Within the world of aviation history, there are few who are as renowned as Amelia Earhart. She was a pioneer among women pilots, breaking boundaries and pushing achievements to new heights. Her life captured the public imagination, inspired countless future pilots, and her unsolved disappearance over the Pacific Ocean has cemented her legacy as one of the greatest icons of the 20th century. However, before she became an iconic aviator, there was a time she had a much simpler life and lived in a small house within the Boston suburbs.
Earhart was born in Kansas in 1897 and moved a lot with her family when she was young. In 1924, following her parent’s divorce, she drove her mother cross-country from California to Massachusetts and lived with her family at a home in Medford. During this time, she worked briefly as a teacher and later as a social worker at the Denison settlement house. Earhart was already a keen pilot by then and maintained her interest in aviation by becoming a member of the American Aeronautical Society chapter in Boston in which she was eventually elected as vice president. She helped finance the construction of Dennison Airport in Quincy and flew on the first official flight from there in 1927. She also worked as a sales representative for Kinner Aircraft and wrote in local newspapers and publications about flying.
In early 1928, Amy Phipps Guest, daughter of Andrew Carnegie's business partner Henry Phipps Jr., announced her intention of becoming the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane. She assembled a team of professionals for the endeavor, but her family strongly disapproved of her idea, and she reluctantly gave up on her goal. However, she was determined to see a woman cross the Atlantic and the search began to find another woman to accomplish it. After some searching, Earhart was selected and she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic as a passenger on June 18, 1928. The flight propelled her into global fame and soon afterward moved out of Massachusetts and eventually settling at Toluca Lake, California with her husband George Putnam where she lived until her disappearance while trying to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe on July 2, 1937.
Earhart’s mother Amy and sister Muriel continued to live in Medford until they passed away in 1962 and 1998 respectively. In 1988, on the 60th anniversary of Earhart’s Atlantic crossing, a commemorative plaque was installed outside her home which was later rededicated and expanded on July 24, 2024. If you have an interest in Amelia Earhart and would like to see one of her historic homes, it’s certainly worth taking a quick look if you’re in the area.
I am signed up for WritingMonth and so can you! If you want to be buddies, I'm 'kalloway' there as well. ^_^ My goal is 100 stories but that is 100 very short stories. Last year I managed 80 despite my life being absolutely on fire so maybe I can manage the full 100 and I think a We Didn't Start The Fire joke goes here or something.
Did the pre-signup for a secret santa in the one little gunpla discord I'm in. Offered to subsidize a local friend for the next month if necessary. (probably necessary) Gonna try to toss some cash at the food pantry. (obstructed more by their hours being counter to mine than anything - obviously a me-problem) Still debating how much I want to do with holiday_wishes, though I suspect the annual 'I can give more!' will envelop me at some point even if I want to humbug.
Comic-con is on the 22nd so I suppose I need to actually start sorting through things. I'm burning some vacation time the week before so at least I'll be mildly rested and hopefully so tired of looking at my stuff that I just toss it in the bags of whoever walks by our table. Or something.
Finished watching the quarter's JFF films and will, as always, aspire to watch the next batch before the last possible minute.
Halloween is almost here and Christmas is right around the corner, and Dr. Squatch is embracing the holiday chaos with The Nightmare Before Christmassoap.
The scary merry scent of Skellington’s Suds blends the magic of Halloween and Christmas. Crafted with coconut oil, pumice, and bone flower extract, the light grit natural soap mixes haunting notes of brandy plum and pumpkin spice with cheery black vanilla and chestnut.
Scare stink straight with the frightful frost of Oogie Boogie’s Brew. Made with coconut oil, pumice, and wormwood extract, the medium grit natural soap offers a wicked charm with scents of bold roasted pistachio, zesty ginger and a smooth blend of warm tonka bean.
Five ounce bars of Skellington’s Suds and Oogie Boogie’s Brew are available in a Ghoul Tidings two-pack for $16 and Season’s Creepings four-packs for $30.40. Individual bars are available to subscribers for $6 each.
The collection is available online and in select retail stores nationwide.
In The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pumpkin King Jack Skellington, bored with the same old scare-and-scream routine, longs to spread the joy of Christmas. But his merry mission puts Santa in jeopardy and creates a nightmare for good little boys and girls everywhere.
Based on a story by producer Tm Burton, the 1993 stop-motion classic is directed by Henry Selick and written by Michael McDowell and Caroline Thompson.
Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory lead the voice cast.
