Thank you LaShaya, Eddie, Mommy, Nikki, Darnell, Wanda, Kris, Greggie, Michael, Debra, Sheree, Kristal, Mia, Vanessa, Charles, all of Shaya’s family, the wonderful folks at Love, Webster Hall, the Apollo, the Broadway Theatre, Radio City and 40/40, Apple (that good paycheck that made it all possible), Bank of America, Airtran, United, the NY MTA, the Metro North Railroad, sample sales, SoHo, Black, ?uest, Kamal, Knuckles, Hub, Kirk, Jean, Common, Kweli, Dice Raw, Jazzy Jeff, Big Daddy Kane, Skillz, Rahzel, Mos, Erykah, Chappelle, Slum Village, Bilal, J. Davey, Baaba Maal, Angelique Kidjo, Jay-Z, the cast of The Color Purple (including Mr Gaines!), Yvonne’s, Havana Club, Chelsea Papaya, Chinatown, the 9th Ave. Food Festival, mango Italian ices, croissants, McCormick & Schmidt, Chipotle, and most of all… the Chinatown Bus.

Boo Kanye. Boo Ghostface. Boo Amos’ Southend. Boo Roxy’s. Boo burgundy butts. It’s okay, though.

I rocked with the best.

Nas, Mos Def To Join The Roots For ‘Wet-Dream’ N.Y. Show

I don’t think I’ve been this excited about an event since… ever. I feel like I’m 8 and on my way to Disneyworld for the first time. Only better.

I’m bubbling over here.

In about three weeks, I will be packing my stuff for my 10-day Spring Break Redux Extravaganza.

May 11 – The Roots & Common in Charlotte at Amos’ Southend with Erin & Nikki
May 12-13 – LaShaya Graduates from College and I Help Her Celebrate
May 18-19 – The Roots at Radio City Music Hall
May 20 – Mom, Uncle Eddie & I see The Color Purple on Broadway.

I’m more excited than anyone can really realize right now. This was originally supposed to be two weekend trips, but returning to Charlotte only to fly back up the coast a few days later was more than my poor bank account could swing. Ah well. I didn’t get a Christmas break either, and I’m not going to Detroit, so this trip is well deserved. I just can’t help feeling like this whole deal came together a little too easily, and that something is bound to go wrong… but I just can’t help being a skeptic deep down inside.

(Not so) Hidden Racism of the Week: These horribly counterintuitive Volkswagen Jetta commercials… why is a black person the cause of the accident both times?
Think about it.

I figure if I can’t do anything else, we’ll always have Tuesdays.

First off, two assignments, for anyone desiring a heaping spoonful of my undying love.
1. Make my computer automatically download the free iTunes Single of the Week. (my Automator skillz are weak, but it’s probably possible for a non-dummy)
2. Make me a portable media device speaker that looks like a freaking boombox. I want to put my player in the part where a cassette tape would be and put it on my shoulder and stroll through the hood b-girl syle. Eff that, I want it to play tapes too. And want it to have an aux. in, and I want it to run on D-cells or and AC adapter or a DC adapter… then I can play it out of the trunk of my nonexistent car for impromptu breakdance and/or cipher sessions. And I want it to charge said player while plugged in. Those are my specs. Now get on it.

Now, let me preface the following by saying that I love my people, but sometimes I hate watching my people on the news. I can’t completely discount the theory that newscasters deliberately seek out the most foolish looking characters to interview and put on TV, even if it is generally the foolish ones that hang around when stuff is going down. That being said, this cat has a blog dedicated to capturing these moments in one location for the world to browse. There are only two up right now, the infamous Bubb Rubb and my new favorite, the Alabama Leprechaun. When I say the Alabama Leprechaun is my favorite, I mean this is the funniest shit I have ever seen in my entire life. I thought it was a lost Chappelle episode or something.

Black People in the News

Last but not least, XtremeMac has produced a very familiar-looking speaker system, the Tango. Fast, aren’t they? It also looks like XtremeMac is the first to make a voice recorder for 5Gs. If only they’d come out two weeks sooner, I could have made someone’s life a little easier. Oh well. Maybe she’ll stumble across my blog.

Between this job, this school, and my lack of self-transport skills, I am slowly dying inside. Seriously. Oh, there went my spleen.

Someone asked me the other day why I stopped writing my blog. Honestly, I don’t have much to write about anymore. Everything is either job related and I can’t talk about it, sorority related and I can’t publicly talk about it, or school related and you don’t really want me to talk about it. I have finally become what I never, ever wanted to be: boring. At some point I feared I might be boring but knew deep down that I really wasn’t. Now, I know I am. Truly. I have, however, had some interesting experiences as of late.

Yay for Me!
First was the agony and ecstasy that was seeing Dave Chappelle and the Block Party All Stars at Oven’s auditorium last month. Agony: the show selling out in 20 minutes and my having balcony seats despite being in line at the box office and on line at Ticketmaster.com since 9:50 AM. Ecstasy: the seats being not all that bad and the show being AWESOME! I wasn’t old enough to attend the 25-and-up afterparty, nor was I bright enough to guess that Dave would do a surprise aftershow at the Comedy Zone, so the only pictures I have are screenshots from the dozens of minutes of illegitimate video shot on my wonderful (and now broken, which is another story) digital camera, which I will, out of respect of copyright law and the code of the streets, not distribute to the public. Kweli rocked it, Erykah ripped it, and Dave… Dave is just fucking classic, is all.

I went to see the Block Party movie instead of the stepshow during CIAA weekend, and that might have been the best and only good reason for avoiding social engagement that I’ve had in a long time. There were all of 8 people in the theater, counting the people who came in late. I thought this might have been because all the black people were CIAAing it up, but apparenly this continued across the country and the following weeks. That’s a dissapointment, but an understandable one… if it had been a standup special, the theaters would have been packed. The movie was WONDERFUL and only solidified my standing belief that that concert would have been one of the standout experiences of my life and would probably have made up for my not getting to see the Roots/Fugees show in Charlotte when I was in the 9th grade (but that is yet another story). Maybe there’ll be a Block Party II? Some weekend when I can ditch school and work? Maybe I’ll have friends by then? Who knows? That last one is only half rhetorical.

*This is the closest approximation I can think of to that sound Prince always makes. You know the one.