Wedding Weekend (Part 4): Reception

The wedding was the most mild-mannered and traditional thing that took place on Saturday night. The reception. BANANAS! Now I've been in a few weddings and I've been to a few. Most receptions I've been to have a bar or an open bar. This reception was "dry" though so there was no alcohol being served or drank at the reception. At first, I must admit, I was a little disappointed in my man for not having the open bar. But the bride's father is a pastor and their a southern Christian family so I can respect his decision not to have alcoholic beverages being served.

The reception started with the entrance of the wedding party...











After we all waltz in, we got seated and had a very nice dinner. The roast beef, mashed potatoes, and green beans were BANGIN! I'm still thinking about that meal.

While eating, most of the guys noticed that the music was str8 old-school background music. Not conducive to the party-type reception we all wanted. However, after we ate, the Best Man and Matron of Honor (matron, right?) made their congratulatory speeches and then it was time for the dollar dance. This kinda got everyone off their feet to get up and dance with the bride (the guys) and the groom (the ladies). After the dollar dance, everyone in the wedding party was up on the dancefloor kinda standing around for a minute just looking kinda bored and stiff. But the DJ put on some southern creole song and all the natives in the room went off like Jay-Z just dropped "allow me to reintroduce myself" in that joint!

They kinda got the party started a little. But once that Lil Jon and E-40 joint came on (Snap Yo Fingaz) the party blasted off. Little did I know that this would be the beginning of the most fun I've had (sober) at a wedding reception, EVER! The Lil Jon and 40-water track got everybody dancing. Next up though was Lean Wit it Rock Wit It and this joint got everybody dancing. That dance was in full-effect among the wedding party. So much so, that we had a battle between the guys and the girls to see who could rock the dance the hardest. Picture this:

Ten guys, some grown men and some teens all in a line side-by-side leaning wit it and rockin wit it. And on the other side, ten girls, some women and some girls, all in a line side-by-side leaning wit it and rockin wit it. It was a str8 battle!

What made it great was that even the guys who don't normally do those dances (the groom and Wayne) both danced their a$$e$ off! Me, I was looking like an uncoordinated bama on the dancefloor as usual. LOL.

This dance-off ensued for one more song, It's Goin Down! And if you've been following my blog at all, you know how I feel about that song! So needless to say I was SICED! Don't laugh at me too hard about that one B-Mizzy!

After the Joc joint went off, the dancing pretty much stopped and I think we cut the cake after that and they threw the bouquet and garter. Naturally, most of us ducked out of the way and watched that garter fly into the hands of some over-zealous cat in the front of the group.

The reception ended with all the members of the wedding party (except the bride and groom) doing the "Goin ride the train" dance throughout the reception hall and eventually out the doors of the reception hall. So much random fun. It was GREAT!

The entire rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, wedding, and reception was GREAT! I'm really happy for my homie and I hope they're having lots of fun on their honeymoon...Ain't that right Dane?



Since two of the groomsmen were engaged and Wayne just had a baby, the question of the weekend was, "Is Weezy next to get married?" Well, I'll let him give you the answer to that...



LMAO! Yeah, that's what I thought! LOL.

The Wedding Weekend (Part 3): Wedding Ceremony

The morning of the wedding was a pretty normal morning. We got up, showered, got dressed and got ready to meet at the hotel lobby at 1:15 where our limo would pick us up.

Check us out before we got in the limo...







Now that I think of it, a picture's worth 1000 words, so I don't need to give the play-by-play on the ceremony. Check it out for yourself.



The spirit of God was "IN THE BUILDING!"



Smooches

The Wedding Weekend (Part 2)

Okay, now that we've all got past Part 1, it's time to move on to the wedding rehearsal and dinner.

Here we are about to head out to the rehearsal



Sidebar: The phrase of the weekend for the groom was "Ya'll boys CLEAN!" Meaning, we were dressed very well. For some reason, Jon has been saying this every time he sees me or Wayne dressed up for the past 2 years or so. It's pretty funny considering he's seen me dressed up tons of times but each time he acts like it's the first. It's a compliment though so it's all good.

