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I'll have you know something before you complain about this kino review: I spent all day Saturday puking my guts out. It started around seven in the morning. Sirens woke me up. Buses and ambulances heading down the naberezhnaya. I felt queasy and slightly hungover from the Night Flight anniversary party the night before. I'd limited my liquor intake and left early from the party because I hadn't been feeling well the previous day either.

It was Saturday morning at 7am, still dark and rainy. I slept like shit. I'd had dark dreams and a bad feeling that something awful was going to happen -- maybe because every TV announcer promised a holocaust. The theater's only about a mile from my house. The last dream I had, the one I remember, I was in a large, mostly unfurnished suburban house with my mother, my brother, some woman -- either a 30s-ish Latino maid or a wife/girlfriend, her role changed -- and a ripe, plump, super-cute baby. The baby was balloon-thick, blond with a big wet smile, big blue eyes, pale complexion, in a red cotton top and blue baby overalls. It wanted to play. I tried to play with it. But I don't feel comfortable holding kids under the age of four. It's like holding someone's air sickness bag. Still, everyone wanted to hear me say that I thought the kid was cute, that I was comfortable with it, that I could love it -- they wanted to hear that I'd finally "come around." I didn't know if the kid was mine, the woman's, or my mother's. It wasn't clear.

Then the dream turned. The maid/mother screamed at the baby. They were in an empty bedroom down the hall. I couldn't see what was happening. There was violence, hitting. I turned to my mother -- she smiled, gathering her purse and keys to go shopping, and my brother didn't notice, slumped in a chair. My mother was so happy to have a new baby in the house!

I started to get panicked about the baby. My mother and brother dismissed it, giving me a "you're being paranoid again" look, a look that used to torment me.

I ran down the hallway to see what had happened. The maid/mother, hair frazzled, jumped out and yelled at me that she'd had enough of the baby, that it wasn't her problem anymore, it was my problem now.

I went from disgust to terror, yelling for my mother and brother. It wasn't so much that I was horrified that a mother had killed her baby; it was that I was sure I'd be arrested. I remember being surprised at my selfishness, but nonetheless, that's what I felt more than anything: fear that I was sure to be arrested. The baby died while I was in the house; the child might be mine.

I ran down the hallway yelling to my mother and brother that the baby had been killed. My mother, still smiling as she opened the front door to leave, told me not to worry.

"Don't be so dramatic," she laughed.

She was on her way out to shop. She'd be back around six or seven.

I looked to my brother and said, "Do you see?! Do you see?!"

And that's when I woke up to the sirens.

I turned on NTV: the rescue operation had just been announced but there was no word yet on what happened, casualties, etc. By eight, my nausea got worse. I ate a plum. Then vomited it up in the toilet. I thought, "Okay, fine, I'm better now. Bad dream, bad night."

Eight hours later, and at least eight trips to the toilet, each resulting in about ten heaves -- I wanted to die. Literally, to just die. I had no energy left and my throat was in tatters. Every joint throbbed. If I so much as drank a sip of water, all the mucus and fluid that my stomach lining could pitch up came out like silly string.

I called Dr. Dolan to tell him I'd have to cancel going to the eXile office to do our special Boar House Halloween Issue. His wife answered. In the background, I heard what sounded like a man trying to vomit up a 100-meter fire hose packed full of mint Jell-O. Miked through a meaty sub-woofer.

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