My own Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, and occasional commentary on all of the above.
Ok, I lied. Quick fix! Ed Garcia is THE man! The CD (5 PAST 13) is going to be ready for Monday night's show and it's purely because he busted his ass to get it done. The mastering, the design, the production...hell, he even ordered the track list! (I'm #13.) Fuck collectivism, it takes individuals with the drive and determination to get things done. All committees do is talk and obstruct progress. Is it obvious that I'm not looking foward to the collective meeting at the end of the month? Going to take a lot of convincing to get me…
So last night was the rather inauspicious relaunch of louderJAM. Light turnout, low energy and some of the most random MFs on the open mic. WTF?!?! The Impossible Home excerpt was interesting if a little sloppy in its adaptation to a different space. Reminded me somewhat of the erotica reading a few years back at Spy, though not as polished. Curious what the whole production looked like. All in all, it bodes well for future collaborative projects. (Side note: Why is Sabrina so ridiculously talented? Beyond the poetry, she sings, dances and speaks Spanish like it was her native tongue!…
Many say it isn't. I say, it depends. One of the arguments against it that I hear the most is that it's unfair to pit a freestyle against a poem that's been crafted over time, edited and revised, etc. If you picked up some slam bias from the "unfair," you nailed the issue. Freestyle is impressive to an audience, generally scores high and, therefore, e=mc2 and freestyle is not poetry! There's also the question of how much of the freestyle is actually improvised, with the inference that the prefacing of a piece that may incorporate pre-existing work as a freestyle…
America is stupid. At least the ones that watch American Idol and take the time to vote. I mean, really, what the fuck was THAT last night?!?! Ruben in the bottom two? Trenyce booted while Camouflage Doughboy lives on? That fake jarhead couldn't even hold his head up while Ruben stood out there waiting for the results, knowing it should have been him instead. Bad enough he didn't get a chance to step on a landmine somewhere in the middle of the deserts of Iraq, doing the job he volunteered for, but to sit up there watching two people with…
Found parking quickly this morning! Yay! Salomé and the kids are back tonight! Yay! Going back to Hartsdale. Boo! Last night's slam... Need another day to digest it. Maya Azucena: WOW! The slam took a back seat to her performance. Read my new poem (the end result from last week's free write) at the end of the showcase. It got some surprisingly strong reactions that caught me off guard as I'm not good with compliments. Not sure if it's because so many people that are around now have never really heard me read or the ones that have are just…
In the breakup with my last girlfriend before Salomé, I left a trunk full of personal items behind that my ex threatened to throw out. She never actually did throw it out but I never got it back either. There were a lot of things in that trunk I'd like to get back, not the least of which are a bunch of my grandfather's poems and lyrics that my mother gave to me after he passed. Isaac LeCharles Harper was a small-time record producer in the 60's, back when people weren't properly credited and were regularly cheated out of royalties.…
Josh Gracin. Why does this twangy fool irritate me so? I've been Googling him to get some more information on his status and it's all annoyingly vague and largely supportive. It's disgusting that this guy is living it up in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, "pursuing his dream," supposedly using his leave-time to remain on the show. Granted, he's not infantry (some kind of maintenance) but the fact of the matter is that we're at war, some of his unit IS deployed and it's a total insult to the other kids who, if not actually in Iraq risking their…
