At its inception in 1997, i was not allowed to watch South Park. Being the Good Kid that i was, i never even tried. My mom said don't do it, so i didn't do it. That was the way of things in my youth. Yeah, i was weird.
One night, i was over at my friend Aaron's house with a couple other friends. We spent much of the afternoon with the PlayStation (the original PlayStation - get off my lawn you damn kids), but then it rolled around time for South Park to come on and everybody wanted to watch that. I was vehemently opposed at first, of course because my mom said no, but somehow they talked me into at least sitting down to watch the opening credits (i'm not kidding - they just wanted me to watch the credits with them). I was a little upset, i kept babbling incoherently about how my mom was going to find out that i had watched South Park and then my life was going to be over, or something.
As soon as the credits started, the doorbell rang. It was my mom. I'm not kidding, this totally happened. She had stopped by because i was on some medication at the time and i had forgotten to bring it with me. So, while everybody else was downstairs, asking each other, "Seriously? SERIOUSLY?," i casually asked my mom, "Hey, everybody else wants to watch South Park. Would it be ok if i watched it with them?" After a frustrated groan, she acceded to my request.
So, at the tender age of 13, having never seen an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head or The Simpsons or any such similar thing, watching Robert Smith of The Cure duke it out with Mecha-Streisand on Aaron's gigantic 32" TV pretty much changed my life.
Once South Park had become a fixture of my existence, little nuances of the show began to creep into my reality. I'm not sure who started this tradition - it was actually probably me - but we did this thing on our various Boy Scout camping expeditions where we would all suddenly emerge from our tents wearing just our boxers and run around for upwards of ten or fifteen minutes shouting "Beefcake! BEEFCAKE!!" I'm not sure why we thought this was a good idea but there were at least six of us that did this on a regular basis.
Well, one year at summer camp, 2000 i believe, we decided to escalate the beefcake situation. Summer camp is obviously a much larger situation than any of our other camping trips, because it is a week long and takes place at a facility which includes about ten other camp sites, each of which houses another troop from a completely different end of the state, or even from other states.
So Gay Eskimo, Zippo, Skippy-Bo Playdo, and i gathered together a Discman, some portable speakers, and a copy of The Bangles - Greatest Hits, stripped to our underoos and running shoes, and went out for a jog. We named this "Operation: Fugishi Yugi," which i am pretty sure is Japanese for "The Mysterious Play," due to the anime series. It may not mean that at all.
I guess some of the other troops didn't think that four teenage boys running around barely dressed blasting Walk Like An Egyptian on repeat at nearly midnight was as funny as our troop did.
Things were ok on our first lap around the campground. We got our expected response - a bunch of people looking up, asking themselves what the hell was wrong with kids these days. That was the kids asking themselves what the hell was wrong with kids these days. The adults were probably asking themselves if they were going to jail for bearing witness to this.
On the second lap, i think that the novelty had completely worn off of these people. And on the third lap, one of the other troops started to chase us.
After we'd gained some headway coming up near the front office of the campground, i turned off the music in hopes that our pursuers would lose track of us. However, without the music drawing us all together in the dark, we got separated. I sneaked up behind the archery range, which was very close to our troop's camp site, but the captain does not return home without his crew. The archery range was in a clearing, with a line of trees butted up against one side, which was opposite to the side where i was hiding. Our troop was nestled in just on the other side of those trees.
Not knowing where the rest of the guys were, i determined that the only way to rally them to my position was to turn the music back on and start running again. I booked it for our camp site. Well, it turned out that part of the opposition was waiting right inside the treeline. I was forced to turn back around and head into the dark forested area beside the administrative offices.
Gradually i picked up my cohorts as i ran. We made a reverse lap back around the way we'd originally came, and took the scenic route toward the secret back entrance to our site. We had the only site on the whole campground with two access points, but if you'd never camped at that site, you probably wouldn't know about the rear entrance. I was counting on this.
Somewhere near the Quartermaster, our few pursuers turned into a veritable horde. They became kind of like the mob in the old Frankenstein movies, and some were armed. Right as we were about to hit our secret entrance, somebody shoved a stick in my ass. I did not like it. Not at all.
Once the throng of irritated Boy Scouts had entered another camp site without permission (a huge violation of etiquette), things got a little out of hand. The ensuing riot took all of our adult Scoutmasters at least fifteen minutes to sort out and to remove all the intruders from our site. I don't know exactly how long, but i do know that i slipped into my tent and got all my clothes on well before the pandemonium stopped. I keep thinking that our fire cans came into play here, but i can't remember the exact circumstances - maybe they were getting thrown? For those who don't know, the fire cans are old coffee cans which are brightly painted and filled with water. You put two of them outside every tent, so that in the event of the tent catching on fire, you have something to fight it with. By the end of the week, there's a layer of dead bugs across the surface of the water thick enough that you often can't tell there's water in the can.
In the end, i don't think anything came of it. We weren't disciplined, i don't know if any of the other kids were but i suspect not. Hell, their adult leaders may not have ever found out that they were trespassing in our camp site. Nothing was ever mentioned at the campwide morning announcements. And for most, i think the incident passed into the recesses of their minds, never to be thought of again.
I think that pretty well put an end to the Beefcaking. Every now and then, at any sort of gathering, one of the four of us might mention that we should, "Commit Fugishi Yugi," as a joke i guess. Usually that would be Zippo. But it of course never happened again. Which is probably for the best.
2010/08/31
2010/08/29
Stupid People and The Pool
The Pool is not my story, but a friend who was present when this happened requested that i write it up. So i'm going to. I'm going to go over some stupid people that i've known first, though, to kind of set the stage for The Pool.
I've known Val for a long time...probably eight years at least. Back in high school, we used to hang out with some pretty stupid people. People like Val. Val is the reason that blondes are maligned with all those terrible jokes and stereotypes. All of them. Val's fault. Of course the breeding stock probably wasn't that great to begin with; after all, if her and her sister had been boys, their parents would have named them Wilbur and Orville. It makes me sad that i know this. I'd cite specific Val stories here but i think i've blocked most of them out.
I may have started with Val, primarily because she's the star of The Pool, but she was far from an isolated case back then. There was Britney Spears, not the real Britney Spears but somebody we called that. She would flirt with guys online and when they asked what she looked like, she'd tell them, "I look like Britney Spears, but with bigger tits!" This was not the case. Anyone who believed that probably had never been on the internet before.
Britney Spears dated a guy for a while called Thornton, who was by far the stupidest human being on the planet. They should've stayed together, because they were a perfect match. Thornton kept Barbie dolls in his shower and shit his pants occasionally. Probably the thing i remember best about Thornton was the time we went to Spencer's Gifts in the mall. Not the two of us alone, hell no, but a group of us that happened to include Thornton. He found some shot glasses with some kind of snarky sayings on them and got excited.
