Rob and Cathy's Wedding
Introduction
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Now that addamark has funding, I've started accepting out-of-town wedding
invites again, this time from a 4-day Long Island wedding in which I
played groomsman for an old friend and his wonderful new wife. He and I
love roasting each other... so live from New York, it's Sunday Night...
re:photos. Sorry, I didn't bring my camera to the reception, and the
official photos won't be in for a couple of weeks. Too bad, because there
were some priceless photo-ops that the photographers would've thought were
"normal". On the other hand, IMHO it's better this way because you can
let your imaginations run wild, and still err on the conservative side.
update: the bride with the groomsmen.
cc: rob & cathy (congrats!!)
The Trip: where they inspect my paper-thin mocassins for explosives...
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JetBlue, $285 round-trip, hassle-free, highly recommended.
...except for that investment banker who "can't believe he flew coach... not
so bad after all", wearing a suit and watched CCNfn the entire way. So
tempting to spill a cranberry juice on him and say "oh shoot! and it
really sucks because they don't offer complimentary dry-cleaning in coach,
either!"
New Yawk: where you pronounce every letter in "Houston" and "knish"
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I saw an ol' frend in da city when I gaht der, and couldn't fuckin beeleev
dat shit. Da fuckin accents, ohmygahd! (sp: that should be "ohmigawd")
Anyways dey wuz freakin me out, I allmost had to ditch da place!
(sorry about the digression, but I may be accented after I return-- I promise
it wears off after a few days; in the meantime, I'll try to provide
translations)
Long Island: back to the future
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Long Island's heyday was 1978-1988, give or take, and you can ennumerate
everything new since then: celphones, the internet, Nirvana, HOV lanes,
Starbuck's and Borders, Thai food (but not Vietnamese). Mostly, I felt
like I'd jumped into a time warp: Newsday was still reporting gypsy-moth
caterpillars deforesting whole towns, Connie Chung was still reporting the
news and WBAB was still playing classic rock from the 70s and 80s. Here's
the groom in his college days, with his friend maelanie: photo.
On the other hand, it's a pretty good life, with real weather and everything.
And lest you Californians start sneering, consider all of the disasters
("experiments") they avoided: energy deregulation, propositions 13, 207,
and god knows how many in between, Candlestick Park, selenium in Silicon
Valley groundwater and building houses on the Hayward Fault.
As for me, I've been away long enough that even Rob was introducing me as "my
friend Adam from California", like you gotta watch out or something.
Thank god for the groomsmans' tuxes, or even my suit would've looked
weeehd (trans: weird). Sniff: it's not home anymore.
Cars: useless in The City, mandatory on The Island
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I didn't think to rent a car, because we usually have a spare in the family.
On the plus side, hitching rides reminded me of high school. no wait.
Two friends in from Arizona observed that everything seems to be half an
hour apart, except if you go two places, in which case it's an hour.
one thing: Long Islanders. They don't know from traffic. In the Bay Area,
there are some places you just can't get to, if there's a traffic accident
during rush hour-- and Palo Alto is closer to Berkeley than San Mateo, but
only if you have a carpool.
For those of you who've never been, the name makes sense: think 20 miles wide
by 150 miles long. Most of the place-names are indian-- Connetquot is
*not* a misspelling of "Connecticut"-- they were two different tribes, who
probably hated each other. Other names whose pronunciation can be used to
test whether you're local: Nissequogue 
, Setauket , Stony Brook
Huntington , Riverhead , Port Jefferson .
Weather: fugettaboutit
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April in California, time for shorts. April on Long Island, light flurries
and freezing girls in open-top dresses and open-toed shoes.
I packed a scarf, almost making up for my idiocy about the car.
Cost and Commerce
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On Long Island, the cost of things is fair game, with people bitching
continuously if something is overpriced, and publicly proud to have gotten
a deal. The biggest brag: "You like this dress? I got on sale, at
Marshall's, for $14.99!"
