O-Bits: A Sunday Kind of Blood Edition

Here’s a lovely story about two Vietnam veterans who kept a promise made in a foxhole that if they survived, they’d meet every New Year’s eve. For  For 50 years, they did. But, as Western Journalism reports, when one of them, Marine First Sgt. James Hollingsworth, died recently, his friend Master Sgt. William H. Cox made the trip early to honor their friendship, stand guard over the casket, and give a eulogy. “There’s a bond between Marines that’s different from any other branch of service,” Cox explained. “We’re like brothers.” Semper Fi, Sargent.

Many people consider spending time with their families over Thanksgiving a horror show, but there haven’t been many horror movies centered around the holiday. The blog of Northeast Pennsylvania Arts Scene tips us off to one, Blood Rage, a 1987 gorefest that takes place around the Thanksgiving table. It’s an underrated gem, they say. If Black Friday is your idea of hell on earth, yu might want to avoid this; as one character explains, “that’s not cranberry sauce…”

Here’s an pitch for the a horror movie: a man buys an animal incinerator, claiming he’s going to start a pet cremation business. Instead, he uses it to dispense of the body of his girlfriend, who he recently killed. Sorry, it’s not fiction; it’s the story told in a Toronto trial of Dellen Millard. He’s pled not guilty, but the evidence is mounting against him. A forensic anthropologist testified that objects in the incinerator looked like human bones.

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.