Monday September 30, 2002 at 12:22 pm

Wow, imagine that, I’m actually writing my weekend blog on the weekend. Okay so technically it’s Monday morning, but since I have yet to go to sleep, it’s still Sunday for me, so onto other news shall we.

Friday was ho hum, although worked for the most part was dead, and boring; the highlight of the day was adventuring to the other side of the airport, for new places to have lunch. Which I well take full advantage of this week, as I’ve found a few more healthier restaurants, okay so maybe not that much healthier, but it sure beats McDonalds and Burger King every other day. Now I have at least Quiznos and Chipolette as viable options without speeding the Mesa, ordering to go, and then speeding back, all to try and eat while workings since the roundtrip consumed my entire lunch hour. However since it was Friday and I had no one to go to lunch with I decided to hit up Fazoli’s instead. I initially had planned to format my system Friday night once I got home, I need to get rid of the pain in my ass upgrade to windows media player, that’s preventing me from watching some of my movies, and some other minor issues, I’m just to lazy to bother with tracking down and dealing with. And no it’s not that I don’t know how to fix them, I just don’t feel like performing brain surgery on a system I intend on swapping out drives with. There’s another story that goes with the whole drive swapping but I’ll get to that bit later.

Anyway other than working on my system I need to get at least one bag of wax ready for the Gig Tom booked for Saturday, needless to say that failed to happen as I fell asleep in the process. So Saturday morning rolls around and Mike as rolled to the gym, after I bailed out on going with him, due to the previous evenings failed/abandoned projects. So I opted to delay going to the Gym to play catch up, which I as far as the wax was concerned, in between, burning CD’s and coping files from one system to another.

So Mike gets home, and is wondering when we were going leave to go to the party. Unfortunately I had already made arrangement with Tom, because we both weren’t able to go buy any new wax this week to hit up some stores before hand and then drive out. Apparently Mike had also made plans to play security to the Tommy Nice entourage, eventually the logistics worked themselves out and we were on our way, until we ran into a snag where Tom had to pick up some medicine, which even now I don’t know if he did or not, either way we got there almost 2hrs after the initial planned ETA.

Dead by midnight is what I thought as I saw the crowd….

The beginnings were good and Tom and I both had a good set, while Mike played, GGW cameraman. The evening was still early and Tom didn’t want to wear the crowd, of 11 down to fast. Yes I absolutely hate these gigs, where the host makes it out to be a huge deal, and then when we get there, there are a total of 25 people, of which only 11 were outside where the music was being played and of those 11, and only 9 were dancing. So my attention span and motivation were quickly fleeing to the sanctity of my own imagination, of what we could be doing instead. I think this was my downfall for the evenings, which lead to my 2^nd to worst set in my entire history of Dj’ing. I say 2^nd to worst because even though my mixes were a little better at the pool party, my nerves were totally racked compared to this evening. Then again it could have been to 4 Smirnoff’s I down while Tom was spinning.

I ended up cutting Tom off after he played YMCA, and the fact I was sick of people asking whether or not we had some ridicules song, that most likely no turntable Dj would have for party such as; Depeche Mode, Neil Diamond, Vanessa Carlton, and Poison, yes I said Poison. Now granted all of these artists have great songs but it stands a very good chance, you would not hear them at any dance, or hip hop club. The 3^rd reason was all everyone dancing wanted to hear was Nelly’s, “Hot in Here”. Unfortunately for me, set the tempo to high to follow up with, and I found my self struggling with every mix afterwards, while at the same time, trying to get one of Tom’s coworkers out of my face, because I unplugged the mic, so I could hear, and at the same time, telling some drunken yuppie, to wait until I was finished before trying to look at the records. Finally frustrated, beyond control, I snapped at the guy on the mic, and told him, I’d wrap the cord around his neck if he touched it again, while he stood in chock for a moment I quickly recovered with politely telling him I unplugged it because it was causing feedback within my headphones and that I’d plug it back in once I was on beat with the next song.

