Toward the end of the old slam, while I was using the mic as a forum for some radical politics and lifestyle choices, and my eventual frustration with the constant emulation/repetition of standard HBO Def Poetry forms was probably evident to the audience, at the new slam, Chris and Kendrick let the kids believe that they are viewing something new and exciting and that’s fine too.  Back when Pat and I were participating in the formative years of American punk (pause for pat on the shoulder), the last thing we would have tolerated was some old curmudgeon from the past telling us how we should do it.  So good job Collective Purpose and good luck San Diego in West Palm Beach.

Yesterday, I took a fairly leisurely 65 mile ride up the coast and back.  It could have been longer but I got a late start due to meandering around trying to fix a stripped seat clamp (thanks Cal Coast Bicycles) so I just cruised up as far as I could within some time constraints.  The coast route is pretty reliable, even in the summer it doesn’t get too hot and as it is really popular with the roadie crowd, traffic is pretty tolerant of bikes.  It isn’t all fun and sun along the beach– climbing Torrey Pines in each direction is a big pull but the scenery is great (except for the constant litter of Gu wrappers– maybe there should be a spandex/carbon fiber tax) and if you need to pull over and rest, you are doing it on a beach.  This length has become pretty routine to me, so I need to either lengthen it, ride faster, or go over those fucking mountains again to get a good torture session.

that things

are spinning

into

control?

Originally Posted 4/23/08

while I read a biography of Trotsky

“The Real Housewives of Orange County” was on in the background

I woke up confused

Does Tiffany sell icepicks?

-6/30/08
*the original title of this post was “The Lollipops Don’t Work Anymore”

I tried listening to Pollan on mp3
four hours about a single meal
I don’t understand
the nutritional value
of a yuppy’s
umbilical noodle

Elevated, the combination open-mic night with featured special-guest readings, is just one of the spoken-word events that have started since R. Spot Books on University Avenue closed last year. Hosted by Collective Purpose, a motley young bunch of spoken-word artists who think live performance is part and parcel of poetry, the event was born out of the necessity to unify a community of writers and poets left without a home. The collective crew came together and went looking for a space to perform.

They found what they were looking for at the Arts & Entertainment Center on University Avenue in North Park, a multipurpose community center with a gallery in front, a performance space in back and a powerful mural coloring the outside wall facing the alley. On Thursday nights, people cram into the back of the center to see the poets perform—the crowds have become big enough for the collective to switch Elevated from a bimonthly to a weekly event.

Last month, Collective Purpose celebrated Elevated’s one-year anniversary—more than 300 fans lined up to see invited guest, Talaam Acey, a National Poetry Slam champion. But many in the crowd came to share in the collective’s successes as a local arts-collaborative force and community builder. So what’s the secret? How does Collective Purpose get hundreds of people to a poetry show on a Thursday night?

“We decided to pool our talents and our resources,” says Christopher Wilson, who acts as the group’s manager. Collective Purpose has a core crew of seven people that includes some of San Diego’s most well-known poets: Anthony Blacksher (aka Ant Black), Eugene Albert III (aka The Passionate Poet), Kendrick Dial (aka Conscious), Rudy Francisco, Viet Mai, tai li la mumba mugambee and Wilson.

The collective is a tight-knit group. Their collaboration and support for one another is apparent to the Elevated crowd, and that translates into the audience’s willingness to join in and participate in the performances. The poet hosts are skilled at eliciting reaction; from the start of every event, they make it known that Elevated is not a quiet poetry reading. The audience is encouraged to jump in and engage the performers and each other, sometimes through laughter and applause, other times through dialogue or even heated debates after the shows.

“Usually 20 to 30 percent of the audience stays afterward to talk about what was said, how it affected them,” says Francisco. “We are a forum for free speech. People are going to have different opinions on what is said during course of the night.”

“And if someone has a differing opinion,” adds Wilson, “they are welcome to get up on stage during the show and respond.”

The collective uses the example of Cecil Hayduke, the host of the San Diego Poetry Slam. The collective says Hayduke took a few shots at their unabashed Christianity—a common, but not overriding, theme on the Elevated stage—during one of his visits to the event.

