I have eaten the cuisine of the dogs and I will not be extorted

I was going to respond to this here email from my friend ”Not Mad” Max by dropping the text from that weird monologue David Letterman did after somebody tried to extort him for sleeping with his employees, but with “eating dog food” subbed in for the things Letterman was admitting to, but I realized most people probably don’t remember that extremely weird moment in time when a famous TV personality used the space where he’d normally be telling corny jokes about current events to talk about cheating on his partner with people who worked for him, and his audience laughed the whole time because they didn’t know what was going on and thought it might be a tortured bit, because why in the world would you address your transgressions and extortion case in that venue, at the top of your talk show where you help celebrities promote their projects? And then after the commercial break, Letterman was just like “Okay, here’s Woody Harrelson, who didn’t know any of this was going to happen and who is going to come on stage looking dumbfounded, let’s talk to him for seven minutes about his police corruption drama Rampart. Maybe he has a funny anecdote about a recent mix-up at the airport.”

This picture brought back some pleasant memories. This was 2011 or 2012 and Max and I were on an outing with WVAU, the college radio station we worked at. I believe we had gone to a record fair, and then we went to Shake Shack, where we entered an “I‘ll do it if you do it” dare to eat some of their frosted dog treats. They were not bad, just bland. I think I was worried they’d taste like meat. After lunch, while waiting for the bus, we all sang Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” into my phone’s SoundHound app, and we did such a good job that it thought it was hearing the actual song.

The “we all” there was most likely between 4 and 5 people. We had more than 100 DJs and you’d schedule something so people could meet each other and hang out, and the same 5 people who were already friends would be the only ones to show. And people have work, don’t want to spend money, need to study, have other friends, are tired, find me repulsive, etc. It isn’t wrong of the other 95 people to skip the record fair. You sure appreciate the 5 who show, though.

I can very easily get down on myself for my inability to get anybody to read this stuff. Like the other 95 DJs, I don’t begrudge anybody who doesn’t want to. I sure appreciate those who do, though. Thank you. It means more than you know.