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SHAPPY'S ONLINE DIARY:
Friday, August 29, 2003
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ONE DAY LATER DAD!
I'll call tomorrow! Meanwhile, you can celebrate by watching your son on HBO on Def Poetry tonight! They are re-runnig my episode tonight!
posted by Shappy at 5:37 PM
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Hey, gang!
Had a great night at the club on Tuesday. Finally made some decent tips for a change. Plus, I got to read and sing at Karaoke+Poetry=FUN! When I got home Cristin somehow scored us a big new bed and a bookshelf! God Bless Ed Garcia! He also lent us some scary movies to watch! I built the bed all by myself and did a damn fine job of it I must say! Tomorrow is the Urbana season opener with Wammo. I was supposed to hang with him and Roger today but got the message too late and had already started on the bed project and running errands and stuff. Apparently, Cristin's sister is staying with us again tomorrow. I'm not sure what she's going to eat cuz she ate all of our lasagna! Watched The Thing on DVD tonight. You definitely shouldn't try to eat dinner during that movie.
posted by Shappy at 2:02 AM
Monday, August 25, 2003
IT'S OFFICIAL!
Well, the wedding went off without a hitch, as they say. Kevin and Katie had a very simple, yet eloquent outdoor ceremony. I got bit by something at the rehearsal dinner and my arm swelled up like a spinach-eating sailor. Cristin says it's because I eat so much candy that I must've been attacked by tiny hummingbirds. It was fine by the next day. Cristin did a great job as the "main witness". I helped out as much as I could. I ended up "bartending" before and after the ceremony. Cristin thought everyone would be scandalized when they saw her kissing the "hired help". Kevin and Katie reflected on thier lives together as vows and even the photographer was crying when Katie started crying/laughing with joy. The reception was fun as well. Awesome little crab cakes and jalepeno poppers! They also had some traditional Irish dancers come in and try to teach everyone some dances. Snoo and I tore up the dance floor and got lots of compliments on our goofy moves. Katie has a lot of hip friends. We met Chris and Paul a married set of circus performers. Paul also runs his own piecing parlor in San Fransico-Body Manipulations. And from the Steppenwolf theater there was Erin who read in the wedding. Maybe she'll hook me up with tickets when I go to Chicago in October. Mr. and Mrs. Aptowicz looked great and were beaming with pride. Mr A was stung in the eye by a wasp like 3 days before the wedding! He was wearing sunglasses the whole time looking like "Apto-schwarzenegger" as Cristin put it. Kevin and Katie are heading for Alaska for the honeymoon, just like Susan and Ernie! Alaska is the new hot spot for hip newlyweds! The next day there was a picnic and we played croquet and got to see some acrobatics from Chris and Paul. Then we took some lasanga with us and rode the train home for 5 and a half thrilling hours! Now I gotta tidy up the apartment as Mr. A is staying with us on Wednesday!
posted by Shappy at 1:22 PM
Thursday, August 21, 2003
GET ME TO THE BACKYARD ON TIME!
Ah, love, she is in zee air, no? Me and Cristin are getting ready for her big brother Kevin's wedding. I picked up the dry cleaning and Cristin cut my hair and I'm gonna go look for an outfit today at Baby Gap. Cristin is the best man! Isn't that sweet? It's as sweet as a bowl of mommy cereal! So the whole wedding is outside and I have been asked to head waterboy! YES! It's gonna be a great time, plus CROQUET!!! The sport of dandyfops! Big ups to Kevin and Katie!
posted by Shappy at 2:09 PM
Monday, August 18, 2003
ACHES AND PAINS!
God, I feel like I'm 80 years old! My leg hurts, my hand's all stitched up and I'm eating Jell-o! I have no idea how I'm gonna survive work tomorrow. Also, the law is coming down on restruants and bars here in NYC. I shudder to think about how all that might go down if I'm not there. Actually, I hope I'm not thre! They busted a guy for drinking a glass of water behind the bar for crying out loud! Never mind how much business was destroyed by the smoking ban and the blackouts! We can't have bald bartenders slicing lemons without a hairnet!
posted by Shappy at 6:47 PM
Saturday, August 16, 2003
WHY IS IT SO DARK IN HERE? IT IS ALSO HOT!
