eFelony.com

I generally don’t take pleasures in the downfall of people. Things the celebrate the worst aspects of Americans, and worse, humans in general, usually is reason for me to run in the other direction (or at least change the channel… I’m looking at you Bravo! TV). Jon Plant has introduced me to one of my guilty pleasures.

This would be Look Who’s Been Busted. This is a monthly newspaper (and I apologize to anyone who writes for an actual newspaper) that publishes photos of people who’ve been arrested in Marion County and the surrounding areas.

Mugshots are fun.

Okay, so these are people obviously not in the prime moments of their lives but for the most of them, looking at what they’ve been arrested for, they had it coming. If you see anyone’s picture and the words “BATTERY/STRANGULATION/FALSE IMPRISONMENT” below it, fuck that guy, he’s a scumbag and I don’t mind paying one dollar to laugh at his ass.

More than likely I probably dated the person he strangled because that’s the kind of guys women have left me for. Completely serious.

My favorite is a guy who’s in for “SHOOT/OR THROW DEADLY MISSILE.” I have no idea what that means but I envision two neighbors having a feud and finally when one refuses to stop his loud Memorial Day barbeque that goes too far into the night the other takes all the South Of The Border fireworks he’s purchased for Independence Day and fashions a hellacious rocket with several empty Sierra Mist bottles filled with gasoline strapped to the sides and spray paints “Memorialize This, Asshole!” on the makeshift m-eighties that fill the warhead. This all goes very Wile E Coyote pretty quickly and this jerk ends up in the pokey.

There is the slight anticipation of flipping the pages waiting to see someone you know. Twice this has happened to me elsewhere and both times of the Marion County Child Molester website when I recognized one of our vendors at the bank and a few years later some guy who worked in the office next to mine. In both situations I asked around was told it was weird circumstances which made them seem stupid but not deviants but then again… what did I expect them to say?

She told me she was into creepy old guys in sweatpants who drive windowless vans with a DVD of the Hannah Montana movie on constant loop… and who am I to argue?

My brother will buy the same newspaper and I find if you show this to men inevitably one of us will come across a woman and make the comment, “She’s kinda cute,” which quickly evolves into a game I like to call Inmate Tap That where you find women who, if you saw them in the wild at let’s say, the mall or the Applebees, and you were unattached, you’d probably take her home… or at least to your car. Keep in mind you don’t know what she’s been arrested for and she probably has cleaned herself up a little wiping the crack-induced saliva crust from her dry lip and maybe a little makeup to hide the black eye given to her when she didn’t give Pretty Tony Playa all his money because she skimmed a little for bay formula and other incidentals (like penicillin… Pretty Tony Playa has a horrible health plan).

I find Citrus County has much more attractive criminals than Marion County.

I wish they would put these people’s ages on there. I’d like to know how many of these people are my age or twenty years older still doing dumb shit. It’s hard to tell since almost no one takes a good mugshot. While few and far between, I find it odd the amount of people who smile in mugshots.

Generally they look like stereotypical criminals or seventies porn stars instead of Disney sitcom and movie stars.

For some reason the smilers tend to be the ones arrested for sexual assault so I am just going to chalk that up to batshit crazy. They should also distribute this in high schools. Maybe put their mugshots next to their yearbook photos so the kids will know what a very small series of bad decisions can lead to.

And if I can diverge for a moment. I know no one anticipates their child becoming a criminal but everything is possible and you probably shouldn’t give your kids overly pompous names just to avoid the irony. Nothing funnier than a cocaine possessing prostitute on violation of parole arrested for battery against the elderly named Princess.

I also have a hard time forgetting people have families, the same way I can’t think of girls in strip clubs and not think, “Hey, that’s someone daughter or mom!” This is probably more benefit of empathy than a problem (although some people in politics would argue empathy is a problem). The same way when I watch Cops I wonder how the hell did this happen to this guy? At some point he was a kid going to elementary school and thirty years later he’s habitually arrested for violation of parole and domestic battery. It only makes me the pressure of being a good parent all the more important or twenty years from now someone will be paying a dollar to laugh at my kid.

And just so you know they’re no better than you…

Critical Mass

Natalie has had three hairstyles since I’ve known her.

Twists, which I was quickly corrected are not little braids.  All the women I grew up with were Asian so I get a pass on this.  The Twist looks simple but it’s a six hour ordeal that happens every two or three weeks.  On occasion, Natalie will attempt this on a weeknight after work.  This never works out right and sometime around midnight she falls asleep with exhaustion and wakes at five the next morning to finish lest she arrive at work with half a head twisted and the other half as…

The Fro.  This is my favorite.  It’s exactly what it sounds like, a big Cleopatra Jones And The Casino Of Gold afro.

Afros should only be worn by black people (much like blue contacts lenses and LL Bean should only be worn by white people).  White people with afros confuse the hell out of me.  The same goes with white people and dreadlocks.  This may also be Natalie’s favorite hairstyle but since she’s a professional woman and fears the judgment that may be levied against her, she seldom wears this style outside of vacations, weekends or if she fell asleep the night she intended to re-twist her hair (see previous paragraph).

The irony of an attorney fearing judgment is not lost on me.

The last and current look is the Straight Hair.  If it has an actual name, I don’t know what it is and am going to refer to it as “The Straight Hair.”  This was done for the wedding.  It offers more options than the previous two lending to the concept of women growing their hair before their wedding so they can “wear it up.”  I always questioned this practice and why they just didn’t cut it.  Wearing your hair up is something you do when you have long hair and need to get it out of the way for a situation like cleaning the baseboards, chasing children or spelunking but when you’re the lady about town you want to let those locks flow.  Spending months growing your hair out only sweep it up at your wedding and then cut it afterwards escapes me.

I questioned whether I would like that the hair Natalie had in our wedding photos would be hair I may likely never see again.  If I liked it, then I wanted more of it.  If I hated it, enjoy your wedding photos for the rest of your life.

I worked with a woman who had very pretty naturally blonde long hair and complained about it.  Complained about maintaining it.  Complained about the heat.  Complained it was uncomfortable.  I asked why she didn’t cute it and she said, “If you had hair like this, would you cut it?”  I didn’t tell her but the answer was, “Yes.”  Once of the three hundred and nine differences between men and women is that men do things for comfort, women do them to impress other women.  I have never gotten a haircut, taken a picture of it with my cell phone and sent it to my brother.

The Straight Hair look was always temporary and I was warned of this.  Like most things, I really didn’t have much of a say in this.  Every few weeks Natalie gets her hair “done” and she’s gone for several hours and returns cute and happy.

So Natalie came downstairs and on the news a woman was being interviewed and she made a comment she liked her hair.  I agreed.  She then said something along the lines of how much she disliked her current hair.

