Saw the midnight showing of Spider-Man 2 last night. Doc Ock rocked my socks.

Even more importantly, though, it was the big fights between Spidey and Doc Ock that rocked my socks most of all. As a kid, Spider-Man was far and away my favorite superhero. I spent many long hours sitting in my grandparents’ attic, digging through their big box of old comic books to find the Spider-Man issues. Of all the classic villains, Doctor Octopus was my favorite. Whenever he and Spidey tussled, Spider-Man got knocked senseless. Their battles were these huge intense things; arms everywhere, buildings shaking in their foundations, bodies flying every which way. The movie captured that feel perfectly.

I have only two complaints. One: Whatever Kirsten Dunst is doing, she needs to fucking stop it right now. She’s nice to look at and everything, but her whiny-sultry always-about-to-cry Mary Jane is really cramping my sock rockage.

And two: I love you Sam Raimi, but Spidey still looks fake when he’s swinging through the city, and it’s your fault. For some reason some of the best directors in the world still haven’t learned that the first rule of making an effects shot look real is to make the camera behave realistically. Sam, I know it’s cool and all, but when the camera dives and swoops and swings along with Spider-Man, it’s not behaving like a real camera; it’s behaving like a camera in a video game, so it ends up looking like something from a video game. That bugs me.

Still, the movie was badass.

After the movie, we trekked to Banning’s Restaurant and Pie House, where we all had delicious pie, except for Tyler, who had some kind of sundae, and Zac, who was a sissy and had cake.

If you’ve watched the Pie Trip II video, you know how much fun Eric Carlson can be in public places. He’s loud, offensive, and he knows it. His brother Ross is slightly less loud, but just as offensive. Put them together and put pie in front of them, and they’re fucking hilarious, as long as you don’t mind getting dirty looks from people.

So we were enjoying our pie as the Carlsons regaled us with tales of how their grandfather killed a bunch of people, when our waiter (a new guy) looked at Ross and said, “Are you Ross Carlson?”

Ross confessed that he was, in fact, Ross Carlson, and the waiter then made a cryptic remark along the lines of, “so you’re the guy who terrorized the Sunset High School drama club.” Ross, who didn’t go to Sunset High School, adopted a very confused look and the rest of us adopted very loud guffaws.

The waiter disappeared to serve another customer while Ross tried to remember what he might have done to terrorize the Sunset High School drama club. He wasn’t having any luck remembering, so we tried to get the waiter to shed some more light on the subject, but he wasn’t keen on shedding any light on anything.

In the end, we left full of pie and still somewhat confused as to why any drama club anywhere would be afraid of Ross, but very amused that the Carlson reputation had traveled as far as Banning’s.

I’ve resolved to bring my video camera with me whenever I’m around the Carlsons from now on.