Jan

The Not So Gifted Little Kevin

By: Bobby Finstock on 01/25/08 @ 7:07 am

Last night I began to learn Flash animation in my new media design 2 class. For our first in class lab we had to make a stick figure that would walk onto the screen and do something. People had their figure do all kinds of stuff like dance, jump, do flips, and even the instructor had an anvil fall out of the sky hitting her stick figure in the head.

What did I have my stick figure do?

I had him walk out onto the screen, squat and poop… Not only did he poop but flames shot out of his ass while doing so. I figure you should always write what you know and that goes for design, there is nothing that I know more about in the world than poop. The professor walked by and kind of looked at it and giggled then mentioned something about me being disturbed. I wanted to say, “Well at least I didn’t have my stick figure spitting the poop back into another stick figures mouth.”

That is going to be design project two.

This whole thing reminded me of the time in third grade when we were asked to draw a Santa picture and I made a cut out of Santa on vacation. I had the people around me do the elves on vacation as well; it was just a different take than the typical rendering of Santa. For some reason this picture got some attention from the school’s staff and I ended up going to what was called “extended learning” a once a week class for the “gifted” kids.

The problem was I was like the dumbest “gifted” kid in the class. There were kids that were in there that were building electronic devices in the third grade, reading novels, and painting art. Meanwhile my weekends consisted of me throwing a tennis ball against our garage door for at least five hours, watching cartoons, and riding bikes with my friends. Plus if you look at how the kids in that class turned out it tells you a lot about the intelligence in that room. One works at NASA, a couple are doctors, one is like an avant-garde filmmaker in San Francisco, and I don’t know about some of the others but they are all probably solving the world’s problems. Meanwhile I am filming my reactions to 2 girls 1 cup. You know what? Fuck NASA, I’ve never screwed up and caused a shuttle to blow up…. yet.

I was in this program for four years until we moved into the junior/senior high school and it got disbanded. I think it was kind of like a lifetime membership thing, once you are in it you don’t leave. If you think about it though how can they kick you out? “Well you WERE gifted but you are no longer gifted and must leave the room immediately.”

The peak or valley for me (depending on how you look at it) was when we were asked to talk about people that inspire or motivate us. We had to get together a little essay and present it to rest of our class. Kids got up there and talked about their parents, literary figures, world leaders, and who did I get up there and talk about… The A-team.

ateam

And honestly how can they not be considered inspirational just read the intro to the show:

“In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.”

They solved problems when no one else could help, what is not inspirational about that?

Needless to say at the end of my presentation I got one of those patronizing, “Well that was nice Kevin.” That bitch couldn’t recognize real talent.

Did you do something that was misunderstood as a kid?

This is going up at humor-blogs.com