The Inconvenient Indian [Canada, Michelle Latimer, 4] Essay-format documentary examines the Indigenous struggle for sovereignty and cultural reclamation in North America, as hosted by novelist Thomas King and inspired by his nonfiction book of the same name. Makes its case through cinematic language, pushing the archival footage and talking heads format to the background.

Beginning [Georgia, Dea Kulumbegashvili, 4] Depressed wife of a pastor bears the brunt of a persecution campaign from a local man hostile to their minority Baptist faith. The camera acts as a pitiless eye in this harsh, austere drama of pervasive male oppression.

I Care a Lot [UK, J Blakeson, 3] Corrupt legal guardian (Rosamund Pike) who slaps unsuspecting seniors into care facilities to bleed them dry triggers a cat-and-mouse game when her latest prey (Dianne Wiest) turns out to be the mother of a wealthy gangster (Peter Dinklage.) Engaging thriller— until it betrays the contract it has established with the audience.

Concrete Cowboy [US, Ricky Staub, 3] After yet another expulsion from school, a troubled teen (Caleb McLaughlin) gets dumped for the summer with his father (Idris Elba), who belongs to Philadelphia’s threatened culture of inner city horse owners. A rich social milieu is the star of the show in this affirming drama, which could do with a stronger drive to activate its protagonist.

Lift Like a Girl [Egypt, Mayye Zayed, 4] From ages 13 to 18, under the tutelage of a volcanic, motormouth coach, with a rubble-strewn lot on a busy Alexandria street, weightlifter Zebiba trains to be a champion. Fly-on-the-wall documentary inhabits a hardscrabble community powered by loving verbal abuse.

The coach and his key athletes denigrate the skills of male lifters, while constantly referring to the girls as boys, urging them to man up, and telling them they need to grow balls if they want to win.

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Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, disc and/or streaming over the next year plus.

City Hall [US, Frederick Wiseman, 4] The latest of Wiseman’s distinctive epic-length observational documentaries studies the quotidian, procedural and human moments of human life as seen through the processes of municipal government in Boston, as held together by the thoughtful charisma of Mayor Martin Walsh. Improbably absorbing as always, this institutional cross-section offers a beguiling vision of an oasis of good government in the USA.

In a normal year I’d wait for the four and a half hour Wiseman documentary to arrive on television rather than taking up two time slots to watch it from the confines of a cinema seat at TIFF. But this is not such a year and with a digital screening you get a pause button when you need it. This is bound for PBS and due to the breadth of its subject matter will serve as an excellent introduction to those unfamiliar with this pillar of the documentary form. Or track down 2017’s Ex Libris, about the New York Public Library. In North America Wiseman’s filmography can be found on the Kanopy platform, which you may be able to access through your public library system.

The Father [UK, Florian Zeller, 4] Retired engineer (Anthony Hopkins) struggles to piece together the confusing reality of his living circumstances as his daughter (Olivia Colman) copes with his progressing dementia. Impeccably performed stage play adaptation puts the viewer inside the contradictory shifts of the protagonist’s subjective viewpoint.

Forget Draculas and Cthulhus. This is the real terror.

Summer of 85 [France, Francois Ozon, 4] Love between two young men in a French beach town leads to a bizarre crime. Teen emotions run high in a sunlit melodrama of Eros and Thanatos.

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Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, disc and/or streaming over the next year plus.

Beans [Canada, Tracey Deer, 4] As the 1990 Oka standoff envelops her Mohawk community, a shy tween achiever (Kiawentiio) decides to toughen up by ingratiating herself to the tough kids. Mixing the docudrama and coming-of-age structures offsets the inherent trickiness of both, but it wouldn’t work without an appealing and touching performance from its charismatic young lead.

Akilla’s Escape [Canada, Charles Officer, 4] Weed dealer hoping to leave the business (Saul Wiliiams) tries to recover his boss’ ripped-off cash and product without sacrificing a young gang member who reminds him of his younger self. Moody, laconic crime drama contextualized by the political history of Jamaican gangsterism.

