I remember exactly what my mom bought me for my 7th birthday. It wasn't wrapped but placed in a birthday card for me to open. Naturally, because this didn't come wrapped I was pretty disappointed. Every time presents were divvied out during holidays my mind separated them out into 3 distinct piles of importance:
1. Boxes that were obviously shaped as toys or ones that I could not directly identify as NOT toys. 2. Boxes that after much shaking and jostling I was sure were just boring clothes.
3. Cards...to a 7 year old it is the most boring gift that could be given.
So my hopes weren't too high when I had shredded through all of my gifts and my mom presented me with a card. However, hidden inside the plain white envelope was a card that informed me that I was to be delivered my very own monthly subscription to a comic of my choosing. Apparently my mom had noticed my love for comics through my subtle hints of disappearing in to the magazine corner and coming back with as many comic books as my little arms could carry and pleading up at her with my child doe eyes.
So that left me to decide on what comic to choose for myself. At the time, Spawn was in full popularity and while I loved looking at the dark comic, I usually had absolutely no idea as to what was going on in it. Also, I was quite sure that a small glimpse into one of the comics like it from my mom would end my monthly subscription so fast I'd barely get a chance to enjoy it. This was, after all, the woman that wouldn’t let me watch The Simpsons until I was at least 15. A little too 'adult' for my mom's taste for me back then and now being a parent myself; I can totally sympathize with her feelings. This led me to my other favorite, Spider-Man. At the time I was a tiny version of the 7 year old I was supposed to be, that's a nice way of saying that I was an easy target of school bullies. This is probably where I got my troubled 'big mouth' that I proudly wear now. My childhood taught me a couple of things:
1. How to talk myself out of a fight
2. How to run away very fast if lesson1 failed
Thank God I wasn’t a fat kid or I would have had no chance at all; Darwin’s theory at its best. I was always saying something smart ass to someone bigger than me (partly because everyone was bigger than me) and still have the tendency to do this as Joe can testify. It was my smart ass mouth that granted Joe’s odd dream of fighting me or alongside me some day. One drunken night I decided to accidentally piss off a rather unpleasant drunk bald man. Granted, I did loudly point out into his general direction probably his most glaringly obvious and albeit self conscience physical attributes that a man can have; the fact that he was balding. But did that mean he needed to try and dispense justice to me and Joe in the form of punches to the face? Yes, that is exactly how he felt and is exactly why Joe spent the remainder of the night trying to stop the flow of blood coming from a fist wound on his lip. I would like to report, however, that our short fight did result in a draw where we all walked away shouting obscenities and derogatory comments at each other and no one got arrested. HAZAH! Granted, our 2 versus 1 side was favored but the giant man had attributes of Cory's favorite comic character Colossus and he literally laughed every time he was punched and wrestled to the ground. Besides, I am always in favor of 2 versus 1 as long as I am on the side of 2. But that's a completely different story.
The fact of the matter is I related to Spider-Man, he used to get picked on and wasn't the biggest super hero out there. In fact, from what I can tell (and I might be a tad biased) he is either one of the toughest heroes out there or one of the worst fighters ever. He was constantly getting the ever living crap beat out of him, having large objects dropped on him or getting tossed around like a rag doll all the while spewing smart ass comments around. I think he broke his ribs every other month, if anyone should have known Spider-Man's secret identity it should have been his health insurance company, due to the fact that his premiums should have been through the roof. Sometimes he lost, sometimes he won, most times it seemed that while he saved the day he fought his nemesis into a draw. (Sound familiar at all? No? Well that’s because your mom drank turpentine when she was pregnant with you…I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure how to tell you)
So to make things clear, I am a huge Spider-Man fan and I wanted to make sure this point was clear since from what I learned from Ben Affleck and Kevin Smith; all you have to do is be a huge fan and make sure everyone knows it and they will cast you in your favorite super hero movie. I must say though Daredevil was pretty decent if you watch the director’s cut but don’t hope for much, they had a great concept but kind of lost touch with the idea of Daredevil along the way. I also probably should say that Ben Affleck did the best he could with what they gave him since Hey Zeus would have a conniption if I ever said a negative thing about Mr. Affleck, not to mention he would know right away and delete this post. I think instead of a Spidey Sense, Hey Zeus was gifted with an Affleck Sense, which might be the gayest super power in the world.
For some of you that don’t know (which is probably all of you) I was a gymnast for 10 years. From the time I was in 3rd grade until I was 17, I flipped and flopped all over this great state of Iowa and nabbed 3 State Titles. Am I bragging? Yes, yes I am and I expect you to be impressed or I will passive-aggressively blog about you the next time I post. I am the Alpha and the Omega in these parts. ‘Mr./Mrs. I-Have-Nothing-Better-to-Do-Then-to-Shoot-Down-a-Childhood-Dream’. So I have the background and could easily do all of my own stunts. Plus, I’m not famous so if for some reason I do manage to kill myself on one of the stunts you can just throw in a dude that looks kinda like me and no one will be the wiser! Also, I have about 10 years of experience dealing with spandex, which I will be the first to tell you, is not the easiest thing to handle. That way you won’t get some weird leather version of Spider-man’s costume like in Daredevil and the X-Men movies but a real live version of what it would look like.
I was a real lady killer back in the day...
I also have the perfect body type. I am short and small in stature but keep myself in good enough shape to where Hollywood studio’s wouldn’t have to drop a mint ongetting me in to shape like they probably did with Tobey Maguire. I couldn’t believe they picked Tobey to be Spider-Man in the first place, sure he was mousy and nerdy but the real Peter Parker came in to his own and was a decent looking dude. Mary Jane was a damn fox and I never once read a comic and thought to myself “Ya know, I wonder how the hell Petey got that hot ass wife of his.” Of course, they did tone Mary Jane’s looks down for Tobey and cast the hideous Kirsten Dunst. I will fight anyone to the death that thinks that snaggletoothed witch is even remotely attractive. Of course, you have me, who has the nerdy good looks that might just pull off the awkward high school angst who grows up to be a catch. I practically still look like I’m fresh out of high school! Plus I have asked artists to capture what I might look like whizzing through the air rescuing someone:
More or less, this is how I usually commute to work.
Yeah, I was surprised to. You can’t even tell a difference between the comic book version of Spider-Man and me. It’s uncanny, which is what we should call this new Spider-Man movie starring Schwez… ‘The Uncanny Spider-Man’ that way we can really stick it to all the X-Men fans who were hoping that the X-Men movies would grab on to that title. This is why I plead to Hollywood to allow this to happen, because it could either be me or…
...it’s in your hands Hollywood.