"Ohh man! Check these out! Someone should buy these for me for my twenty-oneth birthday!" he exclaimed.
"Your twenty-oneth birthday?" i questioned.
"Yeah! My twenty-oneth birthday is next week!"
He was soon distracted by a shelf full of bobblehead dolls. "Oh man check it out! It's Joey Ramone! What band was he in again?"
I can understand if you don't know who Joey Ramone is, but if you know the name, i think the answer to this question is pretty obvious. "Um...The Ramones..."
Val had the greatest longevity with the group out of all of these, for some reason. Eventually we grew up and got out of high school and Val found an attraction to men with damaged faces. She met this guy who'd recently had a chimney fall on his face, and they got married and, by the neglect of a benevolent god, procreated not once but twice.
Some time later, our brilliant couple invested in a swimming pool. They got one of those pools that came into vogue a couple years ago where you inflate the ring at the top, then start filling it and the water elevates the ring, which brings up the sides. The first instruction in the manual, something which should seem like common sense to most of us, is to put the pool on a flat, level surface. The first instruction. Well, they didn't even make it that far.
I don't know which of them set the deflated pool out on the side of a hill, but that happened. They inflated the ring, and they started to fill the pool. Everything was sort of working as directed, the ring was rising, and the flat pile of rubber on their hill was becoming a pool.
Cyndi, who was present to witness this travesty of human intellect, reports that once the pool was starting to get about halfway full, Val finally noticed that it was a little wonky. "Wonky" is Cyndi's word, not mine. Val and her chimney-faced husband then began a debate as to the exact circumstances which led to the pool's wonkiness.
Finally Val comes to a conclusion. "I know why it's lopsided!" she shouts. "It's because there's too much water on this side!"
She then proceeded to pull the hose out of the deeper, lower end, and move it to the end on the higher ground.
I've known Val for a long time...probably eight years at least. Back in high school, we used to hang out with some pretty stupid people. People like Val. Val is the reason that blondes are maligned with all those terrible jokes and stereotypes. All of them. Val's fault. Of course the breeding stock probably wasn't that great to begin with; after all, if her and her sister had been boys, their parents would have named them Wilbur and Orville. It makes me sad that i know this. I'd cite specific Val stories here but i think i've blocked most of them out.
I may have started with Val, primarily because she's the star of The Pool, but she was far from an isolated case back then. There was Britney Spears, not the real Britney Spears but somebody we called that. She would flirt with guys online and when they asked what she looked like, she'd tell them, "I look like Britney Spears, but with bigger tits!" This was not the case. Anyone who believed that probably had never been on the internet before.
Britney Spears dated a guy for a while called Thornton, who was by far the stupidest human being on the planet. They should've stayed together, because they were a perfect match. Thornton kept Barbie dolls in his shower and shit his pants occasionally. Probably the thing i remember best about Thornton was the time we went to Spencer's Gifts in the mall. Not the two of us alone, hell no, but a group of us that happened to include Thornton. He found some shot glasses with some kind of snarky sayings on them and got excited.
"Ohh man! Check these out! Someone should buy these for me for my twenty-oneth birthday!" he exclaimed.
"Your twenty-oneth birthday?" i questioned.
"Yeah! My twenty-oneth birthday is next week!"
He was soon distracted by a shelf full of bobblehead dolls. "Oh man check it out! It's Joey Ramone! What band was he in again?"
I can understand if you don't know who Joey Ramone is, but if you know the name, i think the answer to this question is pretty obvious. "Um...The Ramones..."
Val had the greatest longevity with the group out of all of these, for some reason. Eventually we grew up and got out of high school and Val found an attraction to men with damaged faces. She met this guy who'd recently had a chimney fall on his face, and they got married and, by the neglect of a benevolent god, procreated not once but twice.
Some time later, our brilliant couple invested in a swimming pool. They got one of those pools that came into vogue a couple years ago where you inflate the ring at the top, then start filling it and the water elevates the ring, which brings up the sides. The first instruction in the manual, something which should seem like common sense to most of us, is to put the pool on a flat, level surface. The first instruction. Well, they didn't even make it that far.
I don't know which of them set the deflated pool out on the side of a hill, but that happened. They inflated the ring, and they started to fill the pool. Everything was sort of working as directed, the ring was rising, and the flat pile of rubber on their hill was becoming a pool.
Cyndi, who was present to witness this travesty of human intellect, reports that once the pool was starting to get about halfway full, Val finally noticed that it was a little wonky. "Wonky" is Cyndi's word, not mine. Val and her chimney-faced husband then began a debate as to the exact circumstances which led to the pool's wonkiness.
Finally Val comes to a conclusion. "I know why it's lopsided!" she shouts. "It's because there's too much water on this side!"
She then proceeded to pull the hose out of the deeper, lower end, and move it to the end on the higher ground.
2010/08/27
Why a Toaster?
Thought i'd fire off another quick New Zealand post while i'm waiting for some files to back up before i can leave school for the night. I tell you what, i bitch about not getting enough sleep all the time but today when i say i hardly slept at all last night, i mean it, and it's almost midnight again. So this one might be a little less coherent than most.
On our way to Mount Nguaruhoe, better known as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies, we stopped in a quaint little town called National Park Village for gas. While we were filling up at the gas station, we decided that we were getting hungry, and it might be a good idea to have a meal before ascending a volcano. So while Amanda pumped the gas and Alyssa did...well, something or another, i ventured into the convenience store to get directions to a restaurant.
The two clerks were both busy when i entered, so i wandered around for a bit. It was a rather large convenience store, especially for a small town in the middle of nowhere, New Zealand. Probably it was the town's grocery store as well. Finally a register opened up, so i approached the clerk and made my inquiry.
"You need to talk to this guy," she said, pointing at the other clerk, whose register had freed up in the time it took me to ask my question. He was facing the other direction when i slid over in his direction, but he was an observant one.
He turned around, looked me right in the eye, and said, "Why a toaster?"
I was taken completely off guard and at first i was highly confused, like, what is this guy trying to say, but after thinking about it for a moment i realized that he'd spotted the fresh ink on the back of my left leg. Only a couple weeks before we left for New Zealand, the three of us as well as Amanda's mom had gone out and gotten tattoos. Mine was a toaster.
I laughed a little and explained the origins of the toaster. Though he didn't completely understand, he accepted it. Then he asked, "Where are you guys from?"
"Oh, Wisconsin, if you know where that is," i responded.
"OOOOHHHH, the BIG CHEESE," he said with much gusto.
"Ah, so you DO know about Wisconsin!"