Collective Purpose took Hayduke’s rant in stride, and the two separate events and hosts have come to share audiences. They’ve even started working together; there’s an upcoming Elevated poetry slam in the works as a fundraiser and promotional event for creating a new San Diego national slam team. Chances are a few members of Collective Purpose will make the team if it comes to fruition.

While Elevated is a free-speech event, the group prefers to keep it clean. “We want to make sure it’s tasteful,” explains Francisco. “But it has to be over the top for us to censor.”

“It’s a matter of truly offering something to the crowd versus pulling something out of your ass,” adds Dial. “Shocking people without a purpose—we don’t want it.”

Wilson affirms that they don’t want to censor anybody, but if things get out of hand, they will turn off the mic. “We had guy who did racist jokes,” he says. “We shut him down. Even though the mic is open, we have a duty to make sure that type of thing is not represented in our space: homophobia, racism against blacks, Latinos.”

The seven members of Collective Purpose say they are learning how to manage and grow the event as they go. They have become their own harshest and helpful critics.

“We are family,” says Dial. “I’m constantly learning from everybody. We give honest feedback so we are able to see growth in ourselves and others.”

“Everyone is openly critical of each other,” adds Viet Mai, the newest addition to the collective, “but all out of love and growth. It’s not a harmful criticism. To have that is very important, especially if we’re all trying to progress. Something that I always wanted was that collaborative spirit.”

“We stand together, united. It’s powerful,” agrees Blacksher, who’s featured in an upcoming KPBS documentary called Poetry Live(s) by San Diego State University professor Mark Freeman. Blacksher says the strength of Elevated is evident in the number of A-list performers willing to come from out of town and take the stage. “We’re getting talked up in D.C., New York, all around the nation.”

Elevated takes place every Thursday at the Arts & Entertainment Center, 3026 University Ave. in North Park. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. $5. www.collectivepurpose.org or 619-260-1731.

Zeppelin from the cover band “Pale Black” is not ironic here
Actually, nothing is ironic here
Sherri calls it “land of the lost”
but I think they’ve found everything they want right here
well… an IROC Z or a lifted F150 would be nice

But then I met a french guy getting his masters at UC
we discussed the morality of modernizing trade in the third world
(I’m against it)
I was wondering if he had a plan to do it in Lemon Grove
Sherri thought this was too cynical
she pointed out that Dirk’s has a vending machine that cooks fresh french fries on demand for two bucks
I acknowledged my error, having already used them to suck up some excess Jim Beam

The band played on
“Panama” by Van Halen, apparently in response to my discussion with the French regarding whether the Free Trade Act of the Americas was hegemonious or merely the inevitable result of growth.

The band plays Green Day and announces their URL http://paleblack.com
note the disclaimer: this list is only some of the songs Pale Black plays. If this list seems fairly typical it is because the band is currently booking its first shows and does not wish to reveal some of its more unique song selections until it has performed them at certain venues
Their “Hottie of the Month” is also worth mentioning: http://paleblack.com/hotm.html l

(apparently, merely wearing the t-shirt of this cover band induces orgasm (and cameltoe))
Pale Black takes a break
A bartender seems concerned as he spies a dreadlocked minority heading for the jukebox – he urges others to hurry up and feed it some cash
It turns out that the minority is from France too (or maybe Portland)

I continue blogging on paper
As long as I write, I’m not really in this bar
Maybe that’s how Burroughs could stand Kansas, or Hendrix earth

East County surprise, more minorities at the bar
I eavesdrop as they discuss a local murder, the perp known to all but the pigs
Reality isn’t as fun as the HST bar scene inside, so I sneak a big suck of the 2003 Club Cecil Reserve
and go back inside

Back inside, Pale Black plays Detroit Rock City, the crowd unaware that the fathers of San Diego have long conspired to deny them any chance of a UAW standard of living http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1565848322?v=glanceL ()

Pale Black plays something by something called Seven Mary Three
The TV displays a commercial for “Cat Fight Girl Kitana Baker on Pay Per View” then switches to Nancy Kwan highlights on ESPN
The other TV over the bar shows “Darma and Greg” which makes me wonder whether Kerouac and Cassady ever admitted they were in a stupid place

Sherri and her (female) friend discuss whether they will ever fuck
I don’t care (unless I get to watch) and then only mildly
I vaguely wonder what has happened to my libido

I listen to the cover boys play a Bowie song and contemplate the fact the David J of Bauhaus called today and said he really liked hearing Jazz and I read Wednesday in Encinitas

I scan the bar
still no sign of my rendezvous
did I mention that yet?

