The war continues! This time, the three Los Angeles area slam teams also had to face off with half of the San Antonio team, and boy was it hot! Like summertime in Texas.On Tuesday, June 26th, the Battle for LA continued at Da Poetry Lounge in Hollywood. The place was packed (as usual), and the teams pulled out all their heavy artillery. The home team, Hollywood/Miracle Mile, was represented by Gaknew, Tiffiney Scott, Bridget Gray, Nafeesa Monroe, and alternate In-Q was standing by just in case. Los Angeles team brought Shihan, Sekou tha Misfit, Poetri, Omari, and alternate Jaha. Long Beach team came in full force, led by Ben Porter Lewis with help from Mark Gonzales, Besskepp, and Rachel Kann. San Antonio Team brought two of their best, Amalia and Shaggy, and "borrowed" R-A-C from the Long Beach team and Gimel from the Los Angeles team to form SanOCLA team (San Antonio, Orange County, LA), or as they called themselves, "Sons of Bitches." The event was hosted by Jeff McDaniel, a competitor in the 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1998 National Poetry Slam.
The fun started with 3 calibration poets. Bowerbird made everybody laugh with his take on the summers as a schoolboy somewhere deep in the countryside. Then, Macho set the stage on fire with his performance of spiritual rap "One," to be followed by a guest from San Antonio, reading a moving poem on domestic violence. Then, the main course was served. It started with Amalia of SanOCLA team asking for a cat call and scoring 28.5 instead. She was followed by Sekou and his dilemma whether to rob a B of A or not. He settled for 28.6 points instead. Then, Ben Porter Lewis got a standing ovation while trying to explain "What Is Black," and scored 29.4 points. But Hollywood team came up with a strong response from Tiffiney Scott who opened our eyes by saying: "Oh, say can you see, we are still not free!" The judges showed that they saw her point exactly by awarding her 29.6 points. As the poets followed each other on stage, the fierce battle was raging between Hollywood, Los Angeles, and SanOCLA, while Long Beach started falling behind, even though their performances were amazing (Besskepp and Mark Gonzales). The decision, however was made in the very last round. Los Angeles "Team Captain," Shihan blanked out in the middle of his poem, skipped a line, and let everybody know in the end that he did it. Judges were merciless: 28.4 points for Shihan. However, Shaggy's 29.2 for the SanOCLA team were not enough to put them in the lead, because Bridget Gray walked away with an amazing 29.9 and secured the first place for Hollywood team. The biggest (pleasant) surprise of the night however, was Rachel Kann, who gave an absolutely brilliant performance of her famous (or should we say notorious) lust poem, and got the audience up on their feet. (Needless to say, she was getting a lot of attention from the male portion of the audience after her performance.) Still, her 29.9 points were not enough to get the Long Beach team out of the 4th place, where they ended up with a total of 113.2 points. Los Angeles placed third with a total of 114.6, SanOCLA was second with 115.9, and the Hollywood team won on home turf with 116.9 points.
The Battle continues on Thursday, July 5th at 8:00 PM at the new home of The Green and LA Slam Team, Bistro West in West Hollywood. If you are interested in finding out who will win this battle and the war, hop, skip and jump over to our link to the LA Slam homepage for directions.
Hovering in Hollywood and raving for the LitRave,
Jelena aka Helen the Bashful Dragon
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