1. lame story that other djs might find amusing. 2. perceived class identity problems

So I was doing a show at the Globe Pub yesterday. It's a good spot, outside of the kinda lame English sports bar motif. Friendly staff and a crowd that has absolutely no interest in Top 40 music. I set up, plug everything in, put on my headphones and... nothing.

No sound at all.

I scramble around plugging and unplugging everything and doing the same thing over and over when I realize that I didn't bring my 1/8" to 1/4" adapter, I brought my RCA to 1/4" adapter!

I call up my girlfriend (and DJ partner) Sarah, begging her to bring over an 1/8" to 1/4" adapter. I'll even pay for the cab and...she brings my other RCA to 1/4" adapter!

We're both mortified now, and thirty bucks poorer, with useless headphones, and a book of cds I'm only kinda familiar with.

Luckily, I was able to fake competence until my good friend DJ Demchuk came through and saved the day.

I can't believe people still let me do this. Thanks Dan, thanks Sarah.

----

Today's story (totally destroys the ego I built up yesterday):

I'm riding the train to a show. It's a corporate gig, so I'm dressed as nicely as I can but I still feel like a scumbag weirdo. I'm sleeping on the train, clutching my DJ bag, which is really just the messenger bag Kyle gave me when he got a new one.

I wake up when someone sits on my coat. It's a really young guy with really impeccable everything. Perfect jeans, perfect coat, perfect haircut. Perfect best friend with in similar accoutrement. It's all designer vintage so they don't look like tools. They're going through gay, college student drama.

"She wants to cheat on him and then date a woman, to get back at him."

"Jesus, I feel bad for her and all, but get over it. Dude doesn't even live in the state anymore, does he?"

"No, he's here for like four days every four months."

"Hey, Remember that party where we met?"

"With that twink kid?"

"God, what was he, like fourteen?"

"Yeah, and he was homeless and sleeping on the street and all like, 'You can't laugh at me, I'm just a kid!' "

"God."

I had two chances to feel inferior to these guys. First was when I was the bum they woke up on the train, and second when they came into the bar I was spinning at with a bunch of second-string castmembers for Wicked.

It wasn't a great night. I couldn't tell what the crowd wanted, so I did like I was told and played pop R&B all night after. It didn't feel right, the bar was playing better music before I got there. Verve shit, downtempo house, things I didn't have on me.

At the end of the night, I'm feeling like a hot mess, when fifteen theatre guys and fag hags (to be fair, they were probably just girls from the show who were outnumbered by their gay accompanyment) who only wanted to dance to show off how outlandishly the could dance. It was annoying. They wouldn't keep it up from song to song because they were just doing routines, and they kept me an hour after I was told I would be, or could probably handle.

It's alright. This is probably the best job I've ever had, and the closest to what I actually want to do in the world. Actually, it is what I want to be doing in the world. I just don't know how to deal with it sometimes. It being people, as well as my own perceptions of class, self, and expectation. I feel like a huge fraud, and it's not just there. On Sunday I went to a punk show where I felt overdressed, in practiacally the same clothes. I've always felt stuck inbetween, some sort of middle class guilt/shame.

I have no idea how to end this, because it's far from over, so I'll end it tritely, by saying that next week is another week and tomorrow is another day.

[currently listening to Anavan]