buttery waffles

i bought some stuff. i bought a new jacket and a new bag. i've been walking around and showing and telling my new stuff to everyone. i need some new pants. i think i've been wearing the same 2 pairs of pants to work since it's gotten cold out. i HATE pants. when i'm not at work i just wear melodia pants all the time. those are probably the only pants that i love. pants.

yesterday, after work i went to the lounge to pick up my lost cell phone and visit an old friend of mine who taught me how to bartend when i was a scared little girl who had just moved into the city. i miss that place, but i don't miss the work. i miss my friend, Alin. he had some surprising, but good news to share and we did some catching up. after that, me and Gianma went to Sette and then Tiramisu for food and drinks and dessert and espresso and him speaking Italian to men with loud, enthusiastic voices and women who want to feed me everything.

we went to FIVE to see London Electricity. the drum and bass was okay for me. not amazing or anything, i don't know why, but i was still having a pretty good time. the end of the night went a little 'off' and all i can say about that is this.

oh, and about dancing. i'm fixing to rant. okay so when my friend Emil and i were younger we used to joke about having our own party where we could tap people on the shoulder and kindly escort them off of the dancefloor for breaking certain rules. of course, we were kidding and don't really feel that anything like that would ever be cool to do, BUT I do think that people should (somewhat) be more mindful of themselves when dancing out. i'm all for losing yourself in the music. i LIVE for that shit. but, you gotta make sure you don't hurt the people around you when you're having your good time. people who go out with me know that i can dance 'small', but that i also can dance pretty big (especially when the music is dnb) but i don't kick, punch, burn, step on or spill drinks on other people or the dancefloor. it's called body awareness. if you don't have it, then slow your roll. put your drink down and your cigarette out, or enjoy those things at the bar. see, people at RED on sunday nights understood these things. there was so much respect for the fact that everyone was there to express themselves. you go to FIVE for some good music but you gotta deal with that crowd.



okay, so it's sad that we don't have a Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles on the east coast. but, Kumie, Bojangles and i found this rinky dink lil waffle house downtown. we didn't get to try the fried chicken. i could have though, cause the geezer to my right was invading the HELL out of my personal space and all i would have had to do was turn my face slightly to the right and take a bite off of the other end of the wing he was shoving in HIS mouth. daaaaaang, get offfff me. skip a seat, man. them waffles was buttery and sumptuous, though.

food on a stick

so, there's an article in the Washington Post about the last days of RED. check out the main photo for the story. yayuhhh. that's me peeking out of the left corner. i don't remember that moment at all. that was last sunday, which was supposed to be the last Underground Soul Solution at RED.


i went to rakkasah this year with my troupe Raqs Sahara. i took a workshop with Aziza, who is an amazing teacher. i felt really REALLY good about our performance on friday night. there's nothing like dancing/working with people who you really like and also that you feel are just fucking GOOD. the women in my troupe just amaze me. i mean i got all proud and gushy watching my troupe mates learning choreography in the Aziza workshop. if i hadn't known them i'd be like "WHO are THOSE chicks?". and i get to dance with them. during our performance, there's a part in Leilet Hob where half of us are on stage and the other half joins us. at that moment when the rest of the girls came out all sultry-like i was like "damnnnnnn, check these girls OUT". i'm just lucky that i found my troupe, or rather, that they found me.

and then...

i took Chiaki to the Coldstone Creamery for the first time. Chiaki is my partner in chowhound-dom. we like to eat. when we're not eating, we like to talk about eating. she was so moved by the Cheesecake Fantasy sundae that she said something like "i am so glad that my mother gave birth to me...so that i could be here...eating this". yes, it's THAT GOOD. RUN your ass to the nearest Coldstone if you haven't been. we were sitting there moaning (not like that) as we ate that sundae. again, just fucking GOOD.

and then, and then...


i wanted to freak gianma out. so, i took him to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. it worked. especially when i suggested that we go get some food. now, gianma has never been to this kind of thing, and he's never had fair/festival food. he ordered a beef gyro. the beef was GRAY...GRAY! he was outraged. then i got us a sausage on a stick. he did not approve. it was hilarious for me. they even had mac and cheese on a stick. that's just crazy.

oh and i went to MIT Media Lab for work. while i was up there i got to hang with my peeps Becca and Larry. to my dismay, Becca wanted me to help cook dinner. i learned to make chicken parmesan baked in pasta. it wasn't too hard to make and was delicious. will i try to make it again here on my own? hmm, let me think...hell no, bitches. hey, did you know that in Italy they don't put chicken in pasta? there's also no 'chicken parmesan'. oh, and if you order a seafood dish and your waiter kindly (but while wincing) offers you grated parmesan that you should say "no"? did ya?

