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Straight from the Boogie Down

“That mofo must be lying! All the shows can’t be that good!” Well, this mofo aint lying because the last Acentos was a 4 out of five stars affair.

The positives: first and foremost, Emanuel Xavier rocked the house. His set was well thought, well paced and extremely well written. The crowd was into him throughout and he never let them down. Providing the perfect blend of English, Spanish, slang and poetry would be one of the quintessential Acentos features. Really hard to pin this one down as THE quintessential features as it is so hard to pin down what exactly it is to be Latino but it was sure up there.

My hosting was very smooth this time around and I was able to conversate without be condescending or sounding forced. The little convos that I had with the crowd between open micers were chill and even though I was plugging the feature, CD and other venues it all seemed like fun.

The Open Mic is a double-edged sword. We are attracting ten plus readers for every show and have had to limit the mic at times. (Make no mistake, your Open Mic will make or break your venue because there is no such thing as a guaranteed feature and the Open Mic is where you will eventually cultivate new talent.) The quality of the mic is a bit less than what I would want. At this point of the game, I would want to see some serious forward movement in regard to some of our regulars work and will have to start suggesting some workshops or even may have to facilitate something in order to get them more on track. I have been lucky enough to have an almost 50/50 mix of nervous awkward readers and then more sure accustomed readers. Don’t get it twisted, that is not my ratio of bad and good poets because I have heard some damn good things from some shaky people and utter crap from some arrogant mofos. The lady quotient is rising to three out of the twelve and I can just see it getting better.

Attendance wise, the show is staying at a steady rate of about 35 heads and that’s cool for now but we need to get some young locals into call the place home and use it as a jump off for 13, the Nuyo and any other spots they may want to go to.

That and we banged out some CDs at a discounted rate with Acentos making up the difference. More on the CD another day.

measuringstick

let my synonymUS family know what is on my mind and it is not being well received. what is success? yes, we are producing some awesome work and we are letting people rock out and take chances but we are not filling in the seats. this shouldn’t be a concern if we were producing crappy open mics and the features were horrible but that is not the case and that is where my frustration lies. if the audience isn’t coming then there is a problem and I just want that to be known. of course, when passion overruns me i lay it out the way i see it and these folks should have seen some of the e-mails that *almost* went out.

Teaching Inside

So I had the fellas at Rikers for a full class. The first one last week was a good experience in that Fish and I got on the Island with no trouble and into the facility with minimum hassle. Fish was in utter shock as he had experienced some wicked delays in his trips before and said I must have brought some kinda magic in that everything went smooth and the class we taught went great.

Well, the magic continued… (A lil play by play on getting to Rikers) We arrived in Fish’s car and parked at the bus stop. You need to get on a bus to get on to the Island unless you have a special pass and even then, since we are not employees they would search the car up and down, so that’s no good. After crossing the bridge and actually hit the Island you have to show some ID and the guard has to check in his paperwork that you have some type of clearance. This process can take anywhere from five minutes to two hours (if they can’t find the paperwork) and there is nothing to be done if it takes forever. Both times the paperwork has been right there and we have been rushed through to the bus that takes you to the complex you need to go. The first time we hit some building called EMTC, you get there hand in your ID and clearance and receive a pass. You are now in the actual prison part of Rikers and you have to wait for a guard to escort you to where you have to go again this can be five minutes or two hours and again we were led through no problem. Leaving is pretty much the same in regard to waiting for a guard to escort you but then getting your IDs back is pretty easy and laid back.

Fish handled the bulk of the first class and only gave me the fellas (btw, I hate calling them inmates or prisoners or any shit like that) for about 20 minutes. This last go around I had the whole class. My lesson plan was to go over Billy Collin’s “Aristotle” poem and then discuss the beginning, middle and end of poems, divide the class into three groups, have em each write a stanza dealing with beginning, middle and end. Now, if you’ve never read “Aristotle,” I find the poem quite wonderful and love the images and how the poem is solely driven by those images; however, I do not enjoy the SAT like style of the images, meaning Collins writes way too much about the opera, mountain climbing and cabins for me. I am more about the ghetto, hip-hop and welfare and I wanted to show the guys that you can make your own experiences into those parts of the poem.

We took a break from Collins and read Willie Perdomo’s “Carzy Bunch Barbecue” that has an intro, beginning, middle, end and outro stanza (the intro and outro stanzas are identical) Willie’s urban images were easy to latch onto and the fellas ate it up and head mad commentary on the poem. We then reviewed Collins again and talked about the similarities and differences. Fish closed out the class by reading one of his poems he wrote during the free write and we was out. The fellas have to bring me an “Aristotle” type poem for our next class and I am really interested in what will happen.

I was nervous as hell coming into Rikers and wasn’t sure how I would react if the class did not respond since my initial response is to always try to flex and I knew that was not the road to travel. All the fellas are receptive to the class and have the highest respect for Fish and are warming up to me. I originally did this out of curiosity but am know totally into it to see if poetry can really reach these guys. We shall see.

The Friday Five

1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?

… personally, i’m a mess. leave a ton of things to the last minute.

on a business level, i am well organized. weird? well, check the blogger name

2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?

