Nationals Day 1

Approximately 24 hours ago the skies of Madison exploded in a torrent of rain, thunder, and lightning. Of course I slept through it. But that storm was a excellent start go an excellent day. I slept in, and then took my time packing, and checked out at 11:00. I then watched a movie, ate a burrito, and watched another movie. At which point I checked into my hotel. A great morning. Made especially great, by the fact that morning ended at 3:30 in the afternoon.

One of my team members then spent 40 minutes introducing me to loads of people. I am sure that one of them will remember me, but I will have forgotten them, and their will be much awkwardness.

I then took a nap on the floor, which was great, despite being on the floor. Then I went, and had dinner, talked to more poets (We had a facsinating discussion about cow udders) Then I went to kick off party. I maintain that the only reason we found that party was because of this beautiful creation of mine:

The kickoff party was great. I talked to a whole bunch of people. Met a whole bunch people, many of which I will probably forget. We then went back to the hotel. I started this blog post, but then I was interrupted by another of my team members informing me that I would not have to sleep on the floor, and proceeded to fashion a bed from two seats and a cusioned bench. I will end this blog post with a picture of that bed.

Adventures in Wi-Fi

It is relatively easy to set up a Wi-Fi network. It is also relatively cheap. As such many businesses offer free Wi-Fi for their customers. It is such a cheap and easy thing that there is really no excuse for charging for it.

The Tucson International Airport has free Wi-Fi. Several hotels between Chicago and Madison have free Wi-Fi. However Chicago Midway Airport decided to go against what everyone else is doing and charge for access to the internet. Because of them I spent two hours wandering about looking at people getting their luggage back. My bags are heavy. If I ever get arthritis, I am blaming you, Chicago.

Edit: 100th blog post. WOOT!

How It All Works

In approximately 2 days several hundred poets will descend on the unsuspecting town of Madison, Wisconsin. Those poets are traveling to this town under the guise of a "competition" So that outsiders can understand the nature of the event it is filled with things like judges, scores, winners and losers. But we the poets know that none of that matters.

The poetry is only happening at the same place so that more people can hear it. The only purpose of the competition is to raise the quality of the work. The only purpose of the winner is so that outsiders will feel that something has been accomplished.

The National Poetry Slam is a big party pretending to be a competition. Not only is there competitive bouts, but there are open mics, theme slams, workshops, and countless ciphers. Here are a few of the events I am looking forward to.

Nerd Slam - This has been on my list ever since I found out it existed. I have poetry for this. I am sure to meet so many cool people there. (By cool I mean at a similar level of nerdship as I am)

Okay, I lied there is only one in particular. But I am sure to be going to lots of different things. Here is a list of all the events that will be going on outside of the main competition.
http://nps2008.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=31

Here is an explanation of how the competition works for those of you who happen to care:
http://nps2008.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=71

I plan on taking my computer with me to Madison, so I will be blogging throughout Nationals. Stay tuned.

Recordings Revamp

This entire summer I have been working on all of my poetry, both the writing and the performance. I realized recently that many of the recordings represent the piece as it was many weeks ago. So I have re-recorded, and replaced several of the tracks. I also have a new poem. In favor of search engine optimization (If you don't know what that means don't worry about it) I have posted each new recording as a separate post. I have also updated the playlist that you get when you click on "Recordings" Most of the rewrites are minor, however "Woman" had been changed into a group piece, and had significant work done to it. So has "Make a Joyful Noise" for those of you that knew it outside of this blog.

Enjoy the poems below.

Make a Joyful Noise

Woman

Conspiracy

Girlfriend

Team Tucson 2-0 Part 3

Sunday night we had a show at the grill, but that was rather unremarkable.  So I will waste no time talking about it, and move on to Tuesday's event.

Tuesday night at the UA poetry center the Tucson Slam went head to head with a group of academic poets from the University of Arizona.  When performing our own original work we won, but it was in the bonus rounds that they really shined.  There was a cover poem, where each team chose a poet to recite a work of classical poetry.  Our representative had a finger puppet of the poet she was performing.  Surely that would ensure our victory, but they had this really long poem that was performed beautifully.

Their was also a round where we had to give them a copy of one of our poems and they had to read it.  They handed us this poem that had these gigantic variants in font size.  Everything from inches high, to millimeters small, the poem just looked imposing.  But our team member rocked it.

