Hang the DJ

I know that you can't really have a best friend when you're an infant, but just to kind of make things simple, I tell people that I've been best friends with Bruce since we were babies, circa 1983. My mom and his mom were (still are) really good friends and realized that having sons that are roughly the same age meant that they could hang out and have the kids play together. Then in 1993, my family moved to San Diego, but we stopped by Bruce's house, the morning of the move, one last time before we headed out.

So 1993 was the last year I went to one of Bruce's birthdays. We went to the Mall of America, went on some roller coasters, hit up the arcade and beat the X-Men Arcade Game from beginning to end. It was just Bruce, his brothers, myself, and our moms. So it probably sounds really weird that I haven't been to my best friend's birthday in 15 years, but that's just how it's worked out.

So this year, 2008, I headed out to New York to hang out with him on his birthday. I mean, I had other people to visit in New York as well (1 sister in Brooklyn whose birthday is a day before Bruce's, another in New Jersey), but I was pretty much going to New York to hang out with Bruce. The itinerary for the birthday bash sounded awfully familiar: eat dinner, go to a place called Barcade (booze + arcade games), etc. It seemed like in 15 years, the only thing that had changed was the ability to consume alcohol, and large amounts of it at that. That was a very terrible assumption on my part.

We met up for lunch that day at Grimaldi's Pizza. It was Bruce, my sister and me. It might seem odd that my sister would join us, but like I said, our families are close. After lunch, my sister ran errands while Bruce and I hit up the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum and then headed to SoHo because I made a joke about how Brooklyn made me want to buy Rock-A-Wear clothing. He totally ran with it and we ended up at Bathing Ape (Bape) and Kid Robot, because you know, that's what the rappers today wear. I ended up spending a lot more money that I planned and had a designer hoodie. I bring up this fact, not to boast, but because it had a great effect on the rest of the night.

We hit up dinner, Bruce had some scotch, I had some beer, and then we hit Barcade. There was some Rampage, some Contra, some IPAs, and some Dig Dug. Bruce wanted to head to this bar down the street that gives you a free personal pizza with the purchase of a pint. This is plastered all over the bar, it's something they're famous for, I guess. So we walk in, already pretty out it, get some beer and head to the back room. I immediately see a juke box and started flipping around in it. There were some pretty interesting selections in the jukebox: the new Spoon album, Deltron 3000, and some other indie stuff, enough intriguing picks for me to call Bruce over to the machine. We put in a dollar and put on some Deltron. This is where the night turned ugly.

I know this is going to sound really dumb, but we didn't realize that there was a DJ in the back room spinning music at the time. Like I said, there had already been a lot of alcohol consumed at this point, and also more importantly, this DJ wasn't doing anything to distinguish himself from music you would just hear on a house mix CD. I remember this very clearly. The song he was spinning when we walked into the room was "My Sharona" by the Knack. I'm not a big fan of the song, but as a DJ, I don't think you're making much of a name for yourself if you're spinning that at 1am in a bar as is. If you want to scratch with it, fine, that's being bold. If you want to mash Lil' Wayne on top of it, awesome (Greg Gillis, you're free to take this idea and run with it), but don't spin the song as is, and expect people to say "man, is there an awesome DJ in here or what?!"

So the DJ takes offense to the fact that we're dancing to Deltron on the jukebox and not "My Sharona", and I admit, we're not looking good here. Of course, the bar could've prevented this situation by unplugging the jukebox at the beginning of the night, but they didn't have the foresight, so here we are with this skinny ass hipster looking DJ screaming at my best friend for disrespecting him.

The first thing I wanted to do was to tap the guy on the shoulder and punch him back into the year where it's actually cool to spin "My Sharona" but then two thoughts came into my mind: 1) I don't want to get arrested in New York and 2) I really don't want to get my hoodie messed up. I felt really terrible that my best friend was getting chewed out by this guy over a simple misunderstanding but this is New York and things escalate quickly. Also we're all drunk so there's no way the cops are going to take our side AT ALL.

At one point the DJ asked "how would you like it if I went to your work and messed up your work station?!" after finding out that Bruce is a programmer. Honestly, if Bruce Lee is blasting "My Sharona" at his work station, I give you full permission to take a sledgehammer to it and to throw his keyboard and mouse out the window, but alas we finally left the room in a terrible mood and finally we called it a night. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it to next year's party but if I do, I hope it's at the Mall of America, just like it was in 1993, which coincidentally is another year where "My Sharona" still wasn't cool.