Cross-post: The School of Rap

This was published in a slightly different form in the Star News last week:

My son is in a rap class with a few other five-to-nine year olds. They meet at the Myrtle Grove library once a week to write lyrics around a particular theme, such as vegetables, to perform their raps on a microphone, maybe do a little dancing. Their teacher is goofball genius Scooter Hayes, AKA Melvil Dewey the rapping librarian. Maybe you’ve heard of him. You’re kids have. They love him and sing his songs. Scooter visits school libraries all over Wilmington and raps infectiously about the Dewey Decimal system, library cards, bookmobiles. Continue reading

Men Ink: Rolling with the Cape Fear Roller Girls

Just published a piece on our own Cape Fear Roller Girls in Men Ink magazine (online):

You’ll think I’m exaggerating if I say that the Cape Fear Roller Girls are my all-time favorite spectator sport, but that’s not a particularly high bar, since I’m not a sports fan. The Roller Girl events at the Schwartz Center downtown are literally spectacles. It takes a while to figure out what’s going on in the ring, but your tattooed, beer-drinking bleacher-mates will eagerly fill you in on the rules, jabbing at your program, at the confusing numbers on the scoreboard, at the helmeted ladies whizzing around the track and crashing into one another. The crowd is friendly and various, antic; the action is tense and real.

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