Hobbies always help when you need to take your mind off of a soul-crushing loss. One of my hobbies is playing around with Final Cut Pro, and I just recently put together a demo reel for my wife, Laura Bustamante, a beautiful and talented actor whose done voice-over work (in English & Spanish) for everyone from Spielberg to Kaiser Permanente. She also hosts & reports for a TV show about Latino culture, among other things. She just recently finished a run as Diana Morales in the 6th Street Players production of A Chorus Line. Oh, and she’s also the inspiration for Susan Garcia. For a break from the madness, here’s the demo reel. It’s mostly in Spanish, but you’ll enjoy it anyway.

Visit Candorville!

Some mention about this on the Web. From the Tribune’s Letters to the Editor section:

I’m disappointed in the Trib’s decision to cancel the comic strip “Candorville,” by Darrin Bell (“Meet our new comic characters,” Tempo, Jan. 2). This strip was one of the few highlights of the funny pages, and one of the more consistently funny strips I’ve seen in almost 30 years of reading them. The characters were fully fleshed out and very relevant. Please bring it back, as I have spoken to many others who feel the same way!Fred NicklArlington Heights

That thread also includes a typical comment about how Candorville “always” attacks conservatives, which – also typical – ignores Candorville’s caustic treatment of Hillary Clinton, Ray Nagin, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Oprah Winfrey, etc… People all along the ideological spectrum, from left to right, have an amusing habit of ignoring countervailing evidence when it might get in the way of a good hate.And then there are the obscure blogs (even more obscure than this one, if that’s possible). From M. Rittle at Random Social Thoughts:

We are lucky if a comic strip in the newspaper depicts non-white characters, much less characters of multiple races and classes in the same strip. Candorville accomplishes this social reality with finesse. I read Candorville because the strip breaks racial stereotypes of poverty through depiction of white homeless men. I read Candorville because the highest paid character in the strip is Latina. I read the comics page in the hope to find a humorous depiction of everyday life realities, and no comic strip satisfies this goal as well as Darrin Bell’s Candorville.

***Edit – Rest of the post removed for… oh hell, it’s Midnight Friday after a long week, I’m too tired to keep typing. Let’s just say it’s been removed for the hell of it.***

Visit Candorville!