Monday, May 25, 2009

Hiatus Interruptus…

... which if my Catechism Latin serves me well, should stand for “a break in the Break” - or basically, “stop sitting down on your ass and get back to work, you” - and not the other kind of interruptus some of y’all were thinking it was.

And to think I was actually going to call this post “Return of the Mac” until I realised I didn’t have one… A Mac that is…

Don’t know how many noticed but things have been MAD/MENTAL/CRAZY of late on my blogs so much so that I was forced to put everything on lock-down. I wasn’t even going to discuss it, I just wanted to leave quietly but a whole lot of drama has gone on behind the scenes. Suffice it to say, I’ve re-opened for business and I’m still hanging around. I was down but definitely not out.

Second long story short, the love of my life a.k.a. my PC crashed many weeks back meaning I’ve been unable to do updates or a whole lot of other meaningful stuff for a while. It drove me crazy but she’s in a partially fair state of health now. What really annoyed me was that despite the on-going recession and lack of salaried employment, I’ve had to shelve out a lot of money for her resuscitation. Honestly, you don’t want to know how much I spent, unless - that is - you intend to help me out with a refund or an external Hard Disk to recover my backup.

My friend Woomie has been telepathically beating me up to update so… I just had to do this: GOSH!!! I HAVE MISSED YOU GUYS!!!

Of course I’ve been managing to do blog paroles but it’s a whole different thing altogether having to type out each URL instead of consulting my Links/Bookmarks. And worse, I couldn’t save anything for offline reading which I really love doing, but what pissed me off was queuing up with all those Y.Y. boys Rayo once talked about and jostling to use lousy Ice Age café PCs packed chockfull of viruses and outdated plug-ins.

Anyways, I’m back… and hmm… where do I start? Let me just roam along on this one writing it up as I go.

LEFT 2 WRITE…
Speaking of writing, I’ve got loads to do. First, the concluding parts of my other blog posts are still waiting to be written and I just hope the sequels are any bit as good when I get to post them by next week. (By the way, someone left a comment saying I reminded her of Carlang. You guys just keep astounding me. That’s the greatest compliment I’ve received so far. Thanks Miz-Cynic!)

Then there’s a review of Wande Coal’s Mushin2Mo’ Hits album and Kefee’s A Piece of Me to tackle and I’m also trying my hand at a Book Review. After that I’ll have to script a multi-part serialization x-raying the Nigerian music industry partly in view of the current NBC ban on certain music videos plus a critical look at my favourite entertainment medium: the TV.

Star Quest went by during my absence but I think I can still cook up something on that. Then one of my best Dance reality shows, Malta Guinness Street Dance Africa has begun hitting the silver screen already. I’ve got to say this here: Naija peeps are definitely talented when it comes to all sorts of dancing.

Project Fame West Africa comes up in a short bit and I intend to stay glued to that but sadly I’ll be missing Koko Mansion since the reality show’s exclusive to HiTV and honestly, not even D’Banj justifies a cable subscription in these trying economic times. I just hope they maintain a good web presence so I can follow it up online or even better, license other TV stations to show the delayed-broadcast editions (hope Tony Subair, Don Jazzy and the Koko Master himself are listening).

Lastly on entertainment, the 2009 Hip Hop World Awards came up on Saturday, 16th May with the nominees trying to grab our attention beforehand via their blogs and FB status messages. One mild surprise was Omawumi carting away the Next Rated and Best Female Vocalist awards leaving behind acts like Djinee, Niki Laoye and Wajeh. For a full list of the Award winners and celeb pictures, you can check out Linda Ikeji’s blog while Tosyn Bucknor’s and Banky W’s gave some very interesting Behind-the-Scene gists. One thing that really stumped me was that the HHWA website didn’t have any of the above information on its webpages until way AFTER the bloggers had put up theirs!!! Very BIG banana peel

HHWA photos courtesy LindaIkeji.blogspot.com and WeRunThings.net

Plus Some Random Blogville/FB Stuvvs
Ok, quite a lot has been going on in my absence but let me mention a few that pained me like shege. First on my list, what’s up with Doug’s blog? Got a notification that he’d updated but when I eventually checked it out, poof! The blog had disappeared into virtual smoke! Wetin dey? Is it what I’m thinking? If anyone gets in touch, please tell him to holler ASAP, will ya? And DB, can you please be a good boy and explain the whereabouts of your previously padlocked post?

Oh, then some good news: our Laide’s got a boyfriend! Bad news: It isn’t me. I swear, that post broke my heart to pieces then gathered the pieces and smashed them to even smaller pieces, I was so sad I didn’t eat for all of 3 hours. Nevertheless, I’m really glad for her, honest. Same goes for Vera. Just two things for me to do now: (1) re-focus my glasses and (2) go cast my net elsewhere…

Is it me or does it seem like a cliquish thing is going around Blogville? I haven’t really been able to savour the full flavour of The African Women blog (no thanks to dumb Lagos ISPs) but recently I stumbled upon another group of African bloggers doing their thing literally via movie reviews. Would have loved to join but I’ve got a lot on my plate already…

Now to the really happier bits, I enjoyed reading Rita’s interview with StandTall. I was actually planning to kick-start an Interview segment on my blog by having a chat with our Activist but the gentleman in me let Rita snag it. Yeah, right… More interviews are still in the pipeline nonetheless, so do watch out for that maybe next month.

Blogville aside, I attended the kick-off of the most blogged about literary event, The 9 Writers Book Tour at WA 7 and I must say I was mighty impressed (even better, the event started and ended on time too). You writers are such smart lot! To show how affected I was, I bought a book - definitely helped by the fact that the authoress was good-looking. Borrowing Seye’s lingo, I also un-met Rayo there since she and none of the bloggers I knew eventually showed up. Dante was present but somehow we didn’t meet either. You can read up his reportage of the book tour here.

I’m eagerly anticipating my next Arts meet but another event I’m also looking forward to will hold this time via Facebook. It’s called The Drive and though the destination details are sketchy, it’s basically a road adventure holding on May 29th. Now it’s been a long time since I had adventure, I’m sincerely praying I’ll be around for that one. As for the Sundays At The Bay event, Laide’s chronicle of the April edition, especially the boat capsizing bit has succeeded in “drowning” my enthusiasm. If you use FB, I’m sure you can search for details of both events on the site.

And speaking of Facebook, I’m seriously contemplating its importance to me right now. I seem to be spending too much time on it and moreover, nowadays every teenager, Y.Y. boy and their dog seem to be signing up and popping me with their Friend Requests. Imagine wanting to be my “friend” just because we share the same very common last name? On the flip side, I got into a lyrical battle with someone just because I said Sasha’s sexy and he disagreed. Anyway, I verbally assaulted the guy real bad and won but it’s not as if I’m proud of it seeing as he has to go and majorly diss my FB profile picture. But hey, I never said I was an Adonis, right?

So how’s this for rambling? I’ve got to stop now… Have a gazillion comments to drop plus my blog rounds to resume, certain strong blogging resolutions to be made, a couple of CVs and e-mails to send, stuff to reply to and then Facebook…

So to summarise, even though I didn’t really go anywhere, IT FEELS GOOD TO BE BACK!!!

Gosh!!! I’ve missed you guys! Did I say that before?