A little behind the times on some things, pretty up to date on others.

• Just a reminder that Lucy Knisley’s Relish will be in stores next week, and that it got the Fleen Seal of Approval and you should totally pick it up. As an appetizer, why not check out Knisley’s collaboration with Erin Meister at Saveur’s Recipe Comix?
• Time for a periodic reminder that you New York area types can drag your silly comic-obsessed asses into adult sophistication with the help of a little wine education, courtesy of Kristen Siebecker¹ and her recurring Popping Your Cork series. The Spring PYC will be Wednesday, 10 April (for all you people maybe hanging around after MoCCA?) at Simple Studios in Midtown. Previous classes have sold out so hurry — and use the code FRIEND10 for a 10% discount.
• One of the hallmarks of Kickstarter is that you can’t solicit for charity, which makes sense — you don’t want to get into a dispute where you wonder if money raised under the pretenses of going (wholly or partially) to charity doesn’t. So Machine of Death impressario David Malki ! didn’t come close to mentioning that he wanted to devote some of the proceeds of the MoD game to the literacy and writing charity, 826LA. From the MoD project update page:
  

  MYSTERY STRETCH GOALS:
  Continue reading this post on the Machine of Death blog!

  And from there, the news that the MoD Squad planned to donate one dollar per game (both physical and PDF) ordered to 826LA, for a total of 10,938 games which rounds up nicely to US$11,000. This was enabled by clearing the US$382,600 level. And as a further act of being an stellar person, Malki ! announced that by clearing 8260 backers, MoD books and games will be donated to 826LA for sale in their shop to support their programs. As if that weren’t enough, there will be 826LA-exclusive MoD game content for purchases of MoD stuff via the 826LA online store starting in June.

  Given that the Machine of Death game is about creative and collaborative storytelling, I can’t think of a better place for their largesse to go — 826LA (and its affiliated programs around the country) may well be responsible for finding the next great storyteller, one that wouldn’t have been nurtured without 826’s help.

  Malki ! also did a vlog interview with Matthew Lesko². I suspect that although the interview was very well managed by Malki ! and conveyed his philosophy of Kickstarting very well, the wrong message may be taken by a percentage of the people that watch it. Lesko’s spent so much time hawking the idea that there is free money out there for the having, and here this guy wound up with half a million dollars, that the people most receptive to Lesko’s message will only hear that number and apply it to the message he’s so well known for.

  This is not an unknown situation in crowdfunding, and while those that watch the video because they know Malki !, or MoD, or Kickstarter in general will likely be more resistant to the siren call of Free! Money!, I sincerely hope that he (Malki !) has put in place good filters on his email, as he’s most likely going to be getting a substantial number of people wanting to know how they can get half a million dollars, too³.

• Oh, and one more thing: new Nicholas Gurewitch cartoon at Boing Boing! Great gag, terrific visual, and Mass Casualty Incident classes will be using that last panel to illustrate what a cluster MCIs can become.

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¹ Sommelier, wife of a comics guy of some note, and original showrunner of MoCCA Fest, the latest iteration of which is approaching rapidly.

² Full disclaimer: I have encountered Lesko twice in person at random — once on the streets of Bethesda, MD and once in New York’s Penn Station. He looked really annoyed at life both times and kinda elbowed me in the ribs semi-accidentally on his way through a tight slalom of people.

³ We at Fleen haven’t done a comprehensive survey, but this is most likely the new contender for the longest, most convoluted sentence in the blog’s history. Yay?