I have to interject something here.  I like Natalie’s hair.  I have for the six months she’s worn it like this.  This last time she had it cut I thought the woman took a little too much off.  Just enough to make me not like it as much.  I didn’t say anything.  Neither of us had…

…until now.

“I don’t like it much, either.”  The words came out of my mouth and I had actually examined each one before I said it and still felt the need soften the blow.  “I liked the other cuts.  This one just seems too short in the back.”

Quiet.

Natalie got up and walked upstairs and said, “It’s nice to know you hate my hair.”

Hate?  Did I say “Hate?”

I quickly rewind my Mental Tivo.  Bloop bloop (this is the sound Mental Tivo makes).  I don’t see the word “hate.”

“Natalie?  Nat?”  Nothing.  I get up to follow apologizing all the way.  “I’m sorry.  I love you.”  I repeat this several times like she didn’t understand it the first six times.  “I thought you wanted me to be honest.”

Early in our relationship, Natalie made meat loaf and asked if I liked it and I said, “Yes.”  She then asked if I didn’t like it would I tell her and I said, “No.”  I have always been cautious of other people’s feelings (although often unsuccessfully).  Never having been in a relationship that lasted more than six months I didn’t understand the long-term ramifications of this which would be a lifetime of bad meat loaf.

I know a woman who’s grandmother makes Buckeyes, which for those not in the know, is peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate.  I know you’re thinking, “Nothing wrong there.”  She and her entire ungrateful family hates these delicious treats and every Christmas the grandmother makes several Tupperware containers full of hundreds of these which die a very slow death in this family’s freezer unless my brother or I have our way with them.  This is because thirty years ago someone told this woman they love these Buckeyes (or rather didn’t have the heart to tell her they didn’t).

But this wasn’t the case with the meat loaf.  I liked the meat loaf and reminded her of the story and was quickly told she didn’t care about the meat loaf.  She cares about her hair… that and I have the eating habits of a goat so discretion with food is not my strong suit.

What I thought was I had a pass as soon as she said she didn’t like it and I could then agree.  This isn’t the case.  I’m reminded of the line “Nobody picks on my little brother but me.”  I left her alone having done all I could and a few minutes later she came down, accepted a hug, apologized and explained the rules to me.  If she comes home with a Cyndi Lauper waffle etched into the side of her head and a length dyed Seguin Blue I should just smile and tell her she’s pretty.

Note to self: stop making fun of her dress that reminds you of a men’s dress shirt or a 1960s nurses uniform.  You’re probably making her cry… you big jerk.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Natalie works a lot.  Saving the world takes effort.  I’d like to think this blog is my contribution to making the world a better place but who are we kidding… it’s mostly a way to keep myself (and you) distracted and make your jobs more tolerable.

Natalie, on the other hand, works constantly.  It isn’t unusual for her to work her full day and come home and sit in a phone conference for another two hours a few nights during the week.  I have already been told she has work to do Sunday.  During this time I don’t bother her except on the rare occasion I enter the room to get something (usually a cable or a comic book) keeping my noise and time in her space to a minimum.

The other day she said she needs a Stacy* at home for her organizing.  Stacy is her legal secretary at work that keeps her pointed in the right direction.  She’s the Odd Job to Natalie’s Blofeld.  The one who knows where all the bodies are buried.

Since we can’t afford another Stacy and I suggested she needs a Vanessa.

Vanessa is my friend Jon’s seventeen year old niece.

She’s a senior in high school and applying for colleges so I figure she is going to need stuff on a resume.  Maybe some kind of course credit.  I picture it working something like this:

We have two bedrooms one of which has become a defacto Guest Room/Junk Room/Natalie’s Office.  We set out a small TV table and one of our ottomans at the top of the staircase with a desk lamp.  We get Vanessa a little pant suit (I envision very similar if not exactly to what Natalie would be wearing the same day).  Vanessa sits outside the door at the top of the staircase with a Bluetooth and a laptop making phone calls, arranging meetings and getting her coffee from the Starbucks across from the Walmart.  She would do a little filing, laugh at Natalie’s jokes and take her breaks in my kitchen where she would read Natalie’s old Domino and Architecture Digest magazines uninterrupted for an hour.  Maybe the two of them would bond over shoes at the Payless and Natalie would gives her advice about being a woman in America.  At times I would try to see my wife and it would go something like this:

JIM goes to open the door at the top of the staircase.

VANESSA: I’m sorry.  You can’t go in there.

JIM: I want to see Natalie.

VANESSA: She’s not in right now.

JIM: Yes she is.  I’ve been downstairs for two hours playing Gears Of War 2 and she hasn’t left.  I saw you go downstairs and get two cups of coffee and you’re drinking one.

VANESSA: Do you have an appointment?

JIM: She’s my wife.  I don’t need an appointment.

VANESSA: Sir, don’t make me call security.

JIM: This is my house.  Natalie screams when the toilet overflows.  I am the security here.

VANESSA: Sir, there is no need for that tone.  You can make an appointment or you can leave a message.

JIM: But… I just wanted to know what she wanted for dinner.

VANESSA: Make an appointment or you can leave a message.

JIM: Fine.  I’ll leave a message.

VANESSA: Very well.  Do you have a business card or a number she can reach you at?

This ends with a frustrated Jim going back to his Xbox 360 and Vanessa goes back to updating her Facebook page, Twittering, text messaging, writing a blog to dodge real work or whatever it is kids do these days.  At the end of the semester Natalie would write her a letter of recommendation good at pretty much anywhere accept at FoxNews (where Natalie is considered an Enemy Of The State).

I realize that my brother and I were essentially personal assistants to my dad when we were taught to mow the lawn at age ten or shovel snow from the driveway.  Sure, these are chores and there are parents that don’t make to their kids do chores but my father would call those kids lazy and their parents suckers.  He also said allowance without chores is called welfare.  We once complained we didn’t have a remote control television and he told us he had two remotes.  When I asked to see them he made me get up and change the channel so he could watch Magnum PI.

I watch my brother and nephew and they have a very father/son/partner relationship.  Very much a Batman/Robin thing happening there.  Years ago I asked my brother does he ever think about how old our father is (who was 49 when I was born) and he told me he doesn’t even think of dad as dad but more like the guy that lives with us.  When I watch Alex and Bobby together that’s what they seem like.  Like they’re hanging out.

Except every now and again Bobby gets some cheap labor out of Alex.

*Stacy is not the real name of Natalie’s secretary but when I told her I was writing this blog she said I should get her permission and quite frankly I am too lazy to do that.  Vanessa, however, can handle the fame and fortune that comes with getting mentioned in my blog.

Flick In A Box

I have become very fond of the RedBox.

