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NOTE: This list covers the two-week period from Friday, December 21 to Thursday, January 3. The Crucial Viewing and Also Recommended sections include films from both weeks, so check the dates. The More Screenings section is divided up by week. Also note that some venues may have added screenings that were not listed by our deadline.
Live-Action Disney at the Music Box Theatre
Wednesday-Thursday, December 26-January 3
Check Venue website for showtimes
Richard Fleischer's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (American Revival)
As evidenced by VIOLENT SATURDAY, THE VIKINGS, and COMPULSION, the ever-underrated Richard Fleischer took to widescreen like a duck to water. He filled the broad frames dynamically and supplely, using the format to create expansive, awe-inspiring environments. The 1954 version of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA is of special interest to Fleischerites for being the director's first widescreen production. Made just one year after THE ROBE, the first CinemaScope feature, the film treats widescreen as a special effect in itself; practically every composition is something of a spectacle. (According to IMDB, producer Walt Disney insisted on getting the best value out of the 'Scope lens he rented from 20th Century-Fox, and as a result, the film contains virtually no close-ups.) The special effects (by John Hench and Josh Meador) and production design (by Harper Goff) are nothing to sneeze at, either, as they successfully convey the wonderment of Disney's animated features in live-action terms. And then there's the cast, one of the most esteemed in the Disney canon. James Mason plays Captain Nemo, inventor and master of a submarine called the Nautilus; Paul Lukas is a professor who joins the submarine crew after Nemo saves him from drowning; Peter Lorre plays the professor's assistant; and Kirk Douglas is the ace harpooner Ned Land, a fun-loving brawler who also sings a couple of songs. (Mason and Douglas would work with Fleischer again on MANDINGO and THE VIKINGS, respectively—two very different films that showcase the actors' and the director's impressive range.) This captures the spirit of adventure and invention of Jules Verne's novel—which famously anticipated the design of modern submarines by several decades—not only in its rousing storytelling, but also in its use of state-of-the-art technology. The fake giant squid that appears at the climax is pretty silly, but at least it's memorably so. (1954, 127 min, 35mm IB Technicolor print) BS
Walter Murch's RETURN TO OZ (American Revival)
Before there was the sweet, warm children's film BABE (1995) and its darker, scarier sequel, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY (1998), there was the beloved, bright THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) and its terrifying, bleak follow-up, RETURN TO OZ (1985). Walter Murch, the much-honored sound editor of such films as APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) and THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996), made his first and last foray into feature-film direction with this adaptation of L. Frank Baum's second and third Oz books, The Marvelous Land of Oz andOzma of Oz.Murch, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gill Dennis, signals a very different tone from the first. Shots of the tornado-wrecked Gale farm take the color palette and perspective of Andrew Wyeth's haunting painting Christina's World. Like Christina, Dorothy (newcomer Fairuza Balk) is a withdrawn child whose Auntie Em (Piper Laurie) is so worried about her depression and retreat into fantasy that she gets Uncle Henry (Matt Clark), already near bankruptcy, to agree to have Dorothy undergo shock treatments. Dr. Worley (Nicol Williamson) and Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh) are transformed by Dorothy in her return to Oz as the ghastly evildoers, Princess Mombi and the Nome King, who have reduced the Emerald City to ruins and turned its inhabitants into stone statues. Balk, who was a much-hyped actor until she wasn't, is a more age-appropriate Dorothy who goes on her quest to save Oz with a mechanical army of one named Tik-Tok, a walking/talking scarecrow called Pumpkinhead, a revivified trophy head from an animal called a gump, and her trusty chicken Bilina. The basic plot follows the original WIZARD OF OZ, but the horrors are truly nightmare-inducing—learning that the Tin Woodsman dismembered himself bit by bit until he was completely replaced by tin parts, watching Mombi remove her head and replace it with one of a collection of heads she harvested from women in the Emerald City, and seeing creatures called Wheelers fall into the Deadly Desert and turn to sand. The production's design and costumes closely follow the John R. Neill illustrations in the original books, and the Kansas setting is 1900, not the 1930s. David Shire may not have created memorable tunes like Harold Arlen's, but his score is a thing of beauty. Parents, beware: this film is not for young children. (1985, 113 min, 35mm archival print) MF
Duwayne Dunham's HOMEWARD BOUND: THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY (American Revival)
The late Alexander Cockburn was always my favorite radical journalist, railing against corruptions of empire while effortlessly reeling off quotes from the likes of Foucault, Adorno, or Barthes. That's why it tickled me when the famously acidic polemicist wrote of this funny, moving, majestic family film: "I loved HOMEWARD BOUND: THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY, watched without headphones on a plane between NYC and LAX and wept when the Golden Retriever came over the hill at the end. The tough A&R chick in the window seat stared at my tear-stained cheeks, revolted. It came as a big shock when they told me there was voice-over." I have a personal connection with HOMEWARD BOUND's director, Duwayne Dunham. When I was an Ohio University student in '90, I was assigned to interview someone actually doing what I aspired to do. I immediately thought of David Lynch. Somehow, I got on the phone with someone at the production offices for Twin Peaks. They couldn't get me Lynch. However, they were kind enough to put me in touch with Dunham, who had directed three episodes and edited two others. (He'd also edited BLUE VELVET and WILD AT HEART, and was part of the team that cut RETURN OF THE JEDI, as well). I'll never forget how gracious he was in patiently answering all my questions. Fast-forward nearly 30 years, and in 2017 I thought of my old friend Dunham again as I watched Twin Peaks: The Return. He edited the 18-episode epic, a major accomplishment. Back in 1993, though, he made this live-action Disney movie, a beautiful, silly talking-animal Western based on a novel by Sheila Burnford. Voiced by Michael J. Fox, the narrator is a youthful, rambunctious American Bulldog called Chance, a self-described loner with abandonment issues. His frenemy is Sassy, a proud, brave Himalayan cat voiced by Sally Field. Rounding out the trio is a wise old Golden Retriever named Shadow—faithful, loyal, and true—wonderfully voiced by Don Ameche in one of his last performances. When their family leaves them at a ranch while the new step-dad (Robert Hays) takes a brief sabbatical in San Francisco, the three animals set out into the wilderness on a perilous quest to get back home. Though set in California, the movie was filmed in Oregon, whose gorgeous state parks convincingly stand in for the Sierras. There's no animatronics, nor any of that syncing up mouth-movements business. Rather, the voiceovers work by playing on a natural human tendency, at least among animal lovers like me: if, in the presence of a pooch, you've ever supplied, presumably in your goofy "doggy voice," a translation of what he or she is "saying," then you'll know what I mean. It's a tribute to Dunham as a visual storyteller that the film could work just as well with the sound turned down. Maybe even better, since you and a friend could improve on the dialogue with your own inventions. I also like that Chance, Sassy, and Shadow are played by only one animal actor each: Rattler, Ben, and Tiki respectively, all very impressive. HOMEWARD BOUND is about love, sacrifice, and friendship. In its fraught late moments, I heaved violently, choking and weeping freely. It will work best for either very small children or, alternately, those of us "mature" enough to have concluded that it's dogs who really have the right approach to life: unbridled optimism, despite it all. (1993, 84 min, DCP Digital) SP
Also showing in the series are: Robert Stevenson's BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971, 117 min, 35mm IB Technicolor print), Kenny Ortega's NEWSIES (1992, 121 min, 35mm), and Steven Brill's HEAVY WEIGHTS (1995, 100 min, 35mm).
Amanda Kopp and Aaron Kopp's LIYANA (Swazi Documentary/Animation)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday-Thursday, December 28-January 3 – Check Venue website for showtimes
Amanda and Aaron Kopp are documentary filmmakers who have an unusually refined grasp on the needs of their films. In LIYANA, they eschew the conventional talking-heads format, adopting instead live action mixed with beautifully rendered animation that seamlessly integrates with the larger story they are telling. Jumping off from their short documentary LIKHAYA (2009), which dealt with the HIV epidemic in Aaron's native country of Swaziland, the Kopps focus on a group of Swazi orphans who are engaged by South African storyteller and activist Gcina Mhlophe in creating a story about a girl named Liyana who goes on a hero's quest. The Kopps interview the children about Liyana's adventures, each episode of which is drawn by Shofela Coker and brought to life in limited animation by Stefan Nadelman. By creating their own story, these children, many of whom were orphaned due to AIDS, find a way to process their grief and trauma. Physical abuse, alcoholism, rape, and the experience of losing their parents all come up in Liyana's story, and her attempt to rescue her twin brothers from robbers comes from the recent trauma of a break-in at the orphanage. Whether Liyana will succeed is very much in doubt, as the children concede that not every story has a happy ending. Nonetheless, they intend to try to make their way to a better life somehow. LIYANA is suspenseful, exciting, and extremely moving. It's one of the year's very best. (2018, 77 min, DCP Digital) MF
Lee Chang-dong's BURNING (New Korean)
Music Box Theatre — Saturday and Sunday, December 22-23, 11am
"It's a metaphor." Spoken by the inexplicably wealthy, smugly superior Ben (Steven Yeun) after he equates cooking at home to making offerings to the Gods, this line, like so much of the teasingly elusive BURNING, hints that we're in delicately self-reflexive territory in Lee Chang-dong's latest. It's one of a tantalizing series of moments, mostly generated by Yeun's perpetually smirking and vaguely otherworldly character, that draws us ever deeper into the film's porous reality, where our unreliable narrator Jongsu's (Yoo Ah-in) confounded perspective makes us question the veracity of what we're seeing. The mysteries start accruing early, when Jongsu, a barely employed, young aspiring writer, happens upon Haemi (Jeon Jong-seo), a girl from his childhood neighborhood whom he can't remember. Haemi is off to Africa, and she'll need Jongsu to feed her cat while she's away, but like the phantom tangerine she pantomimes over dinner, there is no trace of the cat. For a while, anyway, Haemi seems to offer the romantic companionship Jongsu has been missing, but when she returns from Africa with Ben in tow, the rich, possibly sinister interloper unleashes in Jongsu a cascade of latent anxieties, desires, and resentments that are as socioeconomically based as they are libidinal. In the thorny, unmistakably homoerotic relationship between the sullen working-class Jongsu and the suave new-moneyed Ben, Lee articulates a dynamic underpinned equally by class antagonism and envy, by a disdain for a callous power elite as well as by the aspirations of a young generation, evident especially in eastern Asian countries such as South Korea, to assimilate the goals of global capitalism. Like Haemi, who oscillates (perhaps uneasily) between economically desperate millennial and male sexual fantasy projection, Ben is a slippery subject, a recognizable brand of entitled affluent hotshot who nevertheless appears like a kind of taunting phantasm. It is a mark of Steven Yeun's sneaky performative prowess that he can make Ben feel like both a plausibly malicious person and a free-floating metaphor for modernity and toxic masculinity, every ingratiating grin and forced yawn an invitation to confront the banally seductive face of evil. BURNING refers, most denotatively, to Ben's avowed habit of burning down abandoned greenhouses, but what it really describes is the psychological unease that smolders in places both rural and urban, sparked by the conditions of a society pervaded by inequality and disaffection. We can't be sure if everything Jongsu thinks happens literally does. Then again: it's a metaphor. (2018, 148 min, DCP Digital) JL
Hirokazu Kore-eda's SHOPLIFTERS (New Japanese)
Music Box Theatre — Friday-Thursday, December 21-27; check venue website for showtimes
Coming home after a day spent shoplifting, a man and a boy see a young girl playing by herself outside an apartment and decide to take her home with them. Their household is presided over by an elderly woman, along with two younger women, one of whom has a relationship with the man. Their home is a ramshackle corrugated lean-to, perpetually in danger of being demolished by a local property flipper. They get by on various grifts and scams to supplement the meager salaries of the grownups' menial jobs and the old lady's pension. Each member of this makeshift family does their best to play the part they wish they had in their previous lives. I kept thinking of Dickens' Oliver Twistwhile watching this movie. There's a lot of Fagin in the man and of the Artful Dodger in the boy; the grubby neediness of their lives is out of Dickens as well. In his careful and unassuming way, Kore-eda has made a devastating indictment of capitalist society, as well as the sacrosanct place the nuclear family holds within its structures. He continues plumbing the depth and breadth of what connects one human being to another through this group of strangers—unwanted or rejected by their relations and by the larger world—who throw in their lots together to form a bond made by choice rather than blood. This one left me gutted. (2018, 121 min, DCP Digital) DS
Marcel Pagnol's THE BAKER'S WIFE (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, December 28, 3:30pm; Saturday, December 29, 4:45pm; and Sunday, December 30, 2pm
"If [Marcel] Pagnol is not the greatest auteur of sound film," André Bazin wrote of the unassuming French filmmaker, "he is in any case something like its genius." An oft-repeated aphorism trotted out in accordance with revivals of Pagnol's work, but true nonetheless. His films are something like this quote, seemingly repetitive as they and it might be—always pleasant, always true. Digitally restored after years of scarce availability, Pagnol's 1938 film THE BAKER'S WIFE, like his better-known, more easily accessible Marseille Trilogy, again considers the director's favorite motifs and mechanisms. Raimu, who starred in the trilogy and was called by Orson Welles "the greatest actor who ever lived," plays the titular baker, Aimable, who's indeed quite amiable. After moving to a Provençal village and impressing the townspeople with not only his affable good-nature, but also his delicious bread, his beautiful, young wife, Aurélie (Ginette Leclerc), runs away with the Marquis' handsome shepherd. The villagers, who like the baker and hope to continue enjoying their daily bread, seek to rectify the situation so that he's well enough to work again—a premise drawn out over its duration but never overstaying its welcome. Each of the film's 134 minutes feels crucial to one's appreciation of it; not surprising considering Pagnol's background as a playwright, one who saw in cinema the capacity for a so-called "filmed theater," the original mode of which savors each minute as a weighty investment for both those creating and consuming it. An emphasis on dialogue (Pagnol began working in film upon the advent of sound) prescribes this delineation, and THE BAKER'S WIFE is rich with the stuff. Based on the novel Blue Boy by Jean Giono, three of whose other novels are the basis of earlier Pagnol films, its provincialism is almost philosophical, with especially astute—and amusing—insights emerging from the verbal sparring between townspeople. Much like a play, one feels involved in what's happening onscreen, though not because of physical proximity to the players. Rather, Pagnol's storytelling, exemplified by plot and image, is warmly enveloping, inviting viewers into a world of which he himself was part, having been born in the Provence region. Despite accusations of "filmed theater," used pejoratively by some critics to indicate a lack of engagement with the cinematic form, there's a delightful scenario involving the town vicar and teacher toward the end, filmed outdoors, that just wouldn't be the same onstage; ironically, Raimu, whose profound subtleness is the very essence of a cinematic performance, insisted on doing scenes with dialogue in the studio rather than on location. This dichotomy is that of cinema, a mode amenable to a director's vision and thus easily transferable, with the right kind of genius, from stage to screen, or location to studio set. Welles put THE BAKER'S WIFE on a list of what he considered to be the best films of all time, sandwiched between BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and THE GRAND ILLUSION—similarly, critics at the time also felt strongly about it, resulting in it being one of the earliest French-language films to be successful in the U.S. Though some might look at Pagnol's film and think more of the same, other, wiser cinephiles will watch and say keep them coming. (1938, 134 min, DCP Digital) KS
Joseph Dorman and Toby Perl Freilich's MOYNIHAN (New Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday-Thursday, December 21-27; check venue website for showtimes
