Michael McFee asked me to introduce a Birds of a Feather session at Duke’s NC Festival of the Book. Festival of the Book lost some points with me for this year’s tagline, “It’s About the Story,” since there were poets involved who didn’t really care about the story as much as the language, but that’s a piddling matter. Market your celebration however you want, people.

The session was intended to be a short reading and then a conversation around a certain topic between two poets, in this case Michael and Gerald Barrax. The assigned topic, Culture’s Sway Over Poetry, was significantly less fun than one might want to hear, so Michael and Jerry decided that they would speak specifically about music. And instead of doing a somewhat stodgy reading-then-answer-some-questions session, they decided that the reading would be their conversation.

Each came equipped with some poems, and Jerry read the first poem. Michael then found an aspect of one of his poems that shared a connection with Jerry’s work, and the two riffed off of each other like that for a while. Only once did they really hit a point where they felt like the work was not directly connected to the last poem read, and that was just an opportunity to launch in a new direction.

What resulted was far more fresh than your standard poetry reading– they really managed to have a compelling and thoughtful conversation through their poems, and I think the casual viewer probably suspected several times that they must have planned which poems to read in response. It’s a format that I would gladly see over and over again around any number of vague topics like music, family, the creative process… the kind of stuff that Festival of the Book was interested in presenting.

So, if you’re planning to have a few poets read, see if they are interested in something like that.

It’s been a good day for poetry, people.

Michael McFee asked me to introduce a Birds of a Feather session at Duke’s NC Festival of the Book. Festival of the Book lost some points with me for this year’s tagline, “It’s About the Story,” since there were poets involved who didn’t really care about the story as much as the language, but that’s a piddling matter. Market your celebration however you want, people.

The session was intended to be a short reading and then a conversation around a certain topic between two poets, in this case Michael and Gerald Barrax. The assigned topic, Culture’s Sway Over Poetry, was significantly less fun than one might want to hear, so Michael and Jerry decided that they would speak specifically about music. And instead of doing a somewhat stodgy reading-then-answer-some-questions session, they decided that the reading would be their conversation.

Each came equipped with some poems, and Jerry read the first poem. Michael then found an aspect of one of his poems that shared a connection with Jerry’s work, and the two riffed off of each other like that for a while. Only once did they really hit a point where they felt like the work was not directly connected to the last poem read, and that was just an opportunity to launch in a new direction.

What resulted was far more fresh than your standard poetry reading– they really managed to have a compelling and thoughtful conversation through their poems, and I think the casual viewer probably suspected several times that they must have planned which poems to read in response. It’s a format that I would gladly see over and over again around any number of vague topics like music, family, the creative process… the kind of stuff that Festival of the Book was interested in presenting.

So, if you’re planning to have a few poets read, see if they are interested in something like that.

One thing we improvisers tend to be really good at is shitting in each others’ corn flakes. In the absence of any real worthy drama within our own theaters, we’ll look to war with another theater in our area, and we’ll generally pick the most modest of offenses to set us off. See if any of these claims sound familiar, improviser:

“You worded your ad in such a way that it might be construed as a slam on our program!”
“You began doing a show similar to the show that we have done before!”
“When you opened your new theater, you took away talent from our theater.”

That’s right, they ARE familiar. You heard them in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, North Carolina, Austin, Washington DC, St. Louis, Richmond, Green Bay, Kansas City, and a couple of other places that I’m too lazy to actually research rather than recall.

Why do we do this? Well, within our own theater, if we find ourselves predominantly performing in just one, we talk plenty of shit, but since we’ve bought into a retarded notion that everyone has to be the best of friends in order to improvise on the same stage, despite the fact that it never, ever happens that way. It’s bad form to write in your blog about what a bitch Ronnie Wilson is if you stand a pretty decent chance of being cast on a team with Ronnie Wilson during the next audition.¹ And someone in the theater will be close enough to Ronnie even that if Ronnie doesn’t care (because Ronnie thinks you’re a bitch), that someone feels insulted and hurt, or worse, feels that the mutual distance must be fixed, immediately.

So, because it’s a day-to-day headache to out-and-out despise someone in your own theater for legitimate reasons, it is often much easier to release that frustration in veiled digs and outright message board hostility towards someone else’s project or theater. Ahhh, the message board. How did we fight without you?