For those of you not in the know, the RedBox is a movie vending machine who’s only real flaw is I have to go to Walmart to use it (although I have seen them in Kangaroos and McDonalds).  You use a touchscreen and pick from a selection of mostly new releases, swipe your debit card and it slides a movie out at you… bring it back tomorrow by 9:00p.  You can go to their website and reserve a movie and when you get there they charge you $1.07 and you go home with a copy of a movie where Academy Award nominee Liam Neeson punches people in the throat for one hundred and twenty minutes because his daughter doesn’t listen.

I love the RedBox.

I know what you’re thinking.

Hey dumbass, what’s the difference between the RedBox and the Self-Checkout Lane you were bitching about last week?

Firstly, stop calling me dumbass.  Secondly, when I ask for a copy of The Third Man at the RedBox and it laughs at me and points out we’re in the breezeway of the Walmart and says:

Keep that arty Ingmar Kurosawa bullshit to yourself.  Here’s a copy of Transporter 3 and a warm cup of shut the hell up.  (Mumbling)…  The Third Man… you think you’re better than me?

It’s exactly what it pretends to be: a vending machine for movies.  If the red light is on, Grape Crush is out, choose another drink.  The Self-Checkout actually makes me work.  I have to get my own crap, scan my own crap and bag my own crap.  At the RedBox I stand there and make a selection and it just gives it to me.

At a Blockbuster I was going to have to show up anyway.  Going to have to pick out my own movie anyway and stand in a line and because I never carry cash, swipe my card anyway.  What the RedBox doesn’t have is ten thousand titles to choose from or my having to hover around the counter waiting for someone to dropoff a copy of Hotel For Dogs.

It eliminates the blue-shirted counter monkey.

Part of my pleasure of the RedBox is when it comes to movies, the less interaction I have, the better.  I once watched a Blockbuster monkey when asked where The Rocky Horror Picture Show was asked had she checked under ‘R’ in Horror.  There are three things wrong with that comment.  A) If you don’t know what something is your dumbass should know enough to look it up so you don’t B) look like the asshole who thinks Rocky Horror is a horror movie and C) doesn’t give the customer the simple courtesy to assume she knows movies, like books, music, telephone, dictionary and encyclopedia entries (as well as everything else in a first world nation) are alphabetized.

Then again, I worked in Spec’s Music and Movies where a guy couldn’t find something and when I went to the wall and pulled it out in under ten seconds he was amazed and asked me how I did it.  I told him that wall was alphabetized.  He was flabbergasted.  Apparently he thought we just jammed stuff wherever there was space and crossed our fingers we’d find it later.  Two minutes later he complained he couldn’t find Ted Nugent and I explained it’s filed by last name.  Two minutes after that he couldn’t find Judas Priest and I explained that’s a band name, not a person.

I then took my break, got some TCBY and wept for the future.

My biggest problem with the RedBox is that people who don’t know what they are doing use it.  The descriptions are fairly Spartan and I find myself standing behind people who have to read the description of every movie to see if Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus in 3D (starring Lorenzo Lamas and Debbie Gibson) is worth the dollar or should they just go home and watch the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer on PBS.

For the love of Kubrick it has a giant shark attacking a giant octopus and eighties pop icon/hat magnate Debbie Gibson… what more information do you need?

And so you all know that isn’t just a ridiculous title I fabricated and something I photoshopped…

Can’t fake that shit.  How quickly we go from Broadway to Sci-Fi Channel at 3:00a on a Tuesday.

I have a friend that owns an adult video store (which isn’t as cool/creepy as you’d think).  He tells me stories of people that will spend an hour trying to pick out a movie and ask him for suggestions.  Really?  Are you that particular about your porn?  You understand the girl on the box cover won’t look nearly that hot in the movie which is to be expected if that was what you did for forty hours a week.  I look busted carrying groceries in from the car. I guess if it was my hard-earned money I’d wanted the hottest moms/daughters money could buy.  My friend spends most of his time at work watching old episodes of HBO series like Oz and Sopranos and every now and again something he’s rented with Keanu Reeves.  Inevitably someone will ask what he’s watching because it looks good (because it’s an actual movie that had writers and actors (or Keanu Reeves)).  They’ll ask if they can rent that and he’ll kindly tell them yes and give them directions to Blockbuster.

Back to the blue-shirted counter monkeys.

When I worked in video stores my opinion was valued. This isn’t because my opinion was better than anyone else’s but because I asked the right questions.  When someone asked me for an action movie suggestion I would ask what they liked.  If they told me Terminator 2 or Predator I had to try a little.  If they told me they liked Steven Segal movies I would just hand them anything with Michael Dudikoff on the cover.  I wasn’t picking movies out for them as much as filtering movies based on information they gave me.  I often gave them movies I’d never seen.  I once made the mistake of giving a woman Die Hard and essentially ruining her for everything I suggested after.

Who gives a crap about the opinion of the guy behind the counter.  I always like to find that shelf where the employees pick their favorite movies and see what I am dealing with (I often notice most of their picks are seldom more than ten years old).  I worked with a girl that thought the Oscar for Best Picture should go to whatever movie made the most money since that was the movie people liked the most.

And 2000 Academy Award for Best Picture goes to Mission: Impossible II.

For all you know that guy behind the counter is a complete psycho and you’re four dollars and two hours of your life shouldn’t be trusted to him.

I found Meryl Steep’s performance in Doubt to be common and Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance predictable.  Amy Adams seems to be the Hollywood’s It Girl and her acting skills are limited to perky and perkier.  Overall I found it lacked the nuance and tension of Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift.

I love my mom but she’ll tell you she didn’t like The Shawshank Redemption because there wasn’t enough action.

Do Androids Dream Of Retail Sheep?

I found myself in Walmart on a Saturday night with container of barbecued chicken chunks and a DVD of Smokey And The Bandit.  This is what I devolve into if left to my own devices when Natalie is out of town for a few days.  There are something close to three hundred checkout lanes at my Walmart which never utilizes more than six.  To add insult to injury, they have the double lanes.  You know the ones, where there is a cashier behind or on the other side another cashier… who’s never open.

I picture Robert Preston from The Music Man selling some CEO who never shops in a Walmart these new-fangled cashier stations.

For only a couple million dollars we can retrofit thousands of your stores with dual lanes so when the first three hundred lanes are filled… BAM! Another three hundred lanes!

Ready to go home and eat this chicken with my bare fingers and get knee deep into some 1977 Burton Leon Reynolds, I walk the lanes hoping someone in management opens another lane and instead come face-to-face with my retail nemesis:

The Self-Checkout Lane.