We handed the all male team a poem entitled "Redfoot Woman"  an identity piece about female sexuality, and sexuality in general.  The refrain of the poem is "I am redfoot woman"  But the person they chose to do it, did this incredibly silly rendition, and they truly deserved that win.

Then came the final round.  We had been told at the beginning that the final round would be a limerick round and we were to write them about the other team.

We had this amazing limerick about the guy that read Redfoot woman.  Their was some random thing about oral sex.  We won all was well, and we made some decent money too.

Now all we have left is one practice, and then Nationals.  I plan on blogging through Nationals so stay tuned.

Team Tucson 2-0 Part 2

So we get home from Mesa at about 5:00am. I found out that I act drunk when I am really tired. I am only 18, but people kept asking me if I had been drinking. Go figure.

So on Saturday night we had another show (For those of you keeping track at home that's 3 shows in a row.) This slam was like every other slam except Team Tucson was the feature. We all rocked it, but there was one moment which sticks out in my mind.

I am in a group piece that talks about why kid's eat their boogers (hilarious poem, I wish I had written it) Everything was going well until we approached these two lines.

Would we have evolved this behavior without justification?
Would children cling to this habit just to make parents angry?

The first line belongs to the woman who wrote the poem, the other line is mine. However as she said her line, what came out of her mouth was:

Would children cling to this habit without justification?

I still don't know how it happened, but somehow my brain went into overdrive, I realized that she had switched the line up, and somehow managed to come up with the perfect line to follow that one:

Would we have evolved this behavior just to make parents angry?

Call it a poetry miracle, or great feat of mental maneuvering, that was the best way to mess up a line.

The rest of the night was a really awesome slam. Loads of cool poets were there and the ones I thought were good were advancing for the part. The judges were feeling harsh that night, but that gave me an excuse to boo them loudly (which killed my throat. Not that I had to worry about it, my poetry was done for the night.

The after party was fun, and all in all it was a great night. I'm going to wrap it up here and give more details about the later events in future posts.

Team Tucson 2-0

I happen to have the privilege of being a member of the Tucson slam team. So far we have had two shows, and two competitions. They were all awesome. But as those few words hardly qualify as a blog post I will expound.

On Thursday we had a show at the loft, but I already ranted about it's awesomeness, so I will move on. The next day the whole team, and our coach's girlfriend piled into a minivan and drove up to Mesa. They had requested our presence for a bout. This was the first time that any of us chose out poems on the spot. It is good slam strategy to pick your poem based on the poem that went before it, so that is what we did. There was a great deal of awesome poetry, but we ended up just barely pulling ahead. but it is not what happened during the event, but after it that was truly magical.

The venue was essentially an alley with some tables. The entire slam the wind was blowing and their was lightning and thunder. The threat of a monsoon downpour was always imminent. But the clouds held. Then the slam ended. Mere seconds after we got all the expensive sound equipment inside the clouds erupted. Any other group of people would have ran for shelter, but we are poets.

Both teams ran about the rain, splashing in puddles. I even got up on a table and did the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet. Then one person spoke up, and said the one thing that excellently summed up the situation

"This is the perfect date. It's pouring rain. He's doing Shakespeare. She's in her underwear. I'm soaking wet. And it didn't cost me a thing."

As this post is getting rather long I will save the descriptions of the other events for later posts. So stay tuned.

You Know You Would

New Macbook

As I type this post I have one dvd ripping, two torrents downloading, and one seeding. My old computer would have been stopped in its tracks with all this going on. But I have a new macbook. 2.1 Ghz of raw apple awesomeness hums beneath my fingertips. Every day that I use this amazing machine I am impressed by something new. I left town for awhile and left my laptop on with the lid closed. So it was in a sleep mode. For 24 hours it slept in my dresser drawer. The power only drained by 10%. That's not sleep, that downright comatose.

iPhoto is a joy to use. I have got several other cool programs like Handbrake, to rip DVDs, or Qumana, so I can blog when I'm not connected to internet and just upload with one click once I have a connection. Front Row is a great multimedia experience. I realize this isn't particularly interesting, but I just need to rave a bit about my new baby. Which, I just realized, needs a name. Thoughts?