Well, what we all thought was the end of days is officially over as of today. I survived the blackout and all I have to show for it is 8 stitches in my hand and this enormous hospital bill! Yes, I tripped on a curb 2 blocks away from where snoo and I were staying and cut the bedickens outta me left hand. I walked back to the club looking like Carrie on prom nite and was whisked away to the ER. Anyone care to guess how much 8 stitches are gonna cost me? We kept the club open for a while on Thursday and power came on too late to do anything on Friday so I haven't relly made much in the way of cashmoney. Thanks to Luckydave and Matt for helping me out while I was freaking out and for the spaghetti breakfeast on Friday. So I walked across the Williamsburg bridge and then walked up 28 flights of stairs to see Cristin and when we got to the 28th floor the power came back on! Curses! So now I sit here in Astoria while Cristin is in Philly getting ready for the wedding. I think I might go see Corn Mo at the BPC tonight.
posted by Shappy at 6:04 PM
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
let's just wrap this shit up. . .
Tuesday-Went to Chicago Comics and caught up with Seth (Americant zine) and Keith (Flotation Device zine) Seth had taken the liberty of bringing records I would like in anticipation of working for store credit that day. Sadly, I could not commit but I did trade in my new book for $100 in store credit and picked up some cool stuff including a very cool Sideshow Bob T-shirt that got lots of compliments when I wore it to host bouts the next night. It was cool to talk of nerdful things. I then went down the street to stock up on old school tube socks and also got a Mr. T in my Pocket (a little voicebox that says Mr. T stuff) also ran into Mike Olsen (an old comedy cronie of mine) who updated me on all the
comedians I knew in town. Then we were off to Eitan's garden party which was in full swing by like 8
pm! The poets already killed the keg! I was in full social butterfly mode. Of course the #1 question was "Where's Cristin?" The answer-hanging out with her sister Caitlin! For you see, brother Kevin
gets married in 2 weeks! Family business, I replied. It seemed like all the fun folks were there. Then
we strolled to Phyllis's where my old roommate Shag was still doing his "little thing" The "little thing"
being a horrible open-mic for rejects and losers. Shag seemed all bitter to see me. Whatever. Me,
Krystal, Alexis and Wammo stumbled off to get Wammo some beer as I tripped over one of Chicago's
way too high curbs and earned the title "Stumble-lina".
Wednesday- Hosted the Vancouver, SF/Berkley, Vermont bout and had Moonshine sac goat for me. He got great scores! Me am proud of my employee!
All the teams were really good. I particularly enjoyed Andy Krackow from Vermont. Really
spooky/smart and funny stuff! Vancouver had great group work. SF/Berkley had the power and the
polish.
Then off to see Urbana kick it. I missed snoo by like 3 seconds but heard she rocked it. The team did a brand spanking new group piece. It totally won the round for them. I hung out for the erotic/prop(?) slam then off to the hotel for mayhem. I stayed in snoo's room but snored too loud so I didn't sleep
there during the tournament. Sorry, snoo!
Thursday- Slept way too late but needed the sleep. Went to Urbana's bout and got to see the whole thing. That's when Der Lovett from Portland rocked our socks off! This guy was so quirky and funny
yet also seemed like he might kill you or something. He had a great line that went like "I'm gonna hit
you so hard in the head with a hammer that the only word you'll be able to say is "hammer"" Genius!
Again, Urbana came with NEW material and won again! After that I hosted
SF/Berkley/Dallas/Providence. The highlight of that evening (besides being heckled by RAC) was
Bernard Dolan. That kid continues to amaze me and makes all the girlies go crazy. I then checked out
the slam-masters slam. Yawn.
Friday- Urbana got robbed at semi-finals as did most of the better teams. Bar 13 lost by one-tenth of a point! After all that nonsense, me and snoo and Seth Myers (original nrrd-thug) and Post and Jazz and Shawn and his lover went to Sushi and shot the shit. At long last the business of slamming was over and me and snoo finally had some time to hang out! Yay! I skipped indie-finals but am glad to report that Merry Mike McGee won the whole kit-n-kaboodle! I LIKE MIKE! Hooray for funny poets!