There are many reasons I hate the self-checkout lane.  First of all, it isn’t always open.  This makes no sense to me the same way I don’t understand why I can’t swipe my card and pump my own gas twenty-four hours a day.  Someone once told me it’s probably the liability on an unattended gas station to which I told them they were putting too much faith in twenty-two year old Teylor in the cashieraquarium who probably couldn’t do much during operating hours if I 1) set someone on fire or 2) set the gas station on fire.  How many people know where that kill switch is and even if I did, I think the gas station exploding around me combined with the simultaneous shitting of my own pants would give me reason to forget as I cowered, crying in a fetal position like a nine year old girl at R Kelly’s house.

The self-checkout lane is taking American jobs.  Not all of them.  Mary Beth in her blue vest and Bike Week 1997 t-shirt has to stand there behind her podium at the Wally World if one of can’t figure out what the hell we’re doing which is probably going to happen since I am not a cashier.

The first time I saw one of these contraptions was in a K-Mart when I couldn’t find a cashier and the customer service person pointed out the self-checkout which were the only lanes open.  I thought to myself why don’t you drag your red-vested ass down here and dispense some customer service and ring me out.

The second time I was in a Walmart buying a copy of Trainspotting and the machine beeped at me because it didn’t know I was thirty-four so it sends some sixteen year old cashier to verify this.  Again, if you’re already here, why don’t you ring me up?

I once stuck some apples on there only to find it complicates things more because no matter how smart 1) evolution or 2) the intelligent creator is, neither of them thought far enough in advance to make apples with a UPC code.

WALMART CASHIER: What kind of apples are these?

JIM: Red.

WALMART CASHIER: I mean what kind?  Granny Smith.  Macintosh.

JIM: Hell if I know.  I am just trying to eat more fruit.

WALMART CASHIER: Well I can’t ring them up–

JIM: You know what?  Here (hands her a box of candy).  Ring these Raisinettes up instead.  They got raisins in them.  I tried.

They’ve essentially taken a working process and to save themselves money, replaced experienced  cashiers with people who have no idea what they’re doing.  Namely, me.

I already have a job, thank you.

When I worked in banking I once heard of prototype branch that had a manager, one teller and one new account rep.  That’s it.  Everything else was kiosks with monitors and somewhere was a call center in Salina and you would belly up to this kiosk and someone would decline you a loan.  The teller windows were just ATM screens and one station for the one live person who worked there.

I am sure this was a problem in the mid-seventies when they did away with gas station attendants.  Some states still have them.  The only one I ever recall seeing was on a road trip to Pennsylvania in 1990 when my brother stopped his car and some dude snatched the pump before he got it and Bobby had that WTF look on his face before he realized the guy worked there.

Our mistake.  We didn’t realize it was still 1955 in Alabama.  I say that knowing full and well you can’t pump your own gas in New Jersey but I hear that’s mostly because its inhabitants lack opposable thumbs.*

I try to imagine the disdain on my face had this practice never ceased and British Petroleum charged me $4.00 for gasoline and still expected me to tip someone.

I hate eating at Melting Pot because if I go out to eat I don’t want to cook my own food.  I’m not a chef.  If there was a restaurant where you made your own macaroni and cheese, hot dogs or ghetto omelets (which would be, for the uninitiated, omelets filled with sliced processed cheese and diced hot dogs and onions… obviously my father grew up during the depression)… that I could probably handle.  But I don’t want to be responsible for cooking my own pork knowing food poisoning is a skewer and a cheap bottle of wine away.

Next they’ll have me washing my own dishes as “part of the experience.”

My friend Nita once went to Melting Pot and it took forever for their ingredients (I won’t call it food) to come out and it did the waitress apologized because the kitchen was backed up to which Nita responded, “With what, chopping vegetables and meat?”

Walmart is a enormoporation with a history (like many other corporations) for sticking it to their employees with their thirty-nine hour work weeks and zero advancement and here is a woman in her blue vest whose job is to show me how to do her job.  Think about that for a minute.  This would be like finding your spouse cheating on you and you bring that dude into the house and show them how everything works.

This is how she likes her coffee in the morning.  You have to giggle the handle on the toilet so it stops running.  In the shower she likes to stand under the water and every so often you want to smack her ass when she doesn’t see it coming… she likes it like that.

There used to be four cashiers here and now there is one.  How long before we all know what we’re doing and we don’t need her anymore?  How long before they replace her with a sentient android?

I watch the Will Smith movie I, Robot (or iRobot when you realize they all look like there were designed by Apple)…

…knowing when it takes place I would be the age of the grandmother character and I envy that she gets to live in a world with FedEx robot delivery men and robot dog walkers.  Sure, I watch enough Battlestar Galactica and Terminator to know the of the impending robot rebellion but somewhere in there is probably twenty or thirty years of complete service competence.  Robots who always have the correct answer when I need help when I get lost in the Galleria by Orange Julius.  Who don’t jack up my order at the Taco Bell.  Who will be at my house to fix my cable at 2:15p and not between noon and four because they are precise and never run into complications.

And more importantly, I won’t have to ring my own groceries and undercook my own chicken on Valentine’s Day.

And let me be the first to welcome or robot overlords.  All hail the mighty 01110101!  What is your bidding, masters?

*I am sorry to anyone I have offended who has an affinity for New Jersey.  You seem like very nice people but you’re just so damn easy to make fun of.  If it’s any consolation, I really like the movie Garden State.

Star Wars… Nothing But Star Wars

In honor of the tenth anniversary of Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace, here is my best Star Wars story. 

As you know by now, I’m a movie guy.  I have been as long as I can remember.  Very little sneaks past me.  Ninety-eight percent of all the books I own are either comic books or about film.  You can’t grow up a boy in America in the seventies and escape Star Wars.  I was probably the last generation that saw Star Wars in a theatre before home video (probably in a rerelease in the late seventies before Empire Strikes Back in 1980).  Rumors of a new trilogy had been around for decades and the last serious talk was after Jurassic Park when George Lucas finally felt special effects had reached a place where his vision could be realized.  When the film was officially announced, I made a decision.

I was going to into the new Star Wars cold.  I was going to create a media blackout around me.  I wouldn’t read anything.  I wouldn’t listen to anything.  I wanted this to be fresh and spoiler-free. 

For the following years I avoided everything.  Websites would print rumors, I’d never click the links.  Magazines would show up at my house and I would read them skipping anything I thought would even mention the word “Star Wars” and then promptly throw them away.  I let everyone know this.  On occasion at the comic store someone would fuck with me.

You know Obi Wan is going to die.

At which point I would freak out and realize he does die… in Star Wars – Episode IV… that was released in 1977.

What I knew was George Lucas was writing and directing.  Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Samuel L Jackson and Ewan MacGregor were in it and MacGregor was playing Obi Wan Kenobi.  Passing through a grocery store I saw a Time magazine cover with Darth Maul, his name and the words “The Face Of Evil.”