It turns out that last week, during the course of my social research, a waitress at this bar saw me writing on a napkin
she saw Sherri later that week and asked her if I wrote
Sherri said yes, apparently taking my napkin scrawling as evidence

her name is Dianne, Sherri said she is from “Eastern Europe” but she isn’t sure where
Those countries confuse her
I have a vague memory of a smile and some cleavage

Pale Black plays “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the over 40 set
All of the creatures in the song– the mulatto, the albino, and maybe the skanky cheerleaders from the video, appear to be on the dance floor for their moment
I bang my head and realize that saying something ironic now would be superfluous

Another Jim on the rocks

Sherri’s friend, let’s call her low-self-esteem-girl, starts looking better
maybe I do want to see her naked after all
… a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido……

assured I know a dirty word, I look up and see Dianne
the “Eastern European country” turns out to be Boston
Sherri is from Huntington Beach
oh well, whatever, nevermind…

We go out to the patio to talk and because I want to smoke
I’m quitting tomorrow and need to take advantage of a bar with a smoking area
Dianne has finished a novel and it’s being published
now she’s pitching the screenplay

about ten years ago she was a dancer at Pacer’s
she organized the dancers into a union and became a national news story, even making that bastion of hard journalism – Hard Copy

a famous labor bashing law firm came in and squashed the union
a few of my Cornell classmates worked there

Low-self-esteem girl has hooked up with a guy
he tells me he saw us rock the blue naugahyde couch at the casbah

we take off for sherri’s mansion on top of the hill
low-self-esteem girl and the guy jump in the jacuzzi
on sherri’s bed, I decide the low-self-esteem girl’s new name is Little Debbie
because you get a lot cheap
http://www.littledebbie.com/
I peak through the blinds and watch them grope in the tub

it does nothing for my libido
oh well, whatever, nevermind

I score a ride home and fall asleep spooning with Leonard

The poets are loose. They drink whiskey. They riff off each other. They scheme the subversion of the known universe and plot a radical, thought-provoking writer series to shake up the complacency of summer.

Welcome to a meeting of the Anarchist Think Tank.

With diverse backgrounds in teaching, corporate law, government and business, the poets that make up the Anarchist Think Tank blend politics and snarky humor to highlight the follies of our political system.

Many local poets understand that when it comes to making political statements, the voice of many can be more powerful than the voice of one. But there are other reasons why poetic collaborations like the Anarchist Think Tank are proliferating in San Diego County.

Spoken word performances have become an important part of the poet’s repertoire. Local poets find themselves in the spotlight at well-attended events and venues like the La Paloma Slam in Encinitas, Poetry and Art at the San Diego Art Institute and Voz Alta in downtown San Diego. They are meeting their audiences and fellow poets face to face, opening up communication and exchanging ideas.

“Everyone’s a potential collaborator,” says Cecil Hayduke, of the Anarchist Think Tank. “We collaborate with the audience. We try and get them involved; we ask them questions; we want them to ask us questions, heckle, do whatever they want. In our perfect world, the whole community would be a collaborator.”

Hayduke’s primary cohorts consist of Jimmy Jazz and Michael Klam.

Already friends, the troika formed the group haphazardly as a result of a joke and a misunderstanding. While announcing an upcoming performance, they quipped about holding a meeting of their “anarchist think tank,” and the name stuck.

“Our unifying theory for performance is that we really believe in performance value,” explains Jazz. “What we’re concentrating on is radical poetry, revolutionary poetry —- not in form, but in the message.”

The group began producing spoken word events, co-authoring and co-performing pieces, and what started as a joke morphed into an entity based on similar philosophies, politics and agendas.

An important factor in forming collaborations, says Hayduke, is getting the right fit.

“You can talk in shorthand to your friends, to your collaborators,” he says. “You don’t have to explain, ‘I don’t rhyme.’ You don’t have to tell them what you like and don’t like. Things just happen.”

Things like “The Science of Blowing Up,” a summer series of poetry shows at Voz Alta (the next one is Aug. 27). The events feature nationally touring performers, many who cut their teeth on the poetry slam circuit.

