G! True Hollywood Stories -- A Tale of L's and Triumphs [UPDATE: Uncle Jr from Jamie Foxx played me]

[True Blue Moon]

What's good brehs. I started a 5-Day story series on Instagram recently trying to get my content up. It's called G! True Hollywood Stories. I'm going to be breaking down L's I've taken pivotal moments in my life and maybe some heart break

Life is crazy and this is a fun outlet, so I hope y'all enjoy. If you fukk with it, make sure to follow me, because I'm going to be doing these every week for the foreseeable future.

Apologies on the formatting -- it's not breaking it down into paragraphs whenever I embed it on the Coli. If you click it and go to my profile, it'll have the paragraphs instead of one block. But either way, they're short stories.

I'll post up for the brehs every time I have a new entry.



G! True Hollywood Stories Episode 1 - "The Passive Aggression of the Balls"

PART ONE

"The Passive Aggression of the Balls"

PART ONE

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I’m driving now.

“You almost ready?” I asked, sitting in Sloane’s bedroom, hands on my car keys and baby hairs peeking out of my ball cap, feeling like a real muthafukkin’ G (shoutout to Eazy).

The keys to that little 2-door Honda Accord gave me access to sides of life you only get by going for a ride.

Sloane was my girlfriend.

Sloane was the first girlfriend of those Wonder Years where I didn’t feel like a boy, but wasn’t quite a man yet.

“Give me a second,” Sloane said.

I didn’t know it then, but this new relationship marked the beginning of a 3-year saga of joy, pain and life lessons. But on this day, with gas in my car and $6 movie tickets in my pocket, all was right with the world. I don’t even think we had had our first fight yet. Sloane came out, dressed and ready.

My jaw dropped. It was like seeing that shy girl from class in her bathing suit. Now I knew how Lil Wayne felt when he spit the line “You know the Feds listening … nikka, WHAT money?”.

“I’m ready to go to the movies,” Sloane said.

“nikka, WHAT movie?!” I asked, my tongue still on the floor.

I didn’t really say that.

I would have, but Wayne didn’t say that line until 8 years later.

My Spider Sense of recognizing a “mood” hadn’t formed yet. All the signs were there. One-word answers. Quiet for no reason. Coldness. That level of nuance was completely lost on 17-year-old Rone G.

While she waged that inner battle of moodiness, literally the only thought in my mind was: BOOTY BUTT CHEEKS! BOOTY BUTT, BOOTY BUTT, BOOTY BUTT CHEEKS!

That’s when everything changed. Sloane bent over to grab something. SSSSSSLAP! I spanked her right on the booty. She made the Angry Bird face.

God as my witness, I’ll never forget those milliseconds when something clicked in her brain, her eyes shifted downward and she PUNCHED ME DEAD IN THE NUTS. MAN DOWN.

Did we talk it out? Did I have to go to the hospital? Did I punch her back?

Find out NEXT TIME, on #GTrueHollywoodStories.

PART TWO

"The Passive Aggression of the Balls"

PART TWO

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I yelled, overselling the agony holding my testicles like they had ruptured.

I watched a lot of wrestling growing up and now it was paying off.

It didn’t really hurt.

Thankfully, this was the baggy clothes era – so while I looked ridiculous, she caught more jeans material than anything. She did catch a bit of side penis, but that’s more of an uncomfortable heat than debilitating pain.

Now that I’ve shared too much, I need to explain that the exaggerated scream of agony was so that she hopefully recognized the wildness of the atrocity she just committed. The other part was sheer shock that she would punch me in my fellas. It wasn’t like “Oh snap. Let me turn and punch him real quick and let it land where it lands”. I’ve been hit in the nuts plenty of times in sports, but this might be the first time someone legit targeted mis bolas, balled up their fist and maintained eye contact and proper form to make sure the punch connects.

This level of disrespect had to be checked. You don’t get to just punch your problems in a relationship.

So I checked her the way any teenage boy in love would. I gave her the silent treatment.

