smile-with-head-tilt photos of a pre-Spring Fling event, fifteen summer camp ads and CSL’s House Tour info. Classic signs of Spring in Piedmont. Everything right as rain. It’s no wonder that 50'ish years ago the Bird Calling Contest sprang from Piedmont’s springtime springy-ness. Newcomers, which incidentally is anyone who has been in Piedmont less than 30 years, may not know that in it’s heyday, the Leonard J. Waxdeck Bird Calling Contest was the event of the year. If the only version of Piedmont’s bird calling contest you’ve seen has been in the last fifteen years, then you haven’t really seen The Bird Calling Contest.
We’re living in a time where praise is handed out like peep-show pamphlets on the Vegas strip. Everything is amazing or fantastic or worst of all…funny. I believe the generalized dummying-down is such an injustice. In the case of the birdcalling contest, the dummying-down was an absolute tragedy. When did we start defining funny as someone simply acting ridiculous? Funny is serious business. It isn’t funny to get up on a stage in a costume that involved no thought doing a skit that involved no preparation. Improvisation is one thing, but that requires genuine talent from someone who is skilled at thinking on their feet, not someone who simply forgot their lines and looks ridiculous. That’s called a waste of everyone’s time and money. I’d also like to point out that making references to obscure movie lines with which only three of your friends are familiar is not a good bit. It’s painful at a high school graduation ceremony with grandparents, aunts and uncles in the stands wondering what in the hell you’re talking about and it’s painful in a school production like, say, a bird calling contest when your skit has everyone wondering why they didn’t stay at home to watch Mad Men re-runs. God sakes, kids, step up your game! Your routine for the bird-calling contest should take months of planning! The birdcall should be authentic! Everyone from the President to Tim Lincicum and Alice Waters to Sheryl Sandberg should get an invitation! This is the big time! This is the Leonard J. Waxdeck Birdcalling Contest! I know they’ve changed the name, but they shouldn’t have! This was the event that made Walter Cronkite break down and laugh on air! Tickets were sold-out months in advance! You could hock those babies on the street for triple the face value! Attendees dressed to the nines for the occasion! Strawberries and champagne were served pre-event and of course, with glass not plastic and linen napkins, obviously! This was top-notch stuff, people. The theater was perfumed with an abundance of fresh floral arrangements and t.v cameras from every station lined the periphery of the theater and all of Magnolia Avenue, for that matter! Please, can someone go back and review the history books on this one? Things don’t always stand up to the test of time, but this is something that would.
Unlike the current..ahem..birdcalling contest, the original had no skits. It was strictly birdcalls. Tongue and cheek, the whole affair, mind you, but birdcalls, nonetheless. There are two camps on this topic, but I admit that, if done well, I think the skits add something. However, in recent years there have been very few skits that were worthy of note and in fact most were an abomination. It occurred to me that we’ve become so much a nation of Beevis & Butthead type humor that today’s youth really may not have an understanding of what constitutes intelligent humor. Subjective, of course, but still…bad is bad no matter how many feathers we tape to it. I rather like the addition of the skits assuming they’re actually funny. Funny, for purposes of a birdcalling contest, would be anything that makes the entire audience roar with laughter. The sound of three teenage boys sniggering to an otherwise awkward cricket-silence would indicate that it was not funny. Sadly and horrifyingly, recent years have produced many such moments.
