by Tiger Lilly
Jamaican Jerk Burger, available at Hell’s Kitchen. This picture isn’t very good, but it was the only full-cooked one I could find with pineapple on top.
This is the burger you will go back for every week. Paired with sweet potato fries (and I shut my mouth….) with basil cream dipping sauce on the side, it’s heaven in hell.
GO.
Ciao for now!
by Tiger Lilly
Spoken Word Poetry Slams are… awesome. There is no other word for it.
Let me give you a little backstory.
A couple weeks ago, Mom and I went to an art crawl in downtown Saint Paul, where the artists who live in the building open up their loft/studios so people can come and obsessively (they hope) buy their art. After looking at many different artists’ lofts and creations, we entered a loft that was especially cool. Why? Well, there was a cat living there…
Mom and I were looking around, and we got sucked into a conversation with the resident artist, Matthew Rucker. Then I hear, “I hope I’m not coming off as creepy, but could you pull your bangs out of your face and look at me for a sec?” Yeah, he was talking to me.
My first instinct was to look around wildly to make sure that Dad had found some discreet vantage point with a sniper rifle trained on the guy, but then I remembered that Dad was at home, although I’m sure his fatherly senses were going haywire, and he was reflexively reaching for the shotgun.
However, I did as the man asked, and he studied my face for a couple seconds. Finally, he said, “Sorry, but your eyes are really beautiful and I’d like to paint you.”
Aw, shucks.
He reverted back to normality (although I know most artists hate to be described as normal, I know I do), and told us about his Spoken Word Poetry Slams. I’ve seen a bit of Spoken Word before, it’s pretty fun. It’s poetry performed with a lot of emotion, wild movements, and a general aura of awesomeness. He gave us a flyer, and then we had to get going.
Well, I wanted to go to the Slam. Mom wanted to go, but she would be out to far past her bedtime. Ben couldn’t go, because he was ‘tired’ or some other lame excuse. I don’t know what Dad’s excuse was, he was probably planning some elaborate trap for the unsuspecting Mr Rucker involving ninja cows, harpoons, and trapdoors. I don’t know. Anyway, I convinced MD to go with me.
It was held at The Artists’ Quarter in downtown Saint Paul. It’s an 18+ club (But I got in!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!! Of course, it helped that they didn’t card you). It was also very loud and crowded. Faith and I hung out near the back wall for a bit. The opening act was some guy singing Bob Dylan covers.
TL: I don’t like his voice.
MD: Well, do you like Bob Dylan’s voice?
TL: I honestly can’t remember what he sounds like.
Finally, I spotted Mr Rucker, who was running this outfit. I went over and re-introduced myself, and he said he remembered me, which was nice.
No one had gotten up and left, so we were still out a couple of seats. We went back to hanging out at the back wall, when lo and behold, Mr Rucker reappeared and magically conjured up a couple of chairs at his table.
MD: Sweet!
TL: VIP service! Woohoo!
He even bought us drinks (water. And Sprite)!
The time finally came for the Slam to start. Mr Rucker got up on stage and started listing the rules for the Slam (it is a competition, and that night the 8 best national champions were going to compete to see who was going to represent Saint Paul in the Nationals in August. We came on the right night!), along with what it was all about. Apparently, Saint Paul has one of the best, if not the best, communities for Spoken Word.
Also, his vulgarity levels were incredibly erratic.
(When talking about the Nationals) Him: We beat them last year, and we are gonna beat these b******* again!!!
(Five minutes later) …anyway, it’s a lot of fun, and everyone just has a gosh darn good time.
The slam was going to consist of four rounds, and each poet had 3 minutes 10 seconds to present their poem. Faith declared that she wanted to leave at nine, unless we got really into it, then we would leave at 9:30. I was disappointed, but shrugged it off. She’s preggo!
Anyway, it started off with two people who just barely didn’t make it into the finals last year. The first up was Miles, who had a piece about the people who sit at the last mile of a marathon and cheer the runners on. She was very scathing, but funny.
The other just-barely was Neal (I think…). His style was very, very hellfire and brimstone. I mean, my goodness. His piece was about a car crash and regrets. There was one line from it, though, that really struck me:
I will lie here forever and sing to you all the things I stopped myself from saying when we were alive.
After that, the competitors were up. There were five randomly picked judges in the audience, who would give a score of 0 (Good LORD, please I never want to hear that CRAP ever again) to 10 (Hmmm… have a winning lottery ticket, or hear that poem again… winning lottery ticket? Hear that poem again?). Then, the scores would be added, and the overall score would be between zero and 30 (the highest score a poem can receive).
There were 8 contestants, but I’m only going to go into detail about the ones I like, because I’m biased like that.
Guante was first up. Faith and I both loved him. He reminded us of a certain spaz-monkey that lives a few doors down from us. His first poem was about a man’s handshake, and how it reflects what you’ve been taught that a man should be. How you’re supposed to be firm, powerful, and establish dominion over the other man’s handshake. He was hilarious. He scored a 26.7 in the first round and a 27.6 in the second.
