Enjoyed The Secret Agent, as there’s plenty of suspense, but also a strong strain of gallows humor running through the serpentine storyline as if to pay tribute to the benefits of absurdism as a survival strategy, which is also true of my debut memoir Killing Justice

YAY!...My good friend the American broadcast journalist and executive producer Ryan Glover just interviewed me about my debut memoir Killing Justice for his podcast & here's the link:... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhkmwYkF7SY

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this truly transcendent masterpiece, nominated for both the Oscars & Film Independent for Best International Film...nothing about the pulsating “Sirāt” is appropriate or expected or traditional or fully comprehensible. It just is. And it is utterly transfixing...Sirat is a profound meditation on the fragility of the human condition and the illusions of safety embedded in the Western worldview. Oliver Laxe challenges our assumptions of stability, revealing how

Maria Popova share the following on her wonderful blog, the marginalian: This world is a school and we are its students. Each of us studies something as we pass through. Some people learn love, kindness. Others… abuse and brutality. But the best students are those who acquire generosity and compassion from their encounters with hardship and cruelty. The ones who choose not to inflict their suffering on to others. And what you learn is what you take with you to your grave. -El

Here's the track from DJ Derek's Heavenly Rave playlist that I'm singing along to in these dark times (even if Derek was only 3 when this song was released back in 1981)... Water of life is going to flow again Changed from the blood of heroes and knaves The word mercy's going to have a new meaning When we are judged by the children of our slaves No adult of sound mind Can be an innocent bystander Trial comes before truth's revealed Out here on the rim of the broken wheel You

At one point during the Oscars-Shortlisted documentary My Undesirable Friends , one of the fearless female journalists says to her colleague, on the eve of the launch of the full-scare war on Ukraine : "It's almost as though Putin has been told that he's only got a month to live, and so he's decided he's going to fuck half the world along with him before he goes." THE SAME COULD BE SAID OF TRUMP .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCyxXOSiRyY

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this intimate, epic, Russian novel-like masterpiece My Undesirable Friends: Part 1, which has already won the Gotham Award & made the Oscars Shortlist (the similarly themed Mr. Nobody vs Putin made the final cut), & is now nominated for the Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary, as its portrayal of its fearless female journalists standing up to the ultimate authoritarian in Putin offers priceless lessons on how we might do the same here in americ

hanging out with Isabel Jasper, the amazing costume designer I met after the NewFilmmakers Los Angeles film festival this past weekend, after she spontaneously asked for & bought a copy of my book during a conversation at a street corner on my way to the Metro

hanging out with Yulee Choi, star and composer for the wildly entertaining Food Truck: Stolen Love...and Moo Deng, after tonight's screening at the Culver Theater...as what especially resonated for me was how Yulee's character's son, named Sarang, is searching for his long-lost father, just like (in reverse), my birthmother searched for me, her long-lost son, for 26 years!...

hanging out with Curran Walters, who stars in the powerful, deeply moving short film Butterfly on a Wheel, which is shortlisted for the Oscars, after an FYC screening at the Culver Theater this past Saturday, & which highlights how what makes us different is our strength, in the case of Curran's character, it's having OCD, & in my case, it's having PTSD...

hanging out with Tabatha Zimiga, the badass nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for her Breakthrough Performance in East of Wall, a truly transcendent, emotional exploration of grief that ultimately tells an uplifting story of resilience, which is also nominated for a Spirit Award for Best First Feature...and featuring a storyline centering a family of foster kids (like Killing Justice/Orphan Rising) and foster horses!... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZCeX4FhTzo

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the truly transcendent masterpiece Sorry, Baby, written, directed by & starring Eva Victor, a tragicomic tale of healing from major trauma, as is my debut memoir Killing Justice... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc0jgWoZo9w

poster for Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration, which I finally got around to watching on Mubi just now, & found it to be a devastating look at the ripple effect of unspoken and therefore unhealed family trauma, which is also a central theme of my debut memoir Killing Justice

hanging out with Yohahn Ko, writer/co-director of the powerful, deeply moving short film Ear Boy, after last weekend's screening as part of the NewFilmmakers Los Angeles monthly film festival, which beautifully captures both immigrant trauma & a mother/son relationship, both of which themes are also central to Killing Justice

(parallels with Killing Justice: while in Killing Justice I refer to the extreme right as 'hypocritical legalists', Paul Kingsnorth calls them "archaists" (trying to take us back to a falsely idealized past), and while I refer to the extreme left as 'amoral rebels', he calls them 'futurists' (trying to lure us into a falsely idealized future), those of us who are repelled by this false duality are the 'principled rebels', who are the true heroes of Killing Justice, & the worl

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this truly transcendent film...(by Joachim Trier, whose latest film is the critically acclaimed Sentimental Value)...& especially love its portrayal of the trauma of religious repression, which is also a central theme of my debut memoir Killing Justice... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgQMHG9SGlU

The cash-bail system forces people charged with a crime to await their trial in jail if they cannot pay—sometimes for months or even years. Robe Imbriano’s documentary short “Criminal” uses music and lyrics by the Tony Award-winning artists Stew Stewart and Heidi Rodewald; animation by Thomas Curtis, who was incarcerated for 11 years; testimony from legal advocates; and excerpts of letters written by inmates to illustrate the grave injustices taking place at Houston’s Harris

hanging out with Weronika Mliczewska, director of Child of Dust, the powerful, deeply moving film I got to see at Museum of Tolerance last week...the film captures both fosterchild/orphan and immigrant trauma in all of their raw complexity, and in doing so dives deep into universal themes of love and belonging, as does Killing Justice... https://vimeo.com/1084211801

great Q&A featuring Lucy Liu & Lawrence Shou following a screening of the powerful, deeply moving Rosemead, which opens this weekend-Go see it!...As a foster kid/adoptee & former immigration lawyer, this film resonated for me as a powerful reminder of the parallels between foster kid/adoptee trauma & immigrant trauma, which I've spent the past decade exploring in my debut memoir Killing Justice, which we are currently adapting for the screen...so kudos to Lucy Liu for creatin

hanging out with the co-creators of the truly transcendent visual album masterpiece Songs from the Hole, Director/ Producer Contessa Gayles, Writer/Music Artist/ Protagonist JJ’88, and Producer/Music Producer richie reseda, featuring a truly transformative vision of how art truly saves lives, & their 3 part collaboration reminds me of similar transcendent, transformative visions, including Ramell Ross' rapturous adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys & Barry Jenkins' wo