Surf’s Up Dept.

Our usual sm??⬨?rg??⬨‚Ä¢sbord of cartoon, caricature and MAD related website, links, news articles and announcements!

I Like Both Kinds of Music: Country AND Western Dept.-

MAD artist Grey Blackwell and MAD scribe David Shayne collaborated with David’s brother Jon on this animated music video where “Merle Hazard” laments losing his girl for someone who is more “environmentally sensitive” and trys going green to lure her back.

I’m Smarter than This 5th Grader Dept.–

Smithson with the offensive drawing…

10 year old 5th grader Cullen Smithson got into a little hot water recently when his teacher, Karen Boudreau, 44, filed criminal charges against him over a drawing he did of her at school. That instantly caused a number of flashbacks for me concerning drawings I did of my teachers in school… but I was a little smarter than this kid. I didn’t draw them lying dead with a bullet hole in their head and me holding a smoking gun. I was more subtle.

Cullen’s drawing depicts Mulcahey Middle School teacher Boudreau and a girl named “Kailey” both with marks labeled “bullet wholes” (guess spelling isn’t Cullen’s strong suit) in them with him standing there (labeled “me”) next to a gun. There is also a large “HA HA” in the mix. Those goofy kids!

The story mentions a suspension but no details about it. It’s centered over the criminal charges the teacher filed and the boy’s mother’s outrage over it. Of course she immediately ran to the American Civil Liberties Union to enlist them to fight the charges. She is quoted in the story as saying: “he shouldn’t be treated like a criminal. He did not threaten. He was making a picture for himself. He wasn’t showing anyone. He didn’t go up to the teacher and give it to her. There were no threats.” I wonder if this lady reads the papers, or has ever heard of Columbine, Red Lake, Pine Middle School or about a dozen other incidents in the last 10 years where some kid takes a gun to school and starts shooting? I’d agree filing criminal charges is a bit over the top, but for all we know she demanded the kid get serious psychological counseling and his mom refused to do it, and the only recourse was getting the courts involved.

I’ll tell you what, I got sick of being dragged into the principal’s office everytime a drawing of a teacher surfaced around school. I endlessly expained to the principal that I only did the really funny ones, and I was insulted to be accused of the crappy ones.

MAD on the Move Dept.-

Someone on YouTube uploaded the first five plus minutes of the 1974 MAD television special which includes the opening sequence and the first segment “the automobile manufacturer of the year”. It looks to me like Angelo Torres did the art that was the basis for the “automobile” skit, but the animators obviously had to adjust things for the animation to work. Actually the animation itself is a lot more involved than you might think it would be.