i decided to miss out on the urbana slam in favor of good dining. i had a goat cheese/roasted tomato/seared onions/basil crêpe as the main course and then a fresh strawberry/nutella crêpe as dessert. ah hell yeah. chevre is one of my serious guilty pleasures. actually, i am a huge cheese fan. havarti (especially dill), gouda (not smoked), english & vermont cheddars (white over yellow) and danish blues are among my favorites though i am not a big fan of brie (unless its en croute) and dont dig the aftertaste of most swisses.

the spot is cafe la pallete and i seriously recommend it but get there early on the weekends cuz they get PACKED for brunch.

afterwards i checked out Wedding Crashers which was all kinds of funny. lemme say that vince vaughn has been crackin me up ever since Swingers.
YOU’RE MONEY BABY, YOU’RE MONEY AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IT

matt gave me the quick wrap up about the slam which i already knew before hand. the nuyorican (i actually guessed team-brooklyn but you know… semantics) wins by ignoring urbana’s “new poem” rule as louderARTS & urbana go down in flames since they actually come to this slam with new work.

for the life of me, i dont know why urbana goes through this same farce year after year. i’ve been going to these things since 2002 and every year its the same thing. the REAL funny shit was when nuyo didnt come to urbana with new work but then half the team slammed with new shit the next night.

leading us to tonight and the fact that i will mos def be at the nuyo since team acentos 2005 (luis cartagena, raj & kyra wolfe) will be in effect. these three have been consistent readers at the acentos open mic and some of the best writers out there. i know they will bring both the hotness & passion to the slam stage.

there is a nice chunk of my ego that would love to make the louderarts team one year. i think it would be the bomb to walk into nats repping out my home venue but the more i continue writing poems with an eye towards publication and real posterity, the less interested i become about slam.

slam is about winning and the bottom line is i only have maybe six poems that embody the elements of slam which include but are not limited to use of narrative, political commentary, anaphora, humor, rhythm and of medium length. as of late, i havent been writing these poems as much as i used to and that doesnt bother me a bit.

for the last few years acentos has participated in these regional bouts with the same attitude. we dont care about winning, we just care about bringing good poems to the slam stage and you can bank on this year being the same. we are going to be the fly in the ointment that will make judges freak the fuck out and once out of their comfortable shells they will probably give us low scores since the common reaction to unrecognizable art is dismissal.

scratch my previous statement, slam isnt about winning its about the lowest common denominator and acentos plans to be the anomaly in that equation. werd.