01 August 2003 - 12:34 p.m. Boston Globe called Zilla: �Whimsical� departs from the status quo� New Hampshire�s Hippo Press claimed she is a: �crowd pleaser� The Naked Girl Featuring Zilla McCue AUGUST 1st & 2nd 8:00 PM LIMITED ENGAGEMENT!! COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS THEATRE 145 Ludlow Street New York, NY 10002 212-254-5277 www.weird.org Tickets available at the door $10 I'm the opening act (on Saturday)! (3) Comments?

31 July 2003 - 8:39 a.m. The Worcester Poetry Slam Team competed in the Cantab regional slam last night. We did pretty well, although we had better audience reaction than our scores would seem to indicate. I performed in a round, and the audience was absolutely fixed on me. There was no talking. No one was distracted. The bartender and the waitress froze. I thought, "this is the best reading of this piece I have ever done." The audience roared as I got off the stage. People in the audience congratulated me as I got off the stage, but the scores went phfffftthhttt. . . The people in there really seemed to enjoy all of our poems, but it seemed like they felt they had to hold back on our scores. I'd love to know why. Maybe it is because we are not political enough. Actually, I could list a hundred maybes, but it really just comes down to this: I don't know how an audience will respond. I've never been able to gauge that. Dave Mac's group pieces went over very well. With a couple little tweeks based on last night I think they could really soar. It's just some nitty-gritty stuff that we can adjust to get ann extra few tenths of a point here and there. On the other hand, Jon Wolf grabbed the audience by their eyeballs and said, "give me those scores you cheap bastards!" And it worked. He really connected. He then gave up his slot so I could perform in the second round. In hindsight, I probably should not have accepted, to see how well his second poem would've done. We probably would have made second place in both rounds. Mike Cellemme from Providence is amazing, both in terms of his writing, and the amount of it he can fit in three minutes. Jared did yet another poem where he slams the poetry slam. The audience bought it like they always do. One of the best ways to get scores in a poetry slam is to say that you are not a slam-poet while you are performing your slam poem. Of course a better way to get high scores is to make some art, but that isn't as reliable. *Shut up Gary. You can't criticise the popular poet. He might scold you from the stage.* There had to be two hundred people at the Cantab last night. I think the temperature was about the same. I thought the waitress was going to pass out from heat stroke, so I gave her a five dollar tip. I saw someone else there counting out dimes to pay her and she got no tip at all from them. Cheap bastards. And poets are all people who have worked as waitstaff who should know better. Well, Nationals are coming up next week. Maybe I'll lose some weight while I'm there. (1) Comments?