Stay with me, and by extension, with Sister!, a short film that I’ve come to adore, but which I recognize could be a hard sell for loyal S/W viewers. Not because of its lack of quality, of course, but because its sensibility is different in many ways from our typical featured short.

The story of a woman who pops in unexpectedly on her unsuspecting Brooklyn-based “sibling” (their moms supposedly share a sperm donor), Sister! is a fun, transgressive, and over-the-top queer comedy written by its stars, up-and-coming talents Julia Wendt and Tessa Belle, and is an unapologetic showcase for the duo’s comedic stylings.

So far so good, but, and perhaps I am projecting here, I was fairly resistant to the film early in my initial viewing. Partly, I recognize we’re chauvinistic towards directors, and this is, resolutely, a writer/performer film. We’ve sat through enough LA actor-driven web series to be trepidatious of this. Directed by John Onieal, notable as the creator of Grindr’s first scripted show, his direction is quite deft, but, between the film’s limited locations and the rapid pace of its joke delivery, the short presents more like a single-camera sitcom than an auteurist work. Onieal’s contributions are necessary but subtle, managing the reservoir of written comedy in a collaborative process that “involved a lot of riffing with each other, comedians, and department heads so to ensure that what we were making resonated,” and making sure the camera platformed the strengths of his stars.

Fortunately, Wendt and Belle deliver star turns. Part of the roughness of the early going is that Wendt is left to establish the initial tone by playing off of a deadpan Asha Ward, but the transfemme Wendt’s line delivery is very affected and can come off as stilted. However, like a stray note brought into harmony, Belle’s entrance into the film soon snaps the dynamic into place, and their chemistry is dynamic.

It’s also relentless. The pair’s comedy style, which is progressive, but playfully mocks the excesses and contradictions of Gen-Z wokeness in subject, is basically all-joke, all-the-time in practice. It’s frankly remarkable—the film has almost no standard exposition, no calm, sincere moments, it’s pretty much 13-minutes straight of jokes.

Naturally, your mileage may vary on the effectiveness of these—comedy is hard! But a ton of them land for me, and the great thing about a high-joke tempo is that if one falls flat, another is right on its heels. The production showed up to the shoot with a huge list of ALT jokes and planned for extensive space to improvise on set, so the team had a huge surplus of material in the edit to pick what was hitting the best, and it shows.

Even if the effectiveness of the comedy is questionable for you, I argue that it is deserving of admiration. Comedy is criminally underrepresented in shorts, and especially this sort of comedy, which is not ironic, surreal, or absurdist, but focused on jokes. Wendt and Belle blasting jokes to set up a joke which delivers a joke punchline is the closest I’ve seen to a short reaching something like classic 30 Rock, which I perceive as a gold standard. That the film also has heart is almost a miracle. In the midst of their bludgeoning, escalatingly hysterical final act, the film’s producer, Jeremy Truong, challenged the production to “find moments of emotional truth,” and while the “sisters’” ultimate catharsis and bonding is telegraphed, it genuinely lands.

A feature at last year’s Tribeca Festival, we’re pleased to present the online premiere of Sister! Take advantage of this opportunity to watch a very funny short, which we expect to be a launchpad for this impressive team, especially Wendt and Belle. 

Our device that we use to take payment for the posters we print died during Review Week, which made for some interesting days. And March Madness is *a thing* in our house. Hence the screen time set up. Brackets were filled out, and many buzzer beaters were witnessed. Fun was / is being had!

The underbelly of the beast.

Screens, screens and more screens. Plus guinea pigs and a couple of toes.

As children, our parents can feel like the centre of our world – figures of stability and/or authority who are easily placed on a pedestal. Inevitably, however, there comes a moment when that perception begins to shift, and we start to recognise them as flawed, complex individuals, no less uncertain than we are. It is this quiet but profound transition that Dovydas Drakšas captures with sensitivity and restraint in his London Film School short, Praeis (It’ll Pass) – a film that had its World Premiere in the La Cinef section of Cannes in 2025.

A film focused on perception – how we see ourselves, how we interpret others, and how we are, in turn, perceived – Praeis unfolds with a contemplative rhythm, anchored by two finely judged performances. Ieva Kaniušaitė plays Ada, a daughter beginning to reassess both her father and her place in the world, while Šarūnas Puidokas brings a quiet vulnerability to the role of her father. At 27-minutes long, the film sits at the longer end of the short film spectrum, yet its duration feels justified, largely due to the emotional authenticity these performances sustain throughout.

Šarūnas Puidokas stars as a cigarette smuggler and father at a crossroads in his life.

This extended runtime affords the film the space to observe rather than follow its character, allowing the audience to gradually become immersed in their emotional terrain. While strained parent–child relationships are a familiar narrative framework, Drakšas approaches the material with a notable degree of empathy and nuance. Rather than privileging one perspective over the other, he presents both father and daughter as fully realized individuals, each navigating their own limitations, expectations, and emotional blind spots. The result is a relationship that feels lived-in and recognizably human, avoiding the reductive tendencies that often accompany such stories.