The rehearsal was cool. Lots of joking among the groomsmen about the groom getting "cold feet" and jokes about how the bridesmaids better be cute. Overall, everything went smoothly because the bride had this thing planned out like a military strike! So much so, that all members of the wedding party received print-outs of the schedule of events for the wedding day. And of course the print-outs were on colored paper that matched the wedding colors. NO, I am NOT JOKING! She did a great job though.

The rehearsal dinner was REALLY NICE. We went to a steak and seafood restaurant where we had our own banquet room reserved. Everyone's order was taken as we walked in and we all were seated (yes, in that order) and we ate.


After everyone had eaten, the bride and groom took time to thank everyone for coming and also give us a glimpse into how they met and how they're relationship progressed to the point of marriage. They did this via a nice and very well put-together Powerpoint slideshow completely with narration by the bride and groom.






After the slideshow, the bride and groom gave out gifts to their wedding party and everyone talked and most members of the wedding party agreed it was time to go out and hang.

All the guys ended up back at the hotel and the ladies, well, I'm not quite sure where they went. But it was decided that we were going to go out somewhere in Lake Charles and hang out. To my surprise, when it was time to roll, not only did the wedding party show up, but also the bride and groom. This was really really nice to see. I thought it was cool that they were gonna go out and hang with everybody the night before the wedding. That's what's up!

Anyway, we ended up in a convoy following the bride's sister to a karaoke spot. This my people, was dangerous! Karaoke, black folks, Lake Charles, alcohol? Man oh man. When we got the karaoke spot we went in and several of us immediately hit the Fat Tuesday's style bar. Daiquiri's are such a beautiful thing. A couple others hit the pool table and the rest congregated at a bunch of bar tables. This place had a stage, a DJ, and a book of songs that was pretty thorough. So you know it was about to be some embarassing moments going DOWNNNN!

The groom ended up wanting to perform "Doin Da Butt" by EU. If you don't know about go-go, then you probably don't know this song. But it's a CLASSIC go-go song. (MORE ON GO-GO) So all the groomsmen except one joined the groom onstage to embarass ourselves performing this song. But we actually had a pretty good performance until the random lady jumped onstage and tried to freak the hell out of one of the groomsmen. LMAO! Fortunately, he went along with it (keeping a safe distance from her donkey-booooootay!).

After the groomsmen performed, the bride and several bridesmaids went up and performed "I'm Every Woman" to a resounding ovation from...Well, everybody that came with us. After that, the night was pretty much a wrap. We contemplated going elsewhere but the bridesmaids weren't down. So we all left and headed back to the hotel to get some sleep.

Part 3 coming soon...This one will have the wedding and reception pics.

50 Cent is JUST WRONG: How can I NOT blog about this one?

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WARNING: (watch your back when looking at this one)
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Okay, below is quite possibly the funniest thing I have seen this year so far. 50 Cent is putting out a mixtape soon and it looks like he's trying to end Game's career. LOL. I can't even type this without laughing. Man this is funny! Anyway, here's the cover ...LMMFAO!


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I feel like I have to say this...NO JOHNNYCAKES!

Now I like GAME and I bet this joint is from several years ago. But no matter how much I LIKE his rapping, the fickle hip-hop audience of today will probably completely write him off after this. This is almost like Jay putting Prodigy on the screen a few years back. I am just shocked that 50 didn't unveil this picture on a bigger stage like an awards show or some huge concert. It's still D@MN funny though! If I could post a soundbyte of me cackling laughing at this picture I definitely would.

The Wedding Weekend: Louisiana will never be the same (Part 1)

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WARNING: This is a LONG POST! Nice pictures though
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Maybe I'm sicing it a tad bit too much with that "will never be the same" comment. But we had fun down in Lake Charles, LA.

First and foremost, don't ever drive 23 hours to get anywhere unless God himself is gonna be there waiting on your arrival witha bottle of that wine he created from water. The drive down there and back was the WORST part of the entire trip. The drive down there...Well, it started like this...

At my grandparents house. I dropped my car off there and WG, Prince, and I got all our stuff in the rental car (Impala SS). We lingered at my grandparents house for a minute checking out my grandfathers car and bike.











