I bought the first Cheburashka plushie in 2014. It was one of those rare Decembers when I had some spare money in the bank. sirius20_81 and her family had a pretty tough year, and I wanted to get something nice for her youngest daughter, Sera. I couldn't get anything too fancy, but I figured I could get something unique, something she wasn't likely to get ( Read more... )

This morning, Chicago area was hit by light snow - but snow nonetheless. As I've written before, Chicago spring is unpredictable, and wild temperature swings are to be expected. But snow in April was still taking it a bit too far ( Read more... )

This morning, Whet Moser, the Assoiate Digital Editor/writer at the Chicago magazine tweeeted about a children's book he found in a used book store in Virginia. While he was struck by the (admittedly very distinct) art style, what caught my attention was the author's name.

Omg the illustrations pic.twitter.com/srbIzAZTrn
- Whet Moser (@whet) ( Read more... )

When I was a little kid, I used to play with this large bear toy with dark brown fur. He wore overalls and a light blue shirt, his arms, legs and led could move, and his mouth was always open. Like most Russian bear toys, he was called Misha (a play off of "Mishka," the diminutive form of Russian word for bear). A lot of the times, I cast him as a ( Read more... )

Grandma Nina is in town visiting, and she came bearing bits of her extensive archives. One of the things she unearthed was what can only be described as a Lion King fanfic I wrote on sketchbook paper. I used stickers for a Lion King sticker book as illustrations. I'm not exactly sure when I wrote it, but based on when I saw the movie, it had to be ( Read more... )

Thanks to the miracle of Youtube (and the AV Club article), I have rediscovered yet another piece of my childhood. I watched this in Russia, Russian-dubbed, in black-and-white. I adored it back then.

It doesn't hold up well

Of course, n the Russian dub, the protagonist's voice wasn't quite as annoying.

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