So raise a glass

Shaloha, my brothers from other mothers and sisters from other misters. Except Kevin, who is my actual brother. That reminds me (already) of something. I wrote Kevin an email last week with the subject line, "A little late." Here's what it said:

I have no idea why I just thought of this, but here goes. You know what would've been a funny thing for your speech at my wedding? This: "Growing up, I used to always joke that Peter was adopted and that I remembered the day our parents brought him home. Well, Peter, on this special day I will finally admit to you that you weren't actually adopted. In fact, that teen couple from Connecticut is technically still your parents in the eyes of the law." Oh well, maybe next time.

I really don't know what brought me to what someone else could've said four years ago, but that would've been a funny zinger, don't you think? He was nice to me throughout his speech, mainly because he said I was nice during my speech at his wedding seven months earlier.

Hey, this little aside just turned into a bona fide topic on which I can write. I fucking love it when that happens! Here's the deal: as a 30 year-old, I've now been to a good number of weddings. (There are two more coming up in the next few months, including the couple that my friend Lisa and I set up. Yes, we're still very pleased with ourselves about that.) Often, the Best Man/Maid of Honor speeches don't stand out too much to me. They're almost always just sweet and a touching tribute to the new couple. And while I haven't seen any "Remember when we double-teamed that hooker" speeches, there are still a few that have stood out for various reasons.

First off, I was at a cousin's wedding somewhere in the early part of this decade. Her husband had grown up in Canada, specifically in Saskatchewan. When his best friend was up there for his speech, he referred to them playing hockey together as kids in Regina. Two interesting facts about Regina: one, it's the capital of Saskatchewan; and two, it's pronounced so that it rhymes with vagina. Therefore, a funny scene unfolded at our table when he spoke the name of the city. Even though they were turned almost 180 degrees from me to watch the speech, I could immediately see my parents' cheeks rise and their faces turn a little redder. Slowly and as nonchalantly as possible, they turned to look directly at me. I'm not sure what they expected to see, but when I smiled and gave a kind of "aw yeah" nod in their direction, they had trouble holding in their laughter. Fortunately, they managed to keep it under control enough that we didn't have to say anything awkward like, "Sorry for interrupting your speech, but a word you said thirty seconds ago rhymed with a part of the female anatomy." Although, if my parents had said that, I could've replied with "Mulva?" and brought the house down. Damn. Next time.

The second Best Man speech on which I'll write is from a wedding shortly after that first one. The thing is, I'm not entirely sure whose it was. I don't think it was my friends Lisa and Paul's, but if so, I apologize in advance. Where has my memory gone? That used to be my calling card, and key details are rapidly disappearing. Actually, I take that back a little. I just scared someone yesterday in my office when I reminded him that we sat next to each other on a plane two years ago. "Oh yeah," he said. I told him, "You were playing a Space Invaders-type game on your iPod the whole time, and you thought the flight attendant said that we could purchase a 'snatch box' instead of a 'snack box.'" He stared at me blankly for a second, then said, "Ok, you have a scary good memory." So I still have it to some degree. Ok, back to the wedding I don't remember. In this speech, the best man started with something to the effect of: "Is there anything better than new love? Yes. Old love. The love of two people who have been together for decades and love each other so completely..." He had just one or two more lines, then raised his glass and said, "So here's to old love!" I turned to my lovely now-wife and said, "We're toasting to something better than the new couple?" We replayed the speech in our heads and realized that yes, that's exactly what we were doing. I equate that to something like this: "Congratulations on your new job as Assistant Editor of the school paper. The only thing better than that is being the actual Editor. Long live the Editor!" I know he meant well (whoever he was), but I think it wasn't executed in quite the best manner.

The third Best Man speech was from my friends Suzanne and Andrew's wedding. First off, Andrew's got a fantastic British accent (he's from the same area as Sting), so anything that he or his best mate said automatically sounded better than our silly American accents. In the speech, the friend was nice to Andrew throughout it save one remark about his receeding hairline. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive to that as I see my forehead slowly turning into a fivehead, but I think that's below the belt. (Yes, I know anatomically that my head is above the belt, but please just let it slide. I'm willing to let "head over heels" slide, even though that's where they normally are in relation to each other. I will not, though, give Alannis Morisette a pass with "Head Over Feet." You see, Alannis, that's not the phrase. When I first heard that song, I initially got angry, but then I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I thought, "Maybe she used 'feet' because she needed a rhyme and is using vaguely-poetic license." What word actually needed the rhyme? "Me." So no, she didn't get any kind of pass from me. "Me" rhymes just as well with "heels" as "feet" does, except one of those two is actually in the colloquialism she's attempting to use. The scary thing is, that doesn't even crack the top two of Alannis songs that piss me off for one reason or another. It might be in third place, solely because I can't understand any of the words to "Uninvited" enough to hate them.) In any case, Andrew just laughed it off and didn't seem bothered by the comment at all. Gotta hand it to them Brits.

