Wale - Uptown Roamers

Wale may very well be the first rapper to come out of D.C. and have a significant level of success. At least, the first that I know of. He is a good rapper but nowadays it seems like it takes more than just being able to rap well in order to garner success. Regardless of whether he makes it in the industry or not, I appreciate the fact that he made a song about his urrea area. Which also happens to be the area where I grew up, so I'm feeling it from that perspective. Good luck to Wale!


Bonus coverage: Wale (feat. Bun B) - Go Mode



Am I the only person who finds it interesting that only singers seem to make it out of D.C. (or the D.C. area) and attain mainstream success? And aside from that producers. For example, Ginuwine, Raheem Devaughn, J.Holiday, Mya, Chink Santana, and Rich Harrison. There are probably others I am forgetting. But no rappers that I can think of. Granted, I now live in BodyMore so I'm not really aware of the home-grown rappers in D.C. that there may have been over the past few years, but Wale seems like the first rapper out of D.C. that I have heard of through the same media outlets (magazines, MTV, blogs, etc.) as other mainstream artists. And he's also the only rapper from D.C. that seems to have any buzz whatsoever.

But the grind that Raheem Devaughn has been on for the last several years and the success and respect he's now getting should be an inspiration to all the musical artists coming out of the Chocolate City. Is he the most talented artist to come out of the D.C. area in the last 5 years or so? If there are others, please let me know.

Gimme Gimme Gimme that Groupie Love!

"See how things change at first they didnt want me now they want me/
See a ni**a gettin paid they wanna push up on me/
You see these hoes chasing a ni**a/
Have em in a hotel casing a ni**a/
Treat me like a lollypop like me baby/"

-- Groupie Love - G Unit

Today as a complete coincidence - and a few days after my last post about Plies' search for a Bust It Baby (again, WTF is that?) - I got an email via my membership to the UrbanFlavorz.com listserv. And an email that I read one paragraph of and thought was a complete joke/hoax, actually turned out to be a very real thing.

That thing would be Baller Alert. Here's the gist...

"a [text-messaging] service that informs it's users of when Professional Ball Players, Actors, or other Entertainers have arrived into parties. "

Club owners are allowed to promote free on the website with some other agreement between the owners of the website and club owners that "can't be revealed". I assume this means that there's some sort of kickback amount the website owners get through some sort of agreement between the club owner and the folks at Baller Alert. Interesting.

I actually think that from a business perspective this is a pretty good idea. People will always want to be at the clubs where the "stars be partying" and there will always be groupies who are extra pressed to be in the aura/area of famous people. And promoters and club owners win if they can get the celebs to come through and also work out a advertisement deal with the folks at Baller Alert. Again, great idea.

The even more intelligent aspect of Baller Alert is that it will not only alert women of men the ballin' males that enter a party, but men can sign-up as well for alerts of when the hot ladies come through a party. Yep fellas, some of you are groupies too! Don't front! LOL.

The downside to this whole concept is that in the end it's going to help further the materialistic, gold-digger mentality that some women have nowadays and can't grow/mature out of. And this service will definitely facilitate the "gimme that hoodrat to go" possibility in a lot of clubs across the country. We all know one or two gold-diggin', vain, materialistic chicks who are just out looking for guys with money to finance their activities for the evening. In a lot of cases, they don't need an actual celebrity, just someone who is willing to trick give his dough away all night. Not to say that these women are always taking advantage of a guy because sometimes men seek out women just to have attention/company and are more than willing to trick dish-out a little dough at the bar for just that reason.

In the end, I think this is a pretty shrewd business move and I am surprised no one had already thought of it and took it to this level.

Anecdotally, "Ballers w/Randoms..."

God I hope this does not air on television!

"I want a bust it baby, don’t want no bourgeoisie bytch!"

And the Low Self Esteem award goes to...



SMH...Oh Lord. At least he won't have to worry one bit about these chicks being bourgeoisie. They're ready to be his mule, follow his orders, and do all types of reckless shyt for him. This just took ride or die chick to an even more ridiculous level.