"Yeah!" he confirmed enthusiastically. "A couple of summers ago, me and two of my buddies went up to Wisconsin, filled a boat with beer, and floated down the river for three days!"
I laughed out loud. "That's a very Wisconsin thing to do," i said.
He directed me to a decent restaurant nearby, where Alyssa and i got drunk, then we climbed a volcano, and i pushed her off.
On our way to Mount Nguaruhoe, better known as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies, we stopped in a quaint little town called National Park Village for gas. While we were filling up at the gas station, we decided that we were getting hungry, and it might be a good idea to have a meal before ascending a volcano. So while Amanda pumped the gas and Alyssa did...well, something or another, i ventured into the convenience store to get directions to a restaurant.
The two clerks were both busy when i entered, so i wandered around for a bit. It was a rather large convenience store, especially for a small town in the middle of nowhere, New Zealand. Probably it was the town's grocery store as well. Finally a register opened up, so i approached the clerk and made my inquiry.
"You need to talk to this guy," she said, pointing at the other clerk, whose register had freed up in the time it took me to ask my question. He was facing the other direction when i slid over in his direction, but he was an observant one.
He turned around, looked me right in the eye, and said, "Why a toaster?"
I was taken completely off guard and at first i was highly confused, like, what is this guy trying to say, but after thinking about it for a moment i realized that he'd spotted the fresh ink on the back of my left leg. Only a couple weeks before we left for New Zealand, the three of us as well as Amanda's mom had gone out and gotten tattoos. Mine was a toaster.
I laughed a little and explained the origins of the toaster. Though he didn't completely understand, he accepted it. Then he asked, "Where are you guys from?"
"Oh, Wisconsin, if you know where that is," i responded.
"OOOOHHHH, the BIG CHEESE," he said with much gusto.
"Ah, so you DO know about Wisconsin!"
"Yeah!" he confirmed enthusiastically. "A couple of summers ago, me and two of my buddies went up to Wisconsin, filled a boat with beer, and floated down the river for three days!"
I laughed out loud. "That's a very Wisconsin thing to do," i said.
He directed me to a decent restaurant nearby, where Alyssa and i got drunk, then we climbed a volcano, and i pushed her off.
2010/08/25
Donuts of Disaster
We were invited to a Mardi Gras party last year, which we of course wanted to attend but knew we'd be pretty strapped for time that particular day. It was requested that guests bring a Mardi Gras-themed food item to pass. After considering several recipes and narrowing it down based on what i had in the house, i settled on beignets, a type of French donut. I got the batter together easily enough, but there wasn't time to cook it. So, we grabbed a skillet and a bottle of cooking oil and headed for the party, where we'd finish the donuts on location.
Amanda cannot cook. Amanda has never been able to cook. Every now and then, i'll get this strange feeling that it's time to try and teach her to cook again, and we'll try and do something simple in the kitchen together. On this day, i'd had that inexplicable urge, and for lunch i had shown her how to do macaroni and cheese. Simple enough, right? I watched her as she stirred the noodles into the boiling water. She never stopped stirring. I watched her constantly scraping the bottom of the pot as she stirred. There was no way that anything was getting cooked unevenly in that pot. Well, when it came time to drain the noodles, the entire bottom of the pot had a layer of noodles burned to it. I didn't see it at the time, but this was obvious foreshadowing on the rest of the night.
So we arrive at the party much later than intended, fully intending to leave within two hours to make another scheduled engagement that night. Everybody else was already drunk. I immediately showed myself to the kitchen, apparently checking all of my knowledge of cooking at the door with my shoes. I started up the burner and filled the skillet with oil. This is where things go terribly, terribly wrong.
Remember how i had just shown Amanda how to cook macaroni, right up from the beginning where you boil the water? I had just taught her that water boils faster when you put the lid on it. So Amanda says, "why don't you put the lid on it so that the oil heats faster?"
I gazed quizzically at the skillet for a moment, thinking to myself, ok, there's a reason that i haven't already put the lid on this skillet. But what? Failing to come up for a reason for omitting that action, i went ahead and put the lid on the skillet full of heating oil. At this moment, i was dragged away to play Rock Band. Figuring that we had a couple minutes and Amanda can obviously watch the oil until it's ready, i said i'd do one song and then would have to tend to my donuts. It was Creep, by Radiohead.
About a minute into the song, Amanda came rushing out of the kitchen toward me. "It's on fire!" she shouted. This didn't register in my head at first. I glanced at her, and then turned my attention back to Rock Band. "IT'S ON FIRE!!" she repeated, and suddenly i sprang into action, throwing the guitar controller on the ground and sprinting the ten feet back to kitchen. Sure enough, the skillet was shooting flames probably three to four feet high. By the time i'd reached the kitchen, Ashley had moved the skillet onto the sink. I found out later that this was because she'd intended to pour water on it, but Amanda had fortunately stopped her. You don't pour water on a grease fire. It does not work and in fact makes the situation worse.
I was frantically looking about the kitchen, trying to remember what it is that you put on grease fires instead of water. Ashley shouted to me, "FLOUR!" and at that moment, that sounded right to me. There was a large bag of flour perched atop the refrigerator. How convenient.
So i grabbed the bag, reached in for a fistfull, and tossed it into the fire.
The answer is baking soda. You put baking soda on a grease fire. Not flour. Never flour.
Instead of putting the fire out, a gigantic fireball issued forth toward the ceiling. In light of my failure, my next plan was to get the burning pan out of the apartment as quickly as possible and set it down in the cold, wet snow on the sidewalk, where it could just burn and burn until we figured out what to do with it or until it ran out of fuel. I reached out and grabbed the skillet solidly by the handle.
I got that skillet all of two feet before the heat became too much for my hand. The skillet dropped to the floor, landing squarely between the kitchen and dining room, where the carpet and linoleum met. Grease splattered on my legs and at least one bystander.
Meanwhile, the building's fire alarms are going off, neighbors are coming into the smoke-filled hallway to see what's going on, and general pandemonium is ensuing in the apartment, where it has become almost impossible to breathe.
The reason the hallway was filled with smoke was because our host had run out to get the fire extinguisher. He grabbed the hammer attached to the case and swung to break the glass. Being as drunk as he was, he missed, and only smashed part of the bottom of the window. He took another swing at it, missing again and this time cutting his hand open on the sharp glass edges. Giving up on the hammer, he pulled the rest of the glass out with his hands and brought the fire extinguisher into the apartment.
That fire extinguisher changed hands at least three times, never once landing in the possession of the one person at the party trained in fire extinguisher use: me. It ended up with Gardener, who did not know what he was doing but was the first person willing to give it a go. He aimed the fire extinguisher at the top of the flames, which is not the way it works. This served only to splatter the grease farther into the kitchen, although somehow he eventually hit the base of the flames and got the fire put out.
