Wedding Pips

Fans of the blog (yeah, I'm referring to all three of you) know how skittish I am about weddings. In the past, you've likely read this or this. If you haven't, you should do so and return when you're better prepared.

The most overlooked reason weddings leave a gassy feeling in my tummy is that it forces the bride and groom to commit to social hierarchies that are uncomfortable to admit.

When we were all younger, way younger, like when mustaches were more manly than ironic, we used to use our personal friendship rankings as a power play. "If you trade me those Dunkaroos for this apple, I'll be your best friend." We've all been a part of the if-you-do-_____-I'll-be-your-best-friend trade-off before. It takes balls to pull this off and little kids have balls, mostly because they haven't got brains.

Clearly they haven't got any brains because the deals went through. They happened. I didn't have Dunkaroos until I was 15 because I kept trading them away to people so they'd become my friends. They were already sitting next to me in school and at lunch and probably already liked me before the transaction, but what did I know?

If I was interested in making my own tee shirts, I'd make one that said "I was a stupider child than you were." I'm not into making my own tee shirts though, so the point is moot.

Using your friendship to manipulate certain situations ran rampant throughout my childhood. Kids my age wrote out invitations according to who was most liked. The cool kids were established by the sheer number of other kids that hung around them. If you sucked at dodgeball, but your friend was a captain, you'd always be picked third.*

* You couldn't be picked first or second because the team had to compete and the captain would get ridiculed for choosing some lame dodgeballer first. The fix would totally be in, the captain's status would plunge and both he and you would be screwed.

It should also be noted that this rule only applies to boys. Girls had no interest in competing or really, being good at anything. Girls only picked their friends and chatted while holding onto the dodgeballs. Thinking back, girls were a total waste until they hit puberty. They're fine now, but I have no regrets wanting nothing to do with them when I was eight.

When I was little, I secretly ranked my friends. I did. I had to. I was always scared I was going to actually be thrown in the hypothetical situations people dream up (drowning boat with time enough only to save one, a dive bombing airplane with only one other parachute, an invitation to a supermodel orgy for you and only one guest**). It seemed imperative that if any of these situations were to arise, that I should not waste time rashly deciding things I should have settled in my head long ago.

** That last hypothetical came a little later in life.

So, for the bulk of my life, at any given moment, I knew who my best friend on Earth was. I also knew the silver medal winner, the bronze and the guys who I didn't really care for, but whose moms were hot.

For most people, this way of thinking shifts and locks onto other things, leaving your friendships in a shapeless glob of history, geography and circumstance. This isn't to say that all friends are equal. Far from it. But the relationships become more organic and comfortable. Eventually, most of us stop associating with people whose friendship can be purchased for the price of a pack of Dunkaroos.

And right about this time is when most people get engaged.

Weddings ask us, once again, to organize where everyone stands in our individual lives. Who's my best man? Which five of my friends and relatives deserve to purchase heinous taffeta bridesmaids dresses? Who's a friend, but still owes me $100 bucks and therefore will be relegated to usher?

Weddings make everyone's social standing frighteningly clear.

And God help you if you don't have a) one (1) sibling or b) someone who saved your life in one way or another.

If my sister Emily was my brother it would be so much easier.*** She'd automatically be my best man. Why? Because we share the same blood. It's not a question of "like" it's a question of family and of "right-ness."

*** For me, not for my sister. If Emily was a boy, she'd take a lot of shit for looking and acting like such a wuss.

It's the same idea if a friend of mine pulled me from a burning wreck, lifted my near-drowned body from the bottom of a pool or spent six years as my AA sponsor. "Hey fellas, your feelings can't be hurt, George here saved my life. I literally couldn't have gotten married without him. I owed him one. I mean, c'mon, his best man speech is practiclaly already written!"

Those two options make everything easy. But I have neither option. One day - I don't know when - I'm going to have to not only choose who will be my Gladys Knight, but also the Pips. I'll also have to show everyone whom I don't like enough to be either Gldys or the Pips clear-cut evidence of this. I'm not jazzed about this process.

The funny thing is, the decision itself isn't hard. I know who it'll be. Actually, I've got both Gladys and all the Pips chosen in my head. The hard part will be revealing to the Pips that they're not Gladys Knight and revealing to the audience that they won't be one of the Pips.

I believe that most people would honestly rather not be a main part of the wedding, but I bet they'd like to be asked. I'd be happy to ask if I somehow knew they would decline. But I don't know that and I'd hate to have the fat guy I bunked with for four years of basketball camp inexplicably become my best man.

The weird thing is, weddings are supposed to be a joyous occasion and yet, to some degree someone's feelings almost certainly have to get hurt at least a little. Someone is going to think they play a bigger part in my life than they do. In fact, it's possible some people don't realize how important they actually are.

Man, I hate weddings.

Bill Kurtis

I can't eat in public anymore. I never thought this would be a problem that I would grow up to have, but alas I'm developing a tendency to create hubbubs in eateries.

Once or twice a week I leave work to eat lunch. I always eat alone. It makes me feel chic, like I'm too cool for school...or maybe just too cool for friends. The act of going out to eat is pretty much where my man-about-town fairy tale ends as the places I go are far from high society hang-outs. Most of the restaurants I'm talking about are named after Al or Bernie and the word "beef" or "grill" can be found somewhere in the restaurant's name.

I was in my favorite ethnic delicatessen (read: Chinese food joint) eating my weekly helping of chicken fried rice. I was in Yu Choy (pictured above) for 10 minutes when an older gentleman with a familiar face and an even more familiar voice sat at the table in front of me and ordered chicken dumplings.

I quickly identified him as popular Chicago journalist-cum-AT&T-wireless-Internet-spokesman Bill Kurtis. Whenever I'm in the presence of someone with a modicum of notoriety (it doesn't happen often), I ask myself "how famous is this person in front of me, really?" That is to say, is this person famous enough that distant family members are going to call to say they saw me mixed in with all the media and paparazzi on CNN? Is this person famous enough to be one of the B-listers on "Dancing With the Stars?" or is this person famous like the mildly crazy guy in town whom everyone knows to avoid?

As far as I know (and could tell from watching him eat his dumplings) Bil Kurtis seems more likely to end up dancing with Cheryl Burke than on CNN or the dumpster in my alleyway.

Bill Kurtis (pictured: right) is famous, but with a small "f."

He's famous enough that the Hispanic owner of the Chinese restaurant (?) also recognized him. After gathering around three of his employees to validate his suspicion that the old guy at table four was, in some way, famous, the owner made his approach... with a steaming bowl of shrimp chop suey in hand.* I could tell it was shrimp chop suey, because before he shimmied on over to Mr. Kurtis' table, he brought me my check. His focus was on Bill Kurtis now. He was done with me and the check was his way of signifying it.

Because the book I brought with me was just so-so, by now it only served as a beard disguising my spying on the unfolding theater in front of me. I wondered if the restaurant owner would still hand Bill Kurtis the fresh bowl of suey if Bill Kurtis turned out to be some regular dude with a smooth voice. There weren't any customers in the place without food, how would the owner have covered that up? It was Bill Kurtis, so I'll never know.

*Mmm. Shrimp chop suey. Sparing no expense, I see.

A healthy dose of gushing took a one way trip from the owner to Bill Kurtis. It was muted enough that I couldn't hear exactly what was said. Again, with certain celebrities, you can probably guess what someone would say in that situation.

"Oh Madonna, you look so good for your age... well, I don't mean your age, like you're old, I meant your age as in, 'my God you're 50 and you look 16...' But...but I'm not implying you had plastic surgery. You're 50. Be proud of that...not that you're not... I'm just saying you look healthier than people your age usually look. You look great... you totally look good enough to pull off messing around with A-Rod... not that you were, just that you could..."

