| Tuesday, August 30, 2005 |
| weekend update |
| playoff weekend megafun. Made it to Sunday. Played hearts out and got rawked. Monster finals game. Inspired to become monster. Illuminate return next summer? Definitely maybe. Hanging up the turntables. Will save hundreds this year that I would have spent on records. DJing was fun. Looking ahead. Shopping for an acoustic guitar. Time to become soft-rock star. One more week till kingston. Big year to come. GG summer. |
posted by DarrenGene @ 12:25 PM  |
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| Monday, August 22, 2005 |
| spiritual sensitivity |
one thing i know is wrong and that i gotta really stop doing is comparing myself to other christians. And i understand how God speaks to different people in different ways but sometimes i really feel that I am spiritually desensitized. So many times in a church setting for example, friends have shared how they sense the presence of the Spirit in the room and i have felt nothing. So many times friends have testified boldly of having a crazy undeniable only explainable by God experience and i have been left questioning why I have been left out. And I'm left with two different streams of thought. One: I am spiritually desensitized: Living life as maybe I should do rather than what I am told to do (but these orders are falling upon deaf ears). Two: My lack of faith and confidence in the Spirit's guidance over my life is unwarranted... the Spirit has been guiding me all along and i'm just too obtuse to see it. I've entertained both streams and still am left with questions.
I remember back in the highschool and some can attest to this that i was praying for spiritual gifting (the ability to speak in tongues). At that point in my life, i felt that in receiving such a gift, that would for sure mean that i would be more in-tune to the Spirit. But yeah, so far, still nothing which led me to believe that either i was not praying hard enuf or possibly i was praying with the wrong motives in mind or simply, God was saying no all along.
Now, more than ever, I feel a deep desire for the Spirit's active guidance in my life. I want to be an empty vessel to rise up to serve my King but at the same time i completely lack the boldness, the spiritual discipline, the passion to go to war. Now, more than ever, I must take my life seriously and the lives that are in my life seriously as well. I must not take sin lightly as sin is always crouching...waiting to pounce and grab a foothold and drag me down like it has time and time again. Help. |
| posted by DarrenGene @ 1:00 AM |
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| Sunday, August 21, 2005 |
| where have u gone? |
Date-filled bear claws. Can't seem to find em anywhere anymore. Hands down, one of the better-pastries that were offered back in the day. In our darkest hour where have u gone? What a cruel...cruel summer (name that tune). |
| posted by DarrenGene @ 3:34 PM |
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| Wednesday, August 17, 2005 |
| my name is jack bauer and this is the longest day of my life |
or that's how it's been feeling the past week with camp and BBC. But jea, BBC is now done and i leave from that conference blessed and rejuvenated. But mang, the worship night sessions for BBC were simply B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Everyone dancing, shouting, singing, forming congo lines, myself breaking drumsticks and sweating off a pound in the process. Little keeeds stealing the mics away from the worship leaders and belting their little hearts out thru the speakers. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Never had to pound the skins so hard in my life. Praise God for foam earplugs. But yeah, It's amazing what the Spirit and the feeling of freedom can do to a person.
Oh man. On to work. It's hella fun but come 5-6pm everyday i just begin to lose it. I'm telling u, when it's 10-11 in the morning, i'm a real nice guy and the keeds luv me and i luv them. It's the annoying ones that really bring out the worst in me tho. And u know that they're real annoying when they keep on asking u if they're annoying u. Am i annoying u? yep. Am i annoying u now? yep. How bout now? still annoying. And so on and so forth. Again, i can handle this at 10-11...I've got my cool together then. But between 5-6, i've found myself looking for more "creative" solutions to deal. Case one: one of the older campers comes running towards me but before she even opens her mouth I stare straight into her eyes and perform my best impression of the T-rex from Jurassic park telling the world that u're not the boss of me now. Case two: in order to speed up the clean up process in the reading room, since the keeds have to pick up all the games and junk nicely before we lock everything up, i've found that rather than simply telling them to clean up faster, subjecting them to me singing round after round of the introduction to the Circle of Life from Lion King (the "AAAAAAAAASSSAQUUENNNNNUIIAAAAAA MEEEDDEEvVeVEETZIVAVAH part) gets the job done quicker since most are convinced that i either sing real bad or that i'm crackcrazy.
