“I woke up last night I thought I was going to die
My doctor came a-runnin’ and my family stood by…”
-- “Bop Pills,” Macy (Skip) Skipper

Today started off on the ass side of the bed with one of my dogs in the hospital after puking up blood last night. The doctor floated all kinds of possible doomsday scenarios in front of my wife and I – cancer, Addison’s disease, Parvo – but it turns out that the big knucklehead has what appears to be a parasite that he most likely got from eating stuff off the sidewalk (which, as we all know from The Cramps, is something you should never do).

He’s got another night in the hospital ahead of him, and then he'll most likely come home tomorrow where he'll be spoiled rotton. A sick pet is the surest and swiftest route to crippling, unmanageable worry (next to a sick child or parent, of course). It’s not like the little buggers can tell you what’s wrong with them, so I declare that if you’ve got a pet within reach, let them know how much you appreciate their good health and unconditional love by giving that fuzzy or feathered or scaled little crumbgrabber a smooch (unless it’s a fish, in which case I guess you can give it a couple of extra flakes).

Speaking of animals gone berserk, Synapse Films has just released the Satanic hair-metal train wreck Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare in a deluxe DVD. If you've never experienced RNRN, I strongly suggest you carve out two hours from your life, erase as many brain cells as possible with the industrial cleaner of your choice, and tuck into this film with both hands; it is, without question, one of the most bizarre yet consistently entertaining low-budget films ever made. Canadian stunt rocker Jon-Mikl Thor (or just Thor to his pals) stars as the frontman for a horrible, horrible flash metal outfit which runs afoul of a gaggle of demon hand puppets in a remote farm house before facing off with a Great Satan constructed from what appears to be pipe cleaners.

Yeah, it’s cheap, dopey ‘80s horror, chock-a-block with teased hair, unfortunate nudity, and half-assed nods to Gremlins, but RNRN is so wrapped in its own lunatic logic that you can’t help but feel deep affection for it--which, incidentally, is the perfect sentiment to bring this post full circle: it’s the same sort of affection I felt when I discovered that my dog once ate a AA battery. You can’t believe that it happened, but you’ve gotta admit the dedication behind something like that. Synapse’s DVD is loaded to the gills with extras, including interviews and commentary by Thor, acres of behind-the-scenes footage, and music videos for the two gawd-awful songs performed in the movie (“ENERGY! YOU GIVE ME ENERGY!”). Trust me, you need this one in your life.