See That Girl, Watch That Scene
First of all, let me apologize for the panic and confusion resulting from the lack of a Sunday night post this week. I'm here now, so there's no need for you to do anything drastic to yourself. Pops make it all better.

It's been a long weekend. In addition to my normal regimen of hunting and killing stray cats (your cat is "stray" if I can see it from the street... local readers may want to keep their blinds closed Saturday nights), we had a wedding to go to. This is first of two weddings we'll be attending this spring, both of which my wife will be in as a bridesmaid.

These blessed events are the reason I haven't seen my wife for more than two hours in a row at any given time since January. As a bridesmaid x2 she spends her time as a full-time member of various Bridal Party Steering Committees planning events she will then attend (bridal showers, bachelorette party weekends, rehearsal dinners and the like). This means extra Pops-only time with the sprogs, during which time I may or may not be passive-aggressively feeding them popcorn and beer for dinner.

Saturday was the actual Blessed Event (1 of 2). This one was in Orange County at a very old church (well, very old for California). I have some observations:

-Want to make a room full of Californians nervous? Put them all in a massive 100+ year old brick structure. One strong jolt and we transition from Congregation to People They Eventually Call Off The Search For. The constant promise of earthquakes can really fuck with your head. See also: waiting for lights to change under freeway overpasses.

-You can note all the thematic similarity in the stained glass, mosaics, statuary and other decoration around the church and say loudly, "Hey, whose the dude in all the pictures? Did he build this church?", but not everyone will laugh.

-Lutheran Jesus is a smiley, antiseptic, wound-free Messiah. Very nearly Buddy Christ.

The wedding was actually very nice. I sat with my in-laws, who didn't even have to crash. They were actually invited and everything. My wife would like you to know that her bridesmaid's dress was actually quite sensible and flattering.

Because the bride likes me, my wife (and all the other bridesmaids) didn't have to sit at the Head Table. This means I got to sit next to her while the meal was served, just before I never saw her again for the rest of the night.

As far as I can tell, a woman's primary goal at a wedding reception is to get drunk and dance in unison with other women whenever possible (your Chicken Dance, your electric slide, your "YMCA", etc.)

A man's primary goal at a wedding reception is (obviously) to fuck a bridesmaid. That's the pinnacle of male achievement really, at least for those of us who will never score an NFL touchdown. Any-old-body can get laid at a wedding. Drunk single girls, so sad about their single-ness, surrounded by words, rites and imagery of snuggly together-forever-ness can be talked out of their underwear fairly easily.

But to bag yourself a bridesmaid, draped in that uniform of upstanding associated purity, well that's a story that a father will tell to his son to echo down the generations.

Now that I think about it, I suppose the ultimate would really be to bang the bride herself. Why chase the bass player when the lead singer is available, right? But past the social taboos, in most cases the bride is spoken-for. I myself have only slept with a bride once and that was after my own wedding.

Once my wife and the other bridesmaids (all married) bolted for the dancefloor to tease and frustrate the single/looking men in the congregation, I was left at the table with Bridesmaid's Husbands. At first we sat there silently, puffed up by our own awesomeness that comes from a sense of ownership and expectation of being married to a bridesmaid. There were some mental high-fives going on. The feeling is transient, especially into the third hour or so. Before it could get too uncomfortably silent, one of us brought up the NCAA tournament and it was smooth sailing from then on.

It was a late night (for us). My slightly drunk wife and I did the other Wedding Day Tradition and talked all kinds of shit about just about every attendee who wasn't us during the drive home.

So Sunday we crammed our normal weekend all into one day. We had to skip church and I had no time or energy to blogpost last night. That is my official excuse.

Tough as Sunday was, it was hard to be in a bad mood that day. After all, I'd woken up next to a bridesmaid that morning.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.5


Pops


PS-the post's title is NOT from ABBA's "Dancing Queen". That would be totally gay. No, it's from Elvis Costello's "When I Was Cruel #2". I'm going to pretend I don't know where he got it from.
- posted by Pops @ 9:53 AM