SlamProfile.com

Live from Minneapolis, MN…

For about the last two years, I’ve fantasized about putting together a truly comprehensive, non-Poetry Slam, Inc. website or wiki on the topic of poetry slam. My biggest drawback has been time and motivation. It is amazingly difficult to get amped-up about a community that only gets amped-up between April and August[!] (as they field teams to compete at the National Poetry Slam.)

I had found a dead wiki on poetry slam and wanted to revive it, but I gave up realizing it would become a time suck and would only fulfill this very personal need to have complete access to the history, lists, who’s-who bios, and stats of the poetry slam world.

Granted, there are so many poetry slams throughout the world. Some are reliably consistent, like the one run by Ko and Rayl at Substanz in Munich, and some exist for one night only. But because there are so many events and no real online source to discover all of them, to keep that information organized and accessible, I feel there is a need for some sort of slam database.

Then I noticed a Facebook wall post by poet and web-head Lindsay Stone for her brand-spanking new site SlamProfile.com So I checked it out and realized that this may be just what the poetry slam world needs.

It is without a doubt a Myspace/Facebook for performance poetry and I believe, if it catches on, it could be the source for poetry slam information, poet profiles and networking. There is no reason for people and poets not to check it out. You can post your audio and videos there, and one does not have to be logged-in to access those files either. That alone should be enough to get poets off of Myspace…

SlamProfile.com has a lot to offer poets, even right now in its earliest stage. I was the 41st poet to join, the water is warm and there is plenty of room. If it catches on, it should feel like a viable, valuable social networking tool for poets in no time.

Go check out SlamProfile.com and add “McGee” as a friend. Tell them I sent you.

And thank you, Lindsay Stone. You’re doing awesome things with it.
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Word to the nerd.

This entry was written by Mike McGee, posted on 9 July, 2010 at 3:50 PM, filed under Uncategorized and tagged facebook, myspace, Performance Poetry and Spoken Word, slamprofile.com, social networking, twitter. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

I LIKEY THE INTERWEBS! I LIKEY MY BOOK! [15/365]

Testing Out A Buncha Web Stuff All At Once!

Seeing if this post goes to LiveJournal, Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Also wanted to see how the PayPal (below) form held up in LJ and FB. I am able to cross-post from my website to LJ, which then sends it to FB, in theory. EDIT 11:45am: I am able to schedule posts to publish at any time I choose. It did post on my site at 11:00am EST. But apparently I didn’t set up Twitter’s update function or LJ’s for that matter. It’s working now. I like the fact that if I change anything from a post on my website, it automatically edits LiveJournal’s version as well. Yay, WordPress!

EDIT 12:45pm: Still not getting Twitter to update from my site. Nor will Facebook get my posts… I am frustrato!
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Speaking of LiveJournal, I’ve been posting everyday. I am trying to post a journal entry everyday in my own personal 365 POST CHALLENGE. It’s been great writing every day. You can keep up with all my posts at MikeMcGee.livejournal.com. Rock and/or Roll!?
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Want a signed copy of my book? Order now via PayPal and I will mail it from home or the road, signed and hugged.

You can always order it at writebloody.com or amazon.com, but this is the best way to let me sign it and get me a larger cut of the profit. Write Bloody authors get copies at a good price, however, the royalties through Amazon are way low.

Mike McGee's new book from Write Bloody Publishing.

–––––––––
Word to the nerd.

This entry was written by Mike McGee, posted on 21 January, 2010 at 8:00 AM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged facebook, twitter. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

I LIKEY THE INTERWEBS! I LIKEY MY BOOK! [15/365]

Testing Out A Buncha Web Stuff All At Once!

Seeing if this post goes to LiveJournal, Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Also wanted to see how the PayPal (below) form held up in LJ and FB. I am able to cross-post from my website to LJ, which then sends it to FB, in theory. EDIT 11:45am: I am able to schedule posts to publish at any time I choose. It did post on my site at 11:00am EST. But apparently I didn’t set up Twitter’s update function or LJ’s for that matter. It’s working now. I like the fact that if I change anything from a post on my website, it automatically edits LiveJournal’s version as well. Yay, WordPress!