Wonderdave was second, wearing sparkly Vans. He was adamant about gaiety. 25.4, 27.3.
Sam Cook compared Where the Wild Things Are to family problems in an interesting, if creepy, manner. I liked him, though. Scored 26.8 for both rounds.
Shane Hawley did a poem about the plight of Wile E Coyote and his never ending quest to get Road Runner. He was wild and funny, scoring 26.2, 27.4.
Michael Lee was kind of boring. He scored 25.9, 26.5.
Then there was Six is 9. Oy. I didn’t really like him, either. Everyone else did, though. He scored a round 27 in the first round, and 27.2 in the second.
Sierra DeMahlder I liked. Both her poems were about a parent’s pain in different situations. She was the only woman competing. Scored 26, 27.
Aaaand then there was… Dylan. [barf] His first poem was… was… I’m not even going to say it. Ask Faith in the comments section, maybe she’ll tell you if you really want to know. Anyway, he scored 25.8, 27.3.
After the second round, we had to leave. It was 10 o’ clock, and there were still two rounds to go. I got Mr Rucker’s card, though, and emailed him about who the winners were.
The team representing us is headed by Six is 9 (nooooo!), with Guante, Sierra, Sam Cook, and Shane Hawley behind him. That means that Michael Lee, Wonderdave, and Dylan did not make it.
They host Spoken Word Slams at the Artists’ Corner every first Monday of the month. The next one is June 7th, if you’re interested in going.
So that was my awesome experience getting Slammed. There you go, Dad! I wrote a blog.
Ciao for now!
by the Night Writer
We had a distinguished gentleman calller in our front yard on a recent misty Sunday morning. Meet Thomas:
The Mall Diva took the photo. And Picklesworth commemorated the arrival poetically.
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Chocolate Bandit’s getting a little desperate…
Ciao for now!
by the Night Writer
Peter Bell, Chairman of the Metropolitan Council, had a commentary on the Strib’s editorial pages today with the headline “America Needs a Little Less Cynicism”. Being kind of a cynical person myself when it comes to the appointed bureaucrats of the Met Council, I expected some hand-wringing about how the toxic discourse in the public square has poisoned the people against their well-meaning political overlords, and my initial cynicism was validated in part by one of Bell’s first statements:
Of all the political challenges we face today, perhaps the most difficult is the depth and breadth of cynicism in America. This attitude, from across the political landscape, is a contagious virus limiting our trust and confidence in institutions both big and small, public and private. In February, a New York Times/CBS survey found that just 19 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing, matching the all-time low and well below the level of trust in government in the aftermath of Watergate.
I will say, however, that the article turned out to be fairly even-handed in its hand-wringing, citing examples of how all sides are equally guilty of both earning and fomenting cynicism, even touching lightly on the fact that some of the most cynical people in the whole equation are the politicians themselves.
Left out, however, is the fact that cynicism is an American right and custom, born out of a system fundamentally designed to “speak truth to power”… and one that perhaps causes Power to toss sops, instead of truth, to the people in order to stay in place. In some countries, however, mocking your leaders will get you arrested, even killed. Here it will get you a late night television show. In some countries, the people’s only recourse is bloody revolt. Here, our leaders are swept from power with handsome pensions and lifetime sinecures in the lobbying and punditry classes (or is that too cynical of me?).
The American heritage of individualism and self-reliance has historically bred its people to look suspiciously at a government that promises something too good to be true, even as our individualism and self-reliance is continually seduced away from us. Some credit Ronald Reagan with coining the sarcastic phrase, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help you,” but I’m sure I heard it when I was growing up in the 70s, and it may have been born in the 1930s when expanding Federal programs and powers started to come in to save us from ourselves, all while Will Rogers became the most famous and beloved figure in America by making political commentary a mass- (and multi)-media entertainment form.
Here’s another old joke: what is the motto of the terminally cynical?
“Yeah, right.”
And What is the motto of the terminally naive?
“Reeeeaalllly?”
I suppose that too much cynicism can be corrosive and when there’s an abundance of something it tends to become devalued, but cynicism also brings accountability. And, as Will Rogers said, “Chaotic action is better than orderly inaction.” The way I read Peter Bell’s column, he’s suggesting that cynicism undermines good government; I think undermining cynicism leads to bad government. A certain distrust and feistiness toward one’s government is healthier than fatalism (though fatalism, too, is becoming more seductive).
I do heartily concur with one of the statements he made in closing, however:
The surest way to reduce cynicism in America is to rely less on major institutions to do for us what we can and should do for ourselves.
One can perhaps wonder where Greece (acclaimed as the birthplace of democracy) might be today if its people had been a bit more cynical – or empowered – the last 50 years.
P.S.