… walk around with a planner and use it pretty regularly. if I get some type of pda it’ll be over because when I get my hands on tech stuff I get fully immersed

3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?

… hell no! it is a complete mess that only I can navigate

4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?

… no, all my stuff is arranged by size order on my shelves for aesthetic purposes and then by preferred order meaning my favorites and most used are towards the front.

5. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to organize?

… vision network

This is your 12:00 O’Clock Report

So much going on:

–went dancing this weekend and took the knees… to the extreme! my acl is not what it used to be and i have no idea how to do the safety dance so it’s either do-or-die out there on the dancefloor. i went with the latter and i swear my patella almost popped at one point. the music was off the hook though with some funky heavy percussion played with some obscure deep vocal tracks that included a french lounge tune, a salsa song, gospel and some 70’s gloria gaynor type jam.

–in an effort to promote synonymUS i have hit quite a number of obscure and well-respected spots. the open mic at urbana two weeks ago was a true chore to sit through and i almost left in the middle. couple that with the fact that i was heckling something awful the week before and i thought for sure that we were going to get a shitty intro. luckily, we received some good love and rocked out quite well.

–westside rhyme was rough just because karen puts the MT5 (her verison of the open mic) towards the end. sabrina was supposed to promote but for some reason did not and i had to remind karen about plugging synonymUS. discussed the merits of freestyle. its a poem, ok, i get it. i just dont like the ‘oohh that is amazing’ response the crowd shoots back especially when most of it is rehearsed and, in the case of bad poetry, it doesnt say anything or, as in the case of real bad poetry, it says the same thing over and over.

–the promotion kicker was this e-mail that i received talking about another spot that is also trying to do collaborative poetry. figure i’ll check it out and try to promote. nowhere and i mean *nowhere* did it state that it was a lesbian open-mic and militant minority lesbians at that.i had already invited jayme to meet me there and then asked mara if she would like to come to and capped off the party with inviting ray. who decided that we were no longer on a promotion blitz because he starts asking IF we can promote to which we get told no. if you are asking chances are you will be told no. i was pissed and had to swallow it. in order: mara did ‘amadou’s second wife’ it rocked, ray did ‘poetically correct’ it rocked, one of their regulars went up and did so-so and then i went up did ‘mercy on the battlefield’ and used the fact that the mc was referring to me and ray as *ah.man* and it seriously rocked. i dont tap myself on the back often but this time i will, still did a bit of promotion for both acentos & synonymUS, so alls well

–my efforts to promote synonymUS fell flat and we only had five more people at his show! the optimist says ‘five more! thats great! next month you will have five more and then, soon, it will all be good!’ fuck the optimist. i do not have the energy to keep doing that every month. i was hopiong for a crowd of 50 and i get under 30! hell no! if success is defined by calibur of performances then we did great as the open mic and feature rocked but you need an audience to go with it. i am frustrated and feeling like some of my co-founders have abandonded my ass. or that i am dragging them to do shit. i may step down as curator, if everybody else wants the title then they can have it. i dont need to be a curator or to have my name announced at a show to know what i need to do. titles fucking suck and somtimes people get them and then throw there legs up on the desk. i dont and refuse to see this show disappear but i need help, real help, and fast.

–monday night was a low energy show at 13 and i am waiting for the same to happen at acentos. not every show can be a winner and i would like to see what happens when it hits us. i really dont but am setting myself up for the fall now.

–my niece had her first communion this weekend and it was a chill vibe to be at church. religion doesnt freak me out. im pretty cool with my beliefs and know that people need comfort wherever they can get it. no need to hate just cuz someone finds that in the rosary or lighting candles. ever see how people get at clubs or when they watch sports– same shit/different place. the afterparty was cool and i kept it 90% poetry free until some members of my family brought up the fact that i appear on public access bronx tv every now and then. its a bit of a running joke with them so ihad to reverse it. “i saw you on teeveee!” then take a flyer and see me in person. Shazam! acentos flyer.

— hit rikers island to teach some poetry and will do it again tomorrow. fish had most of the class so i’ll report when i get the guys for a whole session.

— saw x2 and it rocked. excellent charcter development but there are two big holes in the script otherwise they used mystique vrey well this time, halle berry cant act, cyclops is vanilla and doesnt do much– just like in the comics!, colussus makes a great cameo and nightcrawler turned my world. fuck the comic book mythos, kill storm in the next one and get berry out of the series and we can keep this going for at least five movies or until hugh jackamn scores on another movie.

had to add some stuff to the list of fave songs:

–depeche mode should get into the sexy category with this song called “clean” off the violator cd and should be in the five i cant live without for “strangelove” also throw them in for ‘stripped’

dm were so the shit and they imploded at the right time… on top.

–sade’s “pearls” is off da hizzy and can be put on repeat to some damn fine love makin. for real.

–smashmouth ‘walking on the sun’/sugar ray with ‘fly’ (25 years old/my mama god rest her soul)/barenaked ladies ‘one week’ all these bad boys make me smile

–and the most overlooked song is wyclef’s ‘perfect getleman’ i think i only heard it once on the radio and almost died when i did