the white rapper show

Ok, Mark TiVoed this: Ego Trip's (White) Rapper Show and we just finished watching it. After watching this, we season-passed it.

The first ten minutes were mostly painful. And fucking weird.

One of the rappers called himself "John Brown" and I was like, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! Anyway, he's not that good, and his response to anything he's asked is "I'm the king of the 'burbs!" And for some reason he's all about the "ghetto revival". No clue what that means.

I liked Persia at first, who seemed pretty cool until she blew up at John Brown. She got punished in the show for using the n-word by being forced to wear a giant silver chain that said, "N-WORD", which I actually thought was kind of brilliant. It forced Persia to reconsider what she was saying, and how she'd gone too far. Someone should make Michael Richards wear it.

The show is not a trainwreck in the manner of say, "Flavor of Love". The people who are in this seem to be taking it seriously, and they're staying in the Bronx, and dude, they all got to meet Grandmaster Flash. So far I like most of the competitors, and I liked that at the end of the show, they actually got real critiques on stuff they rapped.

A lot of it was still a trainwreck, though.

foodie weekend

This weekend has unintentionally become a total foodie weekend. Mark's sister and her friend had come up to visit, and their trip became really shopping-intensive, as they could not resist the allure of the new Bloomingdale's.

On Friday, we had dinner at The House, which came with high recommendations from angeeela  and good reviews on Yelp. Unfortunately, while the food we had was excellent, the service was not. Mark's sister had to send something back because she couldn't taste anything but the wasabi, and the waitress came back and argued with her. It's not like she ate the entire plate and said she didn't want it anymore. She took one bite, maybe two and could barely breathe after that from the spiciness. It's not just that, but she wouldn't leave us alone and just kept standing there, lecturing her about how she shouldn't order spicy things if she can't handle it. It was really unpleasant.

Maybe we'll go back if we can somehow guarantee we're not served by that waitress.

( Cutting for length... )

Today, to complete our foodie weekend, we are making a stab at roast duck, from Ming Tsai's cookbook. Wish us luck.

( I'm inserting the recipes for smashed red potatoes here, and also Mark's mom's Middle Eastern chicken here, because we finally figured it out. )

mlk, jr day

The Smoking Gun has the papers on the first assassination attempt.

BGF has a bunch of good links.