Lisa, Kelly, and Screech Take On THE ROOTS?!!!

Yesterday, three young, unsuspecting dumbasses ventured out on the smoker's holiday for a different kind of green -- an Earth Day Celebration. Lured by the phantom promise of THE ROOTS?!!!* and friends (Talib Kweli, Ne-Yo**, Chrisette Michele***, Wale****, etc...). Sadly, these poor, unfortunate souls*^5 did not accurately foresee the grim future that lay ahead of them. What should have been a day full of drunken, high white people, ganja, THE ROOTS?!!!*, crappy - but bearable weather, turned into an EPIC day of trauma. (Right: Look at them, looking all dry and happy. Ignorance is bliss...)

When young Les (Screech), Stephanie (Kelly), and Jasmine (your heroine Lisa Turtle) first awoke on Saturday, April 20, 2008 to disgusting rain the P.G. County area, they reluctantly decided against their previously made plans of seeing THE ROOTS?!!!*. As the skies cleared and the rained stopped, they hastily got ready and set out on an adventure. This adventure included Metro switch confusion (it's okay, our hero Lisa Turtle saved the day even though she was repeatedly pegged as the "non-Metro rider"), partially overcoming Lisa's ridiculously terrible fear of the Metro (and trains in general) and escalators. They arrived at the Smithsonian Metro stop only to see people opening umbrellas and throwing on ponchos so they began to panic. Armed with two hoodies (the girls), a jacket (the boy), and one tiny umbrella that flips up in the wind, they were not prepared for this:

It was terrible... It was like walking in a freaking monsoon. At the urging of Stephanie, the three kept pressing on to see what was going on at the venue but after waiting and getting soaked for awhile, they decided to retreat to the Metro station. Halfway to their destination, they hear the concert shall resume so they head BACK to the stage. After a few minutes of talking some hippy old man drunkenly gurgles some bluesy-ish tunes out and butchers, "One." Then Ed Norton comes out looking all white boy fine and talks about something but it sounds like nothing and then some activist and then some old white man who won't just shut the fuck up and then the monsoon comes back and the man who won't shutup wants everyone to wait the storm out. AT THIS POINT, Lisa, Kelly, and Screech have had ENOUGH so they (once again) head back to the Metro station. It had to be the longest walk ever. After they were sufficiently soaked from head to toe (seriously, everything but T-Pain*^6) they arrive to an overwhelming mob*^7 and transit authority agents who won't let them into the station. As these fuckheads who take their jobs too seriously finally let people come in, Lisa Turtle is nearly paralyzed with fear at the realization she will have to walk down a soaking wet escalator that seemed neverending. (It should be noted Lisa Turtle is afraid of heights, escalators, walking up and/or down non-moving escalators, trains, falling to her death, and SLIPPERY escalators). Lisa Turtle SLOWLY but safely made it down the death trap and through the gates. Kelly and Screech faced opposition from a soaking wet fare card and SmarTrip card (Look out for a picture of Kelly trying to blow hers dry). Once in the Metro station they hop on the first train they can and continue to do this all the way back to their original Metro location. All of this hell and they never even got to see THE ROOTS?!!!*. Lisa never got to see Black Thought (a prominent member of the list of Black Menz Jasmine Wants To Drop It Off In Her Draaaaaawz). Neither Lisa nor Kelly got to see Ne-Yo. Young Screech's plans to see THE ROOTS?!!!* were foiled again.

Wringing water out of a sweatshirt that is really light gray.
Kelly Kapowski trying to blow her fare card dry.

It was the most fun torture we'd ever had.

*"THE ROOTS?!!!" is in reference to a friend of my random neighbor Tim. It was his exclamation when Stephy and I told him about the concert. It was totally obvious he had like never heard a song by The Roots but it was his way of pretending to be interested.
**Les was in no way interested in seeing Ne-Yo, this was only Stephanie and I.
***Nobody really wanted to see Chrisette Michele.
****Nobody really wanted to see Wale either but we would have taken him over hippy/bluesy man.
*^5Reference to the song from The Little Mermaid.
*^6Stephanie had one a T-Pain t-shirt and though the rest of her was soaked, T-Pain remained dry.
*^7I definitely over-dramatized this.

