Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
Okay, here’s my last post as a bachelor.
Bride aside, I am surrounded by the five most awesome people in my life, and they are in rare, rare form. Ross bottled my special wedding lambic in blue bottles labeled with me! I’m on my bottles.
I don’t think life could be any better than it is at the moment.
See you on the other side.
“In 800 yards. Make. A U-turn.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Gina, it told you to make a U-turn.”
“What if that’s not legal here?”
“Then we just tell the police officer that the nice British lady in your GPS told us it was legal, so it’s totally cool.”
“Okay”
Gina commences epic U-turn across Street Road.
“Whaoooooo!”
.
Sometimes as Gina and I wander around being – well, us – I catch myself wondering: why are we allowed to do this?
At no time has this question been more present in my mind than today, as Gina chauffeured me around the city to cross last-minute to-dos off of my wedding prep list. Right now we are sitting in a hotel room on a key-protected floor looking at the ridiculously awesome costume jewelry Gina will be wearing tomorrow in my wedding.
This is after nearly crashing our luggage cart in the hotel parking lot, surviving our epic U-turn, me almost pitching my electric guitar through a display case at Bluebond, buying seemingly a hundred travel-sized personal condiments, earlier wandering around a masquerade store discussing the logistics of whether Moses’ crook is effectively the same thing as Little Bo Peep’s crook, and general driving all around the city wailing along to my official last-day-of-bachelordom CD, Pinkerton.
We are two fairly ridiculous human beings on our own, but we don’t typically verbalize or act upon any of our ridiculousness. As a pair both of those impulses are actively engaged. Which makes it clearly insane that I am getting married tomorrow, and Gina is captain in charge of making sure I get married.
We have not trashed the hotel room yet, but I believe that option to still be in the cards.
We are, after all, rock stars.
.
(As to where I’ve been: I was really sick. A week before my wedding. It wasn’t fun. And I got a chest x-ray. That’s about all that needs to be said.)
I am finally old enough to enjoy a post-dinner recline on the couch while making inane commentary on football games, and I took full advantage of said privilege tonight after dining with Gina’s family for the first time in six(!) years.
While watching the Eagles rack up the highest score of the day Gina, Wes, and I organized the National Football League in descending order of mascot size, punctuated by occasionally less-than-fearsome cardinal cries.
Massive
Titans
Jets (jumbo)
Giants
Saints (if astral)
Huge
Bills (buffalo)
Texans (steers, or possibly minotaurs?)
Broncos
Bears (grizzly)
Bengals
Large
Lions
Panthers
Colts
Rams
Jaguars
Dolphins
Man-Sized
Steelers & 49ers (assumed to be burly and hard-working)
Raiders & Vikings (assumed to be fierce and conquest-oriented)
Chiefs
Packers (assumed to be like Steelers, but with more dairy in their diets)
Cowboys & Redskins
Buccaneers (more of an effete Johnny Depp pirate)
Eagles (massive wingspan makes them comparable in size)
Patriots (sorta bourgeois, comparatively)
Saints (if corporeal)
Small
Seahawks
Browns (if dogs)
Falcons & Ravens (split decision on which would be larger)
Tiny
Cardinals
Browns (if recluse)
Atomic
Chargers
.
At this point we were all in a full-on dessert coma after ingesting Gina’s pumpkin cheesecake pie, and amidst Brian Dawkins imitations*, we also found the time to judge the five most fearsome mascots…
1. Titans – Atlas is a Titan!
2. Chargers
3. Bears
4. Bengals
5. Eagles
Honorable Mention: Saints (if astral)
… as opposed to the five most harmless mascots:
1. Cardinals
2. Ravens
3. Browns
4. Dolphins Per reader feedback, a dolphin could maul a Patriot.
5. Colts
Honorable Mention: Saints (if corporeal)
.
* Everyone we know considers Brian Dawkins to be terror incarnate, and we spend the majority of most Eagles’ games commenting on the fear that he strikes into all opponents.
Tonight we determined that Batman’s interrogation of a hallucinating Scarecrow in Batman Begins was actually based on Brian Dawkins’ pass defense, and that there is likely test footage of Bale wearing a Dawkins jersey along with his enigmatic visored helmet.