So here’s how it goes down. Kelly Poopinski posts something saying, “I really like improv, and I wish the community would get bigger.” This is an honest sentiment from Kelly Poopinski. All of us improvisers agree that we like improv and other people should too. Hey, even Ross White wishes the improv community would grow.

Then Mike Flatulum, who is new to the scene, makes the dire mistake of saying, “Gosh, I wish that the many theaters we have here in our community were working together.” Oh, Mike, don’t you know that seventeen years ago, Joe and Sally were part of the same theater company, and Joe liked Sally but Sally slept with Rick, and Joe harbored resentment against both Sally and Rick that lingers on? And now that Sally is the artistic director of the New Improv Theater Site (NITS), Joe has spread the word around Previous Improv Company of Krazies (PICK) that NITS is pathetic. (Joe has never seen a NITS show, or came to one with his mind made up that it would be bad.) So, Joe posts a veiled reference to the reasons that the two can never collaborate, which boils down to petty personality issues which only really relate to Joe and Sally, and no one else involved.

But because we, as improvisers, are always right, we must immediately enlist the rest of the community around us to come to bat for us. Of course, only one or two people are actually going to post anything offensive or inflammatory– maybe just Joe– but the rest of us have to at least chime in to show our teammates that we were reading the thread and pretending to agree in vague principal that yes, Sally was kind of a dick about things, when in actuality we don’t really care, because we don’t know Sally. Or we saw her show once and we genuinely didn’t care for it. Or maybe we chime in because we’ve been in Joe’s theater for five or six years and we’ve really come to genuinely believe Sally is a dick, because Joe said so and one time she teched a show and blacked it out before we had a chance to say that really funny thing we were going to say.

So we post a few times, usually something innocuous, and then someone who doesn’t know either theater feels compelled to say something about how awful it is that the two theaters are at war. Then, someone in each of the theaters believes they are at war! “If Kevin Polaski says we hate each other, he must really know something about that other theater! They hate us! They talk shit about us whenever they gather! We must hate them back!” is the rallying cry.

But the thing of it is, most people don’t care. It’s not an institutionally held hatred– it’s usually petty and personal, between a few people who have a history that extends well beyond theater and almost always involves sex somewhere along the line. (Maybe just not directly with each other.) Most of the people in each theater don’t know a lot about the other theater, or do, but don’t care because the other theater’s environment just isn’t their cup of tea. It might be geography, it might be established friendships, it might be artistic preference, it might be the cost of classes or the experience of the instructors or the horrible body odor of a member of one company². It might be feelinsg of jealousy or hurt because they were spurned on- or off-stage. Who can say why we choose one artistic endeavor over another? We all have different reasons.

I’m involved at the business end, as a co-owner of a theater currently being dragged through one of these petty spats by good-intentioned people on both sides. And as a business-person, I can safely tell you the following:

• If improv grows in my small market, that is a good thing.
• I see no way in which pettiness and enmity strengthens my goals for my improv theater. So why would I encourage it?
• I may not be at other theaters’ shows or classes on a regular basis, because I’m busy, but that doesn’t mean I think they suck. In fact, in most cases, I’m quite friendly with the members of other companies, having either worked with them on other projects or having performed alongside them for many years.
• I hope you pay no mind to any member of my company who are assholes. I pay very little attention to asshole members of your company³, because I know that they’re not representative of your theater’s ownership. In most cases, I like and respect your theater’s ownership. Your theater’s ownership may have attended my wedding. And I know those assholes are not representative of the many people in your company who are excited about improvisation, yes-and, and community.
• I have seen so many of these spats come and go, I could write a thesis on it for a sociology degree. I could then publish that thesis. And someone would think I was talking shit about their theater in my thesis. And I would still get up in the morning and not worry about it.

So, in short, because I have to go to a theater and perform a show that some people really like and some people really don’t like, here are some parting words.

If you think you’re being a dick, knock it off.

If you think someone else is being a dick, ignore them.

You have better things in life to band against than someone’s improv theater. For Christ’s sake, look at our government and the giant corporations that actually intend to screw you.

If people don’t want to do the same show or class you’re doing, don’t sweat it. There are a lot of factors that go into choosing an experience that works for you, and people aren’t all alike. It’s not an affront.