Saturday- Nerds unite! I was nervous no one was gonna show to the Nerd Slam cuz of all the mis-information. I was wrong! Mike Swinkey from Dayton (my home town!) showed up in a Star Trek uniform! YAY! The whole thing was a nerdy spectacular! Gave away prizes to everyone. Highlights-Muppets are Awesome, GO!, Barbara from Vancouver beat-boxing, Karyna McGlynn's love letter to Leonard Maltin and somehow I had the honor of having Alexis O'Hara performing her one and only time at Nationals! Yow! When I got there by the way, Cristin was wearing my old glasses from Jr. High. Apparently, I had left a bunch of crap in Quimby's basement! Including an envelope with $40 in it! I also traded in books for yet another $100 in store credit! Picked up a beatiful Chris Ware sketchbook! Then snoo and I finally got to eat at Hollywood Diner together! Then finals totally sucked ass! I enjoyed the nachos more than the poetry. Still as an honorary Austin poet I should mention that they didn't suck. In fact, YEEEEEEEEEEHAAH for Austin's first app in finals since 1996! Me and snoo mingled at the hotel bar. I got an invite to feature in Vegas and Cristin got her Def Poetry sweatshirt back. In fact, I think snoo stayed up later than me! YAY, SNOO!
So that's all I'm willing to type at this point. Come to Urbana this Thursday for more poop and gossip! 8:15 at the BPC!
posted by Shappy at 5:01 PM
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Continuing with the NPS day by day. . .
Monday- Woke up and headed to Quimby's to make fliers for the Nerd Slam since it was listed at different times and not listed at all in the NPS Program. Cline sent me a half done flier on-line and I just needed to add a few bits. Met the new guy at Quimby's-Logan. Swell fellah. He let me fiddle on the computer then Hannah came in and fixed all that I screwed up! Just like when I worked there! She is getting ready to move to Boston and brought in all this stuff she didn't want and put it in a dollar box. I did the same when I left for NYC. Finally I got the flier printed up and then a phone call from Alexis O'Hara! Joy! She met me at the copy joint and we had supper. We then wandered off to Wonderland a retro-junk shop. She got a bunch of naughty greeting cards and I got the Empire Strikes Back Atari cartridge and a bobbing-head wiener dog for snoo. Lucky found us and we dropped off my chap-book a mere 2 hours before the gig! Krystal shuffled me off to the Hot House for a roast/toast for I was Born with 2 Tongues.
I read All American A-hole and got a lotto laffs. It was cool to see the tongues kick it one more time. Also saw Omar there and met Dennis and Golda's adorable lil tot! Then rush off to Funky Buddah Lounge for a poetry packed evening. A two and a half hour open mic for Christ's Sake! Here's a small sampling of who read-
Team Wicker Park
Mama Maria McCray
Morris Stegosoreass
Greg Gilliam
Big Poppa E
Hilary Thomas
Buddy Wakefield
crazy french and german poets
Joel Hammera
and a bunch of other people!
What fun though! Lots of jibber-jabber and cherry beer.
Lucy did some cool new stuff and convinced me to try and write a sesstina? Am I spelling that right? We than decided to try and get everyone to do it as a anthology. Alexis read from my still warm chap book "Ya Want Freedom Fries with That?" and read "America!" It was awesome! I felt my set went well. Ended with "Butterfly" but did it as "Mariposa" which made Bonafide giggle.
Afterwards we went to Watusi which looked like it was going to suck at first but then we took over the dance floor. Best part dancing to Blur with Joel and Derrick Brown and Kry and Claude LeMonde and various drunk poetry types. After closing that club Krystal dragged some of us to some ritzy nightclub which really did suck but at least someone recognized me from HBO in the men's room! We then got White Castles (YAY!) and then realized Nationals doesn't even start for 2 days! YIKES!
posted by Shappy at 12:16 PM
Monday, August 11, 2003
I've decided to do a better job of describing my 2004, I mean 2003, National Poetry Slam experience. So the next couple of days I'll re-hash the last 7 days.
