swingchickie | i'm the epitome of public enemy

the concert in NYC last night was certainly interesting. the whole trip got off to an iffy start when C was 2 hours late -- one of my biggest pet peeves in the entire world is when a person is chronically late and doesn't tell you they're running behind... and C didn't call me until he was already 45 minutes late, to say he had just gotten in the car to come over. add that to my stress from the house and dealing with my uncle, and i was absolutely seething by the time he got here. we talked it out a bit and then headed up to NY to grab dinner and see the show.

so, the concert. basically, VH1 is doing a reality show similar to "gene simmons' rock school", where ice-T takes a bunch of prep school kids and teaches them how to rap and scratch. this concert was the finale, these 8 kids performing in a packed club full of people to show what they've done over 6 weeks. and the way to get a crowd in? entice them with a public enemy concert after. the problem is, when you bring in several hundred public enemy fans, you're not going to get the type of crowd that is going to be gentle and supportive of a bunch of rich kids trying to be street. so these poor 12- and 13-year old kids were up on stage rapping and scratching and dancing, and they weren't very good (okay, all but one of them were awful)... and instead of cheering them on for being brave, the crowd booed the hell out of them. it was almost 15 minutes of booing kid after kid. it was awful to witness... the one kid who was trying to freestyle got totally flustered and looked like he was going to cry.

i now have a massive respect for ice-T though... at the end of the kids' performance, he came out on stage and BLASTED the people in the pit for their behavior. "you think you're so gangsta, pickin' on a bunch of KIDS??? that's not gangsta. that's gone when there's KIDS and their PARENTS in here!!!!" and he proceeded to spend the next 5 minutes just red-faced railing on what pussies they were for picking on these poor kids, and what body part of his they could suck for being such assholes, and that public enemy didn't want them at the concert if that's the kind of people they were. it was glorious. i absolutely LOVE ice-T now. the only thing i wonder though, is how VH1 is going to salvage that taping. there is going to have to be a LOT of editing and dubbing to make that performance look good and well-received. eek.

the public enemy show after was good, the place went totally crazy for 2 hours and flavor flav, for all of his weirdness, is a damn good performer. C turned into a screaming fangirly 12-year-old and shouted out every word to every song. hee. the thing that struck me (and not necessarily in a bad way) was how un-polished the whole thing was... random people hanging out on stage not doing anything, bringing up people they knew in the audience to chat while the performance was going on, stopping songs in the middle to just get the crowd to do the whole "say yeah!..." "YEAH!..." thing. talking a lot about random stuff, at length, in between songs. it was like watching a bunch of high school kids in a band in their first gig at a friend's backyard party. except that during the actual songs, they just NAILED it. it was a hoot.

so, back to the non-rap-world now... going in the office late today and then dinner with dad. and at some point this afternoon, i will find out if i got the house. eeeeeeee!