Longtime New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) was a key figure in shaping many governmental policies in the US from the Vietnam Era up to 9/11. He was a public intellectual through a period that culminated in the near-complete rejection of complex thought with the election of George W. Bush. He was a man who served both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations and was routinely celebrated and scorned by both the Right and the Left. He was a man of many contradictions and thus a compelling subject for a feature-length documentary. Well-known figures such as conservative columnist George Will and noted sociologist William Julius Wilson recount Moynihan's accomplishments and failings in ways that make one long for an era of principled argument and public discourse which seems like a fanciful sci-fi scenario at the moment. Moynihan's lifelong hope of eradicating poverty in America—begun during his time in the Kennedy administration—was left unrealized, but the desire to lift up the lives of the common citizen is a cause more valuable to promote now than ever. This documentary is worth seeing for the information it imparts rather than any aesthetic quality, so I wrestled a bit with whether I should recommend it in a forum devoted largely to film as art. But in the end, the story it tells of a public servant actually dedicated to serving the public seems more important than the question of whether this movie belongs on a big or small screen. It should be watched now. Period. (2018, 105 min, DCP Digital) DS
Hiroshi Teshigahara's ANTONIO GAUDI (Documentary Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday, December 21, 2pm; Saturday, December 22, 4pm; Sunday, December 23, 2pm; Thursday, December 27, 6:15pm; and Friday, December 28, 2pm
By now nearly a timeworn tradition, the Siskel's late-December run of Hiroshi Teshigahara's meditative and enigmatic ANTONIO GAUDI annually attracts a respectable and respectful crowd, with its fair share of SAIC architecture students done with finals and therefore blazed. In this film--devoid as it is of narration until the very end--every visual texture possesses its own subtle, droning sound: a particular class of curvature will produce an otherworldly gong-like shimmering; a long shot of Barcelona is accompanied by a low rumble. Anything involving intricate metalwork is, sonically, inexplicably menacing. Unless one is already ultra-familiar with Gaudi's oeuvre the viewer generally has no idea what they are looking at, where it is, or when it was constructed, and are thus transported to experiencing the cryptic persuasiveness of man-made structures before an age of writing and reading: to a time in which there may not have ostensibly been an explanatory narrative (or even a subtitle) for every surface. (1985, 72 min, 35mm) MC
Wim Wenders' WINGS OF DESIRE (German Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday-Thursday, December 28-January 3; check venue website for showtimes
In 1971, Wim Wenders and other luminaries of New German Cinema (including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, and Alexander Kluge) founded the famous Filmverlag der Autoren to produce and distribute their own films, and Wenders and Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke completed their first feature film collaboration, THE GOALIE'S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK (1971). Nearly twenty years later, they co-wrote WINGS OF DESIRE, a beautiful film in the tradition of the German fairytale and dedicated to the angels and to master directors Yasujiro Ozu, François Truffaut, and Andrei Tarkovsky. Wenders tells the story of an angel, Damiel (Bruno Ganz), falling in love with trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), who flies through the air at the Circus Alekan (named in honor of the film's cinematographer, Henri Alekan). Damiel fervently desires to abandon his spiritual existence to become a human being and experience the pleasures and pains of life, particularly that of love, which can be both. He and the other angels experience the world in black and white, but Wenders uses bursts of color to indicate the magnificent difference in the way humans see it. WINGS OF DESIRE is also an ode to Berlin, recalling the city films of the early twentieth century, such as Walter Ruttmann's BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (1927) and Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA (1929). The original German title is DER HIMMEL UBER BERLIN, meaning The Sky, or Heaven, over Berlin. Wenders begins shooting the city from an angel's point of view in the sky, and his camera later descends to the streets, looking at or out of cars, buses, and trains. He concerns himself with Berlin's history and the stories of its people, particularly since World War II. Recurring shots of the Berlin Wall covered in decorative graffiti figure prominently as does old war footage of air raids and of the victims they claimed lying amidst the rubble. Ultimately, WINGS OF DESIRE is a story about time—as longed for by angels, as lived by Berliners, and as experienced by us in watching the film unfold. (1987, 128 min, DCP Digital) CW
Luchino Visconti's ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (Italian Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Sunday, December 23, 2pm and Wednesday, December 26, 6pm
Even if he claimed to be a lifelong Communist, Count Luchino Visconti di Modrone remains cinema's definitive aristocrat. He co-invented neo-realism but abandoned it for the filmic equivalent of neoclassicism. His films about the poor are decorated with a baroque poverty (see: LE NOTTI BIANCHI): the attention to detail of someone trying to depict a culture they can't quite understand. Visconti's merits are the same as his flaws; these very tendencies could bring out the best and worst (DEATH IN VENICE) in him. What tended to do him in was tastefulness, and thankfully ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS is tasteless and the better—and freer—for it; it has neither the tastefulness of being short (it's almost three hours long), nor the tastefulness of being melancholic (its "ugly" unsentimentality is more aching than DEATH IN VENICE's longing), nor even the tastefulness to restrain Visconti's decadent fetishization of impoverished toughness. Cine-File contributor Ben Sachs once said that showing people at work was one of the most subversive things a film could do. Visconti's approach to indicating that his characters are poor is to show their threadbare clothes and harsh living conditions; he never understood that the worst thing about being working class isn't having few possessions, but the working itself. Still, what he sets out to do in ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS is subversive in its odd, aristocratic way: to create a beggar's opera. (1960, 177 min, DCP Digital) IV
Luchino Visconti's LUDWIG (Italian Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Saturday, December 29, 3pm and Wednesday, January 2, 6pm
In 2002, Olivier Assayas selected LUDWIG as one of the 10 greatest films of all time, thereby admitting the great influence Luchino Visconti has on his work, if not the whole of his generation of French filmmakers (Arnaud Desplechin, Leos Carax, Claire Denis, et al.). Assayas and his compatriots are remarkable for a seemingly exhaustless attention to physical detail that never overwhelms their sense of storytelling, but rather makes each new film an immersion in its particular environment. Perhaps contemporary cinephiles underrate Visconti's art because he worked mainly in period films—the most bourgeois of genres, since it often reduces the past into a collector's item. But these films bring the past to life with opulence, wonder, and an idiosyncratic sense of sexual relations. The film, which is Visconti's longest, is an operatic biography of the Bavarian king in the tradition of Wagner—who, perhaps appropriately, appears as a character. (1972, 235 min, DCP Digital) BS
Andrei Tarkovsky's ANDREI RUBLEV (Soviet Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday, December 28, 6:30pm; Saturday, December 29, 7:30pm; Sunday, December 30, 2pm; and Thursday, January 3, 6:30pm
A strong contender for the greatest Soviet film, Andrei Tarkovsky's second feature (completed in 1966 but not shown publicly until 1969 and not released in its native country until 1971) is immersive and overwhelming, steeping viewers in a stunningly detailed recreation of the medieval world and offering profound meditations on the nature of human suffering, the social value of art and religion, and the possibility of achieving transcendence in earthly affairs. It's also one of the most formally accomplished of all movies, featuring some of the densest mise-en-scene you'll ever see and unfolding in meticulously choreographed long takes that suggest a ghostlike presence moving through the world. "At once humble and cosmic, Tarkovsky called RUBLEV 'a film of the earth,'" J. Hoberman noted in his essay for the Criterion Collection. "Shot in widescreen and sharply defined black and white, the movie is supremely tactile—the four elements appearing as mist, mud, guttering candles, and snow. A 360-degree pan around a primitive stable conveys the wonder of existence. Such long, sinuous takes are like expressionist brush strokes; the result is a kind of narrative impasto." The film charts the adult life of a 15th-century monk and painter who developed his talent as an artist around the same time as the Tartars were invading Russia. Tarkovsky presents the glories of Rublev's creative process and the horrors that surrounded him, dramatizing the eternal struggle between the best and worst impulses of humankind. Interwoven throughout this struggle are visions that register like spiritual epiphanies, from the allegorical opening sequence (which imagines another artist who manages to fly above the world, only to destroy himself in the process) to the audacious re-imagining of the Crucifixion in a Russian snowscape to the reverential close-ups of Rublev's paintings that conclude the film. (1966, 205 min, DCP Digital) BS
Ali Abbasi's BORDER (New Swedish)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday-Thursday, December 21-27; check venue website for showtimes
Classic stories from The Hunchback of Notre Dameto Frankenstein have cast physically anomalous outsiders as both mirrors of and foils to the ills of mankind, serving as metaphors for a society hostile to difference. Without giving too much away, Ali Abbasi's folkloric-realist BORDER joins their ranks while shrewdly subverting the cultural codes inscribed in such narratives, conceptualizing difference outside prevailing dualisms. The film follows Tina, a lonely Swedish border guard who, from the start, is clearly unlike anyone else. Not only does her visage set her apart—her heavy, protruding brow and pachydermic skin drawing curious stares—but so too does her seemingly supernatural ability to smell people's guilt and fear, a trait the authorities exploit to find contraband. Near her home nestled in the woods, she appears to commune with foxes and moose, and indeed, her own behavior often resembles that of an animal, most notably in the way her upper lip flares when she's in proximity of a guilty passenger. But is Tina really that sui generis? When she encounters someone entering the country who looks just like her, she begins to question her true nature as the two embark on a relationship that brings enlightenment and terror. Abbasi gradually parcels out information about Tina and this analogous partner, depicting their multiple idiosyncrasies with fascination but also affection. The film may be grounded in Scandinavian folklore, but its inflections of social realism, horror, and discourses around queerness unsettle it from generic categories, allowing it to engage, most excitingly and even radically, with the politics of anti-humanism. Lest this all get too esoteric, Eva Melander's extraordinary performance as Tina anchors the film to a sense of lived experience. Behind the impressive prosthetics, the actress powerfully conveys the arc of a woman shambling from the shadows of diffidence and internalized hatred to self-actualization. BORDER is filled with a surfeit of imagery earthly and uncanny, but Melander's accented face supplies it with its most arresting moments: the plays of anxiety, anger, and shame that capture a life kept on the sidelines of one society, and the blossoming confidence of one emerging tentatively into the center of another. (2018, 109 min, DCP Digital) JL
WHITE/WONDERFUL Double Feature
Music Box Theatre – Various dates through December 24 – Check venue website for showtimes
Michael Curtiz's WHITE CHRISTMAS (American Revival)
Critics agree that Mark Sandrich's HOLIDAY INN (1942), the first musical comedy to feature Bing Crosby, an inn, and Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," is a better film than this partial remake. Yet it turns out that it's revivals of this Technicolor, VistaVision version that people look forward to this time of year. WHITE CHRISTMAS incorporates the history of its own title song, which, while it would go on to become perhaps history's largest-seller, actually seemed a flop at first. Music historians Dave Marsh and Steve Propes note, "What saved 'White Christmas' were requests made by GIs to Armed Forces Radio around the world. Soldiers away from home, many of them in the South Pacific or North Africa, uncertain of whether they'd ever again see family and friends, let alone a snowfall, responded passionately to Berlin's understated evocation of the mythic romance of Christmas Past." This history is folded into the opening scene: it's Christmas Eve, 1944, somewhere on a World War II battlefield, and Crosby sings the song to fellow troops amidst some very fake rubble, as bombs explode in the background. The movie's got Crosby and Danny Kaye as music-and-lyrics team Wallace and Davis, and Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney as sister act the Haynes. They're a treat to watch even just sitting around a railroad passenger car singing "Snow," bound for Pine Tree, Vermont, where the inn turns out to be run by ex-General Waverly (Dean Jagger). When people gather for a screening of this movie, I doubt they worry that it may not rank with Michael Curtiz's best work (CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, MILDRED PIERCE). They come to mark the change of years together. If there's a season for nestling in the warmth of nostalgia, it's this one. Plus, there's the camp appeal of Crosby and Kaye doing "Sisters." (1954, 120 min, DCP Digital) SP
Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (American Revival)
Like Steven Spielberg today, Frank Capra was associated more with reassuring, patriotic sentiment than with actually making movies; but just beneath the Americana, his films contain a near-schizophrenic mix of idealism and resentment. In this quality, as well as his tendency to drag charismatic heroes through grueling tests of faith, it wouldn't be a stretch to compare Capra with Lars von Trier. There's plenty to merit the comparison in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE alone: The film is a two-hour tour of an honest man's failure and bottled-up resentment, softened only intermittently by scenes of domestic contentment. Even before the nightmarish Pottersville episode (shot in foreboding shadows more reminiscent of film noir than Americana), Bedford Falls is shown as vulnerable to the plagues of recession, family dysfunction, and alcoholism. All of these weigh heavy on the soul of George Bailey, a small-town Everyman given tragic complexity by James Stewart, who considered the performance his best. Drawing on the unacknowledged rage within ordinary people he would later exploit for Alfred Hitchcock, Stewart renders Bailey as complicated as Capra himself--a child and ultimate victim of the American Dream. Ironically, it's because the film's despair feels so authentic that its iconic ending feels as cathartic as it does: After being saved from his suicide attempt (which frames the entire film, it should be noted), Stewart is returned to the simple pleasures of family and friends, made to seem a warm oasis in a great metaphysical void. (1946, 130 min, DCP Digital) BS
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS (December 21-27)
Chicago Filmmakers (5720 N. Ridge Ave.) hosts an Open Screening on Saturday at 7:30pm. Attendees can just go to watch or bring up to 20-minutes of work to screen (nothing x-rated; Blu-Ray, DVD, Digital File). Free admission.
Black Cinema House (at the Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) screens Penny Marshall's 1996 film THE PREACHER'S WIFE (123 min, Digital Projection) on Friday at 7:30pm. Free admission.
The Beverly Arts Center (2407 W. 111th St.) screens Christian Carion's 2005 film JOYEUX NOEL (116 min, Digital Projection) on Friday at 7:30pm.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: The 20th Annual Animation Show of Shows (98 min, DCP Digital) concludes a two-week run.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Norman Jewison's 1971 musical FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (181 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday at 7pm; Panos Cosmatos' 2018 film MANDY (121 min, DCP Digital) returns on Wednesday and screens through January 3.
Facets Cinematheque will be closed over the holiday period, resuming screenings January 11.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS (December 28-January 3)
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens David Lowery's 2018 film THE OLD MAN & THE GUN (93 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday at 1 and 7pm. Free admission.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Panos Cosmatos' 2018 film MANDY (121 min, DCP Digital) continues; and Kurt Wimmer's 2002 film EQUILIBRIUM (107 min, 35mm) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.
Facets Cinematheque will be closed over the holiday period, resuming screenings January 11.
The Graham Foundation (Madlener House, 4 W. Burton Place) continues Martine Syms: Incense Sweaters & Ice through January 12.
Currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago: Martine Syms' SHE MAD: LAUGHING GAS (2018, 7 min, four-channel digital video installation with sound, wall painting, laser-cut acrylic, artist's clothes); Rosalind Nashashibi's VIVIAN'S GARDEN (2017, 30 min, 16mm on HD Video) is in the Donna and Howard Stone Gallery, through December 31; Dara Birnbaum's KISS THE GIRLS: MAKE THEM CRY (1979, 6 min loop, two-channel video) is in the second floor corridor.
CINE-LIST: December 21 - January 3, 2018
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Castelle, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Scott Pfeiffer, Dmitry Samarov, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Candace Wirt


