PicoBlog

Film Yap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. If you like me are a purveyor of direct-to-video action movies then you should have some familiarity with the works of stuntman-turned-director Jesse V. Johnson. The dude’s directed a good deal of my guy Scott Adkins’ filmography (“Savage Dog,” “Accident Man,” “The Debt Collector” pictures, “Triple Threat” and “Avengement” among them).

New here? Scroll all the way to the bottom for the recipe!Today’s recipes—for three extremely fast and pantry-friendly dressings—reinforces one of my core cooking and eating beliefs. Shop first; plan your recipes when you get home. This concept was the grounding principle of my first book, Where Cooking Begins, where I made a case that the creative act of cooking started with food shopping. Yes, of course sometimes we just need to solve dinner, but this is the time of year to practice shopping without a list, and being inspired by what you see.

Is anyone else consistently disappointed with the size of aubergines at their local? First off, I should acknowledge that we have attempted to grow aubergines in the past, and I am the first to admit that these puppies can be a challenge to grow to a decent size - even getting plants to fruit at all can be a challenge. But despite this knowledge, I have to say that this season I’ve been chronically underwhelmed when casting my gaze to the aubergine stand at the super or farmer’s market (in fairness to local Ōtepoti growers, the fact that any of them can grow even a modestly-sized aubergine feels like a small miracle).

Happy Sunday from DeBordieu, South Carolina! We are on a two-week tour du South — spending one week down here with George’s family, next weekend in Charlotte, NC, to see more of George’s family plus a million of our friends, and then the little boys and I are headed to my hometown of Winston-Salem, NC, for a few days to see my family.  If you have kids, … ncG1vNJzZmivmJbBtbvCqKakZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonyxe86nnGaon6l6pLTEnqqyZaKesKZ5wKebZpqVlru0

Dear Readers, I’ll be on vacation next week, but I can’t help but give you a little tease: I’ll be making a very exciting announcement very soon. Stay tuned! In the meantime, thanks for making Shiny Herd a part of your day.  Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year! All the best, Ted A standup comedian once told me about how her Netflix special was produced.  It was shot over the course of two nights.

Ritchie Valens, one of the world's greatest ever rockeros, would today be celebrating his 81st birthday—if he hadn't "won" a seat on that damned Beechcraft Bonanza in a coin toss with Tommy Allsup. This bitter occasion perennially demands examination, because the horrifying reality was—thanks to Del Fi Records head Bob Keane's cutthroat expediency—Ritchie was as good as doomed from the get-go. While the 17-year-old wrote 22 of the 33 songs he recorded for Del-Fi (in 8 months!

My own work as an illustrator and storyteller has been influenced in copious amounts by the surreal humor of Monty Python and various projects that followed in their wake — in particular, the early work of Terry Gilliam. From his humble beginnings making cut-out animation for Python to his journey into live-action fantasy epics, Gilliam served as a model for me in my college years, when I began moving cut-outs around myself with 16mm film and dreaming of a career in the film industry myself.

The bar closed years ago. The t-shirt, though still tucked away at the bottom of my dresser, is more cobweb than clothing, only able to survive the most gentle of dryer cycles. The hair is mostly missing, buzzed off in the back and retreating from its post in the front. The Instagram filter, one of the originals that makes every shot look like an oversaturated late-night Polaroid, is gone, replaced by more delicate options worthy of candle-selling influencers.

In early March of 2000, it was no secret in the hockey world that legendary, future Hall-of-Fame defenseman Ray Bourque wanted, albeit reluctantly, to be traded from his team of 20-plus seasons, the Boston Bruins. In a Bruins career that spanned the end of the Carter Administration to the end of Bill Clinton’s, Bourque performed brilliantly for Boston in the succession of other Hall-of-Fame Bruins defensemen such as Bobby Orr and Brad Park.