But the restaurant owner probably wasn't bringing up A-Rod in his conversation with Bill Kurtis. They exchanged a few more pleasantries and then it got to the point where it would have been awkward for the owner to stand hovering above this poor old (68) guy with two plates of food, one of which he had not ordered. So the owner returned to my table, picked up the money I left with the check and made change. He returned quickly, always with one eye on the famous television anchor, shoveled my change and my check (again) at me and returned to the table in front of me to attend to the whims of Mr. Kurtis (who didn't really seem to have any whims) and to provide an epilogue to the star struck show the owner had been putting on in front of me these last few minutes.

The owner felt comfortable enough to bring a few of the restaurant's cooks over to visit with Bill Kurtis. They weren't asking for autographs or taking pictures. They weren't really chatting with him, either. They were more like watching him chew. Like a scorned wife waiting for her husband to drop dead after eating the soup she poisoned. Everyone huddled around Kurtis waiting for...I dunno, something.

My bill was $7. I left a $2 tip, the high-roller that I am, and finished the two pages left I had in my book's chapter. I gathered my jacket, book and phone and headed for the exit. In the rigmarole surrounding Kurtis, it didn't seem as if anyone was paying attention to me until I heard an angry voice behind me loudly saying "Hey, man!"

Being a man, it seemed reasonable that the statement was directed toward me.

I turned around and the tiny owner was right behind me like we were attached to each other by four feet of rope. He had my check and my $2 in his fist.

"You gotta pay your bill, man," the owner said.

This was confusing because I had paid the bill. I wouldn't know how to go about paying for something twice. I glanced over the owner's head at Bill Kurtis who was (seemingly) not paying attention to the confrontation.** I felt this all somehow had something to with Kurtis and kinda hoped he would, at least, rubberneck in his seat.

** Bill Kurtis is a wily journalist. I now realize he heard every word we said. Well played, old man.

I explained to the owner that the cash he had in his hand was the tip, made from change he had given me just a few minutes ago in a gushing haze of Kurtis excitement. Okay, I didn't say anything about Bill Kurtis, but I was hoping the owner would infer why this mistake was happening. Star gazing Bill Kurtis made this guy think I was dine-and-dashing.

What am I? Miss Louisiana Teen USA?

I am not Miss Louisiana Teen USA.

I'm surprised more people aren't as afraid of this situation as I am. Everyday instances of my-word-against-yours could happen and sometimes do. This was not going to court and I had to decide whether I was willing to walk - perhaps force my way - out of the restaurant (and never come back) or avoid confrontation and pay my bill a second time. I stalled the decision altogether and tried to explain the exact same situation a second time. I again told the owner that "for some reason" he handed me the check along with my change, but that I had paid the bill.

For the owner, it was simple, if the check is one the table it must mean that the customer didn't pay. There's a process, a system, he does this dozens of times a day. Why would that system fail now?

Bill Kurtis, that's why. Damn you, Bill Kurtis.

During my second attempt at explaining the situation, one of the cooks previously gawking at the CBS journalist earlier joined our little pow-wow with a $20 bill in his hand (presumably my $20 bill). He held it in front of the owner as if it were verifiable proof that I had paid. I couldn't imagine that either of them had memorized the serial number of the bill, and the sad thought crossed my mind that my bill was the only twenty in the drawer. Inexplicably I nodded and agreed that the bill in the cook's hand was my bill. "Yup, that's it. Can't you tell? Looks just like the bill I handed you. Andrew Jackson, right? Yeah, totally. That's mine."

The owner was instantly appeased. He apologized and handed me a free fortune cookie, apologizing profusely. I was relieved, nnot mad although I was struck with the irony that Bill Kurtis was more likely to steal from them than I was, as the journalist has a recent history of theft (see video below). And if Yu Choy was willing to give Bill Kurtis some free shrimp suey just for showing up, shouldn't I have had the same for being wrongly accused?

Hopscotch

On my walk home from work three days ago I noticed a pink and blue chalk etching of a hopscotch line.*

*I don't know that I've ever before played hopscotch and if I have, I'm certain I didn't play it correctly. I'm not even really sure what the thing kids jump on is called. I mean, I know that they're literally jumping on the sidewalk, but doesn't the sidewalk turn into something when you draw numbered hopscotch boxes on it? I was always under the impression that hopscotch was what you did, not what you did it on. Are you hopscotching or are you jumping on the hopscotch?

I thought nothing of it three days ago. It was poorly created, the chalked lines were uneven, shaky and faint and the numbers inside each box were barely legible. I'm not sure I would've recognized them as numbers had I not already known that numerals were supposed to go inside the boxes.

Three days ago, it was fairly easy for me to glance at the 50 hopscotch boxes and forget I ever saw them. Some kids had a nice weekend. It's better than playing videogames, Twittering about how atrocious the new Facebook layout is or putting the finishing touches on the new meth lab. Good for the kids. One point for the antiquated ideal of youth.

Two days ago I noticed the hopscotch boxes had extended to the end of the block. There were 650 boxes now. I imagined the calf muscles these tiny children were going to have by the end of this hopscotch game.* I was happy the children were setting lofty goals for themselves and playing outside in order to attain those goals.

*Again, forgive my hopscotch naivete, but I'm not sure how one wins the game. For the sake of this blog, I'll assume one wins only after their opponent trips while hopping and crumbles to the ground. Kinda like Russian drinking games, but instead of trading shots of vodka, it's hopscotch and instead of barfing, it's falling.

Yesterday, I came upon the hopscotch again and found two kids, a boy and a girl, both about 11-years-old, at the end of the massive row of hopscotch boxes. I've made it quite clear at this point that I'm ignorant to all things hopscotch,* so perhaps I've got it all wrong, but they seemed a little old for hopscotch. These two kids really looked 11 and by the time I was 11, I was playing baseball. I don't want to come off as any sort of elitist, but a baseball field's chalk lines indicating fair and foul are about the only things that a sport like baseball and a children's game like hopscotch have in common. I was a little disheartened that these kids looked 11 and not six.

*I'm close to being ignorant about all things scotch. I'm clueless on hopscotch, I know nothing about the whiskey, except that it makes me want to die just sniffing it. I run shallow on my Scottish history other than that I really dig the Fratellis. My only saving grace is that I know shit loads of stuff about Scotch tape. For instance, did you know that "cellophane tape" originated with two sticky sides instead of one (what we now call double-sided tape), but to cut costs, 3M produced the tape with only one sticky side? A Minnesota automobile trader said that the Scotch bosses at 3M were stingy and the name stuck (no pun intended).

Anyway, they had traversed the street and had continued on the adjacent sidewalk starting at 651. I wondered what they would do about the 20 feet in between hopscotch box 650 on one side of the street and hopscotch box 651 on the other. Was the street a free zone? Are you allowed to have a free zone in hopscotch?

Is it halftime?

It didn't really matter. The street, the ever-growing numbers, the ages of the kids, the rules of the game. None of it mattered. Kids will be kids. They were setting goals. Fun goals. Innocent goals.

As I walked closer to the children etching an even greater number of chalk boxes, I noticed that one kid wasn't helping the other. The boy was, in fact, slapping the nearby concrete with a fallen tree branch. The girl was etching each box with what can only be called careless consumption. There was no effort put into each box (which was why a box created by an 11-year-old looked to have been created by a six-year-old). She wasn't making a hopscotch table, she was absently drawing boxes and numbering them, like she had nothing better to do.

There were no rocks, no hopping, no competition. Nothing. Just two stupid kids spending the time not taken up by drooling to stand around doodling on the ground with blue and pink chalk.

