I saw this for the first time not long after I had a kid and was surprised to find myself actually tearing up at the parents' horrible conundrum. It's like when I read news stories about people committing awful crimes and their otherwise sensible, law-abiding parents helping them cover it up. Before I was a father, I…

I did some things too but Lou Reed died so fuck everything else.

And now I'm listening to my cassette of Lou Reed Live. It was the first Lou album I ever bought. I'll have owned it for 20 years come March. And I'm not crying yet but I'm not far from it.

I mean, goddammit, I'm going to wake up tomorrow and there's not going to be a Lou Reed in the world. That's never happened before and I have no idea how to deal with it.

It's like what my painter friend Donald said to me…

I knew this was coming but I've always managed to pretend it wasn't really going to happen. For years whenever someone I love has died, listening to Lou's Magic and Loss has been a vital part of my grieving process. Today it's going to be more melancholy than ever.

I do think the woman he sees is the young mother from the barn, largely because she's blankly blowing on a whistle that the Nazis were playing with earlier. I think he sees her as his friend from earlier in the film just because that adds an extra layer to the defilement of everything good and pure in his life. That…

I watched it for the first time right around Halloween last year, which I think helped me realize that it was far more of a horror film than most things I've seen that fit more tidily in that genre. It's the closest approximation of a nightmare that I've ever seen captured on film.

Leland Orser sells the hell out of his scene after having his body forcibly turned into a murder weapon. The guy is just shattered, as of course anyone would be.

"The director planned to have Aleksey Kravchenko hypnotized by a psychotherapist during the most dreadful and violent scenes so that they wouldn't affect his young mind. However Kravchenko turned out not to be susceptible to hypnosis and had to pretend all the way."

Pretty much the entire final half-hour of Come and See, but especially everything involving the young mother who "escapes" from the barn. No film has ever haunted me more. It's the most effective horror movie ever made and it's not even technically a horror movie.

Canada, mostly.

I don't recall Captain Sunshine's actual sexuality ever being addressed. I thought there was just a lot of misdirection about him being creepily passionate about both his sidekicks and nemeses.

"Real Nick Tortelli" is a great phrase and high praise, and I tend to agree with this assessment of Ray-Ron.

No, my son's name is also Bort.

Henry and Ribsy. All due respect to the Quimby qrew, but Henry Huggins gets short shrift these days.

His attempt at a Letterman laugh sounded like no noise I’ve ever heard emnate from a human being. Masterful work by Lamorne Morris.

Don’t kid yourself, Jimmy. If a panda ever got the chance, he’d nuke you and everyone you care about.

Variations on "Marge, Maggie lost her baby legs!" got a lot of play in my household when my son was a baby.

The best summation of Jughead's terrifying voice I've seen came from some anonymous YouTuber: "If I met someone who talked like that in real life I would freak the hell out."