Slam poetry!

(Let's start with another question, for a change ;-))

Can you say "this night is just perfect" if right after that it gets more perfect with every second? Is perfect quantifiable? I think it is. Read on to be convinced.

Tonight Kirsten took Ezra and me to The Green Mill, the bar where Al Capone used to go. This fact alone got me thrilled, but it gets better. Every Sunday this cozy place programs an event they call Poetry Slam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_slam). It's a poetry contest where poets of all ranks read out their creations in an entertaining way. Now, the guy who came up with this idea in 1984, the legend Marc Smith, he's some performer! Even if every poet in the slam is rubbish, he would save the day. And today was even more special because it was the birthday of Carl Sandberg, the poet who put Chicago on the art map at the turn of the last century. Party!

You see, this poetry slam is no dull happening, it's pretty interactive. Whenever you like a poem, you can of course do the obvious thing and cheer or clap your hands. If you think it's awful, on the other hand, you snap your fingers, stamp your feet onto the ground or even boo the wanna-be poet off the stage. When the poet is not being the most women-friendly person, you produce the female hiss; when the poem is giving men a hard time, the Green Mill gets filled with male grunt. And when you can 'guess the rhyme', you shout it out loud. Yes, as said before, Chicago is the right kind of crazy.

Still, there's more to come (as I predicted in my previous post as well): not even were the poems very high-standard tonight, Marc Smith always selects three judges from the audience who have to give scores to the contestants. And guess what: I got to be a judge! Imagine Belgium, 7 points! Very Eurosong, but this tiny girl stood her ground :-).

Last but definitely not least, when the contest was over, Marc Smith called me to the stage and I got to defend my country's honor (possibly for being a tough judge, but who says being satisfied easily is a good thing? ;-)). So, all you Flemish people, I sang Mia by Gorki, both with the Flemish and the English lyrics, accompanied by the band in the Green Mill, during my very first week in the States. Beat that! (And yes, I'm still kinda shaky)