Letters to Holly

Friday, April 21

Bring Me The Head of Alex Trebek

We watched a recorded episode of “Jeopardy” than aired last week. The last question in the category of “Forbes 500 2005 Richest Fictional People” featured a big spoiler from Harry Potter. This is something I have yet to read for myself in the series, and it’s a little shocking. I was so distraught, I couldn’t answer Final Jeopardy (Emma Lazarus wrote the poem displayed at the Statue of Liberty.). Alex, we now have a blood feud. The Trebek name now adorns my Plaque of People Who Should Be Launched Into The Sun.

Your Sister finished up the front lawn, and with help from your parents, finally moved the old Hitchcock furniture into the guest bedroom. It looks good. She’s doing a bang-up job around the house. She rented us a tiller for the weekend so we can get the garden ready, but the rain may keep us from using it.

I again woke up much too early this morning despite staying away from chocolate, sugar, and ice cream. So those can’t be the cause. Which means I can eat crap again.

I just got paid, and I can again play the PlayStation after Lent, and the “Guitar Hero” videogame (complete with guitar controller) is calling to me. I don’t know if I can resist much longer. Then again, I haven’t played the new “Katamari Damacy” yet either.

This weekend is your big test, and we’re both sending you mental power through the atmosphere. Good luck, and party heavily afterward.

Picture of the Day
WWE performer Triple H poses with fans in Milan, Italy. The kid’s expression at the bottom makes the photo.

In the news
According to a FOX News poll, Bush’s approval rating is down to 33%. That’s FOX News saying that, not the AP, New York Times, or any other agency the administration can shrug off.

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Variety reports that the production team behind “Lost” will make the next Star Trek film. The story will focus on Spock and Kirk meeting for the first time. This sounds really, really good. A pre-original series film has been in consideration for years at Paramount as numerous creative types have tried to pitch a new start for the franchise. I can only classify myself as a causal-to-regular fan of Trek, but I’m intrigued by the thought, and I would advocate starting over from scratch in production and technology design and. We have cell phones that are smaller than the original communicators. A futuristic movie should reflect what we now think surpasses our modern devices. We can’t hang on to what people forty years ago with a shoestring budget thought would look good four centuries later.

Thursday, April 20

Can't Sleep. Clown's Gonna Eat Me.

For the third straight night, I awake clear as a bell at 5:30. Las night, I ate no chocolate and drank no caffeine. Yet, I started crashing hard at 10 p.m. and awoke two hours before I needed to. I don’t get it. I feel a little fuzzy in the head from lack of proper sleep. I haven’t had the exercise I’d prefer in the past week, but I have done some serious yardwork. I come home, I work on the drawing (which is looking pretty good; I might not need to ink it), I help with dinner, we eat, watch some TV, and go to bed. I think we need to walk the neighborhood now that we have daylight after work. Or turn off the TV and read for a while. We do have a pile of library books.

I forgot to mention a few days back that we had a visitor to the office, a representative from one of the local theatre companies. I mentioned that I wanted to work with them and that I had performed in Greenville and Spartanburg, and it turns out she’s from the latter. Even graduated from the same high school just four years after me. If I pursue an audition with them, she might be my inroad.

Picture of the Day

We watched a TiFauxed “Nova” last night about an isolated chunk of Madagascar teeming with lemurs and crocodiles that live in caves. One such lemur is the aye-aye. It’s a nocturnal prosimian that uses an elongated middle finger, front teeth, and large ears to dig out ferret bugs out of hollow bush stalks. The cats were utterly bored until they heard the baby crocodiles, after which you couldn’t pay them to stop watching.


In the news

Because Your Sister has taught for more than ten years now, I keep an eye out for teacher articles in the news. Recently, there have emerged only three types of regular stories: teacher-student sex, articles about the weapons/drugs policies catching an honor student with a butter knife/Advil, and No Child Left Behind. This was a bad idea to start with, as it forced states to fund programs mandated by the federal government. A new AP poll of teachers and parents states the following:

1. Nearly eight in 10 parents are confident their local schools will have students up to state standards by the 2013-14 school year target. Yet only half of teachers are confident the kids in their schools will meet that deadline. [Why? Because schools can’t afford teacher aids or separate classes for the handicapped kids. They then move to regular classrooms and affect the grade curve.]

