He showed up to the biggest MC battle in the world in a grungy rock T-shirt, jeans and bad facial hair. No one ever capitalized off of being underestimated as much as he did.
As I began to become a part of the slam community, i was surprised to hear the same thing the hip hop kids always told me. Namely that Sage Francis as a person was an asshole. An unbelievable jerk you would never want to be around. Even jerks thought he was a jerk.
It made his albums even more interesting to me, for some reason I felt like I could hear his knowledge of this in his voice. Every song he made for that group of people who loved his work but hated him as person, he did vengefully.
I met Sage Francis once, I was buying his merchandise at a show and he was watching someone else perform. He grabbed me and started dancing with me in one of the truly odd, meeting an artist you respect moments, for some reason he doesn’t get the acclaim he used too. THe word in popular opinion is that he’s not what he used too. Funny thing is that his last album was the best work he’s ever done. You wouldn’t know if you didn’t buy it. Sage is a spoken word artist who transitioned to a rapper and has been paved a way for others in both realms. He has a new album coming out on May 11th and if I buy it and its terrible, I won’t care. He’s been so good for so long, poured so much of himself into performance after performance and made it possible for white poets to rap without being mocked for it. Their still stuck mocking Sage, saying Anticon as if it was a swear. Slam owes Sage a lot, and I’ll continue to pay him back May 11th.

When the president is elected everything changes. He rides a wave of public opinion that feels unstoppable from the other side of the tracks. The opposition party spends all of its time putting together the best talking points to attack the newfound soverign commander in ways that wont make them look petty. It doesn’t always work. One thing is for certain though, they have to hate him and there base has to hate him. Even if they don’t dislike him that much the current President has to be the worst since the last worst or worse then that.

Its marketing. You can market opposition if you do it correctly. It gives a certain degree of comfort to all voters. The ones who voted against the president in power get to say “I didn’t vote for this idiot” and use all their passion and energy to make him the bad guy. The voters for him get to flip their lid and declare “This isn’t what I signed up for!” Even if it clearly was. It makes us feel good to shake our fists at people and things that are easy to dislike. The president is that way.

A woman I work with who is a republican looked at everyone at our lunch table and said “I think he’s the devil.” She was talking about the president and I began to wonder if people will ever get tired of this easy out, the unbridled joy of Umbrage.

We’ve seen the death of the tasteful disagreement, the sensible counter-solution all of those kinds of resolutions will be things we talk to our children about and they will look at us like nuts. This is more Geraldo’s country then mine some of the time and I’m not afraid to say it.

I couldn’t have debated the woman at my lunch table. That discussion would not be a debate. My response would have turned into something ugly like “As black as he is i’m sure he looks like the devil to you. I’m sure your god looks a lot like you.”

have another thought. We all use the same tired expressions from time to time. One of the classic ones is BOY IF I COULD TRADE PLACES WITH THAT GUY! Some of the time these aren’t very well thought through. No one wants to trade places with Obama because of how dreadfully microscopic the analysis of your every act would be. Same for every president, if they catch you on camera picking your nose it’s all over every form of media. You wouldn’t want to be any of the super major stars because as rich as you are wherever you go crowds will come after you people will snap pictures. What if I’m buying dandruff specialized shampoo and the paparazzi snap pictures of me, now the world knows I have flaky skin?! You have to think about this stuff.

So we can come up with more then enough examples of the people we truly don’t want to be but who would you want to be and why?

Mine are in no particular order

Joe Biden-I know he’s the vice president so he is doing a lot and has pressure BUT not at all comparable to the President. No one cares what the vice president does and its been like that even before Bush I sent Dan Quayle to a new country every month to keep him from saying stupid things to the media. Speaking of saying stupid things to the media, Joe has such a history of saying nutty things that if you don’t say something nuts everyone is happy. All you have to do is not blabber madness and you will be loved based on experience and familiarity alone. On the other hand he’s not as overexposed as Obama so no one cares about him enough to mob him in public and even if they did, secret service has your back. You can’t beat being powerful enough for everyone to pay attention to you while not being powerful enough to shoot yourself in the foot. You can’t be fired, it would be too much of a scandal you have a guaranteed term and then after that if you don’t get picked up for the sequel you can go sell Viagra. Would I sink that low? Yes.

Christopher Nolan-Tell me what Christopher Nolan looks like? He directed all your favorite movies Insomnia, Dark Knight, Momento, etc. He’s filthy disgusting American rich and he gets to be creative for a living(write/direct films) and somehow he’s kept himself from being the media diva that Kevin Smith and Tarentino have become. He could be walking next to you in the mall and you wouldn’t know. You couldn’t bug him for an autograph. Sure a few comic book nerds have memorized his facial features and sleep with a picture of him above their bed but that’s not a majority. On the other hand if he is looking to scoop up the most appealing woman in the club, he simply needs to state “Hey, I’m Christopher Nolan how are you, I directed Batman.” Is it cheesy sure but it will work. You’re a celebrity now.

