I was sitting in my usual coffee house this morning, much earlier than usual, furiously trying to finishing evaluating a set of papers when this young woman I've chatted with before came in. She's getting her Ph.D. in psychology, and so we've had a few conversations. "Oh, I was thinking of you last night," she said, "I just found out that I'll be teaching next semester, and I wanted to ask you if you would be willing to give me some advice."


"Honey," I said, "there are only two things that every teacher needs: a shovel and an alibi."


Silence.


Finally she says, "I don't get it."


"The shovel is for burying them, and the alibi is so you don't get caught." She smiled then and laughed. I went back to grading papers thinking maybe it would be the students who would need the alibi.
The guy next to me on the subway was reading a book proclaiming itself to be "The Number One Bestseller on Fasting." I so need to focus on getting published.
"But, but, but, it looks so"....."Don't say it" I command...."Stupid." This coming from my students.


This is why good movies die.


It would be easier to accept their criticism if say Benchwarmers wasn't the number 2 film in the country.


Slither is essentially a remake of one of my favorite grade c horror films from the 80's Night of the Creeps. The very basics of the premise are the same: intergalatic slugs land on Earth and begin to infect living humans making them hosts and spreading their slug like joy to the world. In Night of the Creeps, there are several story lines including one involving a police detective long traumatized by his arrest of a serial killer. The "hero" of Creeps is an unattractive geeky young man nursing unrequited love for a sorority girl dating, predictably, a jocky moron. Of course, the Creeps, horrifying as they are, make the way for the hero by A killing her boyfriend and B revealing his latent heroism. Unfortunately the Creeps do nothing for his hair or his fashion which continue to be the most horrifying aspect of the film. Slither, on the other hand, features the attractive and witty Nathan Fillon as a cop "holding a torch" for the young, beautiful, and smart, but married Starla. Starla is married essentially to a rich older jock, who for all of his limitations actually loves her.


And here is essentially where any ressemblance to the original ends.


Potential filmgoers who think this film is "stupid" don't understand that this film is a tribute to 80s horror films like Critters in the same way that Cabin Fever was a tribute to 70s horror films. For me any film that has antler dancing, a man attacked by a deer, a mayor straight out of a David Mamet script, Troma actor cameos, a girl who saves herself using her silk wrapped nails and a curling iron, a female lead who is "hardcore" as well as brilliant and beautiful, a conscious disease, and a man turning into a giant ooze covered slug is nothing short of brilliant. And I don't just say that because it reminds me of what I did last weekend. James Gunn's script is full of one liners like:

Mayor: If I wasn't shittin' my pants right now, I'd be fuckin' fascinated.

or later

Mayor: What kind of goddamned thing wants you to eat it?!


I think someone should make a Magic 8 Ball using only the Mayor's lines. I can just see all across the country, little girls wondering if they will ever get married and getting the immortal line, "Get out of the fuckin' way you cocksuckers" or pondering who the love of their life will be and reading, "I've never seen anything like it, and I watch animal planet all the fuckin' time."



Of course James Gunn, author and director of Slither, is also the author of Tromeo and Juliet and the short film Hamster PSA, a film instructing hamsters not eat their own young featuring the Toxic Avenger. Considering that, I expect nothing less than comic genius fused with gross out gore.


And if all I've said to you means nothing, I leave you with only this, if you can find the money and the time to see Snakes on a Plane, you can find the time and the money to see Slither.


Period.
I do strange things. I read books in bars. I walk around with an easter basket converted into a pocketbook named after the Emperor Claudius. I wear light up bunni ears to birthday parties.


It should seem pretty clear to people just from the way that I look, nevermind the way that I dress, that my behavior is going to be well outside the range of "normal." Yet this morning when one of my students discovered I was reading V for Vendetta she said, "I didn't know you read comic books" in a voice filled with surprise. This weekend I kept hearing, "I can't believe that you are reading in a bar."


I'm four foot six and I'm also a thirty-two double d walking around with a bunni bag named after a dead Roman Emperor and the ability to quote Shakespeare at any moment, that you can not envision that I read comic books or read books in bars is a failure of imagination on your part.


Work harder next time.
Why are you in front of a computer reading this? Go, go now. Role around in the grass. Enjoy the extra daylight. Go frolic.


Ok I've got nothin', but seriously, you should be out enjoying the weather remembering that last week it was snowing.