#and then her and paul at an arabic grocery store!! and paul is in the same shirt he's wearing when he's at the hospital later!

[lonestardust]

New 9-1-1 LONE STAR stills via Tim Minear on Facebook.

[greentide-blog]

“If you’ve never lived in a food desert, and especially if you’ve never heard the term, consider yourself lucky.

The designation means that residents must travel more than a mile to get to a supermarket. Doesn’t sound like much? It is if you’re a senior who no longer drives, or a person with a disability, or someone on a limited income for whom weekly trips to shop by bus or cab add up fast.”

It’s the rare and lucky shopper who gets a warm welcome simply for entering a grocery store. But when you’re shopping at a Twin Cities Mobile Market and Abdifatah Nur is on board, get ready to feel the love.

“You just have to know how to say, ‘Welcome!’ or ‘Thank you,’ ” said the gregarious Nur, a Mobile Market staffer who offers those greetings in seven languages, from Spanish to Arabic to Korean.

“That small thing goes a long way,” he said.

Speaking of small things that go a long way, I’m happy to report the Twin Cities Mobile Market, a retrofitted Metro Transit bus loaded with grocery goodness, expanded in May from one bus to two, and from St. Paul to Minneapolis.

The second bus, chock full of affordable and fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, meat, cheese, bread and more, includes stops in north Minneapolis and Cedar-Riverside — two areas designated as “food deserts” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If you’ve never lived in a food desert, and especially if you’ve never heard the term, consider yourself lucky.

The designation means that residents must travel more than a mile to get to a supermarket. Doesn’t sound like much? It is if you’re a senior who no longer drives, or a person with a disability, or someone on a limited income for whom weekly trips to shop by bus or cab add up fast.

Minnesota, sadly and surprisingly, is a leader in food deserts.

In 2016, Wilder Research and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis reported that our state ranks seventh worst in the country for our share of residents — more than a third of the population — with no grocery store near their homes. Only about 20 percent of Minnesotans get the recommended number of fruits and vegetables daily.

The mobile grocer program was launched in 2014 by the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation as a way to fill the gap between food shelves and full-service supermarkets, spokesman Andy Brown said.

The original bus makes 17 stops Tuesdays through Saturdays year-round in St. Paul. The second bus makes 15 stops in St. Paul and Minneapolis, at low-income housing sites, day care centers, churches and community centers.

Supervalu is the food supplier, with financial support provided by Supervalu Foundation. (If you’d like to contribute, Hormel Natural Choice will match any gift to the Mobile Market dollar for dollar up to $25,000 until June 30. Go to twincitiesmobilemarket.org)

Residents are alerted to the bus’ arrival by posters, fliers and resident council meetings. But word of mouth is the best publicity.

Myong Kang stepped onto a bus at the Cedar High Apartments in Minneapolis to buy a big bag of ripe red tomatoes. “It’s nice to come,” said Kang, who works nearby. “I don’t have to go to the grocery.”

Davin Ward works at nearby Augsburg College and lives in north Minneapolis, where healthy food options are few. “It’s good-quality, nutritious food,” he said. “And it’s reasonably priced, unlike my corner market.”

“This is so neat!” said another customer, walking down the narrow aisle past deli meats (a bestseller), several types of beans, flour, sugar, kiwi, bananas, avocados, mushrooms, cucumbers, huge yellow and red onions, even frozen chicken wings.

“This is awesome!” said another.

If a customer is unable to get on the bus due to physical restrictions, staff members are happy to shop for him or her, which is what Nur was doing on a recent stop. As he studied a grocery list and filled up a bag, his customer, seated in a wheelchair, waited patiently on the sidewalk.

“You never know how many people just can’t get to the grocery store,” said the bus’ driver, Keshawn Williams, who also works the register, where customers can pay with cash or credit card or through the electronic benefit transfer (EBT) or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) programs.

“This is one of those very fulfilling jobs,” she said. “The customers love it, and it’s so innovative.”

Mobile Market director Leah Porter confirms that. In a recent survey of 400 customers, fully 89 percent said they buy more fruits and vegetables thanks to the bus, and 84 percent prepare healthier snacks at home.

Food is regularly restocked for freshness, she said. “Marginal” items go into the half-price bin, are donated or become compost.

But the mobile market feeds another need. More than 80 percent of respondents said they feel more connected to their neighborhood by shopping on the bus, Porter noted. An equal percentage say they have met people from their neighborhood as they surveyed the papayas and potatoes.

“It’s a way to bring people out,” she said. “This bus is needed.”

