Today at the New York Observer: a woman reporter quits to go freelance, and a man gets hired from outside to replace another recently departed reporter. (Of four candidates known to have been interviewed for the job, all four were men. That’s a terrible metric, to be fair: conceivably, hundreds of candidates could have been interviewed.) In any event, there are still five staff writers at the paper, but now only one is a woman.

In a sign of progress that gives me hope for our nation’s ability to heal its longstanding wounds, the University of Mississippi has replaced its old sports mascot, a treasonous cur who raised arms against his country, with a bear. Even better? The bear is black. We may just get there yet, people.

by Sean McTiernan

Many horrible things have been done in the name of collegiate tomfoolery. Yesterday Vice unearthed Todd Phillips’ horrific lost documentary “Frat House” on Google video. More terrifying and more gross than anything I’ll be writing about, “Frat House” gave me some insight into the fact that frats are not just a story device fabricated for American comedies and they do, in fact, actually exist. So what better to look to for some light relief than an 80s B-movie classic in which a corpse-related prank goes awry, releasing zombifiying brain worms on the entire campus?

“Night of The Creeps” started out as a writing exercise for director Fred Dekker: He resolved to write in a B-movie in 7 days. If he didn’t have it finished in a week, he would throw it all away but if he managed to complete it, he’d make it. If you had seven days to write a movie, you’d probably go for something simple, right? Like a basic slasher movie, a high school romance with a happy ending. Maybe a movie about implanting an idea in someone’s brain using a seven-layer taco dip of dreams.

Well, you certainly aren’t Fred Dekker. In “Night of the Creeps” he manages to effectively parody the genre conventions of 50s sci-fi, 80s horror and raunchy college comedies. He also decided to do this with characters that all act like they’re in a John Hughes movies, comically extreme stereotypes that still seem to have plenty of human quirks and exchange plenty of rapidfire and hilarious dialogue. That’s a lot to get done in seven days, but Fred Dekker managed it with maximum aplomb.

But “Night Of The Creeps” lightly mocks genre movies without any of that often poisonous (and regularly anti-fun) post-”Scream” irony (one of the few movies to get this right was “Slither,” which itself is a homage to “Night Of The Creeps”). Instead there are nods to its genre brethren (“Plan 9” on the TV, all the characters being named after famous directors, the whole thing taking place at Corman University) with a kind and unabashedly fanboyish approach. This is a horror comedy for people who love horror comedies and, more importantly, people who love things that are apologetically corny and awesome.

“Night of the Creeps” often gets its story dismissed on the basis that it had to be simple so it could adequately take in all the forms of schlock cinema that it wishes to exult. And while the movie clips along at a brisk pace, when you actually attempt to parse out the plot, it quickly becomes obvious how intertwined and cleverly overlapping the whole thing is. Characters die and the nerd gets the girl way before the final reel. Some potentially labyrinth subplots are wrapped up far more artfully and swiftly that expected. For a movie that some have dismissed as a mere horror-comedy artifact, there’s actually a lot of deft sleight-of-hand going on.

You could say it also pays great homage to the hardboiled detective genre, but this would be doing a great disservice to veteran character actor Tom Aktins. His performance as Detective Cameron completely transcends any sort of affectionate satire the rest of the movie does so well. He may as well be every gritty detective distilled into a single kick-ass shaped entity, arriving at opportune times to punch giant holes in the movie to let even more awesome in. And despite striding around with a shotgun and answering the phone better than anyone in schlock history (“thrill me”), he still manages to form the strongest emotional core of this movie. Most people would would balk when attacked by the walking corpse of the axe murderer that killed their best girl. Atkins manages not only to eschew fear and instead reminisce over his lost love, he also remembers you have to aim for the head. He plays everything-from dispatching brain worms with a cigarette and hairspray to frankly confessing a murder to a teenager he barely knows-in such a way that makes you wish Detective Cameron was in every movie.

The gore also looks great. Because there’s so much other stuff going on, it’s spread quite thin over the first two-thirds of the movie. Later, the exploded heads look surprisingly real. A subtle but excellent piece of animatronics gives the teasing shots of the zombie axeman a fantastic payoff. Even the zombie patient zero who slowly streaks his way around the campus disseminating brainworms has a weird split-apart look and bizarre eyes that don’t really ape any previous zombie movies too heavily. And when things finally kick of in earnest, it’s surprising how non-jokey and fully evil those infected with brainworms really look. Oh and the aliens, who everyone always forget, look cool too.

One of my personal favourite characters is the hilariously douchey Bradster, head of the frat that initiate the prank that kicks the whole movie off. He and his cronies use particularly cringe-worthy slang, leaning into their delivery of the worst examples, cleverly satirising how nothing dates a movie like out-modded youth slang. Well, it would be clever if most of the slang these guys use had returned to regular speech. The frequency and emphasis with which these jock dickheads use the word “bro” was probably hilarious at the time but now in the age of “Delocated” (“Just two bros pulling a bros-mose down the street”) it seems adorable and quaint.