Steve Sabol-The voice of NFL films for as long as I’ve been alive. All those superbowl highlight shows that I watched as a kid with the narrated slow motion highlights he was always jumping in and commentating. So you’re a key player for all the classic sports programming, your paid very well. Your rich but not “I need a pool shaped like my face” rich, a good place to be. You have crazy job security and all you do all day is re watch classic sports. THAT IS ALL I DO NOW! Perfect.

Gary Shandling-Star of the Larry Sanders show(which I loved and most people don’t remember or flat out dislike) kind of a wal-mart level version of Jerry Seinfeld. Not as talented not as fun to watch but almost as wealthy and because he’s not Seinfeld level important he doesn’t have a ton of projects going on at the same time. He might jump in a minor movie role or a commercial and then you can back to watching cartoons and yelling at the cat for blocking the cable box when your switching channels on commercial breaks. Is that what I want to do with my life? Yup.

Cheryl Miller-Sister of Reggie Miller very famous basketball player in her own right. Couple points here. I loved watching Reggie Miller frustrate or fluster every major star of his day and would love to ask him crazy things about 1990’s era basketball. She works as a correspondent for TNT games which means she goes to GREAT basketball games free all the time, for her job. What does she do? Chime in from the sideline with an interesting nugget, factoid, or gruff coach comment. She does full time analyst duties on NBA TV and gets paid better then I do to say things I say to Sarah like. “Anderson Varejo is the best at drawing fouls of any modern player this era.” The difference is when she says it everyone loves it and pays attention when I say it the cat just looks at me with a blank stare.

I remember going over and knocking on the door. His wife opened it. When I walked in he was off doing something and I asked how things were, how his writing was. He said “I wrote 18 new poems while I was in the back of a moving truck on its way to New Hampshire.” I was ecstatic and flooded the room with excitement jabbering on about how excellant that was. He interrupted me. “I have been editing them. I think one of them might turn out to be worth something.”

That is why I felt great about every finished poem the Reverand ever wrote. I would never be able to throw a more critical glance at it, not many people exist who can.

The Reverand is now Rachel and a she. I only mention it so I don’t have to go back to talking about it. I have more important things to speak about. The source of the critical eye that shined over all of us back before Rachel moved is what we miss. Rachel loves poetry so much that she never runs out of the energy to perfect it.

Rachel would tear you to bits and be absolutely right. Not to show you who was boss but because writing matters and if you botched it you’ve insulted the process. The potential it had.

I miss the Reverand as a pure force of personality. A reserved inhibited slow sipping introvert who could blast the microphone off its stand with the passion in her voice.

Work means a lot of things. It doesn’t just mean that you spent a ton of time memorizing hot lines. It means you edit down and build up your pieces. You look it over a third and fourth time to make sure nothing disturbs the flow of it and that it represents your vision for the concept and a strong spot in your overall portfolio. If you can’t be proud of it then it needs more work.

Everything she did was such a surprise while she was here. No tired concepts, no worked over phrases just fresh hot madness. Sometimes it scared people and he was one of the few people who could like that. She doesnt write and perform so people will like her. Or forgive her for things she’s done.

She writes because she’s one of those insane nuts that thinks we can right the world with our words if we pay enough attention. One day she’ll win me over on that.

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.

*Wil Gibson is my friend but that has no relevance to what follows*

I believe that writing no matter in what form is a game of imperfections. The greatest writers are the ones that not only know how to push their best work to higher levels but go about improving their weaknesses and minimizing mistakes. That is not just piece by piece but line by line and word to word. By working to minimize mistakes and improve on weaknesses while optimizing strong points you realize more of the potential your work has.

There are three people that I hold as my inspirational figures in achieving this when writing slam poetry or infusing stylistic methods from slam poetry to other forms or writing. Jack McCarthy, Buddy Wakefield, and Wil Gibson.

You should know the first two. Wil Gibson was not born as good as he is. As hard as Andrea Gibson works I cant help but think that she was born brilliant and just as to nurture her thoughts properly. Wil was not born brilliant. He was born with a distinctive voice and passionate views but has taken all these years to mold them properly.

If you look at the material from his first album and put it against his latest which I rename constantly when I get bored with the title(Feathers and Hollow Bones) you can dispute the subject matter. Is this one too heavy in poems about love? I don’t want to hear it, that stupid pink album beck released right after his girl broke his heart was the best thing he ever did, love stuff can work trust me. Look at the words and how they are orchestrated, compare them. You can see the craftsmanship that goes into each track. Practicing isn’t enough its about restructuring lines that may not be bad but are the least effective, its about spending night after night knowing every implication your words give. He does that in ways that are almost unrivaled. He is joined in my mind by only Jack and Buddy.

I’m grateful for the work ethic and polished artistic success he has been able to establish and will continue to work for. I admire his game.

I’d like to start off thanking Simone from Cantab for coming down and performing some amazing poetry. It hardened the notion in my mind that she is one of the most erudite and invested people we have in the artform. I’m not just talking about being intelligently invested in her work but the good of us all in slam. It takes a whole village to raise a poem. Darn right!

