Da Mayor: Doctor…

Mookie: C’mon, what. What?

Da Mayor: Always do the right thing.

Mookie: That’s it?

Da Mayor: That’s it.

Mookie: I got it, I’m gone.

I just wanted to try that blockquote shit out…..

Nah really, doing the “right thing” is hard. We all know what the “right thing” is whenever we are crossed with it and the “wrong thing”. The “wrong thing” is always the easiest thing to do. It’s always the one that will lead to the immediate gratification. More often than not I do the “wrong thing”.

I’m trying though, Da Mayor….I’m trying!

Anyway….enough about my inner thoughts. The beer festival was cool yesterday. I had a GREAT time hanging with friends and shit. Rolled out with Geoff, Heather, Tiffany, Melantha, TaTa, and Dave. We got there and the first folks we saw were Fry, Wendall, Chuck (who redeemed himself from the Nashville on the Rocks), and their friend Jimmy (I think that was his name…I’m sure I’ll get corrected if I was wrong).

Then shortly thereafter I met up with the homie Toney and E-Dubb aka Jane Yamamoto. Saw some other folks (hi Maria) and drank ALOT of beer. As a matter of fact I got nice and drunk. I acted a fool at some points, but hey, I did better than I thought I would. I came home and passed out, then woke up long enough to make dinner and passed out again.

Today I had lunch with Tata at Red Lobster and picked up a few things at Circuit City (while looking for The Deer Hunter and a reasonable price on Family Guy season 2). I’m headed to the Beer Sellar in a few to pound a few more drinks!

OH, by the way….for those who leave comments, it may take awhile to publish, as I have a new system in place to deal with spam. I have to manually publish them, so you WON’T see them immediately, but they’ll get posted eventually….cool? Cool! Later!

A nigga just bought his ticket to Los Angeles, California for Labor Day Weekend!

That’s right. I’m hitting LA for the first time EVER! Ya’ll don’t know how excited I am right now. I can’t really put it into words and that is pretty much a first!

WOOO!!!!

Let me update again when I calm down!!

I made my first final table of an online poker tourney last night!!

Now it’s true that I pissed away over $50,000 (play money ya’ll!! If it was real money, like I told Geoff and Heather I would have walked away like, fuck the rest of this tourney!) once I made said table. But yeah, I’m getting kind of good with this poker thing. I’m learning which hands to play and which hands not to play. Ah another vice!

Speaking of vices, I went to one of my favorite watering holes last night, Bailey’s and got on the $2.50 pints. I also went to the downstairs portion of B.B. King’s Restuarant and had a jaeger-bomb….MISTAKE. I got home and got in the bed, thinking I was good….WRONG….I think you can draw your own conclusions from here, I already grossed out a few people earlier telling them what happened.

Watch as I almost seemlessly transition to discussing food!

So yeah, I’m marinating some lemon pepper teriyaki boneless chicken breast as I type this! I think I’m going to make some rice and green beans to go along with it. It should be delicious AND nutritious. Want some?

On my checklist:

- Go to D.C. to visit the homie Eulus, P.D. Jackson, Karima, and others

- Get this school shit straightened out once and for all

- Man up and step to this chick

- Enter a real life poker tourney somewhere

- Get the digital cable turned back on….with Cinemax!

- Pay up my rent til January

- See about visiting Cali finally

I think that’s about it.

On another note, I’ve been doing alot of interesting things musically lately. Man I love music! If the industry wasn’t so shady, I’d try to be an A&R or something. Well that, and the fact that most music that has come out lately is garbage. That Teairra Mari is an exception however, that album is kinda good. So is the Slim Thug now that I think about it. So there IS still some good music coming out, just not much.

Now let’s see how many things on my priority list up there get knocked out!

Question: What is shady?

Some would say (and a few HAVE said) that what I do on this blog is shady. Writing about people and giving my point of view on various issues as it pertains to my interactions with those people. I beg to differ as I would very easily say the same things to their faces, and I think the people in question know it.

Is shady talking a bunch of shit about people when they aren’t around and then smiling in their faces? I think that qualifies a little more than what I do here. Do I do that on occassion? Yeah, I think we all do to a certain extent, especially if we around those who kind of spur on that kind of thing. As a rule I generally try to “keep my nose clean” though. I think shit like that is bad karma, and most times when I am in a situation like that I try to catch myself and usually feel disgusted.

