Michael Hanson, phone in hand, stood looking out the window of his second-story office on Montana and Twelfth Street in Santa Monica. It was an inexpensive suite on an expensive street—just one small room and a secretarial station—but it was a prestigious address and that was important to him. Diane, his secretary, went home early because of a childcare emergency. Ordinarily, Michael would have been annoyed, but somehow aiding Diane in her childcare efforts worked to assuage his considerable guilt regarding his daughter.

The real pitfall here is how bad and unenthusiastic the voice acting is. I was interested that Patton Oswalt and Ron Perlman were in the movie -- Oswalt as the fish man Aesop and Perlman as the villain -- but was shocked by their performances. Perlman in particular sounds monotone, as though he’s reading a phonebook. He has an extensive resume in videogames and animation, so I can only assume his lackluster performance here is because of a lack of direction or knowing that the material wasn’t worth the effort.

Annette Johnson thinks the travel industry is taking self-service too far. She's watched airlines drop their phone support and add fees for airport check-ins that use a human agent. Some air carriers are even tearing out their kiosks and prodding passengers into using a phone app at the airport. "It feels like you're being punished if you need a little help," says Johnson, a travel advisor.

Amis had a quicksilver mind and a ruthless dedication to the beauty of the written word. While controversies swirled around key moments in his personal and literary life—marriage and divorce, sky-high book advances, his family’s relocation from London to Brooklyn—all of them proved irrelevant, in the end. What really counted was the exuberance of his language (the lorry “barnacled in rust” and “whining for purchase”).

Charlie Day plays a man recently released from a mental institution who has no ability to communicate with people and is largely unaware of the things going on around him. Making the character mute could have been done well, but when that character is also incapable of communicating, it makes it difficult to find him compelling. Even though his body language can be funny, it’s mostly up to the rest of the cast to deliver jokes -- which has mixed results.

Klieg lights installed on the roof of the Foreign Ministry building—itself, a bleak ten-story monolith—beamed down on arriving guests. I fell in with a crowd of cigar-puffing apparatchiks and their brawny wives, all of us moving down a herringbone-parquet hallway into a stately ballroom. The mincing waiter led me to a table in the rear, far from the podium and head table, around which the evening’s festivities would revolve.

In times of economic downturn, such as the 2008 financial crisis or the pandemic lockdown, the government enacts expansionary fiscal and monetary policy to “stimulate” the economy and create jobs. These policies also create inflation and many economists argue that the growth is illusory. The pandemic-related spending and stimulus caused inflation  to reach 9.1% in June 2022.

Raimi’s amateurish filmmaking worked to the movie’s advantage. His do-it-yourself style of directing and special effects allowed the film to be made on a shoestring budget with the help of his friends and his brothers Ted and Ivan. Whereas filmmakers are often keenly aware of their financial limitations, Raimi never allowed his budget to get in the way of his ambition.

You can also tour Kings Park with and hear ancient stories about what Australia was like before colonization. The park, which overlooks Perth, was once a sacred site where women came to give birth. European settlement changed Western Australia permanently, but the memory of a quieter place that was in harmony with nature lives on in the stories told by the aboriginal guides.