Williams, a recording artist, also supplies the score. The kinds of films that play at the festival often economize by favoring black credit  screens over full title sequences, so it’s always a bracing change of pace to see a well-done one. The title sequence for this not only delivers a welcome jolt of mood and energy but does a lot of the storytelling work that would otherwise have to be done with expository dialogue.

New Order [Mexico, Michel Franco, 4] A wedding thrown by a wealthy family during a growing insurrection suffers a murderous attack by protestors and the kidnapping of the bride. Wildly disturbing vision of political violence and degradation takes its time unreeling its allegorical purpose.

David Byrne’s American Utopia [US, Spike Lee, 4] Filmed version of the Broadway version of David Byrne’s recent tour features joyous choreography, simple but arresting stagecraft, and songs from his Talking Heads and solo eras. When you shoot a concert film featuring David Byrne, you have to bring it, and Lee does that ably, finding countlesss different ways to shoot within a proscenium.

David Byrne has always been a hugely important artist to me, but I was surprised how moved I was to get to feel that I was at a live concert.

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Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, disc and/or streaming over the next year plus.

Pieces of a Woman [US, Kornél Mundruczó, 3.5] Grief tears a couple (Vanessa KIrby, Shia LaBeouf) apart after the death of their baby in childbirth, abetted by the insistence of her domineering mother (Ellen Burstyn) that they pursue legal action against their midwife (Molly Parker.) Wrenching drama marked by deep performances and key long take scenes. An otherwise masterful script reaches for the conventional when it hits its climax.

The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel [Canada, Joel Bakan & Jennifer Abbott, 4] Polemical documentary deploys narration, stock footage and talking heads (some appearing via lockdown video conference) to survey corporate capitalism and the struggle against it from Reaganomics to COVID and the George Floyd protests. Comprehensive primer for the prospective young progressives includes a call to continued electoral action.

The doc starts by tackling apparently public-minded initiatives as Trojan Horses for privatization. It is a Crave Original. Crave, Canada’s premium cable/streaming service, is a division of Bell, one half of our reigning telecom duopoly and the lead sponsor of the Toronto International Film Festival

Violation [Canada, Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli, 4] Woman (Madeleine Sims-Fewer) exacts meticulous revenge after her brother-in-law rapes her. Although this jarring, meditative drama includes gruesome imagery and horror-exploitation motifs, it’s closer in spirit to Michael Haneke than Dario Argento or Wes Craven.

Many years the power of coincidence throws up an unintended motif running through many of the movies we pick. Past examples have included cats, stress vomiting, animal slaughter, and teddy bears. This year’s motif: plastic bags as a suffocation weapon.

Falling [US, Viggo Mortensen, 3] Pathologically forbearing airline pilot (Mortensen) attempts to find a new situation for his lifelong miserable prick of a father (Lance Henriksen) as his dementia worsens. With one character incapable of change and another not needing to change, almost all of the scenes repeat the same dynamic.

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Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, disc and/or streaming over the next year plus.

Wildfire [UK/Ireland, Cathy Brady, 3.5] After going missing for a year, a bipolar woman (Nika McGuigan) drops in on her sister (Nora-Jane Noone), opening the wounds of shared tragedy. Raw, unsubtle family drama against the backdrop of Northern Irish politics as Brexit threatens a fragile peace.

The film is dedicated to the memory of lead actor McGuigan, who died of cancer last year.

40 Years a Prisoner [US, Tommy Oliver, 4] Documentary recounts the 1978 standoff between members of radical Black back-to-nature organization MOVE and Philadelphia police through the efforts of the son of two of the group members to secure their parole. A strong emotional hook greatly assists in telling a tenaciously complicated story.

