Ice, Ice Baby

You may have noticed that last week we didn't update the blog. While that was not intentional, I am confident that the awesomeness of this post (yes, awesomeness is a real word) will more than make up for it.

Last week while I was driving home from Janesville - it's where TruGreen's been sending me to work lately - I heard an ad on the radio tell me that Vanilla Ice was coming to Madison. Like most of you, I was under the impression that he was so washed up that he was no longer doing live shows. When I heard the same advertisement the next day, however, I knew it was for real. Here was my chance to go back in time and hear Mr. Van Winkle live. It was Janessa's turn for date night though, so I wasn't sure if it would be cool to hijack it and take her to see a washed-up 90s rapper. Lucky for me though, she was more than willing to go when I told her later that night about the Ice Man's visit.

So Friday came and all I could think about - other than seeing Janessa when I got home - was going back in time and seeing Mr. Ice. We thought he'd be on at 9:30, but that was when the opening act went on - some no-good rap group from Chicago. Vanilla didn't go on until 11:00 (which sort of sucked considering I had to work at 8:00 AM on Saturday), but his skills - or lack thereof - made the wait well worth it.

I guess if I had to choose two words to describe his show they would be sad and disturbing. Sad because the man is under the delusion that he actually has a strong underground following. While the club Janessa and I saw him at was packed, the vibe I got was that it was more of a "We're laughing at you, not with you" type of feeling. People seemed to be watching him as more of a sideshow than an actual artist. Sad because the man is 42 years old and was up on stage dancing and throwing water on 20-something women. Let's just say that if To Catch a Predator was "To Catch a Creep" that Vanilla Ice would be its star...

One more note - if you go to Vanilla Ice's wikipedia page, you'll see that he describes his show as "high-energy," with the high-energy part being his throwing water bottles at people. It was funny to see him try and dropkick a water-bottle only to have it fall right back on him.

I do have some videos/pictures on my cell phone, but until I figure out how to get them off and onto the computer, you'll just have to use my words and imagine what it was like. If you try and disturb yourself as much as possible I'm sure you'll be pretty close...