“Brad how was the date!?”
“Well … it was kind of weird with the three of us there.”
“THREE of you!?!?!”
“Yeah … her, me, and the troll.”
“Hahaha grossssss.”
Now for an explanation. When I was in Europe with Juicebox last year the Troll was created. Well, not created … Juicebox let out an impressive war cry of a burp one night and I said, “wow … the Troll has spoken.” Or something to that effect. The Troll was born. The Troll is who is in charge of any of our delightful bodily functions, including the sometimes frightening, sometimes funny stomach growls.
I recently got a text from a certain friend that read, “the troll just had a soliloquy.” Excellent text.
We enjoy making jokes about the Troll. It’s good clean fun for the whole family.
I just got back from a date (that may or may not have gone well – she was hard to read), and I thought of this joke on the way home. The Troll didn’t actually join us on the date, but I am looking forward to saying this to my friends at work tomorrow.
Yes, I sometimes pre-plan jokes. It’s inevitable with the way my brain spends 90% of its time making bad jokes in my head.
For example, Airplanes, Rainbow Speak, Happy C (a new friend!? unheard of!) and I went to an exhibit this past Friday at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Houston. The King Tut exhibit is in town, so on Friday nights they have little snackums and some drinks, and you can check out the glory that is the Tutster (a couple posts will probably come from dumb jokes I thought of while there). While showering before the event, I thought of a joke. I was excited for the pained expressions that this joke would draw.
“Hey guys, we are SOOOOOphisticated.”
“Pained lawlz …” (Loose interpretation of how they reacted.)
“But I would say I’m the mostphisticated.”
“Many much pained lawlz.” (Verbatim reaction? Maybe …)
I think my friends kind of laughed at the joke (a testament to how nerdy we are).
Anywho. Now to debate if I should send a follow-up “had a good time!” text. These kids and their text messages and their dating and what-not-have-you. I just can’t keep up.
(Yes, I know the title of this post is incorrect grammar. As Steve Martin said, “comedy is not pretty” … sometimes grammar is the victim.)
Welcome back. Go back to yesterday to read the first part of this if you haven’t.
I’m writing about the Houston VIP Slam Off that I attended on March 24th. I was there to support a friend of mine. The competition was to go from nine poets to four, and those four will be traveling to North Carolina to compete in a national competition. Houston is sending two teams, and this night was to crank out one of the two teams.
The MC announced that before the official competition began they would have two sacrificial lambs. This is so that the judges can figure out their scoring, and so that the first competitor doesn’t have to be the first one on stage.
The first guy got up and did a poem about love. If he happens to read this, it was brilliant and I’d give it a 10. In reality, it was a bit dark for me, I prefer more humor (go figure). The scores were on a scale of 0 to 10.0. And it was recommended that we go to one decimal point to help avoid ties I suppose.
***
Now, let me go ahead and tell you a little bit about how I work. Whenever I do a survey and the questions have you say you: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree – I rarely choose one of the answers with strongly in it. It just raises so many questions for my neurotic mind. For example, what is strongly and do I really feel strongly about anything? I’d like to think I can be fairly easy-going so no I don’t strongly agree that this ATM was usable, or that this bagel was tasty. I just agree. Yeah, the ATM worked. Sure. The bagel did the job of being eaten by me. Let’s move on. Nothing strong to see here.
When I heard a scale of 0 to 10.0, my mind converted that to a scale of about 6 to 8. I didn’t want to give a really low score because that would be mean. But something above an 8 would have to be really good. In my head this was just fine.
***
I wrote down my score for the first guy: 6.9. I wrote it quickly and turned over the dry-erase board I’d written it on.
Across from me, sitting by the doorway, was another judge. She was the only other judge I could see the score of. The other three judges were behind me (again, I was a front-row geek). The MC told us to show our scores.
*Gulp.*
The girl across from me had given the performer a 9.9. She gave me a shocked look when she saw my score. The MC read the scores and all of them (I think), but mine were in the 9’s. Whoops. I quickly erased the score on my dry-erase board. Someone around me noticed this and laughed and said, “he’s embarrassed of his score!” I am not 100% sure if I was blushing or not, but I’d be shocked if I didn’t a whole bunch that night. Someone else said they weren’t able to copy the scores down in time and I had to write mine back.
No problem, right? I just needed to adjust my scoring? Well, the people around me disagreed. “No, you have to be consistent! Write what you think you should!” So, you’re saying you want me to be an a-hole all night? Sure, no problem.
The second sacrificial lamb got up and performed. I liked her better than the first guy, so obviously the score needed to increase. But it wasn’t like she was WAY better than the first guy, so logically she got a 7.3 (I’m a logical person, not a dick, it’s just sometimes the two combine?).
Remember when the MC told me no one but her would see my scores? What a liar-face. People would poke around me to look at my score, and in case that wasn’t enough, the MC would look at me, sometimes point, while reading my score.
The night had 3 rounds. In the first two all nine performers went once. In the third round six went. That’s twenty-four performances. At most, four times I did not have the lowest score.
