Tag: College Days

Life

Lip Bomb

Posted on by Desmond White

Lip Bomb is an outrageous group of spoken word-a-holics who mostly met in Kip Fulbeck’s spoken word course Art 137, with a few stragglers (like myself) added later. These seriously attractive people decided to continue performing and writing and freaking out beyond the occasional classroom gig, leading to the bombastic foundation of the group. I’m consistently stoked by Lip Bomb’s bad ass bravado, affable antics, and meticulous humor (although my excitement might be reticent at times since, if anything, I’m the Pierce Hawthorne of the group – older, cynical, less wise). Now as I retire (err, well, graduate) I have an obligation to pay Lip Bomb some lip service: keep it up, youngsters! You’re walking, talking, definitely-not-balking balmshells and you do beautiful things.

Life

KINOTEK

Posted on by Desmond White

 

Ben Shukman, a few others, and myself have been working on this project for the past couple months: KINOTEK, an alternative movie venue in Isla Vista. The Bottomline reported on our first event which had a 160 person turn-out.

Life

Spoken Wiz

Posted on by Desmond White

Somewhere over the rainballs…

I’ve been asked to revive my one-hit wonder “How to be a Man: Splitting Firewood with my Face and other Manly Skills” for Wizard of Balls: A Night of Spoken Words. The show is being put on by Lip Bomb, a spoken word group on campus. The show’s TONIGHT, as in Friday, March 9th, 2012, at 7:30 PM sharp in the Theater & Dance Room 1701. Here’s a blurb about the show:

Lions and Tigers and Balls, OH MY!

We’ve all been scared before, worried, wondering, “Where are my balls?” Well, we were thinking the exact same thing. Come along on our journey down the yellow brick road in search of our courage fruit.

Writing

Spoken Word — “These were my brothers”

Posted on by Desmond White

[A Spoken Word piece I improvised on-the-spot when somebody (as prank vengeance for doing the same to her) signed me up for Bean Night.]

These were my brothers.

The oldest breathed water and wouldn’t stay in the sea. Sprinting across the crags, he lived puddle to puddle. Why not just stay in the ocean? But I think he was broken.

The second found cadavers that walked and talked and kissed but were dead. Second would give them pieces of his soul so they could glow, but soul isn’t sunlight.

Third lived in a cloud fishing for people. When he caught them he would reel them up and eat them. Little stink pieces of heart and blood dripped from the vapor. I would have liked Third, maybe. At least he knew there were worse things than being lonely.

Fourth lived by an ugly statue, a humpty dumpty god. At night he burned his hands in fireplaces, and in the morning he pieced the monument together with Third-World tools. Noon, he would write poetry on its corpse.

When the Fourth died, there were no children to complete his work. But dying isn’t disappearing.

These were my brothers. They speak to me and make me want to do terrible things.

Life

Michael Morgan Presents The Odyssey Project

Posted on by Desmond White

Michael Morgan, a UCSB theater professor with the voice of a lion, hosted this “unique inter-disciplinary theatrical production” over the Summer of 2011. What really set us apart from other stage adaptations of The Odyssey was the inclusion of teenage juvenille delinquents from Los Prietos Boys Camp and Academy in our main cast. For an entire Summer we worked with Los Boys on a primal, abstract, and ultimately personal rendition of The Illiad’s ubiquitous sequel. There was a lot of soul-searching, a lot of tears, one kid got busted with a baggie of pot, that sort of thing. The end result was a blackbox godspell.

For my part (because, as usual, this blog is all about me!), I played one of the cyclops who admonish Polyphemos, as well as a (hopefully) sexy Odysseus during his sexy stay on Circe’s island. Kalila Griffith played Circe and we had a Tango dance number. It was fun!