Guest Post by J. Bradley

The Assignment

A couple of weeks before my performance in The Encyclopedia Show, I received my assignment for May’s theme, Flightless Birds, from show creators and hosts Robbie Q. and Shanny Jean. Their justification for my assignment was that I am a “huge effin nerd.” I watch The Dark Crystal for the first time ever. I send my contribution to them hours later.

Did You Know?

From The Encyclopedia Show’s Website

Brought to you from the minds of poets and producers Robbie Q Telfer and Shanny Jean Maney, The Encyclopedia Show is a live variety extravaganza that commissions local and touring artists and experts from many disciplines to use their individual talents to present a different verbal encyclopedia entry each month. The Encyclopedia Show endeavors to build an age-integrated community cultivating accidental knowledge and irreverent loving kindness. Though the show is accredited by the Institute of Human Knowledge and Hygiene, it is our ongoing mission to chafe against logic and proof, find meaning in obfuscation, and wrest truth from fact once and for all.

Additional Facts

• There are Encyclopedia Shows in Austin, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, San Francisco, and Seoul, Korea. Chicago is where The Encyclopedia Show started.
• I’ve listened to all of Season 1 & Season 2 of The Encyclopedia Show thanks to WBEZ’s online archives.
• I sometimes wrote poems inspired by topics of certain volumes, such as Mythical Beasts (this is one such example).
• Robbie Q and Shanny Jean and I go way back from our slam days. I first experienced Robbie Q at the 2003 National Poetry Slam during the Nerd Slam in Quimby’s, where I learned from him how awesome Muppets are truly. I first heard Shanny in 2004 at the 2004 National Poetry Slam in St. Louis, where I hear the evils of Cracker Barrel and watch her take part as a five person group piece from the perspective of the kids from Charlie & The Chocolate Factory that did not win the Golden Ticket.
  Thinking about this makes me miss the Normal, IL slam team.

After the Audition

I get feedback from the story I wrote for my assignment. I am to add more background about the Skeksis but do so in a way where it is not forced. I do not touch the draft until the day of the show where I revise and rehearse furiously.

At The Venue, Before The Show (Scenes)

• Defending Larry Bird ferociously against the joke writing knives of Shanny Jean.
• Watching Evan Chung and his fellow members of The Encartigans set up. One of the musicians brings up a saw and a bow to play it with.
• Hugging Jilted Emily Rose and surviving it.
• Seeing Tim Jones-Yelvington walk into the venue, glammed up in a way only Tim Jones-Yelvington can be glammed up.
• Cringing under the glare of the Fact Checker from the Institute of Human Knowledge and Hygiene, Herr Belknap.

Things That I Learned From The Other Contributors During The Show (You Figure Out Which Ones Are Truths and Untruths)

• Tim Jones-Yelvington once threw a rock at Robbie Q. According to the Fact Checker, it is the most beautiful sentence in the English language.
• The Skeksis isn’t real.
• We’re the only country that sentences children to life.
• The Chicago White Sox are so bad, their manager forced two of his players to write a report about the Baltimore Orioles
• The Visigoths worshiped The Flightless Visigothic Partridge God
• Lame ducks make more of a groaning sound than a quack
• The word “cock” said 22 times in a poem about the ostrich the right way is incredibly funny and entertaining
• Hand turkeys are drawn to be executed by poor taste
• There’s a far off land called Lake Takhomasak where a kiwi once killed a person or I think killed a person
• The Kakapo produces a smell that makes it very attractive to predators and they have no way of defending themselves, much like a supporting character in a Lifetime movie
• Icarus never listened to his father
• Jokes about Celine Dion getting killed by a SEAL team in Abbottabad told by a man in a makeshift penguin suit isn’t that funny
• The truth lost. By a lot:

Looking Back

I’ve listened to a lot of Encyclopedia Shows where there’s great moments and some not so great moments. Flightless Birds was the best Encyclopedia Show I’ve seen. The voices and backgrounds were incredibly diverse, talented, and funny in their own way. I’m glad I got to do it and would love to do it again (and again).