My night with the Culkin brothers

My sweetie has the flu. Or maybe not the flu; maybe just a bad head cold. He's quite vigilant about germ migration, so has forbade me to physically comfort, snuggle and rub up against him. Alas.

So I slept in the guest room last night, and through the thin wall to our room I heard him cough several times in the night. It seared through me the way it does when you hear your baby cough.

I decided to make the best of the situation, though, and resorted to my stockpile of Netflixes. Last night I shoved "Lymelife" into my laptop and propped myself up in bed with my little box. Kirk would HATE this movie, and for me it was a somewhat guilty pleasure. Mainly because I'm fascinated by the Culkin boys. Based on director Derik Martini's dysfunctional family, Lymelife is set in the seventies, in a semi-rural long island burb, right on the cusp of the real estate explosion. It's eery, honest and dark. And somewhat funny, too.

But back to my thing for the Culkin boys. One of my favorite movies of all time is "You Can Count on Me" with Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo and Rory Culkin. In that film, Rory's so little and vulnerable. He plays an 8-yr-old kid who becomes part of the collateral damage in his mother's struggles with her brother and men in general. But far from seeming victimized, the kid steals the show. Nine years later, Rory plays a similar role, but on the other side of adolescence, and this time he has his real life brother as a foil.

The Culkin brothers had pronounced sibling chemistry, and even though they weren't on-screen together a lot, when they were, their ease with one another, their non-verbal language, gave the film texture and spice.

Not sure if I'm cleared for the isolation room tonight. If not, I may have to check out "Nothing Like the Holidays" or some other ribald family dystopia.