The New Lisa Turtle™ Explained

It has occurred to me that I never actually explained why I am "The New Lisa Turtle™" so I have decided this warrants explanation. To understand, you'd have to understand who Lisa Turtle (the original) is (and I don't mean the actress that played her, Lark Voorhies). For the youngsters and those who just didn't watch Saved By The Bell I will explain her greatness. Lisa Turtle was Saved By The Bell's resident fly, token black chick even when it was Good Morning Miss Bliss. Now, most of what I know of Saved By The Bell/Good Morning Miss Bliss is through reruns (the show aired from 1988-1993 and I was born November of 1986) but I always knew that Lisa Turtle and I were kindred. Lisa Marie Turtle, like most of the Saved By The Bell characters was very one-dimensional so some of the things I will say are somewhat inferences based around what is known about her.

Like Lisa Turtle, I too attended predominately white schools nearly my entire life (only pre-school, kindergarten, first grade, and a partial semester in college were not). I too am used to being the only black girl in my class and often the only black person in my class. This is not to say there were no black people around, I just didn't have classes with the majority of them so it was like I didn't know any of them. Lisa can identify! She only had white friends (you know Zack, Kelly, Slater, Jessie, Screech, etc.). Other black people were rarely seen at Bayside, Lisa didn't even have any black friends (but at least Slater is Hispanic). My high school experience was not too dissimilar from hers, I was moderately popular with lots and lots of white friends. I was quite fashionable, my hair was always white people friendly (either pressed out straight or spiral curls -- you know how mystified SOME white people can be by black people with that naturally curly hair). Our taste in music is quite similar, though my scope may be broader than hers -- neither of us are afraid of the whitey music! Lisa Turtle was mostly single in high school (as was I) but did have small fleeting romances, mostly with cute, preppy white boys. She was, unfortunately, incessantly chased by Bayside's king of nerdom Samuel "Screech" Powers but this was all made okay when she got to have a brief (but cute) one episode romance with Bayside's hottest commodity Zack Morris. In high school I was a "white boy connoisseur," I liked them in all shapes, colors, sizes, types. I had my own versions of Screech but they were mainly obnoxious black boys who didn't get the hint! I (like the best schools, good drinking fountains, and seats in the front of the bus in the first half of the 1900s) was for whites only. Academically, Lisa and I paralleled -- smart but no Jessie Spano. She wanted to become a fashion designer; I wanted to be a patent lawyer. Lisa was accepted into FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) and I... went to community college.

This is where I stop being plain old Lisa Turtle and become the New Lisa Turtle. Beyond her showing up for Zack and Kelly's wedding and flirting it up with an ethnic cutie, we don't know what really became of Lisa Turtle. Maybe Lisa would have realized that fashion isn't what she really wanted to do and just one day quit FIT and come on back to Palisades, CA and mooch off of her surgeon parents (much like I am doing in Maryland -- mooching off my accountant mother and the money my retired father sends me). I wonder if Lisa Turtle's parents would have had the same "insight" my family had and think to themselves, Lisa should really learn to be around black people... LET'S SEND HER TO AN HBCU! Unlike me, Lisa probably would have chosen Spelman instead of the ghettotrocity that is Clark Atlanta University (and maybe she'd last a full semester). You see, I am the continuation of the Lisa Turtle saga; the story that went untold because she's not Kelly Kapowski. I am that girl who is unapologetically a product of her surroundings. Do I still exclusively date white guys? Hell to the no. No offense to my pigment challenged folk, but I am in love with the chocolate these days. Am I still stuck-up? Pretty much. Just call me "The snob of all snobs" (c) Naledge of Kidz in the Hall. Picture if someone took the Lisa Turtle we all know and love and gave her a foul mouth and a Grey Goose habit -- Now you've got the gist of me. Of course, unlike the character, I am multifaceted but I'm giving a general idea here.

I am the result of parents who worked hard to make sure their children did not have to grow up in the harsh world that so many people in my race do and that these children would have a chance at not being another statistic and another stereotype. Unfortunately, I am the new stereotype. They call girls and boys like me "Oreo." Black on the outside, white on the inside... WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN? Do you know how many people grew up like me? It would be more phony for me to pretend that I am someone I am not. Everybody's a gangsta... Try being the only black person in your class when discussing A Raisin In The Sun or Native Son and trying to persuade people who don't feel it that racism is forever alive and kicking. The older you get the harder it is to reconcile the "white" world that you grew up in and the black person you are. I am a true suburban gangster; I bask in my Lisa Turtleness and I encourage others to do the same.


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