I would like to have seen more on the genesis of the group and the first stages of their conflict with the mayor and police. So much needs to be unwound in the 1978 standoff that the even more astonishing story of a 1985 confrontation, which resulted in Philadelphia authorities dropping a satchel bomb from a helicopter, killing 11 and burning down 65 houses, goes unmentioned here. Another doc I haven’t seen, Let the Fire Burn, focuses on that part of the story.

True Mothers [Japan, Naomi Kawase, 4.5] Parents of a kindergartner react with dismay when a woman contacts them claiming to be his birth mother. Luminous, delicate drama of shifting perspectives.

Limbo [UK, Ben Sharrock, 4] Syrian oud player grapples with guilt over family left behind as he cools his heels with other refugee claimants at a center in the bleak and isolated Outer Hebrides. Moments of deadpan humor and stark landscapes layer this exploration of displacement.

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Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, disc and/or streaming over the next year plus.

The final day of TIFF 2020 has come and gone and below are my final capsule reviews. I’ll post a full capsule roundup on Monday.

Fauna [Mexico/Canada, Nicolás Pereda, 3.5] Narratives nest within narratives when an actor visits his girlfriend’s family in a sleepy small town. Comic misunderstandings, naturalistic locations and twisting meta-story may remind seasoned festival-goers of the works of Hong Sang-soo, with Coronas instead of soju.

Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time [Hungary, Lili Horvát, 4] Top neurologist questions the accuracy of her recollections when she moves back home from the US to Budapest for a romantic rendezvous, only to find that the object of her affections professes not to remember her. Quietly suspenseful drama of psychological uncertainty.

The Truffle Hunters [Italy, Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw, 4] An aging generation of Piedmontese truffle hunters carries on the search for the elusive delicacy, fearing the poison bait left for their beloved dogs by ruthless newcomers to the trade. A documentary balm for lovers of food and canines luxuriates in the presence of sumptuously photographed forest eccentrics and their very, very good dogs.

Bandar Band [Iran/Germany, Manijeh Hekmat, 3] A pregnant singer, her husband and their guitarist try to get their van through a floodstruck region to attend a contest gig in Tehran. Neorealist drama where the obstacles in the characters’ path are literal.

The Water Man [US, David Oyelowo, 3.5] Imaginative kid (Lonnie Chavis) heads into the Northwestern forest in search of a legendary immortal, thinking he holds the secret to curing his mom (Rosario Dawson) of leukemia. One of the more successful of a recent wave of films that put a somber sin on 80s kids adventure, thanks to a well-constructed script and Oyelowo’s sure control of tone.

Among the differences of this digital-only fest was that it removed the flexibility to choose between multiple screening dates. In a regular year I program the last days and work backward to end on some combination of stronger and/or lighter selections. Here programmers assigned a 24 hour window for each film. These last movies weren’t what I would have picked as closers in ordinary times. To compensate for this Valerie and I are running a day of fake TIFF programming to simulate the funner final Sunday we usually shoot for. They consist of one film that played at TIFF 2019 and three others from previously-appearing directors. Play along at home by streaming The Vast of Night, The Forest of Love*, Mr. & Mrs. Adelman, and Ace Attorney.

*Update: Turns out this one is ultra-disturbing and in no way fun or light. Going into something with mistaken tonal expectations—just like the real TIFF!

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Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, disc and/or streaming over the next year plus.

Hello and howdy. I usually describe myself as turning the "ripe old age of so-and-so" on my birthday posts, but I may need a new adjective as I'm solidly in my mid-40s, now (44). Perhaps "fermented." The birthday's come and gone without incident, although there were minor contemporaneous incidents:

Still in the math hole. It might be an infinite hole. Trying to get out. But I have improved my console fonts and ANSI color libraries and GPU programming skills, at least. I was very pleased that a recent release of NVIDIA drivers came with a brand new updated OpenCL, which I previously assumed had been abandoned like so many computer things that I become fond of. Kudos to whoever at NVIDIA pushed on this. I am making myself laugh privately to myself (well, no longer private now) by imagining someone who spells it out like an acronym, N-V-I D-I-A.

