It has been a growing fear for those who run the readings at the North Star Cafe on tuesday nights. On the second tuesday of every month a slam happens that we orchestrate and we have been noticing the trend of the perfect ten materializing. I’m not writing this to dispute the winner of the last slam. The score is not even the point(besides the point Sam X really did deserve that win) The point is when we pick random judges from the crowd even though they are at random we expect them to listen. They have a responsibility to differentiate content and if they give everyone a perfect score they are not listening. If you were talking to someone and all they said was “Perfect!” or “Fantastic!” you would call them out for not listening and just putting it on auto pilot. These poets work too hard to be insulted like that.

I’m not sure what we can do about it…but I have a recommendation. The next time you see someone get four tens or too many tens when they didnt deserve it…boo. Don’t be afraid to boo and don’t let the poet cry about it let them know you are booing the judges for not paying attention. We need tough scoring on every poet from judges who care enough to be tough. We just have to trust their in the seats.