What a betrayal! This was not a quaint hearkening back to Opie Taylor or Wally and the Beav'. This was two uncreative, bored-ass idiots drawing boxes on the ground and swinging sticks around like a bunch of Appalachian mounties. Video games would have been better. The meth labs, the Facebook... all better than this idle nothingness.

Ever see a toddler with pudding smeared all over his or her face? Sure, part of you is sad that the child has gross poop-like desert gelatin surrounding its mouth, but most of you is annoyed that that child hasn't got the sense to wipe off the mess or not allow the mess to happen in the first place.

In that analogy hopscotch is the pudding.

Here I thought these kids were the last vestige of old fashioned outdoor play. Overachieving competitors in a simple elementary game. Turns out they're just "Deliverance" with a pail-full of chalk nubs in place of banjos.

Oh the humanity.

Chipotlooting

Tip it in the bud: If you accidentally drop something in a tip jar, let it go,
'cause man, it's gone.

I recently found myself in Chipotle, which is about as newsworthy as an alert that I am sitting on the toilet (an alert often preceding a trip to Chipotle).

Chipotle addresses head-on what Taco Bell does not: it's all the same ingredients gussied up and rearranged as if it were something wholly new. For Taco Bell it's a point of embarrassment, for Chipotle, it's a business model.

I like the guys behind the counter, more specifically, the visible food preparers mixing up my chorizo and barbicoa. I've never been to a Chipotle that did not have employees of Latin decent preparing my food. This is important to me. I still say the worst Chinese food I've ever had was prepared by what looked like a gaggle of Irish women in Gloucester, Mass. This shouldn't have surprised me, the Irish suffered a famine because they only liked potatoes, why would they know how I prefer my shrimp fried rice? So when I see genuine latinos and latinas, it reminds me just how smart McDonald's Corp is.

Ask yourself: would you rather eat a burrito that I prepared for you, or someone native to the burrito culture?

Is it okay to say burrito culture?

Hopefully I've established that I'm more appreciative of Chipotle and all it's employees than I probably should be for a high-end fast food joint. My appreciation was turned in on itself and used as an ironic dagger to my soul.

I ordered a quadruple shot of corn tacos (expertly prepared by my seemingly authentic food staff), scooted down the high school lunch line, squared up in front of the cashier and crescendoed by paying for my meal with a $10 bill. The cashier handed back a single, a few coins and my receipt all in one fistful. This transaction was like a precarious drawbridge swinging over the tip jar moat. I'm in the habit of dropping whatever change I'm given into tip jars, just as much for my own convenience as it is alms to the restaurant staff. Like usual, I dropped the coins into the tip jar, but I also accidentally dropped the receipt. I reached in the tip jar to pull it out. The tip jar is not a trash can and because I fully intended to throw my receipt in the trash, it didn't seem right for me to leave my soon-to-be trash in their tip jar.

I looked up at the cashier as I was fishing for my receipt and something struck me as funny. The look on her face seemed confused and perhaps angry. I did what most people confused about a situation would do to coax out more information, I smiled. Nervously.

"Uh-uh. What are you doing?" the cashier asked.

Still confused. Still gripping the single in my fist. Still fishing for the receipt, I finally got it and showed it to the cashier.

"I dropped this," I said.

"That's for tips," she said. "Put that back."

Ohhh. Okay. I understood.

This was not the first time I've had change trouble in a food establishment and I didn't want to create another scene.

The cashier saw the single in my hand, probably paid as little attention to me as I did to her, not realizing she had just handed me the single and saw what she thought was me taking money out of the tip jar.

"You just gave me this dollar," I said. "I dropped my receipt and I was just fishing it out."

A problem flashed across my brain. I was admitting that I was not stealing a dollar from the tip jar, but I was also admitting that I hadn't put a dollar in the tip jar. I wasn't sure the total of the coins I tossed in there and feared it was three cents or something. I glanced at the receipt. It was 18 cents. My defense was crumbling.

Eighteen cents is not a good tip.

In my mind, I was agitated because I felt guilty. But for what? I hadn't stolen anything. I didn't even believe the Chipotle staff deserved tips, if I may be so honest. They get paid a higher hourly wage than waiters, they get paid a wage comparable to Burger King and Arby's and those employees didn't garner tips. It feels like I'm tipping whoever had the idea to put out a tip jar. Existence does not equal justification. Now I felt vilified and I didn't deserve it.

The only way I was going to get out of this pickle was if I specifically explained that I got $1.18 back in change, dropped the coins and kept the dollar because I hate pennies and like bills.

I also couldn't just drop the dollar in the tip jar because that's an admittance that I was, in fact, wrong. The cashier would be more angry if I put the dollar back. It's bad to be robbed, but worse to catch the thief. There was no sense spending a dollar I didn't think Chipotle deserved in the first place, just so the cashier could hate me more.

People were staring now, more at the cashier than me, but also me. I was blushing. I wondered if blushing equated to guilt. The guy who mixed the chorizo with the rice had come over, not to mediate, but to gawk.

I made the decision that I would not drop my single into the tip jar. Never say no if in a hostage negotiation and never apologize to a significant other if it's insincere. In volatile situations, it's best to stay neutral.

"I don't know what to tell you. I took nothing out of the jar except the receipt I dropped," I said.

The cashier smacked her lips and dramatically turned her attention to the customer after me. She was physically gesticulating that she was done with me. If this were 1993, she would have demanded that I "talk to the hand." If this were my sister, she would have rolled her eyes and said "whatever."

But the cashier did neither. Her manner of revenge was to ignore me, to leave me alone to the enjoyment of my tacos.

The tacos were good, but the taste in my mouth was bad and I haven't been back to Chipotle since...


...Saturday.

And then again on Sunday.

Innovation

A friend of mine - Brian - recently told me a story about his childhood trips to the neighborhood Dairy Queen. In addition to the ice cream, Brian and his brother looked forward to the "Spy Hunter" arcade game (right) stored just inside the D.Q. They enjoyed it so much that the younger, dumber 8-year-old versions of themselves devised a scheme to punch a hole through a quarter, tie fishing wire around it, feed it into the arcade long enough to trigger the game to start and then yank the quarter back out of the machine by pulling the fishing wire.

The plan didn't work for a lot of reasons, the least of which was the cashier's 10-foot proximity to the "Spy Hunter" machine. Even if the ploy worked, Brian and his brother would never have gotten away with playing an afternoon of unlimited spy hunting.

What's worse: they wasted a good quarter, which by 8-year-old conversion rates, was about 20 bucks.

But my friend's attempt at innovation is noble, and worth noting as the prologue to my tale.
__________________

When I was seven, I wanted to be an inventor. I spent my childhood imagining all the fanciful ways I could fortify my world with safety and originality. I marveled at Ferris Bueller's ability to trick his family into thinking he was sick in bed while he made the city of Chicago his own amusement park. I aped, as best I could, the wildly playful practical qualities of Pee-Wee Herman's friends and furniture. Although I never successfully conjured up a floating wizard head or a chair that hugged me, I made my room colorful (and messed up) in the process of trying. I watched in awe of "The Goonies" character Data and his ability to have something pop out of his jacket for every occasion.

It was Data that had the largest impact on my childhood desire to innovate. You'll notice I used the word "desire" and not "skill." Make no mistake, I had no innovative skill as a child. I wasted dozens of rolls of masking tape, toilet tissue and pajama pants trying to recreate Hollywood special effects.

The pajama pants were more of a comfort thing, while I used the other materials to create and build. To my recollection, I never actually used pajama pants as building materials.

Almost every "invention" I copied turned out failed and stupid, but at the time I seemed awesome to myself.

My most triumphant innovation might also be the one for which I got in the most trouble.

I wanted Data's utility jacket just like the one pictured to the right. Like Data's jacket, my jacket had to come equipped with every imaginable solution to every imaginable problem, including the spring-loaded boxing glove that shoots out of the inner lining to pummel evil pirates.