And now, the granddaddy of all Best Man/Maid of Honor speeches. To protect the innocent, we'll call this couple "Donna" and "Joey." Let's just say that by the time the Matron of Honor and Maid of Honor went up there to do their joint speech for Donna, the bar had been open for several hours. It was something. I shall try my best to recreate it in dialogue format.

Friend 1: (giggle giggle) I remember the first time that Donna met Joey.
Friend 2: (grabbing the microphone from Friend 1) Wait! Wait! (giggle giggle) And she was like, "Who's Joey?"
(both laugh uncontrollably)

I can't do it justice, so I'm going back to paragraph form. Let the record show though that they spent literally five minutes laughing, passing the mic back and forth, and saying absolutely nothing. My lovely wife and I weren't even engaged at that point, yet this wedding had us already discussing what we wouldn't do at ours if that ever happened. It got even better though, as a drunk aunt decided that she wanted to grab the mic and say a little something. I'm paraphrasing a little here, but I think it's fairly accurate: "I just wanted to say...that while everything is so nice and beautiful here today...someone is not here with us and it's not right. It's not right, because she couldn't be here. So while this is all very nice, it's not right because someone isn't here with us and she should be." That went on for a while, and the confused guests just smiled politely and waited for it to end. Later, we asked Donna what the hell that was all about. "My grandma had diarrhea and didn't want to come today. The way my aunt said it though, it sounded like she had died, and my cousin thought that's what happened and started crying." Nicely done, drunk aunt. It was memorable to say the least.

And now, one quick note before we launch into the Car Watch. Our friend Riley thought of me when a word came up, and that made me happy. She explained that to her, "extraordinary" sounds like it should mean "not just normal and boring, but super normal and boring." I see her point. When my co-worker Rob used to get a regular vanilla latte with whipped cream every single time at the Coffee Bean, I thought he was being extra ordinary. Now that he occasionally switches it up, he's back to regular ordinary.

Crap, another quick note. One of the drinks that he's gotten instead recently is a "Hot Vanilla." "Is that any different than what you normally get?" I asked. "Yeah, it's like a hot chocolate, but with the vanilla powder and steamed milk instead. There's no coffee in it." That blew my mind, and so I had to get one to see if it was worth all the fuss. It was tasty, but a little too sweet for me. I'm not the best judge of these things since I like my coffee black, so I encourage you to give it a try if that description sounded good to you. I know, I'm such a giver.

And now, it's time to shake your groove thangs on down to the Car Watch.

I saw a license plate on my way home from work that said, "CR8ZY ME." Yes, you're so cratezy. I'd better look out, because there's a creightzy person next to me! Ooooh. This flies directly in the face of Peter Klein's Rule #1 for vanity plates: "If thou canst makest thy message fit on thy plate in a manner that preserves the integrity of said message, then dude, just let it go."

I then saw a plate that told me, "HIIMPOO." Gosh, could that person have any lower self-esteem? What a sad way to introduce yourself to the public. "Good morning. I am excrement. Yes, the body already took the nutrients out of everything you ate, so all that left over waste is...me. Have a nice day."

My homey Rockabye saw a bumper sticker that made me smile. "Say No to Negativity," it said. I'm pretty sure I'd seen that one myself, but I appreciate the humor and the message. I could get all deep and philosophical about how sometimes a piece of a vice can help stop the negative behavior all together, but that makes my brain hurt a little. On the plus side, "A Piece of A Vice" would be a great business name for a drug dealer.

Lastly, Rockabye saw a bumper sticker that pissed me off enough that it gets the famed closer position of this week's Car Watch: "Witches parking. All others will be towed." I wrote back immediately, "On a car? And no apostrophe? WTF?" He confirmed that yes, the grammar-lacking sticker was on the car while trying to tell us who can park there. Park on the car? Or is she saying that wherever she decides to park that car, it should be for witches only? I'm truly at a loss (and an angry loss at that), and I desperately want to ask that person what the hell she's thinking. And I sure hope she made that sticker herself, because otherwise it's doubly bad that someone thought it was a good idea to create it and someone else thought it was a good idea to buy it. I hate people sometimes.

But I adore all of you, my gentle readers. Although I must say, I sure would like for some of you to chip in with a thought every now and then. Like or dislike a word or phrase? Have a favorite joke? See something on a car that you liked, disliked, or didn't get? Do you like cheese? Anything, folks, anything at all, and ptklein@gmail.com is there for you. Have a great weekend and week. Happy Birthday on Monday to Robin, who found the love of her life thanks to me and Lisa. See you all back here on Leap Day. Awwww yeah.

