La Vie en Rose

I went to Club Vogue lastnight to chill with my friend Jay. I was only planning on stopping by for a few minutes. The place was hopping like I'd never seen it. There were so many fur coats and guys all around that looked like stone-cold killers. And a lot of them were from "The Hill", which is the Italian area in St. Louis. It made NO sense for all sorts of reasons. Like, why would anyone wear a fur coat in a hot club? And why would a bunch of gangsters be in Columbia for Mardi Gras when everyone in STL knows that Soulard is the place to be? Well... outside of New Orleans, of course. Everyone should do a Louisiana Mardi Gras at least once in their lives. It was making some of the girls in the club feel very nervous, but they relaxed a little when I told them our crew would protect them (lol).

Then... some huge drug bust happened outside in the parking lot. Eight cop cars... guns drawn... mexican standoff kinda stuff. Supposedly it was some sort of drug deal gone wrong... but I'd be willing to bet that there was something else going on. It felt like smoke and mirrors.

Once the word started spreading, there was this mad rush to the front door, but they wouldn't let anyone leave the club for like a half hour while it was all going on. And then they all stuck around until about a half hour after the place closed... THREE HOURS LATER. The way I was parked, I was completely blocked in by four cop cars.

The whole scene reminded me of one of my recent discoveries, the highly underrated State Property 2 where some guy who looks a lot like LL Cool J is telling his closest crew how he wants to be a quarter trillionaire right before they all go to the "party". Very much like a death-speech. I can't figure out how it only got an IMDB rating of like 3.8/10. Damon Dash... if you read this, please cast me in State Property 3! :) It's a good movie. Check it out.

So finally, we got out of vogue and me and a couple buddies (Caleb and Benadict) came back to my place for some poker... Benadict had blown all his money at the strip club, so we had to get creative. I said I was putting up this green craps blanket I won back in Tunica in a trivia night because I knew that Tom Hanks was the voice of Woody from Toy Story. Caleb put up his shirt. Benadict asked if he could put up his half-empty pack of camel lights. Seeing as I'd stopped smoking a month ago, I was like "Hell yeah! I would love those."

So we started playing, but then a few minutes into it Benadict started craving a cigarette. He asked if he could bum one from the prizepool, and we were like "No, buddy... they don't belong to you anymore." So then he asked if he could trade his favorite Adidas hat for the half-empty pack back. Of course, I learned long ago never to stand between a bitch and their nicotine fix... so we gave in. Looking back, we should have made him squirm all night with his addiction because he came back in refreshed and took both of us out. So I lost my blanket and Caleb literally lost his shirt.

I think it's so much more fun to play poker for things other than money. It reminded me of one of my favorite things about Ali... her home games were all played with what she termed "booty" and she had chests full of the stuff that she had won from stupid tourists. Think Benny and Joon. I won't give it away, but it has one of the best poker scenes of any movie. It's a good movie. Check it out.

I can't remember having such a good time in awhile.