We love you, Miss Hannigan!

So, I’m sort of into Kickstarter.

Background is that the Texas legislature pretty much gutted the funding for the Texas Council for the Arts. Way bummer. Kind of. I know it would seem like I’d be the kind of person who would be really pissed off that we can bankroll things like the Super Bowl, but not scrape up some change for arts in this damn state. The elitist, espresso-sipping, ur-snob side of my personality should be totally bent. Maybe the proletarian, tequila-swilling barbarian side too.

But, to be honest, I’ve always been a little ambivalent about government money in the arts. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and all that. And given the watered down, stand-for-nothing, politically correct wankers that populate the government from city hall to Capitol Hill, the tune they will pay for is probably from Kenny G.’s greatest hits. Not that there’s not a place for the mainstream, but in the interests of artisitic integrity and freedom of expression, I believe that, by and large, art should be independent, grass-roots and responsible to no one but its creator’s vision.

Aaaaaand, I step off my soapbox.

Anyhoodle, I found Kickstarter. It’s this website where you can find creative projects that need funding. Anything from somebody who needs start up funds to get an invention off the ground to someone who is trying to fund an independent film. Kinda cool. You’re not going to get a cut if they succeed. But it’s a way to directly give your charitable donations (if they’re earmarked for the arts the way mine are) to somebody’s dream project that you’d like to help happen. It’s not like I could bankroll a mural or a play on my own. But my $5 plus somebody else’s $5 plus somebody else’s . . . Things can happen.

So today was my favorite Kickstarter moment, probably forever. A bunch of elementary school kids from Dallas need $500 to put on a production of Annie. Awesome. I looked at what they needed to make their goal and thought “I can do that.” So I dropped them some dough (not a lot, I’m not a Rockefeller), and put the munchkins over the top. Hell, yeah. That felt good! I’m imagining a class full of kids boogeying down because they gonna put on a show. Who knows? Maybe there’s some little budding Carol Burnett who will look back on this moment when she got to play Miss Hannigan as the moment it all started.

And if there are about 2 dozen kids who will be driving every adult in their life compeletely bananas for the next 2 months by singing The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow nonstop . . . oh, geez. Even better!