thanks to all that came out to Cal Slam on tuesday. 150+ in attendance :) crayola chalk does wonders.

this dude's back, and he's organizing this show:
SOULSTICE
a multicultural concert/open mic/art gallery
featuring:
Plate Fork Knife Spoon (the rhythm section of the Crown City Rockers)
Jigsaw
along with...
Short Films, Breakdancing Ninjas, Art Gallery, Comics and Zines
Friday, February 4th, 2005
7-10pm, FREE!
Cesar Chavez Atrium, UC Berkeley

a 14 year old kid in my poetry workshop at La Pena started playing all these Radiohead songs on piano in class yesterday, on some O'Riley shit. he also listens to Madlib, but has yet to hear John Legend.

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ill-literacy is the shit. thank you for a good show and the Pita Pit.

eric drunk is amazing. damn near a religious experience. we're thinknig about Journey tattoos. thanks for the couch and conversations.

i've overheard/spied on so many public conversations related to relationships this first week that i feel blessed i'm single, minus the perpetual longing.

cal slam this tuesday, featuring mike mcgee. 8pm, bear's lair. hosted by Jimmy Thong Tran, come or die!

a good crew this bay area has.

staying happy.

The Make Up "Born on the Floor"

ill-literacy & jigsaw, uc davis, thursday january 20th

"me and roberta"
by Geoff Trenchard

Where the alcoholic truckers get steak and eggs with extra gravy and only the widowers in their seventies are brave enough to order the turkey. The graveyard shift at Denny’s on Thanksgiving weekend is exactly as depressing as it sounds. The day Roberta got out of jail she was back at work with me,and I was beyond ecstatic to have someone at least mostly sane to talk to.

Roberta was an Amazonian cholita built thick as a blood clot. Imagine a plus size version of the girls you see airbrushed on the hoods of lowriders. Her daughters name tattooed on her neck like a cursive angle always looking over her shoulder. Our friendship grew from long nights of minimum wage and shit talking ex girlfriends. At twenty two; she had a dead baby daddy, a felony for credit card fraud and the same disposition as I did about serving the ungrateful and insane. I was at the outer rings of my own little private hell. My live in girlfriend and I had just broken up leaving the wreckage of my life packed neatly in corrugated boxes in my Dad’s living room. When I took this job, I had planed on it being as easy pit stop for me to regroup in. It had wound up just being the pit part. The only real perk of the job was being perpetual surrounded by people who’s live were usually more fucked up then mine Said she rather work a double with no lunch break then stand another second on the cold concrete floor of the county jail. They don’t give you nothin but sandals, she said. And you gotta suck somebody’s dick if you want yo shoes. For real, I said, does that mean you’ll pick up my shift tomorrow afternoon? She proced to tell me the story of how she, yet again, wound up on the wrong side of the plexi glass. She told me she felt so stupid for going over to her ex girlfriends house in the first place.
I said she should feel so stupid about smashing in her windshield with a shovel for no reason. Your lucky she didn’t press charges, I said. I know, I know, she hissed, teeth clenched. Her tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth like a burning fuse. BUT FUCKIN DANILLE NEEDS TO ANSWERIN FUCKIN HER PAGA WHEN I FUCKIN CALL OR I’M JUST GONNA ASUMMMMME SOMETHING UP! The whole restaurant stopped and starred at us, like we were a tourettes syndrome floor show. Roberta shot a mind your business glare at the half dozen men sitting alone at various tables. Her glance rotated like an acidic sprinkles till they went back to eating. I just looked down and kept filling the sugar containers.
Roberta, I said, you need to calm the fuck down. No one need make coffee when there that angry. Your gonna fuck around and burn that cross off your hand.
She laughed and tried to play like the outburst was a show for my entertainment. But her voice sounded like a vacuum bag being stabbed with a dull knife. Her hair still smelled of the de lousing powder thrown in her face when the guards issued her an orange jump suit. Her eyes were vibrating screws about to shake themselves loose. Her make up wasn’t it’s usual black elliptical shimmer but a gray finger print smeared on her tear ducts. Even with the ambient noise of a restaurant full of lonely people with no where to go I could hear her pores screaming for a fix.