Weddings are serious stuff. I checked, and Long Island rates right up there
with Tokyo and Seoul. What's weird (to me) is where the money goes. In
California, a wedding like this would have 360-degree video shot by an
up-and-coming indi film director, wine from some local vineyard, and a
view from a hillside of the pacific ocean-- but would have no liquor,
lousy service, 10 flowers, lame *and* pretentious music, one tiny limo--
and you'd confuse the meal with the hors d'oevres instead of the other way
around. No wonder Long Island is to weddings as NoCal is to microchips.
one last story: We stopped in Patchogue (?), a typical Long Island town, to
pick up the tuxes. I had a minute to stroll the downtown. In a 4-block
stretch, I counted 4 bridal shops, 2 tux shops, 3 nail shops, 3 salons, 7
restaurants (4 italian-- 2 north and 2 south, 2 diners and 1 chinese), and
3 five-and-dimes.
For the long islanders who think this is "normal", consider an equally
"normal" California coastal town: 4 coffee shops ("cafe"s, like they think
they're in fuckin' europe or sumthin!), 2 organic grocery stores, 3
herbalists, 15 restaurants (1 california cuisine-- italian gone vertical,
1 cantonese, 1 taiwanese, 1 szechuan, 1 thai, 1 burmese, 1 vietnamese, 1
korean, and 6 japanese-- 5 sushi, 1 robata), and the same 3 five-and-dime
stores, which originated in Seattle like everything else.
Mom and Brother
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My family is doin' great. Between us, we packed in a trip to the mall,
eating at Ben's Kosher Deli, a few (desperate!) runs to Starbuck's and 20
hands of gin rummy. The Starbuck's runs are because the coffee is so
weak, you can see the bottom of the cup. Long Islanders talk about how a
place has great coffee-- which means your choice of flavors: vanilla,
hazelnut or butter-rum.
My family are cardplayers, using gin rummy and poker as an excuse to tawk
about stuff (tr: gossip). My brother loves single malt scotch, so I did
the best I could at the local liquor store. He and I drank the whole
thing (oops) over 3 of those games. I killed him in both the drinking and
the cards, a 20-year sibling rivalry. Unfortunately, that meant another
long island tradition-- taking care of a sick dude who was stumbling down
the front steps howling. Next day, the bastard got up clear and fine,
while I was hung over like a side of beef. I lose. Mom shook her head.
As for mom, I use cards as an early warning for when we have to take the keys
away. Good thing it doesn't go both ways, or my lack-of-car-mistake
wouldn't have been an accident. Put another way, if she were the gambling
type, I'd be even more dependent on addamark's financial success.
Mom and I went shopping, so I've got another year's worth of tan and olive
polo shirts until we get official addamark schwag (ny trans: giveaway
attire, which every silicon valley company does-- you quickly end up with
drawers full of t-shirts from old companies and even projects)
Bachelor Party: "you remember that scene from _Very Bad Things_?"
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You wouldn't believe the size of th...
this is the part where rob gets scared for a moment
...ose chicken wings.
cathy-- wadya think? this is rob we're talking about!
The Wedding: "you remember that scene from _The Wedding Singer_?"
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...only cathy's cuter than drew and rob has better taste in music than sandler.
Seriously, Long Island is a great place to have a wedding. If California
wins in originality (aka weeehd shit), Long Island and New Jersey win for
making stereotypes come alive. Think Wedding Singer, only way more fun.
ok, some highlights...
Getting All Dressed Up: "you clean up real good"
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A picture is worth a thousand words: (phil, myself and tim)
motley crue: photo 1 (big) photo 2 (big)
tim rhodes: photo 1 (big) photo 2 (big)
The Priest
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The priest was "a real comedian" (transl: don't lose the day job)-- true, he
was funny and all, but he cracked so many jokes during the rehearsal, you
had a hard time figuring out what the instructions were. He even cracked
a few during the ceremony. The weehhdust (trans: weirdest) thing was at
the end of the ceremony-- no shit (transl: for real)-- he had them turn to
face the audience, and had us, ya know the audience, raise our right arms
to give them power or something! heard in the limo afterwards: "and what
was that heil hitler thing? what wuz that about?"
The Lovely Couple
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As a guy growing up on Long Island, you're taught to look for these things in
a wife:
1. breathes *and* has a heartbeat.
2. IQ larger than chest size.
3. sanity.
Correspondingly, the girls are taught to seek out:
1. steady job, or at least marketable skills (can opening excepted)
2. IQ larger than nosehair count.
3. doesn't run off with Zebra upon hearing the M-word, K-word, etc.
This may sound simple, but remember that Long Island is a place where people
study for blood tests and the most famous women are tonia harding and amy
fisher (who inspired the film, American Beauty). The guys, they work on
their boats... on cinder blocks... on the front lawn.
