DAY 25 – 10/11/10: With a day to ourselves in between shows/states, and our desire to see another movie in the theater too strong to ignore, we pick a random spot between New York and Providence in which to catch a flick or two. We settle on Stamford, Connecticut, a nice little town not very far from NYC, where we go and see David Fincher’s The Social Network, which we both enjoy immensely, and stick around for Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which we both agree is utter horseshit. It is an interesting double-feature, with both films touching on similar themes involving money and power, but while Fincher’s film is perfectly structured and completely engrossing, Stone’s is bloated, boring, sentimental, and ultimately fairly preposterous, the final nail in the coffin of a filmmaker whose work we once admired. We spend the night sleeping in the van of the University of Connecticut – Stamford, or some such college, and narrowly avoid trouble with the campus security force the next morning when one of their guards asks us what we’re doing there. Ezra mumbles something vague about how we were just leaving and he lets us go without further incident. The timing was good; only fifteen minutes earlier, we were asleep in back of the van.

Ryk McIntire kicking off Got Poetry Live!

DAY 26 – 10/12/10:We arrive at Ryk McIntire’s house just in time to share a lovely dinner of pasta and homemade acorn bread with him and his wife, Melissa Guillet, and their three-year-old daughter, Autumn, who is probably the cutest kid on the East Coast, and plenty precocious as well (later, while we’re watching Hamlet 2 with Ryk, she comes into the room and looks at the DVD case; we ask her if she likes this movie and she says, “No. It’s not for little girls.” She also understands Alice’s iPod better than Ezra does). Shortly after dinner, we head out to the show, Got Poetry Live, an open mic with a very good following that Ryk hosts with the help of Tony Brown, who delivers a very well-written and impassioned piece about the “It Gets Better” movement that is among our favorites of the night. Ryk also delivers the goods, with a sweet but never sappy poem about Autumn that we both really like, and there is a special surprise appearance from none other than Mighty Mike McGee, who once called nearby Worcester, Massachusetts his home and has been all around the country and finally landed here. He does an excellent piece about celebrity culture, in which he expounds upon his many virtues that much more famous people will never equal, such as “Woody Harrelson will never have the disinterest in marijuana that I do” and “Taylor Swift wishes she could be as fat as me … Go ahead, girl, sing about it.” We then went on to do our feature, after being introduced by Ryk with our new “poet” names (Alice: “Killer Judo Word Launcher Supreme Love Truth Bringer” / Ezra: “Zero Tolerance In Your Face Ear Master Guru”) which was well-received enough to get us an invitation to stay in town another night to slam for a cash prize at a show that Ryk is helping Jay Chattelle start. After Got Poetry Live, we go to another, more late-night open mic at the Spot nightclub, where we each get to perform with a live band. Alice rocks the house, as she usually does with a live band, bringing out “The Hunt,” a piece she hasn’t yet done on this tour, and Ezra raps, as he usually does when he gets a live band to work with. This all goes over quite well, and the host invites us to come back anytime.

DAY 27 – 10/13/10: We decide to stay another night in Providence to check out the new slam Jay Chattelle is hosting in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which might be familiar to some of you as the hometown of Peter’s favorite beer on Family Guy. First, though, Ryk takes us on a brief tour of Providence, the highlight of which is the cemetery that houses H.P. Lovecraft’s tombstone, though his actual remains are in an undisclosed location due to previous grave-robbing attempts – Lovecraft fans are so ghoulish. Here’s Ezra brooding over the great one’s grave:

We arrive in Pawtucket that night after another delicious dinner with the McIntire family; unfortunately, there is not a big enough audience to actually hold a slam, but there are plenty of poets and a deejay, so we go ahead and have ourselves an intimate but lively open mic instead. Alice is particularly well-received and asked to close the show out with an encore performance after her first short set, and we make acquaintances with a number of very cool folks, who want us to come back sometime, perhaps on our next tour. This will turn out to be a frequent request throughout the rest of our days on the road. We spend the night at Ryk’s again, and then it’s off to Boston for the weekend, where we will be visiting Alice’s mom and former coworkers at the Natural Foods Trade Expo – East for a little rest, relaxation, and a lot of free samples.

DAYS 28-30 – 10/14/10-10/16/10: We arrive in Boston in the late afternoon and meet up with Alice’s mom at the convention center and hotel where the Trade Expo is going on. It is the first time Ezra has been to one of these things and he is somewhat overwhelmed: everywhere are people eager to share free food made by the companies they either own or are representing. This is only the beginning, so we walk around gathering free samples to eat immediately, planning to swing back through on Saturday when everyone is getting rid of their wares before flying back home – that’s when we’ll really load up on supplies for our rapidly dwindling food bin. Alice goes to a fancy dinner with folks she knows from her mom’s company, INFRA (Independent Natural Food Retailers Association) while Ezra stays in the luxurious hotel room and enjoys some time to himself. The next day we stumble upon an art crawl happening not far from the hotel and wander through one of the buildings, enjoying the gorgeous view from the artists’ studio lofts as well as samples of their work, which ranges from completely abstract to realistic representations and everything in between. That night, we put our van’s backseat bed to the test by piling in no less than six people in the back, including Ezra, Alice’s mom Corrine, and our good friend Nikki Duffney, who took Alice’s place at INFRA when she set off on this crazy adventure in the first place. We go out to a Thai restaurant in downtown Boston and back, and the bed holds up admirably.

Later, we go with Nikki to meet up with some Boston friends and, after getting slightly lost and then 86ed from the bar we had planned on going to because Ezra is wearing shorts (a bad idea not only because of the bar’s dress code, but also due to the near-freezing, rainy weather that night), we end up getting seriously shitfaced at a bar with the awesome name the Whiskey Priest. We outlast everyone in our party and end up dancing till bar close to the tunes spun by a very good house deejay and, since the bar is luckily not too far from the hotel and convention center, we stumble back together and get some rest. On Saturday, we load up our food bin with last-call free samples, then end up spending an impromptu final night at the hotel because Nikki is too ill to fly. She mostly recovers throughout the night, no thanks to the mostly awful The Lovely Bones on the hotel’s free HBO; the reviews were right, this is Peter Jackson’s worst movie yet, and this is the guy who made Bad Taste (at least that one admitted what it was right in the title). All in all, a good time in a very cool city.

DAY 31 – 10/17/10: Today we head out to Worcester (pronounced “Woosta,” or “Wista,” apparently) and arrive at the Nu Cafe for the Poets’ Asylum show, run by Slam legend Bill McMillan (who can be seen in the excellent 1998 documentary SlamNation), among others. We arrive a few hours early and get a bite to eat, relaxing a bit before the show starts. It is during this time that Ezra receives a call from Michael Mlekodaj informing him that Eyedea, one of the all-time greatest rappers from the Twin Cities who we last saw at the National Poetry Slam’s Hip-Hop Headquarters show in August, has died in his sleep due to a complication from his sleep apnea. We’re both a bit devastated; Ezra knew Eyedea since seventh grade and he performed at the CD release party for the Death Ray Scientific album, and Alice’s good friend Chelsea was seeing a lot of him over the last few months as well. It feels like a piece of home is gone. In our feature set that night, Ezra takes part of his time to cover Eyedea’s “How Much Do You Pay?” from the outstanding The Many Faces of Oliver Hart album, which we listen to a few times over the next couple of days. Afterwards, we talk with Walden and Kate, who Alice knows from her days at INFRA, and they make us feel very much at home, as do Bill and his friends at the show, including Alex Charalambides, who is the only one at the Poets’ Asylum show who knows Eyedea’s name when Ezra dedicates the set to him. Alex is the host of the Dirty Gerund show (if you didn’t know, a gerund is an active verb used as a noun; a dirty gerund would be the verb “fucking” in the sentence “Fucking is a good way to spend one’s time”), where we will be performing tomorrow night, and he joins us back at the home of Bill and Sou McMillan, where we hang out in the basement, talking and smoking late into the night.

