MRS. CALIBAN

Now THIS, ladies, is the sort of story you RARELY GET TO READ. It's a tender, affecting, yet oddly practical, PISCATORIAL ROMANCE, about a woman who falls in love with a man/lizardy/fish thing and lives HAPPILY EVER AFTER. NUFF SAID?

Well, almost. This story has a lot of good points, so let me list a few:

>> Dorothy's life is a drag, not to say a sort of creeping disaster, before she meets "Larry." Her marriage is a gray wasteland, her children are dead, and her idea of cutting loose is cracking wise in the grocery store with her best friend. This chick needs some serious help.

>> Ingalls is careful to show that Larry is the answer to ALL DOROTHY'S PROBLEMS.

>> Much of the book is devoted to explaining how Dorothy makes Larry APPEAR HUMAN to the world of hairy bipeds, not because she is ashamed of him, but because he is a fugitive from justice. Won't all the real-life Dorothies out there REJOICE to learn that we have it ALL FIXED so this is NEVER NECESSARY.

>> One extremely realistic touch: Ingalls never really explains what makes the Gill Man so attractive to Dorothy, who seems unreformably ordinary and dull as dishwater, not the type to be atttracted to the exotic or foreign. She just sort of stumbles across him, and next thing she knows...

>> I would have thought Ingalls would resort to rhapsodising about how good "Larry" is in the sack, but she NEVER GOES THERE. That, too, is realistic, not to mention DECENT. The place for passion's in the bedroom, I think, and that's really NONE OF OUR BUSINESS.

>> In fact, we learn very little about Larry. One likes to think that will all come out in the next, unwritten chapter, when Dorothy enters HIS world and learns to get along...DO I SMELL SEQUEL?

>> I know what you're going to ask: IS INGALLS A RECRUIT? If you think I'm going to post that kind of sensitive information on the Internet...

Oh, the vital statistics? It's copyrighted 1983 to Rachel Ingalls, published by Harvard Common Press.

BUY IT.

The Numbers Are In!

I'm happy to announce that this year's Caviar Day boycott was the most successful EVER. Caviar sales actually DROPPED for the first time on record, on this day geared towards slitting open UNTOLD THOUSANDS of our sisters so that Naked Apes can dig out the eggs, swish them around in their hairy-edged mouths for a second or two, then SPIT THEM OUT. You all know where I stand on this barbaric holiday.

If the two Armenian brothers who started this despicable craze in the USA weren't already dead, I'd go find them and kill them myself. They don't deserve to be EATEN. They deserve to be SWISHED and SPAT.

Happy National Catfish Month!

We fish you many more!

BENEATH STILL WATERS

This delightful straight-to-video horror film is on the New Release shelf at your local video outlet RIGHT NOW. You do not need to BUY it, but you do need to SEE it; I have decided to make it optional to RENT it. The fact is, this may simply be TOO FRIGHTENING for some of you to watch more than once. Renting is probably safer. For those of you with serious INTESTINAL FORTITUDE, go ahead and buy.

WHAT MAKES THIS MOVIE SO FRIGHTENING? WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, AND NOT A SINGLE FISH. Yes sir and yes ma’am, this is about a reservoir so loved by the surrounding townspeople that they celebrate its anniversary. WHY? The local Satanists are chained at the bottom. The unforeseen result? NO FISH WILL VENTURE NEAR.

Forty years after the construction of the dam and the flooding of the Satanist HQ, a Shaved Monkey in a diving suit goes exploring. Now these are the scenes that will really shiver your timbers. Our FAVORITE PISCATORIAL HORROR DIRECTOR, Brian Yuzna, fills our traumatized fish brains with horrid visions of a complete human city, UNDERWATER, visited only by a few shaved monkeys, UNDERWATER…and nobody to recruit them. NOBODY. They come and go as they please. When the dam starts to show some cracks and threatens to empty the reservoir, NO FISH IS BEHIND IT. Who is it then, you ask? Let’s just say this much: it’s NOT A FISH.

There’s a particularly terrifying scene with a nekkid girl – Yuzna loves those nekkid girls – wading out into the reservoir in a state of emotional collapse. What rises to the surface to put her out of her misery once and for all? NOT A FISH.

There’s a little kid who wanders off into the dark, chasing something we can’t see, and when the adults find him he’s knee-deep in the water, talking to a new friend who lives below the surface. Who is this new friend? NOT A FISH.

Not long after, the little boy, reunited with his sister and babysitter, hears a voice calling to them from the edge of the water. At last, you think, RESCUE, but nope: it’s NOT A FISH.

This is a nightmare reversal of the sane, normal world, in which there is no problem that cannot be solved by the arrival of a hungry fish. Or a little something with tentacles. Maybe some Kelp. But there is no help available in THIS story. The Naked Apes are on their own.

I mean, I guess there are a few signs of hope in here. Everyone in the movie gratefully lives as close to the water as they can, even the old crazy dude who knows THE SOURCE OF THE EVIL, and everyone counts on water to solve their problems. But LITTLE DO THEY KNOW, lifeless water like this is of no more real use than a gasoline-powered turtleneck. I AM THE TEETH OF DAGON, HERE TO SAVE YOU!

This movie does, on the other hand, go to show the real depth of landscum incomprehension of our purpose. And the fact that even a fish-oriented dude like Yuzna has NO CLUE WHAT WE ARE UP TO.