Location: Denver, Colorado
July 25, 2010
Adventure #25
Each time I return back to the United States, I am asked by many people what I miss most about home. My top two answers are always my family (friends included) and grocery stores. For my third answer, I may have to say American brunch.
Although Hungary and Croatia have many gastronomic delights, such as flavorful mangalica and fresh calamari, they can't quite compare to an lightly toasted English muffin that hugs ham and eggs and is drizzled with rich hollandaise sauce, washed down with a spicy Bloody Mary or endlessly refilled cups of American-style coffee.
Last weekend a trio of my closest college friends and I ventured to Snooze in downtown Denver. To snag a table at this retro diner, the wait is usually longer than an hour, but with free coffee and sidewalk chalk, the wait flies by. And, all idle time is worth it the first second you get a bite of their creatively flavored pancakes (the best in the world) that come in styles like sweet potatoes or strawberry rhubarb, your taste buds are in heaven. I am not sure why it is, but for some reason, gluttony early in the day seems perfectly acceptable, and who am I to argue with the culinary deities? Thus, my friends and I enjoyed one AM drink too many, lined our stomachs with pancake beds and pools made of hollandaise and butter, caught up and laughed for an hour straight. This is what home feels like.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Joining the Quarter-Century Club
Location: Wine and Medieval CellarsJuly 11 and 14, 2010
Adventure #24
As soon as the lights were dimmed and Stevie Wonder's “Happy Birthday” began blaring over the speakers, I knew my birthday cake was coming. I turned around to see a flock of waitresses, all wearing belly-bearing white shirts escorting my cake to the table. Unlike the typical birthday candles, my Hungarian apple pastry had a giant sparkler plunged into its powdered sugar crown. As the sparkler’s silver bursts slowly fizzled out, I made my 25th birthday wish.
Early July is a very celebratory time, because within 12 days the following members of my family celebrate their birthdays: my cousin Brad, my brother-in-law James, my uncle Terry, Mike, me, and my dad.
Mike’s birthday falls on the lucky 7/11, and for his birthday we kept it low key. He had just returned from a exhausting business trip to Macedonia on Saturday night, so I knew he wouldn’t want to do anything crazy. So, I surprised him by bringing together a little group of friends at our neighborhood wine bar, Doblo. For the occasion, I made my first-ever solo cheesecake, which turned out pretty delicious if you ask me. Later, we ended up at a going away party for his French interns, so he was serenaded by a multi-lingual “Happy Birthday.” On his actual birthday, which was Sunday, we ate burritos, traipsed around the city and watched the World Cup final.
For my big day, we did anything but keep it low key. All I wanted to do was to go out for dinner, so Mike chose an over-the-top medieval themed restaurant called Lancelot. Suits of armor guarded the entrance of the restaurant, and we were ushered into a cellar filled with big wooden picnic tables occupied by tourists, stained glass windows and murals.
All beverages were served out of brown steins, so my knight went the hearty route and drank a liter of beer out of the enormous mug.
For dinner, we ordered the six-person platter that could satiate any carnivorous instinct and was presented on a huge wooden plank. We feasted on an insane amount of fish, venison, pork, turkey, ham and beef, all which was piled on a bed of “treasures of the garden,” meaning veggies.
Beyond the gluttonous food, the best part of the evening was the live entertainment. My friend Stephen was chosen to interact with two dueling knights (named Sir Prise and Sir Vive), and was asked to serenade his wife as she stood on our dinner table (fortunately, he is the only professional singer of our group), in order to become knighted Sir Stephen the Brave.
Veering from its Middle Ages theme, the night’s entertainment also included a belly dancer and a fire breather who pranced around with two fiery sticks and consumed the flames in front of every table. However, at our table he hovered suggestively over my friend Dana, ran his hands through his curly chest hair and removed his shirt. I just hope that was part of his normal routine.
Lancelot was definitely the Casa Bonita of Budapest, and an appropriately offbeat place to ring in another year.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
She Works Hard for the Money
Location: My piggy bank
July 6, 2010
Adventure #23
In our backwards world where a rich poet is an oxymoron, I am always quite pleased with myself for making a few bucks off the odd ode. This year, I received my first-ever royalty check off of my debut poetry chapbook "Opened Aperture," and just today, I was paid for my poetry show last week. I thought I performed for the sheer joy of being onstage, so this financial boon was icing on my composition cake. While I can't subsist on my bard lifestyle alone, I can buy a round of beers or weekly provisions now and then, and I believe that getting paid for what I pour my heart into is worth its weight in groceries.