With the crisis over, everybody who wasn't completely freaking out started to turn their thoughts to damage control. Our completely inebriated host was probably (and understandably so) the most panicked. He was standing in the middle of the living room shouting, "You don't understand! If that fire alarm goes off for more than two minutes the fire department and police are automatically notified! They're going to come in here and search my house and find all my pot and i'm going to go to jail! I'm going to jail! I'm going to jail!" and other such nonsense.
It was probably fifteen minutes before the alarms stopped going off. I don't remember exactly what happened from there but i do remember an old lady in the hallway coming out and asking what was going on. When somebody told her that the kitchen was on fire, she laughed and went back into her apartment.
We finally got everybody out of the apartment about an hour later. The host and one girl went to the emergency room for the glass cuts and the grease burns on the leg, respectively. Amanda and i made our way home, blowing off our other plans. It was at about this time that i realized the best course of action would have been for Amanda to have just put the lid back on the skillet. This would have cut off the fire's air supply and it would have smothered almost immediately. Then we could remove it from the heat and wait for the oil to cool down before trying to open the lid again. As it had happened, though, when Amanda came running through to inform me that the grease was on fire, she'd still had the lid in her hand and didn't drop it until she was outside. We found the lid half buried in the snow just before we left.
A week later, our own kitchen attacked Amanda just for walking into it. Pots and pans just randomly started falling out of the cupboards. She tends to avoid the kitchen these days.
Amanda cannot cook. Amanda has never been able to cook. Every now and then, i'll get this strange feeling that it's time to try and teach her to cook again, and we'll try and do something simple in the kitchen together. On this day, i'd had that inexplicable urge, and for lunch i had shown her how to do macaroni and cheese. Simple enough, right? I watched her as she stirred the noodles into the boiling water. She never stopped stirring. I watched her constantly scraping the bottom of the pot as she stirred. There was no way that anything was getting cooked unevenly in that pot. Well, when it came time to drain the noodles, the entire bottom of the pot had a layer of noodles burned to it. I didn't see it at the time, but this was obvious foreshadowing on the rest of the night.
So we arrive at the party much later than intended, fully intending to leave within two hours to make another scheduled engagement that night. Everybody else was already drunk. I immediately showed myself to the kitchen, apparently checking all of my knowledge of cooking at the door with my shoes. I started up the burner and filled the skillet with oil. This is where things go terribly, terribly wrong.
Remember how i had just shown Amanda how to cook macaroni, right up from the beginning where you boil the water? I had just taught her that water boils faster when you put the lid on it. So Amanda says, "why don't you put the lid on it so that the oil heats faster?"
I gazed quizzically at the skillet for a moment, thinking to myself, ok, there's a reason that i haven't already put the lid on this skillet. But what? Failing to come up for a reason for omitting that action, i went ahead and put the lid on the skillet full of heating oil. At this moment, i was dragged away to play Rock Band. Figuring that we had a couple minutes and Amanda can obviously watch the oil until it's ready, i said i'd do one song and then would have to tend to my donuts. It was Creep, by Radiohead.
About a minute into the song, Amanda came rushing out of the kitchen toward me. "It's on fire!" she shouted. This didn't register in my head at first. I glanced at her, and then turned my attention back to Rock Band. "IT'S ON FIRE!!" she repeated, and suddenly i sprang into action, throwing the guitar controller on the ground and sprinting the ten feet back to kitchen. Sure enough, the skillet was shooting flames probably three to four feet high. By the time i'd reached the kitchen, Ashley had moved the skillet onto the sink. I found out later that this was because she'd intended to pour water on it, but Amanda had fortunately stopped her. You don't pour water on a grease fire. It does not work and in fact makes the situation worse.
I was frantically looking about the kitchen, trying to remember what it is that you put on grease fires instead of water. Ashley shouted to me, "FLOUR!" and at that moment, that sounded right to me. There was a large bag of flour perched atop the refrigerator. How convenient.
So i grabbed the bag, reached in for a fistfull, and tossed it into the fire.
The answer is baking soda. You put baking soda on a grease fire. Not flour. Never flour.
Instead of putting the fire out, a gigantic fireball issued forth toward the ceiling. In light of my failure, my next plan was to get the burning pan out of the apartment as quickly as possible and set it down in the cold, wet snow on the sidewalk, where it could just burn and burn until we figured out what to do with it or until it ran out of fuel. I reached out and grabbed the skillet solidly by the handle.
I got that skillet all of two feet before the heat became too much for my hand. The skillet dropped to the floor, landing squarely between the kitchen and dining room, where the carpet and linoleum met. Grease splattered on my legs and at least one bystander.
Meanwhile, the building's fire alarms are going off, neighbors are coming into the smoke-filled hallway to see what's going on, and general pandemonium is ensuing in the apartment, where it has become almost impossible to breathe.
The reason the hallway was filled with smoke was because our host had run out to get the fire extinguisher. He grabbed the hammer attached to the case and swung to break the glass. Being as drunk as he was, he missed, and only smashed part of the bottom of the window. He took another swing at it, missing again and this time cutting his hand open on the sharp glass edges. Giving up on the hammer, he pulled the rest of the glass out with his hands and brought the fire extinguisher into the apartment.
That fire extinguisher changed hands at least three times, never once landing in the possession of the one person at the party trained in fire extinguisher use: me. It ended up with Gardener, who did not know what he was doing but was the first person willing to give it a go. He aimed the fire extinguisher at the top of the flames, which is not the way it works. This served only to splatter the grease farther into the kitchen, although somehow he eventually hit the base of the flames and got the fire put out.
With the crisis over, everybody who wasn't completely freaking out started to turn their thoughts to damage control. Our completely inebriated host was probably (and understandably so) the most panicked. He was standing in the middle of the living room shouting, "You don't understand! If that fire alarm goes off for more than two minutes the fire department and police are automatically notified! They're going to come in here and search my house and find all my pot and i'm going to go to jail! I'm going to jail! I'm going to jail!" and other such nonsense.
It was probably fifteen minutes before the alarms stopped going off. I don't remember exactly what happened from there but i do remember an old lady in the hallway coming out and asking what was going on. When somebody told her that the kitchen was on fire, she laughed and went back into her apartment.
We finally got everybody out of the apartment about an hour later. The host and one girl went to the emergency room for the glass cuts and the grease burns on the leg, respectively. Amanda and i made our way home, blowing off our other plans. It was at about this time that i realized the best course of action would have been for Amanda to have just put the lid back on the skillet. This would have cut off the fire's air supply and it would have smothered almost immediately. Then we could remove it from the heat and wait for the oil to cool down before trying to open the lid again. As it had happened, though, when Amanda came running through to inform me that the grease was on fire, she'd still had the lid in her hand and didn't drop it until she was outside. We found the lid half buried in the snow just before we left.
