(Re-posting in honor of New Moon coming out today)

Robert Pattinson creeps me the hell out. I haven’t even seen his vampire movie. All I know him as is the kid who died in the Goblet of Fire and the guy who takes creepy photos. Look at the above picture. There’s something very, very wrong about him. He has Ivan Drago’s chin, hair you see on your average homeless man and dead eyes. Cold, dead eyes.

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Since the moment Summit Entertainment announced its plans to make New Moon, its much anticipated sequel to Twilight, the company has been under pressure from millions of moms and tweens who are desperate to absorb every new bit of sexy, lucrative minutiae. In April, Summit whetted our appetites with news that Robert Pattinson’s character would feature more prominently in the film than he did in the book (natch). Later, at the MTV Movie Awards, we were permitted a fleeting look at Taylor Lautner’s imposing lupine avatar. Now, for the first time in like a week, Summit Entertainment has released a BRAND NEW FEATURETTE telling us everything we ever wanted to know about New Moon.

For example, one thing we learn about New Moon is that “New Moon is a lot more complicated than Twilight was.” SHIT. If Matrix Revolutions is any indication, complication is the LAST thing you want in a sequel. “Cookies need love like everything does.” –Agent Smith. I mean, Twilight is already complicated enough as it is, at times even heartbreaking-ly confusing. Case in point: this particularly profound exchange:

Billy

Any luck with the Waylon case?

Charlie

(darkening)

Found a footprint out at the crime scene today. A bear human footprint.

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At the conclusion of a movie, it is customary for viewers to composedly gather their belongings, unassumingly dispose of their leftover food on the theater floor, and calmly make their way toward the exit. Less frequently, viewers may feel compelled to linger on a while longer in order to observe a particularly engaging or plot-driven credit reel, as is the case with The Hangover or Se7en or Speed Racer.

In even rarer circumstances, viewers may become desirous to hurtle themselves from their seats at momentous speed, pushing their tired bodies to perform death defying physical stunts as they maneuver over rows of obtrusive seating and hand rails, violently sacrificing life and limb to escape the unrelenting pain and suffering of the last two hours. This is the type of thing that happened after I saw The Ugly Truth.

The worst thing is that you can’t even talk about The Ugly Truth anymore by making a clever pun on the title, because every clever reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes has already discovered the effectiveness of doing that. Note, for example, Kam Williams’ inventive analysis that the film is “Ugly, and that’s the truth!” How creative and knowable! We can totally identify with that statement in the context of this movie! In retrospect, had I chosen to review the film at an early date instead of seeing another romantic comedy (Orphan), I might have had creative license to say “Katherine Heigl Discovers the Ugly Truth about Bottled Water in Revealing Rom-Com.” (SPOILER: Bottled water and its discontents is the primary focus of The Ugly Truth).

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I am only a minor nerd.

Sure, I attended Star Wars midnight showings. Sure, I came in costume as Thane-akin Skywalker. Sure, I still have my Jedi robes that my mom sewed for me (which I still maintain was the saddest day of her life.)

But, as Comic-Con begins, I must reflect on the plight of the nerds. Comic-Con, with only 22,000 geeks in attendance in 1992, has turned into a Hollywood promotional free for all. Attendance is expected to exceed 125,000.

Rummaging through my thousands of fan e-mails today, I found this particularly stunning piece, sent from the opening night of Comic-Con in San Diego.

Dear Thane,

Big fan. First time writer. My name is Norman Wheenier. I have been attending Comic-Con for fifteen years now. And I fear for its legitimacy. Why? Let me put it this way: it’s like high school all over again.

This used to be a safe place for a man to walk around in his Spock ears or wearing a black power ring, bearing the symbol of Green Lantern’s super-villain Black Hand, who after his death is resurrected by Scar, when he regurgitated the first black power ring, and is told by Scar that he is now the living embodiment of the black light.

The Hollywood jocks now walk down the hallways like they own the place. They think they can promote whatever they want here. Including the new Patricia Heaton family sitcom. Seriously.