2. Parents and teachers often disagree on daily aspects of education, from the state of discipline to the quality of high schools.

3. 64 percent of teachers say their state standards in reading and math are about right. Most parents agreed. But parents were also twice as likely as teachers - 31 percent to 15 percent - to say current standards are too lenient.

4. The law does demand regular testing and yearly improvement by schools, all aimed at getting 100 percent of children to do grade-level work.

And the last point is what I want to focus on. The notion that 100 percent of students will graduate high school is unrealistic. Schools must be seen as a factory, analogous to those of the steel industry. It takes in a wide variety of raw materials (the kids) and tries to refine them into a stronger product (graduates and citizens). Like with any factory, you can’t expect a 100-percent refinement ratio; you cull scrap before it’s released as a final product. It’s a lovely notion that all students who enter school will emerge as proficient or even adequately prepared to get a job, use a bank, pay taxes, or be generally independent. But that doesn’t happen. There are some kids who just can’t hack school, whether it’s because of handicaps or attitude. And a number of those are genuinely disruptive. That lowers the efficiency of every class they sit in. All kids should get a chance to prove they can live up to a certain level of participation, in groups and on their on. But after that, you have to get draconian. Either they get shipped to a secondary system of classes or they get out of the school.

I advocate a hiatus for bad students. If the grades hit a certain level for a certain amount of time, they are suspended for, oh, let’s say a year. They are given a job and as much “real world” experience as possible. At the end of that time, you evaluate the student and see if they want to go back and try school again. If they don’t, fine. They stay out of school. Save that student’s allotted state money to help students who do want to be there and make an effort. I encountered many a student who was there simply because the law demanded it and were given no incentive to perform from their parents as the kids were planned all along to go into the family business. And frankly, some kids don’t need the higher level of classes to graduate. They are content to get what we might call a “guild degree.” If you want to be a mechanic, you don’t need AP English. And you shouldn’t be considered part of the same academic class as those who tackle every AP course so they can go to an Ivy League school. Let’s make a guild tract for students.

Let’s make the curriculum distinct for students with different goals and career prospects. Otherwise, we’re trying to make every student perform to a level that not all require or can achieve, and in doing, lowering the ability of teachers to demand the most of their classrooms.

+ + +

The Cubs are 9-5 and second in their division.

Wednesday, April 19

She Works. She Gets the Job Done.

While I was at work, Your Sister went to town on the front yard. She pruned, she whacked, she raked, she organized. The yard looks a hundred times better. The teacher who gave her advice about the yard suggests we mulch the garden rows until we have a definite strategy for new plants. That suits me fine. Your Sister was hoping to move the compost pile out of sight but today’s big storms probably won’t let her get outside. After doing all the yardwork yesterday, she needs to take it easy today anyway. It’s pitch black as I type this; Asheville is buried in storm clouds.

We teamed up to cook dinner last night: a pork curry stir-fry. After I ate dessert, I realized that my body is no longer used to eating ice cream at night. Twice, I’ve eaten the stuff since the Lent ban, and twice I’ve zonked completely out and awakened at 5:30 in the morning. I’m apparently back to my weird caffeine reaction. Your Sister has the opposite reaction; she eats ice cream and is terrifyingly chipper.

We watched “House” and a “Mad About You” rerun on TiFaux. “House” is an interesting medical series where each episode revolves around a series of bad diagnoses. The patient is always just about to die away when the real cause is discovered. The formula is recognizable within two episodes, but the acting and subplots are good enough to bring us back. I haven’t worked on the Star Wars drawing since Sunday, and I told Your Sister I need to devote time to it during the week. “Mad About You” remains very hit-and-miss. But I’m not as big a fan of Paul Reiser as Your Sister.

