Hello friends!!

1. I'll get movie updates out of the way first. Where in the Hell is playing the Full Bloom Film Festival, in Statesville, NC, September 11-13, 2025, and the Santa Cruz Film Festival, October 8-12, 2025. Precise dates and times TBA. Also, an interview I did with NewFilmmakers LA is up on MovieMaker. I’m really happy with it. I think I achieved speaks candidly about her moviemaking process and also hey here’s a person you’d want to hang out with! Click here to read the full piece about the April festival, with brief but flattering coverage of Where in the Hell, or here to skip directly to the interview on YouTube.

2. I promise this won't turn into a ’sletter about birds/birdwatching, but… will it? R and I can’t stop talking about the owls we encountered on a recent twilight walk in the woods. After consulting Birds of Southwestern British Columbia, we identified them as barred owls, though the vocalizations we heard were more like the “long hiss, [and] serious of metallic clicks” the book assigns to a barn owl than the “loud hoots including who cooks for you, who cooks for you allll sequence” the book describes for the barred. Very possibly the barred owl is a mimic.

3. I received several complaints that there was no TACO in last month's newsletter, and while I cannot promise to include one every time (not while I'm in CANADA 😳), I do have a top notch rec for you today. The food menu for Off the Hook in Comox, BC, is entirely gluten-free, and their fish taco is delicious. Basically it's a piece of fish from The Perfect fish and chips (which they also serve) wrapped in a corn tortilla, topped with delicate but just-spicy-enough pico de gallo. 5/5, no notes. Get the “OTH” salad on the side, and eat half of your dining companion’s chips.