Part of that was me being a foo foo, cupcake, Passive Patty -- but another part was because I couldn’t mentally formulate any sentence that didn’t start with “Did this bytch just?...”

On the ride to AMC I was hot and doggone it, Sloane was gonna feel that with my silence. That’ll show her.

I just started driving, so I kept strictly to the 55 mph speed limit with my hands 10 and 2. Angry and following all the rules.

I kept the radio completely off so we had to ride in silence. That’ll show her.

But what I didn’t know yet is that Sloane could be every bit as stubborn as me, if not 10x more. I stared ahead as I drove, wondering if I had overplayed my hand. This might be a long night.

Did we talk it out? Did she break down and apologize? Did I make her kiss it? Find out NEXT TIME, on #GTrueHollywoodStories

PART THREE

"The Passive Aggression of the Balls"

PART THREE

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I looked madder than Ice Cube the entire movie. Sloane kept her silent treatment too.

Maybe she felt my “is it working?” peeks and laughed on the inside so I couldn’t win. For 2 hours, in a theater of people screaming in laughter, we were two mad dummies staring at the screen.

We rode home again with the radio off. Straight silence, homie. When we got back to her crib, I start getting scared.

I KNOW I didn’t just waste a Saturday night practicing acting mad.

As that thought made my temples throb, it hit me that I had underestimated the enemy. I waged a war of misery with a being that thrives in misery. When left to his own devices, a dude only experiences misery if someone dies or goes up 21-0 on him in Madden.

Women overthink everything and have someone put their uterus in the Crippler Crossface until it fukking bleeds for 23% of the month. An Art of War scholar I wasn’t.

So not only did I take a physical L getting right hooked in the nut sack, now I’m about to get KOed in the emotional battle. I realized I had just a little bit of curfew left as she put the key in the door.

I felt my knees buckling like I was going to pee on the carpet. JUST GET MY POINT AND START TALKING!, I yelled at her in my head.

Sloane didn’t budge. “You shouldn’t have punched me in the nuts,” I finally blurted out with as much bass as I could muster -- an ancient survival mechanism that man adopted in 52 BC to save face when taking an L.

“You shouldn’t have slapped my butt,” she said.

I used Venn Diagrams, court re-enactments and the Pythagorean theorem to explain that swatting her rump meat caused no injury, was a compliment, and even if not well received, didn’t warrant her Mike Tyson like response.

After laying all my cards on the table, Sloane thought about it, looked me in my eyes and spoke.

“I see,” she said.

“But I’m still not apologizing.”

Do I snap and uppercut her? Do I shed thug tears? Do I charge her to the game and end the relationship? Find out NEXT TIME, on #GTrueHollywoodStories

PART FOUR

"The Passive Aggression of the Balls"

PART FOUR

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Hours after Sloane and I put away our diagrams and stat sheets – the bitter taste of stalemate loomed.

This milestone argument goes into the history books sans solving the mystery of whose fault the nut punch was.

My memory is foggy on the precise moment this argument ended – coulda been that night before I went home. It might have fizzled out after a night of text venting, making nothings into lots of somethings.

We basically ended it at “I’ll say that I understand your point, if you say that you understand my point, so that we can get past this and be fun again.”

Sometimes that’s all you get.

Could be the best or worst decision, depending on the moment. I have a different perspective on these dumb teenage arguments now. When I was in the thick of it, 17, wearing velour suits and thinking I’m Pootie Tang, this was as real as real got.

Now that I’ve been to hell and back with a woman I exchanged vows with ... (SPOILER ALERT: It wasn’t Sloane) I have a clearer perspective on how to extract information, make a decision on what to do amid the disagreement and live with whatever happens next.

While you gain familiarity in a relationship, there’s never an “end game” level where you get to go on auto-pilot. You just wake up each day, give everything your best until you either die or figure out you don’t want to do it anymore.