Sunday- Left super early in the morning with luckydave who had me biting my nails til he showed up. Got in to Chicago and showed up at Krystal's place. Lucky scotted off to Kinko's like all good chap-book publishers do and I read the crazy article in the Reader about how Marc Smith single-handedly saved the NPS. (whatever) Krystal had us haul out garbage in preparation for all the arrivals and then gave a lift to the birthplace of slam-The Green Mill. Already there were poets in the house. Morris, Ken Green and Tennesee Mary were having some kind of team meeting. Morris admonished me for posting anonomously to his web thingy. Kathrine Zwick and Cristina Nation and Jeremy Richards added to the fun factor and soon we were in the midst of the Pong Jam which is a slam with a band playing behind you. Morris kicked it with "Fingerfood Jesus" and Jeremy had a great bit about being THE MAN. Also two French poets got up and did some crazy French shit. Also luckydave got up and read and proceeded to get his balls busted by Marc and his band. Lucky was the sound guy the night they featured at the club and apparently there was some bad blood. In the end yours truly won the slam with a swinging version of Sensetive Little Poetry Boy done Sinatra-style. We all piled in Team Seattle's TigerWoodsmobile and headed off to the Holiday Club where I used to work. My old boss, Tim, was all like where have you been? And I'm like, in NYC. . . for 2 years! Krystal joined back up and Eitan joined us as well. After that me and Eitan showed lucky some of the funkier spots in Wicker Park (InnerTown Pub) and Eitan showed us his awesome apartment (complete with workin Ms. Pac Man Machine!) we then headed over to Krystal's helped her clean up some more and watched old Simpsons episodes! I have no idea when we went to sleep.
posted by Shappy at 10:17 PM
Saturday, August 09, 2003
BOOOOOO!
Urbana totally lost thier semi-final bout! Whack judging. We just couldn't get the lovin' we needed. Cristin's voice is giving out on her. I have foolishly partied a little too hardy this week. I am a wreck. Sometimes I gotta remember I'm not in my 20's anymore. I was tired all day! I couldn't find my stupid wallet this morning so that put me in a panic. Managed to get Cristin's book made, it looks great! I scored a Miss PIggy glass at the Salvation Army and a dvd of Superman for $10! Decided to skip semi-finals and have dinner with snoo and the team. Now I can't wait to get home! Nerd Slam is tomorrow at Quimby's at 2pm. Also, I love you snoo! I'm real proud of ya!
posted by Shappy at 1:00 AM
Tuesday, August 05, 2003 We have all agreed that last night just might be the funnest night any of us are gonna have at Nationals and all I gotta say is- "Prove us wrong, kids, prove us wrong!" Yesterday was just crazy all around. I went to Quimby's and made a flyer for the Nerd Slam with Hannah! It was just like old times! She's getting ready to move to Boston so she stole my idea and put all of "?" stuff in a dollar box. I imagine the nerds will clean it out by the end of the slam. Luckydave hauled balls and got the blasted shap-book finished and printed super CHEAP! 2 words for all visting poets needing copies- COPY MAX! It's right by the Note which is one of the slam venues. I sold 2 whole books last night! Ah, poets! I'm gonna trade em in for credit at Quimby's and Chicago Comics. Then Krystal and I went to a roast/toast for I Was Born With 2 Tongues. I got up and read All-American A-hole and watched the tongues do their thang. Then off to Mental Graffitti for the world's longest open-mic! All the early arrivals were there. Big Poppa E and Hillary Thomas and Jeremy Richards and a bunch of crazy MF's from France and Germany. Nick Fox was there-DUH-and Lucy read some great new stuff. The best was having the saucy Miz Alexis O' Hara read my poem "America" as me intro! YAY! We then all went out dancin' til the whee hours! Oh man, I loves dancing to Brit Pop! Christ Almighty so much poetry already and we don't start competition til Wednesday!!! Now if you'll excuse me I have a prayer meeting with Ms. Spelt, Bowerbird and Brett Axel. We are praying for Danny Solis. posted by Shappy at 2:32 PM
Monday, August 04, 2003 So I'm in Chicago! Stupid early flight left me and luckydave all tired and shit. Had dinner at the NEW Earwax Cafe (which sucked and was overpriced) I would've preferred Hollywood Diner but promised Snoo I would wait. I have been offered a free ticket to Wizard World and a lucrative offer to work for credit at Chicago Comics which I plan on taking up after serving my poetic duties. I won the slam at Green Mill tonight which was fun seeing that I got to jam with the PONG UNIT and rawk the hiz-ouse. Went to the Holiday Club and saw my old boss Tim who asked where I've been. Once I explained I lived in NYC and managed the bar at the BPC I got all kinds of perks. Hung out late with Eitan and Lucky at some old bars and ate nachos. Still waiting for Lucky to finish the new book. If it's not ready by tommorow I can kiss plenty of sales away. No biggie. Lucky works hard and deserves a vacation as well. Saw Bowerbird, Ms. Spelt and Brett Axel all at Green Mill tonight, how lucky am I? posted by Shappy at 6:02 AM
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