Tonight I entered the poetry fray...

...I sacked up and read a couple of original numbers at this week's installment of Drunk Poets' Society, an open mic poetry night held every Monday evening at Winston's in Ocean Beach. It went well and I had a blast performing. Even better, I heard some great poetry, including a banging set by the headliner, Jimmy Jazz, who shared about 10 poems, each delivered with enjoyable mania.

One poem I read was one I wrote back in 1999 or 2000, called Sorry About This Morning. My more substantial poem, which I started last night and finished today, was this one:


My Chicken Tragedy

when I was young my dad would take me to do laundry on Newport Ave
those weekly laundry sessions are some of the first memories I have

one time, when I was six or seven, the year was maybe 1984,
while we waited for our clothes to dry, we walked down to the pet store

I went in while my dad stayed outside to smoke a cigarette
a few minutes later, I came back out - there was something in there I wanted to get

I asked my dad if I could have a buck to buy myself a treat
Dad was kind of busy talking to a friend he’d seen out on the street

he wasn’t really listening and he handed me a dollar
I grabbed it and went back inside, so thrilled I wanted to holler

see, the store was selling baby chickens - 80 cents was the price tag
I picked one out and paid for it - they gave me my chick in a small brown bag

we got home and put our clothes away before dad realized what I’d purchasedand when the pet store said there were no returns, and boy, was my dad sure pissed

eventually he calmed back down, and we talked about the situation
I made the case for keeping my chicken - I begged and pleaded in desperation

Dad decided we could keep the chick, which was just a little baby,
and when it got older, it could roam our yard, or we’d make a coop for it, maybe

and sure enough, that chicken grew into a feisty little hen
when our cat attacked, she scratched its face, and the cat never bothered her again

the chicken roamed around our yard, and we fed her seeds and bread
I thought she was the perfect pet, but “she shits too much,” my dad said

he said she needed a ranch or farm, where she’d have room to run around
he said chickens were usually happier in the country, not in the town

and I could tell someone was missing when I got home from school one day
the chicken wasn’t in the yard, I realized in a fog of hot dismay

and when I asked my father where my chicken had gone
dad said he gave it to the gardener who mowed our neighbor’s lawn

and of course I missed my chicken, and of course I cried
and of course I kept a lookout for the gardener every time I went outside

and then one day I saw him - he was a Philippino guy
he was raking our neighbor’s leaves when I walked up and, meekly, said hi

his clothes were pretty dirty, and on his belt, a knife was in a sheath
he was the first adult I’d ever met who’d lost his two front teeth

he was actually pretty scary, and my heart began to beat and buzz
I cut right to the chase and asked the gardener how my chicken was

and he spoke in broken English, but believe me, I understood
when he patted on his belly and said “chicken very good!"

July 4th, 2007

re: Over The Line team registration

To: ***, OTL Committee
Re: potential team registration

Hi ***,

I’m a jackass who failed to get a job done. After being charged with getting the team registered this year, I completely forgot that registrations were on May 5 – until mid-day on May 6, when the enormity of what I’d done hit like a ton of bricks.

After scouring San Diego County for details on how we might still grab a slot in the tournament, my teammates and I have come to your contact information – and you are our only hope. If there’s still a slot left in the Men’s Open, or anywhere else you could use us, we’d love to take it.

Thanks for your tolerance,

*********

There are several good reasons to quit drinking…

You can always be the driver.
Which, if you have a clean car with a decent stereo system, is fun.

At concerts, you’re able to listen to the music with a clear ear.
As a not-insignificant bonus, you can dance without dancing like a buffoon.

Being able to mingle and hang out without having to get tipsy is a sign of maturity.
Being able to dance without having to get tipsy is a sign of a true dance floor mac.

You’re at much less risk of crashing a car.
You’re at much less risk of getting hit by a car.
You’re at much less risk of not being able to perform in the backseat of a car.

At bars, you save tons of money.
At bars, you only hit on people that you find attractive.

An opportunity to withstand peer pressure is test of character.

You generally manage to avoid urinating in public.
You generally manage to avoid urinating in your bed.

You only puke when you’ve got the flu.
Or when you’ve eaten some bad cream of sum yung gai.

