Sheldon and Lisa got into town this evening, and the three of us saw
X2: X-Men United at Potomac Yard, and then went for some terrific Afghani food at the Afghan Restaurant on Jefferson Davis Highway in Alexandria.

X2 was fun, though the ending couldn’t have said “sequel alert” more clearly if a naked Hugh Jackman had had the words spelled out in whipped cream on his body (I just wanted to make sure I got that image firmly planted in my mind). And that reminds me of one complaint I had about the movie: not enough beefcake, though I’m certainly not complaining about the big, shirtless (albeit completely smooth) Colossus and the teasingly shadowed but frustratingly brief scene of a naked Wolverine running down the spillway.

And I’m still not sure how I feel about this Nightcrawler, along with Storm my favorite characters from the comic books. Alan Cumming did a fine job, but I don’t think that I prefer the Enochian scarred look of this movie, while very intriguing, to the fuzzy blue elf of my youth.

The lives of mutants in X-Men–their condition is genetic, often can be and is hidden from others, and causes them to be hated and scorned by most of society–has always seemed like a metaphor for (among other things) sexual orientation in our own society, and that was emphasized tonight in Bobby’s “coming out” as a mutant to his family, even to his mother’s statements “When did you first know you were a… uh…,” “It’s my fault” and “Have you tried… not being a mutant?” I realize that this likely is a common reading into X-Men, but I suspect that gay director Bryan Singer also was responsible for bringing that sensibility to the particularly evocative way in which this scene was effected.

It’s been great hanging with Sheldon and Lisa tonight; we’re so easy together. Within thirty seconds we were back in the old rhythms, laughing and playing off of each other like it hadn’t been nine years since we lived together and more than two since we last saw one another.