“Night Of The Creeps” is like getting a giant hug from everything you like-or should like-about corny genre movies.

Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum. You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.

We’ve been waiting for this one for a while, so good news: “The feature documentary ‘Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields’ starts its theatrical run on Wednesday, October 27 at New York City’s Film Forum. Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields will appear in person alongside the filmmakers at the 8:10PM shows on Wednesday, October 27 and Friday, October 29. Tickets go on sale October 20 at the Film Forum website.”

The 2010 edition of the annual Best Music Writing series is out on November 9th, and they’ve just released the table of contents. It includes work from Awl pals Maura Johnston, Sasha Frere-Jones, Jon Caramanica and Alex Ross. I don’t see how you not get this.

“One lawyer representing 33 men who agree to share media-deal profits equally is a recipe for disaster. Here’s why: as the group does interviews, the individual personalities of the miners will flourish, and one member of the pack will emerge as the breakout star, like Beyoncé from Destiny’s Child. The Chilean Beyoncé will receive offers that his fellow miners won’t — a spot on Dancing With the Stars here, a cameo on A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila there — and he will grow increasingly bitter, as he is forced to split profits 32 ways.”

Everything is covered in doody, but especially your cell phones and touch screen iPads and all the other digital chazzerai.

Check out this video from former Tribe Called Quest affiliate Consequence and former Lil Kim affiliate Maino. It’s beautiful and bucolic. They’re in the woods. With deer and squirrels and birds. It’s very weird, right, with Maino rhyming about shooting people with a chrome .45 and hollering “Brooklyn!” in a club? But as jarring as it is, the juxtaposition of sound and vision, I like it. It’s like that awesome episode of “The Sopranos.”

A deer makes an appearance in the new video from Yelawolf and Gucci Mane, too. This one, unfortunately, is dead (maybe Yelawolf’s mom killed it?) and stuffed and seems in danger of being molested by a drunken frat boy. The song, “I Just Wanna Party,” plays as something of a follow-up to Gucci’s hit from last year, “Wasted.” I like the whole thing, but I think my favorite part is when Gucci says he’s “drunk as Paul McCartney.” I didn’t know Paul McCartney was even that drunk.

And while it’s not rap, Rihanna’s futuristic R&B; is also about as urban-sounding as music can be. But her new video, too, could be a promo clip for the National Audubon Society.The music is so synthy and metallic and shiny-a soundtrack for a night of taxi cabs and neon lights and day-glo drinks in disco clubs. But then there’s Rihanna, flowers in her hair, twirling around in the tall-grass like Laura Ingalls Wilder. It’s strange, right?

That tall grass actually looks like it could be the same hills-California, I’m guessing-where the Doors shot the cover of Waiting for the Sun and where Cee-Lo went hiking around in his recent “What Part of Forever” video. (Cee-Lo, of course, stands as an early groundbreaker in the ruralization of hip-hop-his band Goodie Mob, posing in the Georgia Pines for the the artwork that accompanied their 1994 album, Soul Food

. “Country as hell, can’t you tell,” he used announce from stage at concerts, “Even if the record don’t sell!”)

It all makes a surreal kind of sense at the moment. That’s where we’re at, with bearded woodsman like Bon Iver and Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell having become the go-to collaborators for expansive-minded rap dudes. GZA can’t be okay with this! Actually, he probably is. He has a pretty good sense of humor. So don’t be surprised if the next Wu-Tang video looks something like this:

I’d be psyched!

by Abe Sauer

• Marlboro Menthol, pack, empty

• McDonald’s, large fry box, empty

• Miller Lite, can, empty

• Budweiser, can, empty

• Miller Genuine Draft, can, empty

• Orange Crush, bottle, 1/3 full

• Miller Lite, can, empty

• Miller Lite, can, empty

• Doral, pack, empty

• Culver’s, paper cup, empty

• Miller Genuine Draft, can, empty

• Miller High Life, bottle, empty

• Miller Lite, can, empty

• Medical bracelet, J. Miller, DOB 03/08/67

• A&W, small coffee cup, empty

• Miller Genuine Draft, can, empty

• Miller Lite, can, empty

• Miller Genuine Draft, can, empty

• Wisconsin State Journal, Oct. 11, 2010, various incomplete sections

• Busch Lite, can, empty

Abe Sauer is just saying.

The news that Scotland is moving forward with plans to erect a monument celebrating “the extraordinary life of ‘Private Wojtek’, a 6ft tall, 500lb brown bear who served alongside Polish soldiers — and lived out his years after the war in Edinburgh Zoo” is all I need to share this clip. If you haven’t heard the Wojtek story, it’s pretty incredible (“He is best remembered however for his role in the brutal battle of Monte Cassino in 1944, where he voluntarily helped his comrades unload boxes of artillery shells for the Allied guns under fire.”), and if you have five minutes you will probably enjoy the video.