DAY 32 – 10/18/10: We thoroughly enjoy staying with Bill and Sou, who is a fantasy writer and published Slam poet as well (her work can be found in the Spoken Word Revolution Redux book, along with Minnesota’s own Cynthia French), their son Liberty, who is a very smart and cool nine-year-old, and their four huge, furry cats. Liberty also has a pet rat, which surprisingly hasn’t become a problem with the cats. The McMillans prepare a delicious dinner and Sou even sends along a loaf of homemade bread with us, along with some of her short stories, and Bill gives us a copy of his new chapbook, as well as one for Karen G. when we get to Atlanta; we only have a book and CD each to share with them, but we are more than happy to do so. Their generosity was outstanding. Too soon, it’s time for us to leave, and we head out to Ralph’s Diner for the Dirty Gerund show, hosted by Alex and a hilarious and very enthusiastic fellow named Nick Davis. There is a live band, but unfortunately without a drummer, which makes it more difficult for Ezra to rap with them, but we pull together a solid feature set anyway, doing our best to live up to the dirty part of the show’s title. The Dirty Gerund open mic also features live painting by Ashley Tucker, who incorporates Alice into her on-the-spot painting (see the little naked chick in the singers throat?), which is completed throughout the show:

Did I mention the Dirty Gerund is full of all kinds of ruckus, including Snack Time? Snack Time is apparently a regular part of the show, in which Nick brings some sort of deliciousness each time for all to enjoy; we were lucky enough to partake in chocolate-frosted cinnamon rolls – sooooo good! Alex offers us a place to stay for the night, and Ezra is flashed with a titty before we leave, but we have to get on the road again, so we regretfully take our leave of the fine folks of Worcester and begin our long drive to Fayetteville, South Carolina, where we will be visiting Alice’s friends from Morris, Ashley and Gabe.

DAY 33 – 10/19/10: We have a pleasant drive out to Ashley and Gabe’s house in Fayetteville, SC, and are treated to a delicious Mexican food dinner. Ashley is studying to be a nurse and Gabe is in the military, so they’ll be prepared for the apocalypse when it comes. At dinner, there is talk of guilty pleasure movies, the ones that are so bad you love them, and Gabe mentions John Carpenter’s They Live, which Ezra defends as an actually good movie. Alice has never seen it so we watch it when we get back to their place. We all think it’s unfortunate that we’re only in town for one night and we didn’t really get to spend much time together, so we make plans to visit them again on the way back.

DAY 34 – 10/20/10: We arrive in Atlanta, Georgia and settle in at the home of Alice’s sister Amie and her husband Mbola, who is from Madagascar. They are awesome folks who know how to throw a party – their wedding was one of the best times ever – and they make us feel very much at home.

DAY 35 – 10/21/10: Amie and Mbola join us for our first show in Atlanta, which is at Cliterati, an “open no mic” series at a feminist/GLBT bookstore called Charys Books. The show is hosted by the always vivacious, affectionate and wonderful Karen Garrebrant, and there is a strong theme of school bullying throughout the night. Karen’s is our favorite of these, but there are many other strong works performed in the open mic, followed by a mini-feature by Tristan Silverman, who spits some hot fire, including a hilarious story about her all-girl’s summer camp when she and the other girls discovered their “joy-buttons.” This piece fits perfectly at a show called Cliterati, as does Alice’s feature set, which we close with guest appearances by Ezra on “Movie Geeks” and “Campaign.” A good time is had by all and we support the bookstore a bit by picking up a really cool book we didn’t know about before, 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom, a long illustrated essay by the greatest comic book writer ever, Alan Moore, about the history and suppression of erotic art.

DAY 36 – 10/22/10: On the advice of Karen G. the night before, we decide to hit up the open mic and featured performance by Tristan Silverman and Atlanta’s own Theresa Davis, who also performed at the Cliterati show. The show is at Agnes Scott College, an all-female school, and Alice makes a joke that Ezra couldn’t get away with in the open mic, saying, “If you weren’t a lesbian when you got here, you are now,” winning over the crowd and delivering a solid performance of “The Fountain.” Ezra follows her, introducing himself as a student at Agnes Scott and letting that sink in for some laughs before going into “Nostalgia,” an old poem he hasn’t yet done on the tour and that he performed at Nationals in 2006 in a bout against Karen G. and Theresa Davis, which is how he first met them. It feels like a good way to wrap up the open mic, and the shared feature that follows is top-notch, with Tristan and Theresa sharing the stage poetry-tag style, alternating pieces and bouncing off of each other’s energy and the audience, which is a large and lively crowd. Tristan does two of her best from the Cliterati mini-feature the previous night, as well as a short but excellent one about a dog humping a crucifix that was way more poignant and intelligent than that might sound. Theresa’s best, in our opinion, is a devastating account of witnessing and reporting a rape. It’s a heavy night all in all, and it inspires a short, dark poem from Ezra when we return to Amie and Mbola’s house.

DAY 37 – 10/23/10: Today we go with Amie and Mbola to check out a fall arts & crafts festival in Atlanta, which features a lot of really cool work by local folks, including jewelry made from real butterflies, buttons of famous actors and pop culture icons with vulgar captions added to them, and a series of movable dioramas depicting grisly and ghoulish subjects. There is also a band on stage when we get there made up of really young-looking kids, probably in sixth or seventh grade, tops, rocking out covers of Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana and others, along with a couple of originals; they end up maintaining a bigger and more enthusiastic crowd than the adult acts that come on later. It’s partly the novelty, of course, but we speculate that if they keep at it, those kids will be great by the time they’re our age.

DAY 38 – 10/24/10: This is a big day for poetry, with the Night Kite Revival in the afternoon and our feature at the Java Monkey open mic tonight. The Night Kite Revival is a collective comprised of legendary Slam poets Buddy Wakefield, Anis Mogjani and Derrick Brown, along with rotating secondary cast members that have in the past included folks like Mike McGee and, on this particular tour (which stopped in Geneseo, NY, shortly after we were there), the musical stylings of Timmy Straw and Emily Wells. Timmy Straw plays keyboards and sings with a beautifully sad voice; Emily Wells also sings like an angel and plays a mean violin, using loop pedals to layer both of her instruments, and she is currently working on a project with Dan the Automater, the genius producer behind classics like Deltron 3030, Handsome Boy Modeling School and Lovage. It’s a really good show, leaving us with wonderful, memorable lines like “Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past” (Buddy Wakefield) and “Booze is my tuition to clown college” (Derrick Brown).