Let’s stop being rude to each other and focus our attention where it belongs: Having awkward and thoroughly ill-advised sex with the members of our own company, team, or troupe, and then dealing with the fallout from dashed expectations.

Or proposing to have awkward and thoroughly ill-advised sex with the members of our own company, team, or troupe, being rejected, and then dealing with the fallout from dashed expectations.

¹ I’ve also found that it’s retarded to make observations about Ronnie that are neutral, because if Ronnie misconstrues them as negative, you’ll end up with a strained, awkward relationship forever. (Even if you and Ronnie are taking a class in a city you don’t live in. Ronnie could move to your city one day, and end up on your team one day. And you will feel horrible about that awkwardness forever. Seriously. Trust me.)

² You may think I am joking. I am not. I was once in a company with a man who smelled so badly of his own pee that company members left to pursue other interests, and to get fresh air.

³ Someone, somewhere, in an improv company, thinks this statement is directed at them. Get over yourself. Unless you are Larry Howard. Larry Howard, you are an asshole⁴.

⁴ But I love you.

Looking more at how one might take education online, Martha sent me this link: Technology creates lectures on demand. My immediate thought has a pricetag– I don’t see a heavy implementation in the K-12 arena right now because the cost to equip the classrooms is so high. Universities tend to have the capacity to create high-tech classrooms, high schools are generally lucky to have projectors.

And the question continues to come up– who wants lectures? The article mentions that universities are using these lectures as recruiting tools. I’ll admit that I’d prefer a university where I don’t have to show up for class over one where I do, but given the investment in hardware and licensing, wouldn’t you rather look at a university that’s doing something more cutting-edge than having one person stand up in front of a group and disseminate knowledge?

That said, if you are going to be standing up disseminating, then YES, we want your lectures captured and preserved for posterity. I can’t imagine the knowledge that has been lost over time because finer points of lectures were not captured, because interested students didn’t have the chance to go back and review. I see tons and tons of potential for new teachers to succeed by using pieces of older lectures when they’re stuck on a particular topic. I see digital libraries full of lectures and lessons on similar topics, so if a student doesn’t get it one way, they can search the library for a different clip that might shed some light. And I see the role of the teacher changing from “the one true authority” to “the person who shows you how to find and effectively implement information.”

That would be a good thing.

While we wait for Apreso to become affordable, let’s rock handhled cams and YouTube.

If you’re interested, I’m performing live at DSI Comedy Theater tonight and tomorrow, 7:30 PM.

I spent some time tonight in Second Life with Dan Winckler, and I’m seriously intrigued by the educational potential of the environment. Now seems like a very, very good time to do some research, so we’re playing a little with Moodle at LEARN, and I’m goofing with some ideas that might bear some fruit.

SL isn’t all that intuitive yet, but it seems like a rapidly developing community and I get the sense that a lot of people in there are interested in some of the same kinds of things– freedom of information, collaborative learning, etc. I wonder about the feasibility of having a LEARN NC event in SL sometime soon, as a tool for recruituing prospective students.

I have spent the day working on school stuff, putting the finishing touches on one annotation and culling another from a letter I sent several packets ago. (Apparently, even my assorted thoughts on an author are starting to take the shape of useful annotations. Yikes!)

That’s not all I have done; it’s just the largest part. I’ve also found time to talk to my dad on Skype for a while; conduct an interview with a Harvard student about collaborative professional development in education; eat lunch with Corey, Bryan and Leo at Bojangles; trap Ladybug in a near-unbreakable hold and hear her woeful tales of jury duty; read all of your blogs and comment in a few of them; and concoct elaborate fantasies about what Porkins is doing when he gets off that bicycle. I’m seriously thinking about writing Porkins fanfic.

Here’s a thought I almost put into a friend’s comment section before deciding that it would be inappropriate. In my blog, nothing is inappropriate: In addition to being the fullest realization of our partnerships, weddings are our blood and guts, they are a celebration of our failings, forgiven and embraced. They are conceptually defeatist at the same time that they represent a victory for the human spirit– they are a sinister acknowledgement that we’ll never be perfect, but a thankful observance that to one person, we’re pretty damn close.

