Monday, February 4, 2019

Animate Your Life

I watch a series called "Anime Supernova" which showcases rising star animators in Japan. I still like cartoons and animations as an adult. I also like overseas and foreign cartoons/animations.

I had an art teacher in middle school whom I couldn't stand. She wouldn't really teach us and she let the bullies run the classroom. I often got in trouble with her, not because I was a bully, but because I dared to stand up and fight back those bullies.

With Mother's Day was coming up, that's when she was teaching us how to use a kiln and make our own pottery. I wanted so much to make something but the jerk told me I was in trouble again and allowed the idiots in the class to make drinking mugs for their mothers while I had nothing for my own mom.

The experience hurt me so much that I shied away from pottery for a long time. The only good thing that moron teacher did for me was have us watch a lot of foreign animation shorts. A lot of my classmates were bored by this, but I ate it up. She did this instead of actually teaching, but I didn't care. While in that darkened classroom, I could escape. Dream. There were no troublemakers. And no bad teachers. Only imagination.

Years after I moved on, that teacher gave my dad a message that I must keep in touch with her. I refused. Anyway, I got better art teachers for 11th and 12th grade as well as in community college.

Representation is a gift

When I began SUMMER TO WINTER, I noticed more than one brown or Black reader and/or friend asked if (Peter) Dunlop is Black.  The relief and...