Gasoline jumped up four more cents since I posted the $2.86 price this week. Gas hasn’t been this high since Hurricane Rita. Even the shortage prices weren’t as high.

Picture of the Day
From the What Were They Thinking blog about bad comic ideas comes this panel:



In the news
There’s been a recent rash of retired generals criticizing Rumsfeld about Iraq. A few others have stepped forward to defend him as well. The conservative spin on this is to say the generals are attacking the policy of a civilian leader in the Pentagon. That’s not that at all what they’re saying. Bush announced Tuesday that the only person to choose Rumsfeld’s tenure is him. Bush called himself “the decider.” Reports have lingered for at least a year that Rumsfeld has tried to resign more than once, but Bush won’t accept it. If true, what good does it serve the military if their commander doesn’t want to be there? Rumsfeld has had good plans for the military, including making the armed forces leaner, more mobile, and more broadly capable. But the “doing more with less” policy got the Iraq occupation on the wrong footing, and his reaction to the insurgency has apparently been insufficient. IEDs, suicide bombings and convoy attacks continue. He needs to go if the GOP wants to maintain the Congressional majority, but the administration doesn’t want to appear reactive to public sentiments like this.

The new White House chief of staff may freshen up the cabinet, but it’s unlikely he’ll oust Rumsfeld as he might change the curtains. Press secretary Scott McClellan is out the door, much to his relief I’m sure. He had neither the poise or style of Ari Fleischer and projected a vulnerability that was pounced upon by the press corps. Had he soothed the increasingly agitated reporters, there may have not been as much vehemence in breaking through the administration’s wall of sound bites in pursuit of real information. The new secretary needs to be charming, confident, and suave -- qualities Scott never once projected.

Tuesday, April 18

Not Much

Your Sister did a lot of work on the yard. It already looks much better and less like “an abandoned lot” to use her words. A retired teacher is coming over while I’m at work to help her plan the front yard. All I ask is that we have some colorful flowers and a lack of those bushes with the big blue flower globes. I hate those things. We had Kathy and Travis over again to watch wrestling. They’ve become addicted. His dad is ashamed of them a little, saying it would be better if they took drugs. “At least people don’t laugh at you when they find out you’re on drugs.” Also, the new office coworker discovered I watch the stuff and offered a chipper “I don’t anyone with a rain who watches THAT.” I used to think she was just blithely inane. Now, I think she’s a snob. I’m used to that sentiment, but I’m always surprised by people who phrase it in such obviously condescending ways. I tired to explain to her what the appeal is, and she just chuckled and cackled as if I said “Hey, have you tried eating concrete?” Screw her.

Gas pries down here are inching up. Regular unleaded gasoline costs $2.85 a gallon. Your Sister sports car fuel goes for $3.05. We haven’t run the furnace in about a week, but we haven’t turned on the A/C either. W just open the front and back doors and let the ceiling fans throw the air around. Our A/C/ bills will be much, much lower than the furnace gas bills.

I had to exchange a t-shirt I got for donating to the local NPR station. The shirt they sent was a large, but as I’ve noticed over the past years larges are getting larger. I used to wear a men’s large back when I was puny. Now, with 20 more pounds, large shirts envelope me like a nightgown. I have to wear men’s medium sizes. I know this has happened in women’s clothing too, but I have yet to hear or see any coverage about men’s clothing changes in new reports about American obesity.

Picture of the Day

The annual WCQS NPR donation shirt is made up like a Scrabble board. I got the short-sleeve version.



