An Update From Stamford

What ho, dedicated readers. It's been an incredible arts season for me. I've been enjoying some of the best (and worst) performances that the Midwest has to offer.

This past Friday night, I experienced firsthand Calvin Coolidge Elementary Dramatic's performance of "Casey At The Bat". Now I thought it odd that such a drama would be presented in Winter when we all know that baseball is a Spring thing. So points off for that. Secondly, points off for the rather amateurish and downright unprofessional presentation. At the post-play cast party, or Mrs. Colebridge's math class as it was called, I rightly called the actor portraying Casey to the carpet for his inbility to even adequately pull off the wearing of a mustache. Be assured, my friends that when this eight year-old hack next treads the floorboards, he have the memory of a stinging rebuke to inspire his future performances.

Meanwhile, across town, on Monday, Dingley Middle School held and arts exhibition. Despite some astoundingly competent works like "Self-portrait in macaroni" and a brilliant "Jonas Brothers & Miley Cyrus" scene in Crayola markers, there were such derogatory works as "Death Mettle", which espouses to hold The Devil as its primary muse. Across a pathetic and rather parochial landscape of skulls and bones, an unnamed beast -- a mismatched amalgamation of lion, eagle and, I don't know, monkey or something -- savaging a nearly naked and not entirely wholesome looking blondie. Oh, for the days when masturbatory fantasies were not considered high art.

I can't for the life of me begin to fathom how these backwards, awkward mindsets think that art is something that can be made. No, my dear friends, art must be created. Matured. Distilled.

Lastly, I, myself, will keep an audience enraptured and spellbound as I do a reading of my poetry at Shadwell's Coffeehouse and Quick Lube next Tuesday night (weather & scheduled maintenance permitting). If you get a chance, please, stop by. It'll be positively enthralling.

And so it is that I leave you on that. Create and distill your art so that you may one day stand on the shoulders of giants and touch the cheek of God and be heroic.

Yours in artistic artistry,

Stamford Buckforth Pimplton, III