Damn, Reh Dogg


OK, please don’t read any further until you’ve actually watched the video.

Exhale… OK so if you’re not familiar with Reh Dogg, I’m going to have to beg you to get familiar. Most of you know of my love for Samwell (click here and here), and I will never cheat on him… but Reh Dogg is an internet phenom that cannot be ignored. He barely speaks English but he is for real clowning Tammie Starr — whoever the hell she is. Did you catch the photo cut out of her face floating across the screen?… From what I can ascertain she’s a bitch and whore. And she apparently slept with him, got pregnant and had twins and says they’re his, but he doesn’t believe her. Now, I don’t know who this woman is, and she may very well be a bitch and a whore, but I find it hard to believe that she or any other woman would falsely claim Reh Dogg was the father of her children. But you know what they say–one woman’s garbage…

The thing is, his ‘lyrics’ are so brutal. I swear he’s like the corny, nerdy kid everyone underestimated when they were playing the dozens in grade school, and then he started ripping on you, got way too personal and made you cry. “That’s why your daddy left your crippled ass mama with 6 kids and y’all on welfare and…”

Oh wait, I’ve said too much…

Anyway Reh Dogg has a bunch of other ‘songs’ on youtube so check him out. I need to hear Tammie Starr’s rebuttal track. Now. Oh gosh, just look at this dude. I’m out.

I love Bruce Springsteen

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I do. In a way that perhaps a 29 year old Black woman shouldn’t. Why am I writing about this now? Because I was listening to my iPod on random this morning and ‘We Are the World’ came on. Don’t you dare judge me. Anyway there’s the gong, the trumpets… Lionel Richie, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, Billy Joel (yeah, yeah, yeah) … but then in the second verse Bruce’s beautiful, raspy, voice comes in “We are the World, We are the children…” Game over. Bruce is killing y’all.

And it just reminded me #1 – I need to get more Springsteen on my iPod (right now I’ve only got Born to Run), and #2 – It’s time to reignite my adoration of this man.

Growing up in Jersey in the 80’s and 90’s, I had no choice but to love him — and by extension his band. Big Man Clarence Clemons (I saw you working it out on The Wire last season), Stevie Van Zandt (I still remember thinking wth is he doing on The Sopranos?), his ‘Red Headed Woman’, Patti. Love ’em all. To this day, my mother still buys every single thing he puts out, buys his concert videos, and we love him just the same as we always did. Real blue collar (or no collar) music for real people.

And I mean, The Boss. What an awesome nickname. Not too many recording artists have them. In the rock/paper/scissors game of entertainer nicknames, Bruce trumps all y’all ho’s. Plus, Springsteen barely even opens his mouth when he sings. How the hell does he do it? I swear, I don’t even know. And I don’t need to know. He is perfection in every sense of the word. Remember the cut off flannel shirts. The headband. HWWWHAAAT? (in my best Dave Chappelle imitating Lil’ Jon voice). He is so awesome. And I know that this may sound a little patronizing and you may be wondering whether I’m mocking or if I’m serious. Well please believe that I am serious. I love Bruce. I love Bon Jovi. I love Redman, Queen Latifah. Lauryn Hill (yes, still), and even Naughty by Nature. I have an unhealthy devotion to any and all artists from New Jersey — even though as you can see my musical tastes changed over the years. I was definitely white in the 80’s, but as you can see I ‘found myself’ in the 90’s. (BTW, I think that if there is an award for most parenthetical notes in a blog entry, this one should be the champ.) Out.

ELBOW, We won’t go!

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So I’m in the UnSafeway down the street from my house about an hour ago and I almost witnessed a riot. I was walking down the pasta aisle and there was absolutely no elbow macaroni left on the shelves.

On the night before Thanksgiving.

In southeast D.C.

Every single person on that aisle was looking for macaroni noodles… cause a Black Thanksgiving without macaroni and cheese — just ain’t happening. The poor stock boy was like “I’m sure we have some more in the back. Y’all hold up while I check” In the meantime the ladies in the aisle started preparing themselves to riot. “Yeah, they BETTA have some in the back!”, “How I’m ‘sposed to fix Thanksgiving with no baked macaroni?”, “They don’t wanna see us act a fool.”…

Luckily–for everyone in the store–he came back with a flatbed full of macaroni. He didn’t even attempt to put it on the shelves. He just rolled it down the aisle and backed away. Smart guy.

