Working Class Nerd

(WHY DOES SAMSUNG THINK WE’RE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE EMILY?? And what the hell is ‘the comments for your help’???)

Jag älskar dig. Jag har inte testat den här veckan. Det är såna som du som sköt Bambis mamma.

“No, no, listen. Don’t listen to me, listen. You can find your people if you are brave.”

“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”

“Unicorns know naught of shame, or need, or doubt, or debt; But mortals, as you may have noticed, take what they can get.”

– Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

yeah if humans tried to smell space just like that, we’d die, no doubt about it 

but the smell of space lingers on spacewalk suits, and docking hatches when astronauts open them!

apparently, space itself smells like burning hot metal, or a hot barbeque grill with a slight hint of spent gasoline. The moon, apparently, smells like a gun after its been shot!

The coolest thing about it all is that the smell is actually what are left of dying stars- it’s literally the smell of stardust, and the particles smell like that because they’re so rich in hydrocarbons- something so very essential to life, and speculated by a lot of astronomers and astrobiologists and such to be the very thing life on earth started from!

I was home watching TV and cutting up a steak when I got the call at 8PM. A friend of mine worked at a famous hotel in LA and one of the guests made a last minute request for a DJ to play the hotel bar. Someone that could get there and start playing in an hour. The bar frequently had live bands play, but never a DJ. So with little to no time, my wise and generous friend thought to throw a gig my way.

“Yeah, I can get there in an hour. Am I getting paid?”

“Yes, you’ll get paid.”

“What kind of party is it? What am I playing?”

“Someone’s renting out the bar for a private party. And that someone is… The Artist… formerly… known… as… Prince.”

That sentence was not real to me. Still not real. I had no time to really think or say anything but, “What? You serious? Yes. Be there as soon as I can.” Got off the phone and my stomach turned. Only a handful of people in the world have imprinted their music that much in my brain. And couldn’t he just call up any of the best DJ’s in LA to come play for him? Why’s he gonna trust someone who is by all means an unknown? I’d been DJing parties and bars for years but going from that to Prince is an Olympic leap.

The next half hour felt like a panic attack. I made a list of songs to play for Prince and his private Prince party. Ok, no Prince songs. He doesn’t want to hear himself. No MJ. I don’t want to insult him or anything. Didn’t they have beef in the 80’s? No hip hop. Can’t picture him rocking out to Kendrick. I thought of who he was influenced by and dragged some James Brown and Stevie songs into the playlist. Isley Brothers, Curtis. Great. 8:20PM. I still have to get ready even though I could spend the next month picking songs. I quickly close my laptop and get dressed. Pack up my turntables, mixer, cables and run them all to the car as I’m sweating through this black suit.

I get to the hotel with about five minutes to set up. The bar is completely empty aside from a couple of servers and my friend who made the call. And the room is almost lit exclusively by candlelight. I’m told to set up my turntables on the grand piano, which is also covered with candles, making me feel like hip hop Liberace. A waitress tells me there’s like an 80% chance Prince doesn’t show up. He just likes to rent out the bar in case he and his friends wander through the hotel and feel like stopping in. “But you should start playing music anyway in case he comes in. Who knows.” So I start playing songs to the very empty bar. The anticipation is a killer. My friend gives me a much needed glass of whiskey before taking off.

A giant spread of appetizers is covering the bar and getting sweaty. Spring rolls, cheese, orange juice. An hour goes by. Then another hour. A no-show. I’m kind of bummed out but also very relieved. I don’t know how I’m going to react if he walks in that door. So I’m just playing the set of my life to nobody. It’s like I’m getting paid to practice and listen to whatever I want on the bar’s sound system.

At 12AM the door opens and some guy walks over to me and without a greeting he says,

“Hey man. He’ll be here in 15 minutes. What are you gonna play when he walks in?”

“Oh I got some stuff lined up. Some older Stevie Wonder, the JB’s.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he likes that. Anything like that, Earth Wind & Fire, Chic.”

“Yeah I got Chic! I’ll play that.”

“And he wants to hear Janelle Monáe when he walks in. You got that?”

