“And even if my house falls down”

so maybe this is the one.. the [cue booming tony brown voice]bad Acentos show [thank you, tony]

contrary to popular myth, the very FIRST open mic i attended was at cafe largo and the very FIRST person i ever heard do a spoken word piece was mariposa… of course, largo was WAY too loud and i barely heard a word and i had an emergency of sorts that required me leaving right after, but thats a story for another day….

thus, i was quite pleased to be able to feature mariposa at acentos and here a whole set from her especially when you consider she is all boogie down and as latina as sofrito con recao. one small problem, she was coming in from chicago and by bus no less, or as guy called it “african american airlines” and what is supposed to be a 13 hour trip turned into 30 hours. i still had hope she would make it and continued the show as if she would. then our break came and she was no where near the bX… is it time to panic yet?

hell no! not when i still have guy and fish in the house add fred feliciano and edward garcia plus myself. the second half came out pretty fine with all of us keeping the flow going and just making fun of the fact that we had no feature. even better was that the house didn’t turn on us and that they all like coming to the blue ox for us and the poetry as opposed to having us live and die on the feature. plus, [make like the guy in “the mummy” and pull out every religous medallion you have and go for it] the blue ox is now fully 100% air conditioned! i cant even imagine what would have happened to my temperamaent without the bliss of freon.

mariposa did eventually make it to the south bronx, but a good 45 minutes after we were done. sometimes it sucks having a venue that actually ends their show on time.

she will be coming back to us in the near future and that should be a real fun show.

and i guess that this is NOT the bad show as it proved that we can survive an emergency and still have a ton of fun. next acentos is cheryl boyce-taylor, the best hug in all of poetry, and one of the most amazingly talented and giving writers i have come across in my travels… so you best be there and learn something.