Promo Tour Day 9

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 VICTORIA, TX

Victoria, Texas. Population sixty thousand. Where the hell are we? When I plotted the driving directions for this tour, I didn’t tell the program to stay on the major highways and interstates, so it plots the fastest way to get between two points. In this case, it’s a rural road called 87, taking us south to Victoria from Austin.

The chatter in our truck along the way is about the impending hurricane (they call it a tropical depression) and it’s a fact of life here in eastern Texas. The guys are familiar with all of the weather terms and know distinct differences between a tropical depression and a full out hurricane.

We ended up at the Mall in Victoria about two hours early. Ghetto saw a cinema across the parking lot so off we went to kill some time and have some fun. No high schools, colleges, or malls calling to us today, so we opt for some fun downtime. The only movie we can see due to start times is the Chris Tucker/Jackie Chan flick—Rush Hour 403. It was cute and amusing, and puts us right on time to our in-store (on time for us is 15 minutes early). I guess I don’t need to tell you that we took over the theater, right?

Hey, there’s carpet on the floor of this Mall. That has to be a clean up nightmare… But the manager of this FYE, JV, is extremely nice and very supportive of us. He told us that Smoot sold 133 CDs on a Wednesday in this empty mall. VERY surprising!!! We have a better buzz than Smoot, but we only sold 101 single CDs today, and about 50 DJ Smallz mixed CDs. Not bad. Tomorrow we will find out if we lost our #1 positioning on the Billboard Rap chart.

Sayeed’s boy 50 Pak showed up to the in-store and he got to spend some time with him. He is a very close friend of Sayeed’s. They were incarcerated together and Sayeed adores him. He was kind enough to lead us part of the way to Corpus Christi—showing us a back way that would be faster for us. On the way, we listened to 50 Pak’s mixed CD and Sayeed and I chatted about it by text message since we rode in different trucks.

50 Pak, who will most likely have to change his name due to it being so close to 50 Cent’s name, is both talented as well as extremely clever. He has one song about drugs that uses intelligent metaphors for each type and weight of drug. It’s classic. He also has a song about being from Victoria that both showed his skills and his home town pride.

Ghetto set up a radio remote appearance and a club appearance in Corpus on our way. They guys joked about how every time they go to Corpus, someone tries to break into the truck. Reminds me of New York… After crossing over some bodies of water on really tall freeways, and passing by about a thousand refineries, we pull up to the Hampton Inn, tonight’s destination. Zicam isn’t fighting my cold very well and I feel progressively worse as the day moves on. Sayeed informs me that Ramadan starts tomorrow and we have a long discussion on whether or not water during Ramadan’s fast is acceptable or not. Where’s an Imam when you need him?

--wendy