"Where's the Schnapps?"

One reason that our recent Michigan trip was so long was because I was a groomsman in a wedding for 2 of my closest high school friends.  They started dating sporadically the summer after high school (I like to think I had a big part in them getting together), and now they're married!!  It was a fun wedding to return home for, and I thought I'd detail some of the more interesting points of the whole proceedings.

Angela Gerber Photography

It started 2 nights before the wedding, when I went with the groom and his family to pick up our tuxes.  At one point, the fine chap whose store we were renting tuxes from offered us beers while we were trying on the rentals.  The groom and I laughed it off, yelling outside that people should drink up.  It tuns out that the guy was politely standing outside of the dressing rooms speaking only to us, and nobody heard him offer beers.  So, we kind of unknowingly ignored him, which is way awkward retrospectively.  The groom's father also made some comment about how gay the guy was.  Well, at some point, guy had his hands all up in my slacks trying to fix the fitting, so that image entertained dad very much.

The next night was the rehearsal.  I'm pretty sure it's the smallest, country-est church Annie has ever seen, let alone been in.  The quote of that night was "the organist couldn't be here because he's pulling wheat."  Classic farmtown convo.  The Best Man is the groom's much younger brother, who was hidden from us for most of his childhood.  He really likes me, as the person that made it out of Monroe and all the way to L.A. He said he was freaking out about his speech, so I told him to send it to me, and I'd give him some feedback.

And the day of the wedding started quite usually.  We all met at the bride's grandfather's, since we'd be driving around in his classic cars to get to the ceremony and pictures.  It was in his driveway that a mosquito was caught sucking on my new tattoo.  It was also the first time that I got to go through their shed of classic/antique (mostly Nash) automobiles.  It was pretty cool.  Oh, and one of my best friends who missed the rehearsal and all of the plans due to another wedding showed up already in his tux.  We'll call him G-raffe.  The rest of us had our tuxes at the church, and we were planning on going out to breakfast in comfortable clothes.

So, we all sat at Bob Evans and had breakfast, alongside one of us in a full tux.

On the way to the church, we realized G-raffe had brought a flask, but didn't fill it yet.  So, in a line of classic cars, we had to try and figure a way to get to a liquor store without the rest of the procession following us.  We managed to pull off with only one person following (bride's father, whom we told that G-raffe had to pee really bad), but the place only sold wine and beer.  Not acceptable.  So, instead, we drove to the church, dropped off dad, accidentally missed the driveway, and drove to another nearby party store to fill the flask with rum.  We claimed we were just showing off the car.

Skip ahead 2 hours.  We're all tuxed up.  All of us, this time.  The groom's mother walks in with smelling salts.  She's really worried that the Best Man is going to drop in the middle of the ceremony.  So I stuck one in my inside pocket, in hopes of saving the day if Best Man goes down.  Then we're off taking a ton of photos, like this:

We finished and headed off in a shaded area with picnic tables, behind a big wall blocking us from the parking lot and church.  G-raffe pulls out the flask, swigs, passes it to me, I swig, and then nobody else would even touch it (don't even get me started on the utter lameness of half of these guys).  That was until the groom's dad came rolling around the corner.  "Where's the Schnapps?"  I'm pretty sure he didn't know that we were flasked up, but it was a classic line, well-deserving of some rum.  The bride's dad may or may not have partaken, also.  The groom's dad went on to tell us about how he got pulled over on the way there this morning.  The cop ended up following him all the way to the church to confirm that he wasn't lying, but it's really no surprise.  The groom is always late, and has a plethora of speeding tickets, so I could see it being a little genetic.

