The crowd was weird. I guess "Gresham-ed out" is kind of a good way to put it. All white people, all pretty trashy. Lots of slutty girls, and not just the ones who were dancing with Smoochknob. I turned around while waiting for Ice to come out and there was a girl, taller than me, just standing there in a tiny bikini. With some dude who was in shorts and a T-Shirt.

Seemed like there were some people who were there just to be there and party, some people who were there possibly ironically, and some people who genuinely like his new music. I guess that's about right.

Also forgot to mention that the sound guy announced at one point, while he was thanking everyone for coming out, that they were doing tattoos and piercings upstairs if anyone was interested. I did not go up and check it out.

I did do your rap, and considering that the beat was only half there, I pulled it off almost perfectly. I ended up flubbing the last line or two (I may have said "threw Hub in a sack" or something like that), but it had really crumbled at that point anyway.

The whole thing was fun. But I'm glad it's over.

I like that one chick with the pancake boobs. Seriously though, was it just Gresham-ed out in there?

I'm thinking "throw up the horns" may need to take on a second meaning as slang of the week in honor of your righteous experience.

-- Edited by EA Sports at 18:54, 2007-07-08

So here's the report.

We (Joy and I) show up to Outlaws (the old Viscount/Bossanova) around 9 and there is a line around the block. We head to the back and wait for a good 10 minutes and then eventually get let in ahead of a bunch of people because I'm on the guest list and Joy has a ticket. To the Vanilla Ice show. The whole thing began to strike us as very surreal as soon as we got in line and saw the folks who were waiting with us. Dudes, bros, and people who looked like burnt out ICP fans. The show was 21 and over.

I hadn't been to this venue since it changed owners. We walk in and it looks about the same, but with more neon signs and lots of banner ads hanging from the balconies. Tattoo shops, Tarantuala Tequila, **** like that. There is also a giant sequined cowboy hat hanging from the ceiling, dead center above the floor in front of the stage. Wow.

I find Hub and he tells me that Ice threw a fit earlier because there were no risers on the stage for his gear and had threatened to leave. The staff then broke out some saws and built him some. He also tells me that Ice was the only one who got a sound check, and when he did so, he made everyone leave the room. It becomes clear I am not going to meet him.

While we're talking, there is a band playing, some rap rock **** that is just brutal. The lead singer is shirtless and wearing shiny sweatpants, rocking many haphazard tattoos and the standard fat goatee. Can't understand a word. I check one of the posters and see that the band is called Mentor. The bass player seems to be an old Asian woman, or is at least dressed exactly like one. The band, to put it nicely, is scrotum personified.

Fists of Dishonor are next. I have seen them with the Butterys before, at the infamous show where BP Fresh busted himself up. They do basically the same show. They are all dressed as ninjas, and they enlist help from what seem to be local wrestlers to put on a bunch of staged fights and skits that break up the actual songs that they play. Their punching and kicking is fun to watch, but the songs are pretty rough. This time there is some fake blood and a girl doing a handstand while shooting a bow and arrow with her feet, and the crowd seems to enjoy it.

I go backstage before they are done, to hammer out the game plan with the BL's, who are on next. A kid sitting back there asks who they are, they tell him, and he says he knows of them because of CAC. The BL's point at me and I say "I'm one of them," or something like that. The kid says that he knows CAC from Salem, through the Widgets and Sprague, etc. I tell him I'm Eric's brother. He tells me that Eric stole his girlfriend when they were Freshman, but then wrote a song about what a "ho" she was later, so he holds no hard feelings. I impress him by correctly identifying the girl in question. Turns out he is one of the guitar players in Mentor, but makes it kind of clear that he's not too proud of it. We talk for a while about hip hop, and I forget to get his name.

The Butterys go on and are really in great form. BP Fresh has to alternate sitting and standing because of his leg (he's on crutches now) but Hub and Marble pick up the slack. The crowd is loving it. They're all drunk and in good spirits. I stand on the side of the stage, obscured by a divider, watching their set. Girls in extremely skanky outfits are everywhere. There is a downstairs area behind the stage where they keep coming from and going to and this is where I figure Ice is. The BL's run through five songs and then they call me up. It's time for "Megaforce."

