Homer's Travels: High And Low ... Brow

Sunday, February 20, 2011

High And Low ... Brow

Saturday was a mix of high brow and low brow entertainment.

High Brow

The Wife introduced her new school to Poetry Out Loud.  She worked on it at her last two schools and had one of her students go to nationals last year.  Saturday were the regionals.  Frankly , the Wife was a bundle of nerves Saturday morning worrying about that afternoon's competition.  One of her students was participating. She was a little shy, not used to doing these kind of public recitations.  I know, at her age, I wouldn't have been able to do what she was doing.

She arrived a little late - drove the Wife a little crazy waiting for her.  The competition consists of two rounds of  poetry recitation.  The recitation is graded for several attributes by area poets and literary luminaries.  The student did pretty good.  The top five of the eleven schools participating in our region moved on to state.  She was one of the five.  Her name was announced last which just added to the nerve rackification.  She now will compete at the state competition where one reciter will win and go to nationals.  Winning nationals will get you $50,000 in prizes.  Very cool.

The cookies they served between rounds were pretty good too.

Low Brow

After our triumphant Saturday afternoon, we picked up some good friends and went to see the season opening bout of the Omaha Roller Girls (ORG).  Roller derby is one of those guilty pleasures.  This season the ORG moved to a larger venue in Council Bluffs, IA (The Mid-America Center).  Their old venue, SkateDaze, was way too small and recently they had to turn away fans.  Last night they sold out the Mid-America Center selling 3,200 tickets.  We got there early and got great seats.  Turns out the ladies sitting in front of us were scouting out the competition.  They would be racing against ORG in three weeks.  Any of the three ladies could have whipped out a$$es ... with one tattooed arm tied behind their backs.  They were fun.

Along with the change of venue, they changed their format a bit.  Last year there were two bouts per month, one by the ORG AAA team and one by the ORG All Stars.  The new format combines both bouts on the same day.  The first bout was the AAA team and ... well they didn't do so well against the Lincoln AAA team.  The All Stars were a completely different story.  We ended up leaving at half-time when the score was 154 to 10.  ORG was kicking butt.  The final score was ORG 226, Fox City Foxz (from Appleton, WI) 42.

During half time they have raffle drawings.  Our friend Ga turned out to be a winner.  He won four tickets for ORG's next home bout in April.  He gave us two of the tickets.  Thank You!!!  I'm starting to wonder if we're lucky.  The last group of friends who went to the derby with us won one of the raffles as well.

In a few weeks we get to repeat this all over again.  We will be down in Lincoln for the Poetry Out Loud State competition and, it turns out, ORG will be playing their first away game in Lincoln on the same day.  We haven't decided if we will go to the derby but, for now, it is in the plans.

2 comments:

  1. Well, you're a better man than I. I would go to Roller Derby primarily to see the girls in the short-shorts they usually wear. ;)

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  2. GH: Actually, the ORG with the best assets received and accepted a marriage proposal ... from a female ref.

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