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I had gotten/ caught Paprika on vacation in Michigan with a friend's family and I swear she had been someone's released pet before hand because she adapted a little too fast to otherwise being a wild turtle. This happened the summer before my junior year, so if I am doing the math correctly I do believe I had her in my life for about five years.
Her name came from the movie Paprika, which was basically the anime version of Inception (but it came out long beforehand). It's a really good movie, and there was a very warm color scheme throughout it. Between that and the spitfire girl that shared her name Paprika just seemed fitting.
I don't understand when people say oh it was just a turtle. That's like saying your dog died but it was just a dog. There was just as much personality in that tiny reptile as there is in our 80lbs boxer/lab mix. She was spunky, and she'd look at me as she sat on her dock to here me talk, and you'd be surprised at how good it was to have her during certain moments of my life just to get something off my chest. If I was near her tank she'd make sure she was on that side of her tank, if I took her out, no matter where she'd go all I'd have to do is shake her food container and she came running. (and let me tell you turtles can run, unlike their tortoise counterparts)
She was sweet, and never bit or hissed (which they can do) and I definitely lost a friend the day she died. I didn't think that the moment where she wasn't going to be there wouldn't come for a very long time. I hope she's doing well where's she's at now eating all the fish and peeled grapes she can eat, with endless amounts of space to swim. I will miss her always.