I was a child with my sights set high, but I was just a child. I had to start small. I found a windbreaker jacket that my Mom ordered special from Land's End or something. It was bright red, not gray like I wanted, and it had my name on it, which was very much in keeping with the original spirit of what would become my greatest achievement.

The way Pee-Wee Herman felt about his bike was how I intended to feel about this jacket.
It was a simple windbreaker made from synthetic nylon. It had two pockets of which I intended to take full advantage. At first I cut slits in the back of the windbreaker with the intention of storing my entire marble collection inside it. I'm not sure what I imagined would happen with these marbles.

Did I ever really believe that people slipped and fell to the ground upon contact with stray marbles? I guess I did because that was my plan. My original design was simple: 1. cut a hole in the lining 2. hide marbles in between the two layers of my windbreaker 3. wing marbles at assorted pirates.

It didn't really work. After I put all the marbles in the lining of my jacket, I had all this sudden weight that caused me to move slow and I didn't have any way to deploy the marbles quickly.

I dug the three dozen marbles out of the jacket's lining and devised a way to directly disperse the marbles onto the floor at a moments notice. I cut the bottom out of one the jacket pockets, sliced a swatch of jacket lining from the inside of my windbreaker and masking-taped it around the cut open pocket. I attached the lining swatch to a piece of string that I pulled, thus releasing the marbles as if from a trapdoor.

Why didn't I just hold a dozen marbles in my hand and throw them at the hypothetical pirates? Why did I insist on having them shower from my jacket like heaven's rain? Why did I fixate on the marbles in the first place?

These are all good questions. Had I asked any of them, I'm sure I would have skipped this project altogether and played with my Legos or something.

But I didn't ask those questions. Instead I dropped every last marble into my precariously sutchered pocket and gingerly waddled into the living room where my mother was peacefully doing something. When I was young and my mother was peacefully doing anything, it always worked out that it was I who broke that peacefulness.

Also, how could I have sprinted at top speeds from pirates, when I couldn't even move into the living room at a normal pace? I had to creep into the living room for fear of my pocket bursting before I could pull the string to showcase my invention to my mother?

I waddled into the living room and proudly announced that I invented a jacket just like Data in "The Goonies," a character from a movie I'm sure she still has never seen. I excitedly yanked the string, the flap exposed my open pocket and a hail of marbles clanged all over the hardwood floor on which I was standing.

Imagine my look of utter triumph; like a mason stepping back to take in his first view of the mansion he'd just completed. Each wall built sturdy enough to shelter the next five generations of his family. My jacket too was ingenious enough to shelter my loved ones from the storm of pirates.

I was an industrial titan. A boy-genius at the precipice of his future greatness.

My mom looked at me as if I had just removed a 12-foot tapeworm from my rectum. She had an incredulous look of someone with feelings of anger hot on the heels of her feelings of confusion. As if she were about to take her first bite into an apple only to have a stranger slap it from her hand and walk away laughing.

My memory recalls that my arms were out in a "ta-da" pose after dropping all my marbles, but I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong, because my mom was pissed and perhaps worried that instead of dropping my marbles, that had fucking lost them. I would imagine that a "ta-da" pose would do nothing to make her think otherwise.

The same way it never occurred to me not to design something other than a marble spilling jacket, so did it elude me that my mom might get kinda peeved if her first born idiot walked into the room with a sliced up windbreaker dripping marbles all over her living room floor.

I'd like to say that my genius continued after that point. It did, but not in the manner I intended as a boy. My "genius" was in my ability to identify what a foolish child I was and to stop cutting up all my jackets.

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily...

I think it’s important to tip cab drivers a little extra if I happen to leave puddles of water on the backseat. The cab driver is almost certainly going to get an earful from the eventual wetbottom who gets in the cab next. I just want to make that moment a little more palatable for the driver, so I left a 30 percent tip and dragged my soaked 60-pound bluejeans (and the legs inside them) out of the taxi.

Had I known getting in to the taxi what I came to understand upon getting out, I'm sure I would have done a few things differently.

If nothing else, when my girlfriend Emily asked me if I wanted to kayak up the Chicago River toward Lake Michigan to watch Saturday night's fireworks, I would have isolated two very important words: kayak and river. Looking back, I really should have weighed more closely the probable effects of any activity involving these two words. This is automatic for many people, but not me.

I told Emily yes and absentmindedly finished my taco or whatever.

Most people would show up to a kayaking expedition with swim shorts and flip-flops... y'know, as if they were prepared to get wet. For some reason I let myself act as if the cover of night and the promise of fireworks would shield me from a billion gallons of lake water.

Emily and I arrived at the kayak launch site, signed in with our tour guide and chose a life jacket. My tour guide looked at my blue jeans, sneakers and plaid shirt and asked if I had any other clothes I wanted to change in to. In my head I'm imagining all the clothes I wanted to change in to, but all those clothes were tucked away in my house. So instead, I laughed and told my tour guide that I didn't have more appropriate clothes to change into and jokingly acknowledged that I was screwed.

In a situation like this, after I've just acknowledged what a bonehead I am, all I'm looking for is a little reassurance; a "there, there;" an "I've seen worse" or a "you'll be fine, pal." Instead, my tour guide smiled, nodded and agreed that, yeah, I'm pretty screwed.

Somewhere in this story I should mention that Emily and I were not alone. There were about 14 people in our group including some friends of Emily's, so it wasn't like we were by ourselves, but for the bulk of the trip we might as well have been. Our tour guide urged us to use dual kayaks. Along with the assumption that I would somehow not get wet, I also assumed I'd be in my own boat.

I mean, what's the difference between a two-person kayak and a canoe?

I've found in my life as a not single person that my definition of "togetherness" is quite different from that of my female counterparts.

tew-GETH-er-niss n.
male definition: being in the same general area while sharing similar, but not exact experiences.
female definition: being in close proximity as much as possible therefore sharing the exact same memories and experiences.

You'll notice that my definition would most likely lend itself to being fine with my own kayak. You'll also notice that Emily (and her female friend) were more than excited to share a boat with their respective male mates. I'm sure they referred to the partnership as cute or fabulous or some damn thing. Turns out that sharing a kayak is neither cute nor fabulous because sharing a kayak is hard. Along with the syncopation, unless the woman you are with happens to be an Olympian, she ain't making up for her weight with the energy she's expending. So if the two of us are going to get to the fireworks on time, that energy has to come from someone.

Guess who?

In all honesty, I don't mind putting in grunt work. There's something noble about doing so. How bad can a little paddling be? A little paddling probably wouldn't have been bad, but the voyage Emily and I tandemly set out upon was quite a bit more than a little paddling.

Two-and-a-half miles there. Two-and-a-half miles back.

Fun on a Saturday night is seeing a movie, watching the game in a bar, perhaps playing checkers in my jammies, something along those lines. Grunting up the Chicago River, drenched and exhausted is somewhere further down that list.

I should confess that I have a pre-existing bias against kayaks and really, all row boats. A little over two years ago, I attended Maine's annual Lobster Fest and entered its blindfolded boat race with my friend Priti. I rowed while wearing a blindfold and Priti directed me with verbal cues. I'll not go into detail of that horrendous race, but I will say it went poorly and I didn't say much to Priti for a good hour after we climbed from the boat. I guess I just don't do well with tandem things.

The row up the Chicago River was both painful and frustrating. It took us about an hour to get to where we stopped and viewed the fireworks. Emily, God bless her, could sense my frustration and thought that telling me how this experience would make a good blog would be the silver lining I needed. Good blog material doesn't make everything better, okay? Blog material isn't like mommy kisses or unicorn laughter.

Sometimes the stories I get to tell aren't worth the hell of going through them.

