Anticipation better not get the best of me. An hour before my partner in XXX crime arrives to pick me up to go to Sardo’s Grill & Lounge, the so-called home of the San Fernando Valley’s Tuesday night Porn Star Karaoke, expectations are flying around, having a heyday. We have both been assigned to check out where the valley’s living exhibits go after a long, hard day at work to relax and hang loose, no pun intended. I repeatedly tell myself there’s no point in all this anticipating, that thinking too much about what will be will kill it. But in all fairness to myself, fantasizing about it is half the fun. All I can think about is having to sing “Physical” or “She’ll Be Cuming ‘Round the Mountain” to a crowd of drunken adult film stars while my arm is draped around Roxanne Hall and the new Jenna Jameson. Singing our favorite songs, no one caring what an atrocious singer I am, and the 2 a.m. bar curfew becoming null and void in a world of mastacious women, swinger parties, roller skates, and pre-1980s sexual disease phobias… Damn! I’m anticipating again. Staring blankly at my open wardrobe, I’m hoping something will jump out as the obvious attire to help me blend in, but I am having no such luck and I’m running out of time like the Rabbit. Now a little panicked, I circle around my options and eventually throw on a t-shirt, purple leather vest, some 60s-ish pants and my worst enemy, a pair of heels.

Marco picks me up because he knows I’m a lightweight. Two drinks and I’ll be telling anyone who will listen stories that should be told with reservation. I’m used to talking a lot and not being heard, but I’m starting to think Marco is actually listening which both relieves and frightens me. I’m given the task of navigating, but I’m having such a good time already that I forget to pay attention to the map. Road construction detours and MapQuest hell leave us screaming to the lords of Burbank urban planning for help. Where the hell is this place? Right when we think it’s time to go home, Marco pulls into a strip mall. Next to Vons, a neon sign illuminating Sardo’s is sandwiched awkwardly between ill-fitting businesses, as is typical of strip malls. We give each other a deadpan look, laugh, sigh, and unbuckle. The air feels seedy, which sets me in the mood. I get a waft of donuts, sex and mist. Delicious.

It’s still early, so there’s no one outside with the exception of the bouncer and a man I recognize as the owner (I watched his interactive tour on Sardo’s website so he was easy to spot). He is welcoming and gestures for us to walk in. As we do, I notice a sea of red patent leather covering all the booths and the bar stools. It’s calm and collected for what I imagined. The tone-deaf have definitely arrived, but where are all the big boobs? The tanned skin, the peroxide-bleached hair? The gangly men with long, curly man-locks? Ah, yes, there’s one. You have to really look for him, but he’s there. Marco and I look around, sousing out the premises of this should-be-but-isn’t house of debauchery. There appears to be a VIP area where an older woman with a backbreakingly enormous chest sits, alongside a blonde and a brunette. This must be where the “stars” congregate. We count about four who could pass as porn stars, although we aren’t quite sure; we are in Los Angeles after all. The mic is handed over to the MC for the night, who announces the recent release of her new DVD and proceeds to call out tame dirty names to the boys in the crowd begging for a free t-shirt. She selects one up front, makes him turn around and bend over, and gives him the kind of spanking we all predict.

It’s getting more and more crowded, which feeds me with a morsel of hope. I very much want it to be a secret gold mine of a dive bar, with locals I want to chat with, music I want to sway to, outrageous live acts I want to witness. But it’s not; porn has gone limp. Actually, it feels as if it has nothing to do with porn. If I came without prior research, I would never guess that it’s a porn star karaoke night. The bar does have some redeeming qualities: it’s funky, relaxed, well lit, and serves healthy-portioned drinks. But we are here late and not one “porn star” has graced us with his or her voice as far as we can tell, so I’m left thinking the label has been put on the wrong bottle. It’s simply karaoke in Burbank, which naturally, being the porn capital of the world, has a higher than normal chance of being frequented by a few porn stars.

Bad karaoke fades into the background as Marco and I comfortably settle on bar stools in the corner, familiarizing ourselves with local regulars and self-medicating with Heineken and Diet Cokes. One such local, a man by the name of Ken who smells of Marlboro Reds from the table next to us, wears a leather cowboy hat and boots, and clanks glasses with us in celebration of his birthday. We learn he’s been coming for many, many years and thinks it’s the greatest bar around. I must add to that statement that Ken and his wife live one block away. Marco and I had committed to singing if it meant we would experience more of what Sardo’s PSK has to offer, but given the less-than-mind-blowing vibe, we decide to pass.

