��- This week's horoscopes are one entry back ��-
If you check out my web cam you'll see two of my bonsai in their window. They're both about 8 inches tall. I'm a freak, I like to watch tree's grow while I sit at work.
So last night was the Providence Poetry Slam finals. What - a - night.
As always we start off the night with the open microphone. Now usually I only let 8 people sign up because to be honest open Mic's aren't my favorite thing in the world - they can be so hit or miss that they run the risk of boring the audience and thus not coming back.
With that in mind I had pre-stacked the open mic a few days before hand. I had Kyria Abrahms, Sou MacMillan, Dave Blank, and Ray Davey set up in key spots to make sure some quality poetry and good performance would be heard throughout.
So 7:30 rolls around and the club is already packed with people - and a whole lot of poets want to read - a lot of poets who've been real supportive this whole past year - so of course I start to 'squeeze' people into the 8 slot open mic until it grows to a fat 16 person list. I bet I still turned 10 other people away. All I could say was sorry, the list goes up at 7:30 and I CAN'T let anymore people read...
I was afraid the open mic was going to be looong and tiresome, but boy was I wrong.
"Why?"
Well, almost everyone who read did great and energetic work. I think everyone was super charged about it being the finals and the 130 people (I counted) squeezed into that muggy little club didn't hurt either.
I can't list all the names because I don't have the list of them anymore, but apart from the people mentioned above p0etik read as well as the silent one...
and then towards the end Grass Hopper took the stage.
Grass Hopper is a hip hop style drum poet. He's on the pale side, muscular with dred-ish hair and when he gets up on stage he's wearing a black sarong, no shirt and no shoes.
Ray Davey was in the side room with me - where I stand because there's never anywhere to sit during the shows and who am I to take a seat from a person paying to see the show? I'm just the MC.
Grasshopper starts to drum, his words are projecting from the stage - syllabic rhyme schemes mixed with drum beats and catch lines getting the crowd moving and swaying to his music and message about masturbation.
Masturbation. You read that right...
and he is still drumming...
and he is still chanting...
and the poem is approaching the end, because by now I can just tell when a poem is approaching the end...
Grasshopper is standing, the drum is silent but he is yelling
he is yelling without the mic
and he is holding his sarong
and I am back stage saying "Oh No. To Ray"
and Grasshopper is ripping his sarong *off*
and he is suddenly a big ass muscular naked guy standing before 130 people
people are laughing
people are cheering
people are gasping in shock
a few people were shielding their eyes...
and his poem is done.
So I stood next to him in my shorts and T-shirt with my T-shirt pulled into itself in that sexy feminine way women used to do in the 70's... it's hard to describe (think of it as a half-shirt)
yelling "OH MY GOD I'm BLIND! I'VE GONE BLIND!!! But see I can be sexy too - YEAHHH!"
He bows, the crowd is now really laughing and I go on with the show.
Poor Becky. She had to follow that, but managed to pull off a good performance despite the previous distraction.
I think I introduced her something to the effect of "and here's a poet who won't be showing you their penis"
and it was true, because there were no more visible peni (plural of penis btw) on stage that night.
The open mic closed out with a great poem to music by Dave Blank (one of my DJ's) and a multi voice poem by Ray Davey.
I'd say it was a memorable open mic.
After the short break,The Morrigan took the stage for the feature. They rocked. On their site they have a tour diary. Go check it out. I'd give a better description, but I spend most of every feature running around getting everything ready for the slam and couldn't possible do their performance justice other than to say the crowd was really into their work.
After the feature it was another break and then The Slam.
I took the stage and began to speak...
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A poetry slam is a verbal boxing match between poets.
Poets will take the stage one by one verbally projecting and physically performing work of their own creation - meaning they have to have written it themselves.
These poems must be 3 minutes of less in length or we kill them. Actually we take points off if they go over time.
There can be no props, no costumes, no musical accompaniment, No Animal Acts! (at which point the crowd always yells back to me 'No Sex with Hippos' and then 'No poems about Slam' and I don't know why they yell that and really no one does, but they do it anyway)
Poems are judged by 5 randomly chosen members of the audience on a scale of 1 to 10 using 1 decimal point to cut down on ties, because we hate ties!
Zero sucks, zero sucks so bad their mother's mother should have never been born.
A 10. A 10 poem is the greatest poem ever - it produces simultaneous orgasm's thru out the room. Ooh yes, a 10 is that good.
The high and the low scores of the 5 judges are dropped - why? Because.
(at this point I start to really yell in usually successful attempts to whip the crowd into a frenzy)
And now I have one last question and that is: are you ready to slam?
I SAID, ARE YOU READY TO SLAM??!?
THEN LET'S SLAM!!!
First up...
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Sage Francis was on tour and couldn't make it back in time for the finals. Boo to him, but hey, a guy has to make a living... so we went with 7 poets in the finals instead of 8.
So the slam get's going. The first warm up poet - sort of a calibration poet so the judges can practice - was the first already chosen member of the team named David Gonzales, and then the second sacrifice poet was Gary.
Gary and David got the room smoking.
Then it was time for the actual slam. Gina scored a 26.6, Kareem scored a 26.4, Mike got a 28.3 - he was hot, Gis Lane couldn't carry the flash of the previous high score and got a 26.7, Vocab heated up the room again and got a 28.5, Alixa did a great poem and scored a 28.4, and closing out the first round which is a random round was Judith who tied the highest score so far with a 28.5 of her own.
Then my scoring program blew up and I had to take FOREVER to get the show rolling again - with me practically adding everything by hand before the second round could get going again and especially when a judge got lost in the bathroom and was a 'little' late getting back...
For the second round, we drop the competitors down to 5 poets and order them according to highest to lowest score.. This resulted in Judith going first and getting a 28.1, Vocab then scored a 28.3, Alixa lit the room on poetic fire and got a 28.8, Mike was feeling her fire - made it his own and got a whopping 29.1 - with 1 judge giving out a coveted crowd approving 10!
Judith and Gis Lane didn't advance to the third round,
so since the third and last round goes lowest cumulative score to highest, that meant Vocab was first up and did a poem that was great but only scored a 28.3 - giving him a total score of 85.1
Alixa was next, she did another poem that had the crowd howling and she ended up scoring a whopping 29.3 - not bad - and ended with a total of 86.5
Last up was Mike. Make or break time - as the person who comes in third only makes the team as an alternate - he starts reading and he finishes and the judges give him a 28.9 which totals up to an 86.3 putting him in second place,
and there was much rejoicing and fittingly it was one of the best slams of the season,
after that I paid the features, I paid the DJ�s, I tipped the bartender, packed it up, called it a night, and dragged my tired ass home to pass out...
and in a nut shell, this is what I do on the first Thursday of every month � apart from standing next to a big ass buck naked guy.