And don’t get me started on the Lost fans, who think they are so cool. Listen, you don’t know what it’s like to be a super fan. Lost has been consistently strong for five seasons. That’s nothing. Try sticking with Star Wars through Episode I or The Clone Wars, or sticking with Star Trek through the Next Generation episode Masks, where Data becomes an Aztec Sun God.

And the popular kids from Twilight are making life a living hell for me. They mock my Star Fleet uniform, while going nuts for that stupid haired Robert Pattinson loser who looks like he jizzes his pants everytime he sees that Bella girl. Why not go crazy for a real stud, like Jean Luc Picard? Twilight is trash. There are better written books, like Tolkein’s LotR trilogy, or Rigney’s WoT series. Plus, they don’t follow any vampiric lore. Twilight is bullshit. Excuse my language. But it is. All Twilight has done is bring more girls to Comic-Con who won’t sleep with me.

The upside to the Hollywood-ization of Comic-Con? Cooler movies are coming our way. I write this from my iPhone while in line for James Cameron’s Avatar panel.

The downside to the Hollywood-ization of Comic-Con? Probably the cool guys from the True Blood panel giving me a wedgie, and then stuffing me in a locker (which took some effort because there are not lockers here). Plus, everyone is making fun of my last name – which is French by the way. Also, the whole point of coming to Comic-Con was to lose my viriginity, hopefully to this hottie Elloise who dresses like a dark elf. Now, I hear she’s going with some G4 guy to the Adult Swim Friday night party. Party? At Comic-Con? What is the world coming to? Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to seduce her properly during our next LARP encounter.

Hope all is well, Thane. Again, I am a big fan, and I think you are the greatest writer on the internet. You are a genius.

Dammit! Some guys just cut me in line. I’ve gotta go and try out my Vulcan nerve pinch.

Sincerely,

Norman Wheenier

Norm, compared to you, I have discovered I am not a minor-nerd. I’m not a nerd at all. I’m the cool guy.

And as the cool guy I’d like to say that if you open your trap one more time, four eyes, I’m gonna put your face in a toilet and give you a swirley. Watch your back, geek! Your ass in mine!

And thanks for your kind words. It’s always nice to hear from a fan.

He first graced our lives as the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air . Then he saved our planet (and America!) from mind-controlling humanoid aliens in the prophetic Independence Day , and then twice more saved us from aliens in the Men in Black franchise. He taught you and me how to score with the enigmatic opposite sex in the genre-defying Hitch . He survived an apocalyptic spread of zombifying-vampirification disease in the epochal I Am Legend . (Although, this last assertion is debatable. It is not clear whether they are truly vampires. At least not by the Twilight system of classification.) He forever endeared alcoholism to our hearts as the titular superhero in Hancock .

In his next feat of superhuman performance, Will Smith, noted sort-of-Scientologist, will unite the Western World by reëdifying its collective consciousness with a story of true, unfettered love: Welcome, world, to the City That Sails : a 20th Century Fox production about “a father and daughter living on opposite sides of the ocean whose love is so strong that it causes Manhattan to split off and float across the Atlantic.” (No, really. Variety says so. )

You might not know this, but we pitched this movie a few years ago as National Lampoon’s High Seas .  The movie runs as follows:

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Kristen Stewart is rumored to have recently turned down her boyfriend’s proposal of marriage by saying she is too young to become a ‘Mrs’. Me-thinks this may be the smartest thing the flannel-clad angst machine has ever said. Too bad 21-year-old Kevin Jonas didn’t feel the same. After getting engaged to his girlfriend over the weekend, the eldest Jonas will now forever be known as “that floppy haired guy who’s dumber than that Twilight chick”. As it is, the odds are already stacked against marriage these days. Throw in a cherub-faced couple whose biggest life memory thus far is prom, and the odds that the marriage will end with a bang in Judge Judy’s courtroom skyrocket. Here, in my humble opinion, are the top reasons not to get married before the tender age of 25. (Note: I really think marriage shouldn’t be considered until 30, but my therapist tells me I need to work on not being so cynical so, 25 it is).