Other civic-minded collectives include Los Able Minded Poets, who combine hip-hop and live instrumentation with politically charged poetry, and Brujas y Bellas, a women’s collective formed to provide a venue for Chicana writing.

The Taco Shop Poets, one of the longest running collectives in San Diego County, are Chicano poets who see themselves as activists first. The group, which formed in 1994, took the name because they used to perform in taco shops throughout the nation and Baja California.

“The cultural space, physical space, is also a political space,” says Adrian Arancibia, one of the founding members of TSP. “We find ways of subverting space, turning a taco shop into not only a place where you eat, but a place where you perform.”

Their “guerrilla poetry” was an attempt to bring poetry to an audience not typically exposed to spoken word, and to take the coffeehouse spoken word audience into a new environment.

But the physical space is also about community. These days, TSP has a permanent home as artist-in-residence at Voz Alta, a 1,100-square-foot performance space and gallery. Voz Alta (which means “out loud”) hosts a number of spoken word, music and visual art events throughout the year.

“We’ve developed a network of people, a sort of support group, establishing a community of artists and a public for the artists,” Arancibia says. “These types of things develop organically.”

Likewise, the nonprofit group San Diego Writers, Ink is setting up shop at the Promenade Centre, an artistic and cultural center currently being developed at the site of the former Naval Training Center in Point Loma.

The Ink Spot, as the space will be named, is scheduled to open in the spring of 2005.

“We’ll be one of the nonprofit groups in the cultural center,” says Judy Reeves, of Writers, Ink. “There will be artists, performance spaces, dance. There’s a 1,800-seat theater. We wanted to go there as writers and poets for the opportunity of cross-fertilization.”

For the Encinitas-based Full Moon Poets, collaboration is all about community.

“It’s like going to your favorite bar, only you don’t have to go in there and get plastered,” says Danny Salzhandler, founder of the Full Moon Poets. “It’s the fact that you’re going somewhere where you can build on relationships and draw off of creativity.”

The group meets each month on the night of the full moon —- hence the name —- for readings and to bounce ideas off each other.

“We’ve had hundreds of people come over the last five years. It’s sort of a family,” says Salzhandler.

The group also organizes the only ongoing slam in San Diego. The biannual slam is held in January and July (this year’s slam takes place this Saturday) at the La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas. The event generally draws a crowd of 400 and offers a cash prize of about $600, collected from the audience.

The natural progression of collaborative efforts is toward cross-disciplinary art.

Voz Alta is a performance space and a gallery. The Ink Spot will be located amid a cultural center melding spoken word, visual and performing arts. The quarterly Poetry and Art event at the San Diego Art Institute brings visual art and poetry together.

“You should never isolate spoken word performance,” asserts the Taco Shop Poets’ Arancibia. “That’s how a greater movement of artists happens. It’s never in isolation of other genres.”

From long-established groups like the Taco Shop Poets to the newly created Escondido-based Poets Inc., like-minded poets are forming collectives to workshop, network, stage events, learn from peers and co-author works. They are wielding hammers and power drills, creating spaces to gather and perform.

The lonely writer, it seems, seeks community.

“It’s kind of the direction San Diego has gone in,” says Anarchist Think Tank’s Hayduke of poetic collaborations. “I think it’s easier to set up a show and get your message out if you work with people.”

“Unless you’re really rich and famous,” he adds, “the lowly artist has to network.”

- n n

- Los Able Minded Poets will perform at 9 p.m. Aug. 13 at Voz Alta, 1544 Broadway in San Diego. Admission is $5. Call (619) 230-1869.

* Open Mike Night, 6:30-9 p.m. Aug. 18. The Museum of the Living Artist in Balboa Park presents hosts Danny Salzhandler, Guy Lombardo and Lucinda Economo leading an open program of poetry readings geared to the artwork in the museum or their own. Admission is $3. Call (619) 225-8191.

- Poets Inc. will hold its monthly read-and-critique session from 7-9 p.m. Aug. 23 at the Escondido Municipal Gallery, 142 W. Grand Ave., Escondido. Call (760) 746-9114 or e-mail InlandPoets@aol.com.

- “The Science of Blowing Up,” a collective of nationally known spoken word poets (Derrick Brown, Barry Graham, Jervey Tervalon) and local poets Michael Klam, Cecil Hayduke and Jimmy Jazz, will perform at 9 p.m. Aug. 27 at Voz Alta, 1544 Broadway in San Diego. Admission is $7. Call (619) 230-1869.

