Max Fleischer, Revolutionary Animator

Tags

Betty Boop, Gulliver's Travels, Hay's Code, Max Fleischer, Paramount Pictures, Popeye, Superman, Walt Disney

When I first saw Max Fleischer’s 1934 animated short, Little Dutch Mill, the enlightened ending knocked me out! As a wicked miser is about to put Hansel and Gretel’s tongues on fire (yikes!) the villagers race to the rescue. Rather than punishing, they actually rehabilitate the filthy culprit by scrubbing him and his house clean. (How Dutch!) I had to find out more about the creator Max Fleischer who has been overshadowed by his rival Walt Disney.

Richard Fleischer’s loving biography of his father, Out of the Inkwell sheds light on a decent family man, studio head and artist, who created Betty Boop and breathed animation into the established characters of Popeye and Superman. “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!” was Max’s brainstorm. He created the concepts along with the technical methods and artistic style for his animations.

I wanted insight into the juxtaposition of the philosophy of the Little Dutch Mill to the Nazi’s rise to power in 1934 but Richard doesn’t touch on that. We can surmise the circumstances when in 1887, the child Max emigrated with his Jewish family from Austria to America. When Richard is asked to direct Disney Studio’s 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea, he honorably asked his father’s permission before agreeing to the project. Unheard of in Hollywood!

A pioneer in animation, in 1914 Max invented the Rotoscope, the technique that simplified motion capture for his first short about a clown…the precursor to his Koko the Clown. After filming his brother Dave in sequential poses, he painstakingly traced, then inked each of the 2600 frames so the action flowed seamlessly in the final cartoon. The series, Out of the Inkwell was born.

A creative force, Max moved fast to ride on the movie boom that came out of the great depression. Gulliver’s Travels with its dreamy storybook illustrations and Color Classics: Somewhere in Dreamland, including 30 of Fleisher’s works (as early as 1936) are available on DVD. In Christmas Comes But Once a Year you can watch the wild inventiveness of Max through his avatar Professor Grampy as he replaces the defective presents in the orphanage by reconfiguring all manner of household objects into exciting toys, as a train with a percolating coffee pot for the engine.

Contained in the biography is a cautionary tale about copyright and contracts for after overwhelming success and recognition, Max was stripped of ownership of his creations to the profit of Paramount Pictures. His name was scrubbed from the credits of the cartoons shown on television. He ultimately declined into near poverty. He died before he saw the revival of Fleischer Studios and his most favorite creation Betty Boop who fell out of public favor after being ‘too sexy’ for the Hays Code. Max never saw his name reinstated on the credits as respectfully shown here.

Steve Jobs—His Legacy

Tags

Apple, codex leicester, eichler home, joseph eichler, leonardo da vinci, marin county civic center, Steve Jobs

The Apple Marketing Philosophy
In Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, I was reminded of these principles that Steve Jobs followed throughout his career.
1. Empathy “We will truly understand their [the customers’] needs better than any other company.”
2. Focus “In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.”
3. Impute “People DO judge a book by its cover. We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.;…if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.

Eichler as Inspiration

Eichler home, courtesy Eichler Network Online

According to Isaacson, Steve Jobs spent his early childhood in a house developed by Joseph Eichler and attributed its clean design as “… instilling a passion in him for making nicely designed products for the mass market.” Eichler had been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and his vision of “simple modern homes for the American ‘everyman’.” This got my attention since I live in an Eichler home in San Rafael, California, where the Marin County Civic Center designed by Wright is a striking landmark.

Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci

Codex Leicester: Studies of the Illumination of the Moon
Leonardo da Vinci, 
1508-1512
(Purchased by Bill Gates in 1994)

Before diving into Isaacson’s book, I had just closed the cover on Leonardo: The First Scientist by Michael White so pardon my impulse to compare the two men. Considered geniuses, each led major cultural shifts—the polymath, Leonardo da Vinci, of the Italian Renaissance and Steve Jobs of the Silicone Valley high tech explosion. Original thinkers, who didn’t quite fit in with their peers, they were primarily self-schooled. Tireless perfectionists and boundless visionaries, they integrated art/design and science/technology. Both seemed to emotionally suffer the circumstances of their births: Jobs—his adoption; Leonardo—his illegitimacy. They were vegetarians—unusual in Leonardo’s time. Among their differences were temperament and appearance. The exceptionally handsome Leonardo had a lovable disposition and adorned himself in fine clothes. Jobs preferred a ‘uniform’ and had more than 100 black mock turtlenecks custom made by the fashion designer Issey Miyake. As for Jobs’ personality, well…read the book.

“Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they want before they do.”
– Steve Jobs

Muse of Divine Intervention

Tags

Caravaggio, illuminated manuscript

First there is nothing. Then there is something. Nothing short of a miracle, right? Just where do those creative ideas come from?

Gospel Book of Archbishop Ebbo of Reims


816-835 Carolingian, Illumination
Bibliotheque Municipale, Epernay, France

When early Christianity needed to spread the word of the gospel, the man for the job was the apostle Saint Matthew. He even had his own pose! The bending over his paper, quill in hand, is officially called the ‘Author Portrait’ by art historians. This Carolingian illuminated manuscript insinuates that these are not the writer’s own thoughts but emanate from ‘divine intervention’. The laboring Saint holds an ink horn that receives the word directly from the angel’s unfurling scroll. (He’s tiny in the upper right corner—look hard!) Called the ‘Shivering Style’, the intensity of this profound moment is expressed in the Saint’s anguished brow and the frantic wrinkles of his robe. Even his hair crinkles with electricity as if he had a bad perm.

I relate to this Carolingian St. Matthew as a muse reaching beyond a religious context to a larger creative one. A promise to the artist that the paper will not remain blank. However I am the purveyor of my own thoughts translated to words and pictures.

Saint Matthew and the Angel
Caravaggio
1602, Oil on canvas
Formerly Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin (destroyed)

There are countless artistic interpretations of this theme but let’s fast forward to 1602 where Caravaggio, appealing to the poor unschooled masses, interpreted St. Matthew as barefoot and illiterate. In the above photo reproduction, we see his struggling hand physically guided by a patient angel. When this canvas was rejected as undignified by the patron, Cardinal Matteo Contarelli, Caravaggio created another that was accepted. In this painting (shown below) a hovering angel keeps his distance and lists the gospel on his fingers (One…and a…) to the Saint who records with his own hand. Only a black and white photograph remains of the first painting—destroyed in WWII. It is civilization’s loss—this example of Caravaggio’s humanistic approach and a clue to a creative process filled with awe.

The Inspiration of Saint Matthew
Caravaggio
1602, Oil on canvas
San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome

Art Stars at the Movies

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Hugh Grant, Junebug, Mickey Blue Eyes, Outsider Art, Saint Sebastian

Who makes the art that appears in the movies?

When the gilt framed canvas of Saint Sebastian makes its debut in the 1999 comedy, Mickey Blue Eyes, Michael, the auctioneer (Hugh Grant) is especially alarmed for he is coerced to peddle this and other paintings by the numbskull Johnny, nephew of the mob kingpin—or else! A gaudy burlesque queen and a yellow-costumed clown shoot arrows into the annoyed looking martyr.

See St. Sebastian on the movie’s trailer. Pause at .59

Yet, Johnny’s whacky interpretation isn’t all that bizarre in the history of art. Giovanni del Biondo’s 14th C. triptych at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence is described by the curator as ‘especially prickly’ for indeed, the Saint is pierced with dozens of arrows while the pack of archers poise to shoot again. (Story is that he miraculously didn’t die from this attack.)

 Martyrdom of St. Sebastian and Scenes from his Life (v. 1370)
del Biondo, Giovanni, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (Firenze, Italy)
Triptych, wood panel, 224×89 cm.

Of course, Johnny did not create the paintings in the movie. In real life, an un-credited artist painted them with uncanny wit adopting the point of view of a church-going mobster. As therapy to “get his anger out”, the hitman Johnny creates more artworks including a winged Christ brandishing a lethal machine gun.