subset: commoncrawl


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BENEFITING: Imagine Scholar Inc
Do you remember the excitement of your first college visit? The feeling that your future was right around the corner and you would get a glimpse of it as soon as you step foot on that campus?? Well that time is NOW for the grade 12 students of Imagine Scholar! Our students are highly motivated, high achieving learners from across the rural Nkomazi of South Africa's Mpumalanga province. In addition to coming from low-income backgrounds, these students are often the first in their families to be in a position to attend and be successful in university. As a result, this trip will be the first time that our grade 12 students get to see a university campus, visit lecture halls, and learn the options open to them. With YOUR help, these talented young people can take the first step down the path of a happy and successful future!
To expose our students to a variety of universities and career options ( a necessity particularly since many South African universities choose not to come out to rural areas), we will visit four universities in the Johannesburg/Pretoria area: University of Johannesburg, University of Witwatersrand, University of Pretoria, and Tswhane University of Technology- Pretoria Campus. A South African donor has generously offered to sponsor the cost of overnight accommodations for 8 people (including chaperones) but we still need your help to cover the rest of the costs. Below is a breakdown of the trip's cost:
- Tolls- $45 USD/ $405 rand
- Petrol- $220 USD/ $1980 rand
- Food- $200 USD/ 1800 rand
- University of Pretoria/ Engineering Programme- $166 USD/ $1500 rand
- Student Local Transport- $40 USD/ $360 rand
- Miscellaneous Costs- $60 USD/ $540 rand
Imagine Scholar provides unique, personalized education to promising youth in South Africa's disadvantaged Nkomazi region. We strive to effect profound change on individual lives and empower the next generation of African leaders through creative, multidimensional development.
Imagine Scholar aspires not to help students merely get by, but to give them the tools to be the difference makers of their generation and bring lasting change to their communities.
Visit www.imaginescholar.org for more information about the work we do!
The Team: $0 TOTAL RAISED SO FARJOIN THE TEAM
Want to help Fundraise or Volunteer for this amazing Fundraiser? Join the Team


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Quick to assemble, this kit simplifies the process of building your own raised bed. To withstand long-term exposure to the elements, the walls are made of strong, durable plastic resin panels that won't rot or splinter, held together with sturdy plastic corner brackets and anchored with steel stakes. Each kit produces a 4' square bed that stands 5-1/2" tall – a size that provides considerable growing space while permitting easy access from all sides.
Kits can be linked side to side to create a larger bed, while interlocking tongue-and-groove profiles along the top and bottom edges of the panels help keep the walls from shifting if kits are stacked to form a taller bed. Once completed, the bed is sure to last for many seasons with minimal maintenance. Outstanding value, the kit is available in limited quantities.
Made in USA.


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A bright orange color at carrot juice comes from beta carotene, which the carrots are plentiful.
From carotene is formed vitamin A, which provides us with a better pigmentation and healthy skin, hair and nails.
Then affects the proper growth, liver, stomach, intestines, strengthens the heart, improves vision, raises immunity and a lot more.
Carrot juice is a great natural remedy for cleansing the body of harmful substances (especially recommended in the spring), against polyarthritis, osteochondrosis, poor digestion, gastritis, bowel problems, and hemorrhoids.
Alleviates mental fatigue created by excessive intellectual work and stress.
Relieves fatigue of the heart muscle, regulates metabolism in the body and thus affects the regulation of body weight.
Carrot juice – The best choice to start your day
In therapeutic use as a medicine, carrot juice is necessary to drink in the morning before breakfast and about 150 ml, always freshly squeezed juice.
Percent of carrot juice is very effective in killing bacteria.
It is preferable to keep it a little in your mouth before swallowing.
In addition, one glass of this drink is enough to eliminate heartburn.
Therefore, it is quite certain that we would be much healthier if our day starts with this juice instead of the usual black coffee.
You can begin your day with this beneficial red drink.
Carrot juice is a very healing, so we use it in many diseases or as a preventive bio-stimulator of the organism:
– Improve digestion and stimulate appetite – is good to drink carrot juice 20 minutes before eating a meal
– Improve eyesight – beta-carotene and lutein are found concentrated in your retinas and carrot juice has plenty of both
– Prevent cancer – a lot of studies have shown that with high level of carotenoids can prevent different type of cancers
– Promote lung health and protect the respiratory system
– Benefits for your skin – Carrot juice has a high content of vitamin A that can help to your skin, nails, hair, psoriasis and some dry skin problems
– Enrich lactation – help with supply of calcium during pregnancy and enrich milk to nursing mothers
– Improve liver function – this juice is a good way for detoxification your liver
– Excellent addition to any weight loss program – high in minerals and vitamins but low in fat and calories


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Chapters of the Great War is a series of temporary exhibitions held at the Great War Exhibition at Pukeahu in Wellington.
The exhibit uses six big projection screens and an immersive audio environment to create a powerful visitor experience out of still imagery and verbatim accounts. Shows typically run between five and ten minutes.
The sixth, and final Chapter, "The End of the War?" looks at the war-time experiences of nine people — men and women, Māori and Pākehā, Pasifika and Asian — and explores the impact of their experiences through their descendants, 100 years on. The feelings engendered by the war are as varied as the experiences of those who lived it — nurses, ambulance drivers, patriotic supporters, conscientious objectors, wounded soldiers and those killed in action.
Chapter Five "Women's War" examined the diverse experiences women at home and further afield faced during the First World War. Women's attitudes toward the conflict were distinct, and they did not always agree. Some girls gave up their educations to tend to family farms, while many volunteered to knit socks for soldiers. Nurses fought to travel to the front lines to tend to the wounded, while pioneers like Ettie Rout challenged the status quo by campaigning for venereal disease prevention. Six mannequins dressed in war-era women's clothing helped to represent the six archetypal women featured in the show - Pioneer, Patriot, Entertainer, Nurse, Worker and Wife/Mother/Sister/Daughter.
"War in the Holy Lands" is the 4th Chapter in the series. It told the story of the fierce battles, hordes of flies, extreme temperatures, and rampant malaria that New Zealand soldiers faced during the Middle Eastern battles of WW1. As well as the shocking story of the Surafend massacre - the New Zealand military's most shameful day. It ran from December 2017 until 19 February 2018.
Chapter Three, "Passchendaele" opened on 4 October 2017 to coincide with the centenary of the tragic battle. The six screen set up was altered slightly for this show, with two of the projectors repositioned to cast film of mud and driving rain across the floor, conveying the horror of the boggy battlefields to visitors. A small selection of objects, belonging to soldiers who fought at Passchendaele were exhibited in the showcase.
Chapter Two, "Dissent" (July - October 2017) focused on opposition to New Zealand's involvement in the First World War. "Dissent" was not just about conscientious objectors - it also told the stories of soldiers, iwi, religious groups and politicians that spoke out against the war.
Chapter One of the series, "Wounded" (April - July 2017) told the story of the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who served overseas during the First World War and had their lives blighted by injuries or sickness. It featured four life masks from soldiers with serious facial wounds, made by New Zealand military surgeons whose pioneering work during the war established many of the principles of modern plastic surgery.