9 - Macaulay Culkin, LeAnn Rimes, Kobe Bryant, and Britney Spears (And sooner than you know – Speidi). These are only a smattering of the celebrities who’ve married at young ages and are already divorced (Spears twice) or currently experiencing troubled and highly publicized marital discord. Granted, these are celebrities who all need an entire season of Oprah specifically dedicated to working out their deep-seated mental and emotional issues that go far beyond marrying too young, but who wants to be in the same category as any of these hot messes for any reason?

8 – You don’t want to be “that” guy/gal. You’ve just turned 21, so all your underage friends are going to ask you to buy them beer. It’s sort of a cool rite of passage to be the older brother/sister buying cigs and Mad Dog for your younger siblings and their friends. Say “I do” though, and you become the creepy old married guy who delivers the keg to the party then stays and stands in the corner telling inappropriate jokes to all the underage pootang he can no longer get. Or, for the ladies, you morph into the bitter drunk Mrs. Robinson type who buys her younger brother a fifth of Jim Beam but won’t give it to him until his highs school QB friend lets her put her hand on his thigh and tell him stories about her long-gone unfettered youth. Throw a camcorder and youtube into the mix and you’re a cliché waiting to happen.

7 – Your social circle collapses. When you’re single, you tend to hang out with single people. It’s no fun being the single guy/gal sitting in the corner playing Mafia Wars while your friend “discreetly” gropes their significant other. Likewise, it sucks to be in a couple and watch your single friends do body shots off hotties all night. When you marry young, it’s likely that none of your bone-headed friends are also married yet, so you don’t have a built-in couple’s support system. No couples to hang out with for date nights, Bunko tournaments, cook outs, or partner swaps. Once you get sick of hearing about your single friends’ conquests and they get sick of hearing about how you’re feng shuing your bathroom again, you’ll find yourself spending Friday nights in your sweats staring at your amore and wondering just how much Lunesta will knock them out for the entire weekend but not get you arrested.

6 – You’re not playing with Monopoly money anymore. When you’re under 25 you probably don’t have any assets yet, so you don’t think to get a pre-nup and save yourself from future financial ruin. In the case of the Jonas man-boy, I’m sure this isn’t the case. It’s likely the entire Jonas clan has performed an intervention and gotten Kevin’s fiancée’s signature on an ironclad piece of “keep your hands out of our cookie jar.” But in the real world where most 21-year-olds are grunting it out in an unpaid internship, stocking aisles at Target, or living off their parents, there isn’t a lot financially at stake yet. Now, I know everyone thinks they’ll be married forever, but statistics say that one day you’re going to wake up, roll over, and want to punch your spouse in the face for having the emotional intelligence of a 2-year-old, shaving your cat, spending your entire savings on an ATV/Gucci purse, getting fat, sleeping with your best friend, insert reason here. Now, because you married young and built your “wealth” together, divorcing means you’re going to have to split 50/50 with the person you used to adore but now want to see roasting over a spit. Your A-Team figurine collection, your signed poster of James T. Kirk, your eBay earnings, and your drawer full of “pipes” will now all belong to a person who appreciates them even less than he/she appreciated you. If you’d waited until you built your wealth on your own and gotten married later in life you could have pre-nupped your precious and left the ex with nothing but some scathing posts on Facebook.

5 – Babies having babies. Once married you’ll get pressured to have children, then life as you know it will really be over. You just learned how to do your own laundry – are you really ready to launder diapers? How about bibs? Your ball and chain’s underwear?

