Getting to Know You…..

Now that you’re singing that song in your head, I will tell you that The Professor and I went to Busboys & Poets for breakfast yesterday, which is probably my favorite thing to do on a Saturday morning besides a pilgrimmage to Waffle House… although, to be honest, B & P has better grits, as sacriligious as that statement might be.

I found a Waffle House in Maryland so that I don’t have to go to BFE Virginia anymore… it was BFE Virginia coming from Alexandria, and from Silver Spring, you have to add an additional half hour to THAT. Plus, I don’t have a Z-tag for the toll road, which makes going to the Maryland location all the more irresistable. That being said, there’s not a book store at Waffle House, and if there was, I would be afraid of the contents. I might buy “The History of Waffles Abridged,” but that’s about it.

After The Professor and I finished breakfast, we were both tired and ready for a nap, so we went our separate ways. I took a nap, and then went to Best Buy, where I bought a cheap Blu-Ray player because I couldn’t stand not having Deadpool on disc… I could have just downloaded the movie, but I wanted all the extras and commentary. If you haven’t seen Deadpool, be forewarned that it is comically violent, and one of the funniest movies I’ve seen pretty much ever…. from the opening credits on. Plus, the Blu-Ray is wi-fi capable, so I get my laptop back… although let’s not get stupid. The Blu-ray also came with the DVD, so I copied it to my hard drive, anyway. It doesn’t take up that much space, and it’s the kind of movie that I need to be able to pull out when my day is turning into a shitshow.

…which reminds me of my favorite stupid joke. What do you call an animal park with only one dog? A Shi-Tzu.

Because The Professor and I didn’t get to spend much time talking, we’re getting together again tonight, just not too late because it’s a school night. I need to be in bed relatively early, because I stayed up way too late last night. Encoding Deadpool took almost an hour, then watching it took another two, then reading Hamilton took up another four. Yes, I am now on the Hamilton bandwagon, and there are so many things I never knew about him. He had such a garbage dump of a childhood that it’s amazing he was able to work through any of it, much less become the American statesman that he became later in life. I suppose that’s because he was truly a strident, there’s no crying in baseball kind of personality, where as I would still be hiding under my bed.

Reading Hamilton is kind of like the feeling I get when I think about going to HSPVA. Hamilton and the kids I went to school with are doing amazing things (Beyonce, Jason Moran, Justin Furstenfeld, Robert Glasper, Mireille Enos, etc.) and I have trouble finding my car at the mall. I mean, Hamilton helped write The Federalist Papers when he was younger than I am now.

Speaking of Beyonce, she actually left HSPVA after a year claiming that she didn’t need to be classically trained. I still think it worked out okay for her.

For those of you who don’t have any Jason Moran albums, get some. He was a senior when I was a freshman, and he was a jazz genius THEN. Now, he’s just as much of a legend as Wynton Marsalis, John Coltrane, Buddy Rich, et al. He’s a pianist, and one of the most sought after in New York. My favorite album that I listen to over and over is called “Ten,” but there are many more that are just as good. But the other albums do not have my favorite track, “RFK in the Land of Apartheid.” Sometimes when I’m writing, I just put it on repeat.

But if we’re going to talk about Houston artists, I have to tell a funny story about myself. We just got a new employee at DSI, and his name just happens to be Mike Jones. So I’m sitting next to one of my coworkers going, “do you know how hard it is not to just run up to him and yell, “MIKE JONES! 281-330-8004!” And said coworker goes, “you know he can hear you, right?” So I look at Mike and say, “I been sittin’ on that one for a WHILE.” #facepalm #dumbassattack

He told me that he gets it all the time… and laughed, thank God. I was really impressed, because I thought that Mike was obscure, but apparently both his album and the Chopped & Screwed remix made it all the way to DC.

I know that as a female, I should be offended by rap most of the time. But how can a writer ignore rap? It tells a story.

Just. Like. Me.