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Looking at key points of blog writing to help you choose the best blog sites and blogging platform for content marketing (and common sense general use.)
Episode 1 of Misfit Marketing Methods: Introduction to Marketing
In this introductory video to a (potential) series, Steven talks about the basics of marketing, commercial blogging, SEO, and much more.
Your Small Business Website Looks Better than it Works
A small business website must be many things if it is to be considered successful, be it for a small press publishing company (yo!), online retailer, daycare, or anything else, really. Some of the particulars of these factors will differ from one business to the next, as a balance between functionality, usability, marketability, and necessity is sought, but there will always be some features that all but universal, mechanically and operatively speaking.
Trustrum.com Releases First Consulting Product: Website Analysis Report
The website analysis report is just a first step towards solutions. It is meant to examine your website and find the problems. It will even point you towards some of the solutions if you want to take the information it contains and look into the problems on your own. It is, however, just a report — it is the examination, not the medicine.
Getting Noticed: the Power of the Ping
So, you've just posted something on your blog you want to share. This could be a product release notice, a designer's journal, an update on something you are writing, and so on. You get the idea — you want as many people to read your blog as possible, as soon as possible. The potential for your product or book to sell well and get noticed relies upon getting the word out. Once you click on the "Submit," "Publish," or equivalent button or link in your blog software, your words are sent out to the Internet for all to read, right?
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South Ayrshire Council has appointed MLL Telecom to upgrade its network infrastructure as part of its digital transformation strategy.
The new Wide Area Network (WAN) solution will provide the fundamental data communications technology required to support council services.
The MLL Telecom WAN will completely replace South Ayrshire's legacy wireless network infrastructure, transforming schools who will benefit from enhanced bandwidth and a more reliable service. An additional benefit of the new WAN will be the ability to deliver additional and cost-effective connectivity for infrastructure services such as traffic lights, CCTV and public Wi-Fi over the new core network.
MLL Telecom has also pledged to develop opportunities for the South Ayrshire: improving local education; employability and apprenticeship scheme; and ongoing recruitment of local engineers.
Councillor Peter Henderson said: "We're working to ensure our customers can access services reliably, and at a time that suits them. Our new contract with MLL will bring our ICT communications bang up to date with faster and more reliable voice and data connections, improved security, and systems which can adapt to changing customer needs. These improvements will also allow us to upgrade Wi-Fi access for schools, customers and council staff, and replace outdated and costly technologies such as radio systems and hard-wired CCTV cameras."
Ross Duke, technology director at MLL Telecom said "Having grown up in Ayr, I know first-hand the challenges that South Ayrshire communities face as a result of poor network infrastructure.
"It's time that the ageing infrastructure is brought into the future and is able to support the council's digital transformation plans. We'll be combining our experience as a managed service provider to the public sector and demonstrating our ability to provide a resilient, reliable and secure solution to upgrade a network that is no longer fit for purpose."
MLL Telecom has been awarded a five year contract and migration onto the MLL Telecom network is scheduled to commence early 2019.


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NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The financial stocks in the S&P 500 Index closed up more than 2% on Tuesday, with every sector stock posting gains. The advance, along with moves in the materials and energy sectors, helped drive the first run of consecutive gains for the bellwether index since the beginning of the month.
Credit card and real estate stocks grabbed the spotlight and sent the financial sector higher, with an upgrade of Capital One Financial Corp. and a $10 billion bid for one of the nation's biggest mall operators sparking interest.
The Financial Select Sector SPDR XLF, +0.35%, which tracks the S&P 500 financial components, added 2.1%.
Analysts at CLSA Securities upgraded Capital One COF, +0.07% to outperform from underperform, saying recent price drops have made the company's shares attractive.
"We are making a near-term trading call, that the stock could bounce back to what we believe will be a 12-month high $30s to low $40s trading range, if total credit losses peak in the first quarter of 2010, as we forecast," CLSA analysts told clients Tuesday.
Capital One's shares rose 4.6%, while rival Discover Financial Services DFS, +0.49% added 3.9% and Dow component American Express Co. AXP, -0.26% climbed 3.1%.
In the property sector, Simon Property Group SPG, +1.07% bid $10 billion for General Growth Properties Inc. GGWPQ, the real-estate investment trust that filed for bankruptcy last year, in a deal valued at more than $10 billion, including about $9 billion in cash.
Shareholders of mall operator General Growth would receive more than $9 a share, including $6 a share in cash, Simon said.
General Growth closed last week at $9.40. The stock rose almost 28% Tuesday following the announcement from Simon. Simon's stock rose 3.9%. See full story on Simon offer.
Along with American Express, the other financials in the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose, too. Bank of America Corp. BAC, +0.20% added 4.9%, while J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM, +1.00% rose 2.9% and Allstate Corp. ALL, +0.05% added 3.4%.
Bank of America said Tuesday that it has modified more than 12,700 Bank of America customers' mortgages under the government's Home Affordable Modification Program.
It said another 13,700 permanent modifications are pending, "meaning final modified-loan terms have been approved and documents have been sent for the customers' signatures, which will be their final step to a completed modification," the company added.


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LSU 36th Annual National Convention
Friday, July 17 - Sunday, July 19, 2015Denver, Colorado
Denver, Here We Come!
This year's National Convention is going to be one to remember for many years to come. The people, the ideas, the environment, the setting—it all comes together for an experience that will bring the last year to a spectacular close and supercharge you in the next.
That's the big picture. Now let's break it down.
Hosting Chapter: Arcani of the University of Northern Colorado
Our brothers at the University of Northern Colorado have graciously opened their doors to us all. All workshops, seminars, elections, and proposals will be conducted in their lecture halls and conference rooms.
Packed Agenda
Activities start as early as Friday morning where organizational leaders are assembled together for a luncheon and retreat to plan out the upcoming year, while everyone else enjoys a family-style barbeque in the park. Saturday is dedicated to productivity and progress with workshops, elections, and the Awards Dinner to top off the night. Sunday will close with a community service and farewell brunch.
Breath-taking Landscapes
Denver is known for its beautiful backdrop of the Rocky Mountains and many historic state parks. Band with a group of brothers and head out on a mini hiking adventure!
Many Fun Local Attractions
From downtown local breweries to fascinating museums, Denver's attractions deliver unique and unforgettable experiences. Explore on your own or join along with one of our guided groups.


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Counting the days
Hello. In just a few days, I will be making a long trek to Jordan. It's been a bit of a blur in the recent weeks, being invited to go on a trip with my friend's charity. He began talking about his charity taking medical supplies to Lebanon and it piqued my interest. They would be delivering medical supplies to refugee (Syrian refugees) in both Jordan and Lebanon. Figuring the group could use a photographer, I jumped up at the possibility of going. Problem was, I had no money and the trip was only a few weeks away. So, we put it to prayer. I found a website called GoFundMe.org and a lot of friends donated to help me go. So in just over a week, the finances were gathered and I had my tickets and passport. I've gotten to see the general itinerary and it looks like we will get to go to some interesting places. Now I'm just trying to pack my bags accordingly to have the right camera gear and stay fairly light. I'll start posting images once we get there. Follow along!


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Six months ago, I suggested that the Ontario government's omnibus Bill 28 had defined the natural family unit out of legal existence. It was an unprecedented assault on human identity. Like Aldous Huxley's dystopian society Brave New World, the words "mother" and "father" no longer had any legal standing in Ontario.
If a historic precedent were to be sought, the one that occurred to me as a Mohawk was the atrocious treatment of native Canadians in the residential schools. Some have described their treatment as "cultural genocide" and a "bludgeon to kill the Indian in the child." The height of the atrocity wasn't the physical and sexual abuse by authority figures, as awful as that was, but the official policy of "forcible enfranchisement."
"Forcible enfranchisement" was the disgraceful euphemism used to justify violating native families. Children were simply taken from their parents. The government believed its violation justified because it was saving the children's souls. "Enfranchisement" dehumanized the parents by likening them to slave owners.
I suggested that Bill 28 would have a similar effect.
To this day, I suspect that most Ontarians are oblivious to the fact that the spine of the body politic in the province, i.e. the families that constitute it, has been forcibly extracted in family law.
Who would suspect it? Politicians weren't elected to enact theological experiments, or were their legislative intentions even considered by the unsuspecting electorate. The official line is that these changes are little tweaks, inclusive accommodations to bring legislation up to date.
Only radicals would ever consider using the tools of government to enact Frankenstein legislation on the basic social unit of the body politic. And, make no mistake, the Liberals have used their legislative power to do nothing less than to redefine human nature before the law.
This article continues at [LifeSiteNews] Canadian bill serves as a 'bludgeon to kill the Christian in the child'


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Our designs were developed by a U.S. Navy Veteran Luis Diagnosed with PTSD who discovered Graphic Design to help himself with his condition along with his companion and Service Dog Guapo instead of all the medications that had so many adverse side effects, Luis continues to work on his skills and designs to place on apparels for his supporters.
When we have the chance to donate one of our products as sponsors, we are proud to know we helped and see our creativity in use. We love to hear the fish stories of our customers, and we are available to answer any questions you have about the best way to use our products.
We are a family who loves to fish. While my wife and I love fishing, we also enjoy sponsoring children's fishing tournaments, teaching about fishing, catch and release, safety on the water,etc. We work to build communities that support water health, fish, and the joy of fishing.
Sign up to hear from us about sales, specials, and fishing events.
5135 US Hwy 19N , Suite 242 , New Port Richey, United States


