Got Served? Installment the Second

There he stood, all 5’4” of him towering over newsstands and fire hydrants alike.

A cell phone in one hand and a fresh smoke in the other and a look of determination on his jaw that the world has not seen since George W. tried to pronounce subliminal.

“Ima show them how we do it New Jersey STYLE!!”

“NAW Bitch, NEW YORK STYLE! YEA NEW YORK STYLE!!”

As these words began to register in my mind I am positive my face contorted into something out of a Hitchcock flick. I looked at Louis in pure amazement. He looked back at me. Greg looked the guy right in the face with one of those “Are you actually right here in front of me” looks on him.

The man-beast hung up his cell phone and looked Greg right back with his eyes made of pure flames.

“You guys battle?”

Don’t get me wrong maybe in a sober state one of us would have been smart enough to figure that this was on its way to going straight to nowhere but we all just stood there not unlike a 12 year old without its ADD medicine doesn’t.

Greg mustering all the brain cells that haven’t been destroyed through said Jager Bombs gets out what we have all been thinking:

“You mean like dance battle?”

The smiles come across all of our faces as visions of Starsky and Hutch come into our heads with about a million You Got Served jokes.

And on the face of the man-beast:

Anger.

“No,
shit no,
RAP BATTLE”

Somehow, someway, somewhere in this man’s life something made rap battleing in Scranton, PA way above and beyond the coolness of Dance Battling in Scranton, PA by about the same amount of cool points as Rick James vs. Vanilla Ice.

Then it came, the only words I could muster, an old joke from the days when Jeff would be out with us…

“Ah, no thanks man, I quit”

“YOU QUIT!?!?”

Does he think I’m serious? Surely he must have heard the sarcasm in my voice, or the Hitchcock flick on my face or the moving around like the non-ADD filled 12 year old doesn’t. Didn’t this daemon-child see all these things?

“Yeah man, after the last time I did it I swore I wouldn’t battle again”

He looked at me like many a smart human being looks at another person when they say that they support Bush, a look of understanding that the person in front of them must have had a horrible, unspeakable life that brought them to this point. He then offered me comfort

“I hear ya man, since Eminem broke out man the scene has been murdered”

Then I saw it, the fingers separated on his right hand, making that familiar rock symbol…

“Shit I got blonde hair!”

(for the record it was died blond hair)

Then the index and pinky touched and I swear I heard thunder when they did, and in one swift movement they went to his mouth where they got a good wet nap.

He wasn’t about to do it was he?

He was.

They reached his eyebrows and separated each hair from each other in the classic Rico Suave move from the 80s.

“Shit I got Blue Eyes!”

“I can be Eminem!”

It was at this point, in my state of utter disarray, that Ange joined us outside. None too early for the occasion.

We left our battling friend on his way into Tinks to display his skills for all of Scranton to see him do it “NEW YORK STYLE!”

Epilogue:

After all of this we made it to the Bog where I told this story to someone else waiting at the bar for a beer who informed that rap battling was very serious and he knows 6 or 7 people who do it. He also seemed quite insulted by my laughing at the events that made up this story