You never waste a day of work because of a hangover.
More importantly, you never waste a day of the rest of your life because of a hangover.

And most importantly:
You can still smoke a little ****.

So there we were last Friday...

...me and two of my younger cousins, in a bar in downtown Madison, at about 1:30am. Mad-town is a big college town, of course, and the bar's patrons were mostly of the undergrad demographic, meaning my 29 years and my early stage male pattern baldness - not to mention my wedding ring - likely identified me as an outsider. But my spirits were boosted by my cousins' company, and by at least a half dozen Lienekugel Reds. So when cousin Jen asked if I wanted to check out the bar's crowded, sweaty dance floor in the basement, I was all for it.

There was a bit of a line to deal with on the way down the stairs, and when I noticed that the young lady in front of me looked like a fresher Lara Flynn Boyle, I tapped her on the shoulder and mentioned the resemblance. "Lara who?" she responded.

"She's a big star," I said. "You know - Twin Peaks? The Practice? Jack Nicholson's one-time girlfriend?" The lady in front of me was either too young to know Lara or too appalled to humor me, and either way I was quickly beginning to feel like an old dirtbag. Luckily, as the line moved forward, she turned away to interface with a bouncer, sparing me further awkwardness - at least for the moment.

Flash forward roughly cinco minutos. My cousins and I were now on the dance floor, and it was a crowded, sweaty, basement number indeed. I felt a little nostalgia as the place reminded me of similar venues I often frequented in my college years, back in the previous century. A pleasantly bouncy hip-hop song was blaring through the speakers, and I amused my cousins by putting a hand in the air and affecting an exaggerated white man's underbite. Just then, the DJ took to the mic to make an important announcement. "Hey party people - last call for the basement bar!"

Apparently my old college drinkin' instincts hadn't completely faded, because almost reflexively I told the cousins that I'd grab us each another beer, and then I turned to the bar and signaled for three plastic bottles of Miller Lite. I'm a Bud Light man through and through, of course, but Wisconsin is Miller territory, and you know what they say about "when in Rome."

Anyway, after paying the barkeep, I grabbed the beers by the necks, two bottles in my left hand and the third bottle in my right. I wheeled back to the dance floor, quickly scanned for my cousins, and saw them on the other side of the room. That same happy hip-hop tune was still bumping away, and I'm not one to let a good beat go to waste, so I decided to spice up the walk over by hoisting the beers up in the air and putting an appropo bounce in my step.

With the plastic beer bottles in my hands and my hands in the air, I took a big first step away from the bar, toward my cousins, and past a girl who was dancing drunkely nearby. Unfortunately for me, the dance floor was a marble one. Marble is slick to begin with - and with a full Friday night's worth of spilled drinks puddled on it, this particular stretch of marble was sporting a coefficient of friction of close to zero.

The next thing I knew, my front foot went out from under me and I executed a textbook faceplant. Both of my hands were raised and occupied with beer bottles, so my left cheek was the first part of me to reach floor level and therefore absorb the brunt of my fall. My left hand was next to touch down, and the impact caused both of its beers to rocket away from me at diagonal angles across the wet ground.

The crash stunned me, and for a few short seconds my actions were guided by another instinct - the one that compels you, after a moment of extreme embarassment, to play things off and hope that nobody had seen. I sprang back up from the ground, and ascertaining that the beer in my right hand was not lost, I took a swig. The bass was still booming, and I did a couple knee bends, feeling for the beat.

For a moment, it was almost as if nothing had happened, but in seconds the shock cleared and I realized that I had just taken a hard fall, on my face, in a dark room, in the company of two cousins and a basement full of dancing drunks. Nearly simultaneously, I became all too aware of sharp stinging pains both under and above my left eye.

As I put my free hand to my eye, I realized that the girl dancing nearby had turned toward me and begun to move in synch with my half-hearted gyrations. Apparently interpreting the whole thing as an elaborate dance move, she mirrored my hand-to-eye movement, put her other fist in the air, and then proceeded to rotate 180 degrees and dance off in the other direction.