I also posited a likely Dawkins’ internal monologue, but it involved a lot of cookie-monster-metal growling that I can’t really do justice in text. Maybe when my condensers arrive next week…
So, before all of that introspection crap started happening I was actually having an amazing weekend.
The story picks up mere seconds after my Friday post, which was interrupted by Dante’s appearance to ferry me and my various PA equipment to The Dark Horse on South Street for a benefit for Stand Up For Kids.
Stand Up For Kids is a nationally recognized and acclaimed charity that supports homeless and at-risk kids and teens. They offer many levels of service, from counseling children at risk for leaving home, to conducting outreach to kids on the streets, to staffing and maintaining outreach centers where teens can get help in obtaining a birth certificate or finding an apartment.
The Philadelphia chapter of Stand Up For Kids needs support to provide that full complement of services. Their benefit raised money towards supplies for their outreach packets – like juice boxes, deodorant, or sweatshirts – as well as for an outreach van that would allow them to be more mobile in their efforts.
Arcati Crisis has played a slew of shows this year, but the SUFK benefit ranks high amongst our favorites.
First, The Dark Horse Pub is a fantastic bar – one of my favorites in all of Philly. It’s just north of South on 2nd – across from Headhouse. The pub is comprised of multiple rooms that each have their own personality, all clean and comfortable and serving delicious food along with their drinks.
Second, the bill – we played with a lineup of people who we would go out of our way to see. Seriously. It was such a profoundly humbling experience to be listed in the middle of the people whose songs I hum while I walk down the street.
Joshua Popejoy, a model of sharp hooks and specific strumming, and increasingly my go-to for all discussions of mixing. Bill Butler, an outstanding songwriter and one of my favorite Philly vocalists, and the director of the charity The Philadelphia Sessions. Dante Bucci, a virtuosic percussionist who has transformed a zen instrument into a songwriter’s treasure, and who can engineer a PA solution for any space. Jon Glaubitz, an enormously talented guitarist and songwriter with a chameleonic ability to blend in anywhere – no matter if it’s a coffee shop or a rock club. And Andra Taylor, an arresting new voice on the Philly scenes, her hypnotically circular guitar riffs evoking a prism of contemporaries from Patti Griffin to Madonna. And, we made new friends – with David Miller and Jeremy Davis, performers we surely will see again in the future.
However, beyond all of those pleasures was the charity itself. SUFK volunteer, event organizer, and AC-fan Nina found the right venue to turn a gathering into a celebration, found the right music to fill it, and then packed the room to the very limit of its capacity.
Throughout the night Nina sent SUFK volunteers up to the microphone to share their stories about the organization while we set up for the next artist on the bill. The one that really caught me came after our performance – maybe because we were still trembling from a powerful closing swing through “What’ll I Say” and “Apocalyptic Love Song,” or maybe just because she was so very compelling.
She spoke about how she helped to found the Philadelphia chapter four years ago, and how at the time it was just a handful of people who wanted to make an impact. She spoke about how we all pass homeless children every day without realizing that we see them, partially because they so desperately don’t want to be homeless that they will do anything to blend in. She spoke about how – four years later – she is so energized by the enthusiasm of her fellow volunteers and the changes they effect in the world, but that they aren’t enough – they need more support and more volunteers to truly change the streets of Philadelphia.
When she was through I found myself with tears welling in my eyes.
All of these things we do take time. Four years ago Arcati Crisis was an in-joke name for our studio recordings. Four years ago Dante Bucci didn’t know what a hang drum was, and Andra Taylor had no idea she’d be living in Philadelphia.
In that four years we’ve devoted to ourselves, Stand Up For Kids has devoted itself to others, and because of our collective commitment we were able to come together last Friday to share and celebrate positive music and a positive message. We came together into a room as strangers to each other and left with a common cause.
That is the best kind of gig to play, and after the clouds of my weekend introspection clear on a bright Monday morning that is the memory that I’m going to take with me. Even if our music only made SUFK twenty dollars it was worth every minute of playing. If I could raise a thousand I would play for days at a time, stopping only to breathe.
When we last left our intrepid nuptial heroes we were all slinking out of David’s Bridal hoping that they wouldn’t call the cops on me.
Okay, not really. But, if we had stayed much longer I’m sure my photo would have wound up behind the register along with the people who write bad checks.