The biblical themed, racist, sexually obsessed paintings in the 2005 Indie, Junebug, are by the character David Wark, an outsider artist. A Chicago gallery owner travels with her husband to visit his family in North Carolina but her primary agenda is to secure the art for her gallery. I could have sworn Wark was the real deal but he is played by actor Frank Hoyt Taylor who does a masterful job of embodying the character. See the paintings at the Junebug website (Follow the trail: About the movie>David Wark’s Paintings.)

The paintings were commissioned for the film based on styles of well-known self-taught visionary painters like Howard Finster. (Shown recently at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor.) Wark’s bloody interpretations were painted by Ann Wood, who in her personal work, creates charming birds from repurposed materials. Her popular art blog is a pictorial journal of her working process. Since I have used birds extensively in my own art, I feel a special kinship to her and am enamored with her uncensored flow of making things along with her ability to create works for a totally different persona.

Both the fictional Johnny and Wark share obsessions for religious themes and violence. Fitting the description of visionary or outsider artists, both are untrained and unaware of a larger art world. The uncensored, original perspectives are fascinating and darkly amusing. How ‘guerilla theater’ of these movies to raise our awareness of this art category!

THE LOGO GAME

Tags

Andy Warhol, brand, Campbell Soup, labels, logos, POP art

While searching the internet for games as holiday gifts I stumbled upon this: The LOGO Board Game by Spin Master. It’s a trivia game that promises fun for the whole family while testing your knowledge of leading brands. One Amazon reviewer said: “And, you’ll probably wonder, since playing this is really similar to watching a couple hours of commercials, shouldn’t they be paying me to play this game?”

At first I was put off by the blatant consumerism of the game but now, I confess that as a brand and logo design consultant, I find the box cover—a snapshot montage of pop culture—to be amusing. It’s a fact that we are bombarded by logos—all competing for our attention.

The board game’s logos, whether old timers as, The Jolly Green Giant (who doesn’t love him?) or new kids on the block as, the iPhone, are likely to be recognized by the players. After all, we are consumers who have a brand experience with the products. This can be a passionate experience. As, Peet’s Coffee headquartered in Berkeley, California has a loyal customer base called ‘Peetniks’. Amazon reviewers of the LOGO game mentioned the nostalgia factor and one said, “It truly is amazing how many images and taglines get stuck in our heads from the constantly repeating messages projected at us.”

Well, Yeah! That’s exactly what companies hope for. A walk around your house will yield dozens of logos. Not moving from my desk chair, these are the first logos I see:

I wasn’t very happy with my limited choices so Charlotte and I grabbed my iPhone and had fun snapping product labels we found in the pantry. This is what we collected in just a few minutes.

Conclusion: Food labels are more fun than tech labels. Point your camera around your house and see just how many product logos you find. More than just logos, these are emblems of our culture, telling us how we live. (I am now on a MAC using Apple software.)

Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato), 1962 Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol tapped into our cultural icons when he produced the Campbell Soup Cans and defined POP art.

Am I going to play the LOGO Board game? It’s starting to seem more interesting! In the meantime, we made up our own game of photographing labels. Maybe we’ll even make art out of our experience.

Falkirk Cultural Center Holiday Art Auction

The Falkirk Cultural Center in San Rafael is having its Holiday Silent Art Auction Friday, December 9, 2011. It promises to be a fun event with wonderful works of art, wine, appetizers and live music. The annual fundraiser helps insure the future of Falkirk’s galleries and community programs. 100 artists who have shown at Falkirk through the years are giving back by donating works of art.

Visitors are enthralled by the beautiful historic mansion set in the surrounding lush landscape. Whereas many contemporary art galleries are minimalist to show off the art, these once lived-in rooms demonstrate that art can be lived with.

My first visit to the upstairs art galleries at the Falkirk mansion was one of those unique experiences where the art installation perfectly belongs in the venue. Rivers of period piece toys and household objects tumbled down stairs and piled onto the floors. The obsessive mass was a blur until Ken pointed to a metal airplane that was exactly like one he had as a child. Nostalgia became an organizing principle to identify each item. This show walked the fence of art-as-concept on one side and relics-of-history on the other. I was impressed that the Falkirk Cultural Center, in spite of its Victorian facade, had a progressive attitude about art.