In the news
Atlanta
’s Mike Luckovich won the Pulitzer for editorial cartooning. You can see his Pulitzer submissions here. The fiction award went to Geraldine Brooks for Marches, one of those ridiculous novels that spin off of a classic work of literature. Her book is about the father from Little Women, which Your Sister says is never in the book. If the has such a tenuous or nonexistent connection to the original, the link is there simply to garner publicity and sales by the curious fans of the original. And that’s astounding. I’ve seen a sequel for Gone with the Wind, a sequel for Wuthering Heights, a book starring the wife of Ahab from Moby Dick, and a detective thriller starring an adult Tiny Tim. It’s absurd. It’s been done in comics with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as Mr. Hyde, Dracula’s Mina, Captain Nemo, Alan Quartermain, and the Invisible Man team up to fight a world threat. But that’s a lark. That’s fun comics. It’s not a novelist piggybacking on dead authors’ works. The Pulitzer judges just validated the genre. I’m unnecessarily worked up. I need to lie down.

Monday, April 17

I Work. I Get the Job Done.

Once again, I realized I had not copied over files from my old, busted PC and once again had to hook up and crank up that fractured Windows PC. I needed the package art I made for Your Sister's mix CDs. Hopefully, this will be the last time I have to venture into that computer and deal with its constant crashing. I've started a new mix CD for her, called Moody Boys, full of hard-rock and whiny guy songs. When your sister awoke, we grabbed lunch at Juan's and a metal fork at the Humane Society. The latter means we no longer use one our eating forks to cut up cat food, something that irrationally makes me blanche. The lady at the HS store was a bit shocked to see someone bring one small fork to the counter. Cost = 11 cents. This was all we wanted and needed despite her efforts to sell us Easter gear at half-price. I bought some coffee for Your Sister, and we saw a great summery painting that we're tempted to buy. It's very rare to find anything in this area that jumps out at us, but this is a decent size and the work of someone who knows what they're doing, unlike all the folksy crap we see about town.

We drove to Asheville then. Your Sister shopped for complementary bathroom gear (towels, shower curtain, washrags), while I killed time in Best Buy, only the greatest store since Toys R Us. I again drooled over "Guitar Hero" for the PS2, but sadly the store demo was showing sings of customer abuse. I'm thinking of buying a chess program, but Your Sister suggests instead we can play. I'd prefer that. I also checked out scanners for the office, flat monitors for me, some other PS2 games (Lent is over, and I can play the system at will again), and the satellite radio systems. They're pretty cheap, to my surprise. A plug-and-play receiver set only costs $50 and the subscriptions run $13 a month. That's mighty do-able.

With a bagful of towels in hand, we went to downtown Asheville. Your Sister, to jumpstart my wall painting, bought me a really nice easel. I mean, really nice. I'm now obliged to paint until I drop to make that investment worth it. With the storage room cleaned out, I have plenty of space to work in. We looked at some new pieces in the furniture store where we bought our chairs. I don't think we're replacing the couch before the fall. We met your parents for dinner at Asheville Pizza, and I used their flagon to drink Houdini ESP. I didn't see any evidence of new beer logos and can't help but wonder if they have any interest in using the ones I designed after all. It's a pipe dream, I know, and I'm setting myself up for disappointment. That flagon is a strange cup to work with; it stays cold for an hour, but the lip makes the beer flow around your mouth. No wonder the dwarf in Lord of the Rings was a messy drunk. I went through three napkins to dab my mouth dry.

After this, Your Sister and I caught an Irish band at the Diana Wortham Theatre. A packed audience watched them play for about two hours. Right before the show, the theatre manager announced that among the crowd as a French rotary group visiting the area for a few weeks. That's more than likely the same group that will come to Brevard in a few weeks and includes Valerie, our house guest. It wasn't so much a catalog of songs as much as grooves. I see now the appeal of jam bands. The players started off separately, found a hook, and played it for five minutes at a time. It's a nice sound but not very distinct. I did find that the music sparked my brain to write most of a short comic story. Your Sister bought two of their CDs after the concert and had the players sign them. The two of us shared a piece of pie afterward and went back home to collapse exhausted.

