Wall Crawlers, Proto Punks, and Ominous Poker Hands

- I had the opportunity to see Spider-man 3 last week, and I would say that, for the most part, I enjoyed it. It seemed to me that they tried to cram too much into the movie. The various plot lines could have easily fleshed out two separate movies. If you’ve seen the first two installments of the Spider-man franchise, you might as well go see this one. I ended up seeing a bootleg of the movie a few days after seeing it in the theater, but I would advise against downloading this one. Not for the reasons the MPAA and the various copyright holders would put forth, but simply because the bootlegs out right now don’t do this movie justice. Since Spider-man spends a good deal of time wearing a black costume in this flick, you really want to see a quality version, be that the theatrical print or the eventual DVD.

- I generally make it a rule that I don’t take my work home with me. And seeing that I work at a landfill, that hasn’t been a hard rule to follow. But last week a resident came in and I noticed he had a box of LPs on his passenger seat. He said I was welcome to have any of the records. You’d be surprised how many offer to let you have the things they are prepared to throw away, but that’s a topic for another day. So after thumbing through his various Foreigner and Journey albums, I managed to score a few choice LPs. I got Alice Cooper’s “Billion Dollar Babies,” The Cars’ “Panorama,” Elvis Costello’s “Trust,” and the piece de resistance the New York Dolls’ “Too Much Too Soon.” I never thought I’d come across a vintage Dolls LP, seeing as they probably didn’t sell many of them back in the day. But, as the old saying goes: one man’s trash...

- I played a lot of poker this past week. And while I did pretty well, I was alarmed when I got a Dead Man’s Hand. For the unfamiliar, a Dead Man’s Hand is a two pair poker hand, aces and eights. The hand is so named because it is widely reported to be the hand Wild Bill Hickok was playing before he was shot. The hand is a popular cliche in many old western films, wherein a character, usually a villain, will get a Dead Man’s Hand shortly before being killed in a violent confrontation. And though I have not been killed in a gunfight in the days since getting the ominous hand, I have been watching my back.