EDIT 12:45pm: Still not getting Twitter to update from my site. Nor will Facebook get my posts… I am frustrato!
–––––––––
Speaking of LiveJournal, I’ve been posting everyday. I am trying to post a journal entry everyday in my own personal 365 POST CHALLENGE. It’s been great writing every day. You can keep up with all my posts at MikeMcGee.livejournal.com. Rock and/or Roll!?
–––––––––
Want a signed copy of my book? Order now via PayPal and I will mail it from home or the road, signed and hugged.

You can always order it at writebloody.com or amazon.com, but this is the best way to let me sign it and get me a larger cut of the profit. Write Bloody authors get copies at a good price, however, the royalties through Amazon are way low.

Mike McGee's new book from Write Bloody Publishing.

–––––––––
Word to the nerd.

Originally published at Mike McGee Town. You can comment here or there.

This entry was written by Mike McGee, posted on at 8:00 AM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged facebook, internet, personal updates, twitter. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Early Post [14/365]

Been busy since last night. Reading. Writing. Updating my internet presence. Streamline. Streamline. Streamline.

Couldn’t sleep. Now I am tired, but I feel like I should just plow through the day. Reading manuscripts for Write Bloody takes the wind out of you. Some damn good writers out there.

CLEANING UP MY INTERNET FOOTPRINT
I’ve been thinking a lot about how completely reliant I am of the internet these days. Not that I haven’t been pretty reliant over the past 11 years, it just seems that with so many social networks out there and so many apps available to stay tuned, turned-on, and tempted, I am using the web more throughout my day. Especially now that I use my BlackBerry for so many daily (every)things, I seem to easily forget that it’s all web all the time.

What I use most for networking:
    •    Gmail/G-apps
    •    Facebook
    •    Twitter*
    •    LiveJournal
    •    WordPress for my website
These are all also accessible from my BlackBerry thanks to apps. This makes things very, very easy, but not uncluttered and litter free…

To me, there is way too much “web-litter.“ Web-litter (litternet?) is electronic ephemera that exists because it is too easy to create, and does nothing to move your intended web experience along, becoming what I would also call a “yellol light“ (get it? yel-lol) well before a necessary red light stop point. Web-litter is NEVER quality information. If it has an intellectual value, then it cannot be rubbish. Trivial information is fine, as long as it is still info. Web-litter is useless.

I don’t know why I wish the web weren’t so cluttered, but to be honest, what killed Myspace for me were those UGLY "glittery" images of "Happy Valentine’s Day!" with a teddy bear holding a heart, or a 4-leaf clover and a leprechaun wishing me a "Happy St. Patty’s Day!" Fuck Valentine’s Day. Fuck St. Patty’s Day. Do some research. They’re both wack and offensive. I despised seeing new digi-glittering jpegs as comments on my page. They look horrendous and it made me de-friend people because that’s all they ever did. They never actually sent me a message or left text comments. What’s the point in staying?

Imagine the web represented by people and places you know. Someone you trust and rely on very much is your email account. Maybe your journal is your greatest living confidant, and Facebook is a café someone told you everyone you know goes to, and so you either live there or avoid it like plague. (Now that I think about it, it’s more like a strange voyeur café where we can come and watch people without them knowing… Creepy.)

Web-litter would be the most annoying people ever. Ever. Constantly bombarding us with shit, lol-crap and terds. I have created my share of web-litter, but I want to stop.

MY EXAMPLE PLAY

WEB-LITTER HUMAN EQUIVALENT: Hey, McGee! Look at this picture of this cat! I added this misspelled caption to it to make it cute!

ME: Get the fuck away from me. You just ruined my stride. My mom says we can’t play anymore.

FIN

I bring all this up because I know so many lazy people out there who aren’t doing shit aside from creating and trading this shit. Don’t support it, especially when you have other shit to do!

DO YOU HAVE A WEBSITE? ("No, but I have EVERYTHING ELSE.")
I get so frustrated with people, especially other poets, who have a dozen or so different web-networks to be seen, heard and contacted. I am floored that there are any poets who want to make a solid living at touring or get their name and work out there and still do not have their own website. Just do some research – invest a little cash – and you’ll see that it’s pretty easy to get your own site up and running. WordPress is a great place to start. I host my WordPress site on 1and1.com. I hear GoDaddy.com is very user friendly and inexpensive. I’m sure people can comment with other awesome web hosting services.