Also, like usual, I ran the Pittsburgh Great Race, a mostly-downhill 10k. No encumbrances this time. I've been in good shape this summer, but I got sick last month and it set me back a bit, so this wasn't a star performance. Still 43m22s is not too bad and I didn't push myself all that hard. Fewer minutes than years old.

The new GPU is mostly for math, but I wanted to try it out for its Intended Purpose, (N)Video Games. So I played through Far Cry 6, which was okay. I liked it better than 5, which among other things had a bunch of technical problems (this one was much smoother and more stable), but I probably should have read my review of that game before downloading, as I say something like "I should probably stop playing this series." Still slowly savoring Tears of The Kingdom, which remains great. I also started Return To Monkey Island. I loved the first two in this series, but couldn't get into the later sequels; of course I'm interested in giving this one a shot since it's made by the original designers (and I did like Thimbleweed Park). Too early to render a verdict, but I did like how they deftly handled the canonicity of the end of 2.

Then there's this: I think this is Taylor Swift wearing a homemade t-shirt of her "Pegicorn" (sometimes "Pegacorn"), a Unicorn-Pegasus hybrid. The text is in my font Action Jackson:

Taylor Swift Pegicorn (Action Jackson font)

You can also see this drawing/font at the beginning of the "Making of" video for You Belong With Me". I think she posted this to twitter in May 2009, but somehow I'm unable to find an archive of her tweets from this time (inconceivable??).

So what? We went to Mexico for vacation, visiting the island of Cozumel and some nameless resort area between Cancún and Playa del Carmen. This was just a vacation, for relaxing, so I spent most of the time programming for fun or writing my SIGBOVIK paper, but with a nice view of the ocean and a little bit of sand in my keyboard, and a little bit of mediocre Mexican beer. Cozumel was a pretty neat place: We happened to be there for the 150th year of their Carnival, which was happening concurrently with the Super Bowl, so there was a wild collision of tourist "culture" and local culture one evening. I added a picture to the Wikipedia article. It's a sparsely populated island, small enough to bike pretty much the whole way around, although as the bike rental guy informed us, "most people leave in the morning." We did some caving and won some bingo games and did some moderate to severe food poisoning, and now I'm back!

So what else? I'm deep into my project now and the end is (sort of?) in sight, but time is running short and I keep adding unnecessary aspects to it. It's fine. Even though I feel some pressure to keep making these elaborate projects, for deadlines, the real point of my hobby is for me to enjoy the spirit of the hack, which sometimes just means reimplementing typed closure conversion for the nth time.

Oh! I will be presenting at An Evening of Unnecessary Detail in Brooklyn on April 14. I have a silly style of beard again so that you can tell me apart from Matt Parker (aside from his very different accent and he's much taller than me and says it as "maths" and actually doesn't even really look like me now that I'm looking at a picture again). I think this will be quite fun.

I've been playing trough Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, which like Katamari Damacy I had played some of ~20 years ago and had always wanted to finish. I do love struggling with a precision platformer, though as usual with 3D ones the analogueness and camera trouble can be a bit of a drag. It's a good game with a good flow, though, and I'm like 80% of the way through it at this point. And speaking of 3D precision platformers, Celeste 64 is a cute 3Dification of Celeste (which remains one of my all-time favorites in the precision platformer genre) that they released for free recently. Initially I found this game really frustrating; it doesn't have nearly the same attention to detail in the controls that the 2D game does. But by the time I finished it, the controls and camera no longer seemed disastrous to me, and I pretty much liked it. On the other end of the spectrum, I for some reason bought "Yeah! You Want "Those Games," Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them!" and then for some reason beat every level of it. This game is an in-depth implementation of some notorious "games" featured in Mobile Game Hell-type advertisements. (If you're not aware of this phenomenon, it's common for the advertisement to depict some kind of casual gameplay that looks kinda fun, but that if you download the app it's linked to, it's like some totally different game like Clash Of Clans or something like that. So there are all these fairly recognizable games that you can't actually play. Bizarre! I'm guessing that there's just a market for "just get us downloads of the app" where they literally don't even care what the content of the advertisement is.) Anyway, this long-titled game is an implementation of some of those, with like hundreds of levels. Honestly I can't tell how ironic it is, but I did appreciate it as artwork even though it was also basically torture. I recommend it if you are my enemy, or if you like is-it-art?-torture. Having finished that and immediately deleted it, I just started Teardown, which I like so far, but I haven't gotten into it enough to provide a full take.

