“Mom is Mad at Diplo”

(Quote from Shaye to Mac as I madly type away on my computer)

On my last two trips to Las Vegas I’ve been lucky (!?) enough to experience an odd pop culture experience: the Live overpaid DJ.  A couple of years ago we saw Dillon Francis and more recently, I didn’t make it to see Diplo, even though I waited impatiently for almost two hours for him to start his “concert”.

I have been to many concerts: hard rock, pop, acoustic, and jazz.  I don’t mind paying for tickets to these events, standing in line to get in, putting up with the opening acts which can be great, or mediocre.  When the lead musicians get on stage, there is an exciting, well-planned, musically sound, choreographed production that takes place.  There are lights, video, smoke, and sometimes fire.  I am excited to see the talents of many people come together to create a memorable and culturally impactful performance. 

In a hastily planned trip to Vegas, there were no other concerts around with the exception of someone named Diplo who would be the featured DJ at a nightclub at the Wynn called Surrender.  Even though I was less than impressed with my earlier experience with Dillon Francis a couple of years earlier, I decided to see what all the hype was about.

The best part of the story is that I am now mature (read: OLD) and slightly smarter, and have enough money to dine at the restaurant next to the club, which allows for VIP and free entry into the nightclub.  I didn’t have to wait in line in my 4” heels for over an hour to watch the amazing Diplo perform his show.  Because I didn’t have to pay or wait, my expectations were pretty low, but apparently not low enough.

We all clamber around a small stage with what appears to be a long podium of sorts with a series of computers and synthesizers with multifarious buttons.  There is a screen behind the podium, and another screen about 50 Ft in front for those of us who can’t get close to the stage.  The opening “act” stands there and pushes buttons, flips the volume dials with his two first fingers and bounces around a bit behind the podium, alternately removing and putting on his headphones.  Purpose?  IDK.  Occasionally he licks his fingers before touching the buttons/dials.  Better traction?  On the big screens, random photos of dancing animated pineapples and a strange cartoon mouse flit across.  Interspersed with these bizarre and unrelated images is the head of the infamous Diplo.  This goes on all night.  The same video over and over.  Every 5-10 minutes the opening DJ requests that we put our hands up and scream for Diplo.  “Great,” I think to myself, “the show is about to start!”   These requests to salute Diplo begin at about 11:45 pm.  We go to the bar and try to get some water because we don’t want to drink alcohol this late in the evening.  As it turns out, in Vegas where there are virtually no rules for anything else, you aren’t allowed to order “just” water.   As we hold our extraneous drinks, we do a lap and survey the crowd while waiting for Diplo to arrive.  We try to talk over the thumping noises created by the computer.  Occasionally, the DJ would actually play a song that had lyrics – for example from “The Weekend” and I would get excited, but in less than 10 seconds they would mix it with another digital sound.  No more weekend. 

Why does this all seem so pointless?  I look around for some clues as to my increasing intolerance and distress.  Several things reveal themselves to me.  First, I am the only one NOT wearing a sausage dress or high-wasted sausage skirt (I think the fashion term for this is a body-con dress).  Second, my husband and I are exotic creatures in this zoo.  Not only because we are fair skinned and haired, we are also twice the age of 99% of the people in da club.   Hmmm.

Again I am asked to raise my hands in the air and cheer for Dicklo.  WTF?  Where is this douche bag Diplo anyway.  What does he need so much time to prepare for; he is going to push buttons and move volume dials.  My daughter was adept at doing this at 2 years old.  It’s not like he is Mick Jagger who will be jumping around the stage and singing duets with the talented and oddly healthy Keith Richards.

But all of these young millenials with too much foreign money in their bank accounts, enjoying absurdly overpriced bottle service, are still waiting patiently for this Dipstick to appear and perform his digital symphonies.  Have I mentioned that this guy makes upwards of $400K per performance?  I don’t get it.  These kids are dancing to digitized noise; there is no singing, no instruments, and no lyrics.  There isn’t even a rhythm to dance to, just a computerized cacophony with monotonous weird cartoon figures and heads running across a screen.  I truly fear for this generation of over digitized twenty-somethings.

Finally, it is 1:30 AM.  Again, put your hands together and scream for Diplo, Dipfuck, Dipshit!!! 

He doesn’t appear. 

I now understand the aptly named club.  I SURRENDER.  I wave the white flag of age and ignorance as I part the crowd to exit this anti-climatic phenomenon and head to the high thread count linens of my hotel boudoir. 

This is what I missed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LNhHExuaIc

A letter to my son....

Dear Maco,

I was thinking back to our conversation yesterday and I wanted to share my thoughts with you.  I believe that some of this is our fault.  In our effort to help get you into a good college, we have reduced everything you are into a page full of accomplishments.  And in doing so, you feel like all you are meant to do is get awards, achieve good grades and test scores.  But that is far from the truth.  Maybe that is how things appear right now, as you are trying to package yourself up as something a college might want.  And because the application process is so limited, it is hard to do much else.  The system has encouraged this type of thinking and we all fell into it and I’m sorry that I did.  I know that I have projected my own college experience onto you, in that I always felt if I had done a little more, or had the right connections I could have gone to Georgetown, my “dream” school.  I want your dreams to come true, but sometimes the dreams we have are not always the ones that come true.  I have a wonderful life in a beautiful town with a great husband, kids I adore and the best friends in the world.  It didn’t matter where I went to school - I am still living a dream, just not the one I had when I was 18.   