Michael Klam contributed to this story

’Tis the motto of the snarky poetry collective, Anarchist Think Tank

by Jennifer Chung

The game show is “Imminent Jeopardy.”

The category: “Bush or Stalin?”

Contestants are challenged to determine whether a given statement describes our very own George W. or the brutal dictator of Russia. For incorrectly identifying Bush, one contestant is handed a couple of sticks of dynamite and unceremoniously blown up. The crowd in the first three rows feels a blast of hot air and goes momentarily deaf. The building’s smoke detector sounds. People hold their ears and laugh nervously.

This is not your usual poetry show. This is “The Science of Blowing Up,” a series of spoken-word shows created by a group of poets known as the Anarchist Think Tank. The first installation in the series, held in June, was a mixture of poetry, politics and puerile antics. (The exploded contestant is ringer, fellow Anarchist and performance artist Junk Boy.)

According to the Anarchist Think Tank, most poetry shows suck.

“The kind of thing you get taught in English class makes for very boring performances,” says member Cecil Hayduke. Coffeehouse poetry, for example, “might be very interesting to read—possibly—but I don’t think it’s an entertaining show,” he says.

The Anarchists describe their series of shows as the “apocalypse of disgust, the farting out of the status quo, a slap in the face to journal mumblers and their coffeehouses.” Presumably, that means it won’t suck.

Though the Think Tank’s Michael Klam concedes their members are really more like boys in men’s bodies, he says the group isn’t just about “blowing shit up.” There’s a science, he says, to creating a performance that will move an audience to think and react. They use stunts like “Imminent Jeopardy” to make a point.

“You put Bush up next to Stalin and they look like the same person in a different time and history,” Klam explains. “The point isn’t that we’re violent. We’re not trying to scare people. We’re trying to hit people with how we view the world and how we see the world politically.”

With diverse backgrounds in education, corporate law, politics and business, Think Tank members blend politics and smart, snarky humor to highlight the follies of our political system.

“The motto that [we] have always had [is], ‘We fuck shit up because things need to be fucked up,’” says Hayduke. “What we’re concentrating on with this series is radical poetry. Revolutionary poetry.”

The group is bringing a diverse group of spoken-word performers from across the nation to downtown’s Voz Alta. The upcoming show on July 23 will feature Michelle Tea, Bucky Sinister and Anna Joy Springer, along with Anarchist thinkers Jimmy Jazz, Hayduke and Klam.

“We’re trying to bring performers that will move the audience, so that San Diegans can see that there is real strong, spoken-word poetry out there,” says Klam. “We’re bringing in some folks that are seasoned professionals, who’ve been spoken-word performers for a very long time, have published and worked their circuit, and become renowned artists.”

Lesbian author and former sex worker Michelle Tea will read from her recently published graphic novel Rent Girl, accompanied by slides of artist Laurenn McCubbin’s illustrations. Tea, well known in the San Francisco queer underground, founded Sister Spit, the all-girl open mic event that earned a San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of the Bay Award.

Poet outlaw Bucky Sinister ran the Chameleon poetry reading series in San Francisco from 1991 to 1997, and is the author of two books—King of the Roadkills and the forthcoming Whiskey and Robots.

Anna Joy Springer is a queer artist/writer/punk rock singer and creative writing teacher at UCSD. Her most recent work has been published online at lit-zines Blithe House Quarterly, Nerve Lantern and Avoid Strange Men.

The final show of the series, on Aug. 27, features Derrick Brown, Barry Graham and Jervey Tervalon.

The shows’ radical tenor will likely attract San Diego’s fringe community, Klam predicts, “but it’ll also appeal to anybody who sees what’s going on in the world, in the mainstream, and just totally disagrees. Because we try to break down the propaganda as well; we take the evening news and rip it to shreds and throw it back at you.”

The Think Tankers wouldn’t say what kind of mayhem and absurdity are in store for the upcoming shows, but those familiar with the group know to expect the unexpected.

One might do well to leave their delicate ears and fragile sensibilities at home.

Shows begin at 9 p.m. at Voz Alta, Downtown. $7. 619-230-1869.