EDIT: When I was touring festivals with T.O.F.U., I talked to a lot of producers and record label types. I asked them what they look for in an act aside from skill and stage presence. They said they wanted awesome people who believed in themselves. They paid more attention to acts who knew their own aesthetic and had a solidly designed web presence, and very specifically, their own website. It didn’t matter what it looked like, since any label would revamp it anyway. It was just that they could see that the act was willing to put money where their mouth was and do the work to be taken seriously. According to them, If the only place to listen to your work is on Myspace, and it’s been that way for years, then you probably have a long way to go and don’t actually intend to get there.

*TWITTER
I’ve been using it for a while and all I do is text the same message to Facebook as a status update and to Twitter as a tweet. Is Twitter just a whisper scream into a dark hallway in the hope that someone will respond? I get it and I see that it can be useful, but when I go to read other people’s shit, it’s text-based web-litter. I like the quasi-tangible responses on Facebook and LiveJournal. Maybe I don’t use it enough or maybe I’ve already exhausted all possibilities with Twitter.

How’s Myspace doing? Is it okay? Is it eating right? Do people go to visit?
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Word to the nerd.

This entry was written by Mike McGee, posted on 20 January, 2010 at 8:36 AM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged facebook, networking, personal, twitter, useless, web-litter, web-presence, website, wordpress. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

25 Things About Barney Rubble

A lot of numbered lists of random things about my friends are being posted around Facebook and LiveJournal. It’s a fun meme. Geoff Trenchard posted a fantastic list in the persona of Aesop Rock, which was inspired by this “William Shakespeare” list.

Geoff, once again!, inspired my list below, written in the voice of Barney Rubble.

My own personal list from December can be found here: 33 Things About Me

25 Things You May Not Know About Barney Rubble
© 2009 Mike McGee

1. While it doesn’t bother most of my friends or family, I don’t like calloused feet. Because of this, I prefer catching the bus to work or carpooling with Fred.

2. I took Wilma to our Junior Prom. I kissed her good night on my tippy toes. She leaned down for me. It was real nice.

3. I love gardening and planting vegetables. Nobody does it around here. They say it ain’t natural. They say I’m crazy to spend all that time in the dirt. I think people might get used to it.

4. I hate my job. It pays good, but them rocks is heavy and I’m too short for most things.

5. Fred saved my life twice. I’m pretty clumsy, but lucky that Fred’s always around to get my head out of tight situations. He has been my friend since F.D. Rockevelt Elementary School. We started out not liking each other though. I am glad that changed.

6. Betty’s older than me. Not a lot, but she’s taught me a lot of things about life and ladies. She’s a real good lady. Sweet as punch and super smart.

7. I would never name a kid after a sound. Bam Bam named himself. We had to let him cos he made such a loud fuss. I wanted to call him Matthew.

8. I feel really calm when I am sewing. Patching up holes in my skins, fixing up curtains and such. It makes me quiet. I like the quiet.

9. I also make these things out of soft hides that are like shirts for your legs. I’ve made two sets that I wear around the house to keep stuff warm from the waist down. I think people would laugh at me if I wore them outside the house though.

10. I don’t really like Fruity Pebbles all that much, I just like messin’ with Fred.

11. I ain’t never gone fishing or hunting. I don’t think I could do it.

12. Fred’s dog Dino was the son of my dog, Dina. He was the only one who lived outta the whole litter. Dina was the greatest dog ever. I miss her a whole lot. She was surely my best friend until Betty came around. I have never told this to Fred.

13. I really, really like how vegetables taste. Never really cared much for sabertooth steak. Betty says I’m like a bird. I guess I am weird for eating all these plants when there’s so much meat around.

14. People say nowadays that kids got no respect. That they don’t know what the world was like before we had fire. I remember, and it was real bad. I’m really glad they don’t gotta know what it was like. They were some dark times.

15. I always wanted to try stand-up comedy. I like it when people are happy. Laughing is so great. I love to laugh.

16. I don’t like getting into sticky situations with Fred. I think it hurts Wilma and Pebbles the most. Fred didn’t use to be like that.

17. My favorite color is brown. If I could paint, I would use a lot of it.

18. Betty don’t want no more kids. I want a daughter. Bam Bam would be so protective of his little sister. I would name her Fiona.

19. I am fascinated with volcanoes.

20. I once started a business selling flowers. We went outta business in the first year.

21. I am a really good pool player. I like angles and figuring out how to hit the rocks into the holes.

22. I think we use animals too much for everyday things. We seem to be getting real lazy.

23. I like pie. Any kind of pie. I’ll even eat a meat pie. But I’m not very good at making them.

24. I have a diary I scratch into every once in while. Had it ever since high school. First time I put something down on rock was the day I met Betty. She hasn’t aged a day since. In my whole life, she’s the only thing I fought for and won.

