I Survived My First Snoop Dogg Concert!

I survived my first (and last?) Snoop Dogg concert. And so did the 1,001 other vanilla-ice-wannabe local kids, plus about 4 real, live homies thrown in for flava'. As I said before, it was absolutely incomprehensible to me that THE Snoop Dogg was coming to B-town- not "Snoopy on Ice," not "Snoop and His Doggies, The Nation's Premier Snoop Dogg Cover Band"- but the real 9-time-Grammy-nominee himself. [Perfect illustration: the next "big show" scheduled for our local Magic City Music Hall is a classic: "Degameth" which is variously billed as "The Northcoast's Premier Tribute to Megadeth" and "The Nation's Premier Megadeth Tribute Band" and I'm not sure which title is lamer.]

Doors opened at 6 pm, with Snoop scheduled for 8 pm. Being the total dork that I am, I made sure that John and I arrived, along with a 6'4" young lawyer from my office (for additional security, you see), promptly at 7:45 pm, so as not to miss Mr. Dogg's entrance on-stage at 8 pm (there it was in writing, on my ticket- "8:00 pm"). I was still a little scared of the crowd we might find there- worried that some of the very sketchy locals would appear and cause trouble. So I was glad, initially, to see that we were going to get frisked upon entering. That is, until I was whisked into the "female" line, only to have the "frisking" consist of some lightly-mustachioed high school gym teacher-lady slide her greasy hands all over my backside and then pronounce me "clean"- yeah, not so "clean" after THAT groping, thank you very much!

Mr. Dogg apparently did not read the ticket and, to my surprise (not kidding) did not arrive onstage promptly at 8 pm, so that I could be safely at home/in jammies by 10:00. No, we had to endure over an hour of Snoop's "warm up" guys, if you can call them that. There was no actual warm-up entertainment, just 2 guys- 1 of them very prison-buff and wearing a do-rag, and 1 of them extraordinarily fat, to the point that he was surprisingly fun to look at. Here is the full text of the pre-Snoop "entertainment," as bellowed by the aforementioned "entertainers":

"All a y'all out there from Endicott, say YEAH!!!"
"YEAHH!!!"
"All a y'all out there from Johnson City, say HELL YEAHH!!!
"HELL YEAH!!!"
"All a y'all out there from Binghamton, say HELL THE FUCK YEAH!!"
[crowd goes nuts]

Although I didn't "get" the pre-game "act", Snoop came on around 9:15 pm (how anal retentive/old am I that I was actually looking at my watch and taking notes on Snoop's timings, while surrounded by a cloud of skunky-pot-smoke and college-aged partiers?) and he did give a good show (all 1 hour, 20 minutes of it, which was just PERFECT for us, actually!) I'm bummed i can't remember more of what he actually said between songs, because it was pure gold. Stuff like, "Ladies, if you lookin' gooooooooood, like you know you shoooooooooooould . . . drop it like it's hot" and "Ladies, if you got love for Snoop, say HELL YEAH!" You get the idea. It was great. And definitely took me into a culture that I hadn't experienced before.

I had to read, with much confusion, the review of Snoop's show in the local paper. The writer (we won't call her a "journalist"), who is only a couple years older than I am, apparently did not appreciate Dogg's "work"- here is an excerpt, which I find overly-dramatic to the point of being ridiculous:

"I know of no other way to put this. A review is an opinion and my opinion is that Snoop Dogg's concert was probably the most offensive, disgusting performance I have ever had to endure. Seriously. Unfortunately, I can't reveal the reasons why, because this is a family-friendly newspaper and Web site and I can't print some of the raunchier, more vile things Dogg said."

What I wanted to know was, What show did SHE see? I actually saw her standing on the sound stage behind us, her face in a grimace, but seriously, did she not expect to hear a bunch of F-bombs out of Snoop? From her elevated perch, was she able to see some on-stage raunchiness that I missed, and, if so, could I get my $30 back???

FASHION TANGENT: Speaking of cultures I hadn't experienced before, I am surprised to learn that there is this whole style of dressing for these college guys (how old did THAT sound?) that is so god-awful, I had to look into it. Check it out: there was a SUPER annoying/drunk/pot-smoking guy standing next to me wearing what I thought was the worst baseball cap I'd ever seen: a red NY Yankees cap covered in rhinestones. Oh, but that fugly item of clothing was NOTHING compared to his hooded sweatshirt, which had big cartoon-ish diamonds and dollar signs all over it. In PINK, no less. So I scoured the internet, trying in vain to find the exact hoodie that I had to stare at for that 1 hour, 20 minutes, and was shocked to find that not only are these sweatshirts ubiquitous, they are PRICEY- apparently this is the hottest style of urban sportswear and the trend-setting line costs up to $300. THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS for one of THESE!!! Or THIS, but it's SOLD OUT at $330! My god. Seriously, I know this is totally-'80s of me, but wasn't it a scandal for working-class parents everywhere when the cool urban sneakers cost $100? And now we have THIS? Apparently they are sold by a company called Billionaire Boys Club. At least the flagship store, which opened in NYC last December, looks like a cool shopping experience.