I hop on stage and am handed a mic. The lights are obscuring my view from the stage, but the place is packed. We jump into the song and it starts off well. BP Fresh rocks his verse from his chair and the other three of us are backing him up. Towards the end of his verse, it happens: the music starts skipping. I try my best to rock my verse and act like nothings happening, but I keep losing the beat. I can't tell if it's skipping or cutting out. I'm trying to keep it together but I'm in a bit of a panic. The crowd doesn't seem to notice or care. We find the bridge and get our cues back, but just as quickly it's all fudged again. We stumble to the end of it, with the beat cutting in and out, and the crowd gives me a big hand. Somehow. Here's how it looked:

I guess BP was standing up. Either way, I exited the stage and watched the rest of the show from the side. None of the rest of the tracks skipped or cut out. Weird and kind of frustrating.

One of the stripper girls backstage stops me and tells me she really likes my shirt. I got it at Goodwill a few weeks back. On the back, in iron on letters, it says "Property of Sexie Lexie." I tell her thank you and move on, she stops me and calls me over toward the downstairs area. She grabs one of her stripper friends and asks me to turn around. The girl starts laughing and says "Oh my god, my name's Lexie! Spelled just like that!" I say "neat" and head back out to the crowd.

Smoochknob is next. They are a **** rock band that seems to have a huge following. The guys in the band are each wearing a shirt with a letter on it, and as they are lined up on stage, it spells F*&#. I hate them before the guitars are plugged in. They go on to encourage the crowd to "throw up the horns" and say 1-2-3 "Mother****er!" They are what is wrong with society. The stripper girls eventually join them on stage and dance around. Toward the end a bunch of them take their tops off and dance like that for a while. I am mortified to be a part of this. But, I take a picture of it.

The picture does not do justice to how bad these girls' boob jobs are and how ugly they are in the face. It's all a pretty sad scene. Thankfully, their set is short.

Now, we wait for Vanilla. There have been tarps over two large lumps on stage for the whole evening, preventing the other bands from moving around much. A roadie comes up and removes them, revealing an ass rock drum set and a DJ table that is covered in camoflauged netting. If you look in the picture of me and the BL's, you can see a ghost looking thing hanging from the ceiling. They turned that around and revealed that it was a scary clown type creature. Then they hung a bigger scary clown above the center of the stage, so it was looming or whatever gay effect they were going for. He also had his big logo hanging up there on the back of the stage.

We wait like 20 minutes. After the usual on stage shuffling, some local DJ's come out and announce him. His DJ pops up first and is wearing an ICP type clown mask. I am ready to leave. I can't see the drummer behind his kit because the stage is very dark. Finally, Ice can be heard muttering something or other from his cordless mic behind the stage. He finally emerges as the drums kick in. He grabs hold of his custom mic stand and begins the rap rock from atop his hastily constructed riser. People are going ****ing crazy.

It was super dark in there and these pictures did not turn out well. Ice was creeping around, kind of doing a guttural voice and constantly opening bottles of water and shaking them all over the crowd. Everyone loves it. He yells "What the **** is up Portland!" and everyone clamors and screams. People are drunk at this point. Here's another crappy photo. You can kind of tell it's him.

Joy has been ready to leave for an hour and a half. I told her that I at least wanted to see the man. We sat through about three songs and before the next one, he piped up with "This next one goes out to my people who like to smoke marijuana!" It was time to go. I said my goodbyes and we headed outside, just in time to see two bloody Ice fans one the sidewalk, getting arrested for fighting. At the Vanilla Ice show. Wow.

I am so bummed I won't be there. Please do my sweet lyrics justice. I am so jealous. Tell Vanilla that two members of the CAC spent a lot of time listening to his "Mind Blowin'" cassette. Some of my favorite sample lyrics:

"I need some herbs and spices so I can get nices"

"I'll roll you up like a zig zag and smoke you like a hootie mack"

And the numerous Hammer disses. Edgy!

Seriously, I wish I could be there.