The Weekend in DC; Passionmarks II and all!

LOL, now that I have your attention. Not a whole lot to report on last weekend in DC. I hit Chocolate City Saturday afternoon with plans to attend the reception for Lee Hayes, author of Passionmarks and his new release, A Deeper Blue: Passionmarks II. The festivities took place at a spot called Indebleu near downtown DC. Traffic was a mess for Saturday night, and I would rather drive in NYC any old time. The only reason I took my car into town rather than using the subway was because I was meeting my cousin and his partner for dinner after the reception. But I'll come back to that.

As soon as I got to Indebleu, the first thing I thought was another X El bar. The furnishings reminded me a lot of the bar in NYC that I wrote about in November when I went with my boy, Maxim. But I think the reception attracted a different crowd and there were some truly hot bois in the space. As soon as I got into the room for the reception, a guy named Tony grabs my arm and introduces himself. At first, I'm kinda shocked as he wants to introduce me to Lee Hayes who is sitting at a table autographing books. I later learn from Tony that he is the event planner, so it was his gig to make sure everyone got to meet the author. I later enlisted him to take a picture of Lee and me (I'll have to post that later; used a throwaway camera rather than my digital).

Since all of the guys that I wanted to take were either sick, out of town, or busy, I didn't plan to stay long as I wouldn't know anyone in there. I was hoping to meet Bill whom I had met online and who told me earlier that he planned to be in the room. As it turned out, we missed each other by about 5 minutes. His friends didn't come with him, and he was late arriving. I did get a chance to holla at my alum, Tim'm West and his partner. Tim'm is one of the coolest kats in the family and I'm not just saying that becuz he might be reading this - lol. He is a down-to-earth, intellectual, hip-hop artist.

Ok, after 30 minutes I skip out to go meet Cousin and Goodboi at Union Station. Our original plans were to feast at B. Smith's restaurant in Union Station, but they were booked up for the evening. We headed uptown NW to Bus Boys and Poets. Some of you will remember that this is the spot where Tim'm hosted his Thursday evening Front Porch after a fire destroyed his usual space, Cafe Mawonaj. The place was jammed packed on Saturday night. The hostess told me it would take about 30 minutes to seat our party of 3. We moved over into the bookstore area to wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. I checked several times to see if we were close to being seated and finally was told that the only parties leaving tables were 2's. There is no space to reconfigure for 3, and after waiting over an hour - WE LEFT. Since I am not a DC expert, I took my little party of 3 over to Dupont Circle. I had to circle the area for a minute to find a parking space, but I knew I was eating in Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe & Grill. As usual, it was a good eating experience and Cousin and I got to catch up on hislyfe, mylyfe and the gossip about our family lyfe. I even drove them back to Baltimore on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Among all of my kinfolks, Cousin is the best and not just becuz we have some habits in common - lol.

On Sunday morning, I had considered going to church with Spiderman, but after rolling back to my hotel in the pre-dawn hours, I wasn't really feeling an early morning service. After he called to check to see if I was still going, we agreed to get together for brunch, and I rolled back over for a few more minutes of blissful shuteye. Spiderman picked me up around 12 noon, and we headed to Luna Grill & Diner Shirlington to eat. I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than sitting at a table with a phyne man who is both frat and friend, and Spiderman is all that plus (stop blushing Spiderman. You know it is true). And I wasn't the only one in the restaraunt feeling him, because Dude at another table kept giving him steady eye the whole time we were there. We kee-keed for a while b4 it was time for me to head back to the Old North State.

Well, gotta head to the day job. Will be in Oakland for the weekend. Anybody in O wanna show me the town, hit me on email. Will be there Friday/Saturday nights.

And now, get ready y'all:

COVENANT, the follow up novel to Rashid Darden's debut novel LAZARUS will be available for pre-order exclusively at http://www.oldgoldsoul.com on February 1, 2006.

Shem hotep.