25. I had a girlfriend in high school who used to get roughed up by her dad. She would stay at my house after school and eat dinner with my family. She never wanted to go home. We all really liked her, but they moved around a lot so we lost touch for a while. She’s the one who really got me into a different kind of thinking. She taught me about gardening. When her dad passed away, she married a rich guy and they moved around a lot, but this time, it was really nice, big houses. I met him once. Good guy. He thanked me for keeping her happy. They always send us gift baskets from across the world. I miss her laugh. She was fun. It’s been ten years since she visited. I hope she’s okay.

Originally published at Mike McGee Town. You can comment here or there.

This entry was written by Mike McGee, posted on 10 February, 2009 at 11:09 AM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged 25 things, 33 things, barney rubble, facebook, ideas, livejournal, memes, persona, poem, random lists, writing. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Protected: What To Do With This Here LJ Account…

This entry was written by Mike McGee, posted on 14 April, 2008 at 4:06 PM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged facebook, internetting, internetworking, livejournal, myspace, network sites, streamlining web use. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

On the Internet

Over the last year, I’ve become very disgruntled with the amount people using useless and/or unnecessary social networking sites on the web. In November, I deleted my Myspace page, and other than the ability to message 4,000 people all at once, I have not missed much of it. I still run the T.O.F.U. (myspace.com/tonsoffununiversity) profile there, which I am trying to keep very simple.

Instead of hoarding people and sites, we should be evolving with the web. For example, the first social profile I created was at Friendster. It sucked over time, so I moved to Myspace in 2003, and now I’m at Facebook, which has learned a lot from the “growing suckage” of it’s predecessors. These predecessors are now learning from the new kids on the internet block; keeping up with the trend of quality usefulness and user-friendliness. Smart, that is.

However, I feel that when one does add themselves to a new community, they should pick one or two and stick with it. Each online community is very much like a house or a city, very few people live in more than one. It doesn’t seem logical.

By this, I figure I will leave Facebook once a better, more efficient networking portal comes along. It may exist already, but I would probably have to utilize my web-addiction a lot more to find it and develop yet another group of people I will always hardly know personally.

A good friend of mine has accounts and profiles registered on dozens of various social networking websites. I also know that this friend is annoyed with the amount maintenance needed to keep them updated, and eventually forgets about them, only to re-register as a new user. With me trying to be creative and maintain my touring schedule, I was falling behind on my Facebook and Myspace maintenance, so one of them had to go and I went with the lesser of two suckas.

My LiveJournal account has much more value to me than my Myspace profile ever did, which is why I’m keeping it. But now that I’ve “WordPress-ed” my site toward blog-friendliness, I am now reconsidering how I will use my LJ blog. I have considered using it as a Neat Links page, or as my gig listings. Not sure what I will do with it just yet.

I dig the web big time, but I certainly see the lack of much actual art/action stemming from being a member of any website or social network. I think there are a handful of people who have made their careers through web affiliation or promotion on some of these, but it seems to be a small handful of barely-skilled entertainers, and I believe it is a fleeting fame they are falling into. Over time, it’s a very small percentage of the world that actually cares about people who are famous for being famous. Fame in art is nice, but not necessary or primary. Art in fame would be nice to see.

Looking at the nature of shitty things on the net versus actual shitty things in the world and can I see that the web is a moving, growing tabloid of low-quality public interest and a broken amplifier of what the world really is and could become. The truest aspects of what counts in life can a should be found offline, on one’s own, then maybe one can research it online.

The internet is amazing. I certainly get most of my information from it, and have made more of a career through it, but I also tour a lot and perform many, many times a year in front of hundreds of thousands of people. That helps too. No matter how many people know you on the internet, one can never truly understand their own impact until they personally meet and greet the people they have or are impacting.

I feel like there needs to be better contact and context from artists online. If you have a growing fan base, stay in touch with them. Take the time to reach out and know your audience. I can learn from this philosophy too. I have really slipped in the last year with regard to keeping in touch with friends, fans and users. I am going to make a difference this year.

This entry was written by Mike McGee, posted on 27 January, 2008 at 4:59 PM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged facebook, Internet-Stuff, myspace, online, social networking, websites. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.