One more surprise lost.

People would call me and specifically tell me not to look at the tracks on the soundtrack because it gave away a key sequence (and why the hell would you name a track that and release it two weeks before the movie).  I gave myself one treat and the day the teaser trailer was released I downloaded it on my dialup connection over forty-five minutes and watched it in a window slightly larger than a postage stamp.  The image was so small the final image of Darth Maul I thought was Samuel Jackson.  That’s what streaming video looked like in 1997.

The week the film is released I take vacation.  The entire week.  Tuesday morning I go to the theatre at 7:00a to buy my tickets which go on sale at 2:00p.  I am the third in line.  I bide my time until the line wraps around the building.  The theatre, being the douches they are, bring drinks out to the people who are in sun around the building even though I have been there since 7:00a.

I’m not one for lines.  I am not one to defend those people who put tents out three months before a movie to be the first in line to see it.  Really you’re just the first there.  If you were the first in the world or the first country maybe I could get behind that.  Hell, you probably aren’t going to be the first in that city.  More than likely there is another idiot four blocks away doing the same thing.

But one day… I could do that.  People do it for sporting events and concerts.  We’re allotted ten tickets to avoid scalping.  I’m given instructions of who I am buying tickets for.  Ironically, I won’t be seeing the midnight show because I want to see this with my brother and he’d never go to a public midnight show of Star Wars with a bunch of grown men dressed as Jedi lightsaber dueling in the aisles when his military training tells him he should kill them all before they breed and weaken America even more.

Don’t worry, Bobby… they won’t be breeding.

I’ll be seeing the movie at 10:00a the day after it opens.  I saw Star Wars with my brother and not only seeing the new one with him is a bonding return to my childhood, it also ensures I’ll be able to talk about it without him saying, “Hey hey hey, I haven’t seen that yet,” while I wait the six months it takes him to see it.

I buy my tickets and head to the comic store where I have to deliver Ray his ticket.  With months of hesitation I finally give into it and I am excited.  It’s obvious.  At the comic store is Ken, a middle-aged teacher and regular.

KEN:  What have you got there?

RAY:  Jimmy’s been in line since 7:00a to get our tickets to the Phantom Menace.

KEN:  What for?  Everybody knows how it ends.

JIM:  What are you talking about?  Nobody knows how it ends.

KEN:  Sure they do.  Qui Gon Jin dies in the end.

JIM:  How do you know that?

I say thinking he’s just read another unsubstantiated rumor on the internet.

KEN:  Because I read the novelization that came out last week.

I stop moving.  I am pretty sure my blood stopped flowing for a second.  Then this happened.

JIM:  (Having completely lost it)  What… the… fuck?  Did you just not hear him say I have been in a line since 7:00a?  Did you just not hear me say I have no idea how ends?  Why the FUCK would you tell someone how a movie that people have been waiting sixteen FUCKING years for, the most anticipated movie in history, would end ten hours before its release.  You stupid, stupid fucking prick.  Give me my books, Ray.  I got to get the fuck out of here.

As Ray hands me my books Ken gathers his things and exits the store before me.

To this day, that (The Star Wars Rant) is one of the many things I have done that has been passed down to newcomers as legend.

I saw the movie the next morning with my brother and Heather Parker.  After the Lucasfilm logo and opening theme, pretty much everything was a disappointment.  I still have it the benefit of the doubt for three years until Attack Of The Clones sealed its fate and I’ve written the prequels off as great examples of being happy with what you have.  To this day I’ll never forget leaving the theatre and the usher asking me what I thought I and I just shrugged my shoulders with indifference.

Star Wars has never been perfect but when you’re a kid there is something magical there that doesn’t come along often and it’s a lost cause for adults trying to recapture that.

And finally, if you’re one of the ones who defends Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace, click here and I’ll fix that.

Kiss The Bride (The Wedding, Part 4: The Final Chapter)

April 18, 2009.

I can hear the doors open and my view is obstructed by our standing guests.  It feels like forever before Natalie makes the corner amidst the barrage of camera flashes to take her father’s arm.

Somewhere I hear Nicole Kidman and Ewan MacGregor singing to each other.

She reaches the altar and Stephanie Seguin does her thing.  A few weeks prior I showed Natalie “When Harry Met Sally…” for the first time.  When it was over I was watching the trailer for “The Princess Bride” and was stuck with the idea of having Stephanie open her dialogue with the opening from the dream wedding sequence.  Natalie shot down Stephanie performing it with a Peter Cook lisp but agreed on all the rest.  I didn’t know Stephanie would have to practice this umpteen times to be able to do it without giggling.

Marriage is what brings us together today…

I’m told later by a half-dozen men they chuckled and were quickly elbowed by their wives.

Deatra Gilmore performs a song.  Natalie’s uncle reads a scripture.  I have been specifically told my vows have to come after Natalie’s for fear she’ll cry and be unable to read what she has worked very hard over the past few months on.  As she reads her vows I can only think of how wonderful she is.

I learned a lesson a long time ago that if you break the tension with something funny it sets the tone and when something does go wrong, and something always will, it’s taken a lot less seriously.

I start my vows with the words, “I love ice cream.”  I get an immediate laugh.  I tell a story which is what I do and by the time I’m done, I bring it back to the wedding, my love for Natalie and the whole thing makes sense.

I end with me dropping my vows on the floor mostly because I didn’t know what to do with them.  I gets me another laugh.  I’ll take it.

We’re asked for the rings.  I am very cautious of the flowered pedestal behind me since I noticed it in rehearsal and fear I may knock it over.  My brothers hands me the ring, the same one that I bought without Natalie’s knowledge the day after Thanksgiving and my brother just removed the price tag from thirty minutes earlier.  The ring Natalie has never seen.  The ring she’s been asking about for the better part of three months and asking who was my consultant when I picked it out (and that would be no one).  I tell her it was the best ring the guy with the Confederate belt buckles and knives at the flea market had.

I extend my hand and keep the ring covered by my fingers.  I have to stop messing with her.

When I slide the ring on she doesn’t look disappointed and that’s always good.

We end the ceremony with the traditional kiss and a jumping of the broom.  Butch Pattie and several others would comment later how neat he thought it was since he’d never seen it done at a wedding before.

We exit to Barry White’s “You’re My First, My Last, My Everything,” which can’t ever be wrong.  We’re ushered back to a spot outside and as the guests file out we greet every one of them.  My mother, a woman who shies from attention does her best to smile and not be nervous.  It helps that everyone finds her adorable.  The guests are corralled into a area where cocktails and hor’derves are served.  I’ll spend most of my hour greeting people I have only heard of that’ll I’ll never get a mimosa or mini-spinach quesadilla.