Later, at the Java Monkey open mic, many of the performers mention the show, and it seems like we will share a lot of the same crowd, which is a large one, including Amie, Mbola and a few of Amie’s friends, and a whole bunch of other people who are apparently regulars here. The host is a guy named Kodac, who is a lot like a Southern-fried Tom Waits. He kicks of the show with a poem called “Regret” that reinforces the Tom Waits similarity and the open mic begins, a long list of performers that includes Karen G. once again and a guy known as Skinny Bully, who recites a very good poem about his experience doing social work. We lose some of the crowd when there is a break after the first half of the open mic, but there are still plenty of people left for our feature, which we split with Alice going first, followed by a few poems from Ezra and closing with “Movie Geeks.” The crowd is very appreciative, and after the rest of the open mic, we go with Karen, Kodac and Gabe, who we met at the Agnes Scott show, to a local bar called the Brick Shop Pub, where Kodac tells us tales of his friendship with Jimmy Carter’s son and we run into none other than Derrick Brown on the way out. It was a very good night for us and we are looking forward to our next stop in sunny Florida!

Day 40 – 10/26/10: We arrive at Infusion Tea with just enough time to eat dinner before the Soft Exposure open mic. Naomi Butterfield, the host of the open mic, treats us to a delicious dinner that tastes like it came straight from the Birchwood to Alice. When it’s time to start the open mic, things are looking a little grim. It’s not well attended tonight and the audience is quiet. Also, we’re up first so there’s no one to warm up the audience. Ezra starts it off and pushes his performance hard. Despite the quiet nature and older age of the audience, he doesn’t censor himself too much, which pays off because he’s got them laughing hard by the end of his set. Then he brings up Alice and she does 10 minutes of poetry that wins her the rapt attention of everyone in the restaurant. Afterwards, during the open mic period of the evening, a man even comes up to read an impromptu poem he wrote inspired by Alice’s performance. Damn, that makes her feel all warm and yummy.

Naomi Butterfield’s man Steve Tune agrees to put us up in his wonderful guest-house out back of his lovely Orlando home. It’s heavenly to have a place that feels like our own and Steve says we can stay as long as we like, so we decide to kick it in Orlando for a few days.

Day 41 – 10/27/10 : Sweet blissful nothing.

Day 42 – 10/28/10 : Today we head out to the Orlando Slam for Ezra to compete in their Dead Poets slam, in which you select one of your favorite dead poets to cover. The slam was at an old video store turned hipster hang-out, complete with a library, a bar, and a performance space. Guess that’s the only future for video stores with Netflix these days. The slam featured a number of great Orlando poets including Ronin (who covers an obscure French poet in highly entertaining broken French), Curtis X. Meyer, who ends up taking second place, and Tod Caviness (who will burn in hell for covering Mattie Stepnanek – look him up – in complete costume: wheelchair, blanket over his legs, and all). And then there was Ezra, who decided somewhat last-minute to do another tribute to Eyedea, covering “Step By Step” and “How Much Do You Pay?” from the Oliver Hart album. Despite the fact that only a handful of folks in the club recognized Eyedea’s lyrics and that Ezra takes suicide spot in the slam, Ezra dominates from the beginning and wins the Slam. When he accepts his prize, he mentions that Eyedea’s wake happened earlier that night back in Minnesota; this was the next best way to pay tribute, since we couldn’t be there. Everyone was moved Eyedea’s work, which just goes to show the man continues to reach people even now that he’s gone.

Day 43 – 10/29/10: Today we’re headed out to the Ripley Believe it or Not! Museum, our first excursion into the true tourist attractions of Orlando. Thanks to Curtis X. Meyer, whose father works for the Ripley Museums, we’ve got a free pass to all the Ripley Museums in the world for the rest of our lives, or at least until we lose his business card. The moment we step out of the car, we’re rewarded with this mythical sight:

A building on its back!

From the moment we walk in, the Ripley Museum has got us entranced. Ripley was an American cartoonist and anthropologist who traveled the world between 1920-1950 collecting artifacts, stories, and amazing facts. He worked all of his findings into a popular cartoon series called Ripley’s Believe it or Not! While we understand how some might find Ripley’s cartoons and massive collections ethnocentric and even exploitative, we enjoy the hell out of everything in there. Hopefully a museum such as this encourages people to get out there and see the world for themselves; it sure left Alice with chronically itchy feet. Some of our favorite things in the museum included the shrunken head and the video on how they’re made, the brain teasers,
the weight lifting frogs,

the Fuji Mermaid,

the Wolpertinger,

and last but not least this:

a tunnel made out of moving walls, filled with flashing black lights and techno music, with a bridge that you have to traverse from one end to the other. Being in the tunnel creates an insane sense of vertigo; it feels as if the floor is undulating below you, so convincingly that it actually throws you off-balance. It is almost impossible to traverse the bridge without holding on to the handrails. We spend at least five minutes in there trying out different things like taking giant steps that have Ezra almost falling on his face, and hanging over the edge of the bridge to feel like you’re flying upside down. Then we go to dinner at a Chinese buffet, and over an extremely excessive meal we realize we hadn’t walked through the tunnel with our eyes closed. So, we go back (thanks to Curtis, we get in free again) and this time we spend almost twenty minutes in the tunnel. And our scientific experiment concludes that when you close your eyes and walk through, you don’t feel a thing. Goddamn, optical illusions are almost as good as drugs. Almost.

Day 44 – 10/30/10: Steve’s mom, Barb, has invited us to have dinner with the family and friends tonight. We spend the day lazing around before dinner, both working on writing projects. Alice plows through the Henry and June edition of Anais Nin’s diary, which has got her daydreaming about going back to France, while Ezra prepares to begin the National Novel Writing Month challenge, in which he will attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. Dinner is served out on the patio with the lizards and perfect Orlando weather. We all drink lots of red wine and eat till our tummies are distended.

Day 45 – 10/31/10: Today is Halloween, but Steve, in his techy awesomeness, hooks us up with Netflix out in the guesthouse. So we stay in and watch Masters of Horror all night long. This is a great series if you haven’t seen it; we particularly recommend John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns and Takashi Miike’s Imprint.

DAY 46 – 11/1/10: NaNoWriMo begins, and we decide to check out downtown Orlando. We visit the History Museum, which we deviously sneak into without paying after Ezra wrestles some alligators outside:

The history museum is pretty cool, though we really only check out an exhibit of Florida’s “Highwaymen” painters, a group of self-taught artists that made a successful impact on the American art scene with their unique landscapes of authentic Floridian coastal beauty. Here’s an example:

After the History Museum, we drive to downtown Disney to check out that freakshow, which is kind of like a family-friendly Las Vegas, though when we arrive the first thing we see is a group of adults (college age) performing a song called “Born to Hand-Jive” for a group of adults (old). The weird thing is not only the strangeness of these overenthusiastic, Mickey Mouse Club-style “kids” performing for an audience that is seriously made up almost completely of other adults (we saw maybe two kids in the whole crowd), but also what a suggestive song they picked. “Hand-Jive,” which is apparently some sort of spastic dance involving weird hand gestures and a lot of jumping around, sounds almost exactly like “handjob,” which is another activity entirely (perhaps you’ve tried it). The crowning strangeness of it all was that none of the adults in the audience seemed to notice this at all; they just looked bored and touristy. So we wander around downtown Disney just trying to do all the free stuff we can, which is mainly just looking at stuff. The best of this is the most commercial art gallery ever; this thing is seriously a gift shop with the gallery right inside it, and everything is for sale, but the cool thing is that they’re exhibiting a lot of the “secret art” of Dr. Seuss, so we definitely enjoyed that. Tonight we reconnect with Curtis Meyer, who takes us to a Hip-Hop open mic at Austin’s Coffee and Film in Winter Park, FL, run by none other than Madd Illz, founder and CEO of GrindTimeNow, the world’s largest battle rap league. Ezra first met Madd Illz over a year ago when he came up to Minneapolis to start the Twin Cities division of GrindTime. You can see Ezra’s battles here:

Ezra GrindTime Battle 1
Ezra GrindTime Battle 2

The open mic has no host; emcees just stand in a line that stretches out the front door of the coffee shop it is held in and wait their turn to get on the mic. It is an all-freestyle open mic, and Madd Illz is easily the best, consistently killing lengthy, fast-paced and intricate extemporaneous verses that rival the best of Juice, Eyedea, or any other freestyle legend. Ezra observes that the world is wack when someone like Wacka Flocka Flame (2nd mention in this blog!) is more famous than Madd Illz. The rest of the open mic emcees are not half as good, until Ezra gets on and manages to do roughly that: half as good as Madd Illz. Seriously, check this dude out (note: this video was shot at Austin’s Coffee and Film, with the same deejay who spun the night we were there):

Madd Illz!!!

Day 47 – 11/2/10: We arrive at Casandra Tenenbaum’s place a few hours before the slam, which is at a restaurant in Delray Beach called Dada. There we’re greeted with big hugs from her roommates, and we find that a hug from a complete stranger is a beautiful thing when you’re far from home. On the way to the Slam, Casandra tells us about her plans to open a charter school with her roommates. They’re working on a program structure in which high school kids propose a project at the beginning of the year and then spend the whole year focusing on that project. Alice questions her about their plans for real sex education (none of that abstinence-only stuff) and healthy school lunches. She’s happy to find out that they’re even planning on a school garden and nutritionist.

Dada glows beneath low lighting and a creative atmosphere enhanced by Dali-esque paintings both in frames and painted right onto the wall. On top of that, the pay for featuring comes complete with a gourmet meal and mojitos with real sugar cane straws to chew. During dinner we meet Atlas, a street prophet who has devoted his life to spreading his art by performing in public areas, always wearing a mask and promoting a non-secular message of love and compassion. Alice is pretty taken with him (but in a way that doesn’t make Ezra jealous, because he also likes Atlas) and they spend a while talking about identity issues and following the path we desire, something that came up before for us in Chicago when conversing with Laura Yes Yes. You can check out some of his spoken word and rhetoric here:http://www.withinorwithout.com

Ezra takes over the feature set and Alice decides to slam in hopes of making off with the winnings; she does very well, going head-to-head and ultimately taking second place to Katie Wirsing, who won the National Poetry Slam in 2006 with the Denver team. Ezra gets lots of love for the feature set and manages to sell a few CDs, including one he sells for the price of a mojito to a couple who are out for their first time after having a baby.

Day 48 – 11/3/10: We wake up to an empty house and a note under the door from Casandra outlining her schedule for the day. At 11 am, she comes back home to take us down to the beach for breakfast and hula-hooping in the sand. Ezra even gets in the ocean, though he swears he hates water. Eventually, Alice conquers her fear of the bright blue jellyfish that line the shores and gets in as well to spend the afternoon diving in and out of the waves.

At night we head out to an open mic at the Funky Buddha Lounge before we hit the road back to Atlanta. The host perfectly introduces the night by telling us we’re about to witness a parade of broken dreams. Picture snowbird comedians and singer-songwriters for two hours. One hack even started a joke with “So, why do they call it the clap anyways? If the doctor called you up to tell you that you had it, do you think you’d start clapping?” Actually, that was the whole joke. Yep, we checked out early.

Day 49-51 – 11/4/10-11/6/10: We’re back in Atlanta for now. Alice starts work with INFRA again for the time being, which is nice because that means a paycheck, and decides to have Mbola cut off all her hair.

Ezra remains blissfully unemployed and continues to let his freak flag fly (and his hair grow).

Day 52 – 11/7/10: Tonight is our final show at the Asheville, NC, slam. Apparently, the slam is at a Masonic Temple. The fact that it’s a temple makes us question the less than pure content of our set for a second, but only a second, cuz screw it. They’re getting what they signed up for. We picked up this show thanks to Karen G. after the Art Amok show was cancelled due to venue changes. That seems to have been a common occurrence on our tour, slams and open mics seeming to have trouble holding down a consistent venue. We saw this in Chicago, Palatine, and Worcester as well. Guess the venues haven’t gotten the memo yet that poetry brings all the boys and girls to the yard.

The drive to Asheville takes us through the rolling hills of the Appalachians; it’s truly hillbilly country out here. We arrive in Asheville just before the show is supposed to start and head right to the Temple. We rush in, desperate for a bathroom, and run into two other poets and a grey-haired Mason, who also happens to be a part-time bellhop. The Mason calls down an old weight-and-pulley elevator for us and brings us up to the second floor to use the bathroom, which can be converted to a men’s room or a women’s room by simply sliding a plaque on the door. Before the show we explore the Temple, which is complete with a meeting hall with ornate chairs on opposite sides of the room, gavels, swords, metal batons, and black & white photos of previous Masons. The show is in the Temple’s theater, which was built for the theatrical version of their Irish rites, the ceremony for inducting Masons. We’re thrilled to find that the theater comes with 100-year-old sets; tonight’s resembles an Egyptian temple. Basically, we’ll be performing in front of King Tut’s Tomb.

The room quickly fills up with a familiar looking crowd of poets: neo-beats, neo-hipsters, neo-hippies, neo-gangstas and the like, and we’re off. Griffin Payne, the SlamMaster and host of the show, bounds on to stage with an energy that reminds us of Wonder Dave. Throughout the show he changes costumes and props. He even comes out with a bunny hat and bunny slippers at one point, which really makes us miss Dave. The show starts with a local jazz/rock band called Lyric and local feature Brooke Van Der Linde. Then the first half of the slam kicks off. Some memorable poets from the first round include Drewkowski, who does a poem about America getting fucked in the ass by Satan (who, he informs us, sports a giant cock wrapped in a Goldman-Sachs condom complete with a BP label, that when peeled back, lets out a load of crude oil all over her face) and Jeb Jackson, who told a parable about meeting women through lost-dog flyers that was equally brilliant and hilarious, though less political. Later, Ezra realized that “Drewkowski” is actually Andrew Procyk, a SlamMN team transplant he last saw years ago when he featured in Minneapolis.

We take the stage in between the first and second round of the slam for our final set of the tour. Alice does a handful of her favorites, feeling pretty different on stage with her new haircut, and then swears to put all of those poems to rest for a good long while. “Annabel Chong” gets a particularly good reception. It seems to Alice that a temple is just the right place for “Annabel” to be put to rest for now. Then Ezra wows with a few verses and gets folks laughing with “House.” We end the night with our group pieces, thoroughly defiling the shit out of that temple together. Afterwards, Alice gives away the rest of her books, not wanting to haul them around anymore and really needing to part with that work to start anew. She hands the books to anyone who comes up and talks to her and takes any money they offer up. In the end she gives out about fifteen book and gets around $70, which pretty much covers the cost of printing. Ezra also gives CDs out for whatever folks can afford, but doesn’t do quite as well, since he is still reluctant to give too many away for free – CD pressing is expensive y’all. Next time we tour, we might make a point to give out merch for whatever people offer. The way we see it, it’s about getting your voice heard, plus people are more likely to buy your stuff even if they don’t have ten bucks in cash.