so, last night marked the REAL end of Sunday nights at RED. the place was packed and claiming dance space was difficult, but it seemed like everyone was smiling while they danced. people were snapping photos left and right. trying to take a peice of history home with them. goodbye RED. i'll really miss that place.

blood of the cloned lamb

yesterday, i almost convinced kumie that starbucks uses the blood of cloned animals to decaffeinate their beverages. actually, i didn't come close to convincing her, but kumie is pretty smart, and she argued with me about it, so..that counts for something.

kumie: there's not even enough cloned animals to...do you know how EXPENSIVE it is to clone an animal?

me:...do you know how much MONEY starbucks has?

bojangles kept telling me to shutup all day yesterday. and not just 'shutup' but like 'shaaaadddupppppp'. i guess i was a bit chatty. i don't know why, i woke up that way yesterday. another of my friends was telling me to shut up later that night, too. after bojangles bought me one of those pumpkin lattes he told me i could pay him back by "shuttin up". :(

after i left the studio last night, me and a good friend headed out for dinner. he said that we were going to some place that i had never been. right he was, i just don't know where this cool little place popped up from. it's called Busboys and Poets and it's right off of the U Street Corridor. it's a bookstore/bar/restaurant/lounge/stage and it does a pretty good job of being all of those things. this place is super cool, for real, check it out. i know i'll go often now that i've found it.

there's a benefit party going on tonight at FIVE that i won't make it to. but it looks cool. i'll be dancing elsewhere.

a snakecharmer

check out rachel in her 'snakecharmer' video. this track is pretty sweet. unfortunately, she says it may never be released. it's cool to watch her dance to it, though.

wanna see?

pictures i took at a party from last week. it was a bday party. was fun.

bastards of craft revisited

here's a pic from the bboy battle last weekend. check out toys, the grand prize winner, sitting on the floor on the left. he's a lil asian kid wearing a white shirt with a collar. see the girl to his right wearing a grey and white hat? oh my god, that girl can DANCE. i've seen her out a handful of times, and it's to the point that you stop what you're doing to watch her. you just can't go on...things will never be the same. you place your hand on your chest in wonder. and i'm not just talking bgirling, the woman can groove. okay and sitting on the right side of the photo, wearing a black tank and black pants is Flash, the 2nd place winner. his style was aggressive, to me, anyway. to his right are some bboys wearing lots of red. the one guy told me they were from Richmond. when he told me the crew name it sounded something like 'lab rats'...but i think i misheard...

other highlights of the fair included me buying a surprise gift for my best friend from one of the vendors. i can't disclose what it is, cause...somehow that chick found my blog! but i got her som'n weird, cause we had a lil spat on the phone earlier that day. i'm such a rotten girl. but the fair was a good place for me to snag som'n for her cause LOOK! LOOK WHAT SHE LIKES TO DO! KNITTING!



what IS that thing? but, she's cute, huh?

naked brazilian girls and stuff

saturday 815am

i taught my 2 super fun bellydancing classes up in tenleytown. chiaki and i headed to adams morgan afterwards for the annual Crafty Bastards fair. the weather was perfect. now, for a craft fair, this event was the bomb. we went to support some local bellydancers including alexis, who was breaking it down proper with a choreography to a M.I.A song. after that we had some yummies at Meze, browsed the crafts a bit and then i gravitated to the bboy battle that was going on. it was AMAZING. the dancers, the crowd, the dj (dirty hands). it was the best thing i've seen in a very long time. freaking CRAZYLEGS was there as a judge. i just kept thinking 'where are all these guys gonna be at TONIGHT?!?!"

after the battle, we bought some travel prints from a vendor at the fair, got some ice cream, sucked some helium from balloons and talked funny and parted ways.

i went home to chill and re-watch the movie i rented from blockbuster, Closer. then started getting ready for the late show at the 930 Club, The Brazilian Girls. that showed kicked ass. Sabina came on stage wearing high heels and what looked like a thin strip of cardboard across her boobs, crotch and butt. it was a tad distracting. the crowd was great. i had a nice view of it all from my perch up in the DJ booth with DJ Christine Moritz.



i dropped Christine off at around 230am, called the cops on a crowd of kids brawling on Columbia Road and headed to a party somewhere at a residence they call the "Japanese House". the house was packed, djs were spinning, kids were dancing, breaking, laughing, drinking, crying and doing...other things, too. somebody was cooking rice, i'll never understand that. this was a goodbye party for a cool dude named Kenta who is going away to Amsterdam. around 530am the cops came and told us all to scat.

...and then there was sunday...