Coolness

There's a lot of backstory here, but it boils down to the coolest surprise I've gotten all year, so hang with me.

Once upon a time I get an email from Anne, another theatre person in town. It tells me about this spoken word contest that Turner South TV Network is doing, called Speak out for My South. Come up with a 2-3 minute piece about what the south means to you, present it at The Evening Muse, and if you're one of the 12 finalists, you get $100.

Sounded cool, so I wrote something up.

I made the finals. And the producers loved me! So I got them to schedule me to go last on the night of the finals, because I was in a performance that night. So I rushed ass over to Spirit Square, performed my piece, and was NOT the night's winner. So no additional $500 for me. Oh well, it was taped for TV and that was cool. Maybe I'd see myself.

Then it went into rotation during the Braves games. Pretty heavy rotation. My mom saw it, my dad saw it, it was pretty cool. They decided that I hadn't completely wasted my college education, after all. If any of you saw those spots, I was the fat guy with the goatee wearing a Johnny Cash T-Shirt.

So a couple months after that I get an email from someone saying they're with Turner South, and that they want me to go to New York to perform my poem. All expenses paid, with a small per diem. I'm always game for a trip to NYC, then the dates clicked, and I asked "is this a Republican thing?"

Yes. It was a party thrown by a Congressman from Mississippi whose name escapes me now, except for Skip, which I'm sure is no help. His wife was tired of people in DC asking if she wore shoes when she was at home in Miss., so she decided to throw a big Southern party in NYC for the Republican convention.

Now I'm unaffiliated, but NOT a G.W. fan, so I was a little leery, but decided a free trip to NY was doing my part to topple the regime by taking their money. So I went. When I got there, Pat from Turner told me that since one or two of the poets had issues with performing for the Man, they were going to give us a stipend in addition to our per diem. Even better.

Well, GW didn't show, just as well, but Trent Lott was there, and a bunch of guys with earpieces and a pile of muscle and bulges under their arms, so I guess there were a bunch of governmental types. I did my thing, got my check, and flew home. $750 to the better. I wouldn't have gotten that much if I'd won.

So on to today, not quite a year later, the whole rock star thing being forgotten, and Turner South sends me a package. It's a book, called My South, culled from poems from all the participants from all over the south last year. I thought "cool" but didn't really expect much, because Turner is now sending me cool My South stuff whenever they make it, but I started to flip through it.

They published my poem. This is an advance copy of a real book that real people who have never heard of me can buy on Amazon and my words are in it. And that is so totally the fulfillment of a lifelong dream of mine, to be a published writer. Although I guess technically blogging counts, but not until someone reads it.

AND there's a DVD included with the book featuring 15 performances of the My South Speaks stuff, and I'm on it!!!! I stuck it in the Xbox to see, thinking "no way," but hoping, and then got disappointed when I wasn't in the first set of 5. Or the second. And then I got to the third, and not only am I there, I'm the closer! I get the spot of honor as the last performance on the disc, the thing that people are left with if they watch the whole thing. BADASS. I flipped through very briefly to see if the other folks that performed in NYC with me (there were 4 other poets, although I kept telling them I am not a poet) on there, but didn't see anything.

So not only has my poem (partial) been published in a book that can be sold all over the country, but my whole performance is on the DVD that comes with it, not just the 30 seconds they ran on TV. It means even more to me because the part that they published is the ending, where I talk about my dad.

I'll post the poem tomorrow, need to find an electronic copy.