Anyways, Rob met Cathy years after I moved out to California, so I've only
met her a couple of times. Nevertheless, she handily passes all of the LI
tests without studying, and even a few extra required for Rob:
1. She's completely sane, no really. This is a big deal for Rob, if you
met his ex's. For one ex, The Spaghetti Incident wasn't just a bad
Van Halen album.
2. She sees right through Rob's bullshit.
3. She still puts up with Rob, even after seeing through his bullshit.
Seriously, Cathy is completely awesome. The jokes were going around about
her waking up the next day, "dear god! what did I do?" Personally, this
may hit after they have their first Mini-Rob, and he starts immitating his
dad, immitating Beavis. heh heh. heh heh heh heh.
In case you were wondering, Zebra is the fifth most famous long island band
ever, after Billy Joel, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany and Blue Oyster Cult.
The Ceremony
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Perhaps it's just me living in California too long, and slowing down-- but
the ceremony was like watching a tape on fast forward. The procession,
the vows, the music, the priest's speech, the procession out, even the
throwing of the rice happened in like 20 minutes-- much too fast for even
the photographer to catch. note: no actual rice was harmed in the making
of this ceremony, they chose lavender instead.
They chose to memorize custom vows, a great idea when they already have 1,000
other freakin details to worry about. As you might expect, between this
laundry list and their nervousness, they each got about a line into their
speeches before forgetting the words and adlibbing it. To their credit,
they had us all fooled. Except, we did wonder a little when Cathy called
Rob "strange" twice during her turn.
(this really happened: "when I met you, I thought you were... strange...
blah blah blah... and now I know you... I still think you're strange...")
The Outfits
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I'm sure you're all thinking: "Long Island... big hair, right?" In fact, if
you grew up on Long Island, you know that girls have lots of different
hairstyles-- not everyone can have the biggest hair. There's also long,
superflat hair, extreme-super-curly hair, dyed-red hair, punk hair, goth
hair, and so on. In fact, "big" hair is mostly a high-school thing, when
you've got two hours to do it up every morning (you think I'm kidding?
how else do SAT scores get so low? true story: I once tutored a girl
whose combined score was less than 400-- she got penalized for some many
wrong answers, she'd have been better off just signing her name... but she
had perfect hair...)
The tuxes were fine, and went on without event. One guy got the following
remark: "Hey Phil, you clean real nice, uh heh uh heh..." (verbatim)
The dresses were real nice and not gaudy, which is amazing feat for a Long
Island wedding. Cathy must be a scary negotiator to avoid the pushy
bridal salespeople, who honestly liked the sequined print dress with
double-deep cleavage, 35-foot-train and velvet lacing spiraling down the
front.
The Photo Shoot
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Poor photographer trying to snap away outdoor shots in front of a gazebo, in
freezing-cold weather. The bridesmaids looked like raspberry popsicles
getting electrocuted.
Everybody was hamming it up-- I'm sure there's lots of blackmail material.
The Reception: food
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Let me describe the food selection:
- endless platters of swedish meatballs
- rice topped with (sickly-sweet) szechuan scallops and shrimp
- vegetables marinated in balsamic vinegar (endless trays)
- a hand-carved turkey
- a hand-carved ham
- cheese tortellini salad
- manicotti (endless trays)
- lasagne (endless trays)
I kid you not: that was the appetizers for the cocktail hour. Now, this is
how you can tell a New Jersey wedding from a Long Island wedding: on Long
Island, the entrees are lighter; in New Jersey, the entrees would be even
heavier. Go figurah (tr: I don't know why).
Anyways, the food was awwwesome (california translation: ahhhsome). Hats off
to the West Sayville Country Club [photo]
The Reception: The View
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Another way you can tell where the wedding is, in case you got plastered at
the open bar: look outside the window.
If you see an ocean with big, gentle waves or rolling hills with
grapevines, then it's a California wedding.
If you see an inlet with small, hard-hitting waves, or beautiful deep
woods with pine trees, then it's Long Island.
If you see a harbor with the wakes of barges, or the scrub lining a
freeway median, then it's New Jersey.
Californians: warning, you may experience vertigo the first time you see a
sunset and an ocean, but not together. it's weeehd, I tellya.