I hate it when I bring up Bill Withers and someone asks me “Who is that?” the honest truth is that everyone who says they appreciate music should know. Just as I am originally came out in 1971 as Bill Withers debut album and I know exactly where to start describing it. The second song on this album is one of the rare perfect songs that exist in the universe. Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone is a song favor over any Beatles song every made. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like it, the lyrics are emotive but nonspecific enough to make anyone feel its about them, his voice is haunting and low…pained even. Rumors on the internet say he wrote this about his dog. I would love that.

To win a grammy for this song on your first album and then come back for your second and write LEAN ON ME is pretty astounding. Since soul focuses on love its easy for the subject matter to get bland, what Withers is able to do is create a wonderfully balanced album that addresses fatherhood(9.I’m Her Daddy) the passing of family(3.Grandma’s Hands) I’ve seen grown men cry while listening to Grandma’s hands, big scary men. If I could have any voice in the history of blues it would be Bill Withers. I’ve wanted it since I was a kid. He doesn’t have the versatility that Al Green has or the style that Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder had. He just seems like someone quiet and sad that you know very well.

He surprises you with content you don’t expect (12.Better Off Dead) the cover of Let it Be which is track 8 is fantastic. I love the first one but to hear it turned so naturally into a gospel song puts it up there with Al Greens cover of Pretty Woman(all time classic cover).

Some albums need to have a singular emotional theme to make them powerful, it pours all of the artists creative talent towards one idea or state of mind. Bill Withers is able to create an entire world of emotions and sometimes say nothing important but sound awesome doing it(6. Do it good)

I’ve listened to it so much and it still tricks me into thinking that these songs are about my life. Sweet Wanomi(track 4) was so powerful it answered my personal question of whether or not I am comfortable having children. Why?
I have no clue. That is the power of great music.

Still Bill was his second effort and is also a classic record everyone should own but some artists are cursed with an album they can never follow up. A space in time they create for themselves and can never match, its a problem so many other artists try their whole careers to have.

It has been a great year full of terrible crap and I am a pessimist so I am here to celebrate the terrible crap. Debate if you want on any of these but you know in your heart I am right.

The worst of things-

Worst style biting 2009-Rihanna stealing Tyra Banks forehead

Worst musical collaboration-Beyonce and Lady Gaga

Most overused terrible joke of 2009 “Maybe Obama will give me a bailout!”

Most spellbindingly disturbing thing on television of 2009-Andy Rooney’s eyebrows

Worst screenplay of 2009-Inglorious Bastards

Worst sense of humor 2009-Glenn Beck

Most annoying idea for a documentary- Bill Maher-Religulous

Worst new artist 2009-Kid Cudi

Worst basketball team-LA Clippers

Worst invention 2009-the Snuggie

Worst album 2009-Kanye West-808s and heartbreaks/Lilly Allen-Its not me its you

Worst song of the year 2009-Robocop by Kanye West

Song I hate the most but listen too and privately love the most-Walking on the moon-The Dream/ Kanye

Worst television show-Californication

Least funny cartoon show-King of the Hill

Worst supply of necessities-oil/hypemen

Simplest issue made complicated-Gay Marriage

Subject-When your name is Tiger your bound to be full of surprises

As odd as it sounds man there is an honesty in hedonism. All those rappers that prance around like zooted out goblins flossing jewels that were sold to them for more then they are worth are at least dancing because their proud. The dance is to celebrate the hard journey they have completed and the success they have, they are expressing their joy without filtration.

You were the first to pump your fist on the course but it’s not the same. You never fully expressed who you were but that fake smile sat on your face for so long you tricked everyone into the stupidest falsehood a fan can have. They thought they knew you.
Somewhere there was a group of people who shaped every move you made and every word you said until everyone sat in front of the television like they were watching a friend of theirs. You think this is a crazy situation? Did you know white people used to love OJ Simpson? Things change.

Perfect people always get hit the hardest. No one follows Jack Nicholson around looking for controversy, he just gives you any crazy rambling insanity his mouth lets out. That’s honesty. If Jack does have a PR guy then he overcomes his suggestions and acts like he’s out of his mind because its important that the fans know he is.

I’m not disappointed in you. I guess I just always felt like you were a jerk but a very private one. I always respected your work but not you. More then anything I want to be filthy rich. I think it’s a noble goal, if I were to get rich I could provide my family and friends the comfortable life they deserve but I wouldn’t curtail my persona to do it. I wouldn’t marry someone I couldn’t be faithful too with ten different hooters waitresses across the country and a porn star who looks like a used up version of your wife.

I don’t know your life maybe you did struggle to get where you are. I don’t care. Who you are in private is not who you are for the nation. You didn’t lie to me but you tried and the eyes you fooled are following you now. I know the question your asking. Where do old celebrity scandals go, I’m not sure ask Roman Polanski.

Dear Lady Gaga,

Your not artistic your just offputting. Your not Annie Lennox.

thanks