When something is off between the two of you, you might get punched in the balls for slapping a booty. Still, the legendarily dumb arguments, which highlight the “still figuring things out” years, serve their purpose -- necessary co-dependency.

It was co-dependency because we weren’t yet whole. Most of us still aren’t deep into our 30’s and 40’s, but NONE are in the awkward teen years.

It’s necessary, because even when you’re arguing over something as dumb as a punch in the nuts, it teaches you what you need to know to get to the next stage.

EPILOGUE tomorrow, on #GTrueHollywoodStories!

EPILOGUE

"The Passive Aggression of the Balls"

EPILOGUE

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Nine years later, I’m at a movie theatre in Southern California.

My wife and I had just moved.

This is years after the ball incident, but while standing in line at the movies, I had an epiphany that brought me back to that story with my ex.

“That dude is about to go on a journey,” I told my wife, pointing out this teenage boy about a dozen people ahead of us.

Every few seconds, this guy would lean in and give his girl a kiss on the lips. That’s normal enough.

What stood out to me was how his legs were literally buckling between kisses. And he kept coming back for more. Any time she wasn’t kissing him, his legs would shake and buckle. Then that kiss made everything all right again.

My wife didn’t see it.

I did, because he looked familiar. He’s in that puppy dog phase where a young dude loves so unrestrained that he kind of turns his girl into his mom, needing her for validation and affection.

It feels right, partially because the feeling of a girl liking you for the first time is the best thing ever, but makes you ungrounded. It also feels right at that age, because we all bought into a brand of romance that has left us frustrated and with valid gripes.

I could tell that this young simp brotha, like so many good men before him, was too far gone, and he was going to learn that the hard way.

Simp brotha, if you’re reading this #yousharethatgirl.

But there’s good news. Taking L’s THAT close to your heart makes you better when it doesn’t destroy you. And once you can laugh at those L’s, that’s when you know you’ve learned and are headed toward something powerful.

That’s what I want to do with this 5-Day story series.

I’m the best version of myself when I’m creating, so this is like my therapy. If y’all happen to enjoy it, that makes me happy too. I got a lot of stories to tell and have fun doing so.

On the next part of the ride, starting Monday, I’ll tell you a story of how Uncle Junior from The Jamie Foxx Show clowned me at my first booked show after moving to LA.

See you in a few days. #GTrueHollywoodStories!

 

[True Blue Moon]

About to post Episode 2. The time that Uncle Junior from the Jamie Foxx show played me

 

[True Blue Moon]

G! True Hollywood Stories Episode 2 - "Et Tu, Uncle Junior?"

PART ONE

“Et Tu, Uncle Junior?”

PART ONE

I got my first big laughs doing standup in Virginia.

It started on a whim to enhance my writing, but I knew I’d be doing it for the rest of my life the moment that I had to pause before telling my next joke, because the crowd was laughing too hard for me to finish. From that moment on, I was hooked.

I didn’t realize how green I actually was until I moved to LA.

In Virginia, I performed a couple times per month at a college town bar. I had only bombed maybe twice before moving to Cali. Granted, one time involved getting booed out of an auditorium, while I kindly invited the crowd to eat a dikk. Long story, which I’ll get to eventually.

Once I started hitting LA stages, me and bombing became intimately close with one another. I went from killing at the bar show in VA, with successful touring comedians giving me compliments like Comedy Central will love me, or telling me that that they’re going to be opening for me one day, to hearing crickets night in and night out in the city of Angels.

It was partially a confidence thing and partially having to really work on my material for the first time. After having no self-esteem left, I finally bought a little cheap cell phone tripod and forced myself to watch how bad I was doing in HD after each and every spot.

I’d throw up, tweak habits and punch up jokes, until finally, I started finding my funny again and began doing well at open mics around LA. So now I figure it’s time to get some booked shows under my belt. I hit up a comedian I was cool with, who has a good relationship with Garrett Morris (Uncle Jr. on the Jamie Foxx Show).