I second that demotion

Good morning, gentle readers. It's Thursday, and do you know what that means? Me neither, but it was worth asking. Whenever possible, I like to extend an unintentional theme throughout the majority of a week. This week is no exception, and after two days talking about Yearbook Camp, I'm going to delve into some stuff that happened in that world after returning from the getaway. It's a tale of tough choices, backstabbery, vengeance via procrastination, and ultimately the dawn of a new creative age. (That makes it sound a hell of a lot more intriguing, no?)

Chapter 1: Tough Choices
As I mentioned earlier this week, I spent my junior year of Yearbook Staff working on the underclassmen pages and setting myself up to be one of the Co-Editors in Chief the following year. When the time came for the teacher to name the two new Editors, I fully expected to be one of them because of the work I had done. There was a difficult wrinkle in there though: the main Yearbook class period was the same time that the only Advanced Placement Spanish course was offered. I knew this would be a sticking point in the mind of the teacher, but I had come a long with my language courses and did not want to give up something that I could potentially continue scholastically in college in exchange for an extracurricular activity. I talked to him about it and hoped he would appreciate my tough decision. I played up the internal struggle a little more than it actually existed, and I left the conversation feeling like my chances were as good as ever to still get one of the positions.

A couple of days later, the teacher announced that due to some scheduling complications, we would have three Co-Editors for the first time in Yearbook Staff history. Two would be in the main period and one would be in another one. We each had other large sections we'd be in charge of to offset the fact that we were dividing the Editor duties in thirds instead of halves (I would have the magazine section in the middle of the book). I felt like that decision was a little slap in the face, and sensing this, the teacher told me that I had made my priorities known and this was a consequence. I had put him in a tough position as well, and I didn't harbor resentment for long at all.

Chapter 2: Backstabbery
The resentment came back though, let me assure you. I set my schedule and put Yearbook in an open space. I told the teacher where it would be (he had told me that it didn't matter), and he asked why I couldn't do it in fourth period instead. "I have Play Production then," I told him. He made a dismayed face, clearly unhappy that I had chosen something else "more important" than his class. It didn't take long after that. About two weeks into the new school year, he pulled me aside. "Let's just agree that this isn't working out," he started. I had no intention of agreeing, but I allowed him to continue. "You obviously have a lot of other commitments with Spanish, the drama stuff, and your improv group, so let's call it what it is and just let you be the Magazine Editor while the other two take over the larger duties." I was about to be completely fine with that decision, fully acknowledging that it had been difficult to oversee projects when I wasn't physically with a lot of the staff. But then he added, "Don't worry, you can still put Editor on your college applications if you want," as if that was my motive from the beginning.

Chapter 3: Vengence Via Procrastination
I'll be the first to admit that my actions from that point on were of the passive aggressive nature. I knew that the teacher (who really was a nice man whom I respected) got very antsy when projects weren't completed well in advance. Therefore, I took my sweet time. The magazine section was my baby, and I told him it would all be done in time and done well.

Chapter 4: The Dawn of a New Creative Age
While most people formed ideas with the teacher, wrote articles, and then went out with a photographer to get appropriate shots for that feature, I took a different approach. I came up with an idea, looked through the box of discarded photos that no one was using, and found a way to make those fit something in the piece. If they didn't fit, I'd change things around so that they did. This afforded me an amazing amount of creative freedom with the smaller time commitment necessary, and I had a lot of fun with it. Since the teacher was so fed up with my process, I don't think he proofed my projects well enough and a few things slipped in there that were questionable. Allow me to illustrate both the part about the pictures and the questionable content:

I created a list of "The Most Requested New Classes" on one of the pages. After coming up with 15 funny titles, I went to the box of photos and flipped through. There was a picture of two guys in a class, and one has his eyes closed from blinking at the flash. Most would discard that photo, but I manage to tie it in. The caption reads, "As Larry Cox reads his Hypnotism homework aloud, he accidentally causes William Gutierrez to slip into a deep, semi-conscious trance." Ta dah! As for "questionable content," I still can't believe that I was allowed to print such course titles as "Hands-On Sex Ed," "Body Piercing 101," "Self Mutilation," "Weapon Shop," and "Self Gratification 101."

Other "articles" included a list of bad jokes, made-up band names for the future, random facts ("Loss of life is the leading cause of death for people ages 25-40"), pick-up lines, and little articles about the year in music, movies, and fashion. It was all very well received, and that magazine section was hands-down a precursor to UOPTA. Lack of preparation? Check. Very loosely tying things together? Check. Writing about things that I find interesting without considering if others might? You know it, sista.

So that's my story. Judging by the word count, I think it's fair to say that I successfully stretched the theme out for another day. Yay me. Have a good rest of the day, friends, and I'll be back tomorrow with another Follow Up Friday.