How awesome is Jack Black?

There's a big division out there as to whether Jack Black is a waste of skin or genius incarnate. I fall closer to the latter camp.

Here are a couple of early incarnations. First, his appearance in a 1982 video game ad.



And here he is with John Cusack and Todd Louiso, his costars and coworkers in the High Fidelity record shop. This clip comes not from the movie or DVD extras, but from the movie's website; it's the three of them naming their top five songs to make love to.



I'm thinking Jack deviates a bit from the script at the end, which may account for it being the best part.

Spidey!

I was considering marking the anniversary of the Kent State shootings today, but not even learning that Chrissie Hynde was one of the protestors could make it a non-gloomy post.

Besides, something else is going on today that's making everything awesome - Spiderman 3 has arrived at a theater near me. They say this one cost a quarter of a billion dollars to make. You have to wonder why - particularly when there are so many good examples of how quality Spidey can be made with much less.

For instance, here he is on Family Guy...



...on Electric Company (with Morgan Freeman as the cop)...



...as portrayed by Jack Black...



...and Sound of Music kid-grown-up Nicholas Hammond on the '70s TV version (LOVE that theme music).



And if all these clips took too long, here's the first movie in five (or so) seconds.