Moments of the Week

Surreal

Thursday (last) night I was at a lounge/bar to catch the Ravens game (they got wrecked by the way...Go SKINS) and after the game was over it turned into what Baltimorians would probably call a party. I'd call it, "A Baltimore Azz Party".

Anyway, while at the bar, I watching TV and who comes and sits right beside? None other than local celebrity, "Snoop" from the WIRE. I was a little shocked initially just because (I guess) you don't see big or small-time celebs in Baltimore too often. She sits beside me, speaks and says "what's good" after shaking my hand, I respond with "what's good", and that's that. Immediately thereafter, a couple guys in the club go straight into groupie mode and start coming up to her sweating her. "SNOOP! What's good? I seen you on the WIRE!" Blah blah blah. She handled it all pretty well considering she could have gotten all big-headed and took her local clebrity status to an extreme level of arrogance. But she was real cool about it. So after a couple guys sweat her, her crew of 4 dudes - who look like they're straight out of the WIRE cast as well (LOL) - come over and surround her and they all order drinks and chill. You know, normal club-goer type behavior.

I'm sitting beside her hitting "my man(s) and them" via text message to let them know I'm sitting beside Snoop "from the WIRE". So in true classic BHill form, after I send him the text message telling me she's beside me, he says:

"Better watch out for Chris nikka!"

LMAO! What ensued was one of the biggest laughs I've had in a minute. If you watch the show, you'll understand exactly why that was hilarious. If you don't watch the show, let me fill you in.

Snoop and Chris are basically hitmen for the shows biggest drug dealer, Marlo Stanfield. All they do is kill people on the show, period. But they're a very interesting duo even though that's all they do. You have to watch the show to really get an appreciation for characters who are murderers but yet seem oddly ethical at times and virile and uber-belligerent at other times. Anyway, check out the WIRE on Comcast On-Demand when you get a chance (Season 4).

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Good Samaritan

On my way home last night from the bar, I was riding through Loyola College's campus like I always do. It's about 3am and I see a girl sitting out on the curb about 200 feet ahead of me by herself. I drive past her and notice that she looks stranded/lost/effed-up. So the good person in me decides to come out after I've driven about 300 feet past her and I turn around. I go back, pull up next to her and ask if she's okay. She says "Yes." I ask again and she says "yes" again. So I proceed to make a U-Turn to go back in the direction of my house. As I am making my U-e, she promptly gets up and darts across the street as if she thought I was pulling a drive-by. Weird. Well not really considering I'm a young black guy with a beard and she was a young, white woman,and it was 3am in the morning on a pretty empty street. So was I really shocked, nah. But I did have on a blazer with handkerchief intact and "hair cut, cropped, sharper than a pastor's" (shot out to Beanie) so I thought that I wouldn't come across as threatening. But who knows what was really going on with that young lady. I just hope she's okay and it felt good to offer to help.

In that same vein, I was talking to one of my best friends recently about situations like this one. He recently went to Atlanta and he was telling me about how nice and helpful the people there were for "no reason at all." LOL. My funny but honest question is: Why do people need a reason to be nice?

I think in the northern states people are so uptight because they're busy or in a rush that they're less willing to be cordial. And those of us who've been here all our lives fall into thinking and acting the same way. But my man specifically mentioned that in Atlanta if you saw someone on the side of the road, there would be people stopping left-and-right to offer help. That doesn't happen up here too often. That was a big part of the reason why I stopped to offer my help to the young lady last night. Sometimes people are in need and people will walk/ride by all day and not even offer help when they know that if that was us them that position, they'd want someone to offer help.