During the late 90's and early 00's, Sunday nights were characterized by an evening of Cosmos, Blahnik's and fake nipples, with my girls from Sex and the City. When the show retired, I feared that Sunday nights would never be the same, never again, would I get that warm feeling Sunday afternoon, when I planned my day and realized I would have an ab-fab TV night. Little did I know, that just 2 years later, another equally controversial TV on VH1 (who knew?!?) would come along, to again, rock
Erin Richelle's world.
Flavor Flaaave ... while, Sex and the City ushered me through my high school and college days, Flavor of Love, has been here to jumpstart my weeks throughout 1st and 2nd year of law school. Although my mom is afraid to watch the show b/c after watching 1 episode she said it gave her "bad" dreams ... for her sake I won't divulge further details, and my aunt after seeing just 1 episode left a message on my voicemail saying, "poor erin, you must be soooo stressed out with school work that you have to watch this craziness to balance out your brain..." Well call it what you like, but tell me, what other show can you find 20 of the most "hoodrific" women from the depths of our country, throw them into a rented mansion (b/c we all know that if Flave couldn't pay child support, he definitely couldn't afford a mortgage on that mansion) to fight for the love and adoration of an almost bonafide AARP member (Flave is rapidly approaching retirement) with gold teeth, balding / graying cornrows, browning fingernails (you gotta pay attention during the zoom in shots when he is groping some random girl's bootae), dressed in a a crayola colored suit, matching crayola colored Stacy Adams, topped off with a crayola colored top hat (over a white corner store doo-rag), and lets not forget the wall clock draped around his neck!
So even though this all sounds crazy, I absolutely love it!!! This show has generated countless of hours of conversation amongst my friends and I. During shows, during commercial breaks and at the stroke of 11PM, best believe my phone is buzzing with phone calls & text messages from Samantha, Cassandra, Shannon, Ashley Bo. or Eneida ... wanting to recap, and of course reinact what we just witnessed.
Although in many ways I recognize that Flavor of Love may have possibly set the race back a few hundred thousand points in the continual race to the finish line to defy horribly false stereotypes of our people, I also think of the show in the context of a quote by my favorite rapper, (Jay-Z of course) ... "You can't knock the hustle..."
Maybe if I wasn't in law school, hadn't gone to a great college, a great high school, and basically didn't have too much going for me...maybe I too would have chosen to pledge flav-phi-flav, and lived in the sorority house, with boots, buckey, buckwild, somethin, like dat, deelishis, and of course miss new york. My chant, instead of the skee-wee, would have been flaaavorrrr - flaaaaave! And instead of the throwing up of the pinky, I would have had to flip my weave (b/c we all know that you cannot pledge flav-phi-flav if you do not wear a weave). My sorority colors would have been Grill Gold and Flave Brown. And my line name would more than likely have been, "Burbs" or something along those lines. I too would have gotten to say those phrases like, "on my one-on-one with Flave...," "this man is scrumptious, " and "that lying a$$, stupid a$$, fake a$$ bit*h"... I think I really missed out...
Anyways, much thanks to Flavor Flave and the girls for giving me something to talk about, laugh about, and of course, blog about! Looking forward to the homecoming show, i mean, reunion show next week! And from now on, my Sunday nights will be focused on the crime / drug ridden, educationally flailing city of Baltimore, on HBO's
the Wire.
P.S. - If anyone knows who Deelishis' baby's dad is, who in the words of Deelishis, has, "money on top of money" ... please let me know, inquiring minds a.k.a
Erin Richelle &
Samantha Michelle are dying to know!!!