I never expected Sardo’s to be a live and breathing dictionary of all things pornographic, but I did expect something slightly entertaining. I can safely say that Marco, my delightful and funny partner on this PG-rated night, was 10x more engaging than what was going on in the corner of the VIP booth. So what do I think of Sardo’s? I think it’s a bar in Burbank with good drinks. Period. Do you need to venture across town for it? No. Is the allure of porn stronger than porn itself? Probably, but I’ll leave that for the experts to debate.

Anticipation turned out to be the most efficacious act relating to porn of the night, as it is quite masturbatory in itself. But if my expectation of tonight was my mental foreplay, I’m pretty sure Sardo’s gave my dear friend Marco a bad case of blue balls.

Side B: by Marco Mannone

Topanga Canyon twists before me in pitch darkness. One wrong move, and I’ll have a healthy ten-second free-fall to let my life flash by before exploding on the jagged rocks below. Keep it steady and let Nick Cave croon “Moonland”. I’m venturing into this perfect slice of darkness to pick up Forth writer/online editor Sophie Kipner. She lives in the lush heart of Topanga, and it feels thoroughly nice to be off The Grid.

When I pick Sophie up she is surprised at how punctual I am – and I must say, I am as well. It’s a long haul through the winding wilderness before we make it into the Valley and jump on the 101. Our destination: Sardo’s in Burbank to listen to Porn Star Karaoke. Why? Because it has become an L.A. tradition. In Italy, you ride in Gondolas. In Spain, you watch a bull-fight. In New York, you go to Broadway. And here in Los Angeles, you see people who get paid to have sex belt out their favorite 80’s rock ballads in a grimy little bar in a strip-mall of a Von’s parking lot. Who says L.A. doesn’t have culture?

We veer off at the Pass Ave. exit and the evening is going swimmingly until we realize that Pass Ave. doesn’t feel like cooperating and ends prematurely at Olive. We back-track, only to end up in the parking lot of a dry-cleaners and MapQuest has failed to clarify Burbank’s impossible infrastructure. Construction and poor city-planning drives us in circles, and we come to find – over much laughter – that there is no feeling quite as despairing as being lost in Burbank, CA.

Eventually, Sophie calls the bar and we get a new set of directions that circumvents the construction detours and lands us at Sardo’s. Since 2003, the establishment has been hosting Porn Star Karaoke, a novelty that has caught on as a must-see local experience. The lounge is small and modestly crowded at 9:45pm. We saddle up at a free corner of the bar and Sophie gets a Jack & Diet Coke while I get a Heineken. The clientele is typical for the Valley: a strange mix of frat-boys, middle-aged divorcees, Nascar cowboys and, oh yeah, a few porn-stars thrown in for good measure. But the image of a “Boogie Nights”-style disco scene is quickly erased as we settle in and absorb the average, blue-collar atmosphere.

An aging gentleman in a 2006 Nascar champion jacket and cowboy hat (I wasn’t kidding) introduces himself as “Ken”. It’s Ken’s birthday tomorrow and he’s out celebrating with his wife over some chicken-wings and cocktails. They’ve been coming to Sardo’s for years, much like a majority of the people here, and he swears by it as a good time. The meager collection of porn stars are sequestered into a modest “VIP” booth by the stage and they don’t appear obvious in any way – save for the giant breasts on one worn-out woman which look as if they might go down like the Hindenburg.

Waiting to be impressed – or even vaguely amused – Sophie and I turn to each other for drinks and conversation that turn out to be far more entertaining than anything the evening could present. When I catch the dark wing of a bird sticking out of Sophie’s shoulder-blade, I inquire about the tattoo and she pulls her sleeve back to reveal a magnificent crow frozen in glory. She explains that when her grandfather was dying in England, that a crow had perched itself on his hospital window-sill for an entire week without moving. Moments after he passed, the crow squawked and flew away leaving Sophie enchanted. Despite her general fear of birds – stemming from a hilarious “Emu incident” in Australia when she was nine years old – she decided to brand herself with this bird as a symbol of her grandfather and, perhaps, a reminder of fears that need to be overcome in this life.

Excusing myself to the bathroom, I am nearly molested by a crowd of people as I squeeze myself across the bar. There is a line to the men’s room, which plants me squarely between porn-star Julia-Anne singing “Rebel Yell” and a fortune-teller’s glass bowl with a plastic witch head floating inside of it, cackling obnoxiously. This could either be a decoration for Halloween, or the very spirit of pornography: a fake woman trapped in a bubble, stimulated by electricity and doomed to a bar in Burbank.

