My logic is, if Hollywood can make another 9/11 movie a scant four months after Paul Greengrass’s United 93, than I can do another comic featuring Angel Tom, Devil Tom and Pac-Man skirting around the issue at The Starcade. Trust me – it’s pretty hard to do a comic that can make the events of a 9/11 movie funny. So you have to approach things from a more abstract angle.

I wish I could give you a good reason why I don’t plan on seeing World Trade Center. I suppose for the same reasons I didn’t see United 93. But largely because I’m just not ready to. To me, it doesn’t matter how sensitive they treat the issue or how much respect they pay to the fallen. I can’t reconcile art from commerce – entertainment from healing. It’s all too raw for me and much to soon.

I appreciate what Oliver Stone is trying to do with his movie. He’s taken the enormity of the event and boiled it down to the heroics of two men. They stand as the metaphor for the human spirit the rest of us can rally around. But it’s just not for me and it kills me to admit it. If you think it’s cowardly for me to turn my back on these films, I couldn’t agree with you more.

Sometimes I get taken to task for badmouthing a movie without seeing it. I shoot from the hip and tell you up front "I’m into this… I’m NOT into that." It’s a weird position to be in because I am not a critic to be taken seriously. I’m just a regular guy with his biases like anyone else. I never demanded to be taken seriously in that regard. I figured honesty was always the best policy. Objectivity is not my hallmark and you should not expect that from me.

But at the same time, I made a note to censor myself somewhat and not talk about the movies I planned on avoiding. I can’t really do that with World Trade Center. There’s not much else in theaters this weekend and it’s the elephant in the room we’d all be ignoring if I talked about something like Zoom. Has anyone here seen the commercials for Zoom? Yeah, I thought not.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got for a Friday. Hope I didn’t send you out of here on a down note. Not all of them can be a Cracker Jack prize! If anyone sees WTC over the weekend, drop me a note and tell me about it.