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Confined to relative obscurity as victims of their own success after Brexit, UKIP have since morphed into an alt-right fan club in search of a new platform and audience.
This was apparent on Saturday the 4th of August 2018 when a dozen or so individuals wearing 'Make Britain Great Again' caps and wielding 'Free Tommy Robinson' banners stormed the socialist bookshop Bookmarks in Central London, knocking over displays and ripping up newspapers.
Three of the crowd – Elizabeth Jones, Luke Nash-Jones and Martin Costello – were identified as high-profile members of UKIP.
Luke Nash-Jones runs a Youtube channel called Red Pill Factory: a deeply depressing space where the faces of Donald Trump and Tommy Robinson adorn each pixel in Mao-esque personality worshipping memes; where 40,000 extremely online faceless gremlins 'own the Feminazis', discuss absolutely everything through cuckoldry metaphors and make sure to add the disclaimer that they 'can't be racist because Islam isn't a religion' before every ill-conceived dunk on the 'jihadi paedos'. It is the Mecca of the new Ukipper.
Red Pill Factory posted the video of the UKIP squad invading the bookshop, but quickly deleted it after realising that it painted them in a wholly unsympathetic way. It was reuploaded by Far Right Watch shortly after.
Nash-Jones and his cohort would be benign and slightly pathetic under normal circumstances, but UKIP gained 12.6% of the UK popular vote as recently as 2015. They have nosedived after the referendum, but there is sadly no denying them a place within the UK political mainstream. Their occupation of alt-right territory is therefore undoubtedly concerning considering their platform and household name status.
Ransacking shops and destroying literature have disturbing parallels throughout the 20th century that are too obvious to exhibit. A more concerning development is the huge online presence that the far-right now occupy across the internet, especially on Youtube. Watch any video vaguely related to politics or current affairs and watch your suggested videos sidebar degenerate into a selection of middle-class Canadian white girls discussing how a 1934 essay of Julius Evola actually predicted Gamergate, or a 3 hour lecture on 'cultural Marxist' infiltration of office HR departments by someone called Sargon of Akkad.
Roughly 3,000 people joined UKIP in the month of July, coming after years of steady membership decline. Though many of these are likely Brexiteers who are frustrated with Theresa May's softish Brexit compromise in her Chequers white paper, a large proportion are also young people inspired by an avant-garde recruitment drive led by the Youtubers Paul Joseph Watson and the aforementioned Sargon of Akkad (actually a tubby middle-aged man from Swindon called Carl Benjamin who makes videos on how Harvey Weinstein's victims are 'gold-digging whores', not an ancient Mesopotamian emperor).
Even UKIP's former Tory old guard have joined in the fun with the new boy scout division: Neil Hamilton, an Enoch Powell fetishist who was found guilty of receiving bribes from Mohamed Al-Fayed in 1997, tweeted that he looked forward to developing 'dank memes' with the new Youtube caucus. Hamilton had been UKIP's Welsh assembly leader from 2016 until May 2018, when he was fired for calling Leanne Wood a 'concubine in a Hareem' in literally his first ever speech to the assembly.
I'd like to welcome @PrisonPlanet, Sargon of Akkad, @CountDankulaTV and Milo Yiannopoulos to UKIP. I look forward to them developing truly dank memes that will trigger lefty luvvies like @GaryLineker, @mrjamesob and their politically correct establishment chums. Onwards! pic.twitter.com/OI1bIJQ9Qz
— Neil Hamilton AC/AM (@NeilUKIP) June 26, 2018
Going from Margaret Thatcher to a Youtuber named 'Count Dankula' is a significant decline in quality of dinner party guests, but honestly this isn't a dumb move from Hamilton. The far-right views he espouses have reached their zenith on the deepest darkest corners on the internet, and this is where he will find new receptive minions.
Socialist bookshop employees beware, but social media users even more so: Irony-poisoned Tommy Robinson fans with Pepe avatars may have just hijacked a major UK political party.


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All wrapped up
This holiday season, gifts are not the only items that come in pretty packages. Use puff pastry to create a variety of festive dishes that look just as good as they taste.
Beef wellington
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Don't limit presents this holiday season.
Enclose your favorite edible treats in rich and flaky puff pastry to make any winter's night special. Baking something "en croûte" or "in a crust" involves taking ingredients that might otherwise be mundane and fancying them up by simply wrapping them with store-bought puff pastry and popping them in the oven until golden and flaky — a true gift to anyone at your table.
Beef Wellington
Serves 8 to 10
I feel as though I have perfected this recipe (at least in my eyes). While developing the beef Wellington 101 story when I was a food editor at Martha Stewart Living, I made it at least a dozen times. I have tweaked my final outcome a bit purely to simplify the steps. This classic dish is perfect for any holiday table. Try to buy a piece of beef that is consistently shaped so it will cook evenly.
- 1 2 1/2- to 3-pound center-cut beef tenderloin
- Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 shallots, finely chopped
- 1 pound brown mushrooms, stems removed, finely chopped
- 1/4 cup dry sherry, cognac or brandy
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
- 2 teaspoons coarsely chopped fresh thyme
- All-purpose flour, for dusting
- 1 package (17 1/2 ounces) frozen puff pastry, thawed
- 6 ounces duck liver, chicken liver or peppercorn mousse, room temperature
- 1 large egg, lightly beaten
- Sea salt, or coarse salt, for sprinkling (optional)
1. Place a wire rack on a rimmed baking sheet (alternatively, use a cutting board with a well for juices). Season beef well with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large skillet over high heat. Sear beef until browned on all sides, about 10 minutes total. Transfer to wire rack until cool enough to handle, at least 10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, wipe out skillet and heat butter over medium heat. Add shallots and cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender and any liquid released has evaporated, 8 to 10 minutes. Add sherry and cook until liquid has evaporated and mixture is fairly dry, about 4 minutes more. Stir in parsley and thyme, season well with salt and pepper and cool to room temperature or chill for up to a day.
3. On a lightly floured work surface, overlap 2 sheets of puff pastry by 1/2 inch. Roll out into a 1/2-inch-thick rectangle large enough to enclose the beef generously. Spread the top of the tenderloin evenly with half of the mousse and spread half of the mushroom mixture evenly over the top. Carefully invert tenderloin into middle of pastry rectangle, mushroom-side down. Spread remaining mousse on top and sides of tenderloin. Spread remaining mushrooms over top. Fold up long sides of dough to enclose tenderloin, brushing edges with beaten egg to seal. Trim ends if necessary, fold up and seal. Carefully transfer tenderloin, seam-side down, to a baking sheet and chill at least 2 hours or overnight. Roll out any extra dough, cut into holly or other shapes if desired and chill on baking sheet with beef.
4. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Place a baking sheet on the middle rack in the oven until hot, about 15 minutes. Decorate top of pastry with shaped cutouts if desired; brush with beaten egg. Make 2 to 3 slits in pastry for venting steam. Sprinkle with sea or coarse salt if desired. Carefully transfer Wellington to preheated baking sheet. Bake until golden brown and beef registers 120 to 130 degrees on an instant-read thermometer for rare, 130 to 135 degrees for medium rare, 35 to 50 minutes. Tent with foil if pastry gets too brown while cooking. Let rest on a cutting board 10 minutes before carving.
Brie en croûte with roasted rosemary grapes
Serves 4 to 6 as a nibble
This is one of my favorite things to do with soft-ripened cheese. Encased in a flaky pastry and topped with rich, juicy roasted grapes, this dish is the perfect starter to any fall or winter meal — or it can be served as dessert with a sip of rich port.
- 1 small bunch black or purple seedless grapes
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
- tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
- All-purpose flour, for dusting
- 1/2 of a 17.3-ounce package frozen puff pastry (1 sheet), thawed
- 1 small wheel (8 ounces) Brie or Camembert cheese
- 1 large egg yolk
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Snip grapes into small clusters and arrange on a foil-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper and rosemary. Roast until fragrant and slightly wrinkled, 10 to 15 minutes. Set aside while preparing cheese.
2. Lightly dust work surface with flour. Gently unfold pastry sheet, rolling out until smooth. Place cheese in the center and fold pastry up over the cheese, making sure it is completely covered. Trim any excess pastry and press gently to seal. Reserve pastry scraps if desired for decoration.
3. Whisk together egg and cream and brush over seam side to seal. Place package, seam side down, on a baking sheet. Decorate round with any leftover pastry, if desired, using egg mixture to adhere. Brush package with remaining egg mixture. Bake Brie until golden brown and puffed, about 30 minutes. Serve, topped with roasted grapes.


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A REGISTERED nurse and midwife at a Queensland hospital submitted a report stating the maternity ward was busy and understaffed just days before she dropped a baby while hurrying between birth suites, a coronial inquest was told yesterday.
The baby, Millah Keldie-Roulston, made an apparent recovery but died just hours later early on February 11, 2016 at Gladstone Hospital.
An examination later revealed she had a skull fracture and a pulmonary haemorrhage.
The Coroners Court of Queensland began an inquest into her death yesterday at Gladstone Court House, with the intent of determining which of a number of potential contributing causes had been responsible for the death.
While the fall was one of those potential causes, the inquest will also examine the potential role played by head trauma suffered during birth, a Group B streptococcal infection likely to have led to the pulmonary haemorrhage, and meconium aspiration.
Whether the baby received "best-practice" care, whether there was adequate equipment at the hospital and whether mother Brieaan Keldie should have been told to come to hospital earlier will also be examined.
Testifying under oath, nurse and midwife Gabrielle Matamoros said she had been assisting another midwife with the birth when it became apparent newborn baby Millah was not moving or breathing properly.
She carried the baby to the birthing suite's resuscitaire, a machine intended to stabilise infants' breathing, and quickly discovered an adaptor needed to connect tubing to the machine was missing.
Ms Matamoros then made the decision to carry Millah, wrapped in a blanket, down the hallway to the next birthing suite to use the resuscitaire in that room — forgoing procedure that would normally see a newborn baby placed in a cot before being moved.
"My first instinct was to take the baby that was critical to the next birthing suite," she told the inquest.
Ms Matamoros testified that when she reached the doorway of the birthing suite she slipped and fell on a wet patch of floor.
"I had the baby in my hands, I slipped, fell to my knees and the baby had come out of my hands," she said.
Millah was successfully resuscitated soon afterwards and made an apparent recovery, but died in the early hours of the next morning after CPR was performed unsuccessfully for almost 50 minutes.
Ms Matamoros, who no longer works at the hospital, testified that on the night of the incident she was responsible for caring for between 14 and 16 patients in the maternity ward, as well as assisting in the birthing suites and answering phone calls.
She said she had submitted a form to management on February 6 drawing attention to staffing issues, and requesting the patient load be reduced until those issues were addressed.
Much of yesterday's proceedings centred on whether nursing staff had adequately checked the readiness of the resuscitaires in each birthing suite, something scheduled to occur at least once a day in addition to after each use and at the beginning of certain shifts.
The court was told paperwork tracking the daily completion of the task indicated the machine at the centre of this inquest had been checked on only eight of the past 16 days, though the nurses' legal representative pointed out the check may have been carried out and paperwork simply was not completed.
Speaking outside court, Millah's father Adam Roulston said he and Ms Keldie were still digesting some of the new evidence that had come to light.
"We're just hoping for the right outcome for Millah," Mr Roulston said.
"We just want the best outcome at this point for Queensland Health services, and mothers and babies," Ms Keldie said.
The inquest continues today.