I don’t know man. When I do shady shit it bothers me. Like my conscience eats at me. I could never be a hardcore criminal, it wouldn’t sit well on my soul, hell I feel bad when I download music and porn and what not.

Something else that I do that people may consider shady or whatever. Like I’m not a big speaker in public. I might shoot the deuces, or nod my head, but I don’t stop and make idle chit chat. I forget peoples names also. I also have a rather icey look on my face most times. I’m not super approachable and I think alot of times people think I’m shady because of that. I guess I am, I can’t front, but that’s just how I am.

So yeah, what is shady? Who is shady? Are you shady? Are you comfortable with it?

I’ve been having some problems publishing entries lately. I’ve been getting some kind of error message that I can’t decipher, but I’ve actually been meaning to write.

I wrote this diatribe about Karrine “Superhead” Steffans (yes her name means what you think it does). For those that don’t follow the things going on in the seedier side of black celeb-dom, she is this video ho/real life high priced ho who has written a tell all book. The whole premise of the entry I made is that she’s still basically a whore, just now she’s pimping her words instead of her body. The shit disgusts me, so much so that I felt compelled to write about it. But it didn’t publish….*sigh*

Anyway, this week was a pretty slow week. I played alot of poker in various “freerolls” all over the net. I watched and enjoyed the Home Run Derby and All Star Game. I drank alot of beer. My boy Raj came into town and we hung out. Last night I went to a party and enjoyed myself.

I don’t really have any specific thoughts on any one event from the week, but I do have some “general” thoughts. It’s funny how I invested so much thought and emotion into something which now seems like it was NEVER worth it at all. Things tend to reveal themselves like that over time. I’m content with things now quite honestly. For whatever reason I became a placeholder, a reasonable facsimile for something else for someone. I’m glad to be rid of the pretense. It’s funny what people will do to attain their goals and desires, I would say that I wish them luck, but honestly I don’t. I’ll say that karma is a muthafucka, and the negative energy you put out will come back to haunt you some how some way. I didn’t like who I was around you and dealing with you and now I feel a whole lot better. You did make good blog fodder though….*sigh*

What else is there?….I don’t think there is anymore to say at this point.

I’m worn out ya’ll. Plain and simple, tired as a slave in Texas two weeks before Juneteenth! But I had fun.

The best place to pick up this story is me being picked up by the homie Eman and dropped off at the bus station. I had purchased my ticket the night before (as my previous post mentions), so I thought it’d make the greyhound process less of a headache *points like Charlie Murphy* WRONG. First of all, the pissy drunk white man in front of me smelled like 2 week old sour patch kids left in the sun. It was one of those “fruity” rotten smells that stays in your nose for about 5 minutes even after he’s gone. If you are disgusted by that description, imagine me standing behind him for 30 minutes!!

That’s right, I got there at 11:45 for my 1 o’clock bus, do you know that the line didn’t MOVE for 15 minutes? They had 2 people working the counter too!!! All I needed to do was check in my bag! Anyway, I finally got checked in and we actually boarded the bus 10 minutes early. So that means we left on-time right? NO! Of course not, this is greyhound we’re talking about! We didn’t leave until 30 minutes AFTER our scheduled departure time, despite loading before stated time! THEN, bussy (the bus driver) gets on the intercom to tell us that we will be arriving at about 10PM!!! My ticket stated an ETA of 7:55!!! I was heated. That meant I would more than likely miss ALL of the Cardinals game I had planned to attend!

The ride wasn’t so bad. We made HELLA stops on old dusty country roads in Kentucky and Illinois. We passed through one town called Marion, that looked like the town Halloween was based in “Haddonfield”. I was creeped out, and couldn’t wait to leave that town man! I also got like 4 phone calls telling me about Luther dying, that’s how word gets passed in the black community! I didn’t know SHIT about Sandra Day O’Conner retiring, but I knew about Luther kicking the bucket! I tell ya!

Anyway I got to St. Louis at about 9 (so an hour off of my ticket, but an hour earlier than Bussy said….greyhound thinks they are slick with that shit!! They didn’t fool me though!). Heather’s mom and brother came and scooped me up and we met Heather, Geoff, Leon, and Vince downtown.

