Stuff & More Stuff

Debbie Reynolds and Albert Brooks in "Mother." Beatrice Henderson: "I love you." John Henderson: "I know you think you do, Mother."

Seth Meyers got off the most memorable line of the night during Weekend Update: "Barack Obama will go down in history as the first black person ever to have to prove that he killed someone" (Nikki Finke)

I was reading Volume 10 of Stephen Jones' Best New Horror anthology when I came up to Nicholas Royle's story "Reunion." Royle is one of those writers who can be enjoyed line by line. His prose is elegant without ever getting in the way of the storytelling or sounding pompous. This is a strange and disturbing tale of the reunion of a class of med school doctors on their twentieth anniversary. Dark and engrossing. But what really animates it for me is the protagonist's hypochondria. Since I share that affliction Royle's claustrophobic take on it unsettled me.

Perfect formula for A movie Superhero by Brian Moylan: "Origin Story + Meaningful Conflict X Awesomeness of Powers - (The Number of Villains X The Number of Sidekicks) ÷ Amount of Time Spent on the Love Interest = The Quality of the Movie"

Joe Kenny reviews Blood Bath by Bruno Rossi: "Good Lord! If I had known this volume of The Sharpshooter was so lurid, so exploitative, so friggin' twisted, I would've read it a whole lot sooner."

For cat lovers: We watched our first episode of My Cat From Hell on Animal Planet last night at 8:00 p.m.CST last night. Jackson Galaxy's looks may put you off at first (remember when Kramer on Seinfeld was called a "hipster doofus?") but don't let all the tatts and the strange beard fool you. Jackson is the very bright and very cool feline equivalent of the Horse Whisperer. I learned more about cats in one hour than I'd learned in a lifetime of having cats (and dogs) around me. Here's the website link http://animal.discovery.com/videos/my-cat-from-hell-supertease.html