Happy Turkey Day, y’all!

“T-1-shur… Rah here, rah here…”

Me and my two girlfriends Angi and Jennifer were walking around the inner harbor in Baltimore this weekend before the Stevie Wonder show — yes the ticket man did come thru and yes it was the best show I’ve ever been to ever, forever… but more about that later…

This dude was walking back and forth along the pier yelling “T-1-shur, T-1-shur” over and over. My girls had no idea what dude was talking about, but after like the second or third time he said it, I realized old boy was selling:

Stevie – (T)

Wonder – (1)

Shirts… – (shur)

Bootleg souvenir t-shirts is what he was selling, but no one around us had a clue as to what he was talking about — and he was  pushing around a cart full of t-shirts. Yes, really. It may have been the worst rendition of the English language I’ve ever heard.

Below is a picture from the concert taken on a cell phone. I know its poor quality and you really can’t make out anything in it, but I promise you, it’s Stevie standing on top of a piano:

Anyone who knows me knows that seeing Stevie live has been a dream of mine forever. He hasn’t toured in over a decade and let me just say that I had the time of my life and I owe it all to…

Went to a luncheon this afternoon where Tim Russert was the featured speaker. It was awesome. I’m such a huge fan. I’m really tired. Good nite.

I didn’t really respect strippers until I became one…

I spent this weekend in New York City. One of my very best girlfriends is getting married and we went up for her bachelorette weekend. The whole trip was pure hilarity, but I’ll start with the train ride from Jersey into the city… I was wearing one of my favorite t-shirts. It’s black and it has a picture of a cute little bumble bee and then it says “–atch” so if you put it together, it spells… well you know. My girlfriends and I made nice with a handsome conductor on the train who was having a bad day. His name was J.M. McGinty. I know that because it was embroidered on his jacket. I kept referring to him by his whole name because it seemed to lift his spirits. Finally he came by one last time to punch our tickets and I said, “Thank you very much J.M. McGinty.” and he said, “You’re welcome, B–atch…” Oh man, that was the funniest thing that’s happened to me so far in 2006. Check mate, J.M. Check mate.

Once we got into the city, our very first activity was a two-hour exotic dance class – complete with boas, pimp hats, high heels and — you guessed it… poles. I’m gonna give you a minute to digest that. ME on a POLE…

You ready? OK, so I’ll go on. The instructor was so matter of fact about everything she told us to do, it was like she didn’t realize that we didn’t all strip for a living. “Flutter your eyelids… Make a pouty-kissy-face… Raise your eyebrows… Work your shoulders…” At one point I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I looked like I was having a seizure. Those who KNOW know that I don’t have a great deal of dance skill. I’m good on rhythm but I’m definitely a two-stepper if you know what I mean, plus I was the largest woman in the class, I had on a pair of heels way higher than I would ever wear in real life and I was really, really sober, so you can imagine how awkward I felt. After we learned how to work the boas, unbutton our shirts and toss them with reckless abandon it was pole time. OH YEAH! Easily the most hilarious part of the evening, my time spent on the pole helped me to gain a new respect for strippers. Those girls are vicious. It is really hard to get up on that thing and swing like that. The next morning we were all bruised and sore. For real, next time you go out and you see a girl doing some good pole work, give her a nice tip AND a pat on the back. She’s working hard for the money.

After we went back to the hotel to shower and change it was off to the club and one of those totally “Sex and the City” experiences that you can only have in NYC. We’re standing outside of the hotel about to hail a cab when this stretch limo pulls up and says, “Need a ride?” Are you serious? So we all pile in and head for Duvet. We tell the driver to pull right up to the front door and we get out like movie stars. The line was down the block and they were only letting ladies in for free for another 15 minutes so when the door man told us we needed to go to the back of the line, we looked like BROKE movie stars. We eventually did some politicking and got in without waiting in the line — thank goodness we had just learned how to flutter our eyelids and unbutton our shirts. HA! We ended up having a great weekend and I think I got at least 5 good new minutes out of it… Well worth the trip.