We walked down to the Landing and went into Fat Tuesday. I drank 1 and a half 190 Octanes with an extra shot in each. Then we headed down to some other spots. This one brewery place was cool. I had a jaegerbomb up in there, but the melanin ratio was LOW up in that place so we bounced. Then we met up with the beautiful Angela and went to this spot called Buca. It was pretty cool. I got fucked up off of some Red Bull and Vodkas and enjoyed the sights.

At some point we decided to bounce and hit crib to get some rest.

I woke up the next day (Saturday if you are lost) and watched City of God. It was just as good as I’d heard! A must own DVD!! Then Heather and Geoff had to bounce for a second to handle some business related to our last trip to St. Louis. I stayed with Heather’s little brother and her niece Kaci and nephew Little Leon. Man they wore me out to the extent that I had to take a nap! Kids are something else!

Afterawhile we headed to Heather’s grandmother’s house for her graduation party. I ate plenty of shrimp and such and then got my out of shape butt into the pool (still wearing my Rasheed Wallace Portland Jersey). Man, that has inspired me to start working out again, I can’t live like this, having to keep shirts on at the pool and such! I still had fun though shooting waterguns at kids and dunking Little Leon! I’m such a little kid at heart still!

After the swimming and such (oh and some drinking too), we all went over to Heather’s Uncle’s house to watch her brother Omar’s short film, Dance Wars. It was pretty funny! I hope he wins some awards for it. After that we all went go-carting and what not. That was a trip, I had forgotten how fun that could be.

We called it a night and went to sleep, with plans to leave early the next morning for Detroit.

At this point we said our final goodbyes and left for the D at about 9 or so. Please note, at no time was there a segment of “meeting up with Carmen” or anything like that, because it didn’t happen! I guess she was stuck out in North County or something, but a nigga tried hard for a dude without a car or anything!

At any rate, the road trip to Detroit was uneventful. We got there at about 5 or so local time. By the way, why the hell is Detroit on Eastern time? I don’t understand it! It’s like almost west of Nashville!!!

Anyway we got to Geoff’s parents house and chilled over there with them for a minute. Then we headed over to Erika’s house where we’d be staying. We did a quick change and then people started to arrive over. D. Story and his friend Yolanda came by, then Geoff’s boy James, who may or may not exist (in a Tyler Durden type way) came through. We watched Heather’s brother’s movie again, this time “under the influence”….it was even funnier then! Geoff’s brother George came by, but alot of this was a blur to me because I was ummmm….intoxicated. We went to the park and drank and stuff and then at some point we decided to go to the Greektown Casino.

Now you long term readers may recall, I made a little bit of money at Greektown the last time I went to Detroit. Not this time!! Don’t play blackjack high! My plan was to flip $20 into $50. I came close. At one point I had about $35, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I ended up going to the Gyro place and eating away my sorrows. By this point I could also barely walk, so mercifully we all went in to get some rest for the next day. We were going to see the Tigers play the Indians in a doubleheader!! We were excited.

So we wake up the next morning and get dressed! I go to Erika’s computer to look up some seat information, when I hear on the Fox Sports Report that the Tigers were ending a homestand 1-5. I was like, “HOLD ON BUDDY! ENDING THE HOMESTAND?!!?!” Sure enough, the doubleheader we’d come up to see was IN CLEVELAND!!!! Geoff took the news better than I thought he would.

We ended up going to his brother’s house where I BBQ’d (Heather marinated the food and made the sauce…gotta mention that). You know Detroit summer isn’t that bad! It’s PERFECT for BBQ’n. I had a beer at all times, and cooked up some hotdogs and chicken, all while watching Season 2 of Chappelle (that’s perfect for events like that). Fun was had by all. We met Geoff’s various nieces and nephews and then a few other folks (like AJ from this year’s Houston trip) came through and we watched Diary Of A Mad Black Woman…..I know, I know, I had been trying to avoid that movie, but it actually wasn’t that bad! I promise. And you know if it was, I’d say so! This isn’t to say it was a great movie either, just not as bad as I expected.

After a long day of kicking it we went back to Erika’s and I fell out shortly after she put Training Day on.

Yesterday was the travel day. Nothing ground breaking took place. I’m still tired!

And now it’s back to the regular grind. *sigh*

At 1PM a bus will leave the Greyhound terminal with me and some of my belongings in it….I’ll be headed to St. Louis, Missouri. I might also be rolling from there to Detroit for a day or so to catch a Tigers game.

Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful 4th of July!