CP: Our exclusive movie group really wanted to invite you to "Cabin in the Woods" last weekend, but realized it was way too scary for you.

RN: Bless you. I'm told that the fake-blood budget outspent David O. Selznick's burning-of-Atlanta sequence in "Gone With the Wind."

CP: Oh, yes, much gorier even than "Cabin in the E.R." or "The Shining." Anyway, there's a scene early in "Cabin" where the menacing gas-station owner frightens a mobile home full of college kids on a weekend outing. Then he spits a big goober of tobacco juice, complete with the sound effect. That's beyond scary and into flat-out disgusting territory.

RN: As stomach-churners go, that's right up there with the projectile-vomit scene in "The Exorcist." What is it about spitters? Seriously, so gross.

CP: The only public spitting that I totally endorse was when Patti Smith did it at a poetry reading at Hamline University in the mid-1970s. Of course, given the academic setting and her whole Mademoiselle Rimbaud outlaw status, I thought, "Cool!" Plus, hers was just a bit of showmanship spittle.

RN: OK, La Smith could lob a lung cookie in my direction and I'd still bow down to her awesomeness. Which reminds me of a hideous but true story.

CP: You may tell me in complete confidence.

RN: This was years ago. I was outside my prestigious Stevens Square residence when your basic chronic inebriate staggered toward me and hocked a generous loogie that landed on -- and, yes, clung to -- my gigantic 1980s eyewear. I'm sure he was a nice person, on the inside.

CP: Stop me, but I'm getting an image of child actor Peter Billingsley, only in a William Friedkin flick.

RN: Tell me about it. Despite sterilizing my glasses and scrubbing my face with more vigor than Faye Dunaway uses in the opening credits of "Mommie Dearest," I still can't help but think of this heartwarming tale every time I witness some random guy -- and it's never a woman, is it? -- carelessly glob up a sidewalk.

CP: You join thousands of Post Traumatic Spitting Disorder sufferers.

RN: Get this: The powers that be at Target Field just gave the A-OK for fans to pull out their chewing tobacco. Why don't they call it by what it really is: Spit-Inducing Cancer Chaw.

CP: I believe we can agree: No Public Spitting.

RN: Perhaps we could make an exception for life-threatening medical emergencies. No, not even then.