When we both punched in on New Years, it was like the lunatics took over the asylum. Our manager was at a handle bar mustache convention in Reno. At nine o’clock the place was as empty as your bowels if you eat the chili. So the three cooks decided to split a bottle of tequila. Unfortunately, it was a two gallon bottle. The kind my Dad always referred to as a “home wrecker”. These guys were already the culinary geniuses that use speed like salt. So I didn’t say shit and just knew to ask real nice if I need to send back and order.
Roberta sat on the counter holding her clean for thirty days key chain against her lips. Taped on the back is a tiny sears portrait of her two year old. Looking gorgeous but miserable in fake diamond earrings and a lacy head band. Roberta tells me right off the bat that there are a lot of people in her program that still drink. And she’s gonna go in the back and get just one shot for her and one for me. And she swears, on her baby, that that’s gonna be it. I pray she changes diapers with more attention to detail then she makes promises.
Twenty minutes after the count down and we get the drunk grandfather of all bar rushes.
It’s like someone planted white trash land mines at all the tables. After five cocktails and a line of crank longer than an infants foot Roberta locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out. Leaving me to wait on the whole joint by myself. The pint glass margarita I had been nursing all night did not make this easier. But the buzz helped when the old people scream with a teleavangelist’s righteous indignation cause there fucking French toast is cold. I think she had stopped throwing up when I clocked out at sun rise but I didn’t care enough to go check. I thought, God, in my next life either make me the kind of addict that can act like that much of a selfish shit; or make me no kind at all, so I can hate her with out empathy.

On Valentines day, and Roberta offers me a nougat from the heart shaped box of chocolate that said Danielle on the lid. She fixes her lipstick in the reflection of a napkin holder. Smiles wide when she her date pull up in a classic Cadillac and a pressed dickes shirt.She asked me how she looked. The last two months had turned her into a vampiric version of her former self. Black rings circled her eyes like coffee burnt to the bottom of the pot. The unnatural gauntness of her big body made her clothed look deflated. Her cheeks were a thick cake of cover up over fresh acne she constantly picked at. I decided that she deserved to be lied to. I said she looked great. Thinking well, every body deserves at least a night to feel good about them selves.
She said I told my mom about you. She says you sound like a nice guy. I said cool, she single?
She gave me a cursory fuck you, punk, but couldn’t hold back the smile. I owe you big for covering me tonight she said.
Don’t sweat it I said and went back to making ranch dressing in a five gallon bucket.
I felt a warm rub in the pit of my stomach fit for a hallmark card. This turned into a barbwire knot when I heard the sirens get closer. Just as they start to pull out into the street three cop cars come screeching out of nowhere. They swarm down on them with guns drawn and sirens blasting, just like in the movies. They even had the mirrored sunglasses. The who restruant watched slack jawed from the picture window facing the parking lot. I remember Roberta telling me that the words don’t, fucking and move are never so loud as when they are screamed by a man who has a gun to your face. In the trunk they find a brand new stroller still in the box and just enough meth to make sure Roberta’s daughter will be out of high school before she ever get walk next to her mother. I would have prayed for her clemency or early release but I figured Roberta already was. And there are some things a person should to do for them selves. I bit my lip to choke up the tears while I served awestruck teenagers their pecan pie. One of them asked me if I knew her I said not really, we just work together.

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mlk spoken word showcase @ yerba buena gardens, SF, monday jan 17th
cal slam, tuesday, jan 18th @ bear's lair
jigsaw show @ uc davis, benefit for tsunami victims, thursday, jan 20th

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lisa lisa & cult jam with full force "i wonder if i take you home"