Sisters, ladies, women... Seriously, YOU GOT TO DO BETTER! The camera IS on ladies! Jeez! But I guess that's when you feel obligated to put on a show.

Plies, you are short homie. All these country chicks in this video and only one half-decent looking girl. And then she went and jacked that money by pulling up her daggon dress like a loose-azz scrumpet! WTF?!?!

The video was actually more sad than anything else. Plies, you got slim pickins homie! Good luck at the clinic.

Why you would want a Bust It Baby one of those chicks at all is beyond me. I'd take a siddidy chick over that bowlshyt any day! Plies has lowered expectations I guess. Shyt, I hope. If that's the highest he's set his expectations...SMH.

You know I KEEP THAT WHITE GIRL!

From what I understand, this is old but it's definitely new to me. It's quite possibly one of the funniest videos I've seen in a LONG, LONG time!

Ladies, your Vagina is MAGIC!!!



Did she say "glitter, sprinkles, and rainbow fluff"? LOL! Hold up, she said "orgasmaTASTIC" too! Touché LOL.

Aside from that, I have to say that my favorite lines are:

• If you wanna see the magic within, then rub it with your one and let the magic begin
• Turn off the lights now and take off your pants 'cuz you're about to learn what happens when there's pu$$y and chance
• The mystery is simple, it involves your dyck!

What's really funny is when she shoves her hands down her pants toward the end of the video and then wipes it across her face and screams: "IT'S MAGIC!"

Not to mention at the end how she rages about how her pu$$y is more magical than everyone else's! Classic! The pictures of female genitalia that are going on in the background while the video is playing are hilarious too! LMAO!

Thanks for the laugh, Bol.

WebNERD Alert: Time to Celebrate!

This month marks the 10 year anniversary of XML! Congratulations! I remember back around 2001 when I first started learning about XML and the guy I was working for (as an intern) at the Department of the Interior told me, "Oh, you have an XML book. Nice! You learn that stuff and you'll never have to worry about being employed."

Back then I didn't fully understand just how important XML was and would become or that I was starting to learn something that I'd eventually use and/or mention every day in my current position. Today, XML is a part of my everyday worklife and sometimes my non-worklife. From making decisions on marking up scholarly content to thinking about new data models in which to capture the details about my music collection. XML has many wide-reaching applications and is used to serve a lot of our everyday needs (RSS or Atom anyone?), but most of us would never know unless we were a part of the inner-workings of our/an organization's technical endeavors.

In the end I say all this to say, Happy Anniversary XML! And also, thanks for helping me stay employed ;-)

In addition to this month being the 10th anniversary of eXtensible Markup Language, this week is also National Engineers Week (shot out to NSBE)! A lot of you know that I was an aspiring engineer in college and have an engineering degree. But if you know that you probably also know that I didn't really enjoy studying engineering very much and ended up becoming a wannabe web nerd after I graduated. And that's pretty much where I stand now. LOL.

Nevertheless, I have a TON of respect for engineers because of what I endured went through in college and part of me is still an engineer in the sense of how I try to approach and solve problems (at least I think so). So even though I'm no longer an engineer I'd like to say kudos to my engineer friends (Daneger, ChokolatSoda, KaishaAdia, LeVar, Sei What, etc.) and Happy Engineer's Week!

PS - LawrenOrder too! ;-)

Superman that H*!

... But make sure you actually dunk the ball!


The last time I checked this was a DUNK contest. After the dunk you've got Magic Johnson talking about how "he was up so high he threw it through!". Ummmm, Magic... Yes, he was up high. But not sooooo high that he was forced to throw it in. Let's relax a bit and be real. That wasn't a dunk. It was entertaining, interesting, had a huge "wow" factor, but in the end, it wasn't a dunk.

