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BUT IT’S MY BIRTHDAY! (STORY)

I try to be accommodating to everyone who puts in a request but if there’s one thing that’s true, I don’t make promises. 

It’s just the way it is.  I think it’s a really crappy show of character for you to make a promise and then break it.  Not just that, but when you do make a promise to someone, you’ve devalued your word.  And if Tony Montana has taught us anything, it’s that all we have in the this world is his balls and his word.  (Or something like that.)

I tend to only make promises to my mom.  Why?  Because a) she birthed me and she’s earned it; and, b) I know I’m going to keep them.  So many times, stuff gets in the way of getting things done and all of a sudden you’ve messed up on a promise.  No one wants that. 

That brings us to this weekend for when Girl X came up to me and asked for some terrible song.  I can’t remember what it was, but I either legitimately didn’t have it or there was no way I was going to play it.  Either way, this particular song wasn’t going to get played and I told her so.

...

“BUT IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!” she says hammeredly.

“Not this kind of Hammered”

There’s two things that crossed my mind when she told me that it was her birthday and that she deserved to have her request granted:
1- I don’t care.
2- It’s my birthday.*

*It was technically the day after my birthday, but considering I had people wishing me a Happy Birthday 5 days after it’s happened, it’s pretty much the same thing.

So I give her the look of “I don’t care” and tell her I don’t make promises, to which she responds, “you should work on that.”

I have worked on that!  That’s precisely why I don’t make promises.  Aside from the fact that your request sucks, I’m working here and you, Girl X, are not.  If things go wrong with your song request and people think I suck, it affects you nothing.  I have everything to lose, nothing to gain.  For future reference, if I say I don’t make promises, it might happen, it might not.  It’s all about how I’m judging the situation.  It’s nothing personal.

And it’s my birthday.  So, if the rule of birthdays is that “all requests are granted,” I could grant your request, and then nullify it with my “request” of not hearing your request.  It’s like fighting fire with more fire!*

*This never made any sense to me.  You fight fire with water.  Fighting fire with fire is never going to get anyone anywhere.

What happens when fighting fire with fire.

So she goes away, I promise to give her a shout out.. whatever.  Her friend comes by 5 minutes later: “HeycanyougiveashoutouttoGIRLX!!??”

...yes, it’s going to be one of those nights.

#   #   #

Girl X comes back about 10 minutes after that, asking now for “Paper Planes.”  FIne.  I can do that one.  ... “AND CAN YOU GIVE ME A SHOUT OUT?!” 

“YES I’M GOING TO SAY YOUR NAME OVER THE EFFING LOUDSPEAKER!!!  GO AWAY!!”

So I play “Paper Planes” and say her name over the loud speaker.  And as I’m doing it, I look down and what do I see?  I see her and her drunken friends taking a series of awful photos.  Girl X is yelling.  Friend X is directing traffic.  Girl X is lowering her chin in all her photos, which is my number 1 pet peeve and not endearing me to her.  But the upshot of all this chaos is that there is no way in hell this girl is hearing me say her name.

This is just how things work!  I acquiesce to an annoying chick and what happens?  I get grief.  Because I know it’s likely that one of two scenarios is going to play itself out: 1) as soon as this song is halfway over, Girl X is going to come over here, ask why I hadn’t said her name.  She is going to get mad when I say that I already did.  Then she’ll walk away, all angry at me for doing exactly what she asked me to do.  And then probably come back and bother me about something else later.  2) She’ll wait until the song is completely over and then continue with the rest of Scenario 1.

Obviously, it happens EXACTLY like that. 

So she comes back later, asking for a Britney song that wasn’t good when it was fresh, and now just sounds dated from a summer ago.

Again, I’m not going to play it, mostly because I don’t want to, but also because I’m not a jukebox.  You can’t stuff quarters into me and expect me to just play your song. I’ve refused tips on principle because these people were paying me to play their music, not tipping me because they liked what I was doing.

And this girl ain’t even tipping me!  She’s just being drunk and awful and wasting my time.  But now she’s got enough momentum behind her that she doesn’t want to leave me alone - which is not going to end well for anyone. 

# # #

I really don’t care that it’s your birthday.  Every weekend is someone’s birthday.  It’s just the way the world works.  People are born ALL THE TIME.  And many times, when folks are 21-35ish (curve skewed left), people go out for their birthday to the club or the bar, where DJ Feenix is! (Yay for me!)  So it’s not a big deal to me that you have YOUR birthday. 

And you know what?  Birthdays, when you get older, are supposed to be kinda wack.  The best birthdays you ever had were before the age of 21.  When you got that first bike - holy cow that was awesome.  Or went to Canobie Lake Park - you nearly lost your mind riding the Cannonball.  THAT is what a birthday is supposed to be.  Because eventually, when your parents stop giving a crap and you made it to 26 and you’re going to get out of your mind drunk... that’s it.  You gotta find the happiness elsewhere.  The actions alone are the proof. 

I went and smoked cigars in a comfortable t-shirt on my birthday, hung out with my friends and ate pizza.  I enjoyed my night but it’s not the end-all, be-all. 

This is life and we don’t deserve anything as adults on our birthday.  Rewards are living a just life - making good decisions - working hard and earning your place in society.  If someone bakes you a cake, or a pie, be grateful and humble.  Enjoy the desert and look at the person who made it for you and realize that the gift is the care that the person put into cake/pie, not the cake/pie itself.   

If I happen to play Your Birthday Request, what is next?  Likely, another request.  Because it’s 3 minutes of unsustainable happiness.

Find the happiness in the people around you and live every day like its your birthday.

