Saturday Night (Very) Live

Last Saturday's DJ gig was an epic six hours long.

We had a shoving match in the street, boys dancing on the pool tables and some wee fella sprayed his drink (accidentally) on my mixer and laptop which left a sticky residue.

I have just gotten used to the bus groups which will come in for 30 minutes, dance like mad and then depart but on this night we had a 21st, a rugby club and some locals who decided to stay and get down with their bad selves.

The night got off to a tense start as there was a final game going on between the Chiefs (NZ rugby team) and the Brumbies (Australian rugby team).

We had an early bus group and I actually had to play music while "The Rugby" was going!

Somehow I got away with it although, once that first group of party bus people had moved on, one of the guys watching the game got really angry and yelled at the television. At one point I thought he might head butt it.

It is so weird to start out playing dance anthems and end up with people asking you to play "something by Shania Twain."

"Sweet Home Alabama" is also a local favorite (I cringe internally every time) and I have never seen Americans as emotionally worked up as the Kiwis over the chorus of "Born in the U.S.A." It's weird!

I subscribe to a DJ service that lets me pull up almost any song from a genre as long as there is an internet connection. However, once you lose the connection, the only way to get it back is to restart the program.

After two particularly irritating girls kept asking for songs I didn't have and rolling their eyes and saying, "Well, what do you have!?" I got the pub owner to turn on his system so I could reload mine.

They turn on you so quickly, these kids.

By hour four I was getting pretty put out with a few of them.

It's a fickle business.

One minute you're "the bist dj ivah!" and the next minute their eyes are rolling and you can hear them drunkenly exclaiming "Wot is this?!"

One young lady was particularly obnoxious.She had cleverly taken two small black washcloths and sewn them together to make a dress which she spilled out of at the top and was barely contained in at the bottom.

At one point I put on a song and she rolled her eyes and looked quite foolish because all her friends liked it and started jumping around.

Eventually she disappeared.

Then came the shoving match in the street which emptied the whole pub as a crowd formed around the shovers.

After they had been pulled apart and banished from the premises, people returned to the dance floor and the blood lust gradually dimmed from their eyes.

Now I need to talk about these young boys that come up to me when I'm playing.

They are equal parts irritating and endearing.

I spend part of the night tweaking their noses and the other part feeling like my mom told me to take my kid brothers to work with me.

They like to come up on the stage where I'm playing and ask, "So, how does this work?"

Because the music is so loud I have to lean in to hear what they are saying and they will usually take that opportunity to lay their cheek next to mine or drape an arm around me casually. One put his head on my shoulder and another insisted that I let him put on my headphones.

Three young partners in crime discovered the button to make the fog machine work and they took great pleasure in sneaking up to the table and pushing the button while I was busy.

I tried to hide the controller behind my mixer case but it wasn't long before they found it and proceeded to smoke out the dance floor.

I popped two of them on the hand several time and finally got the controller out of their reach.

"Aw, please! Can I just have a wee touch?" one of them said.

"No you may not have a wee touch," said the crotchety DJ who was beginning to feel she was too old for this sort of thing.

"Can I have a big touch then?" he said.

"No!" said the exhausted mother hen.

In retrospect, I don't think he was talking about the controller.

If this sort of thing continues I might just hunt down these kids parents and insist on babysitting money.