I think that dunk was one of the most over-reacted-to dunks of all the times. Yes, he had on a cape and yes, he seemed to be a towering figure in the "sky", but in the end, I can't call that a dunk. In fact, I did that at least 5 or 6 times when I was younger trying to learn how to dunk. I can't take anything away from him as an entertainer because he put on a fantastic show (just like last year) and had some great dunks (superman notwithstanding), but I don't think that "dunk" was that good to get the reaction(s) it did. I think his other dunks were better.

Speaking of dunks, I realized during TNT's recap of dunk contests of the past, that I think that Vince Carter has the best dunk of all the times in a dunk contest. I never really thought about this particular dunk and how difficult it had to be to pull-off until this weekend. Just take a look (and listen to the reactions)....



The degree of difficulty on that is ridiculous. Look at how he had to cuff the ball just so the ball didn't fly out of his hand! He spun the opposite way a right-handed person would spin and then threw the windmill across his body into the rim. CRAZY! The reverse 360 windmill is a dunk I still have NOT seen anyone do or even attempt since then. Think about that! Of course I could be wrong but even if one or two people have tried or done the dunk think about this. The great dunks (the between the legs everyone wants to do nowadays, the foul line a la Jordan, etc.) get emulated and done over and over again. How many times have we seen someone (Jason Richardson, Andre I., Gerald Green, Vince Carter, etc.) try that between the legs dunk? How many times has someone tried to dunk from the foul line? I have not seen anyone even try Vince's windmill 360! And that was 8 years ago! If you have, please let me know. And if you disagree with me in that Vince's dunk is the best ever, please send me the dunk you think is the best dunk contest dunk ever.

Moving on, Gerald Green got robbed only getting a 46 for the dunk below as well as the dunk he did with no shoes on. He didn't put on a better show than Dwight but he definitely had dunks that were just as creative and difficult.


Overall, I thought the dunk contest was pretty good. Dwight Howard's creativity and energy made the contest great to watch!

Ya boy will be IN THE BUILDING!

Sunday, April 6...Heart of the City Tour!


Next up...

VIDEO: Flashing Lights

This isn't quite how I expected this video to play out but nevertheless, I enjoyed it for reasons you probably will understand after you watch it and I am sure it won't take you long to figure out why ;-)



In an effort to get this post up quick I will update with my comments later. But again, I definitely liked it ;-)

Props to Eskay for the video.

The first thing I will say is that this video is totally underwhelming. This is easily my favorite song on the Graduation CD and I was expecting Kanye to really go over-the-top (if anything) on this video. But that is not the case. This video does scream "I never thought you'd take it this far" but aside from that, it's a stretch to say that the video really coincides with the content of the song. I definitely expected him to do a scene for each verse of the song that matched that verse's focus. Obviously, Kanye Tuda was thinking a bit differently.

But he must have known that people like me would be thinking "this is it" and in order to make up for that he put one helluva lingerie-wearing chick in the video to make me less upset about it all.

Touché Kanye! Touché!

But aside from Ms. Thickness in the video, there's not really much to enjoy or love about it. Speaking from an "interesting video" perspective, I'd rather watch...


Update: Just ran across Bol's review of the video and as usual, it's hilarious!

Update 2:Let the star of the video give you her perspective.

Miscellaneous Randomness

A book I might read...

...Since I don't do that all-too-often


I just got the book called "Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War". My employer publishes the book so I got a deal on it. I thought it sounded interesting enough to put on the bookshelf in my living room with the rest of the books I have never read and that I got from my job for da low (hehe). I think I've read like two books out of the 20 or so in my living room. Oh well.

Anyway, I might actually read this one (at some point) because it made me think of one of my favorite movies of all the times, Glory.

If you haven't seen it, Glory is a great movie about a black military company during the Civil War. Denzel Washington and Ferris Bueller Matthew Broderick star in the film. Denzel does his thing as you'd expect. Morgan Freeman also plays a very prominent role in this film as well. It's definitely a movie worth 2 hours of your time.

---

Nigger: The Movie

I can only imagine what a move entitled "Nigger: The Movie" is going to be like.