Besides, I had already planned on writing a blog about this before she said anything. Up until I sat in the taxi, I was planning on starting with that unicorn laughter line.

Admittedly, the fireworks were kinda kickass and they provided twofold services. The first being a calm in between two storms of rowing and the second being our tour guide's insights as to what will happen to Chicago if the city wins the bid to host the Olympics in 2016. I won't go into detail, but I'm pretty sure it will create a disruption ten times larger than the Cubs beating the White Sox in the World Series.

It'll be enough of a disturbance that I will realistically move to another part of the country.

After the fireworks, the sky returned to darkness and we returned to our paddles. Sitting inertly for 40 minutes almost made me forget how wet I was and how much I hated rowing. My hands were pruned and soft, which made it all the easier for layer after layer of skin to peel away, leaving one slightly more tender layers as my only protectant between the paddle and open nerve endings. Our trip down the river went better than our trip up the river. Part of this was because we had learned from previous mistakes, but most of it was because we were now swimming with the river's current.

It felt so good to glide in a straight line. In the fleeting moments where she and I miraculously found a rhythm, I could almost understand the appeal of it all. We were moving, slicing, still grunting, but with more purpose now. We were going to make it, we were going to get there faster, faster than we could have imagined.

We flew on the wings of Icarus.

I heard wind and water, followed by voices of our friends in the distance. I could not make out the words, but the tone sounded urgent. I disconnected myself from the freedom of movement long enough to decipher what they were saying to us.

"Get over!"

It didn't take me long to understand what they meant by this. My focus shifted from my friends behind me to an approaching force 200 yards in front of me. I wasn't sure if this impending phantom was the night sky or my imagination, but it was hulking and silent.

It was a miniature barge that blew its gutteral horn as if to signal that it was not a figment of my imagination. Emily let out a shriek. How could something so massive slink through the water so quietly? How could something so opressive remain unnoticed by two people rowing directly at it? Both Emily and I shared a moment of surreal panic. Was this boat bigger than it appeared and farther away or smaller and a mere matter of feet away?

I refocused and joined in the chorus of our friends by yelling at Emily to get over. I then added "Left!"

For the uninitiated, if you want your kayak to go left, you must paddle on the right side of your boat. If you want to go left, paddle on the right side. On our ride upstream to the fireworks Emily and I had experimented with these physics to a large degree. When I said left, she'd paddle on the left side of the kayak.

It's funny what escapes your mind when you're in a state of panic.

My yelling "Left! Left!" had no effect on Emily, who lifted her paddle over her head for reasons I may never understand.

With the barge making no effort to avoid us, I drag my paddle deep into the river and started moving us. Soon after we gained momentum, Emily came to her senses and paddled with me. We got out of the way and met our friends who were laughing (much harder than I was) and just as clueless how we all missed the barge until it was almost too late.

We exited our kayaks and returned to the small area in which our group had left their belongings.

Soaked and dripping, I felt dumpy; heavy like I had grown a tail. Like all my leg hair grew out an extra foot. It was about 11 p.m. and the set of doors through which we entered were locked and there was no clear alternative exit. We were next to an ultrahip, lively restaurant and lounge called Japonais in the complex in which we were trapped. We approached the bouncer of the club who told us to cut through the smokers patio and exit on the opposite side of the club's exterior.

This club: think a mid-western "Laguna Beach." Think of tiny cocktail dresses and perfect hair, bored eyes and hair gel. This club: think 95 percent yuppies listening to 95 percent hip-hop. Think: social smoking, not addiction smoking. Pitt and Jolie were there last year (pictured right). Got it? It's upscale.

The highlight of my entire night was walking through this maximum capacity club dripping like a newly washed car, brushing past people who spent longer in front of the mirror that evening than I had in the entire month. I'm still tickled by the idea that some girl with a cosmo in one hand got dowsed with a shirt full of lake water on the other when I brushed past.

That must've been confusing.

It must also have been confusing for whomever entered that taxi right after me. You gotta figure, that next person felt some moisture and ran through all the possible liquids the backseat of a city cab could host. I'm not sure what the driver told this person, but I bet everyone assumed it was worse than lake water.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing could be worse than lake water.

Literally Paying for Your Mistakes

What is it about obcene amounts of money that makes people act like shameless shitheads?

I'm surfing the Interweb trying to quench my thirst for Miley Cyrus news when I get bombarded with details about record-breaking weekend profits. Gaudy numbers like $46.7 million and $45.4 million were involved.

The weekend grosses for "Dark Knight" and "Tropic Thunder" you ask? No. Good guess, but definately wrong.

Turns out crappy musician Phil Collins felt that two failed marriages weren't reasons enough to remain a bachelor, so he decided to get married a third time.

Just in case.

"For good measure," Phil thought. "I had better marry someone 22 years younger than me. 'Cause what could go wrong?"

I don't know how much money he has, but he's got $46.7 million less than he did a month ago. Before, Phil Collins' held the record as the only musician with the ability to out-crap Peter Gabriel, now Collins has a new record: most expensive divorce settlement in British history.

Paul McCartney thanks you Phil, for getting him off the hook.

Believe it or not, my anger isn't pointed at Phil Collins, but Phil Collins' wife and perhaps the divorce lawyers involved in the settlement. Why is it automatic that when a star gets divorced, he (and it's almost always he isn't it?) takes a financial bath? Who do these wives think they are?

I know, I know. These wives think they're mothers and it costs money to raise kids. That's always the excuse. Ten generations of my family won't need $47 million, but Phil Collins' kids can't make due without. The whole motherhood defense is a rickity bridge in a violent wind, if you ask me. Right now, if someone offered you $23 millions to have a kid and raise it for 18 years, would you take it?

Most of you would. I would too. Right now.

One kid. $23 million. $47 for two kids, I'm on board with that too.

How must Collins' wife (or any wife who gets a large percentage of their husband's net worth) justify this? I don't mean justify in the context of the law, I'm mean justify to themselves? What did Orienne Cevey do to earn $46.7 million dollars (besides pretend to like Genesis, a feat worth $13.5 million tops)?

I'm hip, okay? I've heard Kanye West warn us about gold diggers. I remember that before she was America's nouveau Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith was among the most blatant settlement whores. I know all about Donald Trump. None of this is news, but as the settlements grow exponentially and the women reaping the benefits seem to do less and less, my rage also expands.

Are feminists mad about this growing trend? Are men protecting themselves more before they marry?

And dear God, does this mean that Phil Collins is going to put out more records in hopes of earning some of that money back? 'Cause whatever Cevey stole from Collins under the guise of "mental pain and suffering," it ain't nothing compared to what she'd owe millions of people across the world if that man decides he needs to continue making music.

A Bird's Eye Interview

I'm good at job interviews. I don't get nervous, even though I probably should. I am inexplicably talented at saying the right thing to whomever needs to hear it and I never walk into an interview thinking I am anything other than fully qualified and ready to start today.

This isn't a story about how bad I am at job interviews, but about how impossible it is for me to cleanly arrive (literally) at those job interviews.

I'm a ragamuffin through and through. No matter how expensive the suit is that I'm wearing, no matter what products I put in my hair or how long I spend shining my shoes, I'm always under the impression that my immaturity is seeping through my pores and the fibers of my clothes.

Turns out, that seeping sensation isn't caused by my immaturity, but by puss, blood and sometimes food.

Stay with me. Let me explain.

I don't believe in curses, but if I did I'd believe that I was doomed to involuntarily signaling to the outside world that I am not a classy human being. I always try to plan accordingly and prevent creating awkward situations for myself, but I can't.

• Just recently, I went to a wedding, shaved the hair growing on the back of my neck, nicked myself and bled all over he inside of my collar. It didn't ruin the nuptials, but several people asked if I was okay.
  
