My friend Jake told me about the speech coming to the college, and I have to say I was intrigued. Halberstam was supposed to talk about her work on Pixar - work that I was not aware of by any means. But an academic talking about something as "low art" as Over the Hedge had its appeal. The speech itself was wonderfully entertaining (the theme of the Cultural Studies conference being entertainment in fact) as she showed clips from both March of the Penguins and Seed of Chucky. The latter was particularly interesting in the context that I was watching it surrounded by my professors, who found the idea of devil puppets coping with the acceptance of an androgynous child as funny as I did. As a future grad student in film studies, her work was particularly intriguing. I spoke to her afterwards, in fact, to see the particulars about what she thought of the growing field, and with her words, my life seemed to be continuing on a path of my choosing and my happiness. I had asked a question during the Q & A about Brother's Quay - two brothers who use industrial and synthesized materials in a puppet-like fashion to form some of the most haunting images in avant-garde - and we talked a bit about how "fecund" the world of alternative/avant-garde cinema studies was. She said it's still a good subfield to get into. I'm happy.