Man I hope this is a joke. I know this isn't a joke though.

---

Me being ignorant



At work on Ash Wednesday...

Me: Hey [co-worker], how are you?
CW: Fine, and you?
Me: I'm fine. Do you know that you have a black spot on your forehead?

[She had to be thinking I was an ignorant, uninformed heathen at this point...]

CW: Well yes, it's Ash Wednesday and Catholics...

[Feeling completely ignorant, dumb, and uninformed...]

Me: Oh, I'm sorry.

[At this point I'm thinking, "I guess this makes us even since she asked me once why Black people wear durags." LOL]

Don't ask me why I have never seen someone with lenten ashes on their forehead on Ash Wed. before. I just haven't. Sad, I know.

---

Fantasia expressing herself


Seriously, when is she just going to change her name to TataLicious?

SERIOUSLY!

MissInfo has an interesting post on Fantizzle's new hairdo.

---

I'm feeling CURTIS on this one

"If I die today or tomorrow I got a chance to see something. I got a chance to feel things...So in so many ways, my life is already exceeded my expectations." --50 Cent



Well at least we know what he got a chance to feel. LOL.

On a more serious note, 50 made this statement in the context of him going back to Queens where it's alleged that he can't go into certain areas because of his beef with Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff. But that's not really why I feel him on that statement because fortunately, I don't have a problem with anyone to the point where I can't go back to my old neighborhood or any other neighborhood. Fortunately.

But from the perspective of me feeling so blessed to have been able to travel to the places I've traveled to and seen the things I've seen so far in life, I agree with Half-Dollar's statement. Well, the first half anyway. If I die today or tomorrow, I got a chance to see something. But my expectations for my life have yet to be reached. I guess I didn't set my bar as low as 50 even though we probably came from similar areas. Thank God for my parents and grandparents instilling something in me that was more than just a whim and a prayer.

Vacation '08: Let the pictures talk...SPEECH!

This is just round 1 (Miami) of several (Key West, Carnival Liberty pics, Grand Cayman Island, Ocho Rios)

As noted here before, I went on vacation a couple weeks ago. Now that I've had the time to get back home and into the swing of things (which include planning another trip, viewing lots of great vacation photos, and oh yeah, work), I've finally found the time to share some of the memories.

This vacation was hands-down one of the best 3 I've ever been on. We had a FANTASTIC time and I couldn't have asked for better people, weather, or experiences. We started out in Miami so I think I'll keep this post confined to what we did in Miami. But rather than type up a boring-azz narrative that no one (who was not there) can appreciate, I think I'll let the pictures do the talking. Well, pictures and captions (LOL).

From there, I'll give the recap of the entire cruise from the ship to Key West to Grand Cayman Island to Ocho Rios, and back home (which was an experience all by itself). Each part of the cruise with a dedicated blogpost. But without further blabber, here are some of the pictures from our time in Miami...

The first thing I do when I get to South Beach is hit Fat Tuesdays. Zuri and KC went along with Dane and I and some rowdy azz folks playing pool provided us with hilarious entertainment.


Later on that night we all went to Nikki Beach for dinner. Nikki Beach is a very nice spot to eat. But for some reason there were hardly any people there aside from us. The food was just average but it was a great experience.





After Nikki Beach, we went upstairs to Nikki Club. It was all-white on the inside (no pun intended by the way) and there were lots of ladies (and a few gents) there but for some reason this place had the aura of a place where rich guys take their "escorts". It just wasn't my type of crowd.


Woo, Craig, and Fool missed their flight to Miami so by the time we finished dinner, walked past Privé, and tried to get into a party at The 5th (which looked like it was probably going to be off the chain), they had finally made it to South Beach. So we ended up meeting at a bar on Ocean Drive for drinks. Needless to say, the fellas got HAMMERED! LOL. Cigars, rum & coke, and Patron shots. The bartender (to the right in the pic below) was serving up free shots of Patron during their late night Happy Hour. I am so glad we didn't have to drive home afterward.


