The B-Masters Cabal

8 Comments

• #1 by Blake Matthews on April 30, 2009 - 10:45 am

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  The old mom n’ pop video store near my house had this one in stock back in the day, but I never got it. The Banana spider is the same as the Brazilian Wandering Spider, which is considered to be one of more aggressive and venomous spiders. It’s called the Banana spider because of its reputation of hiding in banana crates and occasionally making “surprise” visits to people buying bananas at supermarkets.

• #2 by Braineater on April 30, 2009 - 12:38 pm

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  So, Keith; you have the annual gnat invasion, too? I’m glad to know we don’t suffer alone. Every year around this time they come in through the bedroom window: they’re too small to see, they’re too small to swat, and they make our lives a living hell.

  Hey — that sounds like as good a premise as Banana Spiders: the Deadly Cargo, doesn’t it? How about The Giant Gnat Invasion! A Sci-Fi — excuse me, a SyFy Channel Original Movie! Presuming SyFy still uses big, difficult words like “Original”. And “Movie”. And “A”.

• #3 by Read MacGuirtose on April 30, 2009 - 12:43 pm

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  Um… okay, I probably shouldn’t comment on this, because it really has very little to do with your review, but you’ve kind of touched on sort of a pet peeve I have, so…

  but those same guys claim that tomatoes are fruit when everyone else considers them to be vegetables

  Actually, the people who go around annoyingly proclaiming that “Tomatoes aren’t vegetables; they’re fruit!” aren’t scientists. They’re just know-it-alls who are parroting what they heard somewhere without really knowing anything about the topic. Scientists know better.

  (Well, okay, scientists are human too, and nothing prevents a scientist from being an annoying know-it-all and ignorantly parroting something he or she had heard somewhere outside his or her particular field of study. But those people aren’t necessarily or mostly scientists, anyway.)

  Yes, botanically, the tomato is technically a fruit–“fruit” has a very well-defined meaning, biologically, and the tomato fits it. The thing is, that doesn’t make it not a vegetable. “Vegetable”, in common parlance, just refers to pretty much any edible plant part used in a savory dish, other than spices or nuts (and I suppose grains and starches such as potatoes and rice). According to some dictionaries, in fact, any edible plant part qualifies as a vegetable, though that’s stretching a point–few people, if any, would refer to an apple, a watermelon, or an almond as a “vegetable”, after all. So the tomato is indeed a vegetable–and a fruit. What apparently happened is that someone once heard that tomatoes were fruit, assumed that fruits and vegetables were mutually exclusive categories (which they aren’t), concluded that tomatoes weren’t vegetables, and decided to spread the word to show how much smarter he was than everyone else–and then other people followed suit without bothering to double check that this “fact” was, in fact, true.

  In fact, there are a lot of vegetables that are also fruit. String beans. Bell peppers. Squash. Corn on the cob. Okra. Cucumbers. All of those (among many others) are fruit, just as much as the tomato is. When’s the last time you ever heard anyone say “The string bean isn’t a vegetable; it’s a fruit?” I guess the reason this got attached to the tomato is just because the tomato seems to fit better what we think of as a “fruit”, but if you’re going to claim tomatoes aren’t vegetables because they’re fruit, then to be consistent you’d have to make the same claim about string beans, bell peppers, cucumbers, and so on as well.

  Okay, I know you didn’t actually say tomatoes weren’t vegetables, and this rant isn’t really directed at you (except tangentially insofar as you implied that scientists consider tomatoes not to be vegetables, which they don’t). It’s just, like I said, you kind of touched on a pet peeve of mine. Uh, sorry. I’ll shut up now.

• #4 by Keith Bailey on April 30, 2009 - 6:45 pm

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  That was interesting, Read. I’ll keep all that information in mind the next time the topics of fruits and vegetables comes up in my life.

  And Will, I’m glad to know I’m not alone with those pesky gnats. They are almost all gone from my apartment, but I don’t dare open my apartment’s window after the bad time I had with them. What’s worse is that it’s starting to get warm here, and I need a cool place.

• #5 by lyzard on April 30, 2009 - 6:53 pm

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  There’s one scene where a character maps a sighting of the spiders and says, “Almost a direct line to the plane crash.” Uh, buddy, if you connect two points together, you will get a direct line.

  Oh, wow. That’s even better than the spiral in The Giant Claw!

• #6 by anon on May 1, 2009 - 11:24 am

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  Favorite Family Spider Story: My dad is just a little short of being arachnophobic. Which causes us women folk great amusement as the 6′ 4” bearded man of the house tries to come up with reasons why we need to remove the 8 legged invaders. My mom and myself actually like spiders and so we go along with this as it lets us evacuate them rather than kill them. (I was very sad when I learned that house spiders don’t do well outdoors and I’m probably killing them anyway.)

  So we’d just moved up from the bay area to the Sierra foothills. We open the door for to enter for the first time as owners, turn on the lights, and there in the kitchen is the biggest (non-tarantula) spider I have ever seen. (I assume some sort of trap door spider, but while I like them I’m not an entomologist and have little clue about the different species.) Mom’s trying to figure out how trap it and move it outside when almost everything is packed up. I’m staring in fascination, because it has this strange bumpy appearance I’ve never seen in a spider before. Dad isn’t having any of it. This is his new house, and he wants the invader gone immediately. He grabs a broom and brings it down hard on the poor thing. It’s like it exploded – suddenly there’s hundreds of tiny spiders everywhere. It’s his worst nightmare come to life. The spider was transporting it’s offspring on it’s body when my Dad’s ill-timed act of violence came home to roost. Needless to say they scattered into the walls and were gone. Mom and I tried to explain that it was unlikely that they’d survived, or wanted to stay in the house as they were obviously from an outdoor species that had wandered in by accident, but he was convinced for years that they were lurking, ready to pounce. I don’t think he really relaxed until we moved to another house.

• #7 by lyzard on May 1, 2009 - 4:37 pm

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  AND SO SHALL PERISH ALL WHO DO MEAN THINGS TO MY ARACHNID BROTHERS AND SISTERS WITH A BROOM!!!!!!

• #8 by The Rev. D.D. on May 1, 2009 - 10:28 pm

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  I have to admit, I kind of smirked at the result of his attack. Poetic justice for the 8-legged ones.

  I mean, I feel bad for the dad and all, but still, the schadenfreude I am feeling cannot be denied.