Just silly...

So I have time to squeeze in a bit about Diddy...

I have watched some or all of the Making the Band series on MTV. Yeah, I said it. I've bumped into a little pocket of people who are very snobby about their cultural pasttimes. I'm over it. I try to enjoy and learn from everything. Even reality shows.

So if you've missed it, every season Sean Combs, that's Diddy to you(!), promises some group of young hopefuls that he's going to make them the next big thing. That proposition in and of itself is foolish because by now every black artist should have figured out that the fastest route to one-hit-wonderdom or even undeserved obscurity is to be on the Bad Boy roster (Cheri Dennis, Carl Thomas, 112, New Edition, Faith Evans, Craig Mack, Black Rob, and the contestants of the previous three installments of MTB--especially MTB2...should be deposed on how Diddy systematically squandered the heat from their careers). When was the last time someone even said Total. Sigh. Anyhow, every season a group of wide-eyed young performers try their best to get Diddy's attention.

One season he actually did not 'make a band'--those girls were hilarious! Two or three of them got held over to another season--then cut. That eventually spawned the goofiness that is Dannity Kane. Unless you are like 15, you probably have never even heard of Dannity Kane. Yawn. I've just told you all you need to know. The most infamous season of Making the Band...lol...Diddy put together a sorry, obviously doomed hodge-podge of a thing called "The Band." The fact that he didn't even bother naming their group should have alerted these poor kids they...in the words of Craig Mack...wouldn't be around next year. This was the season Diddy infamously sent the hopefuls to walk all over the boroughs of New York and finally to Junior's in Brooklyn to bring him cheesecake...back in his Manhattan office. Other hilarity ensued, but I'm writing about MTB4...

This season Diddy is (allegedly) putting together a boy band. Dannity Kane moved a few units (though someone should tell those girls it's over) so Diddy figured he'd do the same thing in pants. The whole show would have probably slipped under the radar and probably in the rest of the country it is...but since it's located in NYC, during the production word slipped out that Diddy and his choreographer had got into it on the show and that he had thrown a chair at her during production! What?! So that has been the buzz about this season...rather than the band itself, hmm...what actually happened between Diddy and his choreographer Laurie Ann Gibson? Is she really suing him? So leading up to the episode that included this altercation people pretty much thought Diddy was the villain. And he very well may be...Laurie Ann Gibson went on the Wendy Williams radio show right before the show and dished a lot of dirt with Miss Wendy--of the "how you doin'?" variety. If you know Wendy, you know what I'm talking about...It seemed to be worth a watch.

So I got pulled in...I find MTB amusing anyway. I don't go out of my way, but so far just about every season, I've stumbled in and caught the episodes. One night I found this season and remembered the dust-up to come and started watching. Besides Diddy...this season has Michael Bivins from New Edition (Diddy rescued them from their MCA contract) and Laurie Ann Gibson. What can be said about Laurie Ann? She takes herself very seriously. And while she works, she has this habit of counting time by saying "boom kack, boom kack kack..." Eventually I started calling her Boom Kat and I see others have too. To the point that the chick now wears a satin jacket (!) that says BoomKat in crystals. Hilarious. Anyway...She' been the choreographer since the Dannity Kane cycle and pretty much in the background. But with the chair-throwing buzz, all of a sudden, Boom Kat is front and center. Hmm. I ended up hearing her interview with Wendy Williams on the internet. I was ready to see what went down with this chair throwing.

The episode finally comes on --don't worry it will be repeated many times. Like I said Miss BoomKat is taking herself extra serious. She tells the boys that their test for the week is to show how much of the dance routine they can learn in one day....ooookkkkkayyy! These guys do the best they can. Diddy saunters in, sits down with a toothpick in his mouth and dares these fools to impress him. Somebody's getting eliminated! But something is wrong...all these guys are terrible. Diddy finally asks how long did you guys practice and Laurie Ann very (sheepishly) slips in..."just today, their test was to show how quickly they could learn the routine and..." Well, all of a sudden Mr. Diddy is on his feet and furious. It's on and popping. And eventually he, BoomKat and Michael end up in a room off camera. A huge clatter. Then Laurie is gone! Wow.

Now if you hadn't heard Boom Kat on the Wendy Williams show, you probably thought Diddy was 100% in the wrong. It certainly seems like he's being a real jerk. And if he threw a chair? Well that's a wrap. But if you heard BoomKat's interview, you learned a few things that aren't very obvious, but are quite crucial to seeing this incident in context. One Miss BoomKat is trying to get a reality show of her own. Nothing wrong with that. Got to plan for the future...But she fails to mention she was trying to get her reality show during the taping of MTB4. You don't figure that out until you see the episode and connect the dots. Oh...and even though she's my age!...Miss BoomKat thinks she's about to become the next pop princess. What!? Hilarious.
So armed with that information, you notice how shady Laurie Ann sounds when she says..."uh this is the challenge, you're going to have one day..." And when Laurie Ann, Diddy and Michael are sitting together waiting for the guys to start dancing, you realize that Laurie Ann is being quite obnoxious. Diddy puts 2 and 2 together and realizes that instead of working with the guys all weekend, Laurie Ann has only with them one day because of her schedule. Diddy asks why have you only been here one day. BoomKat weakly and evasively keeps saying "that was the challenge" but off camera a producer tattles that she was only available one day because...wait for it.....apparently Miss Laurie Ann was busy taking meetings about her own reality show!

Then it all starts making sense. Laurie stunting on Diddy, daring him to replace her, appearing on Wendy all in her face....This chick thinks she's about to blow up! Priceless. She made this 'one day challenge thing' up and had Diddy not asked WHY the guys were so bad, she wouldn't have said a word. So when Diddy goes ballistic..."I ain't taking no objections, baby girl, I ain't taking no objections!" I actually agreed with him-- I'm actually trying to find an occasion to say that myself..."I ain't takin' no objections"--heehee. The way Laurie Ann handled the whole situation was wrong and underhanded. While she may want her own fame and fortune, for now, she is a bit player on Diddy's show and her behavior was COMPLETELY out of pocket. Now the whole chair throwing thing happens off camera...so I have no idea what really went down. He might have thrown it AT her or he might have just knocked a chair over. He seems pretty confident Miss Laurie's lawsuit ain't worth filing. But when you put all that BoomKat lays out together... she actually ended up persuading me to take Diddy's side. I can't believe it. Any chick in her mid-thirties or better that thinks she's the next big thing in a teenager's game is clearly delusional and unreliable as a source for information! And she obviously has poor judgment. Girlfriend played right into Wendy's "how you doing" game and implicated Diddy, Michael Bivins and Andre Harrell. These are not the things you do when you are trying to be a senior citizen pop star. Sigh. And the first rule is to get a new job before you jeopardize your current one.

Just silly...