The next day when we got up, I was dead-set on hitting the beach. I had my Nerf football ready and I'd done like 6 billion push-ups the day before. I was READY TO GO! That's probably why Woo has that look on his face in the picture below.




Woo, Zuri, KC and I all headed to the beach. It turned out that me and Woo got in the water while the ladies chilled out in the beach chairs.



While Woo and I were in the water playing football, Fool, Craig, Dane, and a bunch of KC's friends came to the beach. We all ended up leaving and heading to a restaurant to get lunch. After lunch, it was Wet Willie's...






Later on that night before we headed out for the evening, we hit another bar/restaurant. This was pretty much just our pre-gaming for the rest of the night.








After pregaming, we all went back to our respective hotels, got dressed, and got ready to hit (...pause...) Diamonds strip club (...pause...) and then some spot called DREAM.




The rest of the night from this point was just simply fun, fun, fun! Nothing too crazy, but fun. This was our last night in Miami before we left for the cruise and we spent it partying the night away. It was so much fun and unlike last year, I didn't lose my camera while we were in Miami. LOL.

Poli-Tricks: Billary and O'Drama

If you didn't read the picture above...Please take a quick second to read it!

(FYI...Billary = Hillary Clinton; O'Drama = Barack Obama.)

I haven't really talked that much about the Democratic primary race but I've been keeping up half-azzed for a while now. Glancing at the news ticker while at the gym counts as such, right? Then again, I've checked out a couple debates, videos, websites, etc. so I think that's good enough. With that said, unless there's a serious change in vision, stances, and the all important swag factor (Barack has swag, you gotta admit) between now and the Maryland primary (Feb. 12), my vote will remain in the O'Drama camp.

I've known for some time now that I am going to vote for Barack. Not because he's Tiger Woods style Black (although that makes it sweeter), but because I agree with him just about 100%. Pull the troops out of Iraq. Provide affordable healthcare for all Americans. Decrease taxes for the middle-class. So on and so forth.

As a matter of fact, I've been on the O'Drama bandwagon since way back as can be seen here, here, and in my open letter to O'Drama. I even managed to include Barack and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the same blogpost. (In the words of your favorite cRapper, Ahmadinejad is a "PROBLEM"!) Granted, some of my feelings have changed since I first started supporting and learning about Barack Obama. But most if not all have changed for the better as I've become a bit more engaged and started to learn more about the political process (still don't really understand this whole delegate count thing though).

The reason I call Hillary, Billary, is simple. When you think of Hillary you think of Bill. For some reason, a lot of young Democrats associate Bill Clinton with great presidential tenure. As in, he was a good president. I guess I can't complain too much about his tenure as president. The economy was doing well, negros had jobs (not that they don't normally have jobs, but it just seemed like more of us had jobs), and bamas was getting head in the oval office and God knows where else. The latter of which is pretty much Bill's legacy in my mind. He got head in the Oval Office.

I didn't understand politics as much as I do now, back then. Granted, I still feel like there's tons of stuff I don't know or understand (re: delegate counts), but I'm learning. But as far as Hillary goes, I am not sure I'm ready to give her the credit she seems to want to be given for being the First Lady. I'm sure she played a significant role during Bill's tenure in some way, but how much was he really telling her or asking from her when the man was getting brain at the White House? Seriously. Don't get me wrong, Hillary is sharp in her own right. Add Bill to that and together they're the sharpest political couple out there. But for those of you who are thinking that Hillary in office means that Bill's back, don't be so sure. At least, I wouldn't be.