July 6, 2010
Adventure #23
In our backwards world where a rich poet is an oxymoron, I am always quite pleased with myself for making a few bucks off the odd ode. This year, I received my first-ever royalty check off of my debut poetry chapbook "Opened Aperture," and just today, I was paid for my poetry show last week. I thought I performed for the sheer joy of being onstage, so this financial boon was icing on my composition cake. While I can't subsist on my bard lifestyle alone, I can buy a round of beers or weekly provisions now and then, and I believe that getting paid for what I pour my heart into is worth its weight in groceries.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Slam and All That Jazz
Location: Gödör Klub, BudapestJune 30, 2010
Adventure #22
Last week I participated in a very ambitious creative collaboration. The event melded the words of slam poets from Budapest and Brooklyn (the New Yorkers were piped in via webcam), a modern improvisational dance troupe, and the jazz stars of the evening: Trio Midnight.
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by an enthusiastic, fast-rhyming Budapest poet who I had met at an event last year. I told him I was interested in slam poetry, so he emailed me and invited me to join this event.
For a quick background, slam poetry was created as a Chicago man's answer to a dull poetry reading. Tired of too much finger snapping and monotonous paeans, he proposed turning literary recitations into a performance-based competitions, and thus slam poetry was born. The rules of slam poetry events are fairly simple: poets must perform original work, their performance matters as much as the poem itself, no props are allowed and the recitation can not exceed three minutes or the offending poet's score will be penalized. Meanwhile, the audience is encouraged to vocalize their praises or censures, and after each poet performs, five audience judges score the performance on a scale of 1-10. After multiple rounds of poetry, which often take on social activism themes, the poet with the best score wins. As this movement blossomed throughout the 1990s and still goes strong today, it birthed a new genre of writer: the spoken word poet. I would describe this style as writers whose deliveries are nearly like hip-hop music without the instrumentation and who aim to entertain.
The event I performed in this week was not actually a poetry slam because there was no competition, but the performers all recited slam pieces, so it was a spoken-word show. On the week leading up to the event, I rehearsed with the other bards, dancers and Trio Midnight's bassist. Although I loved the actual event, the practicing and rehearsals were equally rewarding. I haven't been in a collaborative poetic environment where I exchanged feedback with other performers since I was co-chair of the University of Colorado's poetry club and a member of our slam team, the Melo poets. In the future, I hope to perform more with this slam group, although it's a challenge since most of their shows are for a strictly Hungarian-speaking audience.
On the night of the show, I was thrown by how big the audience was - probably at least a hundred people directly in front of the stage and more than a few hundred more outside. The venue, Gödör, is right in the heart of downtown Budapest where the three metro lines connect, so it's a favorite place to hang out, especially because it hosts concerts nearly every night, as well as art installations and exhibits, design fairs, plays, etc.
The show was held to honor the 20th anniversary of Trio Midnight, so they played a solo set and then we joined them on stage fittingly at midnight. Our act started with some improvisational jazz, and then the modern dance troupe grooved for a few minutes, and I was on stage next.
In poetry slams, the first poet who reads is called the sacrificial lamb, because it is always roughest spot - the judges haven't quite got their bearings and the crowd is not warmed up. Luckily, this event wasn't too bad, since there was no competition involved. And, although I couldn't see them because of the blinding pink stage lights in my eyes, I knew I had my little fan club in the back row, so that was all the support I needed (it is a sure sign that you have an amazing husband and friends if they are willing to stay up until 3am on a work night for you). I began one of my pieces called "Rise," and as soon as I said the first two lines, the jazz band started up behind me, mellifluously supplementing my poem with the subtle taps of brushes and slow melodies on the bass and piano. My words and their music flowed together so well, that it cinched my belief that jazz and poetry were meant to be married. After the first performance, I wasn't nervous any longer - I was just having fun. Here are my fellow poets and me awaiting our next turn at the mic:
After my whole group did one set, we paused and let the poets from Brooklyn perform, which was streamed through the Internet. Their stage lighting was so dim, and their performances were not very engaging because they read off the page, so I was a little disappointed. As Mike aptly described, the scene looked like a low-production hostage video, and the poets were reading their ransom notes.
