Ann LeSchander

A young woman, struggling to become a novelist, has her life go into a tailspin. Her first novel is rejected, her non-committal boy friend decides to take a powder, her best friend moves to Mexico for an acting job, and her mother announces that her long presumed dead father is actually a hippie photographer who has come to town to meet her. Sinking into a depression at being a total failure at 28, she starts fantasizing about suicide. In her depths of despair she meets various eccentric characters including a chain-smoking Santa Claus and an obnoxious literary agent. But her belief in herself is only restored when she meets a patient in a hospital where she does volunteer work.

This short film follows two out, gay, Christian leathermen - Master Skip and Pup Tim - as they prepare to compete in The Second International Puppy Contest (IPC), a leather title contest for human canines and their handlers. The documentary is the first to introduce puppy play - a fetish in which a human expresses the attributes of a canine, most often in relation to another human taking the position of pup handler, owner, trainer, etc.

When Emily, a librarian-to-be, is assigned to tutor Mateo, a struggling undergrad, in American Lit, they do not get along; but when the discussion turns from classics to confessions, they learn something that could change their lives forever.

It is Christmas in Japan and Karen, an American exchange student, is miserably homesick, in spite of the kindness of the Japanese couple she lives with.