Can you see it? That’s the creepy question posed by the new poster for Magnet Releasing’s faux documentary horror movie Man Finds Tape.
Man Finds Tape releases in select theaters and VOD platforms on December 5, 2025.
Kelsey Pribilski, William Magnuson, John Gholson, Brian Villalobos, and Nell Kessler star.
The official logline reads, “After receiving a cryptic call, documentarian Lynn Page (Pribilski) returns to her small Texas hometown to investigate haunting footage of events no one can remember taking place. But her brother Lucas’ (Magnuson) controversial past with a viral web series called Man Find Tape forces Lynn to question if he, or anyone in their town, can be trusted. And the arrival of a stranger with chaotic intentions forces Lynn to confront her family’s involvement with the deadly monster preying on Larkin, TX.”
Man Finds Tape marks the feature debut of co-writers/co-directors Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall. The pair previously co-authored the 2022 horror novel The Dead Friends Society for Encyclopocalypse Publications.
Our own Daniel Kurland describes the film as “one of 2025’s most surprising and disturbing rabbit holes.”
He wrote in his Tribeca review that the hybrid horror film “showcases some genuinely disturbing visuals, which can be essential for these types of movies. It presents several videos that feel cursed and like footage that the audience shouldn’t be watching. It’s an element that’s so hard to authentically accomplish, and Man Finds Tape repeatedly pulls this off. There’s a lot to chew on as the larger mystery unfurls.”
Rustic Films’ David Lawson Jr., Aaron Moorhead, and Justin Benson (The Endless, “Daredevil: Born Again “) produced with Ashley Landavazo, while Jessica Cargill and C. Robert Cargill, and XYZ Films serve as executive producers.
Get ready to unravel a new horror mystery in December, but check out the new Man Finds Tape poster below in the meantime.
Back in 2021, filmmaker Mike Flanagan let it be known on social media that he was interested in making a “standalone horror/thriller/tragedy” movie that would center on the Clayface character. A while after that, he confirmed that he had met with veteran DC movie producer Jon Berg to pitch a “horror-leaning” take on Clayface, as well as ideas for the DC properties Scarecrow, Justice League Dark, and Constantine. The meeting “kind of went nowhere.” But then, in March of 2023, Deadline broke the news that Flanagan had scheduled another Clayface pitch meeting, this time with DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran. And at the end of last year, it was announced that Flanagan is officially writing a Clayface movie that will be part of the DC Universe film franchise that’s being overseen by Gunn and Safran. A few months ago, Speak No Evil director James Watkins was hired to take the helm, and then Tom Rhys Harries (Kandahar) signed on to star in the film. Production has been underway for several weeks – but now, it’s nearing the end. Harries took to social media to announce that Clayface is now in its last week of filming!
Over the weekend, James Gunn celebrated the anniversary of the Clayface character’s comic book debut with this post:
Happy Anniversary to the perennially misunderstood villain, Clayface. Can’t wait for you to see @TomRhysHarries bring him to life on the big screen! pic.twitter.com/cAPXETGPit
Harries shared the post on his Instagram stories, adding that it was the last week of filming. Here’s a screen shot, courtesy of SuperHeroHype:
During an interview with i09 a while back, Gunn admitted that he had no intention of making a Clayface movie as part of the DCU until he saw Flanagan’s script. He said, “I didn’t plan on making a Clayface movie. Mike came in. He pitched this wonderful idea. I was like, ‘Damn, I can’t believe you got me to want to make a Clayface movie.’ But he’s got to write the script and who knows how that’s going to work. He goes and he writes the script. First draft is great. Second draft is even better. And then I’m like, ‘Let’s do it.’ So we found a place for it because if there’s quality stuff, we can find a way to work it in.“ Batman: The Animated Series made its debut back in 1992, and the fourth and fifth episodes of the show were a two-parter called Feat of Clay, which showed “the transformation of a disfigured actor into the villain known as Clayface.” In an interview with ComicBook.com, Flanagan confirmed that his script was inspired by those episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. Surprisingly, since Clayface was only greenlit based on the strength of Flanagan’s script, Drive writer Hossein Amini was brought in to do what has been referred to as a complete rewrite. Gunn has assured that the script is still “all Mike’s story” and any changes are minor.
Deadline reminds us, “Clayface is shape-shifting villain in the Batman comics and got his introduction as part of Detective Comics #40. The original Clayface was a moderately successful actor who adopted the identity of a character he’d portrayed in a horror pic after turning to crime. Clayface has a body seemingly made out of clay and has appeared over the years in various films, series, animated works, video games and other forms of media.”
