“We now pray for our Pope, Benedict, our Bishop, Joseph, and for Coolio, with whom I go way back.”

Coolio and I go way back. That’s not actually true, but it’s a sentence worth saying at least once an hour, especially in business meetings or religious gatherings. “We now pray for our Pope, Benedict, our Bishop, Joseph, and for Coolio, with whom I go way back.”

To be honest, I have almost no history with Coolio, though I once placed an order at the pool concession stand under the name “Coolio.” This was during the summer that “Fantastic Voyage” became popular; I don’t think it quite blew the minds of the pool-going crowd, though the concession guy smiled as he announced “Coolio, your onion rings are up” over the PA. I did also go through a phase where anytime someone called me up to hang out, I’d say “How we gonna get there? We ain’t got no car, fool!” But that ended after both of my friends stopped calling me and hired goons to physically drag me to the billiard halls and rock clubs that made up our social lives.

So if Coolio wasn’t hanging out with me, what was he doing? The Wikipedia entry on Coolio has the whole story:

Coolio was getting in trouble outside home as he spent time with Baby Crips gang members, although he was never formally inducted nor accepted into the gang and therefore not considered as a member of a gang.

Well, thanks for that, I guess. I’d like to not only see all the stupid passages of Wikipedia get erased, but to be replaced with Coolio quotes. So we should delete this whole bit about not being formally inducted in a gang and therefore not considered as a member, and instead say “Coolio didn’t understand about runnin’ with a gang, cause he didn’t gang bang.” With a little effort, we can finally turn this wiki into a fantastic voyage of user-generated information… fool!