There was a news item this week about the sentencing of some people who organised dog fights, with large sums wagered on the result. I saw one such case a few years ago, and it needed a strong stomach to look at the evidence. The fight took place in an abandoned farm building and at the end the whitewashed walls were heavily bloodstained. We simply remanded the two defendants, and my colleagues sentenced them a few weeks later after reports were prepared. The aggravation was considerable; organised for money, dogs had to be destroyed, and so on so. They received the maximum six months each and were banned from keeping animals for ten years. In this latest case numerous social-media comments have complained that the six month sentence was not enough, but as usual that raises the question of just how long is enough? All sentences have to fit into the scale somewhere; for example can it ever be right to impose a higher penalty for cruelty to animals than to people?

Here's the Guideline:-

http://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/item/animal-cruelty/

Watch it again on the BBC iPlayer

A few years back, when Cynthia Leitich Smith was off to Vermont for the VCFA residency, I undertook an exploration of Austin pizza joints and pizza blogging: the rules were these: aside from a dinner salad prior to the pizza, my meals were pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  For ten days.  For the record, the first time I did it, I lost five pounds; the second time, two and a half.

Here's the inaugural post from 2009:  A Pizza a Day and Other Weird Activities.

I tried this again January 2015, but posted only to my Facebook account (I'll be reproducing the posts here along with this edition, with the term "archive" in the header).  I also did it in July 2015.

To view the entire line-ups, just click the "pizza a day" label.

This time, I decided to do something a little different, since I'm on the verge of exhausting Austin's specialty pizza places:  I'm going to see how many pizzas I can make using various techniques.  I'll also take a look at some of the places I've missed or have recently opened.

And, for Christmas, I received this nifty little item:

Yes, it is a starship Enterprise pizza cutter.  So of course I had to make a couple Star Trek-inspired pizzas:
(You can see the Enterprise if you squint real hard).  The saucer section was Canadian bacon with an olive for the bridge.  The nacelles were scallions and the engineering section Belgian endive.  The pizza didn't turn out so great but the cutter worked fantastically.

I also made a pizza in honor of our Klingon allies:

This one sort of drifted apart due to migration of the mozzarella, but it is a Klingon D7 class battlecruiser.  The main hull was a green pepper, while the nacelle supports were red onion.  The nacelles themselves, and the neck section, were scallions, and the bridge was a mushroom slice.

Q'apla!

This is a post I originally put only on Facebook in January 2015.  Click here for background.

And the first pizza of the January 2015 #PizzaADayDiet comes from Hoboken Pie! A thin crust sausage, mushroom, and green pepper -- all the ingredients were fresh and in abundance. The sausage and sauce were slightly spicy and the crust was really thin. It could have had a tad more body, but I liked the fact that it didn't feel like I was filling up on bread. Delivery was prompt and the pizza was warm out of the box. I will definitely order from them again.

Today's pizza a day diet pizza came from the Austin Beer Garden Brewing Co. at 1305 W. Oltorf (right next to the train tracks).

