Hot Sex

I'll be honest with you folks, I'm going home to California this week and my heart and brain are already there. I'm trying to convince one of my aunts to make some gumbo, so forgive me if the following isn't quite... uhh... focused.

Many people don't know this -- or, unfortunately, care -- but Cleveland is the hometown to one of the most celebrated contemporary jazz artists in the country: Joe Lovano. The tenor saxophonist will be celebrating his 54th birthday Dec. 29 at Nighttown in Cleveland with two concerts featuring an interesting quintet of pianist Dan Wall, bassist Dave Morgan, drummer Carmen Castaldi, percussionist Jamey Haddad and singer Judi Silvano.

Lovano has regularly topped jazz critic and fan polls and lists as a top tenor man for a decade. He has a new ballad-heavy album called Joyous Encounter, which, like most of his albums, has been critically hailed.

Last week, I wrote a preview of Vanilla Ice's Dec. 15 performance and since I took my lady out for a fun evening to hear his ``past and new hits'' coupled with the joy of watching college-age people behave like aspiring Girls Gone Wild stars and extras, I am compelled to report my findings.

Besides, the paper won't pay for the ticket if I don't write about it, and I think I can safely say this will be the last time Vanilla Ice is featured in this space for quite some time.

I had never been to Mango's in downtown Akron on the top floor of Panini's, the restaurant and my football-watching haven, and after showing up way too early (about 9:30 p.m.), I know why. That's not a dig at Mango's -- it adroitly caters to its mostly 18- to 25-year-old constituency, and the youngsters I saw were having a good time.

The extremely inebriated over-50 guy, who was doing some serious two-fisted drinking and dancing when we arrived and was still going strong, if much wobblier, when we left about 2 a.m., was also enjoying himself.

It's the kind of bar that has two platforms with poles, uses napkins as confetti and where they don't bother to bring a single bottle of the good beer from downstairs because the bulk of the crowd is still drinking beer for the sole purpose of getting drunk.

The main point of the excursion was to see who showed up to a Vanilla Ice concert in 2005, but I'm not sure I got an honest answer. As the club filled, it seemed most of the crowd would have been there on a Thursday night during/after finals anyway.

I did meet one man who said his curiosity got the better of him, but most of the crowd was still in kindergarten when Ice was at the height of his popularity and was only interested in him because he happened to be there.

While waiting a ridiculously long time for the man to hit the stage and do his thing, we had plenty of time to listen to the party-rockin' sounds of DJ Inferno ``on the 1s and 2s.'' In the three-plus hours we waited for Ice, DJ Inferno played three different mixes of Magic Stick, four mixes of In Da Club, and two mixes each of Gold Digger, Runnin' and Yeah.

You'll notice most of those songs were hot a few years ago, though he did slip in a few current crunk hits plus Sweet Home Alabama and Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy.

During the waiting period we also got a long look at the mating rituals of the ``Horny Student,'' which involved among other things, periodic requests for ladies to get up on the bar and shake their groove thangs. Also, there were small herds of guys standing around trying not to look desperate as a few uninhibited girls flashed their boobs, one brief but hilarious fight and a presumably drunken girl relinquishing all of her cool points by leaving a trail of vomit from the bar to the women's room.

Around 1 a.m. (dude, who do you think you are?) Vanilla Ice finally took the stage with Mexican DJ Dirty Sanchez (get it?) and a drummer named Clint Eastwood.

Between his own requests for ladies to show their boobs and for everyone to shout ``go, white boy, go, white boy, go!'' he sent a shout out to the soldiers in Iraq.

Ice Ice Baby came around fourth in the set list and, of course, went over quite well, surrounded by bad rap/rock weed songs (including a cover of Cypress Hill's Hits From the Bong), a song called Dirty South from his 2001 album, Bipolar, and presumably a song or two from his latest magnum opus Platinum Underground, on sale at the bar for a mere $15.

Ice pulled several women out of the crowd and started a freestyle session and as with many freestyle sessions, it was nearly impossible to hear any of the aspiring emcees display their skills.

And then he was gone. No ``thank you, Akron!!'' or ``Mango's rules. Drink responsibly!!'' or anything. Clint Eastwood stopped playing, Dirty Sanchez (seriously, do you get it?) spun for a few minutes more and that was the end.

If I (or anyone in the room really) were an actual Vanilla Ice fan, I'd probably feel cheated by him for ``performaning'' only a few songs, allowing the show to degenerate into controlled chaos and then literally disappearing. But as a social experiment, I'd say a good time was had by all.

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