According to Nexus Point News, Tom Rhys Harries’ character is Matt Hagen, who “debuted in Detective Comics #298 in 1961 and was created by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff. Hagen was originally a treasure hunter who transformed into Clayface after an encounter with protoplasm.” Many expected him to be playing Basil Karlo, who “debuted in Detective Comics #40 in 1940 and was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane. In the Golden Age, Karlo was a disgraced actor who donned the costume of a character he portrayed known as Clayface and sought to murder the crew and cast of the remake of a film he once starred in.”
Naomi Ackie (I Want to Dance With Somebody) takes on the role of Caitlin Bates, Matt Hagen’s love interest and doctor, while Max Minghella (Spiral: From the Book of Saw) is reportedly in the mix to play John, a detective and fiancé to Caitlin Bates, who’s suspicious of his fiancée’s relationship with Matt Hagen/Clayface.
Are you glad to hear that Clayface is about to wrap filming? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
Chinese director Soi Cheang spoke at the Tokyo International Film Festival for a Q&A session after the screening of his hit action film Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, which featured action choreography by Kenji Tanigaki. According to Variety, Cheang revealed that a sequel to the film is set to start filming in March of 2026. He also announced that there are plans to film a prequel to the movies after the sequel is done. However, there are no release dates determined for either installment as of yet. Both prequel and sequel in the franchise will be based on the novel City of Darkness by Yuyi.
According to Wikipedia, the plot synopsis of Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In reads, “The film is set in 1980s Hong Kong. It follows the story of Chan Lok-kwan, a troubled youth who accidentally enters the notorious Kowloon Walled City. Chan, a refugee from the mainland, is trying to survive by participating in underground fighting rings. He seeks to buy a fake ID to improve his life but is betrayed by Mr. Big, a local crime syndicate boss. In a desperate move, Chan steals drug from Mr. Big and flees to the Walled City, where he encounters Cyclone, the local crime lord who rules the area with a mix of authority and compassion.
In the Walled City, Chan learns about the order and chaos within the community and forms bonds with Cyclone and his gang. These experiences force him to reflect on what he wants from the future and what he will do to attain it.”
During the Q&A, Cheang also reflected on his career. While movies like F1 had to develop special technology to film the racing scenes, the director outlined how disappointed he was in his car chase film, Motorway. “Motorway was another disaster of mine,” said Cheang. “It was the first time I had shot a racing film, and I had no budget to shoot the cars going fast. When I saw the assembly cut, my first reaction was to smash the television.” He continued, “I had to go back and ask Mr. To for money to do reshoots. I asked for 16 days of reshoots. At the end of the day, he used his own money to help fund the reshoots, so that I could recover the movie.”
Home video distributor Shout! Factory and their horror sublabel Scream Factory are very popular among physical media collectors, as they have brought us some amazing special editions of some great movies over the years… but now, strange things are afoot at the company and it has some fans worried that they might be getting out of the physical media business within the next year. Of course, it doesn’t help that someone went on the Blu-ray.com forums and specifically said that the company is pivoting to streaming and getting out of the physical media business. So, what is going on over at Shout? Are they closing shop?
To find answers, we have to go back two years, to when Oaktree Capital Management acquired Shout! Studios. Recently, Shout acquired fellow boutique distributor Gravitas Ventures and Oaktree started gearing up to also acquire FilmRise, a media company with a film and television studio and a free streaming network. A new holding company called Radial Entertainment Group was founded for the merger of Shout and FilmRise, with with Shout CEO and co-founder Garson Foos serving as the CEO of Radial and FilmRise CEO and co-founder Danny Fisher being named the Executive Chairman. The merger of the companies led to a lot of layoffs (possibly 14% of the staff), which is part of what got Shout / Scream Factory fans worried that there was trouble behind the scenes – but, according to a Deadline report, it looks like it’s just “business as usual,” an unfortunate result of two companies merging. The layoffs were part of the “company-wide integration effort to identify redundancies and streamline operations, re-positioning Radial for long-term growth.” This long-term growth will involve Radial seeking to “elevate our company as an innovator and thought leader in the digital streaming industry,” as the company has a library of over 70,000 titles and episodes to send out into the world, but doesn’t mean there won’t be physical media releases to look forward to as well.