There’s a new Sarah Harmer single on iTunes! Yay! Yay! Yay! I’m also spending nickels and dimes on some other worthy audio files– an eels track on iTunes, and 1918’s New Poems (written by DH Lawrence, read by Alex Wilson) on telltaleweekly. I’ve also been listening to some awesome podcasts, like Mike Doughty and Colin Meloy (separately) at KEXP and They Might Be Giants 6A-6C. Dope. Regular podcasters are awesome.

Oh, and Jesus, I don’t want to go back to the Walgreen’s phramcist. Follow the link to find out why:

PORKINS-ON-A-BIKE-METER: 3

Yes, it’s true, blog readers, I have been holding out on you. I saw Porkins on his bicycle on Friday morning about 8:30, pedalling furiously.

Porkins must have been heading in early– I don’t usually see him unless I am heading to work at 9 AM (I sometimes work from home for a while before I head into the office. That gives me a feeling that I am getting a jump on the, reduces the afternoon doldrums on days that I am scheduled to be in the office until 5 PM, and means I have more time with kitties!). Porkins also doesn’t usually look like he’s working too hard, but on Friday, he was pedalling his Porkins heart out.

I just downloaded Minefield, which I guess is the clever way of saying “Hey this is Firefox 3.0 but it doesn’t really work yet.” I’m not really having any problems thusfar, but is anyone else out there using it, and if so, are you having problems?

My only beef is that most extensions haven’t yet been updated. I can live with it. though.

The Ferris clan invites us for a cookout on a Sunday night. Though this is a packet weekend, which means I am a little more studious than normal, we go for a couple hours. We take marinated steak. It is well-prepapred by Doctor William Ferris, and we sup nicely.

Jon Fabris, who could not be better nicknamed than “Johnny Fabulous,” and I spend plenty of time tossing a Mark Jacobson frisbee. Nugget the dog mangles and slobbers upon the frisbee. Malice the black cat comes and goes, is at one point treed, and displays his kitty-grandeur quite nicely.

The Ferris clan are becoming some of my favorite people in the world.

It wasn’t so long ago that I felt like I had hit a wall, but last weekend I began translating a Neruda poem and it changed my whole outlook. I have been in revision mode for the past few days, struggling with a long long long poem that I have been working on. I feel I am making headway. I also feel that when I publish my notes on all of my poems and the world sees just how much of my poetry has been pulled from comic books, I will be called a magnificant failure, a magnificent joke.

So, maybe I won’t publish the notes. I will, however, be tempted to sell my books on my website (if and when I publish them) and tell folks that if they can correctly name 10 or more individual, intended comics references in the book, I’ll send them their money back. Then the fanboys will get free poetry, which I would happily support.

I like to think that writing poems that obliquely reference poems isn’t too hack. I reviewed a book for the Carolina Quarterly some years ago called Monster Zero, which was a book of poems about Godzilla. Some of the poems were fantastic, but ultimately such a grand idea could not hold itself aloft through a whole book. The author, whose name I now forget and am too lazy to Google, tried to make it a cautionary tale for the atomic age, which of course I respect, since I love poems rooted in the real-world concerns of science-fiction-becoming-science-fact. But some of it was just mediocre poetry.<

As I work on Personality Test, Mary has warned me that I need to be careful-- some material will seem like it's flying just because it's on the plane. Monster Zero, you are my cautionary tale, indeed.

Ok, I amazoned him: Jay Snodgrass wrote the book. And you should buy a copy, just to see what it’s all about. Really.

Amazon has all of those “#455,956 today in books” rankings. What is the ranking if a day goes by and no one buys the book? Because hell, I know that happens.

Go vote for Dan Telfer’s t-shirt!

Wrestling is hilarious.

We saw GOUGE at Kings last night.

We loved the wrestling.

The wrestlers loved us.

…And, I have finally given up on 24. Man, oh man, I’ve finally gotten to where I don’t understand the reason these people do a damn thing that they do. There is ALWAYS a more sensible way to deal with things than anyone in the government takes.

Example: You’re a federal agent and you’re with the former Chief of Staff. You need to get into a bank in the middle of the night. You are at the bank manager’s house. Do you knock on the door, show some ID, and enlist the bank manager to help you, or do you break into his house, punch him in the throat, point a gun at him and his wife, kidnap him, and make it look like a robbery? Because in Jack Bauer-land, the latter makes a lot of sense.

