August 7, 2008 - Madison, WI: Nerd Slam

I made it to Madison without any difficulties; my flight went smoothly and there were no delays. Unfortunately, I had to miss the first two days of competition, including the Baltimore Team’s first bout, because my last evening teaching was Wednesday. However, I was thrilled to finally be there!

After getting settled into my hotel and registering for NPS 2008, I caught up with the team on the way to the Nerd Slam. This was held in an auditorium at the University of Wisconsin’s humanities building, and the room was bustling and the energy was high. The Nerd Slam was interesting because, not only was it a specially themed event, it was such an incredibly popular one that they had to modify the rules to restrict the number of poets presenting in a fair fashion. Everyone who was interested in performing put their name on a sheet of paper along with their “nerd specialty”, and then placed it in the gender-appropriate box. Two names would be drawn at random from a box, and then the poets would be asked a series of questions depending on their area of specialty. The first poet to get the question wrong was out while the winner performed.

Nerd Slam being a Nerd Slam, they gave out free comic books before the emcees opened the event. The first poem was a persona poem, presented from the perspective of a Zombie comedian. Absolutely hilarious, and in the voice of the undead comedian, this piece was full of puns and jokes only the buried could fully appreciate.

There were several “Nerd Trivia Masters” on hand to ask questions. However, they frequently needed to call in guest experts to handle more unusual specialties. While a good procedure in theory, the enactment didn’t seem particularly fair on two accounts. First, the questions often varied dramatically in difficulty. Second, inordinate amounts of time were spent on certain duos. It seemed like the whole event would have run much more smoothly if they’d prepared a series of questions in advanced or if they had some way to validate the answers. Still, with improvement, the trivia-tournament method of qualification has a lot of merit.

Nerd specialties included the following: movies, an inordinate number of Star Trek Next Generation experts, 80’s cartoons, cosmology, ABC and TGIF television shows, literary nerds, World of Warcraft, web comics, Marvel comics, X-Men, Harry Potter, impressions, videography, post modern film theory, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 70’s disaster films, Dr. Who, obscure animals (YES!) and Animae.

Poem subject-matter included: lots of nerve-style love, the evolution of the human species, such nerd coming-of-age poems as growing up in an arcade, dealing with parents, and skipping grades.

One of my favorites was Shannon’s “Erotic Poem to my Man Crush Jeremy Goldbloom”. Using made-up words and delivered in the voice of an 11-year-old fan, Shannon professed her love with wonderful comedic delivery and numerous footnotes (and end-footnotes). I also enjoyed Tony and Duchene’s group piece on being black nerds and “the Glutes’” Supervillian poem.

All competitors were awarded a comic catalogue packet and especially proficient competitors were given little prizes, such as a mini-model Millennium Falcon.