The galleries continue to transform, chameleon-like with each new exhibition. The trees and gardens peeking through the large windows augmented the landscape photographs of Ken’s one-person show in 2007. Later, I would participate in a three-person show with Christine Walker and Cynthia Jensen where the art lived organically in those rooms.

Falkirk has a fascinating history along with the spunk to keep up with contemporary times. Beth Goldberg is the curator who is so passionate about art and the vision of Falkirk, she manages to steer ahead in spite of recent significant decreases in staff and budget. The relationship between a community gallery and the local artists is a symbiotic one where both need and support each other. This is expressed throughout the years as Falkirk shows primarily California artists. The auction was a success last year through the support of sales, sponsors, and a dedicated committee of volunteers. (I was happy to donate my services to design the invitation.) This holiday season is a perfect opportunity for artists and art lovers to give back and support Falkirk Cultural Center. A Gift for Falkirk. A Gift for You.

Navigating the Art Museum Blockbuster

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art museum, De Young Museum, Edgar Degas, Impressionism, Jean-Francois Raffaelli, Legion of Honor, Paul Gauguin, Whistler's Mother

I am amazed at the fervor of people clamoring to the art museum blockbuster shows. Are we all really that nuts for art? This week, the De Young Museum in San Francisco was kind enough to send me VIP tickets for any viewing time for Masters of Venice, when I had complained about not being able to navigate through the mob during my recent visit.

If I can come away from a museum with even one artwork that moved me and stays in my head, I am rewarded. Last year’s Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, was so jammed, I couldn’t see the art. While visitors on the audio tour were obediently following the sequentially numbered script, I had to strategize “dives” when openings presented themselves. Through one such dive, I found myself transfixed in front of a stunning portrait of a family in the plain interior of their house. I recognized the Breton caps from paintings by Paul Gauguin. Whereas, Gauguin used a palette of reds, purples and greens, the hardy solemnity of these peasants is symbolized in a range of browns with accents of Prussian blue.

La famille de Jean-le-Boîteux, paysans de Plougasnou
Jean-François Raffaëlli (1876) ©photo musée d’Orsay

La famille de Jean-le-Boîteux, paysans de Plougasnou by Jean-François Raffaëlli, strikingly unique in composition and tone when completed in 1876, is spookily contemporary. A male figure stands half out of the frame, one eye fixing on us, daring us to look back. (Is the artist the half we don’t see?) The unnerving gaze is echoed in that of the seated man. The woman seated in profile and knitting reminds us of the more famous, Whistler’s Mother, done in 1871—a year after the lesser known work of Raffaëlli.

Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 or Portrait of the Artist’s Mother
James McNeil Whistler (1871)

In the Raffaëlli painting, another woman sits forward, face tilted down, her shoulders slightly bent from years of toil. The converging stripes of her long skirt point to her hands, so enormous, they could pull birthing calves from cows or uproot whole trees. These work hands lay on her lap in repose, immortalized by the hand of the painter. I was leaning in to examine each luscious brush stroke when my deep reverie was interrupted by a woman’s chirpy voice, “She sure could use a manicure, couldn’t she?”

Actually, those dirty fingernails might have excluded this painting from the original Impressionist Group show if not for the invitation by Edgar Degas, an influential and important figurative painter who also favored odd perspectives and framing in his compositions. 140 years later, the woman’s comment encapsulates the bourgeois prejudices against the brave and visionary artist who doesn’t prettify but blazes new conceptual territory.

The Absinthe Drinkers, another of Raffaëlli’s paintings was recently acquired by the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. On permanent display, we can contemplate it whenever we wish in respectful solitude…far from the maddening crowd. However, for me, it will never take the place of La famille de Jean-le-Boîteux. Although my brief encounter with it was rudely interrupted, the essence of that painting is forever inside of me.

Photo Resolution: PPI vs. DPI

Tags

dots per inch, DPI, photo resolution, Photoshop, pixels per inch, PPI

PPI (pixels per inch) vs. DPI (dots per inch)

Relax. They act the same and whether publishing on the web or on paper, that’s really all that matters for our purposes. In my design business, I regularly receive digital photos from clients that are not technically suitable for print. Usually, the photo has been grabbed from a website where the image size is smaller than our target print size. Then I have to break the news, which is received as if there has been a death in the family or “no more candy.” My intention here is to clear up the confusion and make all of our lives, happier, easier, more productive!