Also, on 24, an analyst at a counter-terrorism unit can hack any system, anywhere; turn a walkee-talkee into a scanner; reprogram a Nokia cell phone to be a remote detonator for a bomb; re-route satellites from the other side of the world so that they can see what’s happening in Los Angeles; and create a secure cell phone in seconds by opening a socket for VPN.

But the worst part, the part that irritates me the most about that show, is that no matter where you are in Los Angeles, no matter what part of the day it is, there’s not a single place a CTU agent can’t get to, by car, in ten minutes. Ten damn minutes!

The day, in bullet format:

• Felt poorly at waking. Tried to work a little from home, continued to feel poorly. Went back to bed. Woke from dreams of work. Less productive in dream than in waking. Hard to do.
• Watched South Park while eating chili. Was so into the episode that I downloaded the second part and watched it with Ladybug late in the evening. Disappointing to see that Comedy Central pussed out, even more disappointing to see conservative blowhards call the creators unprincipled little whores and call on them to resign. Explain to me how them resigning would make any sense at all.
• Went to DPI for a meeting that I had in my palm as an hour-and-a-half meeting. Got there at 1. Left after 5. Slightly longer meeting than expected.
• Grouchy, blew off plans with the O’Bryans, which was lame-ola because I haven’t seen them in way too long. But, needed to await final materials from DPI for proofing and formatting. Finished that around 7:30.
• Kitchen Press chapbooks arrived in the mail. I ordered three, and the publisher included all four. This was super-gracious. This merits its own blog entry when I get a chance to read them all. Really read them. I read all four tonight, but only really looked at each poem once.
• Worked on a revision of an older poem, quite by accident, and I think I may now have what I need to make it a fully realized poem. Oddly, I thought it was fully realized for eight years before tonight’s revision.
• Sent in a submission to Poetry, which is perhaps the most terrifying thing you can do.

If I’m Bernie Bickerstaff, I have to like the way the Bobcats are finishing. Yeah, so what if two of the three wins were against horrible teams, teams so lame that their coaches are using medical excuses to jump ship.

Yeah, that’s right. Larry Brown basically walked away from an awesome Pistons team to coach the pitiful New York Knicks, who hadn’t done a thing but get worse since Isiah Thomas took over basketball operations. And now, when the team sucks beyond belief, he’s using the most pitiful of medical excuses to get out of coaching: acid reflux. He’s hospitalized for it, but come on. Acid reflux? Give Larry some Prilosec and he’s gonna be able to coach again in an hour.

If you ask me, Larry Brown (who I like, don’t get me wrong), should be stuck with the team for the duration of the five-year contract he signed. It was a monumental mistake, both for him and Isiah, but they should both have to live with the hubris of it all.

Meanwhile, the Bobcats dressed nine players, most of whom are such scrubs that they would have been glad to have Luc Longley on their roster. Raymond Felton is really showing them that he’s going to be the leader of the team for years to come (despite that silly “Bobcats will make the playoffs” guarantee he made before the season), and, well… OK, no one else who played tonight is good for much other than coming off the bench to spell real starters. I still like Melvin Ely. If the Bobcats can add a real-deal first-rounder– and man, wouldn’t you love to see them get Joakim Noah– they’ll be in good shape when Emeka Okafor, Sean May, Gerald Wallace and Brevin Knight are back. Well, not good shape, since they don’t really have anyone at the 2, but better shape than they are right now. I just have this terrible fear that they end up taking Adam Morrison or someone from Dook. Noah or Brandon Roy would be the better fits for them (and trade Primoz for someone useful).

Here at White Noise, it’s “pilots that were never picked up” day, featuring the greatest shows that networks were too dumb to buy. Two of the three greats are here… lemme know if you know where to find a copy of Robert Smigel’s “Kids Show,” which would make the day complete.

Heat Vision and Jack! Forgot how good this is!

Lookwell! Greatest pilot ever!

I’m afraid the tank is empty, creatively. I’ve been sitting around the house for most of the day, trying to write. I did some lame writing exercises, I took stabs at revision strategies, I read, I tried to do a little critical writing to get jumpstarted. Nothing! Absolutely nothing. That’s a little disheartening, but probably a good sign that I need to just stop trying, get out there, and have a little fun. That was one thing that was missing during most of that effort. Either that, or I need to get rolling on creating algorithmic poems, the linguistic derivative of Paul Saffo’s proposed algorithmic music. I don’t want one of those shitty word generators; I want a complex system for creating and interpreting images and combining them in a way that elicits emotional response. Perhaps the finest example would be several years away, when the engine could interpret the response of the reader and create beauty accordingly.