I hit the place in mid-afternoon, so it was pretty empty (Happy hour is from 3 pm to 7 pm, though, so it filled quickly :-)).  You order food and beer at the bar and they bring it to your table.  Inside are long wooden tables with benches, for social/communal beer-gardening in the Bavarian tradition.  Outside are round tables under the live oaks for beer gardening in the Austin tradition. :-).

I ordered a sausage pizza (boring, I know :-), but I like to try new places out on the basics).  It was delivered hot and fresh; the crust was somewhat soft but firmed up after I let it cool a little.  It had a nice chew and stood up to the ingredients.  The sausage had a more subtle flavor than I was expecting, but I really liked it and its freshness.  The cheese and sauce were also quite good.


One of their "by the slice" choices had also caught my eye, so I ordered it as well.  This was venison, spinach, pesto, white bean, roasted tomato, roasted garlic, and ricotta.  This one was amazing (not that the sausage was bad).  The crust had just the right amount of crispness and chew, but the combination of toppings really made it.  It had a richness from the venison without being gamy or overwhelming, and the remaining ingredients provided a terrifically contrasting texture in every bite.


Oh, and the beer was darn good, too. :-).

Today I went back to the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook for their Chicago-style pizza recipe (No, they're not from Chicago, but their recipe is actually pretty close to others I've used in the past.). 

They've got a technique where you "laminate" the crust with butter to make it crispier.  It worked well with the sides, but I'm not sure that it quite worked with the bottom, but the crust did turn out pretty firm and full-bodied.  And rich.  Next time I might let it cook a little longer to see what happens.

The recipe for the sauce and the cheese were a bit different than what I've done before: using shredded mozzarella and diced tomatoes instead of mozzarella slices (or a fresh ball) and crushed tomatoes, but it turned out pretty well.  Next time, though, I think I'll go back to crushed with slices.

And the Star Trek pizza cutter is actually big enough to use on deep dish...

I had Brian Yansky and Frances Yansky over to share the results, so I didn't end up taking too many pictures, but here are a couple:

Pizza! And the Star Trek pizza cutter!

Frances poses with a slice.

The cat inspects the table.

 

Today's Pizza a Day Diet pizza is technically not a pizza.  It's a flatbread. NB: All pizzas are flatbreads but not all flatbreads are pizzas (A flatbread has an unleavened crust).

I happened to be up north during rush hour so I decided to find the closest Italian place and see what they had that resembled a pizza. :-). This happened to be the Maggiano's in the Domain.  The place has sort of a Disney-fied feel of a downtown Italian restaurant, which is not surprising since the first Maggiano's was founded in Chicago by the Lettuce Entertain You chain whose specialty is theme restaurants. 

Anyway, I took a table in the bar and ordered a Caesar salad and the sausage flatbread.  The sausage was removed from the casing but still distributed in large chunks and had that good Italian-sausage flavor.  The cheese was also abundant and flavorful.  And the crust? Nice and crispy at first and then steamed through. 

Here are a couple pics:

Day 8 of ‪#‎PizzaADayDiet‬ is another thin crust, this one from Southside Flying Pizza. They call it “Neapolitan style,” which I guess is a really thin crust. I chose the whole wheat crust and it was pretty good – it stood up to the ingredients but I wouldn't have minded if it had been a tad crisper. The cheese was thoroughly melted and excellent, though, as were the toppings. The sausage had a good flavor and the peppers were nicely al dente. And the side salad was really good, as well.

Today's ‪#‎PizzaADayDiet‬ occurred at Home Slice Pizza -- Don Tate joined me for the sausage, mushroom, and green pepper pie! This was the thickest thin crust I've had so far, and was sufficient to be not -floppy, yet not doughy, with a good, chewy texture. The cheese was flavorful and the toppings were each present in every bite.


Altogether, a most excellent pizza -- and they put the leftovers in a tinfoil swan (I've never seen that before in real life :-)).

 .

