9/03/2012

Watch me slamming!


This, my friends, is the legendary Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, in Chicago. Perhaps you do not know why it is so legendary. It's the location of the first slam in the world, which is still run by its original founder — the person who (and this is literally true, not hyperbole) invented slam, Marc Kelly Smith. I'm in Chicago for Worldcon (as regular readers know), and I decided to take advantage of this already-happy fact to check out the Ur-Slam. And, because I don't tend to do things like this with restraint, I put my name down to compete. Here is the result (sorry it was too dark for a clear movie off my phone, but it sounds pretty good):



Wow. I was quite overwhelmed. (Many thanks to my new Chicago friends Felicia and Marcia for recording my poem, watching my bag, being great company, and cheering for me!) (Edit: no, I didn't "win" per se, but I could not possibly have been more thrilled by the reception the spectators gave me.)

In other news, today's Worldcon adventures included doing a reading of my story Turcotte's Battle and moderating a panel of fantastic people talking about scriptwriting for the speculative-fiction writer. These were my final two gigs for the weekend; tomorrow I'm going to spend just sort of wandering aimlessly around the con, seeing if anyone I know is still here. As it's been kind of an exhausting weekend, that's probably about all I can manage.

Here are a couple more Chicago images:

A hastily stitched-together composite of a cool mural I found.

Trust me to make my way toward the weapons.

Thanks to all the great panelists, fans, and organizers who have made this a really good con!

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4 Comments:

At 8:13 AM, Blogger Houston Dunleavy said...

A very, very fine reception in a place where they know from good :)

 
At 9:24 PM, Blogger Helen V. said...

Love it, Laura.

 
At 9:27 PM, Blogger Helen V. said...

Ooops, should have completed the comment. Love your poem and seriously envious of you're being at the con.

 
At 5:37 PM, Blogger Kelly said...

Bravo! I love your poem!

And I like Chicago, too.

 

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