With Sarcasmo back at home for the foreseeable future, it’s sort of gumming up the works around Casa de Dude, considering we were expecting him to be long gone by now.

See, his room in the house is connected to what we, not so laughingly, call the Creature Cave. It’s a place where the video game stuff and a tv and a couple of couches all reside, a place where the young-ish dudes can go and hang out, without bothering their mom or me.

The problem is this: Sarcasmo likes to think of the Creature Cave as his area, since he’s the only young dude with a room opening directly into the Cave. It’s not, of course, but he likes to think so.

And, to mark it as his territory, he likes to close the door to the Cave and make sure it’s closed so he can pretend it’s his and only his territory. If we leave the door closed, unfortunately, that leads to the dreaded “Teenaged Boy Funk” spreading out of his room and into the common area. So, to make sure it gets aired out and to emphasize that the Creature Cave isn’t reserved for a specific creature, I keep opening the door and making a point to tell him to keep the door open.

Which led to the following conversation the other day.

Him: That’s a silly rule, having to keep the door open. Why do we have to keep the door to the Creature Cave open?

Me: Because otherwise it starts to stink.

Him: Well, why don’t you just, and I know this is a silly idea*, get rid of the stink?

Me: Because we love you?

Him: No, I. . . Hey, that’s not funny.

Well, I thought it was.

*There is a reason he’s called Sarcasmo.

It’s something I find myself saying a lot: I’ve waited more than 33 years for an Avengers movie and this one was worth the wait. No, really.It’s true. Why I find myself repeating that all the time is another question entirely.

In all seriousness, the Avengers movie from Marvel Entertainment and the House of Pain (Sorry. I meant, Disney) came out about two weeks ago and blew past $1B in box office like it wasn’t even trying.

I’m not sure if this movie will have the staying power to surpass Avatar, which brought in about $2.78B in box office, but it’s certainly looking to be the highest-grossing movie in the superhero genre.

But, dudes? I really couldn’t care how much money this movie makes. It was magnificent! It was brilliant! It was explodey! It was funny! It was, in short, everything I ever wanted an Avengers movie to be. Mostly because it was real and not one of those movies that continue to exist in my imagination.

Building on the backs of the previous Marvel Universe movies (Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America), this movie brought together these disparate characters, along with Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye and the omnipresent Nick Fury, mashed them all together with Loki, an invading army of aliens and a surprise villain, and produced a two-hour shot of pure awesome.

You know how, when a movie’s really, really, really good, people will clap when it ends? Yeah, the entire audience in my showing was hooting and hollering and clapping and cheering during the movie. In fact, there were two scenes (both involving the breakout star of the movie — that 7-foot green rage monster known as the Hulk) that were possibly the funniest scenes I’d seen in years at a movie. And that included several alleged comedies.

This one had it all. Great dialogue. Actual characters. Amazing spectacle. Humor. Danger. Action and thrills. And even a tiny bit of pathos.

And, like any good entertainment based on the eternal now of comic-book storytelling, it left us with goosebumps with the small mid-credits cameo scene of the bad dude behind it all. You might not know who it was if you weren’t a big Avengers fan prior to the movie, but, trust me, this is a big deal.

If you don’t recognize that character, just run your select over the following white text: Thanos, the mad god of Titan. He’s so bad, his girlfriend is Death. Literally.

So, yeah. It’s a big deal.

Even with all the explodey bits, I think it remains a great family film provided your little dudes are older than, say, 5 and can handle the loud noises.

Go see this now. In the theaters. When it’s as big a spectacle as it should be.

As big a spectacle as it needed to be, after I had to wait most of my life for it.

You’ll be glad you did.

It used to be, when you found something cool and wanted to share it, you probably only had a bit of that cool thing and you had to spread the word, literally, by mouth.

Thank goodness for the internet and the culture of sharing it’s spawned.

Over on http://www.kuriositas.com, the bloggers decided to share with us some amazing photos that were attempting to capture rays of light, or, as the blogger puts it, crepuscular (of or relating to twilight) beams of light.

And it’s wonderful.

Sunbeams are everywhere – yet when they are caught on camera they are often unwanted additions to a photograph. They cut swathes through the picture, chopping off heads and obscuring detail in a burst of light. However, when they are deliberately captured the results can be nothing short of magical.

There’s amazing shots found in nature. And shots taken that were created by the hands of dudes.

Like I said, it’s some amazing stuff. Should you want to blow a couple of minutes, just taking in some everyday wonder and beauty, you could do a lot worse than to check out the crepuscular photos on kuriositas.com.