Once again, one of my e-books will briefly be on sale! Vacuum Flowers will be available in the US for only $1.99. Here's the news from Open Road Media:

Hello,

We are pleased to let you know that the following ebook(s) will be featured in price promotions soon.

ISBN13	Title	Author	Promo Type	Country	Start Date	End Date	Promo Price
9781504036504	Vacuum Flowers	Swanwick, Michael	ORM - Portalist NL	US	2024-11-13	2024-11-13	$1.99

Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.

Newsletter	Link
Early Bird Books	Subscribe Now
The Lineup	Subscribe Now
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Murder & Mayhem	Subscribe Now
A Love So True	Subscribe Now
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Please let us know if you have any questions. We are thrilled to be part of this promotion; hope you are too!

Best,
The Open Road Editorial Team

And because you've probably wondered . . .

I've been asked this many times, but the answer is no: I don't have a nude drawing of Gardner Dozois hanging in my living room. It's in the upstairs hallway. Anyway, he's wearing a sheet, so much of him is covered.

Robert Walters posed Gardner as the evil genius Jonaman for one of the illos (back when SF magazines had illustrations) that went with the serialization of Vacuum Flowers in Asimov's, way back when.

It's not the sightliest picture. But it is treasured.

*

Holiday of Hearts



View Comic!

1. Kanguva Box Office Day 1 Advance Sales: 568% Higher Than Suriya’s Last Release ET In USA, Selling 5,460 Tix/Hr In India!  Koimoi
2. Kanguva morning show: Tamilians miffed as other states get earlier shows for Suriya, Bobby Deol's film  Hindustan Times
3. 5 Reasons To Watch Suriya and Bobby Deol Starrer 'Kanguva' In Theatres  Zee News
4. Kanguva’s second half to be very crisp  123telugu
5. Kanguva advance booking: Suriya's film earns over Rs 4 crore ahead of release  India Today

I think the next logical step is a pulled-tooth via skydiving.

~NSHA

It's a great budget option, unless you're leaking for comfort. Or functionality.

~NSHA

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY bye mom. Gonna psend the weekend over with some college friends

This illustrator, John Holcroft, is genius! check out his website for more.

 

The saying "you learn something new every day" may not always feel true, but on Twitter, that's definitely the case. People are very eager to share surprising and little-known facts that blow their minds - whether they're political or about something as trivial as the flavor of green Haribo gummy bears. These facts might not be revelatory for everyone, but they definitely aren't common knowledge. And it's nice to make that brain feel a little bigger. 

Exclusive offer from Giveaway of the Day and ToomkyGames! No third-party advertising and browser add-ons! Dia de Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, provides a stunning backdrop for a thrilling supernatural adventure in Mexicana: Deadly Holiday! Guide a young woman as she sets off on a desperate search for her fiance amidst the annual celebration in Mexico. Moments after a spectral figure kidnaps her beloved during a card reading, she begins her journey to the afterworld, where demons will plot her demise and ancients gods will lend her a helping hand. As you travel through a stunning fiery wasteland on your way to a realm of peace and tranquillity, you'll search for cleverly hidden objects, solve skillfully designed puzzles, and crack dozens of devious mini-games. Along the way, you'll slowly unfold the astonishing truth of who the young woman really is. Set in a captivating world, and featuring visuals and music inspired by the Land of Enchantment, Mexicana: Deadly Holidays is packed with thrills unlike any you have experienced!

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire in London, where 79 people died or are presumed dead and many more were injured, serious concerns and questions around flammability of exterior cladding, the lack of fire sprinklers and the notion of “shelter in place,” among other subjects, have been brought to the forefront by the news media and the public at large. Jim Pauley, president and CEO of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), addressed these troubling fire safety issues in the upcoming edition of NFPA Journal, the association’s membership publication, which will be officially released next month.