The Shout website has started running some major sales and it was recently announced that they’re ending their Physical Media Forever loyalty program. Subscribers were encouraged to use their credits by the end of October, as they’ll be transitioning to a new way of issuing store credit as of November 3rd. There are definitely changes going on at the company that haven’t been explained yet… but again, that doesn’t mean there won’t be more Blu-ray and 4K releases in the future. In fact, Disc-Connected reports, “I know of multiple big PHYSICAL MEDIA projects coming from Shout in 2026. They are not getting out of physical media tomorrow.“
This would seem to be an odd time for them to get out of the physical media game, as Shout! recently acquired the worldwide rights (excluding select Asian territories) to the Golden Princess movie library, giving them access to a treasure trove of 156 Hong Kong cinema classics. Under the Hong Kong Cinema Classics label, they’ve been dropping a lot of physical media releases, all of which appear to be selling exceptionally well. So we can probably expect to see them continuing to get all they can out of that label and the Golden Princess library for the foreseeable future.
So, is Shout Factory getting out of the physical media business? The company is changing and expanding, and there’s certainly going to be a lot of streaming involved in that, but it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll be closing the door on physical media entirely. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
Dragon Quest I & II: HD-2D Remake strikes the difficult balance of providing a truly astounding amount of new quests and story details without ever betraying the simple and earnest heart that is core to the franchise 's identity.
“Once upon a time, in the land beyond the forest, a beautiful woman gave birth to the son of a prince…”
So! I’m attempting off-brand give or take a week Nanowrimo, and what I’m going to be writing is the Dracula at the Scholomance prequel we all deserve xD
Or I’ll try to anyway. My plan is to try and get the first draft done in November and then work on editing through till Dracula Daily 2026 (not necessarily the start of it, will depend on how much editing needs done). At which time I’ll attempt to see if I can’t figure out how to self publish it. It that falls through, well, I’ll just dump the lot on AO3 xD
But I want to do an illustration per each chapter, and I finished the Prologue, so sharing this with ya’ll, hope ya’ll enjoy!
On the banks of the Missouri River, you can step into a time capsule from 1865: the Steamboat Bertrand, unintentionally assembled and magical in its mundanity.
On April Fool's Day in 1865, fate played a trick on the steamboat. Two weeks into its journey to Montana Territory, it hit a snag and sunk into the muddy Missouri River. All of the ship's passengers were rescued, but thousands of dollars worth of cargo was written off as a total loss. Years passed, and the precise location of the wreck was lost to the shifting sands of time and the Missouri River.
The wreck's contents remained undisturbed in their muddy resting place until a century later in 1968, when Omaha treasure hunters recovered the ship from under 30 feet of sediment. They found a merchant vessel frozen in time, with artifacts ranging from fancy French perfume to humble household goods, all perfectly preserved in the Missouri River's mud.
The museum at DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, which took hold of the wreck's artifacts, displays an astounding 250,000 perfectly preserved goods: waffle irons and pickles, bullwhips and buttons, mercury and medicine bottles, all destined for frontier settlers and gold prospectors who would never receive them.
Now, the Steamboat Bertrand's contents rest in the museum's climate-controlled environment, its cargo finally delivered to an audience the original merchants never could have imagined.
Simon Whistler of Today I Found Outlooked back at how SOS, which was originally communicated as three dots, three dashes and three dots, became the universal signal for distress. While there had previously been a number of distress calls for individual countries, SOS became the standard according to an vote taken at the International Radio Telegraph Convention in 1906.
The motion passed and on July the 1st, 1908, the convention issued a new set of service regulations, including article 16, which dictated that ships in distress shall use the following signal dot dot dot dash dot dot dot repeated at brief intervals. It seems necessary to specify that indications concerning a state of distress should be given by means of conventional signals in order that they may be understood by all stations.
One of the reasons why this pattern was chosen is its versatility.
Endlessly versatile, SOS can be tapped out on a telegraph key or spoken aloud over voice radio, flashed using a signal mirror or flashlight, written out in the snow or sand, or – if you happen to be held under duress – blinked out with your eyelids.
The one most people know is the greater capybara (H. hydrochaeris) of Brazil and neighboring territories, which grows up to 4ft/1.2m long. The lesser capybara (H. isthmius), which specializes in more marshy habitats and swims even more, is somewhat smaller (3ft/.9m) and lives in northern Columbia/southern Panama. Both are closely related to guinea pigs, and look it. The name is from Portuguese capibara/capivara, alteration of earlier capiiuara, from Old Tupi kapi'iûara, lit. grass-eater.
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holiday_wishes, though I suspect the annual 'I can give more!' will envelop me at some point even if I want to humbug. 