But don't get me wrong. Love me the camp. Love me the keeds. And Love me the Lion King.
me at 10-11AM: well not me cause that's jesus but just look at How he's dealing with those keeds. Just like me!
me at 5-6PM: don't make me keeeeel you! |
| posted by DarrenGene @ 11:49 PM |
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| Monday, August 01, 2005 |
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Evidence that u don't need hallucinogens to make u feel like u're seeing things. I mean seriously, those beans are doing the wave and they won't stop no matter how loud i tell them to... and it almost appears as if the image is sliding underneath the template of this page |
| posted by DarrenGene @ 11:33 PM |
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| nu school versus old school |
so apparently Numark's releasing an Ipod mixing station that will allow u to hook up 2 Ipod's to a mixer for seamless music transitions rather than enduring full tracks from start to finish before the next one hits. I'm looking into this and it might be a solid investment if i wanna keep this djing bidness up. Given that lps will always cost 12-15 bucks a pop and mp3s are free, the only thing i'd need to worry about getting would be a second ipod and the mixing station itself which looks to come out to around 1G. Plus, i could probably carry eveything in one hand as opposed to throwing out my back everytime i'd transport my techs, mixer, and records. But then again, i've already invested so much into my current setup. How do i deal? It's a good thing i took microecon this summer. Let's look at my economic opportunity costs if i chose to stay with my current setup:
a) given that records come out to 12-15 and on average every season i buy 10-15 lps, i miss out on 120-225 bones per season in savings or 480-900 bones a year (given that sale prices for records and my interests in Djing stays the same). This means that if i continue to buy recs for the next 10 years i'm potentially forfeitting up to 9Gs of savings that i could have earned if i did with the Ipod setup.
b) potential savings in chiropractor costs in the future.
On the flip side, the opportunity costs if i was to go with the ipod mixing station:
a) the 1G to purchase another Ipod and a mixing station
b) the revenue from commercial clubs unwilling to hire me based on the fact that use Ipods to DJ (how professional is that?)
c) rrrreeeespect for "selling out" to the digital gods and tarnishing the good name of analogitivity
Hmmm....the numbers don't lie. I'd probably be better off longterm to do the investment. But is rocking Ipods still considered to be "Djing" in the true sense of the form? Mehhh
In other news, apparently people are still Djing parties with only one Ipod. Even if u have a set playlist, it's gotta suck that a) u can't mess with the pitch to beatmatch and b) there's always going to be those two seconds of silence in between each track where everything stops...the music for one, the dancing, all talking, all of it's put on hold until the next one hits....
too much music in 2 posts. i'm done |
| posted by DarrenGene @ 11:27 PM |
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| keys to success in party rocking |
some things i've noticed while on the decks:
most crowds generally rate a DJ not on his/her skills per say in mixing (smooth blends) or his/her ability to cut up a record with syncopated scratches but moreso in song selection. Generally People don't really react when u're scratching in a bass drum or a snare tap or the line from the next tune unless u're making it very obvious what u're doing (body tricks). So one who is technically sound and musically funky on the decks will probably be overshadowed by the DJ dressed up as a clown who can juggle in between pressing the stop and play buttons on the tables.
In fact, the best reactions i've had so far is when i don't mix at all. The secret forumla is to bunch together a lot of songs that u know the crowd will go bananas over and simply suddenly drop each song over the other. I'm thoroughly convinced that most crowds have A.D.D. and so as a DJ, the best thing to do with the sudden drops is to keep the crowd on their toes. I remember one party at the guvernment there was this Dj named One Touch who would only play the introduction of each song or the first chorus line before dropping to the next song. It kinda went like:
If you having girl problems I feel bad for u son, i got 99 problems but a female doggy ain't one Go! Go! Go shorty it's ur birthday, we're gonna party like it's ur birthday! Intro bells from DRE: the Next Episode right into the Intro Keys for Fat Joe Lean Back... and etc.
The funny thing was everyone's reaction to it. I was standing next to this girl that was screaming out the name of the artist every time the song dropped:
Girl: OMG HOVA! Hovi Baby!...wait.. FIDDY! Gonna party like it's your....SHREEEAAAAKKKKK! DOCTOR DRE! That's my JOINT right there!! Huh? AHHHHHHH!!!!! YEAHHH! FAT JOE! I love this song! I LOOOVVVEEE THIS SONG!
So yeah, A.D.D. Djing is pretty hawt and it works pretty well and there's really no skill required at all. All you gotta do is press the start and stop buttons really fast and be able to throw records on to the platters real fast while at the same time, have a hand free to catch all the panties, bras and jockstraps flying up at ur grill.
Live remixes don't work unless you have a hype man yelling out "and THis iS the REMIX!"..."Dj ApPo tear it up!"...."FLip that switch!"..."Aiyaiyaiyaiyai!"..."It's Morphin TimE!"
But again, there are always those who have an ear for what u're doing and will compliment u on the subtle snare hits that u cut into the 2nd measure of the 3rd verse on a certain Neptunes track. So for all 3 of u out there with the ears, I salute u.
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| posted by DarrenGene @ 10:35 PM |
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