This is only my second journey down monkeyFLASHmonkeyBACK lane, and as it turns out, this post also takes place in 2004.  I really should have started blogging earlier…

There’s nothing quite like a great theme song.  I’m not talking about the musical score, the likes of which composer John Williams will never miss a beat, I’m sure.

(SIDENOTE: I’m of course being sarcastic.  His new music from Star Wars Episodes I and II is okay at best, as well as his theme for the first Harry Potter movie, but none of them will ever be Jaws, E.T., or Indiana Jones.  (INNER SIDENOTE: I doubt they’ll ever make all those stupid warlock books into movies… they’re on book five already… it has to end sometime…))

No, what I’m talking about is the Eye of the Tiger.  Shaft.  Wind Beneath My Wings.

So what does all this have to do with Spider-Man 2?  It has a crappy theme song.

Chris Carrabba, lead (only?) singer of Dashboard Confessional, wrote this wonder of lyric-fest that just “screams” Spider-Man:

Hope dangles on a string like slow spinning redemption
Winding in and winding out, the shine of it has caught my eye
And roped me in, so mesmerizing and so hypnotizing
I am captivated, I am

CHORUS:
Vindicated, I am selfish, I am wrong, I am right
I swear I’m right, swear I knew it all along
And I am flawed but I am cleaning up so well
I am seeing in me now the things you swore, you saw yourself

So clear like the diamond in your ring, cut to mirror your intention
Over sized and overwhelmed, the shine of which has caught my eye
And rendered me so isolated and so motivated
I am certain now that I am

CHORUS

So turn up the corners of your lips
Part them and feel my finger tips
Trace the moment, fall forever

Defense is paper-thin
Just one touch and I’ll be in
Too deep now to ever swim against the current

So let me slip away, so let me slip away
So let me slip away, so let me slip against the current
So let me slip away, so let me slip away
So let me slip away, so let me slip away

CHORUS

Slight hope dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption

What?!  Does that have to do anything with Spider-Man at all?  It has been rumored (or it’s totally true) that he had another song called I Need a Sure Thing ready to go prior to seeing the completed film, then he had a change of heart and wrote Vindicated in about fifteen minutes.  How would that song have fared?  Well, here are its lyrics:

You are a razor blade
You are precision-cut
You are a stare sharp as the tack in my eye?
At rest in my veins
[Your pulse in my neck?]
As sharp-edged as questions the time I have left
And so you are on my mind.

I need a burning stake
I need a piercing dart
I need something as hot as it is sharp
And I need to bleed
I need to burn
I need a sure thing
I need a sure thing
And you are a mystery to me

You are a paper bird
Folded and folded and creased
And bent and shaped from a five dollar bill
It’s priceless to me
And never spent
It hangs from a ceiling fan over my bed
And so you are on my mind

I need a burning stake
I need a piercing dart
I need something as hot as it is sharp
And I need to bleed
I need to burn
I need a sure thing
And you are a mystery to me

I’ll hang my hopes all at once on a rope
There’s a possibility that this is happening to someone who’s not me
I’ll hold my head
Keep it still and pretend
That these spins and the webs
Are actually desirable

I need a burning stake
I need a piercing dart
I need something as hot as it is sharp
And I need to bleed I need to burn
I need a sure thing
And you are a mystery to me

I’m beginning to think Chris Carrabba doesn’t know the difference between a spider, a vampire, and a Spider-Man.

At least Chad Kroeger and Josey Scott’s Hero from the first Spider-Man film was about a hero coming to save us (or not) and him not staying to wait.  But then again, Macy Gray sang a song in that same movie:

In closing, I guess every song can’t be Peter Cetera’s Glory of Love from The Karate Kid II.  That was a perfect match.

(SIDENOTE: It wasn’t a perfect match.  It was originally supposed to be in one of the Rocky films…)