The Truth is Here

Diana’s been out of town (vacationing in Tanzania and Zanzibar), resulting in my tattered rags getting caught on our coffee table. Here’s what I did over the holiday weekend:

Friday night – Hooked up with my buddy Paul to go to the sold out Brother Ali concert at Slim’s. After a quick dinner at Popeye’s, we snared a cab to get to the venue. The first act we saw was the Boom Bap Project, a decent opener hailing from Seattle via the Bay Area. Some fun rhymes, especially the free-style portions, but I wasn’t a huge fan of their beats nor their DJ.

Next up was Psalm One, a female rapper from Chicago on Rhyme Sayers. I think my buddy Faust has put it best about female hip-hop, in that it’s really hard to get into, especially when they try to act tough/hard. Mostly forgettable.

The main event had everyone’s favorite Albino, Muslim rapper from MPLS, Brother Ali. He rocked (Like a Champion) in every aspect, playing mostly stuff from his new album, even some of the deeply personal tracks. He has a captivating presence, but it’s a unique kind of charisma that I’ve never seen before, but I can’t place it. The crowd was really into Ali, I didn’t realize he had gotten as big as he had.

After the show Paul and I scooted over to The Page to meet up with friends and get a couple of drinks before bar close. I got home and in bed around 2:30.

Saturday – Woke up and fed and walked Josie, did some chores, then finally made my way over to my buddy Dan’s Underdogs Sports Bar around 5:30 PM to hook up with JR and Joe to watch UFC 71. A great evening of fights, with 4 of the 5 main matches ending in upsets (which netted Dan over a grand in his wagers, in which he picked all 5 dogs). Much celebration went down when Rampage knocked out Liddell, but also numerous people were shocked that it ended so quickly in the manner it did.

JR, Joe and I made our way over to the Mucky Duck to welcome my friend Josh Six-Killer, his girlfriend Michelle and their roommate Stan to the neighborhood. They moved into a new place about four blocks from us on Saturday, and were having a few drinks after moving day. Eventually AJ and his girl Tera showed up as well, so there was a full-on bowling team bonding moment as well. Again, we closed down the bar and I went over to Josh’s new joint for a couple of drinks afterwards. I got home and in bed around 4:00.

Sunday – Woke up and fed Josie, then wandered over to JR’s place. JR, myself and a bunch of JR’s friends went down to the Mission to see the Carnaval celebration. We saw a bit of the parade with the crazy costumes, loud music, and tossed beads. JR and I ducked into a corner store that was closing down so we got 2 for 1 bottles of booze to encourage our depravity. After the parade, we wandered over to the street festival portion of the events and ate our way through the area.

Feeling pretty exhausted at this point, I caught a train home and figured I’d chill out for the evening, maybe watch a movie and go to bed early. Nope. My friend Cat texted me and asked if I wanted to go dancing, and convincing myself I would rest on Monday, I took a train back into the sketchy Tenderloin area. We ended up at a place called the BamBuhdda Lounge, which had kind of a neat set-up. Two rooms with two separate DJs spinning mostly house and techno stuff. It took me a while to get enough drinks, but I broke out some of my old moves from First Ave’s Sunday Night Dance Party. We left the club and ended up back at Cat’s, where we continued the dance party using people’s iPods as our source of tunes.

I was pretty exhausted by this point, so I left around 2:30 to walk the five blocks home, only to see about 8 cop cars, 2 ambulances and 3 firetrucks near the church by our house. From what I could gather, a car had blasted into at least two other parked cars, and at least one of those were on fire. They had the whole block roped off with police tape and I had to go around the block to get home. Very weird stuff, never found out exactly what happened, however. Got home and in bed by 3:30.

Monday – Rested a lot.