Posts Tagged ‘bear who’

House Music Panel

Tuesday night, Feb. 17th Mary Datcher of Global Mixx along with the support of 5 Magazine dedicated February of her monthly collaboration (music industry mixer) to House music. The panelists were Steve “Silk” Hurley, Skip, Ron Carroll, Georgie Porgie, Lady D, Craig Loftis, Lady D + me with Bear Who? on the turntables. Maurice Joshua was slated to be the moderator, but couldn’t make it last minute and instead his brother was given that role.

The event went well, I would say it could have been a whole lot better had it been moderated well, better. Panels have a tendency to become a bitch fest, a “stroke” fest (as Ron Carroll so aptly put it) and general chaos unless reigned in with a tight rope. It became a little bit like that. Moderator comes from the word “to moderate.”

On the positive side, the event fostered a lot of conversation amongst people, and I saw spirited exchanges between guests before and definitely after the event. Cogs were spinning, many points were brought up to me that I hadn’t considered before, and I’m sure it was ditto for many.

Birthday Party

Thursday early afternoon the decorating of Betty’s Blue Star began. After I picked up 2 dozen white balloons from the party store, Carlos and Raw Food Chris were kind enough in helping me hang up all the white stuff and throwing balloons everywhere. After 3 hours of decorating I rush down all the way to the southside to pick up five 3-foot-long hoagy sub sandwiches from this tiny weird shack called Taurus, then went over to another southside joint to get 150 pieces of chicken. Then it’s back to up north to get another black light and the birthday cake. At home all the tons and tons of food had to be cut up, arranged and brought down to the car. By that time (10:30pm) I had 30 minutes to try and look like a birthday goddess as opposed to the housekeeper look I was rocking all day.

I get to the club 35 minutes late, and amazingly the club is already crowded. It actually took my breath away when I saw all those people in white. Everyone looked so elegant! It took probably no more than 45 minutes for all the food to be gone. Literally. I turn around and all I see are bird carcasses. Damn. I guess everyone was hungry. But that made me happy :)

As the night wore on more and more people came, and Paul Johnson and Gene Hunt did their thing on the tables. The energy of the party was wonderful, and shots were being poured every which way towards me, even by all those broke and stingy people who never bought me shit. Yay! The drunker I got, the more I wanted to talk on the mic… thank God people steered me away from it whenever I mentioned getting on again. Emanuel, Terry Hunter, Stacy Kidd, Wayne Williams, Dave Risque, Alton Miller, Bear Who, Diz, Andre Harris, Lego, Hector Lopez and Mark Grant were some of the DJs that came through along with my old dancer friends and assorted househeads. It was so awesome!

By 3:00 when some folks were starting to leave, people asked me if anyone was going to sing happy birthday, after all there was still an untouched cake. I said I didn’t know I was hoping Rees was going to do that, so Scott the manager paged Rees on the mic several times. A few of my friends went outside to look for him, and I started getting antsy. Finally after several attempts by everyone to page/find him, the lovely Scott got on the mic himself, called me onstage and did a wonderful dedication to me. Everyone sang Happy Birthday and that really meant a lot to me. I am so grateful to the whole Betty’s staff because they take such good care of all of us.

At the end of the night Rees stumbles into the club like nothing happened. He had missed the whole thing. I guess the story goes was that one of my friends saw him outside the club and told him to come in, that they were about to sing to me. He waves the guy off and says “Hold on…” then proceeds to get inside a car with his boy and get fucked up. Isn’t that awesome? Fuck her birthday, I want to get loaded.

Despite that little tragedy, thank you to each and every one who came out and showed love. Especially those who wore white! I think I’m starting a bday tradition with this white party thing… it’s pretty cool :)

Fiestas PR

So on Wednesday afternoon, the Bassment Records (a primarily hip-hop based record store) asked me to bring in a little House set to the Fiestas Puertorriquenas in Humboldt Park. I asked Bear Who? to spin and some of my dancer friends to party it up. Bear did a fabulous job, a bunch of people got up onstage (kids, a one-armed man, everybody) and it was a great party atmosphere with Househeads coming and showing love.

The one big negative about the festival was the blatant and offensive military representation, with army guys having booths galore, giant “cute” black blow-up dolls of service men, and families taking pictures alongside what is essentially a representation of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money being spent on genocide. So while Bear and the crowd wear jacking it up, the military men had the nerve to come up onstage, put up a pull-up bar, and proceed to have a pull-up contest!! “Who can do the most pull-ups???” yells the mc, and me and my dancers were like, “hells naw!” So that proceeded to go on for a long time, the music had to change, and that pretty much ended the House set. I could not believe these goons had the nerve to come up to what little time we had to present House, and do some gay ass contest. Go on with your downlow selves.

Luigi my doggie, my party buddy, got drunk on Pina Coladas just like me. All my friends were there and we had a great old time.

Crazy Thursday, Sad Friday

Thursday had mad events for me to cover: Peven Everett performing live at Betty’s, then Bear Who’s birthday party at Tini Martini, the opening of a residency at K Lounge, followed by Four. Later on a whole bunch of us went to this afterhours club that stays open 24 hours a day 7 days a week! With a full bar! As in, a really pretty club with leopard couches and tables and everything…it felt very speakeasy-like, and of course you have to know someone to get in. I was able to snag a membership card from one of the guys who runs it :)

Friday I stay in all day and don’t move from my couch. My phone is blowing up with calls and text messages from friends asking where the heck I’m at. It’s Paul Johnson’s birthday party @ Zentra, but I just can’t get myself to get up. Burned out. I’ve had my heart trampled on by stress, chemicals and a boy so I just veg out with my dog Luigi snoring on top of my legs. It’s definitely sad day.