The Moose in the Closet: Hard Candy and 5 Nights at Jillian’s: Bad Lighting

Before getting into the usual routine, I just want to say a) life would suck without ESPN2 and b) Creative Breaking is the best sport ever.

Admittedly, I’m a bit biased here. Paul Maybury was the extremely talented artist that illustrated mine and Chris Fabulous’ story, “All the Wrong Choices” for Elk’s Run #2. Having said that, Paul débuted his new comic Hard Candy at Chicago this year and I believe it was the third best book I purchased there, behind The King and The Surrogates #1.

It’s a quick read about a Boston school teacher whose student eats a gummy bear and, using the ideology that “you are what you eat”, becomes an enormous killer gummy bear. The teacher has to protect her students while their classmate attempts (and often successfully) to eat them. It’s a funny little story but Paul’s art just gets better with every project he does. He showed me some sample of the things he has coming up and they were jaw dropping.

Oh and Len Kody has a little audio thing of me up on his blog from Chicago. You know, in case you want to hear my voice, view my picture and masturbate at the same time.

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About three months into working at Jillian’s I got something added to my job description. Jillian’s had three floors, I primarily stayed on the second floor when I was game-teching but the first floor was their dance club/restaurant floor. Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night a DJ came in, did a little spinning (CD spinning, unfortunately) and white people danced around. And every Friday night I got behind the booth with the DJ and worked the lights.

You know, because I was a game tech. It only made sense that I worked the dance floor lights.

Rhythm and me – we were never good friends. I like to sing, I like to dance – I occasionally bang my hands on the steering wheel when Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs is pumping through my speakers – but I will never try to convince anyone that I can do any of these tasks particularly well. I tried out for the drums in Junior High School and didn’t make it; from then on I always referred to my rhythm as “cute”, much like my ass.

Despite being rhythmically challenged, my training on operating the lights went almost exactly like this: “This one does the yellow light, this one the red, blue, and the green is right here. This is the strobe. This one, that’s the big white light up top. Just hit ‘em to the beat.”

That’s right, folks, it was that easy. Just hit ‘em to the beat.

I gave it my all that first day. I was getting into it, dancing around, slapping the lights, hitting that strobe when the drum rolled and trying to time that white light to the bass. I was timing the synth sounds with the different colors and trying to drown the dance floor in a sea of magic. I wasn’t just operating the lights; I was attacking people’s senses with a barrage of color and rhythm. I was dropping a psychedelic rainbow on them while the DJ kicked so much flavor in their ears that all of the people on the dance floor were simultaneously reminded of the obscure hit from the early 90s hip-hop star Craig Mack, “Flava in ya Ear”. The phenomenon is still being studied to this day.

By the time the night was over I was sweating. I shit you not, I worked hard. I pushed buttons for four straight hours while swaying to the music and occasionally pumping my fist in true “behind-the-booth” fashion. Fighting off fat chicks stuffed into tube tops that were asking to play Christina Aguilera. It was hard work.

And when it was all said and done the manager in charge of the first floor came up to the booth, shook the DJs hand and thanked him, turned to me and said, “What the fuck was that?”

I didn’t know how to respond.

“Just use the fucking pre-sets next time.”

After my fag-pants manager left the DJ told me I wasn’t that bad, just over-zealous. He also told me that I shouldn’t use the pre-sets, that’s why he didn’t show me where they were. I got better as the weekends passed, learning to tone it down a bit, occasionally use the pre-sets and time the white light and strobe to the parts of the song that are supposed to stand-out.

But I shit you not; everything my manager had something to say to me it always had to do with my apparently spastic light operation. That guy was a fucker

Labels: mitc

Hard Candy and 5 Nights at Jillian’s: Bad Lighting

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

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