The next set went really smoothly, and then all the poets did one last collaborative piece that was written by Muller Peter, a Hungarian alternative musician who was one of the founding fathers of Budapest's largest music festival, Sziget. He wrote a funny poem called "Czardas," which is a traditional Hungarian dance. We read lines in unison chanted the final lines about the dance - "two to the left and two to the right"- over and over until the dancers came back out and flitted for a few minutes. After the show, the owner of the club brought us champagne, and we all celebrated and sung happy birthday to Trio Midnight.
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by an enthusiastic, fast-rhyming Budapest poet who I had met at an event last year. I told him I was interested in slam poetry, so he emailed me and invited me to join this event.
For a quick background, slam poetry was created as a Chicago man's answer to a dull poetry reading. Tired of too much finger snapping and monotonous paeans, he proposed turning literary recitations into a performance-based competitions, and thus slam poetry was born. The rules of slam poetry events are fairly simple: poets must perform original work, their performance matters as much as the poem itself, no props are allowed and the recitation can not exceed three minutes or the offending poet's score will be penalized. Meanwhile, the audience is encouraged to vocalize their praises or censures, and after each poet performs, five audience judges score the performance on a scale of 1-10. After multiple rounds of poetry, which often take on social activism themes, the poet with the best score wins. As this movement blossomed throughout the 1990s and still goes strong today, it birthed a new genre of writer: the spoken word poet. I would describe this style as writers whose deliveries are nearly like hip-hop music without the instrumentation and who aim to entertain.
The event I performed in this week was not actually a poetry slam because there was no competition, but the performers all recited slam pieces, so it was a spoken-word show. On the week leading up to the event, I rehearsed with the other bards, dancers and Trio Midnight's bassist. Although I loved the actual event, the practicing and rehearsals were equally rewarding. I haven't been in a collaborative poetic environment where I exchanged feedback with other performers since I was co-chair of the University of Colorado's poetry club and a member of our slam team, the Melo poets. In the future, I hope to perform more with this slam group, although it's a challenge since most of their shows are for a strictly Hungarian-speaking audience.
On the night of the show, I was thrown by how big the audience was - probably at least a hundred people directly in front of the stage and more than a few hundred more outside. The venue, Gödör, is right in the heart of downtown Budapest where the three metro lines connect, so it's a favorite place to hang out, especially because it hosts concerts nearly every night, as well as art installations and exhibits, design fairs, plays, etc.
The show was held to honor the 20th anniversary of Trio Midnight, so they played a solo set and then we joined them on stage fittingly at midnight. Our act started with some improvisational jazz, and then the modern dance troupe grooved for a few minutes, and I was on stage next.
In poetry slams, the first poet who reads is called the sacrificial lamb, because it is always roughest spot - the judges haven't quite got their bearings and the crowd is not warmed up. Luckily, this event wasn't too bad, since there was no competition involved. And, although I couldn't see them because of the blinding pink stage lights in my eyes, I knew I had my little fan club in the back row, so that was all the support I needed (it is a sure sign that you have an amazing husband and friends if they are willing to stay up until 3am on a work night for you). I began one of my pieces called "Rise," and as soon as I said the first two lines, the jazz band started up behind me, mellifluously supplementing my poem with the subtle taps of brushes and slow melodies on the bass and piano. My words and their music flowed together so well, that it cinched my belief that jazz and poetry were meant to be married. After the first performance, I wasn't nervous any longer - I was just having fun. Here are my fellow poets and me awaiting our next turn at the mic:
After my whole group did one set, we paused and let the poets from Brooklyn perform, which was streamed through the Internet. Their stage lighting was so dim, and their performances were not very engaging because they read off the page, so I was a little disappointed. As Mike aptly described, the scene looked like a low-production hostage video, and the poets were reading their ransom notes.
The next set went really smoothly, and then all the poets did one last collaborative piece that was written by Muller Peter, a Hungarian alternative musician who was one of the founding fathers of Budapest's largest music festival, Sziget. He wrote a funny poem called "Czardas," which is a traditional Hungarian dance. We read lines in unison chanted the final lines about the dance - "two to the left and two to the right"- over and over until the dancers came back out and flitted for a few minutes. After the show, the owner of the club brought us champagne, and we all celebrated and sung happy birthday to Trio Midnight.
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