The Park Interspecial Film Festival (PIFF) has come of age, organizers say, and so have Park citizens. So, it’s about time that comedy was properly represented at PIFF; hence, today’s announcement of an important addition to the 2012 festival lineup.

“We are overjoyed to be here to announce the Noon Nuttiness addition to the festival,” said PIFF Communications President Leola Ocelot at a press conference held this morning at the Park Cinema.

“Noon Nuttiness” means that between the hours of 12:00 pm and 2:00 pm, PIFF screenings at the Park Cinema will be of comedies only.

“Five days in a row of funny should have every Animal cackling,” Ocelot said, slipping the name of the new addition’s sponsor into the announcement. And just to make sure the message was received, standing beside Ocelot was Lester C. Gander, President and C.E.O. of GooseBook, whose company rolled out the new “happy” social networking site cackle™ last month. Gander took to the microphone immediately afterwards to make an announcement of his own:

“I am happy to announce to you today that for the five days of PIFF, Noon Nuttiness patrons will be given cackle™-enabled devices so they can share their reviews of this year’s comedies with their friends,” he said.

Ocelot also announced the names of the two comedies that will open Noon Nuttiness. “Love Lies Drooling”  written and directed by Xanthippe Newfoundlander and “Big Red Bucket” produced by the antYloper film cooperative.

The 8th annual Park Interspecial Film Festival will take place October 1-5, 2012.

Renowned Park film director and proud University of West Terrier alumnus, Douglas Cheetah, is hard at work on a new documentary that he says will be ready for release in time for the 2013 Park Interspecial Film Festival (PIFF).

Best known for his controversial 2007 (25 AZ) film, Black Cats Can’t Jump, Cheetah has turned his attention to the interspecial family which, he says, can be found in all parts of the world.

“We think of it [the interspecial family] as existing solely outside The Park and, always, with Humans as part of the mix,” he says. “But that isn’t true at all. I found interspecial families everywhere, including in The Park. And, in many cases, it was because a conscious choice had been made, rather than as a result of some kind of hardship.”

Most interspecial families, he says, suffer from misunderstanding and there is a deep prejudice against them because they are associated with enforced domestication.

“Of course, that is the foundation of many of these families outside The Park,” Cheetah says. “But not all. And among the families I studied, there were several that had no Human members. Some had made the choice to open their homes and families to other species without any prompting; some had done so as a response to some familial or environmental disaster. Either way, these families are not what we in The Park tend to think they are. A great many of them are happy and loving groups who support each other and who have had success in their lives. They are valuable to each other and to the wider world. I think their story is well worth telling,” he says.

One of The Park’s most controversial musical groups, The Feral Four, has announced that it will donate the proceeds from its new song to the CatsCare Foundation, in aid of formerly domestic Cats who have found their way to freedom in The Park.

The song, which will be released as a digital download in the late Autumn, is titled, “I Saw Your Collar in the Hall”. No other information has been released, either by the group’s manager or by its record company, Colony Records.

The group, who is set to release a new collection of songs next year, is also working with The Canary Cousins, Eggie and The Pigs, The Beasts of Burden, Les Chiens Débraillés, Scentient Beings, The DomEstyx, The Endeka Elephant Band, NIML, and rapper Will.o.be. on The Park’s first interspecial song.

Defying his naysayers, former Archon Nicholas Gander took first prize in the Memoir category at the 2012 Chitter Radio Literary Awards on Friday night for his controversial autobiography, Not Good for the Goose.

Gander, who is new to the literary world, began his working life with The Park’s Goose and Gander Search and Rescue Association. In 2008, he was chosen to serve as Archon and the largest part of his memoir deals with the time he spent in that position.

Gander’s book stirred controversy immediately upon its release last October. One review, published in the Equine Echo, accused his publisher, Herring Press Books, of “profiting from tales told out of school” and another reviewer called the memoir “a big, honking mess.”

On hand at the Awards, Herring Press Manager Alida Silver brushed off talk of the controversy, saying only that the traditional silence of former Archons is “now a thing of the past.”

Other winners on Friday night were veteran novelist Hercule Parrot, playwright D.B. Platypus, poet Storm Walrus, and short story writer Albertina Mayfly.