Inside the claustrophobic commode, a Mexican gentleman is busy mopping the floor with a bucket of dirty water, and I make a mental note to burn my Converse when I get home. A white yuppie uses the urinal next to mine — the kind of guy who wears a silk, burgundy button-down tucked in his jeans. Julia-Anne can be clearly heard through the wall behind us, and the Yuppie breaks my personal bathroom etiquette by engaging me in conversation.

“Oh my god, these girls sound like HORSE-SHIT!”

“Well, what did you expect?” I respond.

“I don’t know man, but of all the places we could have gone, I am regretting coming here. Vegas, New York, shit – even Tucson for Christ sake!”

He is drunk and the Illusion men across the country must have of L.A.’s porn scene has been efficiently soiled by his visit here.

“Well hell,” I tell him, “Keep your sense of humor intact, and go down laughing.”

When I make my way back to Sophie, the evening’s host – adult actress Nikki Hunter – is making a man pull a free T-shirt out of her manufactured cleavage with his teeth.

“What’s this?” I ask Sophie, who watches the scene unfold with a wry smile.

“They’re handing out free stuff to whoever makes the biggest fool of themselves,” she responds.

A free DVD is waved around and the drunk apes in the lounge roll around and beat their chests for a chance at “earning” it. One lucky hominid is singled-out and Nikki asks him, “So what will you do to get this?”

“Anything you want!” he grins.

“So I can spank your ass as hard as I want?”

“Sure!”

The man – presumably apart of the work-force, a relative to some family, a tax-payer and quite possibly a patriot – bends over with his elbows planted on his table, and endures the brutal hand of Ms. Hunter as she WHACKS his buttocks.

“So what was your introduction to porn?” Sophie asks me, a not-so-typical work-related question.

“Like most red-blooded American males of the 20th Century: the glossy pages of Playboy. My best friend’s father had boxes full of every issue dating back to the 1960’s.”

We both agreed that was innocent stuff compared to today’s brand of gonzo porn.

“In essence, you were apart of the last generation of men who had a classy introduction to the opposite sex,” Sophie tells me, “Playboy Bunnies were modest, playful and respected.”

“True,” I elaborate, “And the act of appreciating them required effort. Back in those days, you had to be covert to sneak magazines around. Not like today, where kids can say they’re doing their homework and surf the Internet. Christ, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a kid these days. They can see and hear things that most adults can’t even comprehend at the push of a button. We’re gonna have a generation of sexual deviants on our hands soon, and a good deal of them will become teachers and politicians.”

I ask Sophie what her introduction to porn was, and she confides it was at a girlfriend’s father’s house when she was at the edge of puberty. She and her girlfriends would watch the father’s VHS collection and proceed to prank-call random boys by emulating the breathless dialogue of the women on TV.

“Shit, where were you when I was 12?” I ask her, “All the prank calls I got were insulting.”

Sophie ponders the future of pornography, “How could it possibly get any more graphic? At what point will we be unable to push the envelope any further?”

“I agree,” I tell her, switching an empty Heineken for a full one, “On one hand, it’s desensitizing us, necessitating more and more elaborate fetishes. On the other hand, and I think this is the optimist in me, but I think that at a certain point the sensory overload of the Internet will hopefully re-establish the need to have a meaningful, connected and loving relationship with the opposite sex. Because at the end of the day, an orgasm without love is as empty a physical gesture as sneezing.”

We’re just two young writers for an arts & literature magazine, philosophizing about human sexuality and relationships in the 21st century, all the while a woman with thousand-dollar breasts croons “Pour Some Sugar on Me” in a way that Def Leppard probably never imagined.

Not too long after midnight, we decide we’ve had enough and head out to my car and jump back on the 101 – where we continue to laugh all the way back into the sweet heart of darkness that is Topanga. At the end of the night, the tacky lure of drunk sex objects singing cheesy music pales in comparison with the genuine connection I end up enjoying with Sophie. Connections in L.A. are hard to come by (regardless of their platonic or romantic nature) and when two members of the opposite sex create one, it’s in the same ballpark as a tiny miracle. As much as Burbank seems designed to confuse, L.A. seems designed to alienate, and I am thankful I have gotten to know this girl with a bird on her back a little better. After all, Sophie is proof-positive that it’s not where you go in this strange city we call home, but who you go with.

Ass-spanking optional.