To the drunken yuppie woman, now tugging on my shirt, I performed a nice little arm wrap, with enough force to get her attention, but instead of pulling her arm in so I would be on the outside, poised to snap an elbow if needed, I reversed it, simply, providing enough snap, to get what little full attention she had left and to definitely leave an impression in her mind, followed by the big Tele Tubby hug, with the complete fake smile, and reassurance that we would try and find her song, backed with an exaggerated pout that if we didn’t, we would make it up to her.

As I turned my attention back to the tables, I bumped into someone, Tom’s boss, who was now drunkenly slobbering over the decks, and poised to wreak havoc. And havoc he did, grabbing the playing record and trying to scratch. At that point I gave up on trying to test myself, it seemed fitting I had given up on the party within 2 hrs of being there. Now it was simply a realization, that this wasn’t a turntable Dj type of party, and never was meant to be.

Tom had mentioned before the yuppie attendance, and I blew it off, but has I struggled to recover further, I realized that’s exactly what the crowd was, the entire party for that matter, a bunch of yuppies, but not the yuppie of yester year, it was the new millennium yuppie, the yuppie that wanted to have the retro Dj for the party celebrating the building of their new house. These were the kids who when they ere in high school, their idea of a party was a few cases of beer and high jinks. Totally not my crowd, not then and apparently not now either This was a crowd, who, after making whatever success they had, wanted everything that was the hottest thing “now”, and for them it was Nelly.

Tom took over has he laughed at my crowd control ability, which I’ll admit was never has well as his, at least not for this type of crowd. My kind of crowd his younger and faster, and defiantly more musically knowledgeable, than the 30 yr woman, whom all night ranted that she was 30 and she didn’t know this kind of music. Ironically, I so wanted to grab her and inform her that Tom was 31 and had no problem knowing the music, especially since he was the one playing it. But I just let her go, and watched as she stumbled around like a chicken with her head cut off, dumping more and more coronas down her neck.

As Tom played on, I sat out, meaning I packed up my Hip Hop records and just chilled and enjoyed the mild amusement the crowd provided and enjoyed the free drinks, but one can only sit on a speaker and relax for so long, until one wants to find a nice couch or lazy boy to kick their feet up onto and really relax. As it had peaked out at the end of Tom’s set and the beginning of mine, I estimated the party would be dead before midnight. That would leave Tom more than enough time to play with the crowd a bit, sending them into wild frenzies, and bringing them down again within 2 minutes. I admired his ability to read them as such, but then again he worked with most of them, or knew of them. Either way he knew what they wanted, and I apparently didn’t when it came to Hip Hop.

As Tom’s winded down his set he left them now wildly flinging themselves around as a 80’s dance mega mix, brought them to a faster tempo. At last my groove had arrived, with beats raising the BPM’s (BPM=Beats per Minute) to a new level. The song he left however kept speeding up before I could mix into it, so I found my self, bumping it up myself rather than waiting the 10 minutes it would have taken to get up to 120 BPM’s. Finally mixed in, I was ready to take them even higher and for the most part it almost appeared as though Tom had raised them to a level of euphoria, if that’s possible with slower beats, and they were more than willing to grace their drunken yuppie bodies to the vigor of house. Unfortunately the neighbors of a half mile away were not so cooperative, as they had called the police and request the music turned down. This always happens for some reason, when tom and I spin, just when I get the groove, it comes ends, but such is life, and such is why I need to practice, I say that now, because I never did practice after the pool party, moving and setting up the new apt, simply pushed it to the back burner.

I did get a chance to recover to those, who may have heard or remember the horrendous 2^nd set I provided, by a quick scratch session, while tom began breaking down the equipment. As I pulled out my phone, and dropped my closer 2 Bad Mice, “Bomb scare”, I looked and saw it was 11:58pm.

…Dead my midnight