Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Flunky...

"Hows it going tonight?"

"Good, you?"

"Good. Can I see your id?"

"I'm just going in to get my roommate."

"That's fine. I still need to see your id."

"Naw, that's cool man. I work down the street," he reaches for the door.

"That's great. I still need to see your id." My hand pushes the door closed.

"Listen man, I work down the street at Brockney's. I'm just going in to get my roommate and leave. I don't even want to come to this place."

"Well that's good since I can't let you in this place without seeing your id."

"Really? Your going to be an asshole about this?"

"Just as much as you. You realize you could have shown me your id and been inside talking to your roommate already right?"

"Fine. You want to be an ass about it? Here." He pulls out his wallet and shows me his id. Then he reaches for the door and I step in front of it. "What the fuck man!?"

"Listen. I think you need to try to call your roommate and have him meet you out here. You seem a little too worked up to go walking in here."

"What!?"

"Maybe if you didn't take such an attitude it'd be a different story. I don't appreciate being called an asshole."

"Are you always such an asshole to customers?"

"Only the ones that act like total douchebags."

"Man, fuck you. I should kick your ass."

"If you feel the need. Have a good night."

He turned and walked down the street and sat on a bus bench. A few minutes later one of the regulars, Pete, came walking out. "Hey, have you seen my roommate?"

"He have dark short hair, light complected, and act like a douchebag?"

"Oh man.. I'm sorry man. Was he being a dick?"

"He was being an ass. He's sitting down on the bus bench."

"Can he come in?"

"Don't you think he would be if he could?"

"Yea.. you got a point."

Word...

Sometimes you hear people speak enough that you just don't want to hear it any more.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Overheard...

I was standing outside when the door opened and a girl in her mid-twenties walked out with her phone to her head. "Yes Mom, we're fine. We just left choir practice and we're on our way back to the apartment."

I guess she wasn't completely lying if the bar is on the way home.

"No, there was a guy on the train with a radio..... Yes, I know... Listen, practice went a little late tonight, that's all."

I looked at my watch, it was 2:15 in the a.m.

"Mom... just go to bed. I'll call you tomorrow... ok?" There was a couple minute pause. "Yes Mom, we'll be fine. Just go to bed and I'll call you tomorrow. Good night."

She walked back into the bar and resumed her drinking with her friends.

I had a little laugh at the imagery of her mother sitting at the phone worried about her little girl in the city. Parents always worry, or at the least wonder, about their kids.

Made me start to think about my parents. Not so much my father because he's already six feet under, but about my mother. Maybe her worrying and wonderment is what got her to make the vest for me that I wear on certain nights.

Think I might give her a call tomorrow.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

I know people...

It happens when your a kid. You get starstruck when you meet famous people. You don't know what to say or how to act. You might get butterflies in your stomach, start to cry or just become stupid to the point that you don't know what to do.

I've been one of those kids before. Back when I was in my late teens and I met Ozzy Osbourne on a rare occasion. Although I think my babbling sounded the same as Ozzy speaking.

When you work in a music venue you tend to meet a lot of interesting people. Anything from the coke heads to the people that stammer on about wanting to meet their idols. Sometimes you meet both in the same person. That usually turns out to be really annoying or funny. Have you ever heard a person that's super hyper try to talk 10 times faster than they do when they're all coked out? It becomes a giant slur of incomprehensible jibberish.

Most situations with bands are pretty simple to handle at the door. It's always the same basic story, the person trying to get in knows someone in one of the bands. "They were supposed to leave me a ticket", "They said they left a pass here for me". We don't handle that stuff. The production manager or his assistant takes care of all of that. Not our problem.

One of the interesting things that's happened is similar. One of the guys that works at the venue is trying very hard to make a name for himself as a DJ. Even though he doesn't dj anywhere except at work. To me, he's not trying hard enough.

So on one particular night, he was djing between bands and it was a fairly popular show. No real big national names but bigger local names. He had tried like hell to get a guest list for the show but the office said no. Technically he was working and he wasn't an "act". So when his friends walked up to the door we charged them full price. The funny part was they gladly paid because they were there to see the bands.

So when Toc found out that his friends were paying to get in, he got a little upset. He got even more upset when his friends didn't know he was even djing. He then went into explaining that the venue wouldn't let him have a guest list for his friends. He even went so far as giving his friends their money back out of his own pocket. Some of his friends accepted and some rejected.

Personally I thought this was funny. Here's a guy that most people only know because he can get them into shows for free. Then when he starts to play songs between bands they don't even care. I mean how many people go to see a guy play a playlist between bands? It's not his music. It's just plain old music played through an iPod.

It was even more funny to me how he acted towards people. When they didn't know he was djing he'd buy them drinks or give them their money back out of his pocket. It was the reverse effect in full action. He was starstruck on himself. He literally thought that these people were coming to watch him hit play on his iPod and not to see the bands that were playing live. How does a person get that stuck on themselves?

At the end of the night he was hanging with his friends and we were clearing the place out. He tried to get his friends to stick around but they were going to another place. They were about to leave and we reminded him that he was still on the clock. He asked if he could leave and we told him he could. As soon as he pulled all of the garbage and took it out to the dumpster.


A fitting end to his Rock Star night.