• I went to church with my girlfriend's family a few weeks back. I prepared myself with the most appropriate church clothes I owned. I even Googled proper church etiquette. I was gonna shine at that Sunday's Mass. I didn't plan on going on a bike ride the afternoon before, having a horrific fall and spending the next five days bleeding and pussing out of the entire left side of my body. Band-Aids, tourniquets and gauze did nothing except slide around my pussing joint wound causing my shirts to become drenched in my body's healing waste. At church, my shirt looked like I had a misplaced sweaty armpit stain.
  
• Whenever I get fast food at drive-thrus (especially if it's Taco Bell), I have to order a third more food than I'm hungry for, because some of it is going to fall in my lap. I can't help it, I can't stop it. Just like painting a ceiling: some of it's gonna get on me.

When my morning alarm rang yesterday at noon, believe me when I say my incident's of messiness were among the first thing I thought about. I had no open wounds, I shaved my face with careful precision and I skipped eating before my interview. I was going to beat this curse like the Red Sox beat the Bambino's curse and the Cubs beat the... oh wait, no. No, just the Red Sox.

I was so wrapped up in thinking about all the things that could go wrong, I left myself no room for creatively imagining all the things that have yet to go wrong, but could.

As I was putting the finishing touches on carefully shaving my face, I forgot that my cell phone was lying a few feet away from me on the top of my bathroom's toilet tank. Apparently, I had my ringer set to "stun" because when it suddenly rang, it scared the crap out of me. I was physically startled so bad that I jumped and sliced off a layer of skin from my ear. Blood.

I had to answer the phone, but when I hung up, a streak of crimson trailed from near my eardrum down to my jawbone. I looked like I had used sonar cannon headphones.

Is this what fans look like when they leave a Van Halen concert?

I put a small circular bandage on the unstoppable bleeding cut with the assumption that I'd take it off shortly before my interview, which was about two hours from the point in which I started bleeding. I looked like someone had ripped an earring from my ear. I looked like Jack Nicholson at the end of "Chinatown." But I had taken care of my ear and I had to face what I've come to identify as the most difficult part of the interview process: getting to it.

I feel like any interview I've gone on has been on the windiest day of the week. Some like the wind-blown hair look, I look crazed. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to identify the direction in which the wind is blowing and walk down the street so that that wind does not affect your hair? I'm walking backwards, or tilting my head 90 degrees to the left.

I looked brain damaged and it ended up not even doing any good. I still showed up to my interview (an hour early) with hair as messy as if I had driven a rocket ship with its top down.

The building to which I was supposed to go had a security buzzer at the front door, so if I went in, the company would know I was there and I wouldn't be able to remove my bloody bandage before greeting them. I walked two blocks away to a burger joint intent on using their bathroom to clean my bandages (and all the sweat I had accumulated underneath my gray suit on this 85 degree day). I should have prioritized when I got to burger joint because I ordered food before checking to see if there actually was a bathroom for which to use.

There wasn't.

I paid for my food and sat in a tucked away corner of the restaurant. There wasn't a visible trash can where I was sitting, so when I pulled off my ear bandage, I carefully folded the sticky side onto the bandage side to cover up the dried blood and slipped it into my pocket. Maybe that's gross, but I used bandages are the most awful thing I can think of and I couldn't fathom leaving it where someone else might find it.

Several french fries later, I felt something slightly cool running down my jaw.

Blood. Again.

I'm bleeding just as hard as I was two hours ago. So this is the situation with which I'm faced: do I want to blot my bleeding ear throughout my job interview and explain that my phone scared me and caused me injury of Van Gogh-ian proportions, or I can dig into my pocket, fish out the my folded up bandage and re-apply it to my ear.

I can't believe I went back into my pocket. It was the low point of my day.

I figured at least by re-applying the bandage I might not have to explain myself to my potential bosses and I certainly wouldn't look as if I had blown an eardrum on the walk over.

By this point, the small circular bandage was caked in blood and absent of much of its original stickiness, which caused the bandage to somewhat pop off the contours of my earlobe. There was no convenience store nearby that I could find, otherwise I certainly would have purchased additional bandages. I was also running out of time. With only 20 minutes left, I had to patch something together and get back to the building I was supposed to have my interview. I used the reflection in my sunglasses to position the gauze portion of the bandage over the bleeding nick, which was as pointless as choosing which of the 200 cracks in a leaking dam to stick one's finger in. The bandage had changed from tan to rusted red. It looked like I was putting on a single ruby earring.

Again, this story isn't about whether or not I had a good interview. I'm good in interviews and I was good in this one. I pretended my ear is always bleeding and my potential employer pretended most people he talks to have bloody bandages loosely stuck to their ears. It worked out well and I even landed an immediate second interview with the COO of the organization.

This story is of what I find myself going through any time I try to appear anything more than arrestedly developed.

If nothing else, it was fun to watch my potential employer's demeanor change when he discussed health benefits. I can't swear to it, but while he was discussing the benefits package, he had to have wondered why my ear was bandaged. I should have asked, "what about ear, nose and throat doctors? Especially the ear doctor, what kind of ear coverage is there and exactly how soon can I take advantage of the insurance? 'Cause I'm gonna need to see someone fairly soon."

All this might have been worth it if I had the balls to ask him that.

But I didn't.

So it wasn't.

Get the Wed Out

I went to a friends’ wedding recently. It doesn't matter which friend or the details leading up to the couple's nuptials because I'm 28 and everyone around me is getting married. Fill in your own details, it'll probably be fairly accurate.

I’ve only been to three weddings in my life. The first wedding I attended when I was four and I was the ring bearer. For those of you whom have not yet been a ring bearer at a wedding, I highly recommend it. My understanding of weddings is that you can't get married without rings and therefore, the couple can't get married without you. This adds an entirely new layer of excitement one just can't get from sitting in a church pew.

If you're a woman or over seven-years-old and don't like your chances of becoming a ring bearer, I don't know what to tell you. Michael Jordan never made excuses and neither should you. Play like a champion, make it work.

My first wedding also represented my first tuxedo. It was itty-bitty, which isn't to say the tuxedo was small on me. I was itty-bitty and the tux fit perfectly. I remember little of this experience except for vague and immense feelings of pressure, annoyance that old wrinkled biddies felt it acceptable to pinch my cheeks and that everyone thought it cute to concoct a romantic connection between the flower girl and me.

I never connected with the flower girl because, as I saw it, her only role was to make a mess of the aisle and rip apart flowers that I thought came from the bouquets at the front of the church. Adding those observations with my normal iciness toward all cootie-filled girls at the time, I gave her the cold shoulder most of the night.

That girl turned out to be Kirsten Dunst.

No, I'm just kidding. But wouldn't that be a kick in the ass?

More than two decades later, I’m no better at weddings. Most people don’t think too much about whether they are good at weddings or not. Most people need to know only three things:

1. Is it an open bar?
2. Will there be single, desperate people of similar age and lifestyle at the wedding?
3. Will there be electric or cha-cha sliding? Or both?

I’m a big advocate for cha-cha sliding. I use the term advocate instead of fan because frankly, it seems that the "Cha-Cha Slide" needs defending from general unpopularity.

I think people are turned off by the flurry of clapping that the "Cha-Cha Slide" demands. I cannot properly articulate the amount of guff I get for not only supporting, but requesting and celebrating the existence of the "Cha-Cha Slide." I didn't invent the damn song, nor did I hire any d.j. to play the song, I can't be the only cheerleader for this goddamn thing.

And that is just one example of why I’m no good at weddings.