PPI refers to the digital image consisting of square pixels put together to make up a whole image. When you enlarge a photograph on your computer screen, you can see the square pixels of color.
DPI refers to the printed page. The dots per inch combine to make a photo look like smooth color. If you look through a magnifying glass, you can see the dots.

A 72 ppi photo downloaded from the internet, blown up and traditionally printed will be fuzzy. That is because print requires approximately 300 dpi resolution from the original photo. To be safe for publications where your photo is included, submit a headshot of yourself in a 240-300 ppi jpeg, at the final size it will appears, as 3 in x 4 in.

Put your best face forward. Hire a professional photographer. And smile! You wouldn’t believe how many headshots I receive that look like passport photos—or worse—mugshots of criminals. (They scare me.) And these are photos from people in leadership positions!

1. ORIGINAL  The original photo is 300 dpi. It is down-sized for this page to 225 x 210 pixels. It is still 300 ppi. It is 74K.

When I close it and place it on my desktop, it looks like this. The minimal info includes the pixels: 225 x 210. For more info, click once on the jpeg icon. Go to: Menu>File>Get Info

2. Sized for Web This photo is decreased from above ORIGINAL photo to 72 ppi with image size to 54 x 50 pixels, 49K.

3. Increased from Web Size This photo was enlarged from the small photo. There isn’t enough information for an enlargement so the photo blurs. The size is 225 x 210 pixels, 72 ppi, 147K

Photos © Ken Smith Photography

RESIZE PHOTOS
To resize photos follow the steps below for MAC users and Photoshop CS5. (Always save originals and create separate files for your changes.)
Open Photoshop. (I click on the icon on my dock.)
Click open. Go to Menu Bar >Image >(dropdown) > Image Size

Note the comparison of pixels to inches. (Rather than keeping this ratio in my head, I can just open this window and see it.) To keep the proportions correct so you don’t lose clarity, uncheck the following:
_Scale Styles
_Constrain Proportions
_Resample Image

Change the Resolution from 300 to 72. See how the width and the height enlarged.

To keep the 72 ppi and reduce but not increase the pixel size. Check:
• Scale Styles
• Constrain Proportions
• Resample Image
Change the width to 1 in. The height will be in proportion because Constrain Proportions is checked.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Color?

Tags

camouflage colors, CMYK, color, color wheel, RGB

Who’s afraid of the big bad color? Not the mandrill. Not me. Nor my design clients and fans of my art. We indulge in it. Color is an essential descriptor of a story. It needs to apply to the situation so be mindful of what story your color choices tell. Recently, a dentist had his business cards printed in environmentally correct brown. Brown dirt for a dentist. (It was one of those consensus decisions by a poll of the employees.) He later had the cards reprinted in another color that he likes rather than one he felt he should use. 

ECC! (Environmentally Correct Color) Who decided that the only environmentally correct colors (ECC!) are green or brown? Was it the military with their experience in modern warfare using camouflage greens and browns?

What happened to Nature’s full color symphony?  The rainbow? The oranges, pinks and purples of sunrise? Flowers, birds, butterflies, tropical fish? How did Nature’s full symphony of color get whittled down to just two as a correct expression of concern for the environment? Other than when you need literal interpretations for earth and grass, please indulge in the generosity of Nature’s pallet of myriad colors. She’ll be honored!

The Rainbow and the Color Wheel  The Color Wheel corresponds to the colors in the rainbow. The center triangle shows the three primary colors: yellow, red, blue. Secondary colors: orange, purple, green. These are derived from the primary colors. Blue + yellow=green. Blue + red= purple. Yellow+ red= orange. All colors can be mixed from varying the three primaries. Bold contrasts are opposite colors on the wheel. Tints of the same primary create a monochromatic effect. See the adjacent range of blues.

Color Favorites  What’s your favorite color? Most people have favorites. Some are pretty intense about it. This bias can work for or against a design communication goal: colors that best represent the message and extend the brand. When designing logos, I present the first drafts in black and white so that color doesn’t get in the way of the basic structure of the logo. Once the design is solid and approved, I then mock up the logo in various colors so we can choose the best. Build the house then paint the walls.

