Better Than Weasels on a Train or Musk Oxen on a Cruise

This week in Snakes on a Plane-watch: viddy the trailer (via; thanks, JP). Also, why do I not own this t-shirt yet?

Dr. Robert Sapolsky's hour-long lectures on the physiology of stress linked here are definitely worth seeking out.

Though the ginormous Fosters oilcans LK and I snuck in to the theater as part of our drunken St. Patrick's Day rampage might have ever so slightly affected my critical faculties (ya think?), I still will not hesitate to say that Mrs. Henderson Presents is really not all that great. It's fun for about the first half hour when it's all light and carefree with the familiar but always welcome "putting on a show" tropes, but when it starts getting overly grave and self-serious about the Function of Art and Entertainment During Wartime, it just bored the hell out of me. Frears, my man, what is up? If you're in the mood for a movie about the London theater scene in the early-to-mid-twentieth century that follows the tragicomic misadventures of a saucy, sexy, spoiled older woman, skip Mrs. Henderson and rent Being Julia instead.

I'm only three or four stories in to Kelly Link's new-ish collection Magic for Beginners, but it's already lived up to most of its hype. "Stone Animals" contains the best written evocation of nightmare I've maybe ever read. Check out the first story from the collection, "The Faery Handbag," an early contender for my favorite piece from the book, here.

I highly recommend getting a cute English boy to try to explain the rules of cricket to you over pizza sometime. He will use a napkin as the cricket pitch and the salt and pepper shakers as the batsmen and a grated cheese shaker as the bowler, and you will not understand a word of it, but it will not matter. Thanks for trying, RW, and good luck with the interview.