The Spirit from February 22, 1948. Art by Will Eisner & Jerry Grandenetti, with letters by Abe Kanegson.

"Malaria" comes from Italian "mala aria," meaning "bad air." It was believed that bad air caused the disease, not mosquitoes. #etymology

What movie moment made you exclaim, "This is cinema" Crowded movie theater in New Delhi, no subtitles, thirty minutes in and this BANGER drops. Speechless youtu.be/8jff2wz3Hpk?...

Los Angeles! I will be coming to the LAPL for a public event in March! Come say hi! www.lapl.org/whats-on/eve...

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts you've seen: Leon Redbone Ken Nordine Tom Waits Huun Huur Tu Ali Farka Toure

Hard to imagine a song that hits much closer to the center of the Venn diagram of my musical tastes.

I think it's weird that every news outlet is calling him "former" and "deposed," when neither of those things happened. Like, everyone has just accepted that a country can unilaterally arrest a different nation's leader, and this just triggers a normal process of succession.

This set of observations is produced by my scrolling Reddit and otherwise listening to people talk about "how to write." A) there is no requirement that any of your characters has any sort of "arc" let alone a redemption. B) there is also no requirement that your fiction has a plot.

Just saying there is recent precedent (Illinoise) for a beloved indie singer-songwriter with a deep catalog (Sufjan Stevens) making the leap onto Broadway, so it could happen?

It has come to my attention that the new @themountaingoats.bsky.social album contains a Lin-Manuel Miranda feature, which means we are as close as we've ever been to The Best Ever Death Metal Band on Broadway www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqMW...

Late to share this, but BIRD OF A THOUSAND STORIES made Kirkus Reviews' best middle grade of the year list! I'm very proud of this book, and so grateful to be recognized among some frankly intimidating company.

I laughed

This is the best Christmas song I know. Old, weird, wintry, purportedly Christian but also full of references to planets and stars, and lyrics whose meanings have been lost to time youtu.be/cjht2xQripM?...

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you've seen in the wild Gray fox Gray whale Sea otter Harbor porpoise Bald eagle

This Norwegian stabbur, ca 1700, one of the oldest buildings in the region. Used to store foods & other things off of the ground, away from animals. I'm not OK, for all the Crone reasons. We know where her house came from! Its origins, most likely! imma go get my evil mortar and pestle now brb

Tied with "horaltic" for best bird-related word

I Saw the TV Glow is one of the most haunting and haunted movies I've ever seen. This series sounds bananas.

How have I never seen this painting before?

So I'm writing at a cafe in an unfamiliar city, and this little kid, maybe 9 or 10, came up to me with a pen and a stack of post-it notes and asked me if I wanted his autograph, and so of course I said that yes, I absolutely did. This is what he gave me

My hot take is that none of these are structure. These are all recipes that describe structure. Structure is the Salt, Fat, Acid Heat of writing. 3-Act/Hero's Journey etc are recipes. You can make great meals without using a recipe if you understand the principles of structure.

Kids had an interesting choice for our next bedtime read aloud, but I'm always game for a challenge. It only took until "hval" before they realized they'd made a mistake.

Happy Winsor McCay's birthday!

What you get when you #copyedit me: fractional stets and invented punctuation

This thread was inspiring. I've never run anything more ambitious than short creative workshops for middle school kids, but even those can be electric. We're wired to be creative. Too often I think that circuitry gets bypassed by everyday life. But it's still there.

'Country House at Negishi' - Takahashi Hiroaki, ca. 1936. #JapaneseArt

LEO NARD BERN STEIN

Hand-painted celestial escape in the Méliès fantasy THE KINGDOM OF THE FAIRIES. The film was available as an entire presentation or as separate sequences. Fairy extravaganzas were big business on the stage but the movies made them available to all.

I prefer to think of it as "being earnest" but it's probably cringe to say that.

Weapons is a helluva good time. The atmosphere is relentlessly creepy, the acting is excellent, the story is expertly told. Unsettling, funny, gross, and hugely satisfying. Reminded me of seeing Misery on the big screen.

Just here to say The Limey is a really really good movie and Terence Stamp was perfect in it. Lots of moments that have stayed with me from this film but this one is the one I think about most often youtu.be/tJLdaKUBGzo?...

One of the loveliest things anyone's ever said about my books, and a more perfect description of the thing I try to do with stories than any I would have come up with. 🙏 🙏 🙏

Post one of the most haunting shots in movie history from a film made before the year 2000

Incredible. Obscenity-free, absolutely devastating, and just at a first, non-Romanian-speaking effort, it rolls smoothly off the tongue.

Love this.

That fretless, nylon (or is it gut)-strung baritone banjo with the fiddlehead stock, ALL BY ITSELF, feels like it's from a forgotten branch of the past. But the way she plays it, and the way she sings? I don't think I've ever heard a modern performance that sounded like this.

They finally made the milk from that hotel

The other night I took a late night taxi from the airport & my driver was from Sudan. We got to talking, & he asked what I do - he is a sports journalist who writes about soccer & has been to many World Cups - so I explained what I write...

A worthy follow-up to Morris Honor Book Once There Was, by Kiyash Monsef, Bird of a Thousand Stories is about a modern girl who can speak with and help magical creatures. Like the original, it's interwoven with magical tales from across the world. Read my review: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fi...

Listening to Fox Confessor last night.... What an absolute all-timer by Neko Case. Haunted and sacred and timeless and rich from start to finish. The way the second verse of Margaret and Pauline unfolds itself is so perfect, so masterful, so devastating, and every song after hits just as hard.

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Hey #filmsky, do any of you know of movies besides this one and #Sinners that does roughly this with diegetic music? This has always been one of my all-time favorite scenes in anything, and I was so happy when Sinners did something similar. youtu.be/JyxSm91eun4?...

Implement a 100% tariff and ruin a movie Quadruple Indemnity

That moment of intellectual vertigo when someone shares a peek into a whole deep body of work that you never knew existed

Forget it Jake, it's ... Chintown

Jeanne Dielman

Amazing breakdown of both the creative process and what it's like to ambush audiences with a powerful and moving song 8x a week, from the cast and creators of the wonderful Operation Mincemeat (a bit spoilery so if you're planning to see the show, do that 1st) www.theatermania.com/news/operati...

An excellent toolkit by @natcassidy.bsky.social for crafting suspense, but I think its utility extends a lot further than horror and suspense precisely because all these tools are so deeply rooted in character. www.writersdigest.com/how-one-nons... PS I agree w this controversial quote

I will be at YALLWEST in Santa Monica on Saturday May 3, along with a small army of amazing young adult and middle-grade authors and illustrators. If you're in LA, and looking for a fun and free(!) way to spend your Saturday, come by SAMOHI and say hi!