When all is said and done, Asheville turns out to be the perfect last stop for our tour. The scenery is breath taking, the crowd is rambunctious, everyone here can’t stop talking about how much they love living here, and the venue is the best one yet. Thank you, Asheville, for giving us great closure.

Finally, after more than seven weeks, more than 4,500 miles, more than enough poetry, and too many generous, wonderful new acquaintances to count, let alone thank, we decide to modify our plans, because life is what happens while you’re making them. We had originally set out to tour for a couple months and ultimately end up in L.A., but due to its location, excellent public transit, and other factors, we decide to head back up to New York City and see how that goes. Wish us luck!

DAY 14 – 9/30/10: We roll through the hills of upstate New York entranced, as mile after mile of oak, acorn, and birch in fall burn disappear behind us. This has got to be one of the most beautiful places in the US and we’re lucky to be here at just the right time of year. The drive up to the University of New York, Geneseo, is a bit of a climb and it’s raining so the van keeps stalling every time we come to a stop. Alice is getting really good at double-footed driving, one on the gas at all times and the other working the brake; if the van is getting a constant feed of gas it won’t die. When we arrive in Geneseo, Ingamar Ramirez, our host and poetry booking agent for the school, braves the rain to come find us and show us the way to a warm shower. He takes us to the student union and sets us loose. It’s still a few hours till show time. Being here has already started to take Alice back. Geneseo, with a student population of approximately 4,000, isn’t much bigger than where Alice went to college at the University of MN, Morris, and just as Garrison Keillor’s “Lake Wobegon” parables could refer to just about any small town, so does Alice’s knowledge of life as a college student stranded in small town USA. Ingamar comes back to find us in the study lounge a few hours later and takes us to the Knight Spot, where we’ll be performing. As we ascend the steps through the school grounds (SUNY Geneseo is built on the side of a hill and offers a fantastic view of the forests sprawled out below) Ingamar stops to point out the sunset scorching a swatch of burnt sienna across the sky and tells us, “Athletes listen to rock n roll to get pumped up, and here poets get the sunset.”

Students quickly file in and before long the room is full, so we begin the show. Alice starts the show off right out of the gate with a nasty little poem and it’s cl

ear from their shining eyes that the students are going to eat up her dirty work, and they do. Except for a few of Alice’s heavier poems, we keep it light for most of the show. Ezra wins the crowd with the college work-study reminiscent poem “New Batch,” and we end the show with our new rendition of “Campaign” (Alice’s ode to female masturbation as in inalienable right) as a duet.

After the show, the enthusiasm and gratitude of the audience is overwhelming, as they stop to chat and buy our merchandise on their way out. We end up at Ingamar’s house with a few Geneseo students, which is on a huge lake reminiscent of home. Synchronicity

seems to be doing its job lately, as just a few days ago Alice was telling Laura Yes Yes that what she wants most in life is to be on the end of a dock over a calm lake on a fall day, and that is exactly what Ingamar serves up, along with great conversation and his roommate’s warm bed. Thank you, Geneseo!

Peace

NIAGARA FALLS

DAY 15 – 10/1/10: After Geneseo, we decide to do a little bit of the “travel” portion of our travel and performance tour and visit the legendary Niagara Falls, which is only about 90 minutes’ drive from Geneseo. It is extremely beautiful, as expected, with waterfalls and rapids in all directions, and we spend several hours just walking around the huge national park before heading into the town’s Little Italy district in search of food and a dive bar, preferably in the same place. We find it at Mujunz, a nicely priced tavern with a sandwich and quesadilla joint attached to it, with a window between the two so you can order food without leaving the bar, which is tended by a sassy, energetic lady named Tina. It’s always good to get off the well beaten path and meet the locals. We drink a lot of inexpensive whiskey and beer before returning to the van for some much needed sleep.

ONEONTA, NY

DAY 16 – 10/2/10: Well, we have a few days to kill before we hit NYC, and it’s just our luck that once again we find the perfect solution. In Geneseo, while killing time before our show, Ezra started to chat with Philip Morris’s (see Chi-Town blog) girlfriend, Glam Damage, on FaceBook, and found out that she is now living in Oneonta, NY, which is about halfway between Geneseo and NYC, and she agreed to let us crash at her place for the next two nights. On our way, Phillip Morris texts Ezra to let him know that we’re in good hands with Glam, and he is right! We arrive in the evening and are instantly greeted with libations, a delicious three-course meal, and a room all to ourselves.

DAY 17 – 10/3/10: Today Glam Damage takes us out to the Fly Creek Cider Mill, one of the main tourist attractions in upstate New York. It is a beautiful ride out and the Cider Mill is full of delicious samples and treats. We pick up some apples and other snacks for the road before heading back to Glam’s house for pizza and a couple movies, a very relaxing break from our tour. Glam and her roommates Rachel and Joel are excellent hosts and we pay them back as best we can by performing a few poems and leaving them with a book and CD before we hit the road for New York City! Thank you again Glam for all of your generosity.

Ezra hanging out on Glam Damage's Couch

NEW YORK CITY

DAY 18 – 10/4/10: We arrive in NYC just in time to take the last two open mic spots at the Louder Arts Poetry Slam, hosted by Emily Kagan Trenchard. The open mic begins with special guest Mongo Bearwolf, host of the IndieFeed Live podcast, reading his poem, “Small,” about the little things worth dying for, such as “a misplaced comma that totally changes the meaning of my life.” Alice instantly falls for Corinna Bain, who reads a poem during the open mic with the very true line, “I move to New York because it’s not the woods. Because people move like blood cells through the subway. Because in the handful of city blocks an average person walks in an average day, it is somehow guaranteed that you will see one of the most beautiful women in the world.” New York – it was love at first sight. Then it’s time for the slam and we’re asked to judge. We gladly accept; this will be Alice’s first time judging and only Ezra’s second, after seven years in the scene. We’re determined to stay consistent though, so we keep track of the scores we give throughout the night and are not surprised to find out that more often than not we’re the lowest scoring judges. We give Jon Sands and Geoff Kagan Trenchard (a longtime favorite of Ezra’s) the highest scores in the first round. Thomas Fucaloro, who does a poem on paper about “soberism,” gets a somewhat low score from us, inciting a round of “boos” from the crowd. He doesn’t give the usual rousing performance most slammers do; instead he reads like a professor might. In the second round we begin to question our first impression of Thomas when we does a brilliant piece about his dictionary. Later, we find out Thomas is one of the New York scene’s new favorites when he places third in the slam after Geoff and Jon, who wins with a hilarious piece in the voice of a Puerto Rican lady whose boyfriend “don’t do shit but smoke weed – like, that’s the only shit … he do.”

