shooting from the lip-

1. sunday will be chris benoit day! act like you know. i always imagined i would look like benoit if i ever took the ‘juice’ route and went for straight bulk. i flirted with the idea a few times and did enough research to figure out that someone with a bad liver (o.b.) would last about five years before orals got to me and the idea of any kind of needles does not appeal to me. add the fact that so many ‘roids are watered down bootleg versions of the real shit. the real close shot came when i found a connect with somebody that worked at a vet’s and discovered they had access to straight up testosterone. but test is real fuckin strong and i woulda had to balance out with some other shit and then the scary but also fun part of steroid chemist came into play. anyhow, everybody show the proper respect and reflect on what YOU did on benoit day and pray that the WWE stays the sane route and goes with the obvious and proper choice of letting ‘the wolverine’ come out on top of HHH & the heartbreak kid (at 42?) this sunday at backlash.

2. more sports- the rivalry of all rivalries begins again this weekend.

the yankees and the red sox meet up in bah-ston

last year, the sox kicked a lot of pinstripe ass in the regular season and established some good momentum come playoff time but then one bad coaching decision sank all dat sheet. pedro went one pitch too many and aaron boone became the bucky dent of the new century.

aaron later becomes the most famous cripple in bronx lore as his inability to penetrate on the dribble brings a-rod back home- to NYC.

the bought team argument is kinda dead since the sox have done just as much as the yanks have when it comes to upping the ante on player prices and they were REAL eager to throw the bank at bernie williams a few years ago. it’s a four game series which i s kinda whack- i love three game series. somebody wins the battle somebody loses. lets see what happens next!

3. my knee is shot- again! a simple walk of the stairs (which there are a lot at my job) sent an all too familiar twinge in my patella and the swelling is golf ball size at the moment. way better than the grapefruit or softball version that i have endured in the past few years thanks to my gout. back in the day, i would try to tough it out and have! many nights of straight aspirin, icy-hot and cold compresses have let me endure more than my share of body aches. when i first found out i had the gout- i was in D.Nile and kept toughing out till a few weeks before my 30th it was official as it had spread to both knees and even sitting was a task. when you have no respite sitting, standing, leaning- the you be fucked! this time around- at the first real twinge, i got me some anti-inflammatories and the knee is already feelin better.

4. look, nene- it’s the sun!

5. and finally- from guy’s guestbook-

MCS: Point taken--I'm still hesitant to say that only people with certifiably larger venues should be allowed to field a team at nationals.

i hope matt gets to see this before his feature this saturday at the bowery poetry club ;-)

and also that this is more directed to PSi than to matt himself-

this revolves around the attempt to make the certification of PSi sanctioned venues tougher rather than coming up with a point system or what we have now- the 3×5 (which i think started a great idea- instead of 4 people teams send 3 people teams and now has turned into the normal PSi “let’s add a group piece” and “can we make it so everyone can play!?”)

hhmmm- 5. a) my biggest hope with taylor’s rise as president of PSi is that he can cut through the bullshit and get them to commit to the fact that Nationals is a competition set in a festival like atmosphere OR that PSi will say Nats is a festival that happens to have a competition in it.

one or the fucking other, please!

saying we are hear to compete but also to sing kumbaya is a cop-out, nothing more/nothing less.

either you came to win or you came to hug a tree- if its the first then welcome to the slam and may the best poet(s) win… if ya came to do the second, then enjoy all the open mics and workshops. pretty simple. in the acentos crew, there are quite a few heads that do NOT enjoy the slam. in no way shape or form, which i think is great especially since they focus on the other things this community offers and tolerate the fact that some of us DO enjoy the slam. there is always that- try it, you might like it sentimentality (usually from me) and then there is the ‘no, i don’t think so’ response. Cool.

but this bullshit about slamming and then talking about how horrible the slam is is just plain d.u.m

if you dont like to slam- dont do it

if you think slam is elitist- dont do it

if you think slam rewards crappy poetry- dont do it

but if you think that your slamming may change any of this- then go for it and good luck

and when you or your team or whoever you are rooting for doesnt win dont blame the system cuz i know damn well that you would be singing a different tune if your “version” of poetry got the extra .4 they needed to come out on top

and this is where PSi fails, instead of taking a tough stance and supporting their winner and their process of getting there- they stop somewhere in the middle (around semis) and praise the teams that got there and damn the teams that advance if they dont like em. the yankees win a lot of years and people say baseball sucks and then the marlins will and all of a sudden baseball is great again. nope, its still the same thing just your team won and the MLB or the NHL or whoever stands behind their winners and doesnt try and fuck up how they got there every other chance they get there with an ass backward attempt to dumb down the audience.

back where we were…

the simple thought behind trying to get at least 12 certified PSi members out of a slam that should have at least 50 people showing up was just to avoid what i have heard a lot of rumors about-

slams where the same six people slam in front of the same 20 people and the same 4 people go to Nats each year. if you establish a slam to get the gospel of the TEN out to the masses, cool. if you establish a slam just to see you and your three buddies go to Nats every year, then stay in cottonville or san welle pepe or ozinton or staten island. it doesnt matter how big or small your city is- the fact is that all tournaments have some kinda qualifications to get in and as the tourney gets bigger you tighten the reins to insure a level of competition that doesnt cheat the competitors (the poets) or the fans (the audience) or the game (poetry) and that doesnt mean you shut people out of the game. you have an NIT or a double A ball or a winter league or a CBA and let those competitors work it out there before they can step it up and when they do, it will give them a legit chance to knock out the vets rather than have the random cinderella story or (the usual) the vets romping on the rookies and staying on top.

6. o.b.havin.lunch.outside- see ya!

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