SlamCharlotte Takes the Title as Champion at the First Annual InkSlam Poetry Festival

Move over New York City, Los Angeles is the new home of slam poetry. Every Tuesday night for the past 11 years, Greenway Court Theatre has been the home of the immensely popular Da’ Poetry Lounge, which has become the nation’s largest ongoing, open mic spoken word event. The soul-searching, quick-talking, and groove-loving regulars of the series have been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, won Tony Awards, and have been recognized as some of the country’s finest spoken word poets, eager to take the stage to showcase their free-flowing intelligence, abundant with heart and wit. From November 4-7^th 2009, the Greenway Arts Alliance presented inkSlam, the first annual Los Angeles Poetry Festival at Greenway Court Theatre. After two days of workshops, the nation’s top eight slam poetry teams congregated at the 350-seat auditorium to battle for the title of inkSlam Champion. Winning team SlamCharlotte included poets Twenty20, Tavis Brunson, Quentin “Q” Talley, Andrew Tyree and team leader Bluz, a.k.a. Boris Rogers. Bluz, whose works are inspired by the people around him, is fueled by the crowd’s energy. “I’m always nervous before I go up,” he confides. “I have all these butterflies, but once I’m up there, the adrenaline starts going and it’s almost like a drug. The crowd is so receptive. It’s awesome.”

Bluz has led his team to consecutive victories at the National Poetry Slam in 2007 and 2008, and is the 2008 LEAF Festival Poetry Slam Champion. He is currently ranked as 13^th in the world for Poetry Slam after his successful bout at the Individual World Poetry Slam competition in Vancouver, Canada. Bluz admits that despite early dabblings, it wasn’t until high school that he dove headfirst into writing. “My high school teacher told me I wasn’t any good. I’m the type of person who, if you tell me I can’t do something, will find a way to prove you wrong.” With incremental positive feedback from family and friends, he started to write more often and in doing so, fell in love with the art of the spoken word. “I’m just pushing and going forward,” he tells me with kind eyes and a Cheshire Cat smile, concluding our brief chat after his team’s triumph. Now with an inkSlam champion title under his belt, this self-described people watcher is proving he’s got game, one competition at a time. And this time, it’s written in stone.

Bluz – Poet Reading
Slam Poet Reading

See the video of this event here!

Photos by Nancy Accomando and Bona Hong

Reading Will Alexander’s poetry is like walking into a Jackson Pollock painting: you get lost in a maelstrom of colors, lulled by beautifully constructed metaphors, and unexpectedly shaken by the jarring sounds of each hard-handed stroke. Through Alexander’s work, words fill three-dimensional forms and talk back to you with distinct colors, voices and angles. An autodidact born and raised in South Central L.A., Alexander’s early work didn’t fit into conventional, academically defined structures. After years of carving out his own niche, Alexander is now internationally recognized as a leading literary figure. A poet, essayist, novelist and visual artist, his accomplishments include the Whiting Fellowship for Poetry in 2001 and a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2002, and he was named by The International Biographical Centre in Cambridge as the Outstanding Scholar of the 20th Century. Alexander’s most recent collection of poetry, The Sri Lankan Loxodrome, is a surreal adventure embedded with a lexicon all its own and laced with seemingly disconnected words applied to the page like that of smattered paint.

Staying true to non-linear storytelling, “A Nexus of Phantoms” was initially inspired by the color of lorikeets but is most simply the result of what he deems as his ability to hear poetically. I sat perplexed by this poem’s many metaphors an hour before our meeting, trying to find the thematic tie-ins to the title poem. Instead, I only found a nexus of my own. I thought that with some explanation on his part, I would be able to put this poem into context, neatly boxed and ribbon-tied. How very wrong I was, and I think that’s exactly the point.

Alexander’s poetry is a fluid landscape of words wherein meanings are changed by the context in which they are read. He tells me he hears words in a certain way, as if he were a living, breathing vessel through which words move from source to paper. He scribbles words down as they come to him, hence the pen and paper he always keeps handy in his coat pocket. With the exception of having to make a few minor grammatical adjustments, Alexander’s published poems are basically the same as their first drafts. Why? “Because that’s how they came to me. They came in that order, and that’s how they were intended to be read,” he explains. “I let the words sit until they speak back to me. They tell me what I need to know.”

The idea of words swirling and lingering on the page is just another example of his ability to enchant with imagery, which transports the listener into the cosmos. “I am not a literary person and this genre is nonlinear in that sense. The power is in terms of the hearing. The ability to hear poetically,” he tells me. “William Blake mentioned that as well: to actually hear language at another level as if it had been alchemically brewed. It could be a common word, an arcane word, but the level is soaked by a certain kind of poetic energy, another level that escapes a measurement and can no longer be maintained quantitatively. Reality has a tremendous range; you just have to look at nature. Look at the lorikeets.” This skewed sense of reality is the root of the issue, according to Alexander, because life isn’t linear. His poems come to him in fragments and his poetry reflects that natural pattern. “This is the problem that we are in,” he asserts. “These old ideas and boundaries are starting to break down.”

