Tasha Robinson

That alien's head looks astonishingly like a Cadbury Creme Egg.

Have a buffalo.

A friend texts: "Hey! Want to hag out? Hang out, not hag, lol" Girl texts back: "No, let's actually hag out." Cut to panel of girls dressed as witches around a cauldron.

(Cartoon by cassandracalin.com)

Big day! Here's the thing I've been working on for the past few months.

It's a real shock. I went over to Facebook to read tributes and it sounds like it was sudden and everyone's reeling.

Wait, what? When was this? I hadn't spoken to him in a while, but this is a shock.

YouTube video by WaterTower Music Peacemaker Soundtrack | Home Sweet Home (Official Music Video) - John Cena | WaterTower

John Cena has become such an effective performer when it comes to playing pain, loss, regret, and grief. It helps sell what Gunn is going for in constantly torturing his character, but the way every moment of happiness he earns comes with a devastating loss can be rough to take.

I'm feeling weirdly down about the end of PEACEMAKER. Yeah, I get it, Chris Smith is not a good guy, he's done terrible things for terrible reasons, and he earns a lot of his pain through bad choices. But James Gunn so consistently offers him a tiny spark of hope just to twist the knife on him.

You're going to look sharp together!

Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop

I also wasn't expecting HAZBIN HOTEL dialogue karaoke — the audience knew a LOT of the script by heart and chanted it with the characters. Angel and Alastor were both obvious favorites for dialogue-alongs ("Ha-ha! Never going to happen!"), but the second "I got the LEGS!" was probably biggest.

Two biggest takeaways from the HAZBIN HOTEL sing-along:
1) Really surprised at the level of Velvette fandom. Her entrance got a huge vocal response, only beat by Lucifer when it turned out "Finale" was part of the sing-along after all.
2) I'd never noticed the telling detail in this line before!

Did your screening also totally freak out when it turned out "Finale" was part of the sing-along after all?

Cosplay at the HAZBIN HOTEL sing-along was lit.

This only happens to you once

No! More! Abs!

Radu Jude's DRACULA was the absolute perfect cap for my #FantasticFest. Deeply weird, openly transgressive, sometimes extremely silly, a sly satire of modern AI tech and the people behind it. No description will touch what this movie actually is, or how it feels to experience it.

My last day at #FantasticFest was a certified butt-numb-athon, ending with back-to-back screenings of PTA's tremendous ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER and Radu Jude's DRACULA, both in the three-hour range. But both are effortless, absorbing viewing, and I only felt the run time when I hit midnight.

Doing it all in silence would have made the experience even eerier. I've got more video, I just need to not be in transit, so I can upload the rest.

And a whoooole lot of people watching.

Damn, kinks just keep getting more specific and elaborate all the time.

That tracks, someone alert the animal liberation groups

I admit I was going to record the whole process and then I realized nothing interesting was happening and I was watching a vending machine.

So... It's all about putting on an elaborate show for him, and she has no choice in the matter?

I have been thinking a LOT lately about the Game Changer episode where everyone's challenged to do terrible things for minimal money, and they eventually unionize.

Technically, this doesn't seem very different from the coffee vending machines we've had for decades, plus a shiny futuristic interface and app integration. So I guess the only real selling point is "No horrible barista chat?"

Is the open goal here to have Austin entirely staffed by robots by 2030? Why is "You might have to say hi to another human being" an unbearable burden?

Technical observations, more anxieties, plus I finally figured out I could turn on my phone's video light and get much better imagery of the car interior. (I don't normally shoot night video.)

Recorded a bunch of the trip on my phone, which meant fumbling early on as I tried to get my seatbelt fastened one-handed while also shooting, with the car lecturing me about it. Had some thoughts both on the intellectual experience of being in a driverless car, and some of the algorithm's choices.

Welp, I did it. I booked an autonomous car ride back to the hotel after my last #FantasticFest screening. And it was creepy.🧵