I just wanted to take the oppor­tu­nity to say Happy Father’s Day to my Dad… Dean Wat­son. If it weren’t for the love and sup­port of my father through­out my life, I cer­tainly would not be where I am today. He and my mother, Brenda Wat­son, always encour­aged my cre­ativ­ity when I was a child. Now that I am grown and can see what dark­ness is out there in this crazy world, I real­ize how lucky I am to have such won­der­fully pre­cious child­hood memories.

When I was in my rebel­lious teens, my Father would con­stantly be there to pull me out of some sort of trou­ble or another. But more impor­tantly, later in life as I went through one of the dark­est times in my life (my divorce), he was there for me whole heart­edly. He gave me much needed emo­tional sup­port and a help­ing hand as I needed it.

Basi­cally, I don’t know where I’d be with­out my dad. Now that I am a sin­gle father and rais­ing my child on my own, I try to live up to the role my father played in my life. If I can be half the father for my son that my dad was to me, I will feel blessed. So Happy Father’s Day, Dad! And always know that I appre­ci­ate the things you do!

Visit My Dad’s Web­site: AncientFootsteps.com

Last August, I had the won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to teach a fan­tas­tic group of kids. It reminded me just how much fun teach­ing and mak­ing art is for me. Easley First Bap­tist Church pro­vided a won­der­ful week-long sum­mer arts pro­gram for the chil­dren in our com­mu­nity. I vol­un­teered to teach car­toon­ing along­side an extremely tal­ented group of cre­ative peo­ple. These peo­ple came from many dif­fer­ent cre­ative dis­ci­plines, rang­ing from the visual arts, dance, music, and more.

In my class, stu­dents learned basic car­toon fig­ure draw­ing tech­niques and each child ended the course with a car­toon or comic book char­ac­ter that he/she designed. We all had loads of fun!

I am very excited that our church is plan­ning to offer the sum­mer arts pro­gram again this year in August on the 2^nd through the 5^th. So for all of you with ris­ing 2^nd-6^th grade kid­dos who are inter­ested in art be sure to sign-up!! If your child is inter­ested in tak­ing my car­toon­ing class, please sign up EARLY, as I am told my class filled up very quickly last year. We had a lot of fun!!

When I was a kid, I was all about the A-Team. I had to be home and parked in front of the tele­vi­sion for every episode. Woe be upon my par­ents if they had cho­sen “A-Team Night” for our fam­ily to go out for din­ner. I was hooked. When I read that an A-Team movie was finally on the hori­zon, I was filled with excite­ment and fond mem­o­ries of my child­hood. Best of all, my son would get to expe­ri­ence the adven­tures of Col. John “Han­ni­bal” Smith, Tem­ple­ton “Face­man” Peck, Bosco “B.A.” Bar­ra­cus, and of course “Howl­ing Mad” Murdock!

In prepa­ra­tion for the big event, I bought the boxed set of A-Team episodes that I so enjoyed as a child and, together with my son, re-watched them all. I was sur­prised how well they held up. So many things from my child­hood seem to fall short when I revisit them today. How­ever, with the obvi­ous excep­tion of the 80’s pro­duc­tion stan­dards, the team did not dis­ap­point. I had for­got­ten how well these actors “gelled together” on the show. So much so, that I hon­estly could not pick a favorite. Each char­ac­ter rep­re­sents some­thing that we all have in our­selves to some degree or another.

We finally got to see the movie on Sat­ur­day night, hav­ing heard so many neg­a­tive things from the idiots [crit­ics]. My son and I really enjoyed it. Did the actors have the same chem­istry as the orig­i­nal cast? …No. But in a big screen remake they rarely do. I think that a vast major­ity of the crit­ics that panned this movie were try­ing to view it as some­thing its not. If you have watched and enjoyed the A-team series, chances are that you will enjoy this movie. If you’re look­ing for “Cit­i­zen Kane”… Not so much.

Had a great time at Dragon*Con this year. Although we didn’t stay down there this year and expe­ri­ence our usual 3 days, we had a blast. While I wanted to see the vis­it­ing Whe­do­n­verse folks, we made this year’s trip short and sweet. We went down on Sun­day and spent the day sift­ing through the dealer rooms for good­ies. I found some old Uni­ver­sal Mon­ster movie posters and my son snatched up some Liv­ing Dead Dolls. Waaaay cool.

When we reg­is­tered, we chose how our names would read on our badges. We went with a Stephen King motif. My son’s read “It the Clown” and mine read “Beep-Beep Ritchie”. Both are from King’s “It”.

We did man­age to visit the Brown­coats, which is a tra­di­tion for us each year. My son has got­ten to “that age” where he doesn’t want me snap­ping pic­tures of him every few min­utes. I did man­age to get his pic with the Joker and Harley! After all, who could say “no” to good ol’ Mr. J? I also got his pic with a few char­ac­ters from the Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show. We had a great time, as usual, and are already plan­ning to be there for the whole week­end again next year.

Bret with Mr. J and Harley.

Bret with Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show Characters.