Reality Amazing

I’m sparing you from the weekly photo of my son and I from our hump day lunch not through any altruistic sense.  The lunch had its usual medicinal qualities of sanity maintenance as I ponder the question how I was capable of raising such a fine young man.  The reason there is no photo today is that I forgot my cell phone at home and in testimony about how dependent we’ve all become on technology I feel a little lost without it.  It’s like I’m walking around with my fly open, unintentionally.  There’s already been three separate occasions when I reached for the phone to perform some routine action; entirely too dependent.

I finished my latest foray into Christopher Nuttall’s excellent sci fi series Reality Check which had a similar theme.  It’s set in the distant future with a galaxy wide human empire that’s crumbling under its own weight.  Earth is about the crash and burn (as seen in some of the other books in the series) when a group of highly dependent high school students win a contest to see one of the colony worlds.  Their adventures away from the bizarre earth culture and having to perform simple tasks were telling.  Nuttall’s a great read and I enjoyed this even if the body count was relatively miniscule next some of his other books.

There was nothing miniscule about The Amazing Spiderman 2 which was the object of our delayed date night movie last night.  I really enjoyed the first movie after approaching it wondering why it was needed so soon after the Toby Maguire efforts.  This second one is even better than the excellent first and getting more into the price paid by Spidy and his friends.  My son and I talked about it yesterday where he liked the mid-battle banter Spidy engages in which is more in line with his comic book personae. 

This kid Garfield can really act and Emma Stone is a lot of fun in whatever she chooses to do.  There’s obvious chemistry between the two but the scenes with Jaime Foxx make the movie.  It’s great that blockbuster summer movie doesn’t forget to include compelling stories and actual acting to go along with the special effects (although those were typically Marvel awesome).  Rare for a sequel to outdo its predecessor but here’s a case.