Open Mic Night

On Thursday night, I went to Open Mic Night at the Creese Center with some people I had met on my floor. Before I get into describing what it was, let me just explain how we socialize in my building. In a lot of dorms, everyone just leaves their doors open so that their floor mates can wander in and out and they all get to know each other. This is not exactly what happens in my dorm. Our suite is at the end of a hallway, and though in our corridor there is very little mingling-- after a week here, I have yet to meet any of the boys across the hall from us-- the people in the rooms around the corner hang out all the time. Even though I was sort of wary of going to watch a show where just anyone could perform, I accepted the invitation because I wanted to get to know people better.
The show was at 8:30, but we left a little later because the main reason we were going was to see one of the last acts of the night, a boy on our floor who was performing with his band. The stage was set up in the lobby, surrounded by folding chairs and, around the edges of the room, tables. It wasn't going to be a big show; I don't know how many acts there were, but the audience was probably between fifty and sixty people.
To my surprise, all except one of the performances we saw was just about professional quality. There were three different boys who played guitar and sang songs that they had written themselves, none of which were ridiculous. There was also a girl who played guitar and sang her own songs, who was amazing, and a comedian, whose hands shook the entire time, but who was pretty funny. Then there was a girl who performed spoken word poetry, which, in case you don't know, is a really urban and rhythmic style of poetry, sort of like rap, but more artistic.
My favorite act of the night, though, was the worst one. It wasn't awful, just sort of unpracticed. There was yet another guy performing his own songs on a guitar, but his lyrics were a bit off, and he put on the strangest voice while singing-- he sounded like Quagmire from "Family Guy."
We ended up leaving before the boy we'd come to see even got on stage because some people had to go study, but for me, anyway, it was worth the trouble. It was a really good time, going out and doing things with new people instead of just sitting around watching TV with my roommates.