my "first" blog entry ever
Already : Hatachi Archives
my "first" blog entry ever Saturday October 16
thursday night i searched for an old wallpaper i had before The Great Desktop Data Loss. instead, i found something i wrote from the summer of 2001, that fateful summer. with naomi and miloney. and this was before i blogged, but after reading it, i decided it MUST be chronicled within.
this is why i started blogging in the first place. i need to get back to this kind of writing.
i really didn't want to go to work, if you can call it that. yes, i only make five dollars per hour, but for a guy who moves two tubs of audio equipment, takes five minutes to set it up in random location, and then sits on his thumbs for two hours, it's fair pay. moreover, working at a radio station's got it's perks: cds, free food, movie tickets, free little blinky budweiser cute buttons that i collected have altogether too many of. and, occasionally, you'll meet someone promising (or at least, attractive) and offhandly mention having to work later in the night; i've learned to do it with such disinterest that begs the question, "so, where do you work?" "at 107one, the planet," i casually respond, as if collecting little blinky things were something just about everyone did for their daily grind. i admit, it's a f-n cool job, and when you play it off like it's nothing, the chicks dig that. i'm serious.
however, the promo staff working with me at kam's tonight was pro bono: why? the perk i left off: free beer. in a college town, beer is almost currency, and the idea of getting something for as little as possible is what living at college is all about. however, while i'd prefer to find way to market this free beer that i have access to as opposed to drinking it, i still have yet to arrive at a feasible solution.
my co-workers solution: drink as much as possible while it's still on the house. worse yet, pretend like somehow it's acceptable because of the presence of a deck of cards.
luckily, i had plenty of staff to help me carry the equipment out of the grimace-from-mcdonalds-purple planet van into the bar. in fact, they were so eager, i didn't even carry anything in -- just holding doors. now that's always a good thing; i walk in like i own the entire planet outfit, indicating to my underlings where all the equipment goes, and just generally looking cool for all the women looking around to see who we are, why we're there, and whether or not we'll give them anything for free. unfortunately, as i get blank stares from my "staff" as soon as they set the remote transmission rack on the floor, i realize that my mirage has vanished. as i set up the antenna and whatnot, it is clear that i am the bitch.
it's not like i want the kam's women to target me anyhow. the entire joint has this stale beer smell mixed with smoke and hooch, and all the girls that hang out there either need more clothing to cover their beer guts or are painted sorority sisters who are somewhere in the process of husband-hunting.
i entered the DJ booth to set up our wireless microphone for the planet emcee, and noted an addition from last week: a laptop playing mp3s instead of the usual burned-cd mixes laying about. no one seemed to be in charge, so i browsed the list of what was to come. "ben harper - good - dave matthews - good - whitesnake - good - notorious big -- not so good." eventually, a decently dressed girl entered the booth.
"hi, my name's mark, i'm the planet engineer, just setting up the wireless mic," i say, explaining my reason for entering the forbidden territory. come to the bar at any busy hour and you'll realize why the booth is off-limits: some guy will stop at nothing to get "survivor - eye of the tiger" played for he and his drinking buddies for a rocky re-enactment.
"hi, i'm kathleen," shakes my hand and smiles.
"are you the DJ tonight?"
"no, i'm just a bartender here, but I'm working as a DJ tonight."
she is cute, at least, in the you-just-smiled-at-me way, and i'm temporarily choosing to ignore the fact that she openly chooses to work at the sleaziest bar on campus. so i probe a little.
"how's that work, being a bartender and a DJ?"
"well, i cover a few times a week during the summer. two or three days, weekdays."
i want to get rid of the crap she's playing. noting that she came from a table of girly husband-hunters playing what appeared to be "circle of death", i make the two-step pitch:
"you know, i dj private parties from time to time, and i have quite an mp3 collection going -- about 2,000 --" first off, i've only djed one private party -- one i was helping host -- and second, i have no where near 2,000 mp3s. i'm stuck at about 1,700 right now, but 2,000 sounds cool to a cute girl who obviously is familiar enough with the technology to be DJing from her laptop. nonetheless, i charade:
"i'll tell you what, i'll drop some burnt cds off here next week for you, i'll leave them for 'kathleen'."
re-enuciating that i know and enjoy her name, standard op procedure for flirting.
"really?" she sounds excited. step one complete.
"yeah. i'll tell you what, since i'm looking through what you have, do you mind if i add a song or two?"
or sixteen.
"sure! i'd be grateful -- i'm just out playing cards over there if you need me...thanks so much." mission accomplished.
"do you know jordan?" she ventures. [ed. note: last name omitted]
certainly, i do. he's our sports director at the planet.
"do you see him often? i don't want to inconvience you, you could just give him the cds, he's my boyfriend."
she tags the boyfriend line on there so casually that you know it was the boyfriend-warning device. it's that inner-trigger both sexes use when they sense a conversation has gone beyond pleasantries, and boundaries need to be set. jordan was her boundary. i had no issue with this, she does work at kam's and all, and moreover, after continually talking to her the initial cuteness had worn off anyway. especially after looking more deeply into her playlist. lil kim? what the?
i watched the planet staff pass through a few card games and a few pitchers with steve the beer guy. what a crock this guy's job is: he works for the bottling company selling beer and promotions to the bars. then, he comes to the bar to oversee the promotion, and he gets free beer -- hence the planet hookup. so, essentially, he gets the beer that he sells to the bar served back to him for free. the more he gives out to us, it's more the bar has to buy. i repeat, a crock.
after awhile, the bar filled. i wouldn't call it crowded, but well enough that patronage for the evening would cover expenses. our "game" there was to give away cubs tickets to the person who could answer the most cubs and music trivia correctly. we lined up four individuals -- two of each sex -- and handed them cue-cards with the letters a, b, and c written on them. they turned their backs to the quickly-building audience as our dj matt denault read off questions. they had to raise the cue-card of their answer, multiple-choice style.
unfortunately, two of the individuals were rather drunk, and while they weren't trying to be unfair, they were continually cheating by turning around to see their boisterious male friends loudly shouting and miming "c! it's c!!! c!!! c, not b, you fuck!"
for some reason, i'm usually very tolerant of intoxicated people. not tonight. exercising my right to be an asshole, i stepped up to one of the drunk guys and told him if he didn't stop cheating we'd disqualify him. to a guy trying to look cool for his friends and all the hooch ladies in the place husband-hunting, getting disqualified didn't sound appealing. he backed off, but was too drunk to remember this, and continued his behavior. i gave up, especially since his friends seemed to suck at cubs trivia anyway.
i drove a slightly drunken planet staff back to the station. free beer. what can i say for them? naomi was drunk; she was hanging on me before we left, and this was the tell-tale sign: our relationship has always been 100% platonic, and when she hangs it means she's on her way to being tanked.
as we unloaded, plans were being made.
"denault. here's ten. but we need to go before schnuck's stops selling," someone said.
matt denault, one of the two twenty-one year olds of the group, had volunteered to buy. i paid naomi $14 i owed to her roommate, with marginal faith that it would make it to miloney -- but my debt was paid, so i'd let them sort it out.
"where's the party?" i ask out of random curiousity.
"probably back at my place," naomi indicates.
"seriously, you guys never quit -- it's 12:30 already..." i went home and talked to jon online for too long -- 4:34am, wait, 4:25am. i keep my clock fast. we had a good conversation, though, about how we wanted more from our lives than...the standard. yeah, that's how i'd put it. we're f-n special. we deserve something special, and we realize that we're probably going to have to do it ourselves.
fine with us, but how do we start?
in a dj booth at kam's on a thursday night.
