PicoBlog

If you know me you know I’m obsessed with the Haunted Mansion. It’s my favorite ride of all time. I believe it is the greatest dark ride ever made. The ride and the story of its creation have influenced a lot of my work. It’s the origin of my love of horror. The comic book GHOSTED was written while listening to the first movie’s soundtrack… …and the classic song created by X.

I’m delighted to have you on board as I begin something I’ve never done before: sharing my research-in-progress with the public as I work on a project that greatly excites me: a biography of Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ (1905–1969), whose work for the rights of working people and African-Americans led people to call him “God’s Gadfly in the South.” Subscribe to receive at least one full-access post a month (for unpaid subscribers) or weekly posts (for paid subscribers).

Here’s more of what’s going around. If you like what you see, please consider supporting local, independent journalism by subscribing to the Hot Sheet. Here we go: Well Played Board Game Cafe, which closed last October, has announc… ncG1vNJzZmiZo52yt7HGmqqhp6Sotaax02eqrpqjqa6kt42cpqZnoGTEprjLZqelmamasW6uzpqpnWWXlrqmecKanZ5loprBtr7NrGSaq5iaw6q4y54%3D

Does anyone else remember Angel Hare? Or was that just a me thing growing up? Coming up in the nineties, I recall watching a lot of schlock. Like, nautical tons of shit. Just scads of it. Every church, elementary school, daycare, and library was filled with their own proprietary collections of VHS tapes containing children’s entertainment of various quality, ranging from the staples of Disney’s theatrical animated releases and the less popular but still respectable catalogue of Don Bluth on one end, to less widely acclaimed by still competently made fare like the Land Before Time direct-to-video sequels and, my personal favorite, Veggie Tales, all the way down to totally unknown, obscure tapes of public access programming and shoddy animations made by people in their basements that may or may not have had a total run of copies that you could count on one hand.

Total Population: 5.3 million residents (just under 4 million registered voters) Prospective State Capital: Pittsburgh, WS Number of House seats: 7 (+4) Major Universities: West Virginia University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Kentucky The history of Westsylvania predates the birth of the nation as its eastern border largely follows the Proclamation Line of 1763. The line was established by King George III and forbade settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains, labeling areas west as an “Indian Reserve.

No fund manager in recent history seems more primed for success than Alex Sacerdote. After receiving his BA in Political Science from Hamilton College, Sacerdote worked as an investment banking analyst for Smith & Barney before moving on to becoming the VP of Finance for Interactive Imaginations, an internet advertising startup. Sacerdote spent 1 year at Interactive Imaginations before leaving to pursue his MBA from Harvard University. While attending Harvard, Sacerdote secured an internship with Fidelity Investments and worked in the e-commerce sector.

Weekly questions’ comment sections are left open for one week. This question has expired and the comments section locked. This week, Ted Hope, the co-founder of Good Machine, joined me for one of my artist-on-artist conversations - to discuss the possibility of a new revolution in cinema (you can read it here). Good Machine was a key player in the Nineties indie film movement in America, responsible for such classics as The Wedding Banquet (1993), The Brothers McMullen (1995), Happiness (1998), The Tao of Steve (2000), In the Bedroom (2001), and American Splendor (2003), so I thought I’d use this chat as inspiration for my weekly question:

Share Esoterica by Leah Eichler Writers read—a lot—and as soon as I accepted that it’s okay to read a variety of things that have nothing to do with my own writing, I realized that I have a wide range of interests (who knew?) I have observed that my reading habits can be divided into two categories: Thin… ncG1vNJzZmido6TBpr7InJimmZeWx6q6xGeqrpqjqa6kt42cpqZnoGTEqa3TZpimZZliv6atw6KloGWjpHqouMCdZLKnpWKutLfEnQ%3D%3D

Recently, we’ve had a spate of notable deaths in the U.S. at fairly advanced ages: Just a few I noted: Norman Lear, 12/5/2023, died aged 101 Charlie Munger, 11/28/2023, died aged 99 Rosalyn Carter, 11/19/2023, died aged 96 Sandra Day O’Connor, 12/1/2023, died aged 93 Henry Kissinger, 11/29/2023, died aged 100 The Society of Actuaries has its international Living to 100 Symposium, and while I’ve never been able to attend, I read their papers.