On Saturday morning, we went to the old-fashioned soda shop for lunch as we normally do. A clutch of Russian tourists snagged some ice cream and a Charleston couple was looking at house-hunting paperwork. Yes, summer is not far away. After a quick stop for crackaccino, we strolled through Lowe's for what seemed like hours looking for project tools. We ran into Travis, and he meekly asked if he and Kathy could come back Monday for another wrestling show. Well, of course. We also saw another local teacher, and I helped him find some items for his honey-do list. We picked up a sealant for the bathtub (Your Sister wants to remove the sliding glass doors and use a shower curtain), a wheelbarrow, a workshop vice so I can sharpen the lawnmower, weedkiller, a putty knife, and screws.

Once we got home, we went to work. Above the bed, we hung the rug you brought us from Swaziland. We tried to do this before, but the hanging instructions foiled us with inadequate wall anchors and screws. We ditched the instructions and now the rug hangs perfectly. We also finally installed the curtains on the back deck door. No longer do we have vertical blinds; instead we're using the curtains from her old apartment. We had picked them out together with the notion that they might hang in our house one day. Now, almost a year after we bought the house, we have them up. Following that, we caught some horse racing on TV and toured the yard to get notions of how to tidy it up. One of our neighbors chatted and walked the property lines with us. We want to radically change the front yard; the two garden rows require daily maintenance and are quite the eyesores. Your Sister plans to tackle them during her Spring Break. I, however, want to till some of the backyard garden and try our hand at growing food. At first we'll use a small patch and then expand if we get the hang of it. The firepit was hauled to the deck for summer display, and the workshed was inspected. It's serviceable for now, but it can't last another five years. Wood is rotting, and carpenter bees are boring throughout the trim. Your Sister is trying to use a new color system in the main bathroom and again relied on my "painter eye" to help. I try to tell her that this is subjective but was pressed into service anyway. My best advice: Put up some towels and close the door. Don't look at it for a while, and check it again later with fresh eyes. We watched Anatomy of a Murder but the damn TiFaux cut off the ending. It’s a fine courtroom drama starring just about everyone at the time.

Easter Sunday saw us take a long lunch and read the New York Times. We took turns with the laundry and turned on the ceiling fans to cool down the house. The down comforter is now packed away, and the cats are enjoying the sights out the open windows. I fiddled with the “Star Wars” art, as you can see below. I then put together the easel and wheelbarrow, and we worked in the yard for a little bit. She’s going to rip up the first of the two ugly garden rows in the front yard, and I showed her how to use the hedge trimmer to thin it out. A snackish dinner accompanied “West Wing” (only three episodes left) and some “Mad About You” reruns.

While she got ready for bed, I finished up the third Harry Potter book. The gal who lends them to me is gone for Spring Break, so I can’t start the fourth one until next week. That’s fine. I have a box of library books to plow through. I read one of them Saturday, a retrospective on Captain Kangaroo. My head flooded with memories untouched for almost 25 years. But I learned that Margaret Hamilton, the original Wicked With of the West, was the Book Lady on the Captain’s show. I remembered her and never knew the Book Lady was the Witch even though I knew Hamilton taught kindergarten. Crazy.

Sketch Day
This is the third update on the artwork [the sketches and the modeling photos]. At this stage, the first idea is just to map the drawing area on the page. Once you get an idea of how large the art will be, then you can worry about proportions. Initially, it’s very loose. No shapes are defined. I lightly sketch simple body forms and angles to get a very rough outline. I then tighten up some lines here and there. Using a photo allows you to compare placement of body parts with lines in the clothing. They act like navigational landmarks for each other. Then I start to define the outlines, making the lines heavier and darker and more controlled. I’ll add some circles to mark changes of light, primarily on the boots. The main thing Your Sister isn’t modeling is a hood, but I have plenty of action figures and SW art for reference. I’m starting off with the Emperor’s hood, and it, like all props, can change if need be. Once I get the initial sketch done at full size, I’ll let it sit and return to it later with fresh eyes and tighten up more lines. My preference is to switch back and forth between the two portraits so each stage of the pictures can be completed at the same time. This picture has been darkened in Photoshop to better show the work. The faded gray line is the merge of two scanned images.