Sweet Perdition

“Oh, now, children. We’ve got to keep some secrets today.” –Bruno (Lon Chaney, Jr.) offering words of wisdom to his wards in Spider Baby

[Image description: a black and white photo of three teenagers and an older man sitting in front of a house. From left is a girl with blond pigtails and a sundress with white stripes. On her right is a girl with long, dark hair wearing a headband and another sundress, with sleeves that come a little past her shoulders. On her right is a man in his 60s, wearing a black suit and tie, holding a letter which he is reading. The girls' faces are focused on him. Behind all three of them, visible between the dark-haired girl and the older man, is a man who is completely bald and looking with one eye at the letter in the older man's hands. It's hard to tell how old he is by looking at him--late teens, early twenties, perhaps.]

(more…)

And He Who Walks Behind the Rows did say, “I will send Outlanders amongst you…and these Outlanders will be unbelievers and profaners of the holy.”
–Isaac (John Franklin), Children of the Corn

All right, go ahead and sacrifice me to your respective vegetable-god. I like Children of the Corn.

(more…)

When I was seven years old, I was in love with, and terrified by, a movie called Dolls Its director, Stuart Gordon, was famous for his film adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories–including the cult classic The Re-Animator, which would’ve made Lovecraft himself projectile-vomit–and would later switch gears entirely with Disney’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. In Dolls, these career paths converge: it’s as magical as Peter Pan and as violent as Friday the 13th.

What does some movie about angry dolls have to do with Nancy Russell Burger’s book about raising an NLD child? Dolls isn’t a terrible film, but it doesn’t fit its own format very well–it’s too childish for grownups, and too gory for kids. And A Special Kind of Brain isn’t a bad book by any means. But it’s neither the “how to parent an NLDer” book it claims to be, nor the memoir it probably should’ve been.

(more…)

[Image description: Three plush hamsters standing in a semicircle, each one about 3 inches high. They all have huge, dark eyes. On the left is the only male, mostly white with orange ears and forehead. He's holding his front paws close to his chest. In the middle is a female hamster, completely white. On the far right is another female hamster who's mostly white with yellow-tan ears and forehead. She's wearing a pink scarf. All 3 hamsters are huddled together conspiratorially.]

(more…)

“Hey, do y’all have the new Super Smash Bros.?”

I can’t believe I’m asking this question. Fighting games aren’t exactly my favorite videogame genre. Sure, I fiddle with them sometimes—at 12, I rented Mortal Kombat II at the video store because “Hey! It’s the game Congress hates!”—but they aren’t much fun to play if you don’t have real people to fight. (All my friends are mature, responsible adults who’d rather go out drinking at the bar than play some videogame). So I wouldn’t pay $50 for a fighting game, and I sure as heck wouldn’t show up excitedly at Target on release date.

I hadn’t.

(more…)