BERKSHIRES PS

Or, "The Shire" as the kids in the region call it. Two more examples of the creative outpouring that's going on all around us (or at least me) either through original efforts, or friends and family and even strangers turning me on to stuff I was unaware of, giving me some guidance through the plethora of creative abundance (etc.) include a young white rapper entertaining at the Peace Day festivities yesterday, who calls himself "The Aposoul" and wowed the crowd and got them moving to a new rap called, I think, "Peace Vibration."

It's not on the net anywhere yet, and what is there of his is obviously the work of a young man, a young white man, in The Shire. But the new one, "Peace Vibration" was smart, original in it rhymes and beat, and put over with the kind of charisma you have to have to stand on a stage alone with nothing but a beat track and your voice as it transmits your ideas through your rap. He was as self assured and yet humble at the same time as any rapper I've noticed yet, refreshingly so. Maybe these times are just what's needed to generate some original creativity in our society.

The other example was a young, fresh face of the future, skateboarding expertly and with that confident ease that those who do what they do very well often have, and I recognized him from some videos my little guy and his younger but incredibly hip nephew, my grandson, had enthusiastically turned me on to. Videos that had very few of the expected youthful cliched attempts to get a laugh, and a couple of which could have been transferred immediately to Saturday Night Live and been some of the best of that shows' recent skits.

To see for yourself (hope I didn't build him up so much your expectations will ruin the fresh originality of this when you see it's just kids having some fun with a movie camera), but check out this example and then hit the one call "Losers."