Isaac Hayes and Me. Really !

Imagine the man who made the long black leather jacket famous decades
before 'The Matrix', a musician, actor and towering presence in the world
of Blaxploitation films like 'Shaft'. A 'bad mutha' in my book ever since
I met him one day in the mid-'90s. The late Isaac Hayes.

Now imagine me, driving the streets of New York City with this man in the
back seat of my car (okay, my Limo) and I have the radio set to 'zero' volume
and he still recognizes the song as one of Al Green's. I wait outside on Greenwich
Street for hours as he records some tracks for his new album and then
when he emerges in the evening he introduces me to an additional passenger,
a statuesque Nubian- princess-looking type who is rather nice and friendly to me
and obviously in awe of The Man in the long black jacket. After all, she is
accompanying a legend while in the process of acquiring legendary status herself.
I drive them to the center of Times Square, the heart of NYC and I'm holding that
black jacket for this man, handing him a bottle of water to sip in between takes for
a magazine photoshoot he's doing with the long-legged lady, whom I get to stand
with and make small remarks about the weather (cold). She's 6' plus with the heels
so I literally look up to her from my 5'6'' frame. Throngs of passers- by are busy
taking their own NYC pics and doing their own thing and a few shout out in typical
New Yorker seen-it-all fashion, "Hey Isaac!" "You The Man!" "What's up, my Brother?!"

That was a day and a night to remember because that man was the late Isaac Hayes
and his leather jacket, and the lady posing behind him was Supermodel Roshumba,


most remembered for her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition cover.

I was treated in a friendly and respectful manner by these two and that's what I
took away at the end of a totally awesome day as a Limo driver in New York city.
That and the theme music from Shaft....