From a programming perspective, articulating precisely what distinguishes a film can sometimes prove elusive. While Praeis may not immediately announce itself through high-concept storytelling or formal experimentation, there is a quiet assurance in Drakšas’ direction that suggests a filmmaker with a clear and confident voice. This quality – subtle, but pervasive – manifests in the film’s pacing, its performances, and its willingness to sit with emotional ambiguity. It is, perhaps, less about what the film does, and more about how assuredly it does it.

We’ve had some things going on around here lately: Jonah dislocated both knee caps, Pinecone and Acorn are aging and it is noticeable, and a plethora of combination locks!

Yeah, Jonah dislocated both knee caps while running around the ballpark a few backs and this week an MRI was done to see the damage. I thought this rug was interesting (are magnets really still shaped that way?).

As Nora gets busier with her teen life, I’ve been helping these fellas as their DoorDasher lately. They are our pandemic pets, Pinecone (left) and Acorn (right) and, well, guinea pigs live from six to eight years. We’re six years in and they are funny ones. They recognize our footsteps or when the fridge door opens and when they hear that, they squeal like crazy for some grub.

Padlocks on a cart! We manage a set of lockers and between terms we have to rotate the locks to new lockers so that people can check them out. Spring term starts on Monday so this has been happening at work. I liked the pattern is all.

MVP thoughts

I nominate Tyrese Haliburton for MVP. He hasn't played at all this year, because he's out with a hamstring injury he suffered when the Pacers (our Indiana home team) were neck-and-neck with the OKC Thunder in the final championship game. This season, without Haliburton, the Pacers are among the league's worst. Why? No Halliburton.

And we have a controlled study of sorts. Boston lost its star, Jayson Tatum, to the same Achilles injury that dropped Haliburton, and then the Celtics stayed close to the top of the league without Tatum and three valuable players who left last summer. So Haliburton was clearly a lot more valuable to his team than was Tatum. (Who is back and making Boston look even scarier.)

By the way, before the season, I picked the Knicks (my lifelong fave) to win the championship. They're kinda meh right now. So, in the same way I think Tyrese Halliburton is the most valuable player this year (just given the delta between his presence and absence), I say the same about Tom Thibodeau, the coach fired by the Knicks after the team's good run last year. (Hell, they beat the Celtics in the playoffs.) This year, the Knicks aren't as good, with essentially the same team and a different coach. So my vote for coach of the year goes to Thibs (who, by the way, has been NBA Coach of the Year twice. So we know he doesn't suck.)

Even more after we die

Population growth is slowing.

Where it's Sunday all week

Pew Research: A quarter of all radio stations in America are "faith based."

The what  behind the who

My DNA (according to 23andMe, which still exists) breakdown goes like this:

48.3% Swedish (mostly central and northwest Götaland)
5.2% Norwegian
17.1% Irish (mostly central and northern)
10.8% Belgian, Rhinelander and Southern Dutch (Hesse)
7.9% Scottish (mostly Glasgow City)
6.7% English (mostly Greater London)
2.6% Dutch and Northern German (Northwestern states)
0.7% Northern Italian and Maltese
0.4% Welsh
0.2% Egyptian and Southern Levantine

For what it's worth—
Mom was Swedish. Her parents (Sponberg, Oman) were from Swedish Immigrant families who came over in the late 1800s to homestead in Minnesota and North Dakota.
Pop's mom was Irish on her mother's side. Her parents (McLaughlin, Trainor) came over in the early 1800s. And she was German on her father's side (Rung, Englert). That couple emigrated from Alsace-Lorraine. Pop's father was of early American stock (Searls/Searles/Sarles, Bixby, Reed, Allen, Johnson)

Only one of the surnames I just mentioned is among my 1500+ DNA relatives listed by 23andMe. That was an Englert I wrote to (inside 23andMe who never wrote back.

“April, come she will . . . .” A few photos from recent things going on. A week from now, though, I’ll be in Stockholm, Sweden, meeting up with my friend Kurt as we head south to Copenhagen to attend a concert being performed by Paul Simon. I’ve always enjoyed his music and am very much looking forward to this show. I just finished listening to the audio book that Malcolm Gladwell did called, “Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon.” Some of my earliest childhood memories are hearing Simon and Garfunkel being played on the radio in the house I grew up in, too. Paul Simon is such an amazing and dynamic creator and artist. Plus meatballs in Sweden. And whatever else happens . . . .

Nora is learning to drive and was practicing backing into a parking space. She backed over our styrofoam spigot covers (I do not have traffic cones). A friend once told me that “practice makes adequate,” which I find to be about right.

The Eugene Emeralds season began and we accidentally met up with our pal Richard, who just happened to be twinning with Jonah (they did not coordinate this). The opening night game was good fun with a walk-off home run win for the Ems, plus a “dad” hat giveaway and well, it seems like I can never have enough caps in my life.

A 3-D printed townscape that I stumbled upon in the College of Design’s main building, Lawrence Hall. I was giving a tour to a new student employee and we found this and I thought it was pretty cool. There’s a small duck out there too, if you look really closely. #GoDucks, as we say around here . . .