Life is not about accomplishments or a good resume, or even a lot of money.  Life is about the connections you have with other people.  It is important to be emotional and to be yourself.  And to be vulnerable, even if that is painful.   Like I said, in order to find who you are, sometimes you need to look at who you were and where you came from. 

You have always been mature for your age, you’ve always engaged easily with adults, and they like you (sometimes more than kids your own age).  You were a beautiful baby and child and you are a handsome teenager.  You are smart and wise and thoughtful.  You are the little boy who wanted to save his mother from the “older” even if he didn’t know what older was.  You are the young man who put his arm around his mother during Sam’s service because she was crying.  You are the friend who stayed with Aidan when his ex-girlfriend was having a party and he was having a bad night.  You are the kid who made Nicole giggle time and again at our kitchen counter.  You are the brother who stayed to support his sister in her ski race even after he crashed in his own race.   You are the friend who has driven lots of drunken kids home from parties.  You are the son who made his dad a sculpture of his favorite tree.   You are the grandson who wrote a poem for his grandmother’s 70^th birthday in the back of a cramped ski team van.

These are the things that should be on your resume.  These are the things that colleges should care about.  These are the things that make you human, a good person, and ultimately successful in life.  You are so much more than a ski racer, or a student who got perfect grades.   You are a caring, passionate, curious, lovely teenager who is trying to navigate a complicated and uncertain future in the best way he knows how.   I am proud of everything you are, as well as everything you have done and I love you so much.  Mom

“A happy life is not made up of what you have dreamed of, chased after, and achieved, but rather whom you poured your life into, who poured their life into yours, and the difference you’ve made in the lives of others.”  Susan Meissner

The Home Office

It’s 1:00 pm on a Tuesday afternoon.  The dogs are laying on their backs on the Persian rug, legs splayed open in lazy, canine ecstasy.  Two computer screens are glowing not five feet from each other: one a giant, shiny, silver iMac, the other an old black HP.  My husband is in his jammies, focused on a rambling email.  I sit in the swivel office chair, the back of which touches his swivel office chair, facing my own screen filled with Quickbooks entries.  I too, am in my pajamas.  My second cup of tea sits half drunk next to my mouse.  This, my friends, is the grim landscape of the home office on any given day.

I remove my headphones and peruse the less than professional setting.  “This is pathetic”, I utter.

“Are you kidding?  This is the best” my husband responds while enthusiastically rubbing the dogs’ bellies.    “What are you making me for lunch?”

“I made two breakfasts and two lunches for my CHILDREN this morning, I’m not making lunch,” I reply with as much disdain as I can muster.

“Come sit on my lap then” he suggests casually (every day).

“Are we in an episode of Mad Men?  I’m complaining to HR, would you treat your colleagues this way?” I ask.  “And by the way, you are no Don Draper.”

“I am HR and you’re my wife, so it’s not illegal.  I checked with my lawyer.”   He says with what is supposed to be humorous finality.  

Unfortunately this is true, I have no one to blame but myself for my current predicament.  I even reached out to my brother-in-law, the silent voice of reason partner in our family business, to file a complaint.  He told me to go on a girls’ trip or go shopping.  I now realize I am in my own hellish episode of Mad Henderson Men, minus the continuous consumption of spirits and cigarettes.  Now that is a thought, a glass of scotch would make the day go quicker, but would probably lead to increased harassment. 

The cheerful bleep of the computer, indicating that my accounting entries have in fact reconciled, gives me a pitiful amount of satisfaction so I decide to take a break and throw in some laundry.  Another perk of working at home is the endless amount of multi-tasking that can be done. 

Let me fill you in on a little history so you can fully comprehend the change in lifestyle in which I’ve had to accustom myself.  When we got married, my husband traveled 70% of the time.  After grad school, when I worked in high tech, we both traveled a great deal.  After I had my son, we both worked but only he traveled.  After I had my daughter, and stopped working full time, he traveled around the world consistently, and would be away for 2-3 weeks at a time.  Even later, as he started his own business, he had a shared office space and I went to my part time job over the years.  I just ASSUMEd this was the way things would continue on in our relationship and our life.  As we all know, assuming gets us in trouble.  Now that we are both working in the family business and trying to do so economically, I find myself working in a space the size of cubicle with my sexually harassing, significant other/boss, but without even the benevolently intentioned, yet useless divider to give us privacy.

“Our” office features his side, which is a full wall of desk, with drawers, shelves, and files; it even has room for knick-knacks and photos.  His things are neatly stowed away.  My “side” of the office is a lone desk less than 36” wide with one drawer that is barely deep enough to hold my checkbook, and an archaic HP desktop dominating 30 of the 36 available inches of desk space.  Consequently, my shit is piled all over the desk, and the floor.  Because he is on the phone for at least 50% of the day, I usually move my shit to the dining table or kitchen counter so I can focus.  Then the kids get home from school, and their shit gets strewn all over the kitchen counter, dining and great room.  This creates a lively mess of everyone’s shit that is simply a joy to walk into.   