DAY 19 – 10/5/10: We check into a hostel in Manhattan this morning. Though it cost us more than we’d budgeted for the whole week in NYC, we’ll be closer to everything here. Also, we get to relish spending the morning sitting around naked, a rare treat when you’re living out of the back of a van. Later, we head for the Bowery Poetry Club, home of the Urbana slam, to watch the recording of a number of IndieFeed Live shows. All of the NYC Slam Masters were asked to choose an up and coming poet from their scene to interview on IndieFeed, the Slam Masters and a poet from their scene performing a poem and then getting into the interviews. We get to see performances from Mahogany Browne (Nuyorican Slam Master), Jeanann Verlee (Slam Master of Urbana), Emily Kagan Trenchard (Slam Master of Louder Arts), and James Merenda (Slam Master of the Intangibles). Then each of them brings up a poet from their scene; at this point though, we’re unsure who came from which slam, so in no particular order, they include Bamboo MC, Corrina Bain, Thomas Fucaloro, and Jivepoetic Droopist. All of them give fantastic performances; Alice particularly enjoys Corrina again, while Ezra especially likes Bamboo MC, and we both agree that Jeanann is stellar. We also get an opportunity to do our duet “Movie Geeks” during the open mic, which earns us a free drink from the bartender, Diane. After the show Alice is so inspired that she rushes back to the hostel to write and Ezra stays at the Bowery to watch a series of three webisodes that star Jon Sands, which he quite enjoys, followed by poetry by the cast and the writer of the series. Ezra is particularly impressed with a poem by Sands’s co-star Angel, who reads an open letter from her heart to the sea, including the awesome line “Why you leave so much dry land – didn’t your mother teach you how to swallow?” Ezra is also very inspired after this show and heads back to the hostel to write a couple of short poems, including his best one in a long time, “Life Story (In 60 Seconds Or Less).”

Check out IndieFeed Live’s poetry channel here.

DAY 20 – 10/6/10: On the advice of Alex Zimmerman, another New York poet, we head out to Chelsea to check out the Highline Gardens. We get off the subway at Times Square after deciding to walk the rest of the way. On the way we happen upon the famous Chelsea Hotel, once home of Henry Miller, Leonard Cohen and others. We spend a few minutes in the lobby daydreaming about the luxury of living in a hotel with housekeeping and fellow artists at the bar down the block. The Highline Gardens are built on a boardwalk above the neighborhood streets; real estate is priceless in NYC. Here you can walk for blocks and gaze down at the city below, out at Hudson Bay, and enjoy local art work and well-tended flower beds. After the gardens we head to the renowned Nuyorican Poets Cafe for their poetry and Hip-Hop open mic. There we’re treated to the workings of a violinist and later a skilled jazz band as back up during our performances. One of the best performances of the open mic is an emcee named Rugged n Raw, who is one half of the brilliantly named duo Mohammad Dangerfield; his solo album includes production by Remot, an excellent producer from New Hampshire who is also featured on Ezra’s album – small world. Then we wait 45 minutes for the subway to come and take us back home. Timing is everything in NYC.

Street Art Seen From the Highline Gardens

DAY 21 – 10/7/10: We get up early (for us) and head out to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the day. After setting out to walk across Central Park on our way there, we turn back to the hostel, twice, after talking to Amie on the phone and getting worried about getting our bags searched at the door (Ezra has his Leatherman on him and Alice has a paring knife). The Met is everything that one might hope for in an art museum; huge lofted ceilings, art from all different regions and periods, and too much for one day. Here are a few favorites:

Ezra seeing his first real live Dali

Afterwards, we sit on the steps of the Met eating some snacks, being entertained by a street performer, and watching the pedi-cab drivers pick up their fares. Alice can’t help but daydream about having that job.

Central Park

DAY 22 – 10/8/10: Today turns out to be a bit of a bust: we manage to finally get some laundry done after checking out of the hostel, but later in the evening we make some crucial miscalculations and arrive late to the Nuyorican, where the wonderful poet Jared Singer is featuring at their Slam. Unfortunately, he goes on first and finishes his set while we are still standing in line; the second feature and first round of the slam are also over by the time we get in. Since it costs 10 dollars each to get in and there is literally no seating whatsoever in sight, we decide to get our money back and spend it on some nice, greasy New York pizza (later we find out that Mo Browne had actually saved us a couple seats near the stage and would have let Alice sacrifice before the Slam if we had made it there in time – c’est la vie and thanks anyways Mo!).

DAY 23 – 10/9/10: Today is the day of Brian Omni Dillon’s birthday party, where we meet a lot of cool new NYC folks and get to spend more time hanging out with a few we’ve already gotten to know, including Bamboo MC, Mo Browne and Jivepoetic, who is the DJ of the party. Omni serves up a lot of delicious food, including vegetable lasagna for the few vegetarians at the party (there are at least two others besides us), and the wonderfully friendly and vivacious Stephanie Olga brings some severely delicious spinach pies as well. There are also margaritas, whiskey and lots of beer, so much of the rest of the night is kind of a blur before we retire a bit early to sleep in the van.

DAY 24 – 10/10/10: Tonight is our first and only planned show in NYC, at a place called Lolita Bar near Chinatown, and we are a little worried about attendance. It turns out we have good reason to be: of all the people we’ve met in New York this week and all the makeshift fliers (Alice’s business card with the show info handwritten on the back) that we’ve given out, the one and only person who shows up to see us is Kurtis Melby, an old friend Ezra used to work with at the Riverview Theater back in Minneapolis, who only stumbled upon the show by accident earlier today on facebook. We don’t mind too much, though, and proceed to give him an hour-long show anyway, featuring Alice’s very venue-appropriate poem “Lolita’s Revenge” (perhaps her best performance of it yet) and a 20-minute rap set by Ezra (aka Tom Swifty). All in all, it’s a very fun show, much more intimate and conversational than usual, and Kurtis enjoys it enough to buy a book and CD afterward. Then we head back to his place about five blocks away, where he kindly lets Ezra take a shower and we watch the Christian Bale/Russell Crowe western 3:10 To Yuma (which played at the Riverview a few years ago when Kurtis and Ezra were working there together) before heading out to the van for one more nights’ sleep in New York. Next up: Providence, Rhode Island, where we will be staying with Slam legend Ryk McIntire and his family.

Audience of One

Day 13 – 9/29/10 After we leave Palatine we drive late into the night and stop at a rest stop in Jackson, Michigan to spend our first night in the back of the van. The van is comfortable and the curtains I hung in the back ward off the blinding semi truck brights. We discover that rest stops make for great places to crash for a good night of sleep and a crappy place to powder your nose in the morning – there’s no hot water! So we make our way to a gas station a few miles away to freshen up and eat breakfast out of the back of the van. Alice calls her step-mom Ellen, who grew up in Detroit, who advises us to check out Cass Street and Forest Ave where she used to live to see a typical Detroit neighborhood. The evidence of a city brought to its peak by the auto industry and then sent crashing down after its withdrawal is all around. We hit Detroit a few hours later and quickly find out that confidence in strangers is a bit lacking here after stopping at three different gas stations to try and find a bathroom, all to no avail.