An hour later the guests will be seated and Danielle will be lining us up for our entrance.  Five minutes before the ceremony I mention to DJ Stephen everyone is walking into “You’re My Best Friend” by Queen.  Puzzled, he tells me he didn’t get that change.  He has “With A Little Help From My Friends.”  Everybody walks in to “With A Little Help From My Friends.”  He disappears for a few minutes and reappears with a thumbs up.  It’s Queen… what DJ doesn’t have Queen?

We walk in to the theme from Superman.  Later I’ll tell people I don’t even remember hearing it.  I dance with Natalie and my mother.  She’ll dance with her father and it’ll be the only time in the evening she’ll cry which is an accomplishment for a girl who cries at the end of Steel Magnolias even though she knows Julia Roberts’ days are numbered.

My brother will improvise his entire toast as will her father.  Both of them are excellent and very sentimental.  Her Maid of Honor, Brittany, has her toast handwritten on a piece of paper I’ll later find out was the reverse side of Natalie’s daily itinerary and she wrote in the room before she came down.

I have told people not to expect too much from your wedding.  You’re trying to match a fantasy and good luck with that.  Something will go wrong so you should just accept it.  We had a Danielle so we were lucky.  In the many conversations Natalie and I have had she tells me nothing went wrong.  Even the things that didn’t go according to plan, didn’t go wrong.

As the night wound down with David Gates’ “The Goodbye Girl,” and the dance floor filled with couples, with our friends and family, I realized if I am lucky, this will still be me years from now.

As I thank people for coming I spy two pieces of cake on our table.  I want a piece for my room and now if I show up with cake and none for Natalie I’ll spend my first night as a married man on a couch in the suite.  I take a plate and turn it upside down on the other plate and as I am prying one piece of cake onto the other, Mike, the hotel’s liaison approaches me.

Jim.  You don’t have to do that.  We have cake for you in your suite and a bottle of champagne.  When you pop the cork, you’re going to want to tilt the bottle.  That brand is known to spray.

I thank him like’s my own private Alfred Pennyworth.

As we’re leaving, our guests thank us and I turn down several offers for nightcaps.  I haven’t spent two minutes alone with Natalie in four days and it’s killing me.  I just want to get out of this tuxedo and be alone with her.  I find her somewhere in the lobby and we rendezvous, find our things and head for our room.  We spend an hour opening envelopes and reading cards and immediately fall fast asleep knowing there are several after-parties happening that we’ll hear about in the morning.

I start my first morning as a married man at  6:00a as we both wake up and eat wedding cake in bed.  Stephanie Seguin told me weeks ago your wedding day will be the best day of your life and for a person who doesn’t like weddings… I’ll admit she was right.

Pomp And Circumstance (The Wedding, Part 3)

April 18, 2009.

I have been in several weddings.  Always a groomsman, never a groom.  Not intentionally, I picked a different tuxedo than my groomsmen wore.  My tuxedo (which is actually a dinner jacket) is inspired by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) which I saw when I was twelve and decided the first time I get to choose a tuxedo, that’s the one I am getting.  I was too young to know Ford wore it because Humphrey Bogart wore it in Casablanca.

Everybody else got to wear black.

As we walked through the hallways, past the vacationers, I found people would step aside.  I don’t mean step to their side of the hallway.  I mean they stepped to the side, stopped and watched us pass.  I noticed standing in the lobby people on the higher floors looking down watching us.  Watching me.

And I think I may understand what the big deal is about the dress.

A wedding dress is one, if not the most, defining articles of clothing a woman will ever wear.  If all goes according to plan, she’ll wear it once, in a room full of people with no one looking as elegant as she does.  She will be the center of that room.

When people see a bunch of men in black tuxes and I am the guy wearing white, it no mystery I’m the one getting married.

And for a few minutes, I was the center of the lobby.  And it was nice.

Then in the corner of my eye I could see the bridesmaids enter and I knew Natalie wasn’t far behind and soon the lobby would belong to her.  Danielle motioned me forward and all the people around her disappeared.  I walked to a hallway and there she was, standing there waiting for me.  Somebody could have set fire to me and it would have taken me ten minutes to notice.  We spoke briefly.  I’d like to pretend what we said was something private and for ourselves like something Bill Murray would whisper to Scarlett Johansson in Tokyo…

…but honestly, I can’t remember what we said to each other.  At some point we were escorted outside where we’d have our pictures taken over the next hour.  From outside, I could see curtains pull back and hotel guests watching us.  Occasionally, it’d be our guests.

We’re escorted to a small room inside the hotel lobby adjacent to where the ceremony will be held.  The room consists of Natalie and myself, the six members of the wedding party, three parents, two grandparents, my nephew and Cindy Chang who, even though it’s been explained to me, am not sure of what function she performed but I can tell you she does take great pictures.  We all sat around that table for what seemed like an hour attempting not to get wrinkled.  All of us except Natalie who stood in a corner turning down offers of drinks and snacks.  Much like myself she did this because she knew what it took to get into that dress and wasn’t about to come out of it.

I picture Natalie hoisted in the air in a series of harnesses while three bridesmaids and her mother strap her into that dress much like Tony Stark gets dressed.

Danielle pops her head in and calls me out.  She introduces me to Mike, the hotel’s event liaison.  He tells me the table count for one of the tables is three more than we instructed them.  He can bring three more chairs but they won’t have seat covers.  I tell him I don’t care.  Just make it happen.  In the background Kendra is going over the guest list and finds three no-shows and sends her boyfriend/bodyguard Sean (former bouncer, all six-six three bills of him) to tell Mike.  He does.

Crisis averted.

Danielle calls for Tony who three minutes later is calling for me.  The DJ dropped his laptop at the club last night and hadn’t booted it since.  It isn’t booting.  Tony asks can he borrow my laptop if he can’t get it working.  I have Yuri give him my room key.  A minute later Tony tells me his laptop booted and is fine.

Crisis averted.

I ask him to make sure the DJ got the email we sent him two days ago with the audio our singer, Deatra Gilmore, will be performing at the ceremony.  He says, “No.”  I send Tony to my room for my thumb drive with the songs on it.

Crisis averted.

Later I would be told the audio rental place didn’t give the DJ the proper wires and he sent his assistant to Radio Shack so he could hook up the speakers.

All the while Natalie was standing in a corner trying not to sweat while the rest of us huddled around a table like Twelve Angry Men.

Danielle pops her head in.  “We’re ready.”

We’re escorted out into an empty lobby that was full of people ten minutes ago.  We line up and the door opens.  I don’t know how celebrities do it but I detest having my picture taken, something I have worked on for the past few years.  Someone told me a few weeks ago in the plethora of advice I’d gotten about weddings and marriage that you’ll have your picture taken more on this day than you have in the past decade.  This would be true.