Once we were done doing that, we hit my favorite fast food joint, the Golden Skillet, and then headed to 66 West for almost a day of driving. Man, man, man did I NOT KNOW what I was about to embark upon. This was what the directions said:


Distance: 1,269 mi (about 1 day 0 hours)

66 West (74 miles)
81 South (376 miles)
40 West (53 miles)
75 South (83 miles)
24 West (17 miles)
59 South (444 miles)
12 West (85 miles)
10 West (4.5 miles)
12 West (122 miles)
US 171 to Martin Luther King Jr. Hwy


So not only were we about to travel a day on the road, we were about to end up in the hood! Everybody knows MLK Jr. streets equal the HOOD! But at least we were gonna be staying at the Best Western so we knew our accomodations would be the LAVISH (LOL).

On the way there we pretty much talked, freestyle'd over Wayne's endless supply of hip-hop instrumentals, talked about each other like friends do, etc. We stopped at an Outback somewhere in Tennessee which delighted me tremendously. That Outback Special is so delicious.

After that it was back on the road. Wayne and I would swap driving duties about every 6 hours. We drove through a horrendous storm somewhere near Birmingham, Alabama that woke me up out of my sleep. I swear it looked like there was a cloud right over-the-top of our car that just followed us. I was honestly scared. I suggested to Wayne that we pull over under and overpass and he blew me off like he drives through typhoon-type weather daily. Different strokes for different folks I guess. All this was around 2am or so on Friday. We drove until about 6:30 am that morning and got tired as hell.

So what'd we do? We pulled over at a "rest area" in M-I-crooked-lettah-crooked-lettah...screw it. That would take too long. We pulled over in Mississippi and slept in the car for about 2 hours. We woke up around 8:30 AM and drove the rest of the way to the hotel. Here are a couple pictures I took as we were crossing the Mississippi River.





We ended up arriving at the hotel at about 12 noon. Unfortunately, the room was not ready and we couldn't get an early check-in.


So what did we do? We did what any group of black guys in Lake Charles, LA waiting on a hotel room would do...We went to the driving range! LOL.

Keep in mind that it's like 90 degrees and sunny in that humid, sticky, and HOT Louisiana sun. But I didn't care. None of us did. We didn't have anything to do and I had never went to a driving range before. So we went out there and embarassed ourselves. If you've ever watched Kings of Comedy and listened to Cedric talk about bruhs on the golf course...

"on the golf course just WRONG!"

Yeah, that was US!













I think I'll stop this post here. There's so much more to tell (we haven't even checked into the hotel at this point), but I don't want to drain you in one post. I'll be posting part 2 and possibly part 3 soon. That'll give you rehearsal dinner pics, wedding pics, and reception pics to look forward to. PEACE!

For all you squirrel lovers out there...

My co-worker Mark sent me this earlier. I thought this was completely hilarious! PETA members might not like this. LMAO!


<a href="http://mike.webic.biz/videos/squirrel_launcher.wmv">Click here to view</a>

Man Law: No Smiling!

This past weekend in Louisiana, the guys and I all had a mini-discussion about smiling in pictures. So I decided to propose a Man Law. If you've been watching TV at all the past month or so, you've seen the beer commercials with all the guys sitting at a table discussing Man Laws.

Well, I am proposing this one...

"Men cannot smile in pictures with other men. UNLESS, the man is drunk or there is at least one woman in the picture."

I couldn't find a way to shorten this one...Sorry.

Fellas, what do you think?

Ladies, you can see via the pictures from my man's bachelor party that most guys have been abiding by this Man Law already.

Over/Under on how long it takes me to get fired....

Today my boy Brian at work found my blog...How? He did a google search for this:

http://www.google.com/search?hs=yQY&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=tom+cruise+pat+riley+young+joc&btnG=Search

Come to find out, he's known about my blog for a minute and just doesn't visit it. Not that I ever post anything work-related on here, but you know there's been some people who've gotten fired over their websites and/or blogs. So hopefully that won't happen to me since I don't plan on slipping up and raging about my job on here. I actually happen to like my job so I doubt that will happen. I mean, it's not like I did THIS or anything.

