Oscar Weekend

A very stupid thing happened at the school Friday. The school just started the obligatory daily pledge this year. A known outspoken teacher was asked to lead the school in the Pledge of Allegiance via the intercom. She did, and left out "under God." Kids were so upset they called their parents via cellphone to stone the heathen. The principal added a formal letter of reprimand to her permanent file. Your Sis is so pissed she cleaned her home office. The teacher is understandably upset, and other teachers are debating legal recourse. I'm not surprised she chose to say the original version of the pledge, nor am I surprised that the principal brought down the disciplinary hammer.

Who's to blame? Everyone. She called down the thunder, he overreacted, and the kids are a buncha knee-jerk tattle-tales. I'm hoping the principal and the teacher have a calm meeting next week when tempers die down, because ultimately, the lesson learned is that the omission of "God" in the formal pledge to the flag is actionable. And that's quite the high-horse hick indignation we can live without. I also have a problem with pledging allegiance to a flag instead of, say, laws and principals. But the thing was written to sell flags and later adopted by Congress.

The comic took on big momentum Saturday as I paneled out the artboards and started penciling panels. Instead of working on page one, panel one, I skipped around based on my sketches. The linework came out pretty clean, much to my surprise, and I suspect I can forgo inking if I go over the work with darker pencils. By Sunday evening, I had most of the thing drawn. I put in the extended Lord of the Rings DVD to listen to commentary as I worked and I got through all of that and half of the Sin City commentary. So I know I put in at least 6 hours. I still need to do two panels, but I find myself past most of the hard work. I just got word that the art deadline is March 26. A full month away. I can handle that with no problem. I was scared it would be this weekend or something. Jesus, a month. I feel like I won a lottery.

We watched the Oscars last night, and I was most happy with seeing Scorsese win for Best Director. I remember watching while at Brevard College and seeing Kevin Costner take the award for Dances With Wolves instead of Goodfellas. That was a Big Wrong. I thought the show focused a bit much on An Inconvenient Truth and Al Gore, and I didn't care for the dancers making silhouettes for the Best Picture nominees. But the Jack Black/Will Ferrell/John C. O'Reilly song was good as was the performances for the Dreamgirls nominated songs. Celine Dion just makes my ears curl up and scurry back into my skull, and I don't why they made a big deal about her singing lyrics over a Ennio Morricone song. He's a composer. And she's cooing over his work. The best bit was the sound effects choir.

Picture of the Day
I gave Your Sis her new mix CD Friday before she started slaving away at school work. She listened as she cleaned Friday night and seems to dig it. It makes for good driving music, and she's going back to Greenville this weekend.



You Give Love a Bad Name -- Bon Jovi
Le Disko -- Shiny Toy Guns
Welcome to the Black Parade -- My Chemical Romance
This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race -- Fall Out Boy
Knock 'Em Out -- Lily Allen
Listen Up -- The Gossip
This Fire -- Franz Ferdinand
World -- Five for Fighting
Mad World -- Sacre
Alison -- Elvis Costello
Little Northern Bird -- Dream Academy/Annie Lennox
Put Your Records On -- Corinne Bailey Rae
Thundersexy -- ACDC/Justin Timberlake
Tears of a Rock -- ACDC/Smokey Robinson
Bombs Over Baghdad -- Outkast
Warning, Rush Where It's At -- Big Audio Dynamite/Beck/Green Day
Sober -- Half Cocked
Jack And Diane's Last Episode -- Snoop Dogg/Dr. Dre/John Cougar

In the News (sorta)
The NY Times reports that Christopher Plummer, Captain Von Trapp himself will play one of the leads in a new stage production of Inherit the Wind. Wow.

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DirecTV will provide Ovation (an arts channel) and Chiller (a horror channel) this year. Chiller could start as early as March 1. I hope this leads to a renaissance of '70s and '80s films which have yet to get a decent DVD release. Your Sis is going on a work trip tomorrow, leaving me a bachelor for the night. I intend to rent myself some horror films that I know she would never watch.