We stop at Cass Cafe to eat and sit for the majority of the day at the suggestions of Lauren Begent and Seth Walker, another traveling duo that we came to Detroit to meet up with who aren’t able to spend the day with us because they’re in the process of struggling with the Detroit police to get Seth out of jail. You can read more about their encounter with the Detroit po here as well as Seth Walker’s other Facebook notes on the right to travel with out a license, etc.:

READ MORE HERE

Later, we meet up with Seth and Lauren at The Sweet Epiphany Cafe where they’re playing their last feature set after a few weeks in Detroit. Seth and Lauren have been on the road since before the National Poetry Slam in August and have shows booked across the country all the way through February. They’re true gypsies and even teach a workshop on Guerrilla touring. Read more here:

The crowd at Sweet Epiphany is slow to gather and at first it seems like the show is going to be a wash, but eventually a good crowd builds and the MC for the evening, singer-songwriter Deekah, takes the stage with her acoustic guitar and opens up the night with a powerful cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and a handful of her own original compositions. Then the open mic begins and it quickly becomes evident with all of the snapping, hollering, and cheering that this crowd can put out as well as any bar full of drunks. Between performers, DJ Untitled (aka Chris), who invited us out to the show to open for Lauren and Seth and cooked a whole tray of delicious veggie pasta just for us, keeps it bumping and also gets up to the mic to share a few great poems of his own. I’m feeling under the weather, so Ezra fills in for me on the mic, spending a good portion of his 15 minutes doing a capella rap verses, which wins him the crowd. A woman named Maia even jumps up on the mic later to proclaim, “If you buy Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, and all that other nigga shit you should buy his shit!” (It should probably be noted here that Maia is black.) Ezra loves Lil Wayne, but decides to take it as a compliment, though probably not a good quote to go in his bio. Next is the main event: Seth and Lauren take the stage and deliver an unbelievable show. Lauren rips it up on the violin, playing a few minutes of her own wicked variation of a concerto by Mendelsohnn. Seth brings the entire audience close to tears with show-stopping performances of his pieces “Glowstick Girl” and “A Tree Story.” It’s inspiring to see such a strong performance of pieces that he’s probably been doing three times a week for their whole tour. Afterwards, we have to sneak out early to get on the road – next stop Geneseo, NY!

Loading up the covered wagon.

DAY 1 – 9/17/10: We arrive at Alvin Lau’s apartment in the early evening and soon after depart for Real Talk Live, a recurring open mic at the Vox Ferus (Fierce Voice) house, home of Emily Rose, Laura Yes Yes, J. W. Baz, Eboni Hogan and Roger Bonair-Agard, who are all moving out at the end of September. This is, therefore, the last Real Talk Live at this location, so it’s a pretty good place for our first stop on the tour. The featured guests are Crista Franklin, who impressed me both with her poetry and the fact that she mentioned David Cronenberg in between poems, and the Gringo Choir, a traveling troupe of poets made up of Maxwell Kessler, Carrie Rudzinski, Steve Sabrizie and Carlos Williams. Alice gets on the open mic list last-minute and receives a warm reception. Laura and Eboni are out of town tonight, but we stay for a while and party with the other residents and guests before heading back to Alvin’s for some much needed sleep.

DAY 2 – 9/18/10: A bit fatigued from travel and such, we keep it low-key today, just exploring the neighborhood before retiring to Alvin’s to watch a movie (Munich). Sorry to bore you.

DAY 3 – 9/19/10: We make our pilgrimage to the Mecca of Slam, the place where it all began, Chicago’s legendary Green Mill jazz club. Alice is set to do a spotlight feature before Cin Salach next week (9/26), but we both decide to sign up for the Slam tonight, along with Carrie and Max from the Gringo Choir, Houston Hughes from Lafayette, Arkansas, and Chicago’s own Gregory Pickett, among others. Marc “So What?” Smith, the man who created the Poetry Slam, does an exemplary job of hosting the open mic, then proceeds to fill the feature slot with a pretty amazing one-man show around the central theme of tattooing. The old man’s still got it, f’sho. Then the Slam begins and I, of course, pull the suicide spot. I do “House,” which gets me a few hisses right off the bat, but then the audience seems to settle in and enjoy it once they realize it’s not actually sexist and I do alright, getting pretty big laughs in the right spots. Alice does “A Love Letter to Annabel Chong” later in the first round and, though she doesn’t make the second round, several people seek her out to express their love of the poem throughout the night. I barely manage to make the second round and get the suicide spot again (!), then fuck it up by doing “The Last Days of Living Free,” which must be too weird for this crowd; I barely manage to finish before they snap me offstage (for those who don’t already know, snapping is the first stage of showing disapproval, followed by stomping and then booing; hissing is for sexism). Gregory Pickett goes on to win the Slam, just barely edging out Max Kessler, whose third-round piece, “Pests,” is my favorite poem of the night. Seriously, check this out:

DAY 4 – 9/20/10: Tonight we’re set to feature at Mental Graffiti, at their new location in the Butterfly Social Club, right next door to their former spot at the Funky Buddha Lounge. The Butterfly is a cool place, too, with DVD projection of Waking Life on the wall behind the bar throughout the night. Instead of sharing the feature set, we decide last minute that I will just slam and Alice will rock the feature set solo, which works out well. Her set is very good, but she tells me later she’s decided to work on her banter in between poems, opting to actually have planned jokes and introductions to some poems as well as just improvising and having a conversation with the audience; this new approach will serve her very well in the coming days and weeks. Tim Stafford is an excellent host, as many of you know; throughout the Slam, he and Baz have an extended fake rivalry going, with Baz writing personal messages such as “Tongue-jab my shitbox, Tim” on the scorecards. I do “New Batch” in the first round and get a great response, with big laughs in all the right spots and pretty damn good scores, but only the top two go into the second round, those being Billy Tuggle (one of my all-time favorite people in Slam) and Adrienne Nadeau, a recent Chicago transplant who ends up winning with some funny, poignant and empowering work, including one with rhymes that don’t suck (an unfortunate rarity in non-Hip-Hop poetry shows).

DAY 5 – 9/21/10: Today we decide to take a walk through Lincoln Park and stumble upon the free zoo, about which we both have mixed feelings, as with all zoos. It’s depressing to think about the monotonous and confined lives the animals must lead, but I guess having them in places like this saves many of them from extinction, and the Lincoln Park Zoo in particular apparently does a lot for conservation, including breeding endangered animals and releasing the offspring into the wild. Anyway, on a purely selfish level, it’s cool to see the wide variety of animals housed there, especially the primate house, where there are a lot of fascinating monkeys and apes, including one who flexed his boner at us at one point. Later, we go to Wordplay, the Young Chicago Authors workshop/open mic, facilitated by Robbie Q. Telfer, and find out from one of the young authors that the Lincoln Park Zoo has recently caught a lot of heat about their elephant population, which has died off due to some sort of neglect. This is just word of mouth to us, of course, but it is true that we saw no elephants there. Robbie Q. is the funniest workshop leader I’ve ever seen, at one point telling a young woman who is reluctant to read her work, “Ok, why don’t you just go back out on the street and get some heroin, then?” We read two poems each in the open mic and the young authors, many of whom are still in high school, are very welcoming and receptive; they’re good writers, too. Here’s a memorable quote, from a poem by Tim Seivers, read by Robbie during the workshop: “In this life, we invent ourselves frame by frame; the cartoonist is just a sad rumor.”