But I'm going to set the over/under on how long it takes me to get fired at about 1.5 years. Would you take the over or under on that?

B-b-b-b-b-wait it gets worse!

Many of you probably already read my post about Tom Cruise's hideous dancing to the Yung Joc song. Well, it's actually gotten a tad bit worse now, depending on how you look at it.

Below is exhibit B in this case of unorthodox dance style.



Some notes:

1. Did Shaq pat him on the ar$e or was it just me?

2. Did Pat actually try to do the "lean wit it rock wit it" for a hot-second?

3. Is it just me, or did the announcer say, "Just bought a zone, WADE'S on my feet!"? Whoa!

Now if you're a Miami fan, this is probably just cute and funny.

If you're Yung Joc, you should be extremely happy b/c you're going to sell alot more records now that you've been indirectly or directly endorsed by Diddy, Nitty (LMAO), Tom Cruise (sorta), the Miami Heat, and Pat Riley.

If you're anyone else, you might be a little worried that WAY too many people are attempting to do this dance without practicing first! Now, you may say that you don't need any practice to do such a simple dance, but I believe that Tom and Pat give my point great justification.

If you would like to see them both in the same blogpost, click here. And even the author of this blog warns that "Playing them simultaneously could make your head explode..."

Do they still say Whoadie down there???

Tomorrow morning I'm headed to Lake Charles, Lousiana for my man J-Rock's wedding. Get this though...I am driving! 20 hours folks...20 hours! Me, WG, and Prince...21 hours of driving!!!! This should be interesting. We're all trying to call it a "road trip" so it doesn't sound as bad as it's probably gonna be.

Pray for me!

What a morning!

This morning - after discovering last night that a bunch of my electronics were no longer working - I went, with several of my neighbors to our rental office to see what the rental company was going to do about the power outage and everyone's devices that got fried.

Well, it turns out they said exactly what you would expect.

1. It was not THEIR fault, but that of Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE)
2. That we needed to call BGE and file a claim.
3. If we did not have renter's insurance, then we'd probably be a$$ed out

Fortunately, I have had renter's insurance the past couple of years. It's only about $100 a year for me and my car insurance provider (Erie) provides rental insurance as well. Honestly, I didn't want to get it at first because I didn't think that anything would ever go wrong and because I could use that money to pay for other things. But in the end, I got the renter's insurance because they pitched it to me well when I got my car insurance. Boy am I glad.

So I left the rental office and returned home to call BGE and my renter's insurance company. BGE basically told me that if I didn't have renter's insurance they'd do nothing for me. And then went so far as to tell me they didn't reimburse for fried electronics that they fried (yeah right) and that I should contact my renter's insurance company. Basically, they knew I had the renter's insurance (it was the first question they asked when I told them the story) so they knew they could blow me off and tell me to go holla at the renter's insurance folks.

In the end, I called my renter's insurance company and they are taking me through the process of putting a value on all my devices that got fried and putting me in touch with a claims adjustor. This process works just like the car insurance process would if you got hit (which I just went through back in May). So hopefully I can get reimbursed for all these devices that are now broke. Wish me luck.

What a night!

Last night was one of the longest nights I've had in a while. Not because of basketball though.

5:30pm - 8pm: Class.



BORING BORING BORING. I could have been at home reading the book rather than trying to stay awake through that boring lecture.

8:30-9pm: Picking up my tux for the wedding this weekend from After Hours. This wasn't that bad.



Paid my balance, tried it on (best-fitting tux I've rented thus far), and rolled to my house.

9:15pm: Pulled up to my place and there are BGE guys out there and Comcast guys out there (uh-oh!). Something's definitely going wrong in my court, but I don't know what it is. And since they're out there from time-to-time anyway, I figured this was normal procedure and nothing to worry about.

9:18pm: Walked in my house and realized that there was no electricity. Thanks BGE! Not only was there no electricity, there was a funny smell like something was burning or had been burning. I see my clock blinking and I notice that my air conditioner is not on. I'm heated.

