The weekend started out heavy on the fun and ended extremely lazy and relaxing. Like all weekends should be. Really, my ideal weekend is one filled with all of the things I can’t accomplish over the work week due to such reasons as “needing to be on time to work,” “reading throughout the day is counter-productive,” and my personal favorite, “hangovers are against company policy.”
Of course, I’m not questioning these rules. These are fairly good life rules, especially the last one. Hangovers are against life policy, so that business is strictly not allowed. Nothing is worse than waking up in the morning fully clothed and burning up because your six hours younger self decided he was cold so he would turn the heat up to the max. The ramifications of our younger selves’ actions rarely come to fruition faster then when dealing with activities of a more socially lubricated fashion.
No less, it was a great weekend, full of two awesome events, catching up on lots of things, a fairly successful real and fantasy football Sunday, and oodles of ridiculousness. Such as…
- ?uestlove’s ridiculously awesome DJ set night at the Anchor
- The Roots redefining hip hop shows in my mind
- Reading a ton (finished a book and three graphic novels)
- Watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the Foot Fist Way, and Role Models (surprisingly awesome, who knew McLovin would end up being a pretty decent actor?)
- Catching up on Dexter
- Making some tasty dinners
- The Pats and my fantasy team winning
- Coffee with my sister and niece
- Continuing to obsessed with the library
- Hatching schemes
So once again, the first two items were full of crazy times and tons of fun, and the rest of it was spent relaxing in various locations. The highlights of the weekend were most definitely all events related to the Roots.
I’ll start with Thursday night, not really the weekend, but who’s counting really? That Thursday evening, Hannah and I went out to the Buck for drinks for Mara’s going away party, got some ridiculously delicious dinner and wine at Crush (Hannah became the first person in Crush history to combine the Sausage Flight and Mac and Cheese into one wondrously trashy and delicious concoction), and then onwards to watch ?uestlove’s set at the Anchor.
?uestlove, for those who do not know, is the drummer from the Roots and a man who is very well known for his skills as a DJ. We knew we were in for a treat, but it ended up being an even better time than we initially imagined it would. We get there, grab a drink, and slowly move up front to watch the opening DJ.
Slowly but surely, Hannah and I started to let loose and started dancing our feet off. Sure, I can’t dance, but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing it. The opening DJ was flat out awesome, mixing everything from Blackstreet to MGMT into one mix of pure dance party goodness. Plus, they had some of the weirdest movies ever playing on the big screen above the DJ, including Fantastic Planet and some weird cartoon that was like a cartoon hallucination about middle school sex class and ancient civilizations. In short, it was weird.
Picture taken of Amy, Hannah, stranger, and I by the MC
Then ?uestlove came on, and it all got kicked up a notch. Amy showed up and she joined our dance party as we were right up to the DJ booth at this point, and it was an incredibly fun evening of dancing and ridiculousness. Possibly the highlight of the whole evening though, and one of the more funny things I’ve seen in quite some time, was Amy as she developed a strangely close relationship with the MC that was behind ?uest during his set (and the openers set).
Kima and ?uestlove
It was a local Anchorage guy named Kima Hamilton, and Amy and he had some sort of magnetism going on. Two things happened that make me laugh still: Amy managed to make the guy blush, and Amy and the guy pulled an E.T. (meaning they reached for each other and only met by touching index fingers). It was quite possibly the single most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen, but I started laughing very hard because of it.
The Roots
No less, now on to the actual Roots concert. I’ll be quick on this one because I’ve been going for way too long already, but I’ll just say there are some key points I picked up from this show.
- The Roots are really freaking talented
- Anchorage continues to suck at concert – there was a line to get in for even those who had tickets well into the concerts start
- Captain Kirk (the guitarist from the Roots) is amazing
- The Roots are hilarious
- Fat bald guys dancing on stage at concerts = comedic gold mine
- Hip hop groups are really good at Led Zeppelin covers
This was a tremendously fun concert, although as I said in the bullet points, Alaska continues to be terrible at concerts. The audience overall was pretty meh and the people running the concert completely failed at getting through lines.
Black Thought and the rest dancing
However, the Roots are so good that it didn’t even matter. Everyone brought their A game, from Black Thought and his top notch game as the MC of the whole thing, to ?uestlove and his drumming, to Captain Kirk killing it on guitar, to the guy on the sousaphone. It was all good.
Some random dudes and I taking a pic
If the Roots come in your area, you really need to see them. They’re really fun to watch and sound great live.