i think there was a scene like this in Friday...

i'd like to tell you how smart jeff and i are. how we have street smarts and know how to get ourselves out of sticky situations. how we value our lives and take to heart the old adage that curiosity killed the cat. i'd like to tell you that story, but that would be pure fairy tale. the truth is that we're morons with a thirst for adventure that turns our ordinarily brilliant minds to complete uselessness.

you guys may have suspected as much from me - i spent almost a year delivering subpoenas alone in the projects and i spent most of my wednesday driving to crack houses to interview witnesses (although this time with a partner). so maybe i rubbed off on jeff, or maybe he's just as nosy as i am and we're perfect for each other. either way, the two of us together will generally run toward trouble rather than away from it. saturday night is a case-in-point.

we're just driving along after eating thai food and seeing brokeback mountain, discussing the movie and looking forward to the champagne in the fridge waiting for us. as usual i take the left from carlton onto hampton, jabbering away, when the car in front of me suddenly halts. i'm all, "what the hell is this idiot doing?" and then i look up and see it. (as my law professors are fond of saying, "query" when i would've noticed the scene had i not been following another car; would it have been in time?)

just a little ways down the street is a mass of somewhere between 75 and 100 people milling in the street, completely blocking further passage, shouting and screaming. the car in front of us, a domino's deliverman, pulls a U-turn and gets the hell out. jeff and i just sit there, paralyzed for a moment by what we see in front of us. is it a riot? did someone get shot? or is it just a party? sensing that it would not be a good idea to try to plow through, i begin to take the necessary measures to turn the vehicle around.

"roll the window down. i want to hear what they're saying. it sounds like a party."
"it's not a party. look at the way the crowd is moving, people are kind of frantic, not happy, and they are in forward motion, not stagnant and dancing." but i roll my window down anyway. though i have turned the car the other direction, i've stopped in the middle of the street. watching in my rearview, listening. what the hell is going on?

neither of us want to leave. we want to stay on our perch and watch the scene unravel - where are the cops anyway? another car blindly turns down the road and we watch it get just to the edge of the crowd. will the seas part for it or will the blob swallow it and eat it alive? neither. the car just stops, impotent. SO anti-climactic. why that driver doesn't high-tail it out of there, i have no idea, but it just sits there, waiting, like it's just a traffic light and soon it will have the right of way.

a few seconds later i reluctantly shift into drive and make our exit; tonight is not the night i'm ready to be hit by a stray bullet and things seem to be escalating.

so far we haven't heard anything through the grapevine about what went down, and the online version of the local paper doesn't mention anything about it. we are left with our stereotypes, our imagination, and quite frankly a little tinge of regret that we didn't stick around a wee bit longer, you know, just to see.