PART ONE
Accelerated Romance

There is a Band-Aid for the love-impoverished, but it costs about $36 and it doesn’t include a martini. Our quick-fixing society has found yet another way to cut the bullshit to under five minutes with the advent of speed dating. But while the bandage may stick at first, it ends up just sliding off with nothing much to hold on to. We either need better adhesives or we will just have to keep dating the old fashioned way. I vote for Velcro: it sticks but there’s no commitment, and it’s flexible enough for a fickle city like LA.

I am the first to admit I am no dating pro, nor do my experiences render me fit to give advice. I am, however, familiar with this city’s dating dance, and I’ve acquired a set of expectations, fantasies, and reservations to which the dickless race may collectively relate. Feeling well equipped to explore the polarized views of dating in L.A., FORTH writer Marco Mannone and I volunteer ourselves as subjects of none other than speed dating. Armed with notions from philosopher Malcolm Gladwell, who thinks we make accurate conclusions about people in two seconds, I think five minutes per date should be plenty of time. Unless of course you are left wanting more than five minutes with a stranger, which would be the case we’re all hoping for.

Rolling the dice with a simple Google search, we found SpeedLA Dating, the site with a most perplexing tag line: “Cheeky Fun @ STK—Speed Dating UK Style—Fancy a Go?” It boasts itself as some sort of British speed-dating service, but provides no explanation why. With the exception that the two “playful” hosts are British and the word “fancy” and “cheeky” are thrown in for good measure, it appears to be a typical speed dating experience. One review from L.A. Talk Radio claims, “SpeedLA Dating is the hippest way to meet quality singles.” Also mentioned is that if I get there by 7:30, I’ll get a “stunning, complimentary makeover by a certified cosmetologist.” The most fascinating element of SpeedLA Dating is equally the most bizarre: the chance to find Marley, their resident stuffed bear, to win a whopping $50!

Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink advocates that within the first two seconds of meeting someone, our minds make a series of conclusions that, as he explains, are usually quite accurate. After reviewing questionnaires in a study on speed dating, Gladwell concludes that the qualities candidates want in an ideal date don’t match their subconscious preferences. For one reason or another, we like to second-guess these conclusions or disregard them altogether; but in doing so, we just take longer to arrive at the same point. Aware that I tend to go for men I probably shouldn’t, I am all for putting myself in a situation where I could be enchanted by Mr. Unexpected.

I fell three feet and into a puddle of grape-flavored Juicy Juice. Not too much juice, it was probably just from one carton. But this was no ordinary puddle; there was something different about it. I knew that because it told me.

“Hey you! I’m no ordinary puddle!” it said.

“Don’t shout at me! What kind of lady do you think I am?” I sputtered as I rolled over. I just don’t have time for this crap. Last week, for instance, a nasty old ice cube from my soda bit me on the lip.

“You? A lady?” the purple puddle said with a raspy voice. “No kind of lady I know of falls backwards out of windows. Your skirt was over your head.”

Asshole. I scrambled to my feet and walked away. When I turned over my right shoulder to give it the evil eye, I realized it was moving towards me. This crazy ass puddle was following me! I strained my eyes to be sure. It couldn’t be a mirage; I was in the middle of a city. This puddle just snaked its way across the pavement, retracing my footsteps. I started to walk a bit faster. Fast walking turned into speed walking which quickly turned into running. This morning’s banana bread from Mme Bisous was slowing me down, giving me a runner’s stitch.

Do I look behind or don’t I? I raised my hands because that’s what Mr. Cordon from gym class said to do when you get cramps. But shit, he didn’t have a puddle chasing him. I could feel it behind me. Its edges started to wet the backs of my ankles. But then I remembered, like a flash, the story on the news about a man who survived a shark attack by facing and hitting it with his paddle. So, I turned around in one quick, sharp movement and faced the puddle straight on with my hands clenched tight. It stopped dead in its tracks. I was shocked. It actually worked. We stood there, frozen, staring at each other.

“I can’t believe you turned around,” it said, glistening and shimmering in the sunlight.

“The way I see it, you and I have two options,” I shouted. “Number one- we fight, or two- you get the holy hell out of here!” I shouted even louder than the first time, although it came out quite wobbly. I was feeling proud and strong and lion-hearted. But right then, right when I was on top of the world, I saw myself in its shimmering and glistening. It distracted me terribly. It was at this moment of complete distraction that the puddle of purple Juicy Juice slipped away with my reflection still on it. I never considered that a puddle would rob me of my own reflection. Deflated and reflectionless, I walked back home. Now I avoid puddles entirely, shadows too, because you can never be too sure. There’s just too much risk.