from lala land to the yay area

Yet, another shameless self plug. If you are in the LA area, I would like to invite you to a dope open mic venue called Tuesday Nights Cafe. Yours truly is going to attempt to the realm of spoken word (yep, you heard right. 20 mins of new shit. brand spakin' new pieces. "what the fuck do you think you are doing?" you may say. i shall answer "i have no idea but come see. should be fun.) aaaaaaand, playwright and roomie, melinda corazon foley is featuring as well. aaaaaaaaaand umar rasheed aka frohawk two-feathers (see previous blog) will live paint. not enough? well what about my the homies i went to college with, room to improv. dude, just go okay?With that said, on with the story...


so melinda ante'ed up from being a spoke word artist to taking her art into theater. she wrote her second script and it got accepted to the Hip Hop Theater Festival in San Francisco. so this meant.... ROAD TRIP!!! george, one of the actors, and mark, the director rolled up with us.



we headed out early in the afternoon. i managed to pack lightly. well, sorta. to me, that was light. one overnight, a big purse, backpack and digital video camera? yea, that is light. anyways, we headed out to north hollywood to pick up the boys. (side note: at some random north hollywood residential street, we bumped into nyc's ewok one. hella random. he was out here to work and he just grabbed food and was headed back to the crib where he was staying at."

once we picked up the boys, we headed up north...




we climbed into george's hybrid civic. (yea, bitch! HYBRID!) according to the news, we were going to go thru a storm. i said a prayer for safe travels and instead, we got a beautiful view of the central cali. the hills resembled sleeping lions to mark.





we entered the bay bridge at about 10pm. at the lobby of the hotel, was a poster of the hip hop theater festival. it was a nice greeting. we dropped off our stuff and decided to go out for drinks.






of course, i couldn't NOT check my emails. that is the internet station in the lobby. to the right, cut off, was alex from the hip hop theater committee.


in the morning, george,melinda, and i headed out for breakfast and last minute errands before rehearsals. we ended at this dope spot in the castro district called baghdad cafe. amaaaaazing cajun catfish breakfast and their soy lattes are on point.



so we get to the brava theater and started rehearsals. holy shit. we only had two hours of rehearsal time. and what sucked is that some of the actors didn't get the script till that day. so basically, some people we cold reading. rehearsal we slightly tense but whatever. i had fun.


afterwards, we took a break and walked a few blocks to george's favorite taqueria. it used to be the same spot he went as a child. we could have went to any other place but the majority of the cast decided to kick it together and share the nostalgia







(by the way,its hella fucking early in the morning right now. i apologize for anything incoherentness. whoa, i think i made up a term.)

ok, so at 840pm we did the reading. let's fast forward. there were good parts and there were bad parts.mainly an audience of heckling highschool students who we have called "the peanut gallery." my thing is this, sure you want to expose the youth to theater, but with out the proper workshopping and introduction by their facilitators, these kids won't know the proper etiquette to fully listen and enjoy the performance. and with melinda's script covering adult issues such as debt, sex, sexual harrassment, violence, these kids didn't know how to handle it. they were giggling at every cuss word. it was completely unexpected. i have worked with youth but this was a rowdy bunch.

after the show, we decided that we had enough immaturity that we decided to hang out doing adult stuff. mark and george slept early cuz the wanted to leave early early in the morning. oh man.






i dunno what happened here but someone's boob got touched accidently.












the ride home was bittersweet. i wasn't ready to leave yet but i always know the bay will always be there. jill scott, pat benetar, and angie stone.. sweet... bitter- justin timberlake. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!! hasn't been leland texting me to keep me busy, i would have gone nuts!!!

dirty bitches

First and foremost, a shameless self plug. If you are in the SF area, I would like to invite you to a play reading that I am in for the Hip Hop Theater Festival. We are scheduled to go on Tuesday, May 10 at 8pm. Let me know whats good in the Yay Area. (and for all of you homies up there, call my celly! I am only there for three days.) I love meeting new people, unless you are psycho, in which in that case, stay away from me and my homies- I know kung fu. Or... Urm.. I got hella huge half Samoan cousins who, together, we would beat you to a bloody pulp. With that said, on with the story...




As you know, phloe and I have a feature show in june at the UpOn Shop Records. Phloe will be gone for a week so she wanted to hit all these galleries before she left to support other artists but also in hopes to pass out our own flyers and invite people. She made a list of 12 galleries (yea, man, 12!) she wanted to go out with guns blazing.




The first two galleries we went to were just too hoity-toity. No pictures were taken there. I mean, it was interesting work but really, not worth documenting for my goofy ass. We were there for a total of 15 mins so to kill time, we headed out to susina for iced lattes and this yummy white chocolate berry cake.

And we drove...




To the merry karnowsky gallery on la brea for the richard colman show. Ok, this is more my steez. The paintings were interestingly grotesque. Lots of scenes of violation, rape, and murder in edward gorey fashion. Ok ok, I know you all are thinking “alfie, what the fuck?”.. It’s like that movie “american beauty” but on lsd and steroids. The cool part of it all was that we got giveaways from swindle magazine and fox clothing. Hot.




In the same gallery, I saw a huge piece by miss vann. It probably was about 5’ by 4.5’. The piece was going for $12,000. Like saucy said,” damn, and to think she was just hitting the streets of france with a spray can.” yea, can I get a bread crumb?

On with the journey...


We headed over the 1st bridge towards Downtown LA, to Chinatown.


We met up with FroHawk Two-Feathers of the band, F&D. But in the sake of cutting down my type time, we shall call him umar. Umar has been showing his work in the art scene for a couple of years now. He was part of the munkee king’s the funny club show. Now if you know me, I love urban art and I love toys so this was definitely something I was excited to see.

And I bumped into some friends...

Meet shakespeare and aurelito of I & I sounds. They converted an ice cream truck to be this mobile dj set up. They parked right in the courtyard and played hella reggae, dancehall, and dub. Oh man, I bummed off a cigarette and just danced outside underneath the stars and paper red lanterns.


That last pic is a shirt from umar’s clothing line. Buy one. They are cute.


The second and last are pics of umar’s piece. Remember, “fur is mrdr.”

(by the way, now I am on the phone while I am typing this so I apologize for the typos and grammatical errors.)

So we leave the chinatown party and head to downtown la to transport gallery for the buffmonster show.


Lots of nipples and lots of pink. Like buffmonster, he has a fixation on nipples. I have a nipple fetish too, mainly my own.

Place was hella packed. By this time it is 11pm and we looked at our list. We made it to 5 outta 12 galleries. Oh well, it was a noble try. We headed to UponShop Records for their opening.


So this is the place we are going to have our show in june. A dope art space/record store. The store front is where the djs are going spin. (sorry, still on the phone. Not much to say.)


Umar joined the festivities. Which is dope cuz where ever umar shows up, the party starts. The res of the night consisted of freestyling on the street, drinking red stripe while hollering at cars, boom chicka bow bow music, and the term of the night--- “dirty bitches.”


Oh my...