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Leadership for a Fractured World
by Dean WIlliams
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Release Date: February 2015
View table of contents
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Book Description
Leaders today—whether in corporations or associations, nonprofits or nations—face massive, messy, multidimensional problems. No one person or group can possibly solve them—they require the broadest possible cooperation. But, says Harvard scholar Dean Williams, our leadership models are still essentially tribal: individuals with formal authority leading in the interest of their own group. In this deeply needed new book, he outlines an approach that enables leaders to transcend internal and external boundaries and help people to collaborate, even people over whom they technically have no power.
Drawing on what he's learned from years of working in countries and organizations around the world, Williams shows leaders how to approach the delicate and creative work of boundary spanning, whether those boundaries are cultural, organizational, political, geographic, religious, or structural. Sometimes leaders themselves have to be the ones who cross the boundaries between groups. Other times, a leader's job is to build relational bridges between divided groups or even to completely break down the boundaries that block collaborative problem solving. By thinking about power and authority in a different way, leaders will become genuine change agents, able to heal wounds, resolve conflicts, and bring a fractured world together.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
PART 1 Preparation
ONE What Leadership for a Fractured World Entails
TWO Diagnostic Boundary Spanning
PART 2 Leadership in Action
THREE Crossing Boundaries
FOUR Busting Boundaries
FIVE Transcending Boundaries
SIX Building Bridges
PART 3 Personal Work
SEVEN Expanding Your Personal Boundaries
EIGHT Keeping Yourself from Fracturing
About the Author


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Whenever I think about the city Holyoke the first word that comes to mind is pride. There are a tremendous amount of citizens pulling for the city's revival, and they've got some good help. Recently, Marcos Marrero & Katie Stebbins joined us on The Engine to talk about their work in the city. Marcos is the city's Director of Economic Development, and is working with individuals such as Katie who is spearheading efforts in Holyoke's Innovation District. Marcus and Katie tell us about some of the projects they are working on, as well as the people in Holyoke who are making a difference.
Viewing entries tagged
Katie Stebbins


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Bolton to Visit Moscow, Plan Possible Trump-Putin Meeting
- by Julia Norris
- in Sport
- — Jun 22, 2018
Blatter, much to FIFA's obvious unease, attended Wednesday's Portugal-Morocco game at the Luzhniki Stadium and then had dinner with Putin and deputy prime minister Vitaly Mutko in the head of state's Kremlin apartment.
His appearance at the World Cup in Russian Federation is therefore potentially embarrassing for FIFA and its new head, Gianni Infantino, who has promised to draw a line under FIFA's corruption problems and clean up the organisation. Both men deny any wrongdoing.
"I am not in football activities".
"We had small talks", Blatter, who converses with Putin in German, told reporters Thursday.
"I'm here to enjoy the World Cup", Blatter said after arriving on Tuesday.
"It is emotional to come here, football is still my life, you can not stop that after working for 41 years in football", he said. "How I was received here, television, cameras, people, photographs, and so on", he said. "It should not be an embarrassment to Federation Internationale de Football Association".
The videos are among a string of incidents in which some Latin American fans are encouraging foreign women to say offensive things in languages they don't appear to understand.
Haley says USA will leave United Nations human rights council
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein on Monday called on Washington to halt its " unconscionable " policy. The 47-member council has a number of powers, including the ability to establish panels that probe alleged human rights abuses.
It was Blatter's first high-profile public appearance since that scandal in 2015, and here his old pal Putin had given him a global platform, one he didn't deserve, to try to sway public opinion. "If you are a judge, I would be happy now if they terminated this matter in the Swiss justice, and they will do it".
This restriction applies to all games of the world Cup, and not only performances of the Russian team.
Blatter, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, said on Thursday he had been invited to the World Cup by Russian Federation, which he said had organised his trip and provided him with tickets and a fan ID.
Good thing he has stayed true to form in his time away from the cameras - Blatter is still a bumbling buffoon, and bungled most of his answers in the Channel 4 interview when repeatedly pressed about the allegations he is facing.
"We have good contacts with Mr Infantino".
Blatter, however, suggested Federation Internationale de Football Association was not troubled by his five-day visit - his first public appearance outside Switzerland since a July 2015 trip to St. Petersburg for the World Cup qualifying draw.
"I was welcomed here, and I have to say, and I've had the impression sometimes that time has stopped - I still feel part of it".


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On Sunday, September 25th, Riverbend will be officially kicking off our fall community groups! Groups are an excellent way to get further connected — be sure to come to hear more about each group, and sign up!
Also, please reference our site riverbendonline.org/groups for an updated list of groups forming within the next few weeks.
That same Sunday, We will be holding our next Baptism! if you are interested in taking this step please indicate by contacting pastor Joe through email : email@example.com


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Did you ever know that you're my hero? Everything I would like to be… A Hero is someone, someone who inspires others…
1. a person, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.
2. another term for submarine sandwich.
Heroes are in your family.
Heroes are amongst your friends.
We meet Heroes where we exercise.
One of your co-workers might be your secret Hero.
A Manager or a boss could be a Hero. A teacher from your past or present may be your Hero.
A coach at your box, your gym, or for your team will be a Hero.
Heroes are everywhere. Shouldn't we all strive to be someone's hero?
Everyone has someone they admire, whether you're vocal about it or keep it to yourself. There's a person out there you look up to, you strive to be like, someone who inspires you to work more, try harder or practice often!
That person also has a hero. It's a healthy chain reaction.
You might not even know it, but there's someone out there honoring you too. Are you the best you can be for yourself? Are you the best you can be for others? What kind of model are you? How's your work ethic at the office, at home or at your CrossFit box? How do you speak to others? How do you treat those around you? I promise you, someone is watching you, listening to you, following your lead and hoping to do something the way you do.
I suggest we all try each day to do something we're proud of, take a chance and consider those around you that are watching to be inspired, motivated or in plain admiration. They are out there, you just may not notice them.
It all begins with you, being your own hero. Cliche? Maybe! But, you've got to start somewhere, so start right there, in your heart, applaud yourself more often, it's contagious!
Act like a hero…you probably are one, (not a submarine sandwich)!
Carolyn "CJ" Silas
Personal Coach
(805) 295-9151


text: If you are interested in booking a poetry reading, I encourage you to contact me via the form below. This is also how you can reach me to inquire about my professional copy editing services and poetry coaching. As an editor, I specialize in a variety of book-length works; law, medical, and graduate school application essays; and undergraduate application essays.


text: All Black with a Pop of Red Hey guys!My favorite time of the year is finally here and I couldn't be more happy. It's crazy how some people's mood changes for the worst during this time, but this is when I'm most motivated and most happy. The colder weather means Fall Fashion and as a fashion blogger, clothes are our favorite things!I've partnered with ShoeDazzle to bring you a classic all-black look. These ShoeDazzle booties stood out in such a vibrant way. I'm thinking I'll be wearing the heeled booties during Christmas time. The crystals sewn to the back of the heels are subtle yet eye-catching.my long trench coat, leather bag, and Shoe Dazzle red booties are the perfect way to strut into the office on a Monday! Check below for links to shop the items. Shop This Look!Coat - H&M - $145Bag - River Island - $120Boots - Shoe Dazzle - $40 - Sign up and your first pair is $10 Today's post was sponsored by ShoeDazzle. Thank you for reading! Xoxo Bibi CamiloNovember 14, 20172 Comments Facebook0 Twitter LinkedIn0 StumbleUpon Reddit Tumblr Pinterest0 0 Likes


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By Dan Kricke
Guest Blogger
I have never known a life without hydrocephalus. For 33 years, that meant I had also never known a life without a shunt. I've had around 16 shunt revision surgeries since I was born. I don't think you can ever call a brain surgery "routine," but there is a part of me that is almost more comfortable having a shunt revision than a routine visit to the dentist. I mean, I know what I'm getting into with a shunt revision.
Six years ago, I underwent an endoscopic third ventriculostomy, or ETV, where a tiny hole was poked in the membrane near my ventricle to aid in cerebral spinal fluid drainage. This ETV meant that the shunt in my head was no longer medically necessary. At the time of the ETV, we left the shunt in as a sort of fail-safe in case the ETV hole closed up. Six years later, the ETV is still going strong.
A few weeks ago, I came down with a mysterious infection. After a bout of wooziness was followed by a sustained, high fever, I went into the emergency department. The ED staff ran a battery of tests to try and figure out the cause of the issue. My white blood count was high but they couldn't pinpoint a cause of infection. Finally, they tapped my shunt and I was told my CSF fluid was "florid" with bacteria. Doctors put me on strong antibiotics to fight the infection, but I was told that because the bacteria was in my shunt tubing that it would be necessary to remove the shunt in order to clear the infection completely.
A day later I sat in an ICU bed recovering. I was without a shunt for the first time in my life since just after I was born. 33 years with a shunt. 24 hours without. Then 48 hours without. Everything seemed fine. My intercranial pressure remained steady thanks to the ETV.
Now, I am more than a week removed from having my shunt removed. I didn't really need the shunt for the past six years, but it's still such a strange feeling to not have it anymore. Do people feel this way when they get their tonsils removed?
On my neck there's patch of skin that has an indentation from the tubing that was in my body for 33 years. It looks like the tube is still inside of me, just under the surface of my skin. But I know it is not. It is my phantom shunt tube. I wonder if the marking will go away one day.
Will I wake up one day in the future and not even remember having a shunt? Is this shunt-free life just a blip before my ETV closes and I need another shunt? I can't possibly know the answer to those questions. Frankly, they don't really matter now. I'm still recovering from my infection and feeling better every day. That's what matters. But the feeling of being shunt free is still so strange, so remarkable, after requiring this device to keep me alive for so long.
Read more from Dan:
Aging Out of Pediatric Care: A Cautionary Tale
The Day-to-Day of Headaches and Hydrocephalus
Navigating Social Interactions Growing Up with Hydrocephalus


