Sooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

I started writing this as I was stuck at the airport in Atlanta, a layover from Minneaoplis. Its raining and thundering and our flight home to Philly got delayed because its also windy in Philly, and they're having some kinda limit on how many planes are allowed to fly in and be on the runway, or something. That sucked big time. I had been sitting on the floor charging my laptop, and my ass, well you get the picture. Since I was there, I'll decided to start the update, a little synapsis of this past weekends adventures. Little did I realized that I was gonna be soooooooooooo exhausted that my update would be a tad late. Sorry, no pictures of our own yet, we didn't have a cord to connect to my laptop. I'm gonna borrow some flicks for the time being. Michelle will upload them later...

The LA trip was quick and fun. We were in and out in 24 hours. Yun, who organized the "Building Peace in Our Communities & Campus", picked us up from the airport, ran red lights, like she did in Detroit when Michelle met her. I think I was too jetlagged to notice. We met up with a couple other good friends, Kristina Wong, Allison De La Cruz and the Iletos, who were the very reason we were there. If you've ever heard about Filipino hospitality, Deena Ileto takes the cake - she kept offering to take us out to dinner, and if we ever come back to LA to stay at their house she she'd give us a our own bedrooms with bathroom and even take us to Disneyland. I dont know what Michelle's thinking, but I never been to Disneyland...

Just kidding. Deena we love you, Ish, and the whole Ileto family, thank you for everything. We also got re-acquainted with John Eric Concordia whom we first met at the very first APIA Poetry Summit in Seattle. He was singing with/for his friend, and fellow performer Bambu. Those guys were pretty dope for not having a regular sound system and doing acoustic Hip Hop. Very noble. But probably not as noble as the three youths who came all the way up from San Diego to see us. San Diego!!!


Yep, Xander Fernandez, Carmela Capinpin & Janice Sapigao drove all the way up from SD, on the first day of school, no less. I hope in exchange you guys learned something. You guys are so cute, and thank you for the trip! Im glad you liked it. The funny thing is I went on Myspace to update our profile and there this picture was, already a profile pic for Xander... Sigh... Michelle of course, wore her voice out by the end of the night, so everything was a whisper from then on.

Minneapolis blew us away with the I.C.E. Open Mic (was it in St. Paul?), and with the Equilibrium audience. The I.C.E. (Innovative Community Elevation) is an Open Mic organized, support and particpated by mostly predominantly South East Asian Youth. They made me so proud I wrote a poem about them the next day for Equilibrium. Now that show was the show!!! Not only were we open by Palabristas, a dope collective of Chicano poets in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area, I dont think Michelle and I have ever done a show where the audience is finishing the lines with us and I think Bao's laughing at my Laos in the House poem was the longest I've had to wait to get to the next line. We were so blown away at the openess and reception of the audience, even watching our friend Juliana, who is a fellow "performer/artist" and also a grad student in American Studies take notes during my poem freaked me out a little bit. I do this poetry thing for the kicks and here she was using me as a source. I feel smart.

Larry, Lorena and Brandon... They're Chicano, not Hispanic, godammit!!!


Rodrigo with his daughter, a pequeña Palabrista-in-training.


Me and Julie matched with our hot pink and purple zebra and python prints. Michelle thought that was funny.


Ice Ice Baby!!! You think youy got talent? You should see what they do.


As tiring as it gets, its important to sign those autographs...


and spell those names right. Even after I took the time to ask Tou Saiko Lee how to spell his name right and write something nice for coordinating ICE, that fool left his CD on the floor. Sheesh, you'd think that if you were saved a CD before they were sold out, you would treasure it. No worries, I let him have it when I saw him later at Dinkytown, where I also saw local Hip Hop acts, including Bao's favorite, Toki.

On the way home, going into the airport, guess what happened? I was delayed because I had to take off all metal above my shoulders, so I rook all all my jewelry including my famed Wu Tang earrings. When it went through the X-ray the security resent it through and inspected it. Why? Because they looked like ninja stars...


Now do these look harmless to you?

Michelle will add on anything I forgot, and post up more pictures. Im tired, yawn...

Catzie