A week later, our own kitchen attacked Amanda just for walking into it. Pots and pans just randomly started falling out of the cupboards. She tends to avoid the kitchen these days.
2010/08/20
Interstate Love Song
Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't, but a lot of my post titles are musical references. This one is. It's a Stone Temple Pilots song from 1994, in case you missed it. That's alright. I picked that title for this story not because it's overly appropriate, but because i couldn't come up with anything better that wouldn't give away the ending right there in the title. And there's nothing worse than knowing how a story ends before it begins.
In 2002, i was working at a warehouse in Watertown, Wisconsin. I'd gotten the job because a friend of mine, Amanda (yes, THE Amanda, before we hooked up), needed a ride there. Her grandparents own the place, and had always said she had a guaranteed job there if she ever needed or wanted one. Being fifteen, she couldn't drive, so that was pretty much the big hangup. Well, at a year and a half older, i'd gotten my license not so long before, and we struck a deal that involved her paying me for gas and me getting a better job than the pizza place i'd been shackled to.
After Amanda got her license, she stopped paying me for gas and we began to alternate driving duties. Even though we both lived in the same tiny (Population: 3000ish) town, the routes that we took to the warehouse were radically different depending on who was picking up who. When she drove me, we got to take back roads, but when i picked her up, the interstate was involved.
On this particular night, i believe we'd worked quite a bit later than we were technically supposed to, and were therefore driving down a dark and completely deserted interstate back to her house. I was keeping an even 75, a mere ten over the speed limit, because not so long before i had gotten my first speeding ticket. There's not much of a story to that; i totally deserved it.
I saw the cop sitting in the median from a mile away. But even at the age of seventeen, i knew that by the time you see the cop, they've already got you. There's really no point to slowing down, and in fact if they see your brake lights, they consider that an admission of guilt. I'd like to jump on my soapbox about assholes who slam on their brakes and shoot down to less than the speed limit when they see a cop and how dangerous they are, but i'll abstain for now.
So, i sailed straight past him, continuing at 75 miles per hour. I turned my attention to my rear view mirror, and sure enough, he pulled out and started following us. I watched intently as he closed the gap, and took my foot off the gas a little, slowing down to 70 without using the brakes.
This was all happening in the left lane. I always drive in the left lane, i'm much more comfortable there. As soon as the cop achieved "riding my ass" status, i hit my blinker and moved over to the right, which is exactly my protocol for when anybody comes up on me in the left lane like that. The second i did, he put on his lights and sirens and pulled me over.
As stated, i'd had my license less than a year and already had one speeding ticket in the can, so i was a little nervous. I don't recall whether Amanda and i made any conversation at that point, i was just eying the cop car in my rear view and fumbling my license out of my wallet. Suddenly, the high-powered search light on the Crown Victoria came on, burning my retinas since i had been staring right at it. I cussed loudly.
After a considerable wait, the officer finally made his leisurely jaunt over to my Jeep. I had already rolled down the window. I'm pretty sure this conversation is transcribed verbatim, the words are pretty strongly etched into my mind.
"Good evening," the officer said.
"Good evening," i replied.
"Well, the reason that i'm pulling you over tonight is for your bumper sticker."
I paused, a little shocked. I was unsure what bumper sticker he was referring to at first, but then i realized that i had but one lonely sticker adorning my rear. It read, "Bad Cop! No Donut!"
"...What?" i questioned.
"Naaah, i'm just kidding. Did you know that you've got a headlight out?"
I was stunned. After another brief pause, i replied with much gusto: "No officer! I didn't!" This was true.
He took my license back to his car where he made out a written warning for equipment failure. Amanda and i exchanged relieved words as we waited (forever, again) and laughed.
When he came back, he handed me the warning and explained. "Alright, i'm giving you a written warning on the headlight, you'll need to get that fixed in two weeks, and a verbal warning on the bumper sticker!"
I thanked him and bid him a good night, and then we were on our way.
In 2002, i was working at a warehouse in Watertown, Wisconsin. I'd gotten the job because a friend of mine, Amanda (yes, THE Amanda, before we hooked up), needed a ride there. Her grandparents own the place, and had always said she had a guaranteed job there if she ever needed or wanted one. Being fifteen, she couldn't drive, so that was pretty much the big hangup. Well, at a year and a half older, i'd gotten my license not so long before, and we struck a deal that involved her paying me for gas and me getting a better job than the pizza place i'd been shackled to.
After Amanda got her license, she stopped paying me for gas and we began to alternate driving duties. Even though we both lived in the same tiny (Population: 3000ish) town, the routes that we took to the warehouse were radically different depending on who was picking up who. When she drove me, we got to take back roads, but when i picked her up, the interstate was involved.
On this particular night, i believe we'd worked quite a bit later than we were technically supposed to, and were therefore driving down a dark and completely deserted interstate back to her house. I was keeping an even 75, a mere ten over the speed limit, because not so long before i had gotten my first speeding ticket. There's not much of a story to that; i totally deserved it.
I saw the cop sitting in the median from a mile away. But even at the age of seventeen, i knew that by the time you see the cop, they've already got you. There's really no point to slowing down, and in fact if they see your brake lights, they consider that an admission of guilt. I'd like to jump on my soapbox about assholes who slam on their brakes and shoot down to less than the speed limit when they see a cop and how dangerous they are, but i'll abstain for now.
So, i sailed straight past him, continuing at 75 miles per hour. I turned my attention to my rear view mirror, and sure enough, he pulled out and started following us. I watched intently as he closed the gap, and took my foot off the gas a little, slowing down to 70 without using the brakes.
This was all happening in the left lane. I always drive in the left lane, i'm much more comfortable there. As soon as the cop achieved "riding my ass" status, i hit my blinker and moved over to the right, which is exactly my protocol for when anybody comes up on me in the left lane like that. The second i did, he put on his lights and sirens and pulled me over.
As stated, i'd had my license less than a year and already had one speeding ticket in the can, so i was a little nervous. I don't recall whether Amanda and i made any conversation at that point, i was just eying the cop car in my rear view and fumbling my license out of my wallet. Suddenly, the high-powered search light on the Crown Victoria came on, burning my retinas since i had been staring right at it. I cussed loudly.
After a considerable wait, the officer finally made his leisurely jaunt over to my Jeep. I had already rolled down the window. I'm pretty sure this conversation is transcribed verbatim, the words are pretty strongly etched into my mind.
"Good evening," the officer said.
"Good evening," i replied.
"Well, the reason that i'm pulling you over tonight is for your bumper sticker."
