PicoBlog

Espooky Tales is a podcast about all things espooky with a focus on Latin America and we started an espooky book club! We aim to read horror books read by Latine authors and send out discussion questions to our book club members. Launched a year ago No thanksncG1vNJzZmido6W8sLfYZ6qumqOprqS3jZympmc%3D

Readers can sign up to have a Tressie essay delivered directly to their inbox for free, just as soon as it is fresh out the oven. These Big Reads are one of her favorite things to write: deeply researched, narrative-driven cultural analysis that surprise readers and challenge easy description. The Big Reads are always free.  If you want to know how the sausage is made, you can become a subscriber. Subscribers get the Big Read in their inbox and they get to tell Tressie what they think about it in real-time discussion threads.

My father who passed away at 93 in 2015 was a lover of film.. Yes I remember he spoke of movies only this way. It was kind of cool. Knowone else I knew used the term.. It just sounded very important.. like the rest of the world went to the movies .. but he saw A FILM. He had shelves and shelves of his own collection some mostly in VHS and then gradually DVDs He was always talking about the latest foreigh films froms directors Truffeau, Antonioni, Bunuel and Bergman and Jean Luc Godard.

Our Zoom call this week will be at our regular time: Friday at Noon EDT. Our guests will be Jeremy Kalmanofsky, Rabbi of Ansche Chesed, a conservative synagogue in Manhattan and Eva Borgwardt, political director of If Not Now. Rabbi Kalmanofsky recently made news for responding to Israel’s new government by deciding his congregation would no longer say t… ncG1vNJzZmiolamys67EoqWaqqRjwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89onK%2BZXZe8s7PWmqmdrF2Wu6V50ZqZm6Fdn7KzscyyZKSZnKKur7vFrKKy

The Moral High Ground By Evan Hurst We are living through a world-historical temper tantrum from white conservative Christians over their loss of control, relevance, and supremacy. This weekly newsletter looks at current events through that lens, glares at it, and usually mocks it. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjabCwKefrqqjqQ%3D%3D

Writer/director filmmakers are a rare breed these days. There’s the bigger pack of directors who co-write films, but the lone wolf creator isn’t as widespread as it once was. A studio’s control can be limiting in that aspect, something that John Carney has largely avoided. His films are low-key and touching without the maximum effort, kind of like the catchy songs that help assemble the soundtracks that play in our cars for years.

Just about a year ago, I found myself roaming an empty hallway at the United Center in Chicago. Providence’s season, one of the best in program history, had just ended about 45 minutes prior in a Sweet 16 battle with Kansas. It was the end of a magical run and a devastating loss for a Friar team that had taken the lead late, but just didn’t have enough to overcome the eventual national champions.

Did the beauty industry win the Super Bowl? If it did, the rest of us lost! Ahead, a mini-analysis of each ~$7 million skincare/lip gloss/foundation commercial that aired on Sunday night. In this (maybe stolen?) Cetaphil spot, a sports-loving father and pop-loving daughter find common ground in fandom (football for him, Taylor Swift for her). They bond over the big game… and skincare. This is a classic case of the industry inserting beauty products into unrelated stories of love and connection as a way to assert the products’ importance and/or obscure their purpose.

When I was a TA in graduate school, I always gave students the chase to earn some extra credit - and every semester it was always the same assignment. “Write 800-1000 words comparing the science in disaster movies to the actual science in real life.” I usually let students pick whichever disaster movie they wanted, but provided a list of suggested films that I thought would make for a fair essay.