You know those how-to-dress articles where the fashionistas tell the regular ladies to wear heels with ankle length skirts to avoid looking squatty? I’m not immune to these things. So, when I got ready to party at Los Globos last night, I grabbed an ankle length gray skirt that I have probably had since the ’90 and a pair of spiky-heeled, pointy toed boots that I bought right around the time the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

I hadn’t worn the shoes in years. In fact, I just came across them while cleaning out my closet last week. They looked like they were in good shape. They were not. A seam in the pleather ripped when I changed into them in the parking lot at Los Globos. However, I didn’t not realize this– despite having Instagrammed a photo of said shoes– until I was inside the club. We were out on the patio. I looked down and realized that both shoes had ripped apart at the seams surrounding my ankle. There was still shoe there, but it wasn’t holding my feet place the way you expect boots to do.

I couldn’t give a crap about the shoes. They were old and cheap. I suppose it was bound to happen. But, did epic ankle support fail have to happen on the night where I intended to dance for hours? Oh, gods of the dance floor, sometimes you are unjustly cruel.
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Tomorrow is Underground. I won’t be spinning, but Larry G., Diana M. and BipJeffington are. It’s going to be all about the New York bands. You know what that means, right? Interpol. Yes, I’m aware that there are plenty of other bands from New York as well, but, really, you should see how fast people run to the dance floor for Interpol at Underground.

Anyhow, if you’re on Facebook, you should RSVP so that you can get in for free before 10 p.m. and $5 thereafter. Underground is at the Grand Star in Chinatown, across Broadway from the Gold Line stop, and it’s 21+.

DJ Mag just opened the polls for its annual Top 100 DJ list. I might vote, but I get annoyed with any kind of poll that requires me to be logged into Facebook. Can’t I vote in private?

Regardless, I have a lot of opinions about DJs, mostly because I’m a fan of them more than anything else. When I saw that the poll was out and #Top100DJs was trending on Twitter, I wondered what makes a DJ awesome.
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#ThingstoNeverAskaDJ has been trending on Twitter all day in L.A. today. That makes me happy because a lot of people don’t have a good grasp of club etiquette. What can you say? A lot of people don’t know that you’re supposed to read the story before you fire off angry comments either.

I can’t explain the idiosyncrasies of humanity, but I can tell you what annoys DJs. Certainly, many non-DJs on Twitter can too. It’s all too appropriate that nearly all of the tweets I saw had to do with requests. Asking a DJ to play your jam is a weird thing. Some people don’t take requests. Others do, but there is a certain level of selectivity in what they will play. Also, how you ask for a request is as important as the song itself. The moral of #ThingstoNeverAskaDJ is don’t be a jerk.

I’ve spent a lot of time working in clubs, mostly as a DJ, sometimes as a promoter. I’ve played at parties that hit capacity by 10:30 p.m. and spun at clubs where there were, maybe, 20 people in attendance. Clubs are tricky business. Even when a party is a running success, it’s not predictable. You’ll have nights where everyone shows up early and leaves by 1 a.m., nights where no one arrives before 1 a.m. There are times when all your friends flake on you and people you barely know are dropping your name at the door to try to avoid the cover charge. There will be parties where the crowd will dance to anything. Those are always the best. There are other nights, though, where people only want to dance to songs that came out before they were born. Then there are nights when no one wants to hear anything more than five years old.

Any club that’s a success takes a lot of work. Even the failures take some serious effort. Whether you’re a DJ or a promoter, you know that you spend most of your time promoting. You never attend an event without at least a small handful of flyers on you. There are probably more in your car. When you’re record shopping, you leave stacks with your friends at the store. You tweet and blog and update your Facebook page. You do this knowing full well that hardly anyone is paying attention to you, but you have to give it a shot. You do this on top of things like booking talent, finding a venue, creating the aesthetic of the event and practicing your technique.
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