Entry One Hundred Sixty-Seven.
Saturday, 2013.06.08, 7:28 AM CST.
A long-overdue post about DJ Robbo and my foolish pride.
Current Mood:  Nostalgic (gasp!) but very open to the future.
Current Scent:  The faintest remnants of Lolita Lempicka au Masculin by Lolita Lempicka.

Well, It's been a while.  I've actually been working on this post, off and on, for a long time.  I know it's overdue, in more ways than one.  Hopefully, you'll understand what I mean momentarily.

First off, I want to give a great big THANK YOU to everyone who showed up at my performances at Throwback Thursdays and 80s Prom back in April.  I'll elabourate on those performances and post my setlists at a later time, but it meant a lot to see so many people there and I'm sorry it took so long to post my gratitude here.

I need to clarify something before we go on.  Some of you might wonder why I would be working with DJ Robbo, since you may have heard through Tulsa's social circles that I "don't like" him.

Well, it was ridiculous of me not to like the guy, and my opinion has changed over the last couple of years.  If you don't read any of the rest of this fairly lengthy post, understand this:  I WAS WRONG, AND I'M SORRY.  I'VE MADE MY PEACE WITH ROBBO.  He's a decent guy as far as I'm concerned, and while I have already apologized to him in private a while back, I feel that I should post an an explanation to clarify things.

I know it might be hard to believe... but despite what you might have heard, I am not completely flawless.  This might shock you.  Perhaps I should have advised you to sit down before you read that.

I like to think that I'm usually a really good person.  In all sincerity, though, just like everyone else, I make mistakes, and like a lot of people in the entertainment industry, I can sometimes be a bit prideful and occasionally even petty.  I really try not to be, but I goof up from time to time.

Robbo, for those of you who may not know, is a massively popular DJ and promoter in Tulsa.  He's been in the business for an awfully long time, and he's been very successful.

I'll try to keep things fairly simple here:  Many years ago, a friend of mine told me that he had a bad experience after working with Robbo.  Of course, in my mind, since this was coming from a friend and I didn't "know" Robbo, I figured that meant Robbo was probably a bad person.  As I went through the years, I unfairly tended to believe any bad things I heard about him and more or less dismissed most of the good things.

Throw in a decent amount of simple jealousy - after all, I'd been in the business for a long time too, and I was nowhere near as famous or successful as "this Robbo guy" - and, well, I started disliking him without him ever doing anything bad to me.  It was stupid - very stupid - and for years, it got worse and worse.  While in the company of friends, I voiced a few opinions about Robbo that weren't too flattering.  I made it clear that I didn't like him.  I was kind of a dick about it.

In most cases, if I dislike someone, I've got a legitimately good reason for it.  (I can name two or three other Tulsa-area DJs that qualify, right off the bat.)  However, in this case, I had no personal reason to dislike Robbo, besides petty, personal envy. 

Again, this was without him doing anything bad to me personally.  In fact - get this - when we'd had the fleeting opportunities in passing to interact, he'd actually been pretty nice to me.

I'm not usually this much of a jerk.  Really.  I promise.

Within the last year or two, a couple of mutual friends explained to me, quite clearly, that Robbo really was a nice guy, and I genuinely started feeling ashamed about how I had felt.  I realized that I'd probably been wrong about the guy.  Then, more recently, brought together by a different mutual friend's Facebook post about the Depeche Mode single "Heaven," Robbo and I recently had the opportunity to chat.  He was supernice to me.

Not only was he supernice to me, but he invited me to perform at 80s Prom.  I apologized for the things I'd said in the past and I told him that I didn't think it would be right for me to DJ at 80s Prom because, frankly, I didn't deserve to.  Robbo persuaded me to hop on board.

I'm glad that I accepted the invitiation.  I performed at 80s Prom, and I am happy to report that Robbo was great.  He and his wife, Lynn K, were extremely kind, and I was proud to be a part of the event.

I started writing this post pretty much immediately afterward, but I kept going back over it and revising it.  Then, a month or so back, Robbo invited me to be a part of "That 90s Party."  This time, I accepted without hesitation.  (I'll post more about that very soon.)

I'm a pretty opinionated guy sometimes, and I can be pretty stubborn... but, occasionally, I'm just plain wrong.  This time around, I'm pretty happy that that was the case.

If you've read this entire thing, I appreciate it.  :)  Thanks for your time; more soon!

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