As for Barack, I call him O'Drama because I heard DJ Drama say "you can call me Barack O'Drama" on a mixtape a minute ago. LOL. I'm not afraid to admit that there's really no point to that one. But if he wins the primary and gets into office, there will inevitably be some drama. I can only imagine the background checking that media outlets and the government will end up doing if Barack makes it into office. Regardless of what may potentially happen though, I don't think anyone can argue that Barack isn't the most intrigiung, captivating, and charismatic candidate across both parties. He's the only candidate that makes you feel like you're a part of something larger than just an election (besides maybe Ron Pizzy). You're a part of a change that's needed in order for our country to move in a positive direction. And that's a big part of the reason why I am voting for him. Not because he's Black and not because he's a Democrat. Simply because I believe that his vision coincides with what we need as a country. And that's change... CHANGE we can believe in.

...Hello? You still there? WAKE UP!

Word of the Day: Elucidating

First off, if any of you already know what this word means, kudos to you. LOL. I would however, like to know when you first learned of and subsequently used this word. Just out of curiosity.

Elucidating is the word of the day today because my co-worker just dropped me an email using this word in the following way...

"[Sam] said he was going to try to find out [some information] in his meeting with [Linda], to see if she could show him, but it wasn't very... elucidating."

...Naturally, I was simultaneously confused, enthralled, and flabbergasted. LOL. Confused because I'd never heard the word before. Enthralled and flabbergasted because I knew this is a word I'd now begin to use. Yet-and-still I was completely sure there was a more simple term to use for whatever point she was trying to make (LOL). But I obviously need to get my vocab game up so I embraced this as an opportunity to learn a new word.

I looked it up (online of course) and the definition of elucidating is:

"To make clear or plain, especially by explanation; clarify."

Makes sense considering the context. But in retrospect, why not just say "helpful". Elucidate that, please.

This is why they call it HAPPY Hour

You know how some of your co-workers tell you casually during the day they're going to Happy Hour on Friday, right? You've got those co-workers that you know are going to Happy Hour to sit around, chat, and blow off some steam after the work day is done. But not in a wild, partying type of way. The sit, chat, and have a drink and go home type of way.

Then you've got those co-workers that you think "I know this fool is going to act an d@mn fool after work when he gets to that Happy Hour." I'd like to think that I fall somewhere in-between those two categories when I tell my co-workers, "I'm going to D.C. tonight to hit a Happy Hour!" But regardless of what I'd like to think, I'm sure that after seeing some of my pictures from parties at my old apartment or vacations, they're probably thinking the latter of those two statements above.

And I have to admit, this past Friday was definitely more on the wild side. All in good fun though. LOL. Let me give a little background. On the cruise I went on in Jan. (yes, I'm going to do a post on the cruise) there were some people I met that live in the D.C. area but said they didn't really go out that much. So Woo and I decided to offer up some places that we thought would be cool. Because we obviously only know about cool places to go (uh...yeah, right). Turns out that when we got back home that conversation/discussion turned into everyone wanting to get-together and go out. So we decided to go to POSH but that didn't pan out so after one hell of an assist (read: recommendation) from K.C., we decided to go to Park @ Fourteenth. I'd never been before and the website looked nice so I figured it was worth a shot. Boy, was it! Well for the most part anyway...

Great food...CHECK!
Beautiful people...CHECK!
Nice atmosphere and furnishing...CHECK!
Music...Ehhh, not so much!

Nevertheless, I still had one of the most fun and memorable Happy Hour experiences I've had in a while. My man L even called me and said he'd "never seen [me] as happy as [I] was Friday". Wow! Then again, he's never gone to Miami with me. LOL. But Friday night was so much fun there's no way I could not share it with everybody. Enjoy!

L and ChokolatSoda, two of my best friends from college



Me, L, and Andy. I just met Andy that night and this guy is hilarious!



See what I mean?



I look so drunk in this picture. I wasn't (at this point, LOL), but the cabernet was mean and vicious!



My favorite picture so far.



Travelitis...Info on the next cruise info is coming soon people!



Cute.



Finally Woo doesn't blink his eyes in the picture. About time!



This was above the toilet in the bathroom. Am I the only person who finds it funny that this particular quote is in the bathroom at a nightspot? Maybe I just have a dirty mind. Okay, I'm sure I have a dirty mind (at times). LOL.