Rustbelt '10 Wrap-Up

A lot can happen in a years time.

I had 3 goals in mind for our Rustbelt Team this year:
1)Our Team make Finals
2) Barbara Fant make Indy Finals
3) Kim Brazwell make Indy Finals. We finished 1 for 3, but in retrospect weren't far away from accomplishing all 3.

As for our team, we all expected to do better. We suffered a pretty steep penalty on the first day and never truly recovered from it. I will say, we performed very well all weekend. I definitely feel like we left a huge impression on the rest of the tournament.

Even though I didn't experience the same competitive success this year that I did the year previous, I did have the same amount of fun. Being on a team with Barbara and the Brazwell's is a dream scenario and I would gladly duplicate it, no matter the situation. And for the record, Jason and I sitting next to each other at a slam is a bad idea for EVERYBODY involved. Just straight ignorance

My highlights and otherwise:

*I've gushed about Barb for a few years now, so I won't waste anybody's time repeating what I've been saying for eons. Just that she made me extremely proud this weekend (she finished 3rd overall at Rustbelt) and I'm happy that more people are getting to see what I've been talking about for so long
*T Miller was the single most impressive poet to me all weekend. She performed off her ass every round. Natasha has always been good, but now? Her combination of honesty, hard work and compassion make her something to behold on stages these days.
*Detroit's team OWNED Rustbelt from start to finish. No question. One of the few solaces I can take for my team competitively is that we gave them their closest bout all weekend (.8 differential), but that's about as close as anyone got). Much in the way St. Paul pretty much trampled everybody in West Palm Beach last year. This is poetry slam of course, so it wasn't without a little controversy in the Finals, but we'll get to that in a minute
*Cleveland and Minneapolis are the two teams I had the most fun watching. Tom Noy with his new and young crop of gunners and Wonder Dave imprinting his style and confidence all over his squad too.
*LOGIC did a damn good job. I know he feels like 'his' Rustbelt has some warts on it, but I thought it was pretty good overall. He also accomplished what I felt was a first since I started competing in Rustbelt ('06) in that he provided a very substantial crowd for the Saturday afternoon bouts, which I know is hard as all hell to make happen. There were some delays for bouts, but nothing unreasonable or typical for poetry shows regardless if they were big slams or not (well worth it to get the audiences that we did). Hey, no bouts were ever suspended midway thru and moved to another floor or to another day, so it was all good in my book. Doesn't mean it ran perfect, but he should be pretty proud of product he put on. Especially considering it was pretty just him and Monica putting it together.
**Bouts were ridiculously high scoring. I know, there's only so much you can do. Sometimes it takes ludicrous amount of prep work on a emcee's part to guard against a 30-fest (and even then the returns can be minimal), so I don't blame them. But when the lowest score in a bout is a 27.5 (and 90% of the scores are 28.2 and up), it really does take away from the jubilation of a poet completely destroying their poem when everyone is scoring high. For some perspective, Writing Wrongs got a 29.0, a 30, a 29.8 and another 30 in the second bout and we STILL finished 2nd. By almost a full point. Just one of those things we're kind of helpless to in slam I suppose. But I'm not a fan of 30-fest in the least bit. On Day 1, Barb had the only 30 (minus Jamaal who had a 30, but incurred a time penalty) for both bouts. On Day 2, there were four 30s. In the first bout alone (two of them perfect 50s). So everything seemed a little inflated.
**A little sloppier than I would've liked from the poets perspective. Time penalties EVERYWHERE. Again, Day 1 one was bad, Day 2 was much worst. If you subtract Kalamazoo (who didn't care on the second day and was trying to incur time penalties or rather did the poems they wanted to regardless of time), it seemed like a time penalty was happening every 3 or 4 poets. In Bout 2 of Day 2, I want to say 4 of the first 7 poets that hit the mic got a time penalty. I don't want to harp like TPs are the end of humanity and obviously an individual getting a time penalty isn't responsible for the other 12, but it felt a bit sloppy, like we weren't putting out the best quality product at times. I dunno, my two cents.

So, about that Finals and Detroit thing. I'll just say, first off, Attila the Hun wasn't going to stop Detroit from winning. Whether you call it fate or whatever, they were just steamrolling teams, period. With that being said, there was some chatter raised about a poem performed during Finals. Phenom (Miles) has a poem in which he reads off paper while the poem itself is about reading off paper. Well, he references the paper, several times throughout the poem. As I understand the rules, that's a prop. Again, I said as I understand them, which could be incorrect. El Presidente Woods is much better equipped to answer that as the Prez and a venerable page poet. But I'm pretty sure the combination of those actions make it a prop...by PSI standard. I guess, this is where things get tricky. Rustbelt always operates as a non PSI event obviously, but by 'typical PSI rules.' I have no idea where those technicalities should start and stop. All I know is, if someone actually were to protest, I would've have sided with the protester. But I'm glad no one did. And no was going to, but I guess I'm stating this for those that caught hell (like they were a sore loser or some shit) for pointing out that if protested, it would in deed have qualified as a prop, I think.

Overall, a very good time hanging with very good people and I'm proud of LOGIC for giving us another good reason to all hang with each other. Which makes it a hard act to follow when Rustbelt makes its way back to Columbus in 2011. Jhyea!