Allow me to demonstrate the skill of Shaolin

Alright, it's up to me to get this started again, to pick the HBCC up by its bootstraps and get this shit set off again like that whole VineyardGate '06 never even happened and like the self-loathing week from hell finally blew over. Howdja want me to start this though, a little a cappella? "I can see clearly now the rain is gone"? Fuck nah. "WU TANG CLAN AIN'T NUTHIN TO FUCK WIT/ WU TANG CLAN AINT NUTHING TO FUCK WIT". This ain't tradins spaces, so protect ya godamn neck.

Right then. Let me set the scene. 1992 was it? 8th grade was the grade. The jackets were Starter (University of Miami, What!). The skin color was white bread. The suburb was Farmington Hills, Michigan. And the chambers? Wellll, there were 36 of them. One acronym, five little letters. That was all it took to turn me on to rap and hip hop forever. At that point in my life I was just learning about the birds and the bees and the bees of music, you know: dark side of the moon, stairway to heaven, bloodsugarsexmagic, foghat, flanel, ten, maybe some OPP, whateva. And then my buddy grabbed me one day and said, "hey man, have you seen that video for that song where those guys go cash rules everything around me and then this guy goes CREAM!! That shit is awesome." Of course I hadn't seen it cause my parents never let me watch TV on school nights, so I was immediatelty fascinated. Cream!? What the fuck could it mean?! Well my friends, I soon found out.

Enter the Wu-Tang. Oh man. From the moment that old dude first comes on: "Shaolin shadowboxing/ and the Wu-Tang sword style/ if what you say is true/ the Shaolin and the Wu Tang could be DANGEROUS/ do you think your Wu-Tang sword/ can defeat me?!" Homagawd. Nothing that had ever entered my ears up until that point ever made me feel more bad ass than that intro. And what was it introducing? Why, a song by the name of Bring da Ruckus. At that point I had no fucking idea what Ruckus was, but you can believe me I tried to bring it every single day. I wanted nothing more in life (except maybe to get to third base) than to bring the ruckus so fucking hard and be like my heros, The Wu Tang Clan.

The RZA, the GZA, Ol Dirty Bastard (RIP), Inspectah Deck, Raekwon the Chef U-God, Ghostface Killa and the Method Man. Some people think John Wayne or Clint Eastwood or Bono were some bad-ass dudes. In my book, they can't hold a candle to the fucking Wu-Tang clan. Even Biggie Smalls (RIP) who I thought was the most amazing, just didn't grab hold of me and shake the shit out of me the way the Wu Tang did with 36 Chambers.

So, it is with a huge amount of anticipation that I finally snapped out of my self-loathing stupor this week and realized, "Friday fucking night I'm going to get to see the Wu-Tang Clan live on stage." I know that their concerts in the past have been plagued with all sorts of weird ass bullshit that prevents them from ever coming on stage. And I know there's a fairly good chance that I might get shanked or robbed or that a gun fight might break out. I mean, they are having it at Webster Hall of all places. But one time my good friend Heidi took me to see Ghostface in concert and when he did some of the Wu songs, or at least parts of them, live? Psshshsshh. Nothing beats that.

Friday night. The HBCC. Bobsled Commando. Captain Handsome. Webster Hall. The Wu-Tang Clan. I'll leave you with an actual theme song, comprised of one of the best verses ever on a Wu-Tang album. Inspectah Deck from Triumph on Track 2 of Disc 2 of Wu-Tang Forever. And ODB...Rest in Peace.

sing the theme song: i bomb atomically/ socrates philosophies and hypotheses can't define how i be droppin these mockeries/ lyrically perform armed robberies/ flee with the lottery/ possibly they spotted me/ battle-scarred shogun/ explosion when my pen hits tremendous/ ultraviolet shine blinds forensics/ I inspect you, through the future see millenium/ Killa B's sold fifty gold sixty platinum/ Shacklin the masses with drastic rap tactics/ Graphic displays melt the steel like blacksmiths/ Black Wu jackets queen B's ease the guns in/ Rumble with patrolmen, tear gas laced the function/ Heads by the score take flight incite a war/ Chicks hit the floor, diehard fans demand more/ Behold the bold soldier, control the globe slowly/ Proceeds to blow swingin swords like Shinobi/ Stomp grounds and pound footprints in solid rock/ Wu got it locked, performin live on your hottest block...