I’ve literally been waiting 36 years to walk into a classroom and hear the teacher say, “I want you to come up with an action pose involving Popeye and Bluto.” (After that I branched out with a couple of Looney Tunes.)

When I was in the 2nd grade, I got scolded for drawing cartoons in class. Now that I’m in the 30th grade, I take classes in which I’m supposed to draw cartoons. Yeah! Suck it, probably-dead-of-old-age teachers of my youth! Anyway, I started two classes this week. One is my usual Naked Ladies in Artsy Poses Saturday morning class. My Wednesday night class, entitled “Figure Drawing for Cartoonists,” also includes drawing from life, but provides a nice complement to the Saturday class.

For my money (redeemable at Chuck-E-Cheese), the most touching scene in movie history occurs at the end of Chaplin’s 1931 “silent” City Lights. Charlie is the star, but it’s Virginia Cherrill that strikes me as beautifully, fallibly human, as her prejudices give way to the realization that she was revitalized by a Little Tramp.