Every now and then I'm given the opportunity to talk with some truly amazing Torontonians. It's not something that happens as often as I would obviously like, and I cherish these conversations for what they are: rare glimpses of world that is both kinder and more caring than the one-hour-news-cycle world I read of, so often overwhelmed by rush and distant squalor.

Today I spoke with Kim Beatty, mother to The Children's Book Bank, on the day that her foundation turns six months old. In honour of the occasion, Kim and her staff of sixty volunteers threw a half-birthday party this morning at the Bank's location in Regent Park, where a majority of incomes lie below the Toronto average. The event was attended by children, regulars and not-so-regulars, and adults, including a number of supporters from the Yonge Street Mission. Also among the supporters was Marguerite Campbell, principal of Rose Avenue Public School, a kindergarten and primary school in St. James Town.

"I thought I was finished when I realized I had forgotten the skeleton guy. The composition was cramped on the left of the page, so I just drew another piece of floaty rock, and I thought 'oh he looks kind of lonely back there,' so I put some mantas flying around him. And I was like 'oh he's kind of separate from the group now. He kind of looks evil. He's a bad guy. Oooh, he's the bad guy! Nice.'"

Ramon Perez is explaining his creative process to me over coffee at Cafe Diplomatico. When we met, Sunday of last week, he was coming off two all-nighters at his College Street studio, a Friday morning class he teaches at Max the Mutt Animation School, and, I think, a wedding. He talks fast.

Ramon, in my opinion, is one of those young artists who has cut his chops and, in ten years, will be the artist that younger self-starters, like his current self, hope to share a table with at conventions. He is the local writer-illustrator behind Kukuburi, a web comic that invokes some of the unearthly weirdness of a J. Gourmelin sketch, but with flying whales. We chatted about his career and his ample portfolio, which includes work for Lucasfilm, an as yet un-nameable Dark Horse Comics project, and a solo noir graphic novel set in fifties Toronto.

It seems like just about everybody and their stepmother has something to say about Gregg Gillis of late. I don't want to talk about who he is and what he does because that's been covered elsewhere in prose so sycophantic it's practically syphilitic.

But put me firmly on the other bandwagon: Girl Talk blows.

If you're not currently growing a mustache and were never an Emperor of Rome, it's sometimes hard to indulge in that most ancient of practices, liberally re-labeling months. Fortunately, there's NaNoWriMo.

National Novel Writing Month is a mad-cap dash to hammer out 50,000 words of juicy fiction in a state of insomniac, literary abandon between 12 am November 1st, and 11:59 pm November 30th. I caught up with some of Toronto's would-be novelists at greenavi cafe for Tuesday night's group writing session, to talk about the sci-fi greats, Godzilla movies, and why droopy-eyed subway commuters and well-toned coworkers are fair game for much-needed plot.

In case you were worried, Cinematheque Ontario will deliver a second screening of David Lean's 1962, and very very long, masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, after the first showing in late November sold out faster than hotcakes. Like two weeks ago.

My source at the Cinematheque box office says they've already moved about a quarter of their tickets for the second screening on December 7th.

In addition to the ongoing David Lean retrospective, Cinematheque Ontario will be screening all fifteen intense hours of Berlin Alexanderplatz over three days, starting December 12th. There's also the monumental and ongoing retrospective of Nagisa Oshima's ouvre, which blogTO's own Danielle D'Ornellas beat me to the punch on last week.

Oh, and happy Barack Obama Day.

It was edging on 8:30 when I showed up, late, to the International Festival of Authors' Thursday night reading. Hanging around astronauts at charity events is a fantastic excuse for any transgression. But still - I arrived too late to hear from Canadian poetesses Lorna Crozier and Allison Pick, but just in time for New Yorker Nathaniel Rich, editor of The Paris Review, to begin reading from his debut novel, The Mayor's Tongue. Several hours later I walked out of Harbourfront Centre's Brigantine Room, passed Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul, with a signed copy of Patrick Lane's generation-jumping, farming family epic, Red Dog Red Dog and the knowledge that Patrick is unfortunately internet-illiterate.