9:25pm: My next-door neighbor comes over and explains to me that the entire block lost power about 3pm and I should check my breakers to try and get my power back. (By this time I'd already lighted candles just to get around the house. In the back of my mind I knew I had to be at the airport at 9:45 to pick up a friend.) My neighbor also inquires as to whether or not my microwave was working. Crazy question, but I obliged and checked. It was working. (Now how was that single device working but nothing else?) So he asked if he could heat up some food b/c his microwave was blown due to the power outage. Blown = not working anymore, ever!


9:30pm: I start messing around with the breaker switches and realize that I can get power to my living room and upstairs. So lights are back on. I also spent the last 3 minutes heating up my neighbor's dinner for him.

9:35pm: I run out the house in haste to head to the airport.

9:55pm: At the airport waiting...waiting...waiting...


10:05: Got my friend in the car and I am headed back to drop her off at her car.

10:45: Made it back and dropped her off at her car.

11pm: Start testing my electronic devices to see what's still working. TV, nope. Surround sound receiver, nope. Fish tank filter, nope. Cablebox, nope. Computer, yes. Sweet! Life's not over yet! Refridgerator, yes. Cordless phone, nope. So it appears that several devices are dead to the world. I guess I know what that burning smell was now. At this point I'm kind of upset, but not as mad as I always thought I'd be if something like this happened.

11:30pm: I eat while watching the NBA finals game.

Midnight: I start packing for the weekend trip to Louisiana while listening to the NBA Finals game on my TV in my bedroom (this one still works). Finals go off and I immediately blog about it. (Pressed)

12:45am: I start remembering that I have to go pick up BHill from the airport at 1:30am. DAMMMMMMNNNNNNNN!

1am: I leave to go BACK to the airport and pick BHill up.

1:35am: Pick up BHill and head back home

2:15am: Get home and talk with BHill out front about his trip to Arizona and my trip to NYC last weekend.

3am: Sleep with no air conditioner.

God, grant me just ONE WISH....

Put me in SoBe MIAMI...Right now! 12:15 AM, Wed., June 21, 2006! Ah man I can only imagine how much celebrating is going on!



Congrats to the HEAT! You guys did a great job. I'm happy to see GP, Zo, Shaq, and D-Wade get this ring. You also proved that my prediction was WAYYY OFF! You guys essentially came back and swept the Mavericks.

I guess tonight or tomorrow Mark Cuban will spontaneously combust. Right about the same time some angry Mavs fan snipes Eric Dampier for fumbling the ball at the end of the game.

And not only is Pat Riley a great coach, he's also a prophet according to Shaq. That's wild. Maybe I should play this number today...62006 (June 20, 2006). On the other side, Avery Johnson really loves his guys. At least that's what he said he told them after the game.

Last but not least, I'd like to take this opportunity to ask one question...How's it feel Stan Van Gundy (anybody remember him)? OUCH!



Yeah, the guy on the right...That guy on the left, well, he's somewhat more of a celebrity. LMAO!

I'm on my New York -ish...

Some of you probably already know I went to NYC this past Saturday with a couple of my boys for my man's bachelor party (congrats Jon...Saturday's the big day mayne!). Well, it was quite a fun trip. I've got a lil run-down to give and some pictures. Maybe you'll find this interesting.

On the way up to New York, the guy here with the hat on lasted about 30 minutes into the friggin ride before he passed out. I mean knocked out like a baby. So you know who the butt of all the jokes was on the way up to New York.



The next flick is just after we got to NYC, checked into our hotel, and freshened up. We were headed out to find some food. This pic was taken in front of the hotel where we caught a cab to Times Square. About a block into the ride we realized we were ONE BLOCK AWAY from Times Square. So that cab ride amounted to about $3. We were definitely tourists on that one.





Once we got to Times Square, we walked around looking at all the stores and trying to find a restaurant. Of course there were tons of people walking the streets so we were bumping into people left and right and coming close to getting hit by cabs as we crossed the street. Lots of people (like me) out there with cameras taking flicks of the stores and buildings.







We walked around Times Square for a while, stopped at a few stores, and ended up at this nice lil restaurant I can't remember the name of. But it was alot like the District Chophouse in Wash., D.C. This place spealized in steaks and brewed their own beer just like the chophouse. We ate some steaks and had drinks. We ended up getting out of there pretty quickly to go back to our hotel and get dressed for the real reason we came up to NY...TO PARTY!