4 – The Stag Party. Your friends aren’t old/wise/rich enough to throw you a decent bachelor/bachelorette party. This is twofold. When you marry at 21, chances are some of your friends are still not legal to drink and won’t be able to wrassle up a fake ID to get into the stag party to begin with. Also, your of-age friends probably aren’t all that inventive or imaginative or endowed with cash. All they’re going to try and do is get you shit-ass wasted drunk on the cheap. So, basically you’re getting a keg of PBR and some local community college girls stripping, which equals a pounding hangover and a possible case of herpes. Wait until you’re older and maybe your friends can spring for a long weekend in Vegas, a sailing excursion in Miami, or a trip through wine country. Don’t worry, all these more adult parties can still include strippers, but they’ll also be a lot more fun and activity-oriented than most underage bachelor/bachelorette parties, which are usually just your typical Friday night on ‘roids.

3 - You haven’t had good sex yet. If you believe Team Jonas, Kevin hasn’t had any sex yet, but this article is for the normal 21-year-olds out there who are at least willing to admit they’ve put the tip in. If you’ve gone to college you’ve had sex in a frat house bathroom, or in your bunk bed in your dorm room with your roommate pretending to be asleep, or next to a statue of an old dead guy in the quad. If you haven’t gone to college you’ve had sex in a union worker’s truck, in your parents’ basement, or in the alley behind your local karaoke joint after 18 shots of Don Julio. Though you probably woke up with a hangover, I’m 95% certain you didn’t wake up with your no-no still tingling in bliss.  It takes some time to figure out that sex is more than just rubbing and fumbling and getting things to go in the right places. Maybe you’re a quick study and could teach sex ed classes by the time you’re 21, but chances are you’ve really just barely figured out how to put the condom on with minimal embarrassment.

So, #1 – you don’t really know if your partner is that good in bed or not because you don’t have a ton to compare them to. You could be satisfied with bad sex for the rest of your life (or the next 3 years until you divorce) and never know the difference. And #2 - When you get married young, odds are you and your partner have probably been very polite and gentle during sex and haven’t really figured out what you like or how to ask for it. Maybe you’ve done some light experimenting with food or props or mirrors, but you haven’t yet figured out that you want your partner to sit in a swing, or that you’re really turned on when they crow like a rooster, or that you ‘O’ louder than a freight train when they dress up like Obama or use their knuckle, etc. Whatever your sexual appetite calls for, you probably haven’t discovered it when you’re 21, so it’s very likely your wants/desires might turn out to be not quite as compatible with your partner’s as you initially believe. When you’re 21 you both might totally be into missionary. Imagine how awkward it’s going to be when you turn 25 and discover you’re vanilla and he’s a Furry. Do you really want the divorce papers to read “I’m just not that comfortable peeing on him”? Save yourself the grief and get married later when you know what moves you between the sheets.

2 – You’re only young once. You haven’t figured out a path for yourself yet – but when you get married you suddenly have to have everything be contingent on this guy/girl? The world is a big, big place. It extends beyond your local Applebee’s and two-screen cineplex. One day you’re going to wake up and realize you can do anything you want. Maybe you’ll decide you want to join the Peace Corps, become a pyrotechnic, move to France and sell hair wraps. The thing about being married is that you have to run every crazy wild hair you get up your ass by somebody else. And they’re always going to have a reason why now is not the right time to go to Ibiza or to open that comic book store. Being young is about exploring your options and figuring out what makes you tick. When you marry young you say “no thanks, world. I’m really not that curious about anything. I want to stay in Flint, Michigan and marry the first girl who let me put my hand on her boob because there’s nothing else in the world that could fulfill me. Ever. Really.”

1 – Your Permanent Record. You think nothing makes you feel dumber than the glazed and terrified look your blind date will give you when you try to explain to them why you’re already divorced at 25. But then you remember your parents are still paying off the wedding, and that makes you feel even dumber.  And at every family gathering from here to eternity, all of your relatives who flew in for the wedding and whispered behind their programs to each other that the marriage was a bad idea and would end within a year will be smugly and silently sending you ‘I told you so’ looks across the green bean casserole as they look at the empty seat beside you that once, briefly belonged to your spouse.  Save yourself the grief and let your cousin Judy be the dumb one everyone whispers about.  You’ve got years and years and years of awkward family gatherings ahead of you - do you really want to rush into them?