After the 4 am J’ouvert, I was pretty beat. Came home and zonked out. I’ve been trying to get some scenic shots to add to the prior entries but it has been overcast for most of the day. Soooo, I hung around the house and did the bum thing. One of the sideline activities for Carnival is the VI Calypso Competition. Haven’t really listene to any professional Calypso so it sounded interesting.

The Vi Calypso Competition was sponsored by Coors Light and the co-sponsors AVIS Car Rental and Bellows International. Now I only bring the sponsors up because it was one of the events where you know there was some sort of contract that stated Coors Light must be announced at least 75 times throughout the night. Anyways, the Calypso Competition consisted of one universal band, last years winner and 10 challengers. Its kind of a free for all type competition. The participants are graded on the Calypsoness (Steve word), lyrics, originality, and performance. Last years winner was Brother Mudada. His challengers this year were Super T, Mighty Pat, King Kan Fue Plentae, Spade, Lollipop Man, King Generic, Mose I, Joey B, Coach, and Renegade. They did two halves with each getting to perform twice. That’s the Calypso Competition. Oh yea, Coors Light.

My night started off at 8pm. The competition started at 8, but I know island time so an arrival at around 8:30 should get me there about a half an hour earlier than the most likely start time of 9. My estimation was that this was going to be a decent event so parking would most likely be a problem. Instead of doing the parking lot search I figured I would save myself some time and head to the far side of the strip. So did my thing and made the twenty minute walk to the stadium. At the gate I find that you have to purchase a ticket. Head on over to the ticket counter and they want $20 for a ticket. No problem except that I have a grand total of $15. Son of a bitch. I could hear the music and saw that the stands were pretty full and I thought great. Now the old Steve would have just figured it wasn’t meant to be and would have gone home to watch tv. Now with this blog and an open book into my life, I couldn’t end the day with “and I watched tv.” So I high tailed it back to the car, hit the bank, and decided to see if I could find a closer parking spot. As I got close to the stadium I took a little side street and entered a not so nice area. The only spot I could find was in front of a house with a couple of sketchy guys in front. I think the sign up front said something like chop shop or something. Oh well, I’m vested in this thing and I’m going to see some Calypso. By the time I finally got there it was 10. I got to catch the last two songs of the first half. I wandered around and grabbed some food, checked out the crowd, then took a seat in the grand stand. About a half an hour later they started back up again and I got to see some Calypso. The only was I can describe it is a Caribbean style free styling. They don’t actually sing melodically, its more like a soothing rap. Most had that Caribbean accent so I wasn’t able to decipher all that much. Although it was a refreshing night, by the time midnight rolled around and there was still four more singers to go, I had enough. The Childrens Parade was at 10 the next morning so I wanted to make sure I got there early (yup, still can’t tell island time.)