Garrett runs a pretty cool blues and comedy show in LA. My friend introduced me to the booker, we shook hands and BOOM … My journey from killing to sucking to hopefully killing again is back on track.

Will I do my thing? Will I tell Uncle Jr. how much I loved the Jamie Foxx Show, only for him to tell me “Young man, I THOUGHT I knew what funny was until I watched YOU perform”? Will I disgrace the artform with an all-time WOAT performance?

Find out NEXT TIME, on #GTrueHollywoodStories!

 

[Shabazz]

 

[True Blue Moon]

 

[True Blue Moon]

G! True Hollywood Stories Episode 2 - "Et Tu, Uncle Junior?"

PART TWO

“Et Tu, Uncle Junior?”

PART TWO

My first booked show in LA.

I’m booked to do 5 minutes. As a kid who only saw California as some place on the map where girls are pretty and the Lakers play ball – this was nuts. Garrett played Stan on Martin and Uncle Junior on Jamie Foxx – two shows that are etched in my childhood memory.

I was one of maybe 6 or 7 black kids in my 5th grade class. Every day on the playground, me and my homie Corinthian would crack on the girls using Martin’s jokes. The girls returned fire with some of Pam’s banter.

I got in trouble for putting my hand in this one dude’s face and making a screeching noise like Jamie Foxx did whenever he was tired of Braxton. Garrett Morris played the cool old head in both of these shows and grounded the over the top goofiness of his younger cast.

These two shows sparked my creativity -- now 17 years later, the guy who was a standout on both shows was going to pass me the mic and let me rock it.

So yeah, with all of that in my head, I started thinking too much. I got there early. As far as I could tell, I was the only comedian there when the lights dimmed.

“You’re on first,” the booker said.

I did my best to front like that was cool.

I went to Garrett to tell him how to pronounce my name. “Luh-Larone? Lerone,” he asked, practicing it.

“That’s right,” I said.

I had an out of body experience and went back to 5th grade.

Uncle Junior just said my name.

How could I ever walk around mad when life is full of moments like this? I told him how I wanted him to introduce me and he went onstage to warm the crowd up.

I sat by the steps, watching Uncle Junior telling his jokes, moments away from stepping into a milestone.
Do I kill? Do I bomb? Do I get arrested?

Find out NEXT TIME on #GTrueHollywoodStories!

 

[True Blue Moon]

G! True Hollywood Stories Episode 2 - "Et Tu, Uncle Junior?"

PART THREE

“Et Tu, Uncle Junior?”

PART THREE

“How y’all doing?” I asked.

There were a few claps, but a pretty tepid response. As a black comedian performing in a black room, the RIGHT way to bounce back from their weak response was to hit them with something along the lines of: “UH-UH! Y’ALL CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT! PUT Y’ALLS MUTHAfukkIN’ HANDS TOGETHER AND MAKE SOME NOISE, GOD DAMN IT!”

Or something like that.

Nah, it doesn’t take that -- but black rooms are energy rooms. They’re not going to give you their energy unless you earn it up front by showing that you’re confident enough to take everyone for a ride. Otherwise, you run the risk of playing yourself real hard.

Which brings me to the moment I played myself.

You saw how I just broke down the vibe of a black comedy club in nuanced way?

Well, going into this, I made an educated guess on how to connect with the crowd, but nowhere near as nuanced. I have a bit that involves me singing a song. So I thought … They’re old. They’re black. How about I change it to an Otis Redding song! That’ll connect! That’ll kill!

“Sittin’ on the dock of the bay. Wastin’ tiiiiiime,” I belted out stupidly in a piss poor tone that I wasn’t confident enough to fully commit to.

Wanna get a clearer picture of how awkward it was?

I dropped down to a knee and made a forced “I’m killing this shyt” facial expression.

I didn’t even have to stand back up or raise my eyes from the ground. The entire aura of the crowd merged into a ball of energy that hit me all at once. When my brain translated the energy, the message it decoded was “Is this nikka serious?”

I feel my throat tighten up.

