MOM! THERE'S SOMEBODY FAMOUS AND GROSS IN OUR FRONT YARD!!

Gawd ... whatta weekend.

Friday night I DJ'ed a wedding reception for a VERRRRRY conservative Christian couple.

There's this service on the web that you can go to in order to find a DJ that I had never had much luck with.

Basically, you get a "lead" where you get just a little bit of the information about the reception and then you place a bid on getting their business.

And the couple usually picks the lowest bid because, in their eyes, cheapest is the best.

I can understand that. If my transmission goes out on my car and I need to get a new transmission, I'm going to buy the $1,500 transmission over the same transmission that the fancy upscale guy with all the nationwide advertising to pay for is selling for $2,000.

So anyway, a few months ago I received a lead on a couple who were having their reception just a few miles from my house on a Friday.

I had never had a bite on another lead from this website before.

So, just for the heck of it, I bid a low, low, LOW price to see if I'd hear anything back because, frankly, I was beginning to doubt this service.

A few days later, the groom calls me and says that he thinks they want to go with me.

BUT ... rather than book me through the website, he wants to circumvent that and just pay me outright.

So basically, he's saving even MORE money because he doesn't have to pay commission to the website.

The guy is SNEAKY.

And because I quoted such a low figure, I have to stick by it ... even though it's lower than the total figure he was originally quoted and we're doing this without the assistance of the website.

Yeah.

Bored yet??

Anyway, in the weeks leading up to the night, the guy KEPT CALLING ME wanting to remind me that they were a very conservative Christian couple and their guests were very conservative Christian guests and by no means was I supposed to play ANYTHING ANYTHING ANYTHING that even might REMOTELY have ANYTHING to do with sex.

No cursing. No hip-hop. NO SUGGESTIVE LYRICS.

Now ... I'll be honest. I do NOT listen to song lyrics anymore.

I have enough crap to do in my life without listening to every song I own, deciphering the lyrics, determining if there's anything sexual about those lyrics and then separating the songs into "clean" and "dirty" piles.

Sorry Dudley Do-Right, but this DJ HAS a life.

So we jump ahead to the night of their reception and the groom comes up to me and ONCE A'FREAKINGAIN reminds me of his conservative Christian beliefs.

This guy is TERRIFIED that I'm going to play something like KC and the Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight" because HEAVEN FORBID his guests are asked to "do a little dance, make a little love and get down tonight."

Ohmigod.

The pits of Hell will open up and swallow us whole if something like that were to happen.

Oh.

But the guy wants disco music.

So I'm playing the most sanitized music in the history of the world.

Frankie Valli, James Taylor (a former heroin addict ... but "we love his music"), etc.

The groom KEEPS COMING UP TO ME roughly every 10 minutes to tell me what to play next.

"The older group would probably appreciate more music from the '50s. Do that next."

"My friend wants to hear some country. But NO CHEATING SONGS. Play that next."

"Play that James Taylor song 'Mockingbird' again. My goodness! That was a hoot! Play it next! Play it NEEEEEXT!!"

Now.

I'm standing here ... in a tuxedo ... outside ... on a warm September evening ... being HOUNDED by this guy who had been riding my ass for months about music and ... rather than enjoying his own freakin' wedding reception ... he was playing DJ for the night.

To say I wanted to kill him and go ahead and send him to Heaven so he could just skip all the formalities like a long and prosperous life and just frolic with the angels right freakin' now is an understatement.

And to top it off ... it was the absolute lowest amount of money I had ever commissioned for a wedding reception.

...Which was my fault. I understand that.

But still ... when you're getting paid peanuts, you don't expect to eat plates full of shit to get your grubby little hands on the peanuts.

MERCIFULLY, his crowd probably wasn't as conservative Christian as he was and the bulk of the guests left about 90 minutes before the party was scheduled to end.

Either that or they all had to leave early to make sure they all got to their Friday Night Prayer Groups on time.

The groom was clueless.

"Well, they didn't stay as long as I was hoping," he said to me.

"Well," I said. "It's hot out tonight and a lot of these folks worked all day, went home and changed and then went straight to the wedding. It's been a long day for them."

I didn't add things like "That's why most people have their weddings on Saturday, numbnuts" or "Maybe it was the fact that rather than play music they can dance and have fun to, you wanted music that the Brady Bunch would have dismissed as being 'too square' played all night."

So it was an early night by about an hour.

I collected my little airline-sized pack of peanuts (no tip either ... thankyouverymuch God's Little Personal DJ) and hauled my booty home.

Saturday morning our neighborhood was having their annual Neighborhood Yard Sale so we decided to get up early and see if we could find any bargains.

Specifically, we wanted to find a boy's shirt that was too big for Andrew that he could wear in his art class because they paint a lot and Andrew tends to be more interested in painting his clothes than actually putting brush to paper.

We're at one yard sale and I hear this lady saying to one of the other customers that she's giving away these really nice books.

I'm all for a free really nice book. Hey me! Over here!

So I turn and look at the really nice books.

...And they're all books that I wrote about 4-5 years ago, which for those of you who remember, I used to write coffee table books for a living.

Why I said this next phrase, I don't know.

"I wrote those books," I said, pointing at the stack of free books.

People looked at me like I had just said "Are there any small boys around here that I could have sex with?"

"Really?" the lady helming the yard sale said.

"Yeah," I said, flipping one of the books to the back and showing them my photo on the jacket cover. "Right there. That's me."

They looked at the photo and then looked at me. They did this a few times.

Finally, one woman squealed "HE'S FAMOUS!"

Yeah.

I'm the famous guy.

Standing in someone's front yard at 7:45 a.m. in a faded black t-shirt, cargo shorts, dirty tennis shoes and a stained ball cap hiding my bed head.

Captain Famous at your service.

The next door neighbor, who was having her own yard sale, came over to see just who was famous in the yard.

Suddenly, 10 women wanted copies of the books.

And they wanted them AUTOGRAPHED.

The next door neighbor ran inside her house and came back with a Sharpie.

"Write 'To Jennifer'," she instructed me.

I suddenly felt very very very stupid signing my autograph in a stranger's front yard in books that were being distributed freely to other strangers.

It was an impromptu book signing at a yard sale.

The ladies were all a'flutter, reading what I had written in their books like overweight high school girls reading what the top jock wrote in their yearbooks.

It was the same thing in every book.

"Hope you enjoy it! Uncle Bob 2006".

I ended up signing all of the books for the lady who was going to keep giving the books away to the customers who came after we left.

She was ecstatic over this and now decided she could actually CHARGE for the books.

Nevermind that the books were written for citizens of Eugene, Oregon and Boise, Idaho and other places millions of miles from here.

She was convinced that my chicken-scratch would make her a small fortune.

And they probably did get her an extra $1 per book for each book she managed to sell.

I wouldn't have paid a dollar for them.

I really enjoyed myself. The groom was cool, the bride was sweet, everyone had a great time.

I played "My Humps" and packed the dance floor with bridesmaids all singing along with the song and shaking their butts.

Now THAT'S my kind of wedding reception.

AND I made more money last night than I ever have as a DJ.

So that balanced out with the conservative Christian couple to give me two decent nights.

Granted, I got home at 2 a.m. and got up at 6:30 a.m. and am meeting a bride this morning at 11 a.m. to go over her wedding plans and then have a picnic at Andrew's school at 4 p.m. and then have to come home and write several things for various newsletters and publications.

But ... I ... I ... I have no point in all that.

Except that I should be doing something else rather than this.

Peace out, Seacrest.