Earth girls are easier than ever

This movie-film is a gem and I'd forgotten how I loved it soooooooooo until I had the blissful chance to revisit her charms and delights. Is it Gina's skinny ribs? The Blonde song? The 'Curl up and Dye' salon? Or Jeff, simply Jeff in his stately hotness?

I have my personal theories on the magic of this film but it is more than the sum of these considerable parts, what took it over into cult status? Devotes of 'The Fly' wanting to commeorate that glorious Gina-blum fusion in an altogether perkier world? The convenient reemergence of 80s fashions? LA?

Roach-gate

O winged minion of hell!

There it was, climbing the wall of my bathroom. I felt queasy. I felt greasy and it was nothing to do with the dirty burger I'd eaten in a haze just moments before. There it was, it's siena brown shell gleaming defiantly at me, in filthy contrast to the clean, cold white tile it was scaling with nimble prowess. I screamed, the scream of a soul just sent forth from the bowels of the earth, manflesh came running... But the nifity little bugger had disappeared! How he could hide his shiny brown self with such success in our sterile room of ablutions? We slowly took out every extraneous item: shower curtain, "bath robes", shampoo, conditioner, conditioner, conditioner [note to self: walk PAST Duane Reade, no need to go in every single time], flannels, shower gel etc.

No sign of the beast. Where had it gone? Unable to locate it we surmised with touching optimism that it had gone out of the window.

We returned to our prior distractions: playing the lute and working on the dance moves, but still we could not rest. Heart pounding, I retraced my steps in to the sorry bathroom and turned on the bath tap. Evil fears nothing but discovery and sure enough, a flurry of brown started tap-dancing in my tub. The 'clickter-clackter' of it's unquantifiable number of legges was repulsive, some sort of dance-hall spectacle directly out of William Burroughs. The beast was crawling and so was my flesh. The scream burnt up out of my throat and signalled to my long-suffering manflesh that the bitch was back. We were armed this time, with wine glasses and cardboard, employing the spider-specific method of entrapment. The beast practically laughed at our efforts and unleashed his top trump: wings.

Freakin' wings!

It could now traverse beyond the plane of the wall! O unhappy development! This beast was wily and escaped into unchartered territory, namely the rest of the apartment. The brute made straight for our living room, which, furnished with sofas, chairs, books, guitars and stereos, is a roach's delight for hiding places and dusty nooks. The ante was up and nerves were running high, the bug situaiton had reached defcon 5 and if we were ever to sleep again we would have to catch the roach. Sacrifices would have to be made, it was us or it and 8 months into our lease, we weren't going under without a fight.

Our only option was to trail it's luckless path, tracking it with the light-giving torch. It scurried like a common crim, seeking the murky shadows, from stray object [boxing glove] to stray object [wine-rack]. It was vile. It was also vast. The size and weight of a small child at a conservative estimate. Finally we broke it's stride and it made a heady bid for the entire floor space. Foolish ambition! Heroic manflesh threw a tumbler with calm precision and... managed to imprison the chestnut-brown roach and it's indecent number of limbs! Those years of playing darts were not in vain and we were safe at last.

The hour was late and the vibe was fatigued, so feeling safe we reinforced the trap with a chunky French dictionary and went to sleep, confident that we would not be faced with unwanted bedfellow.

Bleary-eyed but chipper, we returned to the scene and were relieved to see the beast was in his box. It was time to rid ourselves of our Pacific Heights horror so we took it to the roof to fling it over the edge to perish. However the crunchy, cantankerous cock' of a 'roach employed those wings again and simply flew back on to the wall of the building. I feel cheated. I feel wronged. I feel it might one day want a rematch. How to protect the hearth from such a sequel? Wire wool? Rentokill? Answers on a post card please.

Having survived an encounter with the great white of the bug world, I have no interest in meeting another.