TITO PUENTE'S ROLLING OVER IN HIS GRAVE

Oh yeah.

Hey, how ya doin'?

Took a lil' vacation myself from Uncle Bob.

Tell ya more later.

So New Year's Eve ...

Had a deejay gig at the local Super Church-Mart. This is the biggest church in town ... so big it has its own television network. Big, I'm a tellin' ya.

Ran into a bit of a problem at the Church.

Y'see ... to make a long story short ... I fucking despise ballroom dancers.

Hate 'em.

Ballroom dancers are the worst people in the world.

If you had to make a list of the shittiest people in the world, ballroom dancers would be number one, bad drivers number two, cranky old people number three and bloodthirsty Nazis number four.

When I took this gig, I specifically asked my partner, "Will there be any ballroom dancers at this party?"

"Nah," he said, then quickly added. "And if there are, you just ignore them."

(He understands my hatred of ballroom dancers, as he's a deejay himself and has had to deal with their ruthless acts of aggression)

So I show up, get the equipment set up and meet the guy in charge of the party.

"What kind of music are you going to play?" he asks.

"Oh, a little bit of everything," I respond.

"Well, I have a few requests," he says, as I groaned, fell to the floor and began kicking my legs in protest. "Please don't play anything offensive as this IS a church function."

Oh. Well fuck me. Now the fucker's telling me I can't play Fiffy Cent's Greatest Hits.

"...and do you have anything for ballroom dancers?"

I froze.

"I ... uhhhh ... I was told there wouldn't be any ballroom dancers here tonight," I stammered.

"Oh there'll be a few," he assured me.

I cringed the biggest cringe in the history of cringes.

They open the doors to the place and a swarm of people come rushing in.

It was then that I found out that this was a singles mixer. No married couples allowed. All single people. Single Christians. Single Christian Ballroom Dancers.

Welcome to Hell, Bobby. Grab a flaming cocktail. You're going to be here a while.

Within three minutes of the doors being opened, a woman with spindly legs adorned with metal braces up and down her legs wobbled over to me.

"What do you have that we can cha-cha to?" she asked.

"I have the Cha-Cha Slide!" I said with a forced smile on my face.

"No," she grimaced. "Something we can chaaaa-chaaaaa to."

"Ummmmm ... I said, mindlessly flipping through my CDs, pretending to look through them when I was obviously just hoping she'd go away.

"Do you have Tito Puente's 'Oye Como Va'?"

When she said this, I thought she was having a legitimate seizure. If you say "Tito Puente's Oye Como Va" really fast and loud, you'd swear you'd need to call a paramedic after you say it. Either that or she was possessed and speaking in tongues.

"Uhhhhh ... " I stalled. "I'm not sure. I'll check. Thanks for your request."

I then shooed her away with my hand.

Within the first 30 minutes, I had 10 requests for "something to cha-cha to".

But no actual song titles.

Here's where I admit my downfall as a deejay ... I have no fucking clue what songs a person can cha-cha to.

Or rhumba.

Or tango.

Or mango.

Or East Coast Swing.

Or West Coast Swing.

Or goddamned anything.

I know music. I don't know dancing.

I know you can waltz to the Commodores "Three Times A Lady" and Anne Murray's "Could I Have This Dance".

Other than that, I'm proper fucked when it comes to dealing with these insane bastards.

Finally, after blowing off all these people, they FINALLY send someone up who has a pseudo knowledge of music. In a nutshell, they found a deejay translator.

He suggested several Madonna tunes. Santana's "Black Magic Woman". Lou Bega's "Mambo #5" in a pinch.

I was so thankful, I could have chomped his monkey right there.

I put on "Borderline" by Madonna and sure as shit, all these insane cockdogs hit the dance floor and start dancing.

To the naked eye, you probably think that I hate ballroom dancers because they're extremely annoying when it comes to their incessant requests to "play something WE can dance to".

And while that plays a large part in my obsession to rid the world of these stank assjockeys, the biggest reason I want to see them all dead is the way in which they dance.

Dancing is supposed to be fun.

Ballroom dancers take their shit seriously.

They get on the dance floor, take their position, silently stare into each other's eyes and then start whirling around the dancefloor like they're the Fred and Ginger of the new millenium.

Nine times out of ten, they have the grace and skills of a three-legged horse.

And they never smile. NEVER. It's against the rules of ballroom dancing. While dancing, no smiles should creep across your face. This is SERIOUS. There will be NO FUN HAD BY BALLROOM DANCERS.

God, I hate these creepy bastards.

What I hate even more is because this job pays so damned well, I have to grin and pretend that I love them and think that ballroom dancing is just the most awesome thing in the free world.

So I blow through the six songs that my new best friend has told me they could all dance to. I blow my wad in like ... 21 minutes.

As soon as I played something they COULDN'T cha-cha to, they all started coming at me like flesh-eating zombies.

"What else do you have that we can cha-cha to?" they asked in unison.

I'm a patient man.

But I was on the verge of cracking ballroom dancer skulls at this point.

At about 10:30, the guy in charge comes up to tell me what a goshdarned fantastic job I had been doing and informs me that at 10:50, we'll cut off the music and watch the ball drop in Times Square on the big screens.

Wonderful.

At 10:35, an angry looking man and his date walk up to me.

"When are you going to play something WE can dance to?" he asks, the battlecry for those who hate deejays.

I asked him what he wanted and he wanted Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever" and Foghat's "Slow Ride". Two surefire dance floor hits!

Against my better judgement, I played them back to back.

The ballroom dancers clasped their hands over their ears to protect them from Terrible Ted's guitar chords.

A few of them started jaunting over to the deejay booth to protest that there was no way in heck that they could cha-cha to "Cat Scratch Fever"! It was un-cha-cha-able!!

"We can't cha-cha to this!" one of the women said.

Rather than saying "You fuckers can't cha-cha PERIOD!" I countered with "Not everyone is here to cha-cha. These are requests made from the burly bearded guy on the dance floor."

They skulked off like scorned vampires, hissing at me from a distance.

At 10:50, I shut the whole bitch down, the guy in charge forced everyone to give me a big round of applause which I accepted graciously and then I said "Where's my check? I'm outta here."

I got my $300 with a $100 tip.

$400 for four hours work.

God bless ballroom dancers.