Though our negative experience soured me on the idea of big box bridal stores, Lindsay and I did come away with an idea of what my groom’s-ladies would wear. We decided on a combination of platinum and black, which meant we’d most likely need separates – lest we be left to the haphazard whim of multi-color one-pieces.
We also needed the ladies on Team Groom to look more groomy than maidsy, so we decided to add a matador jacket to make them more tux-like.
Thus began The Great Matador-Hunt of 2008. Because, you see, outside of the fairy-tale world of David’s Bridal matador jackets for women are apparently a fictional concept. We searched and searched, and turned up a scant one or two, neither appropriate for our purposes.
In the midst of our jacket-search we settled (ironically) on something we tried at David’s: a strapless, lightly paneled princess top paired with a simple trumpet skirt. After some deliberation we decided that the skirt would be black to better mirror the gentlemen in their tuxes, while the top would be platinum.
At this point Lindsay, Gina, and Erika commandeered the good ship Groom from my control. They found a collection that carried what we were seeking in multiple styles, and each of them tagged their favorites. We discussed them at length for a week, engaged in several virtual straw polls to determine our favorites, and then Lindsay and Erika did a preliminary shopping trip in Boston.
Suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, Gina was picking me up early on a Saturday morning in August to bring me to a tiny bridal boutique in Havertown called Lizelle’s.
(It should be pointed out here that Gina has graciously served as the official Team Groom chauffeur for each outing, which has lead to extra hilarity in each instance, even though she has yet to wear a cap and a mustache as my godmother did for my mother’s wedding this past June.)
My boutique experience could not have been more different than our previous nightmare.
First, the entire shop was about as big as David’s reception area, but it contained approximately ten times the attractive dresses – no 90s promwear in sight. Second, Bruna – a pretty, diminutive woman with a European accent – had opened early just for us, and pulled out every iteration of the styles we were interested in. Third, I was allowed close to and, in one instance, inside of the dressing rooms.
Last, and most important to me, Bruna crossed out “Bride” on her info sheet and wrote in “Groom.” She didn’t even write down Elise’s name.
By that point a second customer had arrived, alone. I sat down across from her while Bruna fussed over Lindsay with a tailor’s measure.
Cheery Customer: You’re the groom?
Me: Yes.
Cheery: And you came with them to shop?
Me: Well, we did most of it together online. We just came here for the grand finale.
Cheery: (Clearly a little awed). That’s awesome. I had to drive by myself all the way from New York to get here!
A mere twenty minutes after our arrival I was pacing back and forth in the alley next to the store, calling Elise on her cell and at home on multiple cell phones, juggling them to try to find one with reception. Eventually we connected and I had her take one last look at our favorite style on the web.
Elise’s approval confirmed, I headed back into the store waving my platinum card. “We’re a go! I repeat, we’re a go on dresses!”
Bruna, not understanding the international signal for “charge me!” asked Lindsay and Gina to present their credit cards.
Me: No, Bruna, I’m paying.
Bruna: For vat?
Me: The dresses.
Bruna: All of them?
Me: Of course.
(As an aside, I find it fascinating that bridesmaids and groomsmen are typically expected to pick up the majority of their expenses. I know not everyone is in the financial situation to pay for their party’s clothing, but at the point that you have a group of people doing so much research, legwork, and chauffeuring for you it seems only fair to comp their costs as much as possible rather than rewarding them with some inane gift like a monogrammed hip flask.
And, seriously, I have the best, smartest, most-resourceful Groom Team of all time. If wasn’t so busy planning a wedding I’d have them whip up a World Tour or a grassroots political movement for me. I’m lucky they don’t charge an hourly fee. Buying them clothing and accessories is the least I can do.)
Bruna waved me away as she got started on the transaction, and I sat down again across from the cheery customer, who was paging through a sample book.
Cheery: Are you really buying their dresses?
Me: Of course. They’ve done so much for me! It shouldn’t cost them money to be in my wedding.
Cheery: Wow. You are really unique.
Greek Chorus, AKA Gina & Lindsay: You have no idea.
Me: I figure they’ll have to buy their own shoes, and who knows what we’ll do for jewelry…
Cheery: Oh! I can help you with that. I have my own jewelry business. You should call me; I’d even give you a discount since you’re paying for their dresses!
Beautiful dresses and good karma, all in one morning.