I paused, a little shocked. I was unsure what bumper sticker he was referring to at first, but then i realized that i had but one lonely sticker adorning my rear. It read, "Bad Cop! No Donut!"
"...What?" i questioned.
"Naaah, i'm just kidding. Did you know that you've got a headlight out?"
I was stunned. After another brief pause, i replied with much gusto: "No officer! I didn't!" This was true.
He took my license back to his car where he made out a written warning for equipment failure. Amanda and i exchanged relieved words as we waited (forever, again) and laughed.
When he came back, he handed me the warning and explained. "Alright, i'm giving you a written warning on the headlight, you'll need to get that fixed in two weeks, and a verbal warning on the bumper sticker!"
I thanked him and bid him a good night, and then we were on our way.
2010/08/18
Hugs
My additional mom, Lisa, came up to me in my cubicle this morning while i was alternating between being hard at work and reading Yahoo! Answer Fail and said to me, "It doesn't matter what color you're wearing or how your hair looks or whether you're wearing a hat. When you're sitting there in your corner, you just look so...huggable."
Immediately sensing a trap, i replied, "Huggable?"
"Yes," she confirmed. "I don't know." And then she began to walk away.
"Was that a request?" i probed.
"Well, no..."
"Because if it was, there's a five page form you have to fill out in triplicate."
"A form?" she inquired.
"Yeah. And you'll probably have to pay a fee."
She stared at me for a moment while a grin began to form.
"I'm so proud of you right now." She began to wipe her eyes as she walked away. "I'm just...so...proud!!"
Immediately sensing a trap, i replied, "Huggable?"
"Yes," she confirmed. "I don't know." And then she began to walk away.
"Was that a request?" i probed.
"Well, no..."
"Because if it was, there's a five page form you have to fill out in triplicate."
"A form?" she inquired.
"Yeah. And you'll probably have to pay a fee."
She stared at me for a moment while a grin began to form.
"I'm so proud of you right now." She began to wipe her eyes as she walked away. "I'm just...so...proud!!"
2010/08/04
It Looks Like You Need a New Jeep
Well, it's past midnight, so i guess i technically have to say that TODAY, we are leaving for our annual pilgrimage to Indianapolis and the great GenCon. This will be my ninth consecutive GenCon; my first was 2002, the last year it was held in Milwaukee.
So, to commemorate the holiday, i'm reposting my blog about my spectacular journey to GenCon in 2005, the last year i drove down alone, which is pretty fucking epic. Some edits have been made from the original 2005 post.
[originally published on MySpace]
WEDNESDAY
Despite my best efforts to leave on Wednesday morning between 8:00 and 10:00, i didn't get on the road until about quarter to 11. Considering that, if i drive straight through at 75, the journey is six hours, and badge registration started at four, and i wanted to drive 65 to save gas...yeah. That would put me there at approximately 6, which would still be ok since registration went until nine. Well, 30 miles into my 360 mile trek, i'm cruising down I-90 at 75 (i eventually decided that i'd rather save an hour than a little gas), it suddenly started raining...but not on everybody, just on my windshield. Raining out from under my hood. So i pulled over and inspected my engine, but could find nothing wrong. So, after speaking to Correy about different possibilities of what had just happened over the cell phone, i ended up having to just haul ass to the nearest exit, my temperature gauge well past 360 (the far right edge, deep in the red) the whole way. It was 12 miles to Beloit, but i found an exit (marked "Bumfuct, Egypt") in about two miles. I pulled over at the gas station right off the exit and popped the hood again. Upon closer inspection i discovered a hole in the huge hose in the middle of my engine. I don't pretend to know much about car maintenance but this seemed pretty...well, not good.
Correy had me wrap the hose up as best as possible in duct tape. This thing was fucking hot, and had two other hoses right up next to it, which the heat prevented me from getting between, so i just wrapped the whole thing up in duct tape. At the gas station i bought a jug of coolant and got directions to the nearest parts store. Actually, the guy told me that there was a service station right next door, but it was almost impossible to get in without an appointment. I didn't have that kind of time to sit around and wait. He assured me it was only two miles to the parts store, so i dumped the coolant in and took off.
It was more like four miles. The engine died just as i was trying to turn into the parts store, so i had to fire it back up and then back up out of the lane of oncoming traffic, which almost hit me, and there was steam billowing out of every crack between the hood and body.
When i finally pulled into the parts store and rolled up to the foremost parking stall, there was a guy standing right inside watching from the window. I walked into the store and he said, "Let me guess. You need a new Jeep." I liked how he said "New Jeep" and not "New car" or "New vehicle." I suspect that he owns one too. So i bought the hose that i needed as well as another jug of coolant and borrowed a screwdriver to perform the surgery. Ten minutes later i went back in for a pair of pliers. It only took about fifteen minutes and i was back up and running and ready to go, so i did. But, i was still running hot. In fact, i got only about twenty miles away from there and the needle was buried in the red again, so i stopped at a gas station just off the interstate in Rockford, Illinois.
While i was on the phone with Correy, i discovered that the hose immediately to my new one's right was swelling considerably at its base. Correy recommended that i remove that end of that hose and put it back on, because i might have a bubble in the system or something. So i went in to borrow a screwdriver. They didn't have one handy, so the guy took one off the shelf for me to use, and said just bring it back. Well, i got it all greasy and stuff, and it's one of those 4-in-one things, so i just bought it. I figured i'd probably need it again later (and i did!). I lost a lot of coolant by taking that hose off and putting it back on, so i filled 'er up again and got on my way. Twenty miles later, the engine started barfing coolant onto the hood again. That hose, the one to the right of the new one, did not only have a hole in it, it had split three or four inches up from the base. I spent a very long time on the side of the freeway trying to figure out what to do, and eventually determined that i must try to get to the nearest exit, which was a ways up but i made it (barely). Steward, Illinois. NO SERVICES, the sign read. You're not much of a steward with no services, bastard. I called Sam, my friend in Indiana whose house i was on the way to, because i knew she had a map (my road atlas never seemed to have taken the journey from the red Jeep to the blue Jeep [for the story on why this shift was necessary, check out my previous blog Total Eclipse of My Ass]). She determined that my best bet for a city to get to for parts would be to turn around and go back North to Rochelle, four miles away. So i headed back up the interstate. Four miles later, i was seeing no signs of Rochelle, only an exit for a different interstate (88, i think). I saw a city off to my left so i jumped on 88 to see what it was. Another mile and a half of interstate and i landed in Rochelle. The first thing i saw was a Shell station, my engine was billowing again and this time also screaming with vengeance. I talked to the girl in the gas station, and she told me that the nearest parts store was three miles up the road. My Jeep was not going to make that by any means. So i locked it up and was just about to start walking when my dad called me. I spent a few minutes on the phone with him, in fact just enough time, i was hanging up with him when this guy pulled up next to my truck with his huge Dodge and said, "The girl inside says you need a ride to the parts store." I thanked him profusely and we headed off. By car it took five minutes or so to get there. Watching everything i would have had to walk through made me glad i hadn't, especially considering the heat. At the parts store, i picked up a length of hose, a knife (a really cool one), a jug of coolant, a splicer, and some clamps, because the undamaged end of this hose has a special fitting on it so i was going to have to splice it. Back at the Shell station, the operation was successful, and i was back on my way.
