August 27, 2007

I’m back

Man, I’m gonna have to refund subscription fees for the way I’ve been ghost lately. Check’s in the mail right now, and it should be there by the time you get done reading this.  Don’t believe me?  Go check.

Well, International Baba Day was yesterday.  It was a much more subdued affair than usual.  The children weren’t dancing in the streets in third world countries as they usually do.  No fireworks or any of that.  International Baba was…tired as all get out.  Did Int’l Baba’s Eve at a concert–headliner, Erykah Badu–with my fiancee, and that was pretty much good for me.  That, spades and some Playstation.

But ’nuff bout that…lemme tell you about how country I really am.

My fiancee’s birthday was a few days ago, and we did a few things during the day before dinner at a classy lil dinner club in Durham.  I’m not a member of this place–it’s far too classy for that–but I’m just classy enough to know a couple of people that work there, so they lined us up with a room for dinner.

This was one of those spots where they make the Caesar salad in front of you, starting with the anchovy and rolling from there.  Where all the wine clings to the glass.  All that classiness.

Soon as your butt hits the chair, there’s a napkin in your lap.  At first, I thought somebody was trying to get me, and I’m not even sure in what way.  I just know I’m not accustomed to people having their hands in my lap, and certainly not used to that being treated as professional courtesy.  But hey hey, I’ll take it.

Now, the countriness part.  I told my fiancee that I felt like one of the Beverly Hillbillies in that spot.  30 minutes after dinner, I was going to ask if we could get in the cement pond.  Dude, they brought your boy a filet mignon you could cut with a butterknife.  Literally.  And I’m talking about paper thin slices.  Shoot, look at this one.

Folks even brought out the souffle and poured the chocolate in the little hole and everything.  And did I mention wine?  I even quit drinking a while ago, but I couldn’t let that good vino pass.  I forgot to ask them to bring me the box so I could find out where I could get some for myself.

(Also, if I didn’t mention the wine, I think you can see a bit of it in my eyes in that photo.)

I mean, really.  I’ve lived a fairly privileged upbringing, but I never have really done a lot of time in places where I couldn’t imagine hanging out with any other patrons.  Staff?  All good with me.  The folks at other tables?  I’m just glad I didn’t have to walk past them, cuz the first person to ask for a refill was gonna have a real hard time, can you dig it?

But overall, good stuff.

In fact, ’twas the nicest dinner I’ve ever had.  Without question.  Great company, too.
Always a winner when you can manage to exceed the expectations of a woman that’s curious to see what you’ve come up with for her birthday.  Not like there was a checklist or fear of evaluation, but coming correct always makes the world a happier place.

(Dang it, I can’t upload that photo…just know that it’s as coontastic as you’d probably imagine a picture of me eating a piece of steak with a big ol’ glass of wine in front of me.  Oh, I love being almost totally impervious to embarrassment.)

Oh, and Badu was pretty incredible.  The highlight…you know how they love to make us beg them to come back stage?  Then, there’s so surprised and overwhelmed that they break out some fancy version of some big hit they just somehow forgot to do before?

Well, she ran that game on us.  comes back with cowbells in her hand.  She starts playing som enotes that sound familiar, but I couldnt’ place ‘em.  Then she came with the verse.

“Is you rollin?  Is you rollin?  Is you rollin?  Is you rollin?”

then she took it all the way…

“Bitch I might be…”

Only Erykah Badu would treat the green tea crowd to Gucci Mane.  From what I could tell, only my fiancee and I knew the song.  However, we weren’t the only ones that appreciated the entertainment of it all.  Quite a few of them deep folks was lovin’ it.

Birthdays, man.  always a winner.

This weekend’s my big brother’s wedding.   Add to the celebrations, baby.  Problem is…with all this stuff that’s been going on, all I wanted for my birthday was sleep…and I needed it so bad I didn’t get to rap with everyone before I went to sleep.  My apologies, and thanks for the happy happys.

August 15, 2007

The Vegas Recap…at last.

Business…here are the Jumps from Monday and today.

Well, August is trying to beat me down.  Had to take a 6-day trip to start the month, which was followed by a four day trip, which will be followed up by at least two more trips by the end of the month, including a trip to the islands for my brother’s wedding.  Tired?  You know it.  But eh, deadlines don’t wait for nobody, yanno?

NABJ was hot.  And I do mean hot.  One day, the WMD and I were walking from our palatial accomodations at the Super 8 toward Bally’s, and we noticed that the sign at the motel said it was 97 degrees outside.  We both commented that it was probably the most comfortable 97 degrees we’d ever felt.  It should have been.  It was dark outside.  No sun.  And 97 degrees.  At 10 p.m.  Viva Las Vegas, ha?

So this is how the convention started.  Soon as we got in from the airport, we stopped by the Ocho, dropped our bags, then headed toward Bally’s.  On the way, it seemed a good idea to stop and get bottles of water…if for no reason other than to stop my fiancee from asking me if I’d been drinking water.  So we get in there, and the person–at that point, gender hadn’t been determined–working the register was real ag with something.  I thought it was the heat, so I said not to sweat it.