“Mom, can you move these architectural plans off the dining table so I can do my homework?”  my daughter grumbles.

“Can you guys be quiet and turn the music down?  I’m getting on a conference call,” my husband yells from “our” office.

“How long until dinner?” my son inquires casually. 

The dogs start whining and barking as their inner clocks tell them their evening feeding time is approaching. 

Calgon, High West, Don Draper, someone please take me away from the home office….

The Perfect Gift

To:  Mom

From:  Kristie

Re:  xmas ideas for gram

Any ideas on what to get Gram for Christmas?  I know her place is smaller now so she doesn’t have room for any more stuff.  Thanks K

To:  Kristie

From:  Mom

Re:  NO IDEAS

Hi Kris,

I got Gram 2 pair of incontinence panties for Christmas. Jeanne said she needed them, as somehow her laundry gets lost. I’m not sure how that happens when everything is labeled with her name…but s**t happens. In case you want the site it’s Amazon.com CareActive Women’s Reusable Incontinence Panty, X-large in Health & Personal Care.  Love, Mom

To:  Mom

From:  Kristie

Re:  kidding??

I hope you are joking. Please don't give her that for Xmas.  If I got that for Xmas I would euthanize myself. Get her some nice chocolate or a gift certificate to a restaurant that she likes and you can take her when you visit.  Love, Kristie

To:  Mom

From:  Kristie

Re:  P.S.

I will NEVER get you incontinence panties for Xmas. Love, me

This is a real email conversation between my mother and me a couple of Christmas seasons ago.  This little gem has been stowed away in my inbox for almost two years because I promised not to use it in my blog.   Apparently, my mother was going through a tough time, and my stepfather, realizing this was ripe for my blog fodder assured me that I should NOT use this as blog material or it would push my mother over the edge (see old blog about the 30+ year old face cloth that didn't go over so well with Mom).  Reluctantly I agreed to put it on the back burner.

However, I came across this email the other day and started laughing out loud by myself. I then called my mom and I got her laughing about it too, so I’m in the clear.

So I must preface this by saying that I love my grandmother and mother beyond measure.  They have both served as great role models in my life and hopefully they can appreciate the humor in this situation as I have.  Also, shopping for one’s grandmother, at 96 years of age is always a difficult task.  At that point in life, she has way too many things and is generally trying to give away what is left, so finding the appropriate gift can be daunting for sure. 

That being said, there are so many things that are wrong with this short exchange, let’s conduct a brief analysis.

First and foremost, the words incontinence and panties don’t go in the same sentence together, or on the same packaging.  If you are incontinent, you should not be wearing “panties”.  I don’t think you could even substitute knickers in this sentence.  I can't picture Bridget Jones saying “this is the perfect occasion for some seriously incontinent knickers” as she preps for a romantic interlude in the nursing home. 

I believe the term my mother (and apparently the marketing department) was trying to avoid is “adult diaper”, which is understandable.  None of us is looking forward to the time when we need to wear these, but at 96, there are worse things going on I’m sure.  The image that is conjured up by incontinent and panties is just not pleasant, whereas adult diapers pretty much sums up the situation perfectly.

Second:  I can appreciate my mother’s frugality and the challenge of finding a gift for a nonagenarian, but it isn’t like my grandmother is getting mountains of gifts for xmas.  Get her something fun, unnecessary, and maybe even risky – like a nip size bottle of whiskey to hide in her wheelchair.  When we were teenagers and my mother had clearly reached the end of her rope with the whole xmas façade but my brother and I still wanted the Santa experience, she would wrap up toiletries and put them in our stockings.  Deodorant, soap, razors – anything to fill the stocking with things we would use.  My father used to get her some appliance or other for xmas and I vowed this would never happen to me.  Christmas should be special, not a trip to Rite Aid. Kids -- I don’t care how old or incontinent I am, put the adult diapers in my closet when you visit, do not wrap them up and put them under the tree.  I beg of you.  Keep a little mystery and magic in the holiday; don’t remind me of my ailing physicality during the Yuletide.  

Third: I also love that she ponders the disappearance of my grandmother’s previous pairs of presumably used incontinent panties on a regular basis.  And to add insult to injury, then says s**t happens!  Was this a subconscious pun?  Maybe my mom should have been a stand up comic, she really is quite funny.

Finally, the fact that she assumes that I too, might want to send my grandmother the panties and provides me with very specific instructions on how to find them.  As if opening one package of incontinent panties on xmas wasn’t enough, my grandmother needs two packages?   I mean, what do you say when you open a gift like that?   

My grandmother is also one of the most frugal people I know, but I think even she would prefer the gift of a dry derriere to be something she experiences on a regular basis with some semblance of modesty, and not a special holiday treat for all to see!    

Happy Holidays and good luck finding the perfect gift for everyone in your family!