Critical Avenging

And I thought I didn't know what to write about... 

Yes, I saw The Avengers. Of course I liked it. I love-love-love Ironman, I was pleasantly surprised by Captain America, and I thought Thor was stupid. But it's Joss Whedon with Mark Ruffalo on the side, so how could you go wrong?

But as I mentioned in an earlier comment, there was something a little off, and it took me a while to figure out what it was. The details were exquisite. I loved how the Black Widow "interrogated" people. I loved how much Tony Stark respected Bruce Banner. Mark Ruffalo was brilliant, although what got Maj. Tom (Ret.) and me squeeing like fan girls was the return of Lou Ferrigno. And, in the end, I was craving shawarma like nobody's business.

We have a Palestinian restaurant down the street from our house. The best shawarma. The flat bread is soft and warm, just a tiny bit crispy on the outside, and it never falls apart. The meat is warm and fresh and perfectly spiced. The tzatziki has the cool of the cucumber with the warm garlic. I love the pickled turnips; they're sweet and crunchy. And they add banana peppers and onions which I pick out, but I could see how the heat would balance the sweetness of the other ingredients.

The Avengers was not a shawarma. It was a Brazilian grill. Have you ever been to one? We went, many years ago. They took all the meat in the world, and cooked it perfectly. Whether it was steak or fish or chicken or pork, it was meat cooked to bring out the best in the meat. They were spiced, but there was no sauce. Everything was meat as it should be.

But, holy cats, that was a lot of meat! So rich and filling and ugh. They had a few paltry sides, but after a while, even though the chicken was the perfect chicken and the pork chops were the perfect pork chops. I just got tired of meat.

I recently read a short story about an artist who found she was putting too much detail into every square inch of her large canvases. She realized that when she stepped back to look at the finished piece, there was no place for her eye to rest. That's kind of what The Avengers felt like.

Other than that, I thought it was awesome, and we're going to go see it again so we can catch the lines people laughed through.

But what I really want to know is, what did Dr. Selvig mean when he told the Black Widow, "Who said I didn't know what I was doing?" Was Loki controlling him or not?