live via: harlem

there's nothing like waking up with a hangover even though you didn't have a lick of alcohol the night before. rather, there's nothing like waking up and being glad that you opted not to mix any type of wine, malt liquor, or cognac with the tremendous mound of greasy greasy greasy greasy goodness that you stuffed your face with at 2 in the morning, which is now making its slow coarse through your veins, ultimately resting in your colon where you're sure it will sit, and rot, and sit some more, for the remainder of eternity. what i'm trying to say is, it's 10 am, our plane touched down in JFK exactly 12 hours ago, and based on the events that have preceded me sitting here in a complete stranger's morningside heights apartment, the next three weeks here in the big apple are going to be historical.

so ruby and i made our performance debut on the A train today. it's not that we were all standing on the platform saying "heyyyyy you wanna hear some POETRY!" and giving each other high fives, nor did we stand in the middle of the traincar and demand everyone's attention, start doing poetry, and then proceed to ask for donations to our middle school's basketball team. but it definitely was one of those moment when you just kind of wish you had a video camera around because it would've been great footage, and then realize the next morning while typing a blog about it that you not only had a video camera in your luggage, you also had a regular camera and cellphone, both of which have video functions. oh well...maybe the basketball donations idea would've made a better documentary bit anyway.

but when you start having a conversation with someone on the train, get into the discussion of why you're in town, and reveal that you're a spoken word artist, after the almost on-call responses of "spoken what?" "oh i do a bit of poetry myself," and "spoken what?" it's quite inevitable that you'll be challenged to perform. and after you say no and dude looks over at the person sitting next to you, sucks his teeth and says in a thick brooklyn accent, "oh...they just skeeeered, that's all," you pretty much have no choice. so it ends up being a li'l cypher, with the dude actually being an emcee himself, named "fresh."

on a side note: fresh, if you're reading this, please proceed to holla. i think it's safe to assume that at least 86% of the people living in the new york city vicinity
have referred to themselves in one way or another as "fresh." i know you told me your myspace address as "fresh to def," and since then i have tried every verbal interpretation of that, including but not limited to myspace dot com slash: freshtodef, fresh2deaf, freshtoodef, fresh2def, freshtoodeaf, and freshtodeaf. i even tried deftofresh, but alas.

so by the time we finally got to harlem where we'll be calling home for the remainder of june, we had worked a pretty big appetite. one of those "i boarded the plane at 1pm for a five hour flight and somehow it's now 12 hours later" kind of appetites. i place we decided to rest our cravings:



oh yeah. fried goodness, and the initiator of my waking up feeling like the back of my eyelids are pasted to my ass. you can only eat so many deep fried shrimps, deep fish slabs, and deep fried fries before realizing it might've been faster to just down a whole bottle of crisco.

new york moment: guy walks into the chicken place and says, "i'll have a snapple...and a mu'fuckin leg."



so, here we are. ruby and adriel, day numero uno of new york. the apartment has a fire escape which i predict to be my resident kick-it spot. it overlooks a vibrant corner of lennox just 3 blocks from the apollo (how sweet is that??) and the sunlight pours in in the morning (which i'm loving now, but wait until i have a real hangover). it's a glorious sight really, and i've had to restrain myself from proclaiming from my window in a "coming-to-america"-esque fashion.



within the next 48 hours we're going to do a show on the lower east side, watch lily allen live (!!!!) in brooklyn, and welcome dahlak and nico, who arrive tomorrow night!

more soon.