“I ain’t about to let a muthafuckin stranger stress me.  What I look like?”

Clearly, I misunderstood.  So I made that clear.

“Oh hell naw, I thought you was talking about them.  I was gonna tell ‘em they could get deez nuts as soon as I grew some.”

Well, we knew she was a woman…but only then, through the use of quite the interesting bit of banter.

Welcome to Vegas, baby.

First, shouts out to the Ellis Island Casino on Kovahl, home of the $3.50 steak and eggs special.  And the steak was much better than the diner here that I get steak and eggs from, which really just gives us the leftovers from the previous night’s Philly cheesesteaks.

Overall, ’twas a great time.  Caught up with lots of my folks I haven’t seen in a while, met some people, attended some informative and entertaining sessions.  Can’t knock that, especially not when one of those sessions involved Don King, Bob Arum, Floyd Mayweather, and too much action to try to relay in this space.  Let’s just say it was just short of pre-fight press conference madness.  Floyd don’t like Don, he don’t like Bob, and they seem to feel the same.

Then there was that Obama speech.  Hillary spoke, too.  I went to see neither.  Know why?  Because there is nothing either of them can tell me in the summer of ‘07 that’ll matter by January ‘08…and the stuff from then won’t matter much after National Convention.  Right now, these cats is just raising bread.  I respect that.  But I ain’t gonna waste time listening to it when I ain’t giving nobody no money behind this.

The game is large and powerful.  And while both candidates talk a good game, neither of them is saying anything that leads me to believe they have any inclination to change the game.  Oh, Obama thinks he does.  But once he gets face first with that machine and realizes how powerful it is, he’ll be explaning why what he said at a speech I didn’t bother to hear didn’t hold anymore.  Such is the game, folks.

Straight up?  It doesn’t really matter too much to me who wins the next election.  The problems with the current presidency are more rooted in incompetence than ideology.  Agenda’s a part of it, too, but incompetence is the matter of the day.  Anybody can do better than what we’ve got now.

Sadly, I’m so disillusioned with things that all I’m asking for is a little improvement.  I’m not even getting greedy.  Just do better.  Henceforth, just about anybody’ll do.  Further, those low expectations–which, I admit, I’m dramatizing a bit–make listening to Barack Obama make assertions that have a radioactive half-life an inefficient use of my time, especially after being out until 4am the night before.

Might come back later this evening.  Gotta get on a couple things.

August 10, 2007

Today’s moment of irony…

…there’s nothing like making a post apologizing for an extended absence from blogging, then following up that apology with a similar absence from blogging.  Not that bright am I.  Or maybe I’m just too busy for my own good.  One of the two.

Either way, just wanted to say hi.  Plenty of priceless stories are coming. Those include a chance encounter with an androgynous person that only proved to be female when she told us about something she’d like to do once she grows testicles.  There’s this hot ass heat.  There’s my insistence upon treating the job fair like I’m trick-or-treating, straight taking whatever I can get just because…well, the stuff’s free.  And you can never have to many traveling coffee mugs.

And there’s the realization of my addiction to the Internet, which became abundantly clear to me once i realized me and the WMD were staying at the last hotel on Earth without wireless.  Even the Motel F’n 6 offers free wireless.  We’re just up in that piece watching ESPN Classic.

But such is life.  I figure a major update will come Monay morning, after I’ve recharged…and written the Jump, of course.  Be easy.

Oh….I forgot.  As I type this, Barack Obama is speaking at the convention.  I gotta figure out what it means that I could care less, particularly at this stage in the game.  It sounds like he’s just asking who wants free food.  Everyone does.  I’d just like to know where it’ll be coming from.  Dig?

August 7, 2007

I feel like I’ve been here before…

Looks vaguely familiar.  Same funny looking dude up top, same blogroll, same colors.
Yes, this is my blog.  You’ll have to forgive me, for I’ve been away for a while.

My bad on that.  Last week was travel heavy.  This week is travel heavy–NABJ in Vegas, baby–and got a wedding in St. Thomas at the end of the month.  But I’m back.

First, lemme unload some links on you.  Here are the Jump’s from last Monday, Wednesday and this Monday.  And here’s one on what a clown Bud Selig was last week.  And here’s why I don’t wanna see Greg Oden play on Christmas day.  I think that’s it.

Went with my fiancee to see “Talk to Me.”  Great flick.  Cheadle killed it, and I don’t recall there being a single corny moment.  That’s rare in movies that happen largely in the ’60s.  Or maybe I’m just holding the sins of Robert Townsend–the corniest man in the history of planet Earth–against everyone.

Either way, fie fie.  Don Cheadle, the more I think about it, is absolutely incredible.  The interesting thing about him to me is how he’s been able to do projects that let him display his range.  There aren’t a lot of black actors that really get that opportunity.  Or perhaps not that many that choose to display that range, because of money and things.  Most likely, it’s a combination of the two.

But he was fall down funny in this one, and he managed to nail the emotion in the flick every time.  He didn’t miss once in this one.  Good flick.

Back later.