Some favorite stage moments...
(...from Rust Belt, obviously.)
- Getting a 5.5 for "Flavor of Love". You wonder what goes on in a judge's mind when they give a score like that for a poem like that. Not that it's the greatest poem in the world, but goodness: it was the lowest single score of the night. I thought it was hilarious.
- Watching my team in Finals.
- Versiz.
This cat is one of my favorite poets in Slam. Every time I see him he's better. I know he works a lot on his work, but he's one of the few cats that you can literally see the growth on him from season to season.
- Cleveland's "Stick Up" Team Piece.
One of the most engaging team pieces I've ever witnessed, and I am very hard on team pieces. Those cats are seriously like Voltron: tough when they're solo, but unstoppable as a fully-formed robot.
- The 4-minute+ cat, Eye Witness, yes? I love it when people just don't care about the rules.
- Detroit. Just a team of really great, warm ladies and writers.
- Twain Dooley.
I love watching this cat throw down. He takes chances with his humorous work that pay off without being nerdy or high-falutin'. Just witty, street cred stuff, baby.
- Dan Vaughn.
This is more of a private stock choice. I know Dan's been through some trials lately, so to see him working it out on stage the past couple of months has been an inspiration.
- Rose Smith at Finals.
The best performance of a poem all weekend, period.
- Vernell in Indie Finals.
I'm very hard on Vernell when it comes to her poems, harder than I am on other poets. It's because I see her potential and I really push against her grain to make her realize it. Vernell could go on to be the best of us. That she almost consistently goes up in rounds first and still manages to rank high is a testimony to her power as a poet. it's kind of funny to think that we've been working together on the night for almost ten years now - hell, is it ten years this year? - and only now do we see her potential coming out in this way. You wonder what she's been doing the past decade, yeah? Soaking it up, I guess.
- Any poet who read off of paper by CHOICE, and meant that junk.
My people.
- Jason's "Gold" arm.
There's always more, but my mind snatched these off the top.