HILLBILLIES NEED LOVIN' TOO

(Fair warning: This is a long one.)

Most wedding receptions that I perform at, they're your average reception. Lots of people getting tipsy and dancing to the Electric Slide and then going home.

Saturday night was by far the most bizarre wedding reception I've ever done.

He wanted to book me for seven hours ... from 5 p.m. until midnight.

I told him that the SMART thing to do would be to hire me for FOUR hours and then at the end of the four hours, start paying me by the hour if he wanted to keep going.

Nope.

Seven hours.

He was SURE that people were going to stay until midnight.

We went back and forth on this and I finally decided that this guy wasn't going to budge even though it was the smart thing to do and I was clearly looking out for his best interests. The average wedding reception lasts 3-4 hours. That's just a given. This guys was planning a seven hour reception.

So contracts were signed and I was guaranteed my biggest payday yet for a wedding reception ... quite a bit more than $1,000. In the big cities, that's what DJs start at ... in my neck of the woods, it's the top of the line.

Last week I called the guy and went over last minute details.

"So the reception starts at 5, so I'm guessing the wedding's at 4?" I asked.

"No," the guy said. "The wedding's at 1."

"And what time does the reception start?" I asked.

"At 2," he answered.

"Wouldn't you want me there at 2?" I asked.

"No ... at 5" he answered.

Now I'm the professional. I've done probably 200 weddings in my life. At this point, I should have stepped in and said "No dude ... you want me there when the guests first get there in order for me to keep them there."

I didn't. For some reason, this guy seemed to know what he was doing.

That's the back story.

Now ... on to the reception.

The wedding's out in the middle of nowhere in a VFW Lodge.

The lodge is surrounded by thigh-high weeds, beer bottles and broken glass. It looked like the type of place that had been shut down years ago and local teens used it as a parking lot to smoke weed, drink beer and make out.

I walked through the front door and there were about 30 people eating barbecue sandwiches.

The first thing I noticed ... it was steaming in there.

No air conditioning.

Mid-July ... a reception in a large aluminum building with concrete floors ... and no A/C.

They had turned the lights out to try and make it cooler in the building, but that merely brought the temperature down to a cool 92 degrees.

I met the groom who was the spitting image of Earl from "My Name Is Earl".

His friends even called him Earl, which I'm guessing is where the nickname came from.

He's a nice guy, very helpful and shows me where to set up.

I begin setting up and I'm noticing that a LOT of people are coming up to the bride and groom, doing their well-wishes and leaving.

"They must be going home to change and coming back," I thought as I'm putting speakers on stands, etc.

I'm all set up by 4:30.

There are now 17 people in the building ... 18 if you count me.

I just went ahead and put in a disc of soft love songs since I was there. I'm not going to sit there staring at my watch waiting for 5 p.m. to roll around so I can start playing.

5:00 comes.

17 people still here.

And they're ALL in the wedding party.

We were supposed to do the Grand Entrance where I introduce the wedding party and finally the bride and groom at 5 p.m.

It's a big deal for those of you who've never seen it.

I figure we'll wait until more people get there to do the Grand Entrance.

Because if we do the Grand Entrance now, there will be NOBODY to witness it. LITERALLY ... everyone there is in the wedding party.

At 5:10, the groom comes up to me.

"She's real upset," he says with a thick southern accent. "Would you mind doing the Grand Entrance now? It might make her feel better."

Hey, that's fine. Believe it or not, one of my big selling points as a DJ is that I'm a real easy guy to work with and will do whatever the customer says to make them happy.

That's probably why I'm so bitter as Uncle Bob. I'm too goddamned nice away from this site.

Yeah.

So anyway, I make an announcement (HA!) over the mic and tell the wedding party to meet me outside.

Where it's cool. Probably 88 degrees out there.

I get everyone lined up and there's a few bridesmaids missing. They had apparently already left the party.

We make up for it by having one girl escort two guys down the aisle.

I get back inside and I am THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS HELLHOLE.

All 17 people are outside waiting to be introduced to NOBODY.

So I start calling out their names and they walk in to the strains of some country song that I've permanently blocked out of my memory.

The Bride and Groom are brought out to "Cotton Eyed Joe".

They dance their first dance.

Oh.

The bride's sisters want to sing the first dance.

You know ... since we've got Karaoke.

I mean ... what's a hoedown without Karaoke??

So they sing some country song together over the mic.

Which would have been fine.