I’ve been up here for a couple of minutes and still haven’t connected.

My homie put his word on the line to vouch for me. Uncle Junior is watching. Do I turn things around?

Find out NEXT TIME, on #GTrueHollywoodStories!

 

[True Blue Moon]

G! True Hollywood Stories Episode 2 - "Et Tu, Uncle Junior?"

PART FOUR

“Et Tu, Uncle Junior?”

PART FOUR

WOW.

One word.

The lady in the back of the club said that one simple word, but it was the rock salt encrusted ice dagger that finally put me out of my misery.

My set was finally unsalvageable, because that lady’s disgust had me too disoriented to even stick the landing on my closer.

It was a bit that had always killed, until now. The joke is about how Michelle Obama’s vagina is the real historical agent of change. Every great man has a muse.

Before I could get to the punch line, the lady in the back lost her mind at my mere mention of Shelly B’s lady parts. I already didn’t have the crowd, but her disgust sealed it.

At first they just didn’t find me funny. Now they didn’t like me as a person.

I wish you could feel the impact of the WAY she said “Wow.” It was like my ancestors cried out from the grave -- fresh lashes on their back. And instead of just smacking me upside my head for besmirching the first black president’s wife -- they just shook their head.

Because they weren’t mad – they were disappointed.

I finally took my L and finished my closer, which didn’t land (Surprise!), thanked them for their time and walked offstage to forced, halfhearted applause and loud blues music.

I sat back down in the crowd and let the burn sink in.

I’ve had bad sets, but this one was bad to the point that people in the crowd wouldn’t even answer simple questions like “You guys here together?”

They were like nah, don’t try to drag us in it. You stand up there and take that L by yourself.

Just when I was ready to take a deep breath, charge it to the game and enjoy the rest of the show, Uncle Junior grabbed the mic.

“Thanks Lerone. It was his first time performing here. And next time, he’ll bring his punch lines with him!”

The crowd erupted.

The loudest laugh of the night was at my expense.

Do I cry? Do I retire? Does my wife leave me?

Find out NEXT TIME, on #GTrueHollywoodStories!

 

[lotteryplaya]

Trust Stan Winters brehs

 

[True Blue Moon]

Trust Stan Winters brehs

This is true

 

[True Blue Moon]

G! True Hollywood Stories Episode 2 - "Et Tu, Uncle Junior?"

PART FIVE

“Et Tu, Uncle Junior?”

PART FIVE


I have a thing about bombing.

The worse a show goes, the less I allow it to get to me. It’s 100% ego, but has served me my whole life. I just have too much pride to let another man or woman feel like they got one on me – even if they did.

So as opposed to ducking out the back exit, I stayed and watched the entire show and was ready to square up and box with the lady in the back of the club if she still felt strongly about my Michelle Obama joke.

As the saying goes, hurt people hurt people, so running the fade with an old lady would be just what I needed to boost my self-esteem.

But as I suspected, she didn’t wanna see my hands.

My poker face is impeccable, but on the inside, I was replaying the show over and over again, as I sat in the crowd watching every other comedian do their thing.

Even though Uncle Junior played me, I have to note that he also said onstage that I will be back, because he believes in helping new talent grow.

I still haven’t been back.

I’ve since been booked at places like the legendary Comedy Store and have killed every time.

I know I can kill Uncle Junior’s club now, but there’s probably still some wounds there deep down inside, so I’ll have to add that to the list soon to exorcise those demons.

After the show, I hit up my homie and fellow comedian Terrence James (look up “Blowed Up” web series on YouTube. It’s for the people) and we had a good laugh and some good words about it.

Without question, this all made me better onstage and in between my ears.

NEXT WEEK, we’ll dive into critical moments of awakening when young Hollywood Rone was but a wee lad.

Stay tuned to #GTrueHollywoodStories!

 

[LevelUp]

Subs

 

[Rell84shots]

 

[LevelUp]

Some theme music

 

[Woman of god]

So what's the full Michelle Obama joke