kayak

i've been longing to be on/in/near water recently. i live within a few minutes' walk of a public launch and i see people out enjoying the water, coming and going, literally walking from their house towing their kayak on little wheels. waaaaant.

after chatting with philotera (who has been kayaking for a few years now), i signed up for a kayak class to not-so-metaphorically get my feet wet. i was looking to get some paddling technique training, and see how it all felt vs canoeing. would being so low in the water be scary? would my legs go to sleep? would the paddling exhaust me?

oh, i liked it. pretty much all of it.
( about the class )

at the end of it all, i came home and realized that i had lived for years near a lazy river (and while growing up near fast-flowing but not-rough creeks) and could have been paddling nearly year-round. where i grew up, the word kayak meant whitewater and helmets and eskimo rolls.* oh well.

my legs did not go to sleep. nor was i crippled with pain the next day, although i definitely felt the work in my abs and i had a little sunburn on the backs of my shoulders.

i'm dreaming of boat-in camping now. but that means getting C on board. (and probably going without Leela, which makes me sad...okay, i was trying to figure out if she could sit between my legs as long as i skipped a spray skirt.)




*and perhaps if i had grown up here i would have thought of kayaking as waves and drysuits and hypothermia, rather than puttering about in a lake.

the Spider-Man problem

i'll start by saying that Spider-Man: Homecoming is excellent. no spoilers for the film follow.

the movie has the feel of a Marvel comic, where the characters are clearly a part of a larger world that includes both superheroes and locations that are familiar, like New York City. Peter is a 15 year old boy who lives in this world. Homecoming is well-executed, and dare i say it, better than the Raimi films. if you like Spidey, you should see it. it is definitely Spider-Man, and all the ways that it breaks away from existing tropes are good and leave me hopeful for the future of the franchise.

i won't be seeing it again for a while, though.

i love my Marvel Unlimited subscription, and whenever a character comes up, i go off and read up on their history.* the one character that i like but can't seem to read much of is Spider-Man. i could never quite put my finger on why i would read an issue or two and then walk away. Peter Parker is a great character, and well supported with a-list writers and artists.

after seeing the movie the other night, something clicked. i can't deal with the Peter sad = story good** dynamic. he's perpetually unable to enjoy his personal life or be truly happy because Spider-Man gets in the way. and so often that "Peter sad" comes from him trying to maintain his secret identity and keep his patrolling secret from people who deserve to know. or, as mimerki noted, he doesn't leverage his connections with his wealthy superhero friends to help with his cashflow problems nor use normal legal means to achieve his needs when it would be completely reasonable to do so. so first, there's a hell of a lot of "Peter sad" and i can only take so much of that, then there's Peter's wit only being applied to the heroing side of his life.

it's like he's perpetually punished for doing good. that's not something i actually want out of my entertainment.

it's too bad. i can't help but like the guy.



*this has mostly been delightful. a detour like Night Nurse is surprisingly good. then again, The Great Lakes Avengers i tried reading is painfully unfunny.

**i'm paraphrasing one of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer writers here. and "Buffy sad" was also a problem.