Rhythm and Gravy

Jason, an old friend from Pittsburgh, got married in York, PA, last weekend, and flew me out to deejay his wedding reception. I’m not one to pass up a free trip to see old friends, so I hopped a plane to Pittsburgh on Friday and drove across PA with good friends Lisa and Rick. It took a whole day of flying and driving, so we barely had time to check in at the hotel, have four Yuenglings (sweet, sweet nectar of America’s Oldest Brewery), iron my DMC*, sleep for four hours, and set up the sound system at the reception hall before the wedding.

The wedding was short, sweet, and very Methodist. It worked — when it was over, the beautiful couple was much more married than before.

Then, as it turns out, I was charged with not only deejaying swing music for a five-hour reception, but emceeing as well. Also, it turns out that I’m extremely insecure about my microphone voice. So there I was, trying to hit “play” while announcing a wedding party and trying to get the phonetics to line up proper. I struggled through it, dances were had, speeches were made, glasses were ding-dinged, and that which had been given by various mamas was shook. The reception was over by 4pm, the bride and groom off to do married couple stuff, and we headed back to Pittsburgh. Rick is a tenor and baritone saxophone playing side man for several bands (including touring with the great, late, great Maynard Ferguson), and so is used to driving his ass all over for various gigs, which allowed me a blessed couple of hours of sleep, crammed into the backseat of a Honda Civic, drooling on my duffel bag.

For those not keeping track, at this point my lower back felt like somebody had implanted a joy buzzer soaked in distilled capsaicin between L5 and S1. But Lisa and Rick dropped me off at Nick and Kate’s place, and Nick and Kate fed me good scotch, took me to the Brillo Box, surrounded me with old friends, and Matt, Gil, Loring, Caroline, Clark, Mark, Jean Marie, and Tamar fed me East End beers and caught me up on their goings-on, and I was reminded that damned if I don’t knows me some awesome people.

Slept like a champ, and caught up with Jenny’s Dave and Dave’s Jenny over breakfast and flew home while Eli and Plax baby-faced their way to a Super Bowl title. Today, a quick 1,000 milligrams of the blue pill erased all memory of back pain, leaving nothing but a pretty sweet weekend trip behind.

* Dead Man’s Clothing, a.k.a. my suit from the thrift store.