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Experience pet care made easy with an Optimum Wellness Plan®, now including access to Banfield's Vet Chat™.
Optimum Wellness Plans® are yearly packages of discounted services that make proactive pet health care easy and affordable.
Rancho Cucamonga
(909) 483-8099
Hospital Number: 1163
My Preferred Hospital
Dr. Magee joined Banfield in 2007. She was at the Fontana hospital for 5 years and transferred here to become the Chief of Staff. She graduated from Western University in Pomona in the Charter Class of 2007. Dr. Magee loves being a preventive care veterinarian with Banfield because she can focus on all aspects of preventive care. Her areas of interest include dental care and behavior, and she especially enjoys working with cats. Dr. Magee has been happily married for over 10 years and they have 2 children, 4 senior kitties, and 2 adolescent tripod kitties who joined their family in 2016. In her (very small amount of) free time, Dr. Magee enjoys playing games, scrap booking and exercising - the longest event she has completed is a Half Ironman Triathlon.
More Details >>
Dr. Sesody is an associate veterinarian at the Rancho Cucamonga location and joined the team in 2013. She graduated from Western University of Health Sciences in 2013 and is excited to be a part of the veterinary profession. She has always wanted to be a veterinarian and is happy to be pursuing that dream with Banfield. Dr. Sesody loves working with dogs and cats, but is also interested in many other aspects of veterinary medicine. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with loved ones, which include a goofy dog named Raven and a fluffy cat named Olive, as well as family pets Millie (dog) and Figaro (cat). Dr. Sesody also likes hanging out at the beach, hiking in the mountains, snowboarding, relaxing at home, and searching for the occasional geocache.
More Details >>
Dr. Barnes graduated from UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine in 2013. She grew up in the high desert of Southern California and attended Cal Poly Pomona for her undergraduate studies. Her free time is spent with family and friends, including several dogs, horses, goats, chickens and a lovebird. Dr. Barnes comes from an equine medicine background and was excited to join our Banfield team in August 2017. She looks forward to expanding her skill set to care for small animals.
More Details >>
Amy has been with Banfield since January 2007. She started with the practice as a Client Service Coordinator in Upland, CA and with much hard work and dedication, was promoted to Practice Manager in August 2013. She has 1 dog named Koda (an American Eskimo/Akita mix). When not working, Amy enjoys spending time on the Colorado River with her husband and their families, or running around with her 3-year-old! She looks forward to meeting you and your pets!
More Details >>
* This is only an estimate. Prices may vary. Most services also require an office visit at an additional charge.
Individual products and services may be included, added or even discounted on an Optimum Wellness Plan. Learn more about these affordable pet health solutions.
The Free Pet Exam is good for a general physical exam and consultation with one of our veterinarians for new pets.
Fields marked "*" are required.


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Almost every company tries social media, however, not all of them are completely aware of why they do it; They just go with the flow and follow what everybody else does. However, there is a huge opportunity that many businesses seem to miss. Social media offer a great pool of leads and potential future, loyal customers.
Also Read: 30+ Social Media Stats You Need To Know [infographic]
Social media are not a nice-to-have feature anymore. They combine multiple aspects of modern marketing, from segmentation to advocacy and real-time response. In other words, they are indispensable for your business and with a cohesive strategy you will see your results blooming.
Quicksprout created an infographic which combines all the facts you need to know in order to understand the impact of social media on sales, along with some useful steps on how to structure a solid strategy and how to make the most out of it.
Key Points to Take Away
- – 23% of all internet users spend their time on social media and blogs.
- – Compared to outbound marketing, social media has 100% higher lead-to-close rate. Still doubting its power?
- – The majority of marketers allocate resources to social media, in order to generate, traffic, awareness and market insights.
- – Almost a quarter of companies using social media have seen a significant increase in sales.
You will find more impressive stats and tips at the infographic below.
Related Stories:
- How You Can Use Social Media to Increase In-store Sales
- The Top 10 Brands on Twitter for Customer Service
- Brands and Instagram – The Short Video Success Story
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With over 750 million downloads ever since it debuted on July 6 2016, Pokémon Go is one of the most popular mobile games of all time. Through the use of augmented reality (AR), people's childhood dreams of catching Pokémon in the real world have come true. It has broken at five records according to Guinness. Unfortunately, the next record it breaks might be for the most disastrous AR mobile gaming event.
For the app's one year anniversary, its developer, Niantic Labs, held the Pokémon Go Fest on July 22, 2017 at Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois. It was a grand vision. Players from all over the world could go to this one special place where they can meet, play, and compete with their fellow Pokémon trainers then finally cooperate to capture the rarest Pokémon of them all: the Legendaries.
However, Murphy's Law arrived in full force. An event that should have buoyed the playerbase instead shone a spotlight on the weaknesses of Niantic Labs which was only obvious to diehard players.
But from this disaster, event organizers can glean important lessons for the future. Events that use augmented reality can only become more popular and it's crucial to avoid the mistakes of this one.
Remember Physical Limitations
Trouble began before the event started. The lines just to enter Grant Park were huge! Reportedly, people waited in line for six hours and the majority haven't gotten inside by the time Pokémon Go Fest was supposed start at 10am. The bottleneck? The entrance had approximately a dozen turnstiles with respective bag checks for 20 thousand attendees. It was simply too few. For a large event like this, the number of turnstiles to admit all the participants within a reasonable timeframe should have been calculated from the start.
Prepare Hardware for the Worst
Once people managed to enter, they were met by overwhelming technical difficulties. Players couldn't log into their accounts, the app crashed, and QR codes, which marked a person as a participant in the game, couldn't be registered. The culprit was the sheer overload on existing cell towers. Except for event sponsor, Sprint, a major telecom, no other network provider sent mobile towers to help handle the expected load. They declared that the event was well within their capabilities and, unfortunately, the organizers believed them. A plan B was not made just in case the telecoms were wrong. Initial attempts to rectify the situation were unhelpful, such as the recommendation for the people to move to the north side of Grant Park because it's nearer to a cell tower. For an event critically dependent on having a stable mobile internet connection, making no contingencies for failure was unbelievable.
Appease the Crowd Quickly
With a long line to enter a gaming event where participants can't play, the crowds' feelings went south quickly. There were boos and chants of 'We can't play'. Expletives were hurled at Niantic CEO John Hanke while bottles were thrown at the stage. With physical and technical issues dominating everybody's experience of the event, it was critical for the organizers to realistically assess the situation as early as possible and implement drastic measures to get the crowd on the organizer's side. Unfortunately, the event initially tried to shrug away the difficulties and then it began to drastically lower the standards for the competition that everyone came for. It was only by 3pm that Niantic admitted surrender. The developer gave the participants $100 worth of in-game money and simply gave away all the event rewards that were to be decided by the competition including two of the Legendary Pokémon: Lugia and Articuno. Admittedly, there wasn't much the event organizers could do at this point but giving up quicker would actually lead to the best solution to the congestion problem.
When Organizing Mobile Internet-dependent Events, Think Bigger
As the crowds dispersed from Grant Park at the end of a disappointing day, people were able to finally do what they came for: play. Niantic's apology extended the Safari Zone, a special area where every Pokémon could spawn including those that are region-specific, across Chicago and enabled Legendaries to become raid bosses around the world. With new different Pokémon sprouting everywhere and exciting new raid battles, the participants scattered across the city to find and fight rare Pokémon without long lines and overwhelmed cell networks. For massive mobile games like Pokémon Go, making an entire city be the event instead might be the best option.
With Pokémon Go Fests planned in other cities across the world and augmented reality events becoming more popular, learning the lessons here is crucial when staging a similar event. Technology is increasingly being wedded to events and complications due to tech limitations can only increase. Fortunately, foresight and preparation will still create a meaningful experience for your followers and your brand.
Visit M2Live.net for more advice on staging different types of events!


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Learn How to Steam Vegetables, Which is the BEST Way to Have Them
Steaming vegetables helps to preserve their nutrients and they are so much healthier than fried ones. It is one of the gentlest cooking methods and it helps to retain the texture and color of vegetables.
Rimlee Bhuyan
Last Updated: Mar 7, 2018
The best way to have vegetables is by steaming them. However you have to know the right way to steam vegetables if you want them to taste good and retain all its nutritional goodness. Having steamed vegetables as a side dish along with grilled fish or steak is one of the best ways to make sure that you consume enough vegetables in your diet. It is possible to steam vegetables in a steamer, microwave, and even a rice cooker.
Without a Steamer
If you have a steamer with you, then steaming vegetables is quite simple. However, if you don't have a steamer, you can still prepare perfectly steamed vegetables. All you need are a big pot, colander, and lid that will fit the pot. First wash and cut your vegetables and keep them aside. Next fill the pot about ¼th of its volume with water and place the colander inside it. The colander should fit inside the pot in such a way that the bottom of the colander should not touch the surface of the water inside the pot. Now turn on the heat of the stove top and wait for the water inside the pot to boil.
Once the water starts boiling and steam comes out of the colander, place the vegetables that you have cleaned and cut inside the colander. Cover the pot with the lid and let the vegetables cook in the steam. If you are wondering how long to steam vegetables, then it depends on the vegetable that you are steaming. For soft and delicate vegetables like broccoli florets, green beans, and tender asparagus spears, you need to steam them for just 4 - 5 minutes. Anything over that will overcook them and make them taste soggy. On the other hand some vegetables like cauliflower florets, parsnips and Brussels sprouts need anything from 8 - 12 minutes to cook through.
In the Microwave
One of the best and easiest ways to steam vegetables is in the microwave oven. When cooking in the microwave you do not have to worry about overcooking or undercooking your vegetables. To steam vegetables in the microwave, first you need to clean and cut the vegetables. Next place them inside a microwave safe bowl and about an inch of water into the bowl. Cover the bowl with microwave safe cling film and microwave on "high" for about 4 - 5 minutes. Make sure that you make a small slit on the cling film, so that the steam can escape while the vegetables are cooking.
In a Rice Cooker
A rice cooker can also come in handy for steaming vegetables when you don't have a conventional steamer or a microwave. First add about 2 inches of water in the rice cooker and place the steamer basket that comes with it. Add the cleaned and cut vegetables inside the steamer basket. Cover the rice cooker with its lid and then turn it "ON" to start the cooking process. Set the timer to 5 - 10 minutes depending on the vegetable you are cooking. Once the timer goes off, remove the steamed vegetables from the rice cooker into a platter. Remember that vegetables cook much faster in a rice cooker than a steamer so do not steam them for long.
Many people think that steamed vegetables are bland and boring. But you can add flavors to your steamed vegetables like green beans, broccoli, and baby carrots by using fresh herbs, spices, and flavored oils.