As I escort my mother down the aisle I concentrate on moving slow, don’t trip, don’t leave your mom behind like I left Danielle’s sister behind at her wedding.  She’s nervous and she’s clinging to me.  Halfway down the aisle I can hear the music that has been playing us in, Hans Zimmer’s “You’re So Cool” (the opening theme from the film True Romance (1994)).  At the altar we light a candle for my deceased father and take our places.  Everyone enters, her father circles around and is the last one in as the doors close.

One of the key images in my head is her father staring at his shoes waiting for that door to open and his daughter, the woman who in twenty minutes will be my wife, to make her entrance.

Natalie’s mother stands and the plan is everyone is supposed to follow her lead and stand after her, a point that was brought up in rehearsal and someone Natalie believed would happen spontaneously.  I disagreed because I believe people need to be pushed in a direction.  Natalie believed because she also thinks people will burst into spontaneous choreographed dancing which is what watching too many Audrey Hepburn movies will get you.

I motion for the confused crowd to stand and they do and the door opens.

Enter Natalie.

Sharp Dressed Man (The Wedding, Part 2)

April 18, 2009.

I wake up the morning of my wedding next to a man.  This is no surprise and in speaking to former grooms I find this fairly common.  You go somewhere for your wedding and are in a hotel room you split with your groomsman, brother, friends, family, whatever.

I will say that Tony Lipari doesn’t snore, is generous with the blankets and his Catholic nature keeps him on his side of the bed.

It’s 6:00a.  I lie there a few minutes and accept that I’m up.  I quietly fumble through my bags and find my Playstation Portable and go to the bathroom where I play Pac-Man and Galaga for about twenty minutes and decide I need to find something to do.  My brother calls me from down the hall and obviously his family is up and moving.  They tell me to meet them in their room and we can get breakfast.

Natalie picked the hotel we’re getting married in because it’s close to the airport (which provides a shuttle for guests) and within walking distance of several restaurants including the Denny’s I find myself at.

I ordered the Moon Over My Hammy sandwich partly because I wanted something light but mostly because every time I said the name it made me chuckle.  I decided I wanted to eat as little as possible since I have heard stories, one in particular from Jon and Amy, of people who were so busy at their wedding they didn’t have a chance to eat.  In Jon and Amy’s story it actually ends with them changing clothes and going to Bennigan’s for ribs the night of their wedding.

“This is your last breakfast as a bachelor,” Danielle tells me.  She’ll repeat this phrase several times during the day changing the event.

“This is your last check you’ll ever pay as a bachelor.”

“This is the last time you’ll kiss your mother a bachelor.”

“This is the last underage hooker you’ll have to choke for laughing at you as a bachelor.”

That last one I made up.

Bobby forgot t-shirts so we make a decision to find a Target.  I promise my photographer Mike I would pick up another battery for the camera.  Tony also needs a few things.  Danielle specifically tells us all to be back at the hotel by noon.  We have pictures at 2:00p.  Danny Gimenez, husband of Officiant Stephanie Seguin, stops me at the front desk.

He stands shoulders sloping in and slightly awkward and although he’s a grown man, he’s very boyish.  His unkempt facial hair doesn’t hide this.  If I didn’t know better I would think he’s around to ask me to prom.  “Jim.  I don’t know if you know this or not somebody always forgets something at a wedding.  I’m the guy who fixes that.  If you need anything, someone to run an errand, do something at the service, I’m that guy.”

I thank him and tell him it’s all under control but I appreciate the offer and we’re off to find a Target.  Three stops later we have camera batteries, t-shirts and a spiffy fedora for my nephew who refuses to wear it until my brother, Tony and myself plead with him.

It’s cool.  It’s so frickin’ cool.

Danielle calls looking for us.  This is the first of many calls I am going to get from Danielle for questions I don’t have the answer to.  Her call is immediately followed by Natalie asking if we have any pictures that can go in the matted frames we’re having people sign instead of registers.  I tell her I’ll figure it out.

I call Danny Gimenez.  He’s in a car with Stephanie going to visit her brother.  I tell her I am going to email her a picture and I need her to get to a Walgreens, a Walmart, a Kinkos, whatever and print two out.

A moment about that.  I like backups.  I like backup plans.  I don’t like surprises.  I told Natalie on the phone before I came I took all the critical documents, guest lists, songs, table cards and put them on the thumb drive that’s kept on my keychain.  She assures me I won’t need any of this.  This is what I’ll be thinking of as I email our engagement photos to Danny.

We’re back at the hotel at five minutes after noon.  Tony and I get to the room to find Yuri and his wife Deanna still asleep.

Judas Priest… what the hell?

I open the blinds like Eileen Brennan…

…and wake them both with two words:

Suit up.

Only three straight men can get ready for a wedding in a room with one bathroom in less than an hour.

We check each other to make sure we look okay.  We take turns putting on each other’s cufflinks and adjusting vests.  At some point when I am not looking, Yuri becomes my body man.

(In a Venezuelan accent): Nobody wears a jacket.  I want all the jackets in this carrier.  We’ll put them on when we get there.  Jimmy, what have you got in your pockets?  Give me your keys, your driver’s license and your credit cards, you won’t need them.  Tony, you bring the car around.  I’ll get his bag.  Let’s go.

We walk through the lobby of the hotel, men in tuxedos.  I’m given a key to a suite for us to wait in.  We spread out jackets on the bed and I send Yuri and Tony down to the lobby business center to print out my vows which I have forgotten.

Ten minutes later they return and tell me, “Natalie is coming down.  The photographer told us we couldn’t be in the lobby… or in the hallways.  Natalie said so.”  The three of us sit in the room staring at each other.  Periodically my phone would alert me with tentative updates.

The flowers have arrived.

The cake has arrived.

The DJ has arrived.

Yuri offers to find me some bottled water and attempts to close the blinds so we don’t see Natalie who’s having pictures taken in the area outside our window.  It seems like I get a phone call from Danielle every three minutes.  Kendra, another one of my friends who’s volunteered to be her assistant, comes to the room to get the camera batteries and photos and take them downstairs.  We keep waiting.

My phone rings.  “Be ready in ten minutes.”

Jackets on.

Last Call (The Wedding, Part 1)

April 17, 2009.

I hadn’t been sleeping well.  I had been sleepy at work.  In bed by ten thirty and awake at five.  My procrastination had gotten the best of me and the things I was responsible for at my own wedding I lackadaisically pushed into the final two weeks where even Natalie had faith I would have them done… she just wondered how.