THE GIRL WHO WAS A GRUMPY GUS (STORY)

I have to take umbridge with one patron of the bar last weekend...

This starts as I'm in the the middle of my set.  I'm having an OK night, with there being no real highs so far.  The crowd is into it, but despite my best efforts with the hits of the moment, they're not at that "10" that I feel like I can get them to.  But I'm not sweating it - there's still a ton of time left in the night and I haven't gotten to my big anthems yet.

So I notice a girl directly in front of me and she seems to be talking to her boyfriend (or at least what seems like her bf).  There's a wall of glass in front of me, so I can't hear what she's saying but she has that look of "I need to talk to the DJ."  In most cases, you never want to see the "I need to talk to the DJ."  Whenever someone intoxicated "needs" to do something, there's a problem there.  When you're drunk, the line between "need" and "want" is a little skewed.  Also, the determination to fulfill needs is a little bit of a wild-card.

So this girl comes up to me and I see the boyfriend there and I don't know his mental state so I give her the "1 minute" sign.  I want to give her a second to rest and maybe forget what she wants to say. (Yes, this technique has worked in the past.)

While I do that, Girl X starts talking to my well-dressed DJ assistant who is out with me for the first time.  Girl X makes the points that:
1 - This music is old and we here at the bar do not like that stuff.
2 - This is M Street, and old music has no place here.
3 - She has lived in DC for 4 years and, therefore, she is qualified to give an opinion on how I do my job.
4 - She is on the verge of leaving.

I'm not sure how Boyfriend X is going to react me telling his girlfriend that if I had one wish it would be that we were all standing on a fault line and that the world opened up and she was thrown into a world of brontosori and Sleestaks.  Aside from that, hammered people never play nice.  I play it cool.

Issue 1: This music is old and we here at the bar do not like that stuff.
What I said: Ok.
Translation: You're completely wrong.  You (singular) may not like this song/stuff, but you (plural) love the old stuff.  Rihanna's "Umbrella" is 5 years old at this point.  Bon Jovi's best material is pushing 20 years (if not already), "Don't Stop Believing" came out in 1981.  You (plural) love those songs and eat it up with a spoon when I play them.  The songs aren't going away.  The song you're hearing now "The Call (Remix)" by The Backstreet Boys may not fall into the same category as the songs I've just listed, but this song is old and dated enough that I have no regrets in playing it.  It's got a fairly modern sound for a song made 10 years ago.  It has Malice from The Clipse rapping about 1,000 spokes on a Gold Impala, in a flow that resembles nothing that he does today.  It's a strange song that captures the Napster era perfectly: one of the biggest groups, Neptunes production, a remix that everyone stole but no one bought.  I have no problem letting people go back to their apartments later and finding it on their old mix cd or trying to steal it again on LimeWire.  And, Girl X, if you would turn around you would see that there are 40 people behind you dancing and singing along.

Issue 2: This is M Street, and old music has no place here.
What I said: Ok.
Translation: Despite your lack of understanding for causal relationships, your geography is correct.  This is M Street, which, in terms of cultural impact, is more significant for its touristy nonsense and lack of metro stop.  I have enough sense of where and when music is breaking through to the masses to know that M Street in DC is not on the short list of Bleeding Edge streets - where the music needs to be produced within the past month in order to be considered even worth playing.  Maybe if we were in a club further downtown or in New York... or Vegas... LA... DC is just not that crowd.  And that's fine!  It's just the way it is - we're a busy set of people who work in government, for the most part.  We, as a collective, don't have the time to be on to the next one.  If you're in the group of people who does have time: 1) get a hobby, or, 2) go somewhere else that can service your needs. 

Issue 3: She has lived in DC for 4 years and, therefore, she is qualified to give an opinion on how I do my job.
What I said: That doesn't make sense.
Translation: If your 4 years gives you authority, then does my 7 give me Super Authority, or is it like a bell curve where I have no authority at the early stage (1-2 years), gain authority (3-5 years), then lose it again (6-7 years).  [Or it could be on a wave-pattern and I'm on the rise again! Woohoo!]  Regardless, you're not an expert on going out.  I don't care how many times you have gone out, I am out in the bar/club from opening to close, every weekend.  Sometimes twice a weekend.  I can log as much as 13 hours in a bar in a two-day span.  That's a long time considering that two back-to-back days of 10p-2:30a is only 4.5 hours.  You'd have to go out 3 days in a row from 10p-2:30a to get to 13.5 hours and then do that every weekend for a month.  That's where I derive MY expertise on the musical selection for the evening.  And no, you're not qualified to DJ because if you were, you'd be out making money and not getting hammered and bothering me tonght.

Issue 4: She is on the verge of leaving.
What I said: So?
Translation: If you really don't like being somewhere, or it's uncomfortable, or you have to take your talents to South Beach, just do it.  Go home.  Go to another bar.  It's fine! No one's going to hold it against you or be mad.  In fact, we'll be happy than a Grumpy Gus is leaving and you'll be happier that you don't have to deal with my crappy taste in music!  So no one cares if you go away and don't come back.  In fact, I prefer it.  That way, I don't have to listen to you come up and complain to me. 

I just want to know where people get the gall to come up to me as I am working, and tell me, with no metrics, facts or sensibilities, that I am doing a bad job.  At this point, if I'm doing a bad job, I know it.  "Peanut Gallery" commentary and a lack of respect is not going to get anyone anywhere.  It's only going to make me bitter and reflect poorly on you.

When I tell folks that I meet a lot of interesting people doing this job, they think positively, and don't assume that these are some of the folks who make themselves known. 

It's all good though.  Girl X was there until about 2am enjoying herself and apparently having a fine ole' time.  So who wins in the end?  Me.