Spiderman. He's on the web.

You've got to have some sympathy for the New York Times. Because someone has given Bono a column in the paper, while the rest of the world might be laughing so hard milk spurts out their nose, the Times has to nod and pretend, hey, this guy has a point.

Even when he's talking about his Spiderman musical.

“Creating art that has never been done before is the reason I get out of bed in the morning,” said Bono, leaning forward in Row A on the aisle, as Reeve Carney, playing Spidey, rehearsed onstage. “This feels like it.”

I don't know if anyone's spider sense is tingling right now, but our bullshit meter's certainly going off.

“We’re wrestling with the same stuff as Rilke, Blake, ‘Wings of Desire,’ Roy Lichtenstein, the Ramones — the cost of feeling feelings, the desire for connections when you’re separate from others,” Bono continued. “If the only wows you get from ‘Spider-Man’ are visual, special-effect, spectacular-type wows, and not wows from the soul or the heart, we will all think that we’ve failed.”

Hmm. Here's the advert they're using to try and flog tickets:



That really does look like the way Blake would be selling his work, and doesn't at all make it look like people dicking about on trapezes and great big monsters, right?

And bonus points, by the way, for Bono cramming his face into the advert for no real reason.

Back at the Times, Bono and June Taymor are talking up their show:

Bono observed: “The scope of this thing is just hard to grasp sometimes. It just doesn’t fit into the normal —— “

“Broadway mishegoss,” Ms. Taymor said.

“Right,” Bono said. “And trying to blend comic books — which is a very American contribution to the world of mythology — and rock music and Broadway into this thing of art that we don’t even have a word for.”

It's a musical, Bono. There's a really good word for it. Perhaps - if you must - rock musical.

[Thanks to Rob F and Michael M]