True story.
But first, here’s the rabbit trail that brought this on. I was on my home from KiDstuf, the Wednesday night program we do at church fro k-5 year olds, and I was thinking about how I was missing the Justin McRoberts webcast. Well, this brought on thoughts about California. And then I started singing “California, knows how to party”. This lead me to think of Tupac. And then I thought, “I’ve never been to a rap concert”. Then I remembered that this was a lie.
So, let’s go back in time. I was attending HACC, Harrisburg Area Community College, as a Sophomore and I was working for the Student Government as the Treasurer. It was ok. I enjoyed the people I was there with. They made it totally worth while. The group of kids I hung out with were an odd mix from all sorts. They liked to party, and they were all about relationships. We were post-modern before it was cool to be thought of as such.
Anyway, the 7 of us decided to skip school for the day. It was a very cold Thursday, 1999, and I had worked out with my parents the whole car situation so I could have the “good” van. I was driving a caravan we affectionately called the “Warwick mobile”… it was in no shape to go out of state. It barely made it up hills.
Where were we going? New York City. We had figured that we could afford to drive up for the day and just park at the Port Authority and just see what we could get into. I had been up in the city for awhile and knew my way around. I liked the city a lot. mostly because it wasn’t Harrisburg. I was ready to get out of Harrisburg and NY was the perfect place to get away to. I’d never had a bad day in the city. Or a bad night either. Granted I hadn’t always made the smartest decisions, but there were always stories. Though it turns out I’ve forgotten some of them.
We parked at the authority and we began to walk. We walked for awhile. Blocks of the city were covered in hours. When we finally got to Times Square there was a mess going on. People were being stopped, some were being corralled into one spot, others were being pulled into a line, and the rest were trying to get through. We were walking, trying to walk through this gaggle of people, when a guy with a clipboard came over to us and asked if we wanted to be on TV. Of course, we did. They were going to be filming TRL and would we be interested in being a part of the audience. Uh, yeah.
TRL, or Total Request Live, was the show on Mtv back in the day. This was during the days of Carson Daly, and when it mattered what he said. And we were going to be on it. But then we were divided. Two of us were put in line, and the other four of us were taken and placed in a sea of people right in front of a stage. No one had told us who we were going to see, but I noticed something almost right away… we were the only white kids in the sea. It was just us. I thought, “odd”.
And then we waited. And waited. It was late fall, and we were really cold, and only getting colder. When suddenly, a roar came to our left and only got louder as Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg came on the stage set in Times Square. I cannot tell you what they performed. I know they did two songs, and Carson Daly was there, but it was over really quickly, and we tried to be the most enthusiastic misplaced white kids on the floor.
This was during the age of the pager… so we had pagers but no way to communicate to anyone else that we were going to be on TV. And there you go. We got out of the mess of people and wandered around 5th avenue for a bit, then headed home.
It seems like so long ago. It was a long time ago. It was another lifetime for sure. No wonder I forgot about it. It was before I met Heather. Before I started my adventure with Christ.
Teh = the 