Red  I just have to have it. My car, my front door, my leather sofas, shoes. The red bear logo. (My name, Bercu, is Roumanian for bear.) Since my design business is me, why not red? And red gets attention.

Web Color  It is a challenge to achieve color uniformity across all browsers and monitors and electronic devices. For a graphic designer who started in the business when there was only print, it is frustrating to see my carefully chosen colors appear so erratically different on different monitors. Even though professional web developers test in the various situations, it simply is not possible to control a consistent outcome but the essential color will come across.

Useful Color Terms
RGB: Additive primaries of red, green and blue mixed together in varying amounts. Used primarily for screen color, as web, and desktop publishing.
CMYK: Four color process used in printing. Represented by tiny dots of cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black.)
PMS: Pantone® Matching System colors used by designers for exact color selection in print. (These look like paint chips.)

Honor Nature’s Bouquet. Treat yourself to flowers every day.

Images are purchased, free usage or created by Bercu Design. 

Hippie Day

Tags

Hippies, Pledge of Allegiance

Today was Hippie Day at my granddaughter’s school. (One day after elections where my lead local favorites lost and two days before Veteran’s Day.) Children are crazy for dress-up in costume so a week after Halloween, Charlotte’s kindergarten class went all-out in a variety of accurate interpretations of the hippie theme. Charlotte created her “uniform” from an inherited green patterned long skirt (deeply folded over at the waist so it wouldn’t trail on the ground) matched with a green t-shirt—a speckled sea turtle decorating the front. It was her brainstorm to use a pink marker to tattoo her wrist with a peace sign with a circle around it. A green ribbon headband completed the outfit. Unlike her mom and I who have dark curls, she has the iconic hippy straight blond bangs and long hair…like Heidi Klum’s. Like Heidi, she also has pretty good taste in clothes on most days with color coordination as an unshakeable imperative. Her favorite colors are turquoise and pink so I was surprised when she went for green. She joined the other flower children in the circle on the round alphabet rug. A few girls were crowned with smooth braids entwined with flowers and ribbons, deftly managed by their mothers before the school start time of 8AM. Charlotte’s headband sat askew with a cranky knot and a clump of stray hairs standing straight up from the rest of her bangs. One boy wearing a grey t-shirt sporting a peace emblem, distributed yellow daisies to his classmates. It brought me back to those days when my then-husband was a medic in the Army reserves and I pushed my baby (Charlotte’s mom) in a stroller on peace marches. My present husband (love the ring of that) had served in the air force as the head of a nursing unit for the severely injured returning from the Viet Nam war. He was a 20 year-old with this grave responsibility…just out of his teens, barely trained, taking care of fellow teenagers in trauma.

I stayed for the “Pledge of Allegiance” this morning—an unexpected promising start to the day. As Charlotte placed her right hand over her heart, she noticed the tattoo and invited others to look at it. The children were already focused on reciting the words and ignored her. They can’t yet grasp the meaning of the Pledge but they are at an age when all pledges are magical to utter. One child had the honored job of holding the flag. Their voices then rang out to “My Country, ’Tis is of Thee” and “America the Beautiful.” At first I just mouthed the words but soon I was singing along. It was fun. It was touching. These pure—not cynical—children are our future. They are learning step-by-step what it means to be citizens and guardians of our constitution. They finished with “This Land is Your Land” coordinated with hand motions while the teacher mentioned that this was sung during those hippie days. Written by Woody Guthrie in 1940, the song is nostalgic to me as it was revived in the 60s by popular folk singers including: Pete Seeger, the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan.

What does this have to do with the Art & Story of Design? This is the information gathering stage. Being an artist means being vulnerable. Living in a constant hypersensitive aware state of openly observing, receiving without judgment, internalizing, feeling, noting, musing, remembering, collecting and then, finding meaning, synthesizing and expressing your observation through your own unique voice.

Ken (Charlotte’s Grandpa) says, “Isn’t it just like a hippie chick to flash a peace sign while saying the Pledge of Allegiance?”