Knowing that today’s homes burn faster than ever, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) announced “Every Second Counts: Plan Two Ways Out” as the official theme for this year’s Fire Prevention Week campaign, October 8-14, 2017. Experts say you may have as little as two minutes (or even less) to safely escape a typical home fire from the time the smoke alarm sounds.

They come and they go into our bookstores and libraries and out again without a whisper of awards or significant praise. Yet the true mark of whether or not you are opening up your child to the world is to show them books made internationally. Today we celebrate translations. Even the weird ones. I take that back. ESPECIALLY the weird ones!

The earliest American picture books had only one goal: To provide some form of moral instruction. These days books with clear messages are exceedingly common. The ones that do it well? Much rarer. Here are the 2018 titles that knew what they were doing this year.

Every year I try to keep an eye out for any children's book that gives ample attention to photographs in some way. Thanks to advances in technology and printing, it's never been easier to make books with photographic images. Yet despite this, few come out. Today's list is a small one, but I'm grateful that each and every single one of these books exists.

Interestingly, 2018 turned out to be a very strong year for folktales, fairy tales, and religious stories. Why? Well, look closely and you'll see that this is nothing so much as a gathering of small publishers. It's like I always say. The more the big guys consolidate, the more cracks and fissures remain for the little folks to sneak through. Here then are the titles published in 2018 that really stood out and shone:

What one person might consider "odd" could easily be another's cup of tea. It's important, then, to clarify that I don't see "odd" as a bad thing at all. It's healthy for a kid to see a book written for their age level that's outside the norm and dares to get a little bit freaky.Here then, are the 2018 titles that dared to be strange in some way. May they inspire others in the future!

Poems used to be the sole property of April a.k.a. Poetry Month. Now that's changing. Publishers are rapidly putting more faith into the poetry books they produce. So let's take a look at what we saw this year, and the wide range of topics that were touched.

I think you've heard me say before that in many ways easy books are the most difficult titles to write. They are most perfect when they are most simple. And they are most simple, when they limit their text complexity. Can you make complex characters and plots with such small words? You can. These did.

Older than easy but not yet novels. The fact of the matter is that while Easy Books are hard to write, Early Chapter Books are hard to categorize. They're also ideal bedtime books for older children, which means that with the European imports you get a lot of experimentation. American early chapter books are pretty much just written to please. Here then are the books written with 6-9 year olds in mind.

This year, ALA established the first Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table (GNCRT). Long gone are the days when we would pooh-pooh anything with a panel or a little sequential art. And so, in celebration of their status, I cast aside the "graphic novel" moniker. Long live, comics! Long live, panels! And long live speech balloons!

Dogecoin shot higher on Tuesday night, extending its postelection surge after President-elect Donald Trump formally announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, which he referred to as "DOGE" in his statement. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, former Republican…

Investing.com-- Bitcoin fell from record highs on Wednesday, retreating as optimism over a Donald Trump presidency now appeared to be cooling, with focus turning to upcoming U.S. inflation data for more cues. Major meme token Dogecoin also retreated on Wednesday after a stellar run-up to…

Can’t wait until Black Friday to start your holiday shop or score a killer deal on a gadget you’ve been eyeing? You may not have to. Although Black Friday isn’t until November 29th, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target have begun rolling out their holiday discounts, many of which are available elsewhere.…

Chances of the bill being passed this year are not high.

Shopping for clothing is one of my favorite past times — and with all the early Black Friday apparel sales happening now, it's starting to feel like Christmas morning! Apparel and shoes are seeing some of the biggest markdowns with popular brands like Lululemon, Nike, Adidas, Patagonia and more…

With the internet changing everyday staying on top of new trends and changes surrounding SEO should be a top priority of any professional SEO Company. Within the last year or more the SEO industry has changed immensely. Some of these changes include the Panda and Penguin filters and the recent changes of the exact match […]

Steph Caskenette made these awesome illustrations.

It's every cat's greatest dream to finally catch that red dot. And sometimes they do (meaning we get tired of holding down the laser and pointing).