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Welllll, that was really fun :)

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Before there was Ben Wyatt, there was Griff Hawkins.

ADAM SCOTT as Griff Hawkins Boy Meets World (1993–2000)

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Great job, AI!

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There's a special sort of marking out for this that only the realest of people will understand.

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It would appear it was in fact Tiffany o'clock.

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This should be a reality show.

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Recently went back and re-watched the men's Iron Survivor from Deadline 2022. What a fantastic match!! Probably one of my favorites from the post-2.0 era. Highly recommend.

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I actually watched an entire season of Dancing with the Stars (Season 33)  for the first time in a while! (I last watched during season 30 but only up until The Miz got eliminated, haha :D)

Going into this season, I was already a fan of Stephen (thanks Paris Olympics!), and by the end I was honestly impressed by much he had improved and how far he made it, especially given the fact that he is not a dancer AND he performed without glasses like 99% of the time. Partway through the season, I started growing to like Danny and Ilona a lot too.

Congrats to the eventual winner - although he was not my personal pick to win, but I'm glad all my faves made it to the final. Overall a fun season and I'm a little sad that it's over.

Here were a couple of my favorite dances. There were probably a few other ones that I liked a lot too but these are the two that come to mind off the top of my head.

The one where Danny and Witney danced to "Bye, Bye, Bye" from Deadpool & Wolverine:

The one where Stephen was creepy for Halloween night.

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Actually documented on record.

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[Smackdown 25/10/24]

*The* reunion we've been waitinggg for.

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When a meme gets memed.

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As always, I am late to the game and I just found out about the horse meme 🫣🎠

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Movie Review (2014)

I had originally seen this movie in a theatre (!!) when it first came out (seriously can't believe that was TEN years ago!), and since then usually caught bits and pieces here and there whenever it was on TV. It wasn’t until last weekend that I had actually taken the time to watch it in its entirety again for the first time in a LONG time. 

Watching this movie again got me digging back into my movie review archive. I have been known to have opinions that have evolved through multiple rewatches of things, so I get curious to see what I had initially written about them. But I was kind of surprised (and confused, honestly) that I had actually never posted anything about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - which is really weird because I swear I remember writing about it.

Anyway here is my super belated review because better late than never, right?

I guess I will start out with my overall thoughts, which also happen to mostly be the things I didn’t like.

First off, the story as a whole felt chaotic. They went a bit overkill with the villains and there was just too many concurrent storylines going at once, which resulted in less-than satisfactory payoffs for each of them individually. From the beginning, Electro seemed like main villain of the movie, yet his story seemed to end abruptly to make room for the conclusion of The Green Goblin.  Meanwhile Harry seemed to have a slow buildup throughout the film and then suddenly became a big deal villain only towards the end. And then there was Rhino who popped up here and there. I thought that they should have kept the focus of this sequel on Electro (see 'random tidbits' below), while also introducing Harry Osborne and building a foundation to establish that he was indeed one of Peter's 'best friends'. And then they could have devoted the next installment to The Green Goblin’s villain arc. However of course, now in retrospect we know that there never ended up being a part 3, so maybe it was a case of just trying to cram as much as possible into this one.

Okay, now for the things I liked. 

Something I noticed and appreciated more during this rewatch was the relationship between Peter and Aunt May. I really liked that there was a more noticeable mother-son dynamic in this film, and that you could see from the things she did (working hard to put herself through nursing school so that she could support Peter) and said (“You’re my boy”) that showed how much she loved him like a son despite not being his actual mother. I also loved (LOVED) any and all scenes with Peter/Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy. I know that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone were dating at the time, which I suppose helps… but they had such amazing chemistry that was really apparent on screen and made me so invested in them as a couple. I don’t have a lot - if any? - of celebrity couples that I ‘ship’ (do people still say that??)  but they were seriously SO freaken cute, I love(d) them sososo much (RIP StoneField!! ☹).  And while I hated the fact that Gwen had to die in this movie, I do think that her death scene was so tragically and (cinematically) beautifully done at the same time.

Other random thoughts:

I had forgotten that BJ Novak was in this movie.

Why was Gwen applying for scholarships and being accepted into college after graduation?

I can’t tell if Aunt May knew or suspected that Peter was in fact Spider-Man. It seemed as though she was heavily hinting that she knew his secret at times, however I know in comicbook-land, characters are often surprisingly oblivious to the obvious (eg. Lois Lane not knowing that Clark Kent was Superman for the longest time).

Random tidbits I found out on the internet while Googling during commercial breaks:

The international title for the movie was The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro, which makes me think that the original intent was that he would be the main villain of the movie. (source)

When Gwen Stacy passed away in this movie, the time on the clock tower struck 1:21. This is in reference to issue #121 from The Amazing Spider-Man comic book series entitled "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" (also known as "The Green Goblin's Last Stand"). (source)

Andrew Garfield avoided Emma Stone for a week to prepare for Gwen's death scene. He is ~so~ method. (source)

Final Thoughts:

The reason for this revisit and belated movie review are due to the fact that The Amazing Spider-Man movies were on TV last weekend and I had unintentionally gotten sucked into watching them. Both of them. In their entirety. Commercials and all. I don't know why I did this, especially considering I have access to both of these movies on iTunes – commercial free.

I had re-read my original review of the first Amazing Spider-Man movie, and it mostly holds up - I still love that movie. However this second movie was just alright. It had its moments, but overall - especially plotwise - it was sub-par to the original. 

But you know what? Even though I had spent a crazy amount of time watching the with-commercial versions of these films, I don't regret it. It was fun. It made me feel happy and nostalgic :)

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You’re my path and you’re always gonna be my path. And I know there’s a million reasons why we shouldn’t be together, I know that. But I’m tired of them, I’m tired of every single one of them, you know I gotta make a choose, Gwen, I choose y o u.