Further down the road, i discovered that the operation was more than just successful. The truck had a history of running hot for as long as we'd owned it, and now it was running an even 210, right in the center, right where it should be. The next 300 miles were without incident...until i started nearing Indianapolis. It was getting dark, and i discovered that i had no dash lights. This was a recent development, i had never had that happen to me until right then. Also, it was 8:00 and i still had about 25 miles to Indy. Registration closed at 9. I called Sam up and asked her to just meet me at the convention center, to save some time. Well, long story short, i got horribly lost in Indy, but Sam found me and then guided me in to the RCA Dome. I got through the line for badges at 8:55 PM. Sam informed me that she had no electricity at her apartment through some colossal screw-up between the power company, her landlord, and herself, and thus no good food in the fridge, and because of the reactivation fee on the power couldn't afford her own badge for GenCon this year. We ate at Steak 'n Shake, where these two adults picked up this 8 year old kid and threw him in the air for his birthday. The waitress was wearing waaaaay too much makeup. I saw someone wearing the Penny Arcade "Fruit Fucker" shirt. It was the first of many Penny Arcade shirts i would see over the weekend. On the way back to Sam's apartment, the front end of my Jeep started shaking violently, a problem that Correy used to have constantly but he'd told me that he'd fixed it. Since Sam had been leading, i ended up pulling off at an exit without her, and she had to come back to get me. I was in a Family Video parking lot in the ghetto when she finally found me.
The rest of the trip back to her apartment was ok, except that i still didn't have dash lights. Back at her apartment, she introduced me to the Love Sack, which is like a giant beanbag chair, except not filled with beans. The thing is sooooooooooo comfortable. If i ever live alone i'm getting one of those instead of a bed. Jessica and her boyfriend Scott came over and chilled with us for a while. Jessica says "What the fuck," all the time, and she sounds just like my college English teacher (Bernie) when she says it (he used to say that all the time too).
And finally, i got to sleep.
So, to commemorate the holiday, i'm reposting my blog about my spectacular journey to GenCon in 2005, the last year i drove down alone, which is pretty fucking epic. Some edits have been made from the original 2005 post.
[originally published on MySpace]
WEDNESDAY
Despite my best efforts to leave on Wednesday morning between 8:00 and 10:00, i didn't get on the road until about quarter to 11. Considering that, if i drive straight through at 75, the journey is six hours, and badge registration started at four, and i wanted to drive 65 to save gas...yeah. That would put me there at approximately 6, which would still be ok since registration went until nine. Well, 30 miles into my 360 mile trek, i'm cruising down I-90 at 75 (i eventually decided that i'd rather save an hour than a little gas), it suddenly started raining...but not on everybody, just on my windshield. Raining out from under my hood. So i pulled over and inspected my engine, but could find nothing wrong. So, after speaking to Correy about different possibilities of what had just happened over the cell phone, i ended up having to just haul ass to the nearest exit, my temperature gauge well past 360 (the far right edge, deep in the red) the whole way. It was 12 miles to Beloit, but i found an exit (marked "Bumfuct, Egypt") in about two miles. I pulled over at the gas station right off the exit and popped the hood again. Upon closer inspection i discovered a hole in the huge hose in the middle of my engine. I don't pretend to know much about car maintenance but this seemed pretty...well, not good.
Correy had me wrap the hose up as best as possible in duct tape. This thing was fucking hot, and had two other hoses right up next to it, which the heat prevented me from getting between, so i just wrapped the whole thing up in duct tape. At the gas station i bought a jug of coolant and got directions to the nearest parts store. Actually, the guy told me that there was a service station right next door, but it was almost impossible to get in without an appointment. I didn't have that kind of time to sit around and wait. He assured me it was only two miles to the parts store, so i dumped the coolant in and took off.
It was more like four miles. The engine died just as i was trying to turn into the parts store, so i had to fire it back up and then back up out of the lane of oncoming traffic, which almost hit me, and there was steam billowing out of every crack between the hood and body.
When i finally pulled into the parts store and rolled up to the foremost parking stall, there was a guy standing right inside watching from the window. I walked into the store and he said, "Let me guess. You need a new Jeep." I liked how he said "New Jeep" and not "New car" or "New vehicle." I suspect that he owns one too. So i bought the hose that i needed as well as another jug of coolant and borrowed a screwdriver to perform the surgery. Ten minutes later i went back in for a pair of pliers. It only took about fifteen minutes and i was back up and running and ready to go, so i did. But, i was still running hot. In fact, i got only about twenty miles away from there and the needle was buried in the red again, so i stopped at a gas station just off the interstate in Rockford, Illinois.
While i was on the phone with Correy, i discovered that the hose immediately to my new one's right was swelling considerably at its base. Correy recommended that i remove that end of that hose and put it back on, because i might have a bubble in the system or something. So i went in to borrow a screwdriver. They didn't have one handy, so the guy took one off the shelf for me to use, and said just bring it back. Well, i got it all greasy and stuff, and it's one of those 4-in-one things, so i just bought it. I figured i'd probably need it again later (and i did!). I lost a lot of coolant by taking that hose off and putting it back on, so i filled 'er up again and got on my way. Twenty miles later, the engine started barfing coolant onto the hood again. That hose, the one to the right of the new one, did not only have a hole in it, it had split three or four inches up from the base. I spent a very long time on the side of the freeway trying to figure out what to do, and eventually determined that i must try to get to the nearest exit, which was a ways up but i made it (barely). Steward, Illinois. NO SERVICES, the sign read. You're not much of a steward with no services, bastard. I called Sam, my friend in Indiana whose house i was on the way to, because i knew she had a map (my road atlas never seemed to have taken the journey from the red Jeep to the blue Jeep [for the story on why this shift was necessary, check out my previous blog Total Eclipse of My Ass]). She determined that my best bet for a city to get to for parts would be to turn around and go back North to Rochelle, four miles away. So i headed back up the interstate. Four miles later, i was seeing no signs of Rochelle, only an exit for a different interstate (88, i think). I saw a city off to my left so i jumped on 88 to see what it was. Another mile and a half of interstate and i landed in Rochelle. The first thing i saw was a Shell station, my engine was billowing again and this time also screaming with vengeance. I talked to the girl in the gas station, and she told me that the nearest parts store was three miles up the road. My Jeep was not going to make that by any means. So i locked it up and was just about to start walking when my dad called me. I spent a few minutes on the phone with him, in fact just enough time, i was hanging up with him when this guy pulled up next to my truck with his huge Dodge and said, "The girl inside says you need a ride to the parts store." I thanked him profusely and we headed off. By car it took five minutes or so to get there. Watching everything i would have had to walk through made me glad i hadn't, especially considering the heat. At the parts store, i picked up a length of hose, a knife (a really cool one), a jug of coolant, a splicer, and some clamps, because the undamaged end of this hose has a special fitting on it so i was going to have to splice it. Back at the Shell station, the operation was successful, and i was back on my way.