I'm also a cranky ceremony attendee. Although the mingling and the toasts and the dancing seem celebratory, the mass seems like a preemptive strike against all the fun everyone is preparing to have. When my parents punished me for something they later realized I did not do, they would often let the punishment stand and justify it by assuming there was something I'd done about which they hadn't yet found out. The pastor or priest or reverend, realizing that intercourse between two people is moments away from not only be without sin, but blessed... well, you bet the servants of the Lord are all going to get their last licks in while they can.

I’ve sounded off on churchin' before, so I won’t retrace those steps, but I still think it’s kinda uncool that Catholics slip church processions into wedding ceremonies.

That’s what Sundays and Easters are for.

Sometimes when a television network has the rights to popular sporting events like the Indy 500 or the World Series, that network invites stars from their primetime television lineup to sit (and be seen) in the crowd. The purpose of this is to focus a camera on them as if they just happened to love baseball or Indy cars and perhaps this is a good time to mention that they are also starring on a new sitcom that also happens to be owned by the same network.

What were the odds?

"It’s so nice that this man and this woman are here today to celebrate their promise to love, honor and obey one another and… oh hey, you know what? We just happen to have these wafers and I think we’ve got enough hymn books for everyone, why don’t we just throw ourselves a little Mass while we're at it."

Gotcha bitches.

The wedding Mass itself doesn’t bother me, but it lessens the ceremony. Over the course of one hour, the ceremony lasts like, 10 minutes. Vow, vow. I do, I do. Kiss, kiss. What are we sitting around an extra 50 minutes for?

Now remember, I have very little experience with actual weddings, but my experience with Hollywood weddings is vast. I envision the perfect ceremony consisting of a couple walking down the aisle, saying “I do,” running back up the aisle arm-in-arm to a throng of close friends and relatives tossing rice at the couples' mouth and eyes as they run into a limousine with “just married” written in soap on the rear window. Maybe there are a dozen Pabst Blue Ribbon cans jangling behind the car as it drives off, I don't know. That's not imperative. The couple rides into the sunset, not to return until weeks later after their Honeymoon is over.

There are also caveats to this cliché. Instead of a limo, it is possible to ride off on a public bus, as Benjamin and Elaine did at the end of “The Graduate” or perhaps in a flying ’57 Chevy, as per the end of “Grease.” (I am aware that Danny and Sandy were not married at the end of that film and were probably going to live a heathenish existence of unmarried relations like the street rats they were, but the end of that movie was so magical I dare not think about the rest.)

Whatever happened to those weddings? When did receptions start happening? Hollywood always has the wedded couple sprint out of the church into a limo or convertible not to be heard from for weeks. I like that. There' something very Howard Hughes-ish about that. I wanna have the Amelia Earhart of wedding ceremonies, where people don't hear from me for years afterward. Give 'em something Claude Rains would be proud of.

I want my wedding guests to feel about me the way I feel midway through summer when I wonder whatever happened to my favorite shows and can't remember where the plots left off or even if the show got renewed for another season.

I guess I also want to be the "Heroes" and "Lost" of honeymoons.

I should make it clear that I don't hate marriage, happy dance parties or God. I'm just not all that jazzed about pageantry scornful of anyone with a penis. Let's face it, weddings have nothing to do with the groom. They're just as ornamental as the groom's plastic alter ego standing atop the wedding cake. That's all I ever think about sitting in the church moments before the ceremonies began. Everything is all atwitter behind the big oak doors at the back of the church while the groom stands waiting at the alter in front of two sets of friends and family like the court jester.

I've seen too many grooms standing around as if they were informed they were getting married moments before the start of Pachelbel's "Canon in D." They all had the same look on their faces that I had on pop quiz days during classes in which I had yet to start reading the assigned book.

While the bride's entourage, harum and posse all flutter around like ducks trying to dismantle a bomb, what does the groom do? Make fart noises with his groomsmen? Staple the corners of the red velvet carpet down which his future wife is moments away from walking? Try to remember the vows that his fiance wrote for him to say? Poor bastard.

Weddings for the groom are a crock, which I can only imagine is why the bride's family foots the bill for them. Whenever I get married (and according to other people my age, this is something I should have done five years ago), I'm going to strongly consider demanding a pay-for-play clause to the ceremony. I'll pay for the rehearsal dinner, the clergy and officiant's fees, limousine services and honeymoon services only if I can choose the music (or the d.j. or band that will itself choose the music) and the centerpieces.

That's it. Give me the tunes and the dinner's centerpieces and I'll pay for everything for which I'm supposed to pay. If I get shooed away from all wedding decisions, then the women involved in the planning are on their own in paying for it. Don't say I never warned you.

People don't realize how important the centerpieces are, but they will when they see what I've got planned.

But that's another story for another day.

Again, it's not marriage, but pageantry with which I have the problem. I do't want to be stranded at the front of the church yammering with the priest that my fiance's mother most likely chose. Marrying couples should stroll down the aisle together, right behind the flower girl shredding and littering flower petals in front of us. Don't hold Mass with a ceremony hidden in the middle. It's not like we don't notice that we're no longer talking about the man and woman trying to become ajoined in holy matrimony. For each Psalm mentioned in place of a wedding vow, I swear I'll play the "Cha-Cha Slide" one additional time.

Test me. I dare you.

Kelly Ripken Jr.

I was in a discussion recently about the Baltimore Orioles' Hall of Fame third baseman Cal Ripken Jr. Actually, this is inaccurate, we were discussing Ripken Jr's wife, Kelly.

We wondered what the heading on all her mail looks like. Cal Ripken Jr's father was also named Cal (hence the Jr.) and when Kelly Greer married the Hall of Fame junior Ripken, she took his last name.

But what exactly constitutes a last name? Is she Kelly Ripken Jr. or plain ol' Kelly Ripken? She's undoubtedly been referred to as Mrs. Cal Ripken Jr., there's no confusion there. However, if Kelly Ripken leaves off the junior from her name, doesn't that suggest that she married Cal Ripken Jr's father? That being said, if she goes by Kelly Ripken Jr., it suggests her mother was both a Kelly and a Ripken, neither of which are true. If Kelly Ripken was a junior she would keep company with other women likely using the junior suffix to stand on the shoulders of their mothers' notoriety. Fashionista Carolina Adriana Herrera Jr., poet Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr. and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Jr. all have different middle names from their mothers but were known as juniors. I know them as coattail riders.

But Cal Ripken Jr's mother isn't named Kelly and even if she was named Kelly, Cal's wife wasn't named after Cal's mother.

The mother-daughter duo on the WB's "Gilmore Girls" got around the situation by skipping the suffix and instituting a nickname. The daughter, although technically named after her mother Lorelai, simply became Rory.

So what should a woman call herself when she's married to a junior or senior or a third?

Wikipedia says :

A wife who uses the title Mrs. would also use her husband's full name, including the suffix. In less formal situations, the suffix may be omitted. Hence: Mrs. Lon Chaney Jr. on a wedding invitation, but Mrs. L. Chaney or simply Shannon Chaney for a friendly note. Widows are entitled to retain their late husband's full names and suffixes but divorcees may not continue to style themselves with a former husband's full name and suffix, even if they retain the surname.

I concede that Wikipedia isn't the best source for anything, but it is also the only source that has something to say about everything. Wikipedia is the overly talkative drunken uncle who never stops telling stories. Not necessarily reliable, but oft quoted.

In summary, Kelly Ripken leaves off the junior from her name and Cal Sr. has had a tense relationship with his son ever since.

This was all a roundabout way of half-assing a grammar lesson instead of an entertaining blog, but there' something vaguely lesbian-ish about woman with suffixes attached to their names and I wanted to do my part to cease any excess use.

Some conserve gas, I conserve gay suffixes.

Road Rash

When I was 14-years-old I biked home from high school. I only had an hour for lunch so when I biked home, I biked quickly. Each day I'd try to improve on the previous day's time. Tighten a turn here, cut through a parking lot there.

