My eldest turned 13 last week. We let him have a similar party to his younger brother - a backyard movie showing on a jumbo screen. When the woman showed up to set up, I was taken aback. This was not a young adult who could lug stuff. This was a ~70 year old woman who, while rugged and sporting a knee brace, was clearly a senior. I helped her wheel stuff to our backyard. She told she would be good from there because an assistant was coming.
The woman's name was Tina (fake name). She told me this would be a piece of cake event for her b/c she had been DJing for 37 years. She also told me she was a DJ at our town's "ECLC" school, which is for kids with special needs. So, of course, my mind went right to Matt Dillon in Something About Mary. Am I going to get canceled for that?
As you may be guessing, Tina and I did not get along well. She set up okay and we were cordial at first. I offered beverages to her and her assistant and let them have input on where to set up the screen and the projector. But then things went downhill. They finished setting up as I finished cooking burgers and dogs on the grill. The screen setup we had for this movie was bigger and better than the prior one. The screen was 12' x 9' and there were two large speakers.
Kids sat in their lawn chairs to eat after playing in our front yard and street for an hour. Tina then starts cranking - and I mean CRANKING - some sort of Taylor Swift ballad on the two speakers. It was loud as fuck. It did not go over well with the group of 10-12 12 y/o boys. And it did not go over well with me. I immediately told her to turn it down a lot, amazed she would think that was an appropriate backyard volume at 730 PM, and that a group of boys would want a pop ballad. One kid than asked for hip-hop, and she changed the music.
After the dinner, the kids went to play again and my wife and I started cleaning up. The hip hop was pretty loud. At one point, I heard some sketchy lyrics. My conversation with Tina went like this:
Me: "Those are some aggressive lyrics!"
Tina (dumbfounded): "I'm playing a clean hip hop mix."
Me: "Well, somebody's singing about loving vaginas, and the whole neighborhood can hear it."
Tina: <no response and more dumbfounded looks at me>
(Author's note: pretty sure this was the oldest woman I've ever said the word "vagina" to.)
Fast forward 20 minutes. We gather the kids in the back again to do the cake. All of a sudden, I hear some sort of polka music very loud in the background. I look at Tina and order her to cut the music. I've had it with Tina. I am now ordering her around like she's one of my kids. Her assistant, who was pleasant, young and pretty cute, recognized my ire and stayed out of the way. Tina tells me she plays this music at all her birthdays. I tell her this is not the ECLC and we will sing ourselves.
In the couple moments where I festered on my dislike of Tina, I had full fictional conversation with her in my head. In the conversation, I asked her about when she started. This is how the conversation went in my head:
Me: So you started in 1983?
Tina: Yes.
Me: Did you play a lot of Greg Kihn?
Tina: What?
Me: Greg Kihn. The artist. You like him?
Tina (dumbfounded): Um, I'm not sure. It was a long time.
Me: He's fantastic. You should have played him a lot back in the 80's. You should play him a lot now.
Tina: <no response and more dumbfounded looks at me>
It's a conversation I might have initiated if somebody else was there. It would've been mean-spirited for sure, but funny for me and somebody else to listen to.
In the end, I tipped Tina and her assistant pretty well. I'm not that kind of mercenary, and I no longer fester in anger like I used to. She's an older woman doing manual labor to make ends meet. But she was all kinds of annoying. And I couldn't even pour a few drinks to help tolerate her b/c I had to drive to pick up my other kid at a function across town.
In the end, Rush Hour was a big hit. It is a PG-13 movie from 1998. Even Tina liked it. The movie did not age well, with some N-words and dated stereotypes, and had a few moments where I had to hold back laughter, like the scene below. But the party was a success.
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