She had left for Orlando three days earlier.  Part of the plan is that she would be there having taken everything for the wedding with her, including The Book, an overstuffed green three-ring binder that had accompanied her pretty much everywhere for the past fourteen months.  On occasion, she would have me take a picture of something with my cell phone so she wouldn’t forget and then notes would be scribbled in The Book.  If the end times came before Saturday at 6:00p future civilizations could recover The Book and know, in theory, exactly what our wedding would have been like.  The things I needed to bring were stacked by the front door so I wouldn’t forget.  One day to go and I am still not a hundred percent sure how we’re going to do the music for the cocktail reception.  I am 97% sure but ninety-seven will tell you it’s not one hundred.

I wake up and I start cleaning the house.  Not In-Law clean but just clean enough to satisfy my OCD and in the event I die in a fiery crash on I-4, my mother won’t be saddled with the burden that her son is not only dead, but also a disgusting swine.  I do laundry.  I take out the trash.  I vacuum.  I tidy.  At 9:00a I drive to the barber shop next to the Blockbuster and pay for my first haircut in twenty years.  I want to get this right.  I can’t have a spot I missed on the back of my head as I am prone to do when I am in a hurry.  At the barbershop I am the first one there and a polite tattooed/ponytailed man in his forties trims me up.  I haven’t cut my hair or shaved in three weeks (which gives me the facial hair of an unkempt fifteen year old rather than a man leaving his thirties).  I ask if he does shaves and he explains almost no one does that anymore.

Thank you, Gilette and your five-bladed disposable blades.

I go home and take a shower and realize I am running late.  I call Natalie to tell her I am leaving.  Is there anything else she needs me to bring being that she’s planned this wedding with an accuracy and foresight that George Armstrong Custer wished he had.  Rings, cake toppers, marriage license, ceremonial candle, picture frames, wedding favors, wedding party gifts, pens, cameras, memory cards, checklists.  She tells me, “no,” and I tell her I am on my way.

I get four blocks from the house and realize I left my tuxedo draped over the couch in the living room… where I wouldn’t forget it.

Twenty minutes later I am at my brother Bobby’s house.  We all pile into my truck.  I throw luggage on top of various audio equipment from favors I called in.  The plan is I ride back with Natalie after the honeymoon.  My family drives my truck home with whatever gifts people have generously bestowed onto us.  I assure my brother none of this equipment is coming back with us so the truck will be mostly empty except for their things.

We drive to Orlando.  Two weeks later I will receive a picture of my car running through two toll stations and a request from the Florida Department of Transportation for $1.50.

We get to the hotel.  Twenty minutes later Tony and Yuri, my groomsmen, show up.  We meet my family in the hallway to go to the rehearsal.  Bobby has jeans on.  Alex is in shorts.  I ask if that is what he’s wearing and he asks why and I tell him Natalie gave me specific instructions not to wear jeans or shorts to the rehearsal.

“Well, she didn’t tell me,” Bobby replies.

Rehearsals are good things.  We run it through once, hammer out the kinks.  People throw out their ideas and we do it again.  As Stephanie, The Officiant, reads her lines, Natalie and I make faces at each other trying to make the other one laugh.  This goes on for an hour and then we go to TGIFridays and I pay for the largest dinner tab I have ever gotten in my life.  Natalie reminds me not to tip on a party of twenty because they already did that.  Making sure I properly tip is one of her many functions.  Not that I am cheap (which I am) but my mother was a waitress so I reward good service… it’s just that I hate math and tend to just make up numbers.

There is an hour break and then we round up in the lobby for a field trip to Colonial Lanes, a bowling alley with a… wait for it… karaoke bar in it!  Again, I am running slightly late.  My phone is ringing and Natalie is wanting to know where I am as I walk in the door behind Heidi and Crystal.  In the corner of my eye I can see my friend Jessica and her husband Mike from Indiana between the hugs Heidi gives out for any reason she can find.  I walk forty feet through the lobby which is a Who’s Who of people from various points in my life and tomorrow there will only be more.  Jessica was literally the first person I met when I moved to Florida from Pennsylvania when I was fifteen.  I didn’t go to her wedding because 1) I was twenty and couldn’t afford a ticket and 2) she was getting married and I wouldn’t really see her and 3) seriously, on your wedding day, your mother could not show and you’d be lucky to notice and 4) she lives in Indiana which isn’t like “hey, wedding in Florida!” and mostly 5) wedding aren’t my thing.

We start pushing people into cars with total strangers to get everyone there.  I ride with Natalie’s sister Adrienne and her friends Debbie and Andrew from Seattle, who, when together, form some kind of giggle vortex between the two of them.  Some people are referred to as the “life of a party.”  Well that party is five foot mobile radius around Debbie, which often envelopes her husband Andrew.

The bar in Colonial Lanes is a very dark, very loud bar.  My first impression is, “Where the hell has Natalie brought us?”  It takes a few minutes for people to get acclimated and soon they start commandeering tables and as soon as we figure how the bar works, I see people returning with iced buckets of beer.  My mother is there and the sight of my mother in a bar is just weird.  Just football bat weird.  Every now and again someone leaves the table and some random dude saddles up next to her probably just for a place to sit but just to be safe, I wander back over and make sure someone is with her.  I see Natalie’s aunt and grandparents arrive.  From what I have been told her grandparents like to be part of the action.  Her father, Bruce, told them this was for the young people and they were better off not going but they insisted.

In the twenty minutes it would take her father to get home after dropping them off, he’d come home to a phone call requesting an immediate extraction.

The night is fairly blurry to me.  I spent most of the time with Jessica and Mike because the point of the night was to spend time with those who came distances you know you won’t get face time with tomorrow.  On occasion I make sure nobody is putting stuff in my mom’s drinks.  I stand in the back of a room while Natalie sings her drunken rendition of Salt N Pepa’s “Whatta Man” to me and witness Yuri Scala’s even-drunker performance of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” (now with Venezuelan accent!)  I learned that an entire crowd of people who have never met will butcher the hell out of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Crystal, when unleashed in a bar, will make friends with everybody and have take pictures with people she doesn’t know (including a girl wearing two very long pigtails and goggles on her head and oddly resembled Jar Jar Binks).

Crystal really should be the goodwill ambassador to something.  We need more foreign dignitaries discussing world events over a game of Presidents and Assholes.

At eleven forty five I round up my family and we head out.  I am tired but this is mostly because Natalie really doesn’t want me to see her on our wedding day before she is wearing her dress.  I oblige.  Two weeks later she tells me she’s surprised we left so early and never remembers the conversation.

We get back to the hotel and Tony, while scouting for food, finds Danielle in the lobby looking for a nightcap while my brother is working out in the gym (slightly after midnight).  Yuri comments my brother did more exercising in the thirty seconds we watched him that he’ll do this year.  We meet them by the pool and talk until a little after 2:00a when we turn in.

After all… I am getting married in the morning.