About 700 people lined up outside Hammond’s most popular nightclub, The Buzz, one Friday night in late March. It was, as my grandfather used to say, “a Pearl Harbor evening.” (That’s an old racial slur against the Japanese to describe a cold night. It literally means, “There’s a ‘nip’ in the air.” Japanese (nip), airplanes…get it?) That particular Friday night, ’90s rap star Vanilla Ice was topping the bill.

It was packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor, and we were in the very front row. We got there at about ten, and the Ice Man was supposed to go on some time around eleven. It wasn’t a big surprise that he didn’t show up until 12:30. He’s only got about 30 minutes of material, anyway. It’s Vanilla Ice, for Christ’s sake – two songs: “Ice Ice Baby” and “Ninja Rap” (that song from the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II).

Ice came out with authority, rapping a tune that I had never heard before. The song wasn’t very good, but for some reason, I just wanted to stop, collaborate, and listen. It was almost like he was back with some brand new invention.

He came out with a bottle of water, and as he got into the song, he poured the water all over me and the rest of the people in the front row. What an a–hole! It wasn’t even hot in there, and it was like 50 degrees outside. I probably wouldn’t have minded if I was high on acid or XTC, but I was just drunk, and it was cold, and it was Vanilla Ice. It wasn’t like it was Rage Against the Machine or the Rolling Stones. It was Vanilla Ice.

I almost feel bad for the guy. At one point, he was on top of the world…well, maybe not on top of the world, but he was a big hit in the early ’90s. He was a hard-ass, white rapper from the streets. Well, at least that’s what his fabricated resume said.

In his prime, he was doing shows in Vegas. Now he’s performing in a small college town, begging the audience of college kids for weed: “Anybody out there’s got some weed for ya’ boy? That airport security’s a bitch!” It was a pathetic sight. If Snoop or Cypress Hill would have asked for some weed, I’m sure the stage would’ve been flooded with bags. Poor, old Vanilla Ice couldn’t even score a dime bag of stress. I had a gram of kind bud in my pocket, but f–k that. That weed’s mine.

I might’ve thought about smoking him out after the show, but after he declined an interview and then poured water all over everybody in the front row, f–k that dude.

I’m glad I got to watch him get his ass kicked in his Celebrity Boxing bout against Todd Bridges a few years ago. The show would’ve been fantastic if Bridges had come from backstage and started whaling on Vanilla.

He may not have been able to kick Todd Bridges’ ass, but he definitely won his cross-gender bout against his wife in mid-April. He was picked up in Florida on April 10 on battery charges against his wife. He allegedly hit and kicked her.

Van Winkle also kicked some serious ass on the set of an MTV or VH1 show a while back. I think the show was called Banned. Well, they ended up banning “Ice Ice Baby” from being aired on the station, and Vanilla flipped out and wrecked the set. You can probably catch the footage on YouTube.com.

After he couldn’t score any weed from the audience, he decided that it was time for Jäger. He got one of the bartenders to bring him a bottle of Jägermeister. He taunted the crowd with the bottle. Everyone in the front row was looking up at the Ice Man with his or her mouth open, awaiting a taste of that delicious, black, cough syrup-tasting liquor.

He then began dispersing freehand shots to all the fans close to the stage. So now we were covered in Jäger and water. I started to ask myself, “Will it ever stop? Yo, I don’t know.” It wasn’t long before Vanilla was back with like four more bottles of water, drenching the audience. I guess he was just trying to wash off the Jäger that time around.

After that, he pulled some random girls onstage to dance. He handed each of them a bottle of water. I’m sure you can guess what happened next. The girls started getting wild with the water, so now we were getting covered in water by washed-up (no pun intended) Vanilla Ice and some random broads from Hammond.

After that, I had seen enough. “F–k it. Let’s go. Y’all check out the hook while my D.J. revolves it.”