If either of them had an ounce of talent.

So they're screeching into the microphones, each of them holding a Boone's Farm bottle of wine in their hands because they were underage and weren't allowed to drink the liquor there.

We were supposed to go into the cake cutting next, but the cakes had been cut hours ago and had since become a breeding ground for flies the size of dinner plates.

It was like a disco full of ecstasy for flies.

So IMMEDIATELY following the first dance, the only two kids in the party wanted to sing.

Because nothing appeals more to a kid than hearing his voice amplified.

The first little boy wanted to sing "Sara Beth".

Know it??

For those of you who don't, it's a country weeper about a little girl dying of cancer.

Yep.

Here's your first song of the evening folks ... a five year old singing about a little girl dying of cancer.

Can't get more upbeat than that!!!

WHOOOO-HOOOOOOOOO!!!

PARRRRRRRR-TAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

It would have probably been nice if the kid ... you know ... had an ounce of talent.

But he was the son of the bride and groom and therefore, talent just wasn't swimming broadly in his gene pool.

After he finished butchering the song, I said "What a great way to kick off the reception!"

Nobody got the irony.

I've discovered that hillbillies really don't recognize irony in its purest form.

By 6 p.m. we were down to 11 people in the building.

Eleven freakin' people.

The bride and groom, the parents of the bride, the son of the bride and groom, the son of one of the bridesmaids, two sisters of the bride, the mentally handicapped brother of the bride and two groomsmen who worked at Walmart with the couple.

That was it.

I walked outside during a song and called my wife to tell her it'd be an early night.

I told her that poor planning killed this party. You can't expect people to sit in a hot non-air-conditioned building in mid-July from 2 p.m. until midnight and that I should have been here at 2 p.m. in order to keep the people entertained rather than letting them all go home.

I figured I'd be gone by 7.

At 7:00 the place looked like a ghost town.

The two sisters were dancing and sweaty and heat rashes had broken out on their faces.

The bride and groom were wondering where did everything go so wrong.

The retarded brother was a piece of work.

I'd keep using the term mentally challenged, but "retarded" is simpler to type. Sorry retarded people.

The brother had one of my Karaoke books in his possession.

He came up to the stage and with the book wide open, he pointed to a song.

Some Dixie Chicks song.

"Have you got that?" he asked as he pointed at the song.

I read the title.

"Yes I do," I said. "Would you like to sing it?"

"No," he said as he walked away and sat back down.

Five minutes later.

Another song.

Another confirmation that the song was in my possession.

Another decline to sing it.

This went on for six fucking hours.

After the third time I explained to him that I had every song in that book and that if he wanted to sing one, he could. But in the nicest way possible, I let him know that he didn't have to keep interrupting me to check and see if I had the songs.

...Sailed RIGHT over his head.

Because the goofy bitch kept asking me all night.

At one point, he wanted me to play a request for the couple.

Sure. What song would he like to request.

"Some Christmas music," he smiled.

Okay.

I really really REALLY wanted to shove him off the stage at that point.

I don't really make it a habit of physically abusing the handicapped ... but I had no choice.

Nobody was really watching this guy to make sure he wasn't bugging the holy shit out of me.

My role had basically become the highest paid babysitter in America by this point.

I told him I didn't have any Christmas music with me because this was JULY and I only brought Christmas music with me in DECEMBER.

When it's COLD outside, Forrest.

I think he was disappointed that we weren't going to take a break from the songs about kids with cancer and brighten up the place with "Frosty the Motherfucking Snowman".

At 7:30, the groom came up to me.

"Hey," he said. "We're really just kind of waiting on one of the bridesmaids to come back. She said she was going home to change clothes and then come back. Once she gets here, we'll probably just play another hour and then be done."

Finally.

A light at the end of the tunnel.

We were keeping this sad excuse for a wedding reception going for one person who'd be coming back and would probably sing a song or two and then we'd be done.

Hallefuckinlujah.

In the meantime, the little five year-old party perker-upper wanted to sing some more.

He didn't care what the song was.

He really just wanted to wrap his mouth around the microphone and grunt.

Literally.

That's what this kid was doing.

Just moaning into the microphone because he couldn't read the lyrics to the songs anyway.

So he's standing onstage, pinching his penis while he sings.

The bride comes up and tells him to go to the bathroom NOW.

He's not budging.

This is his shining moment.