DAY 6 – 9/22/10: Tonight we go to In One Ear, a very popular open mic hosted by Billy Tuggle and Pete Wolff at Heartland Cafe, a really cool place that has not only a big room with a stage for the open mic, but also a bar and, next to that, an organic co-op! The open mic is extremely well-attended; we even run into Adrienne Nadeau again, along with her friend Daytone, who does a very strange poem about his butt. There is a wide variety at this show, including a few stand-up comics (one of whom is hilarious and plays harmonica in between jokes, one of whom just sucks), a sort of gypsy music duo of guitar and accordion that has the whole place pounding on their tables and dancing in their seats, a pair of young women who play a cover of Oasis’s “Wonderwall,” and of course, lots of poetry. Pete buys one of Alice’s books to add to his library of work from every traveling poet who comes through the Heartland; we consider it a great honor to be part of this.

DAY 7 – 9/23/10: The Art Institute of Chicago is free from five to eight pm on Thursdays, so we have three hours to peruse as much as we can; we decide to start with modern art and impressionism. Of course, before that we stood under the famous chrome bean and looked at the skyline. Our favorite piece of art we saw at the Institute was called Human Dust, by Agnes Denes, which consisted of two photographs of cremated human remains coupled with text describing this particular human’s life in detached, statistical terms such as “He had four friends throughout his life. He was loved by 17 people and liked by 310,” etc. My head also nearly exploded when I saw a woman taking a photograph of a photograph of people looking at paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago. So meta. Here are some of our other favorite pieces and photos from the day:

After the Institute, we go across town back to the Vox Ferus house, where we will be staying for the remainder of our time in Chicago. We stay up late, having a really deep conversation with Laura Yes Yes, who is like some sort of drunken therapist. Really a great person, and very real, like everyone in this house.

DAY 8 – 9/24/10: Having a day off from doing shows, we go to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World at a musty old theater with terrible seats for four dollars each. A good time.

DAY 9 – 9/25/10: Another day off, so we go to see Black Don’t Crack, an excellent spoken word show featuring our housemates Roger Bonair-Agard, Eboni Hogan and Mahogany Browne, who is staying at the house for a few days before returning to New York, as well as Avery R. Young, who we saw at Real Talk Live our first night in town. A really great show with a lively crowd, including Dasha Kelly from Madison, Wisconsin, who comes back to the house to party with us after the show. Baz has just gotten back in town from doing his one-man show, No One Can Fix You, and Roger is leaving in the morning; it seems like wonderful people are always coming and going here.

DAY 10 – 9/26/10: The big night has arrived: Alice has a spotlight feature before the legendary Cin Salach, a Chicago poet who competed in the first-ever National Poetry Slam as a member of the Green Mill team. We arrive a bit late for the open mic, but manage to catch a few great performances, including Robbie Q. and Mahogany Browne, who reprises my favorite of her poems from the Black Don’t Crack show, “Grolar and Pizzly: An American Tale,” a hilarious story about the love children of a polar and a grizzly bear, two animals who aren’t supposed to mate. Alice goes on after the open mic with a very good short feature and finds that she has won some fans at the Green Mill, a group of friends who saw her last week and loved her work. I leave the Slam early to get to the Darkroom, where Phillip Morris is having his CD release party for his stellar new album, The Truth Campaign. Alice stays for the slam, which Mahogany wins with Emily Rose in second place (Vox Ferus represent!) and joins me later, just in time to see the end of the Bottom Feeders and Associates set, in which I do a little rapping with Spy MC, Sean Anonymous and Samiam; we go on after the opener, a belly dancer named Gypsy Rose. After us is Number 2 and White Jesus, followed by Scarlet Monk and her orchestra, whose set is just unbelievable, with cello, drums and saxophone accompanied by Scarlet’s beautiful vocals and a dancer named Allie who does insane bodily contortions and stares the audience down with unflinching bravado. Here’s a clip of Scarlet Monk that gives you some idea of her awesomeness, but really doesn’t do justice to seeing her live:

Agents of Change, a very energetic ska/punk influenced live band Hip-Hop group, follows Scarlet, and then Mr. Morris himself takes the stage for a brilliant set that is unfortunately too short at about half an hour (the club had to close). If you’ve never heard Phillip’s work, you owe it to yourself to check him out; he is without a doubt one of the best rappers alive. Here’s a sample:

DAY 11 – 9/27/10: Another day off, so we decide to have dinner and a few drinks with Alvin Lau, the first of our wonderful hosts in Chicago. We feel spoiled by all the love we’ve felt from him and our new hosts at Vox Ferus. Chicago rules!

DAY 12 – 9/28/10: We say goodbye to our friends at the Vox Ferus house and head off to the Palatine Poetry Slam, our last show in the Chicago area. Palatine is a very young crowd made up of high school and beginning college students; they are consistently the youngest team at Nationals each year, and the crowd at their Slam is fantastic. We feel extremely welcomed at this show, which is helpful because it is our longest feature set yet. We divide the hour we’ve been given fairly evenly between us and it goes very well; Alice’s new banter is top-notch, with jokes about our “rape-mobile” van and the GPS we’ve nicknamed HAL (after the evil super-computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey) before introducing me with a list of credentials such as my past National Poetry Slam team experience and “he gives great handjobs.” We also premiere our two new group pieces, “Movie Geeks” and “Campaign,” both of which go really well. Between Wordplay and the Palatine Slam, we find that we really enjoy performing for young crowds, and they seem to enjoy us as well. Stay tuned – we’re off to Detroit to meet up with songstress Lauren Begent and poet Seth Walker next, and then New York!

Alice & Ezra’s Send Off Party at the Breaks

Time: September 10 at 9:00pm – September 11 at 2:00am
Location: The Blue Nile
2027 East Franklin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN

Come see Alice & Ezra off on their two-month Cross Cuntry Tour (that’s not a typo) with a special edition of the Breaks, featuring members of the St. Paul, Minneapolis and P.O.P. poetry slam teams; Guante; Spy & Sam I Am; Matching Wits; Erok Foret; DJs Elsewhere, Morplay and djo on the 1s and 2s; and more fun stuff! $5.00 18+ 2 for 1 drink specials till 10 pm! Join us!

And here’s a video of my poem Love Letter to Annabel Chong performed at our second Nats bout.

For those of you who haven’t made it out of your air conditioned houses all summer, the National Poetry Slam is coming to St. Paul in August. That means 84 teams from all over the nation and upwards of 400 poets will descend on St. Paul the first week of August and duke it out for the much coveted spot of best slam poetry team over five days of non-stop poetry events and competitions. You can learn more about slam and this years Nationals here http://www.nps2010.com.

Come out and support my team Punch Out Poetry, the first all women’s team. Our two preliminary bouts are:

Tuesday, August 3rd
Artist Quarter, St. Paul
7pm-9pm

We’re up against our home town rivals St. Paul Soapboxing, Urbana from New York, and Eclectic from Baton Rouge. This should be one of the hottest prelim matches of the events.

Wednesday, August 4th
Artist Quarter, St. Paul
9pm-11pm

This should be another raucous match against Piedmont from Winston Salem; Respect Da Mic from Charlotte, NC; and Slam Richmond, VA.

Alice-Wanderlust from Alice Shindelar on Vimeo.

Accept,
or she’ll realize that she’s been walking in your shadow all along.
Accept,
or we’ll say that you are no man.
Accept,
you’ll regret it either way.

Perhaps she is the devil
dangling dirty panties like collectables.
But you were born to undress mysteries
and she was born to teach us how to be still.

Though,
you will never know her nudity
and she will never stop vibrating.

Lolita’s Revenge

The Hunt

Don’t Ask