And you know what happened more often than not? I was BOOED. BOOED I tell you! I have never been booed so much. Here’s how it would go:
1 – Performer goes
2 – I give the a-hole guy score, everyone else gives nice, high scores
3 – I get booed
4 – I look down in shame, look at my friends
5 – My friends laugh at me
6 – I say ‘I hate you guys’
7 – They laugh some more
At the end of the first round I formed a plan. Of course! I’ll just add two points to whatever score forms in my head! 7.4’s will become 9.4’s and I will no longer be this jerk in the front row! I tell my happy plan to the girls sitting behind me (who made a habit of making fun of me with The Story Teller, and poking me occasionally to laugh at me). They seem to be ok with it. Then the MC comes back to the stage and I tell her my plan and she says, “NO! You have to stay consistent!” I turned to one of the girls behind me and said, “ok you two work this out and please just tell me what to do!”
I continued on my consistent a-holery. Or, dumbassery if you will.
***
The competition and thankfully my friend made the cut. I think I had ended up grading him more harshly because I didn’t want to be biased. Afterwords I was talking to him and saying how I felt like such a dick all night long. He responded very kindly (in tone, not in words),
“no it was fine! Normally the Nazi judge isn’t consistent at all but you were really consistent.”
Ooof. Without batting an eye or thinking of it as a bad thing I’d heard my label – the Nazi judge. Ouch. Nevertheless, probably pretty accurate.
***
The Story Teller recommended that I get up on stage and explain how my bell curve works. While everyone else is between say a 7 and 10 I operated between a 6 and 8. We joked that Rainbow Speak would operate between a 99.0 and a 99.9.
Overall, I really didn’t enjoy being a judge. I felt like a jerk all night and, seriously, I got booed. But, it was still pretty funny, and my friends had a blast. It was very cool to see my buddy TFO perform, and I’ve included a YouTube video below of one of his performances.
Hope you enjoy it! Feel free to judge him as harshly or kindly as you like with no fear of public repercussion! It’s life’s simple pleasures like that, you know?
(And yes, people would snap. So if you think that’s what you’re hearing, it is what you’re hearing.)
Saturday night a friend of mine, TFO, was competing in a poetry contest. The Houston VIP Slam Off.
Now, I’m going to go ahead and let you in on a little secret … before the event I had guessed that my buddy Rainbow Speak and I would be the only white people there. I was almost right. Another friend and co-worker of ours came with a friend of his (and friend of ours), so that made four white people. I’ll call them The Story Teller, and Sugar.
A week before, when I was returning from SxSW, my friends and I stopped off at a big outlet mall in San Marcos. There, at the urging and encouraging laughter of E$ and Airplanes, Rainbow Speak and I each bought a pair of pink pants. We figured these would come in handy any time we wanted to look like idiots.
Saturday night, for the Houston VIP Slam Off, we decided to look like idiots. Airplanes (who is Mexican-American) sported a pretty dress, Rainbow Speak and I went full blown pastel. Because hey everyone, did you notice we’re white?
***
We got to the event and I was regretting our fashion choice. I ended up being disappointed at the complete lack of people making fun of us. Our friend, TFO, was introducing us to other competitors and friends of his and … no one said, “hey uh … what’s with the pants?” Not a one! Instead, TFO’s friends probably just had the thought ‘silly white people’ further drilled in. Whoops. At least I left my tennis racket in my trunk. (Yes, I have a tennis racket in my trunk.)
One of TFO’s friends was Bean. Bean was telling us some stories about past events and mentioned getting upset at judges. Wait, upset at judges? I asked about the scores, assuming that a round would finish and then all competitors would get their scores together. “No, I don’t know anyone who would do this if it was like that,” Bean said. Instead, after each performer, the judges grade them. And, what’s more, the performers know what score each judge gives. Bean told a story about being at a competition as a coach, and throwing his notebook at one judge who kept giving low scores.
This is worth noting.
***
Fast forward a little bit and we’re sitting inside. It was at a cool little coffee and food shop, and it was packed. Forty to fifty people inside. They had set up some benches and pushed the tables off to the sides, against the windows, and only the front row was left.
The Story Teller squeezed in at the end of the second row. Sugar, myself, Airplanes, Rainbow Speak, and another dude from work sat on the front row.
A girl, who turns out to be the MC, comes up to me. I’m not sure what all was said during this conversation, so here’s my attempt at repeating it.
“Want to be a judge?!”
“What? No I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“That’s fine! You know poetry?”
“Well, I mean I’ve read poetry … I wouldn’t say I know it.”
“Perfect! So you’ll be a judge?”
“Ha! No I … I wouldn’t even know what to score on!”
This story would be much shorter if I had managed to say no. But she got a yes out of me. Things to note from the conversation, her line, “you’re going to say yes eventually.” Which proved to be true. And:
“Wait wait … I was talking to a dude outside before this and he said they could SEE what scores they get! So then I’d just want to give everyone a TEN!”
“No, only I will see your score.”
LIAR!
She also said, “you’re young and you seem like you’d be ok with it so I’m going to be making fun of you.” Which made her cool in my book.
“Ok fine … but I have a friend here and I’ll want to give him higher scores so he’ll win.”
“You’re saying you’re a biased person?”
Which was a brilliant response. After that I laughed, said yes of course I’m biased, and agreed to be a judge. This picture was taken after the show, which depicts the MC and I’s relationship I think.
DumbFunnery 