poetry March 27th, 2012
Last night, Jill and I went to a poetry slam at The Fridge on Barracks Row. Ever since she had been raving to me about one she went to while she was living in Australia, I’d been wanting to check one out. I know from that photo it looks like we were hiding like weenies in the back row, but believe it or not, we were actually 2 of the 5 judges for the night, and there was really nothing we could do to hide. Don’t ask me how we ended up in those roles, personally I think they shouldn’t have picked such newbs to judge the performances, but there we were, handed dry erase boards and markers and asked to rate each delivery on a scale of 1 to 10, Olympic style. The first performance was then done as a barometer to judge all the rest against, meaning the first speaker was not part of the competition. From there, about 10 people read/performed their poems, and we rated them after each one. We quickly learned that anything less than a 10 was met with a chorus of boos from the crowd, but like I said, there was no where for us to hide, so we just embraced our roles Simon Cowell style and told it like it was.
Jill’s scoring board, awaiting a number
I will say, it was really hard for me to compare each of the performances. For one, the subject matter ranged from funny to political to morose, and from soft spoken word to rapping to near song. Apples and oranges, my friends, but I did the best I could. After the first round, the bottom three scores were elminated and then the headliner, Carrie Rudzinski recited several of her works. She. was. amazing.
Then, in the second round, each of the top scorers recited another poem, and we awarded more scores until the top three winners were crowned. I thought all the poems got better and better as the evening went on, but there were definitely some standouts. So overall, a great experience, and I would definitely go again, but would probably leave the role of judge to someone else, since I found it a bit too stressful. Also, The Fridge is a really cool venue and perfect for this show — it’s tucked in an alleyway on 8th St between E and G, and there are tons of awesome murals and stencils that cover the brick walls. check these out –
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Oh, did I also mention we grabbed dinner at Ted’s Bulletin? I love that place… We shared a homemade pop-tart for dessert. It was almost as amazing as the poetry. Here is the guy in the window making them from scratch… YUM.
tags: alley, capitol hill, DC, People
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March 28th, 2012 at 10:34 am
roses are red violets are blue
i like your blog and you two
What’s my score? Do I win a homemade pop tart?
March 28th, 2012 at 8:33 pm
bahahahah dad i give you a 10!!!!!!!!
i didn’t give out a 10 all night so you should feel special.
the poptart was awesome!!!
March 29th, 2012 at 12:33 pm
Me likes me some poptarts!
I no longer win at de MarioKarts!
I like de candies that taste tarts!
When I go pfffftttt you don’t want to smell me…………
Oops…… just joking around………that’s what happens when you pull an all nighter folks!!!!! Little short on the sleep and the brain circuits aren’t firing quite right!
Dad you remember the great pop tart battle/war don’t ya???