I always like it when something that was really popular when I was in high school becomes a major motion picture almost a decade later.

Enter X-Men. I remember the X-Men were all the rage back in about the winter of 1993, because I wrote an excruciatingly un-funny article for the school paper entitled "It’s a very X-men X-mas, Charlie Brown." It just got worse from there.

Jump forward to the year 2000. Now we’re in the age of the Internet, flying cars, and Viagra jokes not being funny anymore, and look at what I’m doing. Writing an excruciatingly un-funny review of X-Men the major motion picture. I guess the more things change, the more things stay the same.

While I certainly won’t go so far as to say that I’m not a total weenie, I can honestly say that I’ve never had the slightest interest in comic books. I think that "Tom and Jerry’s Guide to Electrical Safety" turned me off to them forever in the first grade.

At any rate, my entire knowledge of the X-Men comes from what I’ve made up from staring blankly at this cardboard standee in the cubicle next to me at work. In my world, these are the X-Men.

Young Cruella - Before resigning to a life of stealing dalmatian puppies for their fur, she apparently fought crime. Special power: Big snoobs. Tight Underwear Lifeguard - Desperately clinging to his Ray-Bans and letting out a primal scream of pain as his wetsuit crushes his testes. Special power: Sings soprano. Forced Perspective Man - He’s comin’ atcha! Special power: Gloves with veins. Big Gun Bob - Carries a big gun. Special power: Shooting a big gun. The Fluid - Maybe he’s water, maybe he’s ice. I don’t know. He’s blue and shiny. Special power: Able to have tantric sex with Zan from the Superfriends.

Oh, how naive I was. Not only did I fail to guess most of their powers, but it turns out about half of them aren’t even X-Men at all. I don’t remember seeing anybody who even vaguely resembled Big Gun Bob in the movie, and he was always my favorite. Who the hell are these people and what are they doing on this standee?

The world of the X-Men takes place not too far in our future. In a time when the Internet is fast, hovercars are passé, and Viagra jokes are making a big comeback. Like all good stories that take place in the future, it begins in WWII Poland where those darn Nazis are doing that "separating family" thing that they always do. Only this time it’s different, because there’s a mutant kid in a newsie cap that bends up their evil Nazi Jew-containment fence with his magnetic personality!

Oh, sweet Jesus. I'm sorry.

Flash forward. Mutants are everywhere in society. Congress debates whether or not mutants should be required to be exposed to the public and licensed as such. This makes me wonder exactly how far in the future it is before Congress realizes there are mutants living among us. I mean, it seems pretty obvious to anybody who has ridden a Metro bus, sat high in the stands at a Dodgers game, or worked at a Subway in the middle of the night that most of the people in our society are mutants. There should be a law requiring non-mutants to be registered. It would take less time.

It seems that most people who have special mutant powers (such as kung-fu, pizza scarfing, and radical, tubular skateboarding) don’t manifest these powers until they hit puberty. Our good friend Dr. Jean-Luc Xavier (creator of Cabbage Patch Kids) runs a special school where developing mutants can learn to control their powers at this young age.

Okay, it seems like a good idea in theory, but speaking as one who only had, you know, the usual mutant powers at puberty, I think this could be an extraordinarily dangerous thing. Sure, all of us have that awkward uncontrolled bodily function story from junior high, but none of us ever shot a fireball through the blackboard out of a phantom boner? Can you imagine the stories in the mutant version of YM?

This was the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to anyone, ever! Okay, my rents like totally wigged out when they found out that my like, spit and tears and stuff were like made of acid, so they sent me to this whacked out private school for like total freakazoids! Okay, there was this totally righteous BSB studmuffin in my Telekinesis class. Like OH MY GOD! He was so to die for, see. Anyway, one day he comes up to me, and he like totally asks me if I want to go to the prom with him. No lie, guy! Damn, I wish I was his lover! I was like, so excited that I just couldn’t hide it, but then all the sudden he just gets this mondo gonzo horrified look on his face. It was so embarrassing! I was wearing these white spandex pants, and I didn’t even realize that I had started my period! Not only had I burned a hole clean through my pants, but there was also this totally big pit frying out of the floor tile like in Alien! I could hear people screaming downstairs where the drips fell on their heads. I wanted to just curl up and die! That guy never talked to me again, and for the rest of the school year, everybody called me "Firecrotch."

Those mutants who can survive puberty with their integrity intact get to be the X-Men (even though half of them are women). Their powers are much cooler than the ones that I had given them, but I still have the following questions:

Why doesn’t Jean Grey have a stupid nickname? Why isn’t she "The Doctor" or "The Mindbender" or "The Unbuttoned Blouse"? I think I’m in love.

If you are going to star Rebecca Romign-Stamos's fly-rupturing nude body wearing nothing but blue oatmeal, why do you not EVER put her on the screen for more than a second at a time, or in good lighting?

Is it just me, or did Cyclops totally get the short end of the mutant power stick? It is mostly in his case where I give the X-Villains mad props. I mean, most supervillains are too retarded to say, shoot Batman instead of lowering him into poisonous beetles, or just wear a freakin' yellow suit when attacking the Green Lantern, but not the X-baddies. Even that guy who looked like the dude from that Linda Hamilton Beauty and the Beast TV show could grasp the concept that if you just grab this idiot's sunglasses, not only does he no longer have any super powers, but he can’t even see. What a crappy super power. I'd take erection fireballs over that any day.

And what about "The Toad"? Was it just me, or was he like exactly the same guy as "The Sphincter" in Mystery Men? Or whatever the hell his name was. You know, Pee-Wee Herman. I guess that is except for the one crucial detail that the Toad totally kicks everyone’s ass. I mean, you’ve got Storm, who’s got the power to control the weather on top of the power to look like Halle Berry in a Tijuana whore wig, and she kicks eighty percent less ass than this guy whose power is "can do things frogs can."

But if you can get past these issues, and the Xena style fighting effects, X-Men is a pretty kick ass summer movie. If I had seen it ten years ago, I could have been the coolest kid in school.