One day in November 1994 I was biking down the busiest street on my route home. Usually I cut across this street, but on this day I biked alongside it because traffic was too heavy to cross and I'd have to stop pedaling. Three cars were coming up behind me. My plan was to swing across the street after the third car and cruise home. The first and second cars passed me, then the third and then I veered to cut across traffic.

WHAM!

Actually that's inaccurate. Before I heard the cold limp thud of my bones hitting the fiberglass frame of the car, there was the familiar screech of locked rubber tires burning into the asphalt.

SCREECH! then WHAM!

After that my memories turn into photograph slides of my body flipping over the hood onto the roof and back onto the hood before being hurled in front of the car. My memories of this are in strobe. Something then nothing then something then nothing. My wrist slamming ontp the front grill. My back against the windshield glass. My foot bouncing off the passenger side mirror.

Something then nothing.

I got up unaware of my pain and unable to escape my embarrassment. Whatever doesn't kill me mortifies me with embarrassment. Whatever doesn't kill me usually provides at least one moment worth exaggerating through my retelling to friends.

What really happened:
After peeling myself off the blacktop and gathering my contorted bike, the lady that hit me exited her car and started bitching at me about what a reckless punk I was, which caused me to limp-step myself home as quickly as possible. I basically ran home from fear and embarrassment.

What I tell people happened:
I stoically lifted my bicycle while ignoring the careless and crazed woman who hit me. I willed my broken body home.

The ending to this story remains the same: as I ambled my busted bike home I passed a couple playing tennis near the scene of the SCREECH and WHAM. As they saw me pass, one of them asked, "Hey did someone just get hit by a car?"

Thinking back they had to know that someone had because that's not the kind of thing you casually ask someone out of the blue.

"Hey do you have genital warts?"
"Hey did your company recently file for bankruptcy?"
"Hey are those my pants you're wearing?"

All those questions fall into the non-casual category. So they asked me if someone just got hit by a car and in a moment of brief awesomeness and without looking at either tennis players, I replied, "Yeah. I did."

I recalled this story sitting bent forward bleeding in a ditch of a gravel road thankful that I'm not dead.

Aside from the normal reasons to be thankful for not being dead, I was immensely happy that I didn't happen to die in this Iowa dandelion ditch in which I found myself reminiscing. That would kill my mom. All her life, if there were two things she most feared about me, it was that I'd be dead in a ditch somewhere and that I'd be far from home when it happened.

Dying in an Iowa ditch would totally validate my mother's greatest fears. What son ever wants to do that?

I hadn't been on a bike in almost 13 years until last Saturday when my girlfriend Emily suggested we pass the time by biking to a popular ice cream shop. It sounded innocent enough.

Little kids rid bikes. Ice cream is soft and enjoyable for everyone. Council Bluffs, Iowa doesn't host the same kind of manic traffic that Chicago or even Omaha does. Why wouldn't a fella? What could go wrong?

The adages that once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget and if you fall off your bike, it is best to climb back on and continue pedaling are both misleading. It's true that one never forgets how to ride a bike, but the adage should also stipulate that a refresher course will most likely be required if you haven't ridden a bike in over a decade. A short few loop-the-loops around the driveway before careening downhill at 40 mph.

The second adage about climbing back on the bike and start pedaling... well, I did that and there should be an asterisk noting that before getting back on one's bike, one should pick out all the gravel chunks from one's hip, spray iodine on the road rash and let the blood coagulate a bit before continuing on one's bike ride.

I thought my will, stubbornness and desire for an Oreo shake would propel me up the remaining hills and through the swelling pain my ripped hips and bloody joints had caused. Even more than my desire for ice cream was my desire not to appear weak or foolish in front of my girlfriend's parents.

Last year I was unable to escape this fate after I went golfing with her father and brother. I shot almost every ball into the sand traps or off the goddamned course and spent the entire afternoon wanting to crawl into the 18th hole and never come out. This year, I had golfed well. I felt I had escaped another weekend of shame. I should have known that riding a contraption I haven't been on in over a decade was a table setting for a bad meal.

Emily's mom offered us both helmets, which we declined because, y'know... why would we need helmets? We spent 10 minutes changing clothes, adjusting seats, adding air to tires, mapping our route and convincing both Mr. and Mrs. Girlfriend's Parents that we'd be fine. If you spend more than 20 seconds convincing someone that you'll be fine, I've found that you probably won't be.

We set out, starting atop the windy sub-divided hill and it only got windier as we descended it going 20 mph, then 25, then 30.

I wondered whether I should brake and whether my right-hand brake was for the front or rear tire. I wondered if I did brake, should I pull both brakes simultaneously? Should I pull them hard or ease on them?

35 mph.

I wondered if I created the sudden growing wind or if I was caught up in Mother Nature. I zipped past a road sign that said the speed limit was 35 mph and wondered if bicycles were held accountable to this too. Don't bikes always run red lights and stop signs? Yes was the answer. They do, but was it legal for all those bikes to do that? I wondered if the gravel was going to make it hard to steer.

40 mph.

I wondered how my girlfriend was doing. She was in front of me and seemed to be gliding along with ease, probably using her brakes. More wind and an oncoming car. Danger followed by panic. Gravel. Wind. Speed. The car passed me, then I passed a traffic sign indicating a winding road ahead. The oncoming car created a tailwind that added to the cyclone powering my bike down the hill. I started losing my balance. I corrected it. Shit. I've over corrected it. I tried to straighten out. Faster downhill. Panic. More overcorrection. Faster downhill.

I'm done. I'm airborne and separated from my bike. Flashback to 1994. My back against the windshield glass.

I'm already out of control by the time I decide to brace for impact. I hear the bike skid on the ground and I know what's next.

Flashback 14 years. WHAM!

What's next is generally a series of curse words; a shorthand of my agony. It's clear before I stop rolling that I'm hurt, but I won't know how hurt until I, at least, stop rolling.

They give you ice cream for missing tonsils and stubbed toes. What do they give for this and how ironic would it be if it too were ice cream?

What I should have thought was, "Oh God, am I okay?" What I actually thought was, "Oh God, I hope no one saw me beef it just now." I would really rather not show up on YouTube. When Emily stopped her bike, turned around and found me, I was huddled in a ditch thinking about getting hit by a car as a high school freshman.

I felt like Ralphie at the end of "A Christmas Story." Everyone warned him that he'd shoot his eye out if he got that bb gun. He got the gun and within minutes shot the glasses off his head. I was warned to wear a helmet and to take it easy. I ignored all that and now I feel as if someone lit my back on fire.

Emily wanted to go back. We had only been riding a few minutes. I had visions of her parents standing in the same spots they were standing when we left. Her mom still with the hose. Her dad still with pruning sheers. Everything the same, except for me. I'd return much worse than I'd left. The only reason we'd be back so soon is if something bad had happened. No ice cream. I couldn't go back to the house without having had ice cream.

It would be like last year's golf outing. I cannot present myself as a lame or a liability. I'm not weak or fragile or in need of special consideration and I'll be damned if Emily's parents are going to see me that way. I'm inpatient and therefore occasionally careless, but I didn't really want them seeing me like that either.

I replaced the chain on my bike, used toilet paper that Emily retrieved from a nearby port-o-potty to sop up the blood bubbling from my elbow and employed that second adage about climbing back on the bike. We were getting that damn ice cream. This was not a wise decision, but it is a decision I would probabaly make again in a similar situation. When we reached the shop, a few patrons looked at me as if I had traveled underground to get there. It must have been a humorous sight to see some dude cut and bloody sipping Oreo shake through a straw like nothing was wrong.

One has to have priorities. Survival is my first priority. Tending wounds is a distant third after saving face and perhaps even getting ice cream.