The Reception: Speeches
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I loved the schtick: rob and cathy did some kind of celtic tradition thing,
and burned physical objects that represent their single life, signifying
their adventure into married life. Rob didn't have to remind us that
playing out pyro fantasies was part of the attraction, but Cathy did have
to remind Rob that he *is* married, not "going to be" married. ;-) Cathy
burned a silly love poem, Rob burned telephone numbers of girls who never
returned his calls anyway. It was hilarious.
The best man, John, made a speech, something about cheez whiz. (inside joke)
The Reception: Miscellaneous Discussions
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Some random discussion topics...
- NT system administration: "I fuckin' hate Microsoft-- they make you reboot
just install their weekly security patches!" No quotes, but this is the
land of "is Linux the same thing as Unix? Like who uses Unix anyway?
Them long-hair California faggots, that's who!"
- the groom's friends were all about my age (30-35). One guy is a suffolk
county cop (10yrs), another a waiter at Red Lobster (13yrs). After
several startups (and school) in 10 years, I sounded like a drifter.
When Rob formally roasted the groomsmen, I got labeled a "sculptor who
dabbles in computers". Nobody laughed-- in Calfornia, it's like "wow--
you're a creative artist-- I'm jealous!"; on Long Island (you're "in"
California, but "on" Long Island -- don't ask me why, ask Billy Joel)-- on
LI, it's like "people pay you to pound blocks of stone? I'm jealous!"
- we observed that Rob made exactly one male friend in each geography he
lived in, outside of Long Island. We weren't sure what to make of this,
but it seemed weehd.
The Reception: Dancing and Music
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It is true: Rob and I met on a 300bps dial-up BBs (Searchlight, if you must
know) and became friends ripping off the RIAA before either activity was
fashionable. That's us, real trendsetters. But, you have to understand,
this was 15 years ago, a time and place where music was a way to meet
people, when Led Zeppelin was new to us, and when trading Zep involved
physical objects, sometimes large discs made of vinyl. You kids wouldn't
understand.
Anyways, I was relieved to hear Rob explain how he screamed at the DJs
beforehand, finally giving up and handing them the CDs he wanted them to
play. I've been to weddings where they have a quartet attach horsehairs
to pieces of wood and rake them over cat's gut. It's a barbaric practice
that should be outlawed in my opinion, and doubly so because the result
sounds like it belongs in an elevator. When it's important, you gotta
take things in your own hands. You chicks wouldn't understand.
As a side note, the music is another way to tell California, Long Island and
New Jersey weddings apart. In Northern California, pop music fans would
play The Grateful Dead and Eric Clapton. On Long Island, it's Billy Joel
and Led Zeppelin. In New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi of course.
Without further ado, some tracks from the limo and various car trips:
- joe jackson, breaking us in two
- led zeppelin, stairway to heaven
- billy joel, (too many to list)
and some tracks I heard during dinner:
- john coltrane, my favorite things
- the doors, light my fire (during the burning ceremony)
- led zeppelin, the rain song
the cake cutting was choreographed to The Beatles, When I'm Sixty Four,
complete with a chorus-singalong in between knife strokes. It was too cool.
Dancing commenced with... you guessed it: You Shook Me All Night Long (AC/DC).
Then the bleepin DJs hijacked the "turntable" and played disco. Nevermind
that the bride, groom and the rest of us are exactly old enough to
remember "disco is dead" graffiti on the bathroom walls of junior high.
After a while, we dragged Rob out for the "last dance" (he doesn't)...
Last Dance Number 1 is the wedding and bar mitzvah classic Pour Some Sugar on Me,
by Def Leppard-- the only band to go multi-platinum with a one-armed
drummer. Rob took his hair out of its 3 ponytails, and started moshing.
For old friends like me, it was old times, with his hair so long, it moved
in one direction while his head wound back up for the next slam forward.
I joined in, of course. Fortunately, the photographers went nuts, and I'm
sure we'll have some great negatives that future employers can use to
bargain-down our salaries.
Last Dance Number 2... no surprise here: Paradise By the Dashboard Light, by
Meatloaf. If you know it, just imagine the bride and groom mouthing each
part to one another, teary-eyed on the best night of their lives.
Last Dance Number 3... drum roll please: Thank You, by Led Zeppelin. To
some, "heavy metal as your last dance?"; to others, a classic you haven't
heard in years; but to others, a timeless love song for a timeless couple.