Speaking of our American heritage of skepticism and satire, here’s a fun video I saw over at TechnoChitlins; it’s kind of a VH1 “I Love the (17)70s” take:
by the Night Writer
Earlier in the week I posted a link to a talk I presented last month to the Inside Outfitters group about the need and benefits of living with an open hand (my part starts about five minutes into the podcast). In the talk I shared several of my experiences over the years where I was prompted to give something (usually money) to someone and the things that had happened for myself or my family as a result. The main point was to show how important it is to have an open hand (as opposed to a grasping or fisted hand) in order to both receive from God and to hand on the blessing to others. It was a fun message to prepare since it caused me to go back over so many wonderful memories. The trap, of course, is to spend too much time looking back and not enough looking ahead.
At about the same time I did that little presentation I also also received an unexpected gift from my new company, honoring my 15 years of experience. Actually, the experience was with my previous company, which had just been acquired by the new company. The new company, though, carried everyone’s seniority forward into its own benefit structure and I suddenly found myself with an American Express Gift Certificate for $75. “Hoo-lah!” I thought, “What toy can I spend this on?”
The thing was, I have just about all the toys I could possibly want — at least among those in the $75 price range — and I couldn’t think of anything even after giving it some thought over a weekend. Then, duh, I remembered what I’d preached and realized that I was overlooking a basic calculation. The Word says God “supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food,” (2 Corinthians 9:10); therefore I should look at everything that comes to me as either being bread (something I need to live) or seed (something to sow “to increase the fruits of my righteousness”) and this unexpected windfall clearly looked like seed to me. Then, instead of shopping, the fun part became looking around trying to find out who I was supposed to give the card to. Over the next week or so I saw a couple of possible opportunities, even good ones, but I didn’t have an inner release that any of these were what the card was for (we gave other things instead).
Then, quite unexpectedly, I re-connected with an old friend I hadn’t seen or heard from for nearly 25 years (and the way I got reconnected is pretty incredible and too complicated to go into here). We exchanged some emails and agreed to get together for lunch this week. In the course of our emails I learned that this woman was going through a tough time and trying to get a small business started. As I thought about it over the weekend, prior to meeting for lunch, I decided that the gift card was meant for her even though it wasn’t much compared to the size of the challenge she was facing. When we met I found the opportunity to give her the card and share a little about how it had come to me in the first place and how I’d been looking for the right person to give it to and that I was pretty sure it was for her. As I was saying these things, and handing her the card, she was smiling pleasantly and perhaps a little uncomfortably as most people are when receiving something. Since the value of the card wasn’t marked on it, however, I then told her that it was worth $75, thinking she might buy groceries or something with it. Her eyes blinked several times and she suddenly looked half-stunned.
It turns out she had been pricing some supplies she needed in order to get her business started, and the amount she figured she was going to need was…$75.
I have no way of knowing how she’s going to do in her new endeavor, or if it will be 25 days or 25 years before I ever see her again, but it was a tremendous rush to be used to encourage someone in such an unexpected way. Its always been fun to give, but when something comes together the way this did it’s even more satisfying — and feels even better than getting a new iPod. I also hope that, as welcome as the money might be to her, the sense of knowing that God is aware of you and is thinking of ways to let you know that is priceless.
![Anorex[st]ics Inaneymous 082](http://thenightwriterblog.com/files/2010/04/Anorexstics-Inaneymous-082.png)
There’s a reason why they say that… now you know! Learn from this guy’s mistake.
Ciao for now!!!
ETA: I knew I couldn’t have been the first one to think of this… [facepalm]
by the Night Writer
“Jesus was a socialist, and you like him.”
— Minnesota state senator and DFL gubernatorial candidate Tom Rukavina
In that case, wouldn’t passing laws to raise taxes and forcibly re-distribute wealth be mixing Church and State? Isn’t that forcing (and enforcing) one’s religion on others? Did he go on to say that it was appropriate to rob Peter to pay Paul?
I suppose it does mean that when I stand before God and He asks me if I gave to the poor then all I have to do is say, “Well, I paid my taxes.” Or maybe I just have to say “I voted to raise other people’s taxes.”
Somehow or another I’ve always figured that giving to and serving others was a personal responsibility and not something I could farm out. Apparently it’s not self-government we need, just more government. Yet its been my experience that loving my neighbor brings me closer to both God and my neighbor, causes me to consider the state of my own heart and stimulates my appreciation for the blessings I’ve received. It also seems to me that if my neighbor loved me, he wouldn’t covet what I had or want to do anything to make himself a burden. My experience is that when people take it upon themselves to help others they end up sowing peace and reconciliation. When it’s left to a third party to do it on your behalf, however, the result is strife and enmity. Which would Jesus chose?
Along those lines, I recently shared a message with the Inside Outfitters group on the importance of “living with an open hand” and what I’ve seen in my life as a result. You can hear the message here (the first couple of minutes of the podcast features someone else, and then I get to talk).
by the Night Writer
My grandson is scheduled to arrive in July and will join his parents in residence at the Night Chateu, no doubt soaking up most of the attention in the household that is currently being devoted to Sly, the Family Rat. Or perhaps receiving even more attention than Sly. After all, I haven’t yet waltzed through the house with Sly, singing, the way I did with my children when they were little…or the way I’ll do with the beh-beh.
And of course, I will sing the same song I sang to his mother and auntie.
