What Is Life?

Being a masochist - I often bring work home with me and spend my evenings cleaning up little jobs and catching up so I have time to read all of your blogs the following day. Last night I decided that I was going to head to a coffee shop to work so that Mario Kart couldn't give me "come hither" eyes and distract me from the task at hand. Damn you sexy Wii. That sounded bad.

So to the coffee shop I went. I should explain that this coffee shop isn't your normal Starbucks-y place. It is attached to my apartment complex and has a coffee shop, restaurant, bar, convenience store, dry cleaner and Assault course from American Gladiators (ok that last one was a dream I had where I was a gladiator and my name was "Teflon"). This coffee shop on steroids also has theme nights.

Last night was open mic night.

The stage is in the bar / restaurant area of the room while I was perched over in the coffee house area silently working away. I heard the microphones being set up and the specrapular smooth jazz playing before anyone took stage. I tuned most of the distraction out as the Drive-By Truckers were playing a live acoustic set on my favorite XM Radio station - X Country and I was also listening to the Tribe game (yay for multi-tasking!). The first half hour was made up mostly of jazz singers and was actually quite enjoyable. Then "that guy" hit.

"That guy" is often "that girl" but they are always "that" and "that" always goes like this:

What is life?
Are you life?
Am I life?
We are a life...

To which I stood up and screamed "IF YOU SAY LIFE ONE MORE TIME I WILL COME OVER THERE AND END YOURS!" That never happened - I would never think up something that witty on the spot - but when I was laying in bed last night thinking about it I totally said that in my head. I showed him!

Who writes that crap? I know we can't all be lyrical geniuses but the drivel coming out of that guys mouth made me want to slam my man parts in a car door (I need to quit using that analogy).

So I crank up the tunes/game and get on with life. Before long the first free-style rapper makes his way to the stage and, with the game and the DBT show over, I am left to listen. He gets going and I didn't want to murder myself so he is already an improvement. I would say he was talented but me criticizing a rapper is like Keanu Reeves voting on the Oscars.

The rapper was going on about how people in the black community don't stand up for themselves and hide behind racism for not improving their life. Then he dropped this line:

"We got more chickens than Church's"

Anyone that can work Church's Chicken into a rap is cool in my book - and sitting there, 12 hours deep into my work day with my eyes half shut - I let out a moderately loud chuckle. Not as loud as a "Caddyshack" chuckle but more than a "Son In Law" chuckle.

I wasn't laughing at what he was saying - just the way he chose to say it. This point was apparently lost on the crowd because every person in the place turned to look at me. I then noticed I was the only white guy in the whole place. Great. Now I look racist. Damn my selective hearing and penchant for laughing at culinary comedy. I look around at the collective death stare and notice "We Are Life" guy shaking his head. It wasn't hard to tell what he was thinking:

"There is always 'that guy' in every crowd."