“Yup. Yup. Janelle Monáe.”

“Cool, he’ll be here in 15 minutes.”

I didn’t have any Janelle Monáe. I ran out to the concierge desk in the lobby to get the wifi password, ran back and started downloading a bunch of Janelle Monáe off of iTunes. Right on time as I cue up the track, the door opens and I catch a quick glimpse. Full on afro, turtleneck and a gold chain. I want to say he had a cane, but I was trying not to look directly at him. I didn’t want to throw him off or maybe infuriate him by making eye contact. Prince was in the room. I was just musical wallpaper. He and a friend sat down at a couch about fifteen feet away from me.

The grand entrance song blended straight into James Brown’s Talking Loud and Saying Nothing. I played Ike & Tina Turner, Charles Wright, Omar’s The Man, and Gust of Wind by Pharrell. My head was pretty much glued to the turntables, sticking to my no look philosophy, but I could hear bits of conversation. Hearing that Prince voice in person was something strange. It just belongs on record or on microphone. I start dishing out some other favorite tracks of mine, Think Twice by Jay Dee and Alicia Myers I Want to Thank You. There’s zero reaction to the songs I play. I’m still worried I’m not playing what he wants to hear. Is he gonna throw a spring roll at me?

A little later that guy from earlier comes back into the bar and walks straight over to me.

“Hey man. Just want to let you know, they love your music.”

“Oh really? Thanks. Do they want to hear anything in particular?”

“Nope. Just keep playing what your playing.”

Oh it’s on now. I can finally breathe and I’m getting props from the man himself, or from the middleman himself. And then it hits me. There’s only two people in there. Prince and a girl. I’m not there to DJ a private party. I’m there to DJ a date. Prince is on a date and I’m the entertainment.

I saved my set list from that night and I don’t remember playing half the songs on it. All I know is I was in deep concentration, mixing out of my mind. Messenger man came in one more time and said Prince might try to play the piano. When it was time, he would pop his head in the door and give me the cue to stop DJing. I had never seen Prince perform, so a private piano ballad to his woman and myself sounded alright. I stayed looking at that door for a while until Prince’s date walked over to me.

“Hey, so what’s the name of this song? He likes it and wants to know.”

“It’s a Smith’s cover. This Charming Man by Stars.”

She sat back down and relayed the info, to which he nodded his head. Now I’m stumping Prince with cool music. I play another track. She comes over to me again and asks, “What’s this one? He wants this on repeat.” Blacker 4 The Good Times by Ballistic Brothers. So I play that song a couple more times in a row. It’s now 4AM and I’m just a little delirious from being on my feet DJing for 7 hours. And I’m running out of music. My song selections are all over the map at this point. Esperanza Spalding, ESG, Broken Bells.

At around 4:30 Prince gets up off the couch and walks floats right over to me. He looks me in the eye, starts shaking my hand and says in a deep Prince voice,

“Thank you. That was very enjoyable.”

“Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.”

In my mind it was that smooth but there’s no doubt I was speaking gibberish.

And just like that he left the room with his date. He didn’t put any moves on her in the bar, but I like to think I helped him out by setting the mood for whatever happened next. I stopped the music and the lights went on.

And that was the best night of DJing I ever had or ever will have.

Playlist from that night.

German Engrish

Guys, this is not a drill. Antarctic scientists need you to study photos of penguins to help them figure out how climate change is affecting these stumpy little flightless birds.

Scientists from the UK have installed a series of 75 cameras near penguin territories in Antarctica and its surrounding islands to figure out what’s happening with local populations. But with each of those cameras taking hourly photos, they simply can’t get through all the adorable images without your help.

“We can’t do this work on our own,” lead researcher Tom Hart from the University of Oxford told the BBC, “and every penguin that people click on and count on the website - that’s all information that tells us what’s happening at each nest, and what’s happening over time.”

The citizen science project is pretty simple - known as PenguinWatch 2.0, all you need to do is log on, look at photos, and identify adult penguins, chicks, and eggs in each image. Each photo requires just a few clicks to identify, and you can chat about your results in the website’s ‘Discuss’ page with other volunteers.