Seizure
December 20, 2000
We had a great show: the year in Newspoetry. In attendance were Anne Bargar, Joe Futrelle, Anne Geraci, William Gillespie, Mike Lehman, Frank Lombaer, and Sam Patterson. Sam and Andy were visiting their families in Illinois for Xmas, and each made a special trip to East Central Champaign County in dangerous icy weather just for the show. Sam and Andy and Frank had prepared an elaborately-structured (I never did find out what the structure actually was) pre-produced cut-up remix of their poetry on a CD, still warm from Frank's CD burner. Scott called in his Pinsky conspiracy poem long distance from Chicago (apparently WEFT doesn't stream for Mac users: bummer, bummer), and Bill Wendling phoned in a request for "Time Warner and AOL Shove Each Other Up Each Other's Assholes." We debated with station manager Mick Woolf about the propriety of that, and, although he was mellow, we changed it to "buttholes." A couple of innovations helped channel Newspoetry into the miniscule funnel of a two-hour performance: 1. Joe brought a laptop with the whole site on it, allowing for much spontaneity. For example, I brought "Liberal Olympics," a Newspoetry reject penned back in Janaury, and hurreidly cast it. It turned out that, on the laptop, Joe had an ad for Rainforest Beer he had written specifically for that poem. He read it while we played "Becalmed" by Eno, God it was lovely. And 2. We all just took turns reading over and over until everyone had fainted from exhaustion - never mind segues, background music, or rehearsal. I think we got a lot of good audio for the Newspoetry site, and I'm pretty sure everyone had fun and got a chance to perform.