[recentanimenews]

The Music Never Dies: Rising From the Grave with ZOMBIE LAND SAGA

  Halloween has come and gone, but just as our taste for half-off candy at the local grocery store remains, so too does our hunger for delicious, delicious anime. And so the Fall 2018 Review by “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog” lives on, rising from a state of eternal slumber to haunt the living with an exploration of some of the hit titles from the anime season of one year ago.

  This time, we're exploring a story of musical dreams, undeath, and the rigors (and rigor mortis) of performing live (?) on-stage with a look back at ZOMBIE LAND SAGA.

    What's ZOMBIE LAND SAGA?

  ZOMBIE LAND SAGA is a 2018 TV anime with direction by Munehisa Sakai and animation production by MAPPA. Crunchyroll describes the series as follows:

  A typical morning. The usual music. Their normal lives. The peace these seven girls experience will suddenly be destroyed. By the living dead... zombies. A reality that they never wanted a part of, an amazing and terrifying zombie world. They all share one wish: "We want to live." These girls will struggle through this saga, in order to achieve a miracle. MAPPA, Avex Pictures, and Cygames team up to bring you a juicy, 100% original anime. A timeless shocker for all audiences, a brand new style of zombie anime, will soon rise.

    It's worth remembering that ZOMBIE LAND SAGA is an original project (i.e. one that isn't based on an earlier manga or light novel series), and prior to the first episode airing, no one knew exactly what to expect. Aside from some cryptic videos featuring voice-actor Mamoru Miyano performing in-character, a bit of key art, and some deliberately misleading teaser trailers, there was little indication that this show would be a horror-comedy about a troupe of zombie idols seeking to revitalize Saga Prefecture.

    Murdering Genres

  ZOMBIE LAND SAGA has a very particular sense of humor, one that combines groan-inducing puns (“saga” as both the recounting of an epic story and “Saga Prefecture”, “live” refering both to “live music concerts” and Franchochou's undead status, etc.), slapstick humor, and slasher movie sensabilities.

  Horror-comedy as a subgenre walks a very fine line, but ZOMBIE LAND SAGA does an excellent job navigating this territory, because most of the gruesome dismemberments and decapitations are played for laughs. The sound direction (also by Munehisa Sakai) is especially good, and prior to settling into a more conventional pop idol formula, the series parodies other musical stylings, such as death metal and hardcore rap.

    Putting the 'Romance' in Necromancy

  While primarily a comedy packed with plenty of horror elements, ZOMBIE LAND SAGA also has its dramatic and sentimental moments, particularly when dealing with the difficulties that the girls of Franchouchou face both in adjusting to their undead state and tackling the challenges posed by rehearsing, performing, and marketing themselves in a media-saturated world.

  The series deals with such diverse impediments as depression, culture shock, family troubles, and the trauma of remembering one's own untimely demise, and some of the best moments in ZOMBIE LAND SAGA occur when it strikes a more serious tone.

    The Voice of (Un)Reason

  ZOMBIE LAND SAGA wouldn't be nearly as effective either dramatically or comedically if not for some truly inspired voice casting. While the entire cast deserves praise for their performances, two roles in particular stand out, albeit for different reasons.

  Mamoru Miyano is completely unhinged as band manager / amateur necromancer Kotaro Tatsumi, delivering rants worthy of a Nicolas Cage movie, while veteran voice actress Kotono Mitsuishi (the Japanese voice of Usagi Tsukino in all versions of Sailor Moon) grunts and growls her way to hilarity as the legendary (and non-verbal) Tae Yamada. The two steal every scene that they're in, and their presence elevates ZOMBIE LAND SAGA to a higher echelon.

    Rise From Your Grave

  Crunchyroll currently streams ZOMBIE LAND SAGA in some 206 territories worldwide. The series is available in the original Japanese language with subtitles in English, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian, and Arabic. Funimation will release ZOMBIE LAND SAGA on U.S. home video on January 07, 2020, and if you need more of the working dead in your life, a sequel anime entitled ZOMBIE LAND SAGA REVENGE is currently in-development.

  Straddling the balance between absurdity and sentimentality, ZOMBIE LAND SAGA is a unique viewing experience and the perfect way to shake off the post-Halloween blues. If you're in the mood for oddball comedy, and if the series is available in your area, then please consider giving ZOMBIE LAND SAGA a try.

    Thanks for joining us on this most recent installment of the Fall 2018 Review by “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog." Be sure to tune in next time when we experience a blast from the series that's sure to pull the trigger on your mid-Nineties nostalgia for all things superhuman, samurai, and “syber."

  Is there a series in Crunchyroll's catalog that you think needs some more love and attention? Please send in your suggestions via e-mail to cruisingcrunchy@gmail.com or post a Tweet to @gooberzilla. Your pick could inspire the next installment of “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog”!

    ---------

Paul Chapman is the host of The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast and GME! Anime Fun Time.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com