Latin Funk and the Church

Thanks for all the well wishes. Work still sucks, but I’m much better now. I had another interesting weekend.

I was invited to a First Friday event by a friend of mine. It was a comedy show. What he neglected to mention was that it was a church event involving 2 churches, sponsored by their Singles Ministries. I kind of had a hint about how the evening was going to be when I had to fill out a questionnaire on the way it. The first part was pretty standard. Name, email, how you heard about it, would you come to another event. Then it got into the “What church do you attend? Are you saved? Do you want to be saved tonight? Etc.” When all was said and done, I think I had no for every answer. I just knew they were going to hunt me down afterwards to have an “intervention”. It’s not that I am against church or God, I’m just not that into organized religion. The show itself was ok. There was an awful lot of talk about Non-believers and various jokes about things within the church that I didn’t care for. There was some “You know them white people” jokes and things said about gay people that I really didn’t care for. The music was good and they had a poet there who was good. Over all it was pretty good. I met one of the Pastors from one of the sponsoring church. I kind of skirted by the “What church do you go to question” by mentioning that my friend invited us. He started to go on and on about how he had helped so much with the planning and told me to make sure he brought us by Church one Sunday. After meeting him, my girl and I were talking about how we wished we were more religious cuz he was in his early 30s, cute, AND single! LOL! Don’t worry, I’m not trying to hit on a Pastor. There won’t be any “So at Church today” stories. By far the funniest part of the night was my girl D. When the show started, a guy who organized the whole thing went up front to introduce the MC for the night. As soon as he stood up and introduced himself as Omar, my girl grabbed my arm so hard, I almost cried. “You are NEVER going to believe this!” In a whispered voice, she related the story to me about how she knew Omar. Ok, one day after work she went to Whole Foods because she wanted a cop of soup for dinner. If you have never been to this grocery story, they have really good already prepared foods, including various soups and chowders. Anyway, as soon as she got inside Omar, who was about 5 feet tall, approached D, about 5’10, and asked her “Do you date short men?” THAT was his pickup line! He then proceeded to follow her around the story asking her questions and giving her his card. “Do you shop here a lot?” “What kind of soup are you eating?” “You gonna call me?” I had to stop myself from laughing hysterically because Brother Omar was still talking. Out of the corner of her mouth she whispered “He didn’t mention Jesus when he was stalking me!” and I almost lost it! I told her I’d have to ask my friend if he knew Brother Omar…

On Sunday I went down to Miami for the Annual Latin Funk Festival. I know what you are thinking, WHAT? I was thinking that too at first. Then I heard some of the music and it was pretty cool. Plus, I never really do anything, so I’ve been making up for it by going out a lot lately. Anyway, we drove down to Miami and headed to Mansion, a nightclub on South Beach. It was nice because we parked several blocks away and walked down to the club. We passed the Tattoo parlor where they film that Miami Inked show and my friend had me take a picture of him for his brother. His brother in England has seen the show. His entire knowledge of Miami is Miami Inked and Miami Vice. How sad is that? Back to the show… There were a couple of artist that played. My favorite was Locos Por Juana. They had a Latin-Reggae sound. And there was Javier Garcia, who I really liked as well. We had a few drinks and danced a lot. It was fun. Afterwards, we met up with another co-worker and his sweetie for drinks on Lincoln Rd. Well, after drinking earlier, it was more like pizza, ice cream, and more drinks. By the time I got home it was 2am and I was completely exhausted. It was soooo difficult to get up this morning. Shelly called me a little after 8 and I hadn’t even made it into the shower yet. Good thing they don’t mind me showing up at a quarter to 10.