Further down the road, i discovered that the operation was more than just successful. The truck had a history of running hot for as long as we'd owned it, and now it was running an even 210, right in the center, right where it should be. The next 300 miles were without incident...until i started nearing Indianapolis. It was getting dark, and i discovered that i had no dash lights. This was a recent development, i had never had that happen to me until right then. Also, it was 8:00 and i still had about 25 miles to Indy. Registration closed at 9. I called Sam up and asked her to just meet me at the convention center, to save some time. Well, long story short, i got horribly lost in Indy, but Sam found me and then guided me in to the RCA Dome. I got through the line for badges at 8:55 PM. Sam informed me that she had no electricity at her apartment through some colossal screw-up between the power company, her landlord, and herself, and thus no good food in the fridge, and because of the reactivation fee on the power couldn't afford her own badge for GenCon this year. We ate at Steak 'n Shake, where these two adults picked up this 8 year old kid and threw him in the air for his birthday. The waitress was wearing waaaaay too much makeup. I saw someone wearing the Penny Arcade "Fruit Fucker" shirt. It was the first of many Penny Arcade shirts i would see over the weekend. On the way back to Sam's apartment, the front end of my Jeep started shaking violently, a problem that Correy used to have constantly but he'd told me that he'd fixed it. Since Sam had been leading, i ended up pulling off at an exit without her, and she had to come back to get me. I was in a Family Video parking lot in the ghetto when she finally found me.
The rest of the trip back to her apartment was ok, except that i still didn't have dash lights. Back at her apartment, she introduced me to the Love Sack, which is like a giant beanbag chair, except not filled with beans. The thing is sooooooooooo comfortable. If i ever live alone i'm getting one of those instead of a bed. Jessica and her boyfriend Scott came over and chilled with us for a while. Jessica says "What the fuck," all the time, and she sounds just like my college English teacher (Bernie) when she says it (he used to say that all the time too).
And finally, i got to sleep.
2010/08/02
A Funny Thing Happened
So my brother got married on Saturday.
The ceremony was pretty low-key, just some of their closer friends and relatives. The ceremony and reception were held together at the Fireman's Park in our hometown. As the Best Man, i held the bachelor party the night before. When he had originally posed the idea of the bachelor party to me, he had thought it would be difficult for me to come up with something to do, since he doesn't drink and isn't overly interested in strippers. My response was, "Are you kidding? This is the easiest thing ever! The bachelor party will be you, me, and Andre in my basement playing Halo on the projector all night!" And that's pretty close to what happened.
He had been telling me that the ceremony was going to be short and simple, and that neither of them were even going to have any lines except "I do."
As it turned out, the pastor maneuvered them into some vows and a couple other speaking parts, but it was still pretty minimal. All in all, it was a nice and fitting ceremony. I don't think that an extravagant churchy wedding would have worked out for them at all.
There's really nothing inherently funny about this post, i admit, and it's not supposed to be. I just wanted to share the joy of what's happened and welcome Jo to our family. I've finally got that sister i always wanted.
Well, there is one thing that's kind of funny. I'd been told i wouldn't need to make any speeches, and in fact i was discouraged from it. Really, though, if i hadn't been so bogged down with school that a speech didn't even occur to me until the day before, i would have written something which would probably be long winded and a little embarrassing to him. You should know that, though, whoever you are; i mean, you do, after all, read my blog. Right? Maybe not.
So that worked out about as well as the whole "we're only saying two words during the ceremony" thing. Here's an interpolation of the speech i ended up doing:
"So a funny thing happened to me today. I went down to Marshall, and my little brother got married!" (big applause)
Then my mom breaks in: "Oh wait, were you recording that? I was standing right in front of the camera! Do it again."
(loud exasperated sigh)
"So a funny thing happened to me today! I was at my brother's wedding, and i was giving a speech and my mom walked right in front of the camera and asked me to do it all again! Well, congratulations, you guys! Let's have a toast."
I guess the moral of the story is that i'm the best Best Man ever.
The ceremony was pretty low-key, just some of their closer friends and relatives. The ceremony and reception were held together at the Fireman's Park in our hometown. As the Best Man, i held the bachelor party the night before. When he had originally posed the idea of the bachelor party to me, he had thought it would be difficult for me to come up with something to do, since he doesn't drink and isn't overly interested in strippers. My response was, "Are you kidding? This is the easiest thing ever! The bachelor party will be you, me, and Andre in my basement playing Halo on the projector all night!" And that's pretty close to what happened.
He had been telling me that the ceremony was going to be short and simple, and that neither of them were even going to have any lines except "I do."
As it turned out, the pastor maneuvered them into some vows and a couple other speaking parts, but it was still pretty minimal. All in all, it was a nice and fitting ceremony. I don't think that an extravagant churchy wedding would have worked out for them at all.
There's really nothing inherently funny about this post, i admit, and it's not supposed to be. I just wanted to share the joy of what's happened and welcome Jo to our family. I've finally got that sister i always wanted.
Well, there is one thing that's kind of funny. I'd been told i wouldn't need to make any speeches, and in fact i was discouraged from it. Really, though, if i hadn't been so bogged down with school that a speech didn't even occur to me until the day before, i would have written something which would probably be long winded and a little embarrassing to him. You should know that, though, whoever you are; i mean, you do, after all, read my blog. Right? Maybe not.
So that worked out about as well as the whole "we're only saying two words during the ceremony" thing. Here's an interpolation of the speech i ended up doing:
"So a funny thing happened to me today. I went down to Marshall, and my little brother got married!" (big applause)
Then my mom breaks in: "Oh wait, were you recording that? I was standing right in front of the camera! Do it again."
(loud exasperated sigh)
"So a funny thing happened to me today! I was at my brother's wedding, and i was giving a speech and my mom walked right in front of the camera and asked me to do it all again! Well, congratulations, you guys! Let's have a toast."
I guess the moral of the story is that i'm the best Best Man ever.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
