The DSW DJ

My sister and I were talking a while ago about something that occurs to me today: persistence. We were talking about it because she wants to be an actress, and is trying to pursue this on a few fronts in a crowded and talent-packed place like New York City. And we were talking about actors that had to struggle for a long time, and work shit jobs and almost give up and then break through. And you know who came up? Peter Dinklage.

Who some of you may only know as Tyrion Lannister, while others only know that he's the midget (or little person, my bad) in Game of Thrones. And people know the movies he's shown up in and the success he's had now, but probably don't know that he had to struggle and work a data processing job for years, and then decide if he was going to quit the job to pursue acting seriously the whole time and be broke until it pulled through. But he did it. And he's one of the easier actors in Hollywood to recognize, both from his talent, his distinct roles, and his diminutive stature.

My point in bringing it up to my sister was just that it could have been someone else that broke through in his first big role in "The Station Agent" or who appeared in "Elf", "Find Me Guilty", "Death At A Funeral", another "Death At A Funeral" or a bunch of other roles. There were like 30 other little people that didn't get the parts, and had to keep struggling. Everything the dude had to do to get by allowed him to progress, but we've never even heard about all these others that could have had it worse or been more talented, all of whom probably hate Dinklage's guts for taking all the good little jobs.

Here's a link to the video project my sister recently posted, if you're interested.

My point is just that you have to take advantage of whatever opportunity you have, and basically not worry one bit how it looks while you're going through the process of getting where you want to get to. It's not something anyone wants to hear, especially while you're going through the rough, ugly part of this particular process. But going through ugliness or unpleasantness, or even randomness, tends to bring us to opportunities we didn't plan on hoping for, and that can lead us to discover things about ourselves that we may not have realized otherwise.

It can, of course, also break us and ruin the opportunities we thought we would have, and leave us clawing through the remaining opportunities. And when that happens, we have to push through with whatever we have left to work with. And that is easier said than done basically every time. It is tough to stay positive before, during, and after the fall, except to acknowledge that what you're dealing with 1. probably won't kill you, 2. hasn't killed you yet, or 3. didn't actually kill you even though maybe it still will slowly without you realizing it. And I know this might not sound overly positive, even though I kind of do mean it in a positive way.

Okay, let's try to explain this a different way.

A while back, I got dragged to shopping at the Designer Shoe Warehouse with my wife, who was at the time my fiancee. I'm fairly sure it was in 2016, the year before we were to be married, and I was all about doing things for her and spending time with her but still very much not a fan of shoe shopping. Come to think of it, I've been in the stage of hating shoe shopping since before I met her. I think I was born there, and I have no plans of leaving anytime soon. But there I was, on a football Sunday afternoon, stalking my fantasy teams while wandering up and down the wide aisles, aimlessly and apathetically while Tara was in her zone trying to find options to match several of her outfits and all this other stuff I really couldn't bring myself to focus on.

I remember being a bit mad at myself for allowing her to bring me out of the house at this particular time, regardless of how much I love her. I remember quite specifically that the Packers were playing, and it was a good game, whoever they were playing, and here I was, trying to give as little pushback to whatever my wife-to-be said so we could get out of there and back before at least the 4th quarter. I also remember being mad at others in the store with me, both male and female, that were wearing Packers gear. I mean, what kind of shit is that? You'll go out and buy the Clinton-Dix jersey and then not sit and watch the only game of the week that the guy wearing that shirt appears in? What kind of lame poser punk-ass mother-...see, I need to stop for a second, it's still fresh in my mind. Gotta just bring it back calm and remind myself that this is how much I must love my wife, to be discussing the colors of heels and cross trainers on any given Sunday.

There was another reason this day stuck out to me. Don't ask me why, but there was a DJ working at the shoe store on a Sunday afternoon. No crowd dancing, no hype man, no one singing or rapping or playing alone. Just a dude with two turntables set up about 20 feet in front of the entrance, with a little mini light show going along with his beats. Probably the lamest possible setup for a performance of any kind (I understand if you want to debate that DJing is ACTUALLY a performance, but that's not the point here). I mean, the light show was a sign that this guy might have had promise, a sad reminder of how out of place this set up was, and completely useless with the overhead lights all at once. Encouraging, dismaying, and curious all in one fell swoop.

Here's the thing, I was half paying attention to what he was spinning, and I must say, this dude was actually setting up a good vibe, all things considered. I found myself nodding back and forth to some of the tunes, even mouthing out some of the words, which meant I knew lyrics to whatever he was putting down. So regardless of not really enjoying shoe shopping, not wanting to miss watching a football game and not wanting to be a punk to my future wife, for several moments I found something to enjoy at the Designer Shoe Warehouse on this chilly afternoon.

At one point, he played the Cha-cha slide, and I lost some respect for him. But that means I had respect for him to be lost. He was DJing at the god damn DSW during the Packers game, and he still made his way up the ranks in my book. And it reinforced a valuable lesson for me: You better make the most of every opportunity that comes your way. I had to tip my hat to him as we walked out, because not everyone can take a job like that seriously and still thrive. Because he could have showed up drunk, or messed up on mollies and been just a shitshow. He could have panned to his demographic and played overly emotional pop songs to further emphasize feminine vibes where it was clearly already the main focus of everyone in the building. Hell, he could have played stuff just to mess with everyone there, like orchestral opera or Himalayan monk chanting, or playing popular records backwards and pretending it sounded normal. But he didn't. He earned that check and grooved his ass off and damnit if I didn't get a bit inspired from it.

My point in all of this is that this DJ almost certainly had other shit he'd rather be doing. I really hope so, anyway. The DJ that turns down other gigs to play records at a shoe store on a Sunday afternoon, he's not thinking too far down the road, is he? But the dude, he showed up, and did what he does, and he converted a skeptical bystander, me, which means he can probably do this kind of thing in a better environment. And don't get me wrong, this guy may have gone home that night and smoked a ton of meth because this was his last night of sanity before a breaking bad moment. But maybe, years later, he will look back at that same afternoon as one of the reasons he grinded through a relatively less successful part of his career like a god damn champ.

And truth be told, I'm now a bit let down when I get dragged shoe shopping and there's not a DJ now. Payless needs to step their damn game up.

Bubye now.