Better late than never...I guess.

Just as I was sitting down to write this I was informed by my boss that I “may be called into a meeting here in a few minutes” so you’ll have to forgive me if this post ends up a little scattered. It wasn’t going to be the most beautiful piece of literature the western world has ever seen to begin with but now I’ll be happy if I can actually get this thing out and finished before it’s time to head home for the day (I'm like psychic or something). Between catching up on work after a four day weekend and being dead ass tired because of a four day weekend there’s hardly been time to even think about what I should write about this week, much less actually write it. As a result of this, today’s post will be a collection of random thoughts/personal accounts from the last week or so.

As has been mentioned in this space, I recently attended a couple of concerts. The first of which was The Roots and Common at the House of Blues in Orlando. As always, it was a fantastic show. I was a little worried about the general energy level of everyone involved b/c they were all coming off of two straight shows at Radio City Music Hall which have already earned legendary status. When you’re talking about a Roots live show, that is saying something. Alas, I had nothing to fear at all. The show was a solid 3 hours of great music. The Roots started off and played for about an hour, eventually giving way to Common who went through a good chunk of BE before moving through his catalog of songs with crowd favorites like I Used to Love H.E.R., The Light, Resurrection and many others. Slowly, members of The Roots trickled back on stage to collaborate with Common on some tracks that they’ve done together in the past. After this, ?uestlove and Co. jumped right back into things by playing for another hour or so, eventually closing up the HOB at right around 2 am. The show was great and I had a fantastic view that also happened to be about 10 feet from the bar. As always, The Roots were well worth the price of admission. Oh yeah, the concert was sponsored by Kool cigarettes. Because of this, the entire venue was plastered with Kool logos and such. I had a silent chuckle about this on numerous occasions.

The second show I attended was in Orlando as well, at a small venue in downtown called The Social. The Social is an intimate venue that holds around 500 people. On this night, it was packed to capacity. People Under the Stairs were playing there first ever show in Orlando and the locals certainly came out to lend their support. The show was fantastic and PUTS played all of the songs that both Vitas and I were hoping for. Unfortunately these dudes must’ve had a plane to catch or something because they finished up their set at 12:30 am. I’ve been to at least 20 shows at The Social and never before had I seen one end this early before 2 am. Nevertheless, it was a good show and the encore even featured my favorite PUTS song of all time, San Francisco Knights. Unfortunately, with the show ending so early, this allowed far too much time for me and my compatriots to get into trouble in the streets of downtown Orlando. Mind you, we’re not talking Chris Henry in Orlando trouble here, but trouble nonetheless. Before the night was said and done, we’d met up with one of Berto’s friends at Berto’s office in downtown Orlando and managed to run up much heftier bar tab than was necessary.

As you may have guessed by now, the first part of the post was written last Thursday afternoon. I would’ve gotten it up last Friday if I had been in the office at all. Instead, I spent most of my day in Daytona Beach at a meeting. I try and make it a rule to stay out of Daytona for anything other than bachelor parties and Black College Reunion but this was an unavoidable commitment. On the bright side, I was home and done with my day/week by about 4.

Things have really been humming since then as a result of both Thursday and Friday’s meetings so I don’t have a tremendous amount to add today as most of the subjects that I had planned to take on are now horribly out of date or overdone by other bloggers and/or media members. So you’ll have to forgive me but I won’t being waxing philosophically on the criminal genius of AJ Nicholson and Fred Rouse (good thing you brought your embroidered receiving gloves to guard against fingerprints Fred) or the Conference Finals (since they’re, you know, over) or even Dirk’s ascension into the upper reaches of NBA stardom. However, I do have a few things to say:

- I’m not as down on Sopranos as most seem to have been this season but even I was disappointed in the lackluster season finale on Sunday (aside from seeing AJ’s hot girlfriend nekkid). In fact, the whimper in which Sopranos went out with only further served to whet my appetite for the new season of Deadwood because if we know anything about Deadwood, it’s that it will consistently bring the heat with murder, sex and other types of assorted debauchery. I’d be ten times more geeked for the season 3 to kick off it I hadn’t about the series' cancellation last week. Fuck. Now I want to murder somebody. Wait, now that I checked the link for this post it seems as if some sort of happy medium has been reached. It's not a foull season but it should keep me out of jail.

- Speaking of murder, I’m as excited about the return of Hubie Brown on Thursday as I am about any of the individual combatants involved in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Nothing, and I mean nothing, makes me smile like hearing Hubie say things like, “Jason Terry is murder on that pull-up jumper going to his right.” Seriously, listen for it. I first noticed Hubie's proclivity for using the word murder during last year’s Finals and it’s been my favorite running subplot in ABC broadcasts ever since.

- ABC has actually done a pretty respectable job during the playoffs aside from the continued insistence on using that camera on a string thing that zooms all over the court. It makes me dizzy. Please stop. With that said, there is one thing that is bothering me. What’s with all the damn Tom Petty? I have no problem with the use of Runnin Down a Dream as it feels fairly appropriate and is surely a big hit with over 35 white folks. However, why in the hell is it necessary to use Tom Petty songs exclusively for all playoff related montages? Listen, everybody loves a montage. You gotta have a montage. That much we all know. I’m just having some trouble figuring out why ABC couldn’t have bought the rights to a couple of other songs for the 2006 playoffs. The playoffs last 2 months, give us damn variety already. Actually, I should probably just be happy that ABC didn’t hire out the Black Eyed Peas again.

- Finally, as further proof that I'm a certifiably awful dude I present you with this story from Saturday night. I met some of my friends up at the bar around 5:30 or so for some drinks and dinner. The plan was to grab some food and then chill out for awhile at somebody's house before heading out for the evening. Things did not go as planned. As the drinks began to flow more frequently, a number of our other friends found their way to the bar. My old roomate Federico was even forced to meet me at the bar as I hadn't yet finished my boozing by the time he made his way into town. Eventually, around 11:30, I finally manged to get myself extricated from the bar. As you can probably imagine, I had a significant buzz at this point. Federico had come into town to conduct some business with my friend Sammy so we decided to take care of that before going back out. So Sammy, Fed, Nick, Sammy's girlfriend Rachel and Rachel's friend (whose name escapes me) all made our way back to Sammy's house. Once there, our collective buzz was heightened, significantly. It was at this point that Rachel's friend took it upon herself to say something that I perceived to be an attack on my character (whether it actually was is still up for debate). Often times I would let something like this go without so much as a passing glance. This was not one of those times. Upon hearing her comment I quickly turned to her and said flatly, "Whatever size 10." After she picked up her jaw off the floor and Nick and Fed stopped pissing themselves she eventually said, "Umm...what did you just say to me?". To which I respnded, "You heard me 10."

I'm Mark...nice to meet you.