Waffle and Writings! for Sunday, February 1, 2009

If only "little" Otik had stayed that way! BY GARY MORRIS Despite its tortured history, Eastern Europe, but particularly Czechoslovakia, has managed to produce an almost uninterrupted flow of the world’s great animation over the past few decades. This is due to consistent state support for the format, a long folkloric tradition, and individual artists like Jan Svankmajer who manage to get state funding for projects that would induce seizures in knock-kneed American grant committees. Svankmajer,... Sign in to see full entry.

dear Joyce Oates. I had a story rejected and have decided to make myself a little collage of rejected story titles. Sort of a masochistic exercise to strengthen the determination. I also was watching a weird story on SBS about a wooden Otik which I think was Russian with subtitles. It was very interesting and macabre. This couple cannot have children and out in the country one weekend at their country dacha the man digs up a tree root that looks like a little baby boy a bit. He carves it a bit... Sign in to see full entry.

and I ended up leaving after I had had the life guard speak to me three or four times. The last time I was standing by the wading pool watching my son and this officious so and so came over and started to lay down the law to me. He was a young boy in his twenties and barely cut his milk teeth, no kids and just feeling like he needed to throw a little power trip around. Him -' The next time you come here with your son, you need to go in the water with him.' Me - 'I am afraid that is not going to... Sign in to see full entry.