Recently my friend Melanie, who is an art teacher at a local school, told me I was entered into their “Art Madness” competition. This is basically a bunch of artists going head-to-head in a “Final Four” type bracket to figure out who is the ultimate artist (in the students opinion of course.) Neither time nor location has any bearing on who battles who to begin with, so you can imagine my feelings when I learned I was randomly up against Michelangelo in the first round.

Yes, you read that right. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect friggin’ genius who created such utter and complete icons of art itself as the Statue of David, and a little mural thingy you might have heard of called the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Well, today Michelangelo went down in flames as yours truly took him in the first round by a 35 to 23 margin. Excuse me while I do a little celebratory dance! Now, might some of this have to do with my actually appearing in their classroom on several occasions, showing them both chalk mural and digital art demonstrations, and even helping them to create their own chalk drawings? Possibly. Well I am sorry if Mr. Lazy-Art-Genius couldn’t be bothered to make an appearance.

Actually, it is probably best that he didn’t show up as he would undoubtedly smelled far worse then me and tried to eat the student’s brains. Then I would have to remember Zombieland rule #2 and gone all double-tap on him!!!

In the end, my friend Sean put it best when he said:

“Michelangelo made a huge mistake when he chose not to paint super heroes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling!”

Well put my friend, well put.