Some poets will gripe and fuss and say that no machine could do what the poet can do, but I maintain that beauty is beauty, however it is created. There is beauty in nature for some people; for some of us, we just don’t see it. So, since beauty is not intrinsic but interpreted, how better to create it than to monitor the experience as it is experienced? I think the process would be akin to most performers’ “read” of the crowds for which they perform.

Heidi and I went back out and threw the baseball, and then we fired up the grill for the first time this year and made some hot dogs. I know, I know, it’s lame to fire up a grill and only make hot dogs, but this was a trial run. We may do some real grillin’ come tomorrow night. If you’re down, give a holler.

We’re spending the day watching Six Feet Under, season five. We’re watching at a furious rate– furious! We could be done tomorrow. That’s a lot of Six Feet Under. To make myself feel just a wee bit productive, I made some black bean chili, ZoneAlarm, made a new banner for the site, and read PCWorld. OK, so I know that’s not terrible productive. I have the rest of the weekend to produce.

During a break in the DVD action, Miss ladybug slipped on some sandlas and we went out back to throw a baseball. God, that felt great. I hadn’t thrown a baseball in a long time. I was having great fun, and Ladybug even seemed to think that it wasn’t so bad. That is, until I threw one low and nailed her on the foot. Within seconds, the blood vessel was all puffed up and the foot looked like it was gonna have the worst bruise EVER. Got some ice on it, though, and she may keep the foot.

Speaking of baseball, Jeff Francoeur seems to be breaking out. Two homers last night, another one tonight. Hells yeah. I’m just bummed that I benched him in fantasy baseball two days ago.

Last night, Bill and I headed down to Hoke County High School, where we presented LEARN’s online courses to students and parents at their GEAR UP event. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the school for sending students to college, and I think they did a great job of getting students out to the event, which was held at night and wouldn’t have been as well-attended in many other areas.

The keynote speaker spoke in the school gym. Click on the picture to see my favorite part of the school gym:

Our speaker was a graduate of Hoke County High, and he’s now in Charlotte, where he operates his own company and is a pastor. His speech centered on providing vision for young people, and was very well-received, but I couldn’t help giggling at one point in his speech, when he stressed that young people who surround themselves with negativity and negative influences will often end up negative. He was addressing the parents, telling them about how good books could be a salve for the negative influences, and said, “When negativity goes in, what comes out? Negativity. When you make sure to surround your children with books, when positive reading material goes in… what comes out? Positive reading material.”

PORKINS-ON-A-BIKE-METER: 2

Once more, on the way to work, I spotted him: Porkins on a bike. If I weren’t driving, I would take pictures of this dude for you.

I finished up a Level 1 class last night, which means I don’t currently have anything planned at the DSI Theater. I did a show Friday, hosted my Level 1 Sunday, and taught Monday, and it was that same familiar “weekend of improv” feeling that I’m so used to (albeit interspersed with family madness). I do miss it, and part of me wonders what it will be like to know that for the next little bit, I have absolutely no improv lined up. I have a couple of possibilities to guest here and guest there, which is sort of rending, because part of me would like to dive back into a full-time commitment at the theater and part of me knows that a little time off is going to do wonders for the exhaustion and justs general chronic crud that was Februrary and March. It’s like, the minute I sense that I’m not stretched to my absolute maximum, I start looking for ways to overextend myself. Bad Ross! Bad Ross!

I have, however, committed to directing a one-man show later in the summer and wild horses could not keep me away from that.

Some pix that Lauren took Friday that make me happy:

Watch the hell out for Nikida… she’s going to be wicked good in a couple of months and will contribute mightily to the unstoppable juggernaut that is ComedySportz.

Since it was my stepfather’s 70th birthday, my mom brought cupcakes for everyone in the audience.

I got tongue-tied at the beginning of the second half, and what came out sure sounded like the word “shit.” I tried to barrel on and hope no one noticed, but members of the audience started calling for the brown-bag foul. I was caught. What choice did I have but to bag myself? Embarrassing. Awful. At least I got to end on an absolute low note, right? (Actually, it was a strong show.)