Back at the hotel after dinner, we spent about 45 minutes getting dressed. Most of that was spent with me asking everybody what outfit I should wear and joking one-another. We also took some time to pop a couple bottles of champagne that Dane brought and clip the cigars I brought. This 45 minutes was like our lil warm-up for the club.

Once we all settled on the fact that we were gonna get dressed up in slacks and shirts (rather than the usual jeans and button-down), we were dressed and out of the room in like 20 minutes (sippin on that fluid the whole time).

Below, we are as we wait on a cab in front of our hotel.



We were headed to Jay-Z's 40/40 club which (naturally) I was super siced about going to since I am a big Jay-Z fan. Yeah, I know...It's not like he was gonna be there, but still. So we hop in the cab and make our way to the club about 20 minutes after our 9pm reservation...Now for the good stuff.



The 40/40 club was free to get in. Not because we had a reservation, but because that's apparently just the way it is. As soon as we got in, we hit the bar where I bought everyone a round of vodka and pineapples (my favorite drink). How about a bill of $53! Now, I didn't realize that it was $53 because there was 20% gratuity included in the bill. What I did do was tip the bartender $5 NOT KNOWING he had already gotten a tip of like $8 already. DUMBASS! That's what I get for not paying attention to my bill. The damn Tru Life look-alike who fixed the drinks damn sure kept my $5 too!

After that we headed to our reserved section. Much like other ritzy clubs, the reserved section was just a bunch of couches and a couple little tables that were up about 3 stairs. Wack as usual. But the great thing about this place is that there are flat screen tvs everywhere! And there are projection screen TVs on each side of the bar that I'm sure you could see from Long Island. So no matter where you sit, you got a view of the boob-tube.

We sat in our reserved section and got harassed by a representative to buy food and/or a bottle and watched Woo flirt with the girls we had to share the section with for a minute. Now bottle service was ridiculously priced like it is in every club. Personally, I thought we could just order the cheapest bottle on the list (Alizé, $150) if we HAD to buy a drink to keep our seats. But no one was feeling that and I wasn't gonna press the issue considering that same bottle costs about $20 at the liquor store. So while we were debating if we wanted to buy any bottle at all, Randy and I got up and walked around. We walked through a couple billiard rooms, a cigar room, and a lounge type room. Naturally, we ended up finding the cigar room.

JACKPOT!

Eventually, all 4 of us ended up in the cigar room smoking the stogies we smuggled into the club, and drinking everything from Heineken to Remy. We watched the Winky Wright fight in there and afterward headed back out to the main club area where it looked like the Middle Passage. From there it was party time. To the bar, more drinks. And then to the dancefloor to embarass myself. (But it was so much fun though!)

I would divulge the details about how I almost got into an altercation on the dancefloor, but I'll save that for another post. Fortunately we enjoyed ourselves dancing and laughing at one-another dancing, and made it out of the club without any violence. After the 40/40 we tried to hit Club BED but didn't get in since they were no longer letting GUYS in. Just females or guys accompanied by females. So we ended up at a diner talking about how much fun we had. After that it was back to the hotel and to sleep. Pretty good night!

The next picture is from Sunday morning (after my obligatory trip to Starbucks) while we were walking around looking for some place to eat. We found a nice lil restaurant right by our hotel and had brunch.



After this, it was back to Bmore for me and back to DC for everyone else. Jon and Woo slept like babies on the way back so it was pretty much just Dane and I listening to rap all the way back. Shot out to Dane for putting me onto that Little Brother Chittlin Circuit CD. I had to go buy that joint mayne!

Overall, it was a really fun trip. I'm glad we could send my boy off the way he wanted.

Unfortunately in this post I had to leave out a bunch of details b/c this post would have been ridiculously long. It would have been so much easier to liveblog this whole trip. Maybe I'll do that on the next trip if I have that new Motorola Q by then. And after I read this thing over a few times, it'll probably get updated, so subscribe to your boy via bloglines if you know what's good for ya!

PEACE!