Now this has got to be one of the sneakiest, most underhanded, cunning stunts ever pulled by a community of people famous for trying to corrupt the minds of youth and everyone else who spends time sucking air.
Not content with pushing its hedonistic wares over its own zealous cult, the Colorado pot industry announced this week that it would snuggle up to the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and offer a spate of “cannabis-friendly” concerts this summer. How could the CSO sink so low?
I am shocked. I am shocked and dismayed that an industry as forthright and upstanding as the state’s nascent recreational pot industry would hitch its wagon to a clan of musical artists known for trying to infuse the likes of Mozart and Bernstein into the minds of hapless children.
Don’t think I don’t see what’s going on here. Lure a bunch of stoners into a swank venue with sauvignon blanc and caponata and blueberry kush, and when they are most vulnerable — bam! They sneak in the “Clair de Lune” or “Appalachian Spring”. What could be more devious than getting innocent young adults hooked on classical music by letting them hear how sensuously familiar it can be?
Don’t you see what a gateway selection Ode to Joy really is? Sure, it all starts so innocently, with a little Vivaldi “Four Seasons”. Then you hook them with Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, shocking the group when they realize that the famous United Airlines commercial music was an American classical masterpiece all along. Reel them in by injecting them with Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”. Opus-pocus, classical junkies.
From there, I can guarantee you it’s going to be silver haze and heavy Rachmaninoff, tapping feet to “Symphony No. 2”. Mouths open for everyone smoking strawberry cough and drowning in Brahms’ “Violin Concerto”. That’s just sick.
Where is this all going? To arts and cultural hell, that’s where. Before long, small theater houses will be luring innocent stoners to come and yuck it up at bent comedies like Spamalot or Little Shop of Horrors. And you know where that leads. It won’t be long before people give up wholesome nights spent in front of mind-expanding reality shows or heady video games to spend an evening watching ungodly theatrical favorites like GreaterTuna. Worst of all, there will be packed houses for crap like Two Men of Verona and Much Ado About Nothing. That’s right, folks. The Bard. Get used to it.
No doubt the museums will jump on this idea like red on a Monet. My ears already ache from the claims of, “way cool, man” echoing through the usually empty Egyptian art floor at the Denver Art Museum. And it’s back to the 1970s folks with Lemon Diesel Laserium nights, stealing people away from virtuous evenings with HBO specials. And those old, dusty boring bones at the Natural History Museum? Egads. Imagine the lines of unsuspecting get-highs gawking for hours at a bunch of lame dinosaurs or shiny gems and crystals at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Demented arts addicts are taking advantage of the fact that modern ballet takes on a whole new, deeper meaning when you’re riding the buzz of a train wreck.
That’s where this is headed, folks. Shakespeare. Beethoven. Degas. Tchaikovsky. Barnum Brown. Brancusi. Hawking.
Oh the humanities.
It’s not enough that sirens like the Colorado Symphony have lured generations past to delinquent lives of thinking and wondering and marveling. Now they want young people who safely guard their intellects with Arrested Development, Bridalplasty and Yahoo! News to join the glassy-eyed, slack-jawed white hairs in the bowels of the Boettcher Concert Hall.
And rather than just fade away with some sense of dignity, like reading has, arts and humanities activists will stop at nothing to drag empty-headed Americans into their den of equity, even if it means seducing Aurora residents when they’re down. I mean high. Resist this opus now, Aurora, or suffer the fate of enlightenment for the rest of your days.
Reach Editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com
YOU are the reason that I read the Sentinel every day.
Imagine if they lured people into the symphony with wine or champagne. what a disaster that would be. oh wait, that is already allowed. Dave Perry only likes certain drugs.
Imagine if you had actually read the part of article where Dave already mentions seducing them with a sauvignon blanc (wine).
It is certain that you do not recognize sarcasm when you read it….
I never realized Dave Perry was a neanderthal! I love classics, opera, ballet, symphony. Have you noticed the majority of audiences have white hair? Something must be done to attract younger audiences. In moderation, pot is no different than alcohol. And I am one of the white haired members of the audience. Bravo to the symphony!