My cousins had witnessed everything from their end of the room and quickly rushed to my side. "What the hell was that?" Jen asked with a laugh. "I think I just wiped out," I said. When I took my hand away from my eye, I recognized the dark outline of blood on my palm, and then looked up at Jen and Aaron. I'm not sure if their mouths actually said "Holy shit!" but the looks they were giving me certainly did.

"You're bleeding!" Jen and Aaron yelled. "I know," I answered. "And I dropped both of your beers."

A few minutes later, the three of us were sitting at a table upstairs, waiting for the bar to empty out so we could leave. As I wallowed in pained self-pity and dabbed a wad of napkins to the cuts above and below my left eye, I looked across the room and happened to make brief eye contact with the Lara Flynn Boyle lookalike. She nudged the young lady next to her, pointed at me, and said something they both snickered at before turning around.

"There's probably a lesson here somewhere for me - or for all of us." I said to my cousins, in a meager attempt to find a positive side to the episode.

"Don't drip on your shirt," Jen said.

Do you like surf movies?

I hope so because I've got quite a few laying around here. Here's one featuring my neighbor John and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Digweed review

So Sunday night, I went to bed at 7:30pm and got up again at 10:30pm, puffed a couple ***, and went down to Belo for the Digweed show.

After arriving at about 11:15, to the sight of the tour bus parked right outside the club, I went in and caught the tail end of the warm-up set by MSTRKRFT, a dj duo whose sound kind of reminded of the Chemical Brothers. They don't spin entire songs but do a lot of sampling and swapping of basslines, all with that happier, uptempo spirit of a Darren Emerson-type dj. MSTRKRFT's sound was very bouncy and entertaining, and the crowd, probably about 75% of capacity in Belo's main room, seemed into it.

At about 11:45 Digweed appeared in the booth, and took over the reins from MSTRKRFT at right around midnight. Now, JD's new rock star hair cut makes him look a little different to me...kind of more of a trendy guy than a weirdo who is all about his twisted music. But the set he dropped was purely enjoyable, and because I consumed no *** nor alcoholic beverages, I was able to really pay attention to his technique.

I recognized at least a few tracks from the his latest mix album, Transitions II, including both of my favorite tracks from that mix. For me, those two represented the chief highlights of the set, as they're both pretty intense, and nothing beats when a DJ drops a banging track that you've recently been playing a lot at home. Diggers also kept it interesting at the sets more mellow points. In fact, other than two tracks I would classify as cheesier, Tiesto-type trance anthems, Digweed's tune selection was completely of the sleek, smooth, progressive flavor, with some nice trippy touches and some great peaks. I had at least three or four moments when I was rocking out 100%.

From my sober perspective, I had a much clearer grasp than usual of Digweed's technical style, which generally seemed to be a simple mix-song-A's-outro-phrase-with-song-B's-intro-phrase approach. I ended up hanging until about 2:45, only pausing my dancing during the slower moments, in which I'd relax in the back or grab a cup of water from the bar. In a way, I looked at the night as similar to a workout session at the gym, with special guest trainer John Digweed, and that perspective paid off. My legs were aching like after a stair-running session or something - not that I have never actually done stair-running, mind you.

Anyway, at 2:45 or so, right when I thinking it was probably time for me to head home, the lights came on and it was over...I had made it to the end. For the last half hour or so, the MSTRKRFT guys had returned to the booth and were hanging out in there with their girlfriends, who actually sat down on chairs at times - which was oddly distracting, almost prompting me to suggest that sitting should not be allowed in the dance floor vicinity, and certainly not in the booth.

After the lights came on and the last song stopped, much of the crowd milled around for a few minutes, hoping for an encore. When the music stopped, Digweed had no way of getting out of the booth without walking through the crowd, so he actually crouched down behind the decks, apparently planning on waiting down there until the crowd petered out and it was safe to make an exit.

Outside of a couple bartenders, I had talked to only one person the whole time - some raverish dude who had asked if I had any rolling papers. Despite the relative solitude, it had been quite an enjoyable dance session. I felt like Digweed had come to play on my court, and I had risen to the challenge, giving him my best. To top it off, the streets of downtown were as empty as I'd ever seen them, and my drive home was illumniated by a big full moon.