He is NOT going to walk away from destroying Porter Wagoner's "Green Green Grass Of Home" just to urinate.

So the bride walks away.

And as soon as she does, I see urine spilling out of the kid's shorts.

"We've got an issue up here," I say good-naturedly over the microphone as Billy Bob pisses all over my Karaoke stand.

The bride turns around and marches up to the stage.

She grabs the kid.

And then she SPANKS THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE KID.

She hit his ass six times. HARD.

Okay.

I'm no child psychologist.

But I'm guessing that I witnessed a moment that will forever define this child's personality for the rest of his life.

Your parents finally decide to get married when you're five years old.

You're celebrating by singing about kids with cancer and other country shit songs.

You piss your pants in front of everyone there.

Your mother beats you senseless and with each swat on your ass, urine droplets free themselves from the front of your shorts, spraying for yards in front of you.

You're then sent outside to the back of the truck and told to stay there the rest of the evening.

Which he did.

Thank God.

No offense kid, but if I wanted to hear the entire George Strait catalog grunted into the microphone by a five year-old, I would have asked.

And when I say large I mean "large".

You there sitting in front of your monitor eating Twinkies and washing them down with Mountain Dew while reading this.

You may think you're large.

Trust me.

You weren't THIS large.

She's sitting in a chair pretty much right in front of me facing me.

She pulls up another chair to rest her feet on.

I'm now looking at the bottom of her feet.

That's not bad.

It's when she decides to air herself out up further on her body ... most notably her vaginal area ... and begins fanning her dress so that it's open access to Granny's poontang ...

I happened to glance over there.

Folks, I have no idea what I saw.

I pride myself on knowing my way around a vagina.

I've goofed around with my share of them.

This was no vagina.

I'm not sure if I was only seeing thighs, old underwear, or a Mexican midget crawling out of the wreckage she once called her vagina ... but I turned away so fast I almost got whiplash.

I made a mental note that I could no longer look straight ahead to the "crowd".

A few minutes later, this woman got up, walked slowly to the buffet which was now over six hours old, pulled up a chair and a fork ... and began eating the food that was left.

Never mind that the flies had eaten the majority of it by now.

Never mind that the mayonnaise in the potato salad was as spoiled as Paris Hilton.

She sat down and began just eating out of the aluminum roasting pans that the food had been sitting in at above room temperature for a quarter of a day.

By this point, I had seen enough.

I'd seen hillbilly kids piss themselves onstage and get a butt busting spanking for it.

I'd seen something under a morbidly obese grandmother's dress that I could not explain.

I'd seen the hot new game that's sweeping the nation amongst the country's mentally challenged: "Let's Fuck With The DJ's Head".

I'd seen sweaty bridesmaids/sisters trying to yank each other's dresses down to expose their big flabby boobs to the room.

Which I really didn't get into yet.

I'm a guy.

Guys naturally like boobs.

These two were wearing strapless gowns and apparently the Boone's Farm went to their heads and they thought it'd be funny to expose each other's boobs to their immediate family.

So they're chasing each other around this room at full speed.

Like little kids on a playground.

Only faster.

Screaming at the tops of their lungs.

"Look at me Daddy! Look at me! I'm your favorite daughter and even though today's not all about me, I'm going to rip off my sister's top so we can all see her sweaty, pimply breasts!! You'll be so proud of me, Daddy!"

That's not what they were screaming.

But that's what was going on in their psyche.

At 9:30 I got the bad news from the groom.

"It don't look like that girl's gonna show up," he said. "Let's get ready to wrap it up for the night."

"Alright" I said, barely hiding the glee in my voice. "You wanna go ahead and play your last dance song and be done?"

"Oh no," he said, looking at his watch. "Let's just go another hour and then be done."

Fucker.

You dirty, dirty fucker.

DO NOT GET MY HOPES UP THAT THERE'S A CHANCE I MAY BE HOME BEFORE 1 A.M. AND THEN TAKE IT AWAY JUST LIKE THAT!

I played for one more hour while the eight or so people left sat there staring at each other.

Everyone was too drunk to move.

The last 30 minutes I played a 30 minute mix I have for just this type of occasion as I loaded everything else in the car.

I let the mix end, played their Last Dance song which they just sat there and listened to it while trying not to vomit all over their rented tux and wedding dress.

I thanked them all for a wonderful evening, I congratulated the bride and groom and wished them many months of happiness

And then I got the fuck out of this horror movie as quickly as possible.