Twice Upon a Time is a 1983 animated movie directed by John Korty and Charles Swenson. This film had an unusual history in terms of release and editing, but it has been named one of the most important films in the history of stop-motion animation.
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Cyndi Lauper has been singing about True Colors; since the 1980s, and these days she's speaking out for young people whose true colors have put them and their health at risk -- the thousands of young homosexual and transgender people who face the emotional and physical ordeal of homelessness.
It’s no secret that M. Christian and I are friends. I’ve introduced one of his books and we’ve guest blogged for each other too. So even if I’m not the most unbiased critic, I still like to highlight interesting books I read from time to time even if they are by friends of mine.
One of Chris’ many recurring themes are alternate visions of the police. One of the characters in his wonderfully weird novel near-future novel Finger’s Breadth is a freelance officer who receives his orders and files reports via a distributed police ap on his smartphone. “Bluebelle” in The Bachelor Machine explores a future cop’s intimate relationship with his police vehicle, and Christian even co-edited the anthology Future Cops.
The most recent book I read by him is The Very Bloody Marys. Like Finger’s Breadth, it takes place in an alternate San Francisco but creatures of the night. Our hero is Valentino, a young gay vampire so uncertain of his place in the world that he can’t even decide how to start telling his story at the beginning of the book, so he begins again 2 or 3 times. Somehow, despite his Lestat-like confidence or prowess, he’s been selected to join an undead police force charged with maintaining the secrecy of the undead and the weird. Here, Valentino laments his own impending doom after his superior officer disappears:
Two hundred years. It’d been a good run. Lots of … well, there’d been blood of course. Moons. Stars. Rain. Fog. Hiding, too: all-night movie theaters, bars, discos, stables, warehouses, churches, a few synagogues (even a mosque or two) [...] Lots of … I was going to say friends but, to be honest, the nightlife might be advantageous to boogying but doesn’t make for long-term relationships. Some back-alley assignations, sticky stuff in my mouth or pants; not blood, or at least not up until a few years ago.
Two hundred sure sounds like a lot, but … the time just seemed to have hopped, skipped and jumped by. Never skied, never sailed, never surfed, never had two guys at once [...] What surprised me the most, though, was what I wanted more: orchids, bow ties, potato salad, string, oil or watercolor, hooks and line, two of everything.The book has a breezy, playful noir style which would make it perfect summer reading. Though it doesn’t have the usual romance (though it has a handful of interesting unrequited ones), I found it especially interesting as a queer take on the torrid vampires-and-werewolves subgenre of urban fantasy.
In The Kid
By Ralph Greco, Jr. of Clifton
A young aspiring writer interviews with a famous playwright to be a research assistant. But the playwright may not be exactly who they seem to be; or maybe they don't really want a research assistant after all. This production features Cooper Sacks of Summit, Jean Kuras of Glen Ridge and Terri Sturtevant of Hillsborough.
The Color of Lust - A shark, seedy poolhall, and a wager ... Daisy knew the hustle but what she didn't count on was being played herself. But in the best possible way.... Everything But The Smell Of Lilies - In the near future, Justine is a sex worker with a unique twist: for a fee her clients can do whatever they want - including kill her. Everything is going well for her ... until, that is, she comes across an ambulance attendant with his own unique fetish. Betty Came - A sweet, and extra-hot, tale of longing and lesbian desire: what do you do when you know what you is so very wrong ... but feels so very right? Regrets - Sitting on a chair, arms on the desk, fingers on the keyboard, words on the screen-" the letter is a final goodbye from a fellow to the world he's wronged ... or is it? And if he didn't write it then who did? The New Motor - A steampunky tale of outrageous turn-of-the-century inventiveness: John Murray Spear created The New Motor, The Mechanical Savior, but it was a special woman who gave it a sexy spark of life ... and then some. NY by Way of Taos - In a trailer baking in the hot desert sun, two women lose themselves to desire and fantasy: going to new and, for them, unexplored sexual worlds ... like New York City
After dinner – did I mention the glasses? Shit, forgot about them. Easy to do, I guess. They're a huge part of the world here, so big you don't even notice them. Gave me my pair after the first week. They called them iglasses, a joke they say no one under forty understands. Which I'm not, so I didn't. Anyway, they're mnemonic plastic. They look cheap but they aren't. Big guy named Star, like a golden bear with a huge bristly beard, told me they'd cost something like 5 million new yen if they sold them, which they don't. He also told me they are a "mesh networked, micro thermopile powered, molecular computer system with a virtual retinal display" which I don't understand. But they work, I know that. You put them on and you can see and hear all this stuff that is and isn't there. Like you can look at the ground and see where the irrigation pipes are, and then reach out and touch a little icon and then see instructions on how to fix them. Or look at someone and see their name, what they are good at, what they don't like – stuff like that. Sometimes it's like cartoons, little symbols and stuff floating around, other times it's like a ghost world that you can but then can't see. I'm writing with them, too. They showed me how to get them to show me a keyboard, and then I just touch where the letters are. Kinda cool, but also kinda creepy.
They use the glasses to talk to one another. They shoot videos with them, make cartoons, write poems, do all kinds of things, and send them to each other. They may look like primitive, but they're really wizards with this kind of stuff. It makes me sad to think how I know that, but I do.