The wedding was great, but really hot up in that full tux.  It was so ridiculously hot in Monroe for the first weekend of October, and I was dripping mid-ceremony.  At the end, I poked G-raffe and asked him if I had white stuff around my lips.  It always happens when I get really dehydrated.  He just looked at my lips with 'what the fuck?' face, which meant I did, so I had to vigorously wipe them on my sleeve before walking down the aisle.  I also spent the first 2 minutes of the ceremony trying not to giggle.  Something about uber serious situations does that to me.  I picture the maid of honor letting off a little toot, or the flower girl falling over, and then it's 5 minutes of me trying to keep my shit together.  I also may or may not have grabbed G-raffe's ass a few times.  And 'swiped a credit card'.  ;)

Throughout the pictures afterward, we had to keep returning to my rental car to 'check on the baby'.  I had stolen a cooler from the ringbearer (they stuffed it with is lunch) and had filled it with pre-mixed Jack 'n Cokes.  We shoved G-raffe and the bride's cousin, we'll call her Lately, in the rental, and Annie drove our slowly-getting-intoxicated asses back to the bride's grandfolk's and then on to the reception.  Not before I peed in an ancient outhouse at the grandparent's.  (They have plumbing, but it's there as a shout out to old times.)

We showed up to the wedding in fine shape.  And here's where things got interesting.  Open bar?  Yes please.  We continued to drink.  At no point was I really drunk, or anywhere near black-out like I had been at the last wedding I was in.  (Sorry, B&G!)  The Best Man won the speech battle.  I really thought the maid of honor was going to pull out all the stops (since she's super smart and competitive), but with the help of my speech, he kicked her ass.  #winning

At some point, somebody handed G-raffe a microphone and asked him to say a few words.  He kind of freaked out, thinking it was to the whole audience.  So, he called over Lately and I.  What a trio we were.  I'm pretty sure I detailed some things on that video that should have never been spoken aloud.  (Sorry, B&T!)  Then, on the spot, Nate and I made up a song and sang it, straight outta 'Whose Line is it...'.  I can't wait to see that.  It's gotta be epic.

Then Lately went on to steal the blog-worthy show.  At one point she was retelling an incident between her and an aunt of hers, who asked about G-raffe.  Her response was, "Yeah, I blew him like 10 years ago, but there's nothing there now."  She didn't know, but the bride's mother was standing behind her.  And Lately is far from quiet.  The bride's mother escorted Lately out to the hallway for a little 'picture'.  Lately had another great moment later where she was detailing how the flower girl was all hyped up on sugar and going crazy while we were trying to eat... or something.  The flower girl's mom was within earshot, and dragged the flower girl over to Lately to apologize.  Which was all kinds of awkward.  Lately begged the flower girl's mom (by the way, the bride's new sister-in-law) not to force her daughter to apologize.  That it really was no big deal.  The mom skulked off, but she sat at the main table with pissed off face for a while.  Nice job, Lately.

G-raffe & Lately may or may not be shown here, in the bottom left.  I'm the top right.

Other notable moments from the night were my dancing.  This blog set me up for really high expectations on the dance floor.  I feel like I fulfilled them.  There was one moment where I was in the center of a big circle gettin' jiggy wit it.  And killing it, if I do say so myself.  But when I danced my way to the edge of the circle, in came a green man.  Straight out of 'It's Always Sunny...', totally stealing my thunder.  It was entertaining, but scorned I remain.  There was also a fun moment in the photo booth with G-raffe where I was pantsless in a half-assed attempt at reenacting the creepy, tucked, mirror scene from Silence of the Lambs.

I guess there is one other quote that's worth mentioning.  An old female rival (both voted Smartest in 8th grade), whom we'll call Moo Mist, made this comment about the Best Man, who as I've mentioned we were hidden from for so many years.  "I mean, him and the groom look nothing like each other.  I'd fuck Best Man.  I mean, not that the groom is ugly..."  Paraphrased, but pretty spot on.

And I think that's about all I'm allowed to publish about it online.  Anyone seen that video yet?

Congrats, again, B&T!
~RoB

Wal*Mart

Last Friday, I was driving a friend to the Oakland Airport in the morning.  I got off at Hegenberger (no clue, but I always pronounce it "HEY-zhen-burr-zhey" like it is some classy french word).  The friend that I was driving, who was in the back seat like Miss Daisy, pointed to the Wal*Mart in East Oakland and noted a marching band parading around in the parking lot.  There was a huge group of people congregating outside in front of the entrance.  It made me laugh, and I assured her that I would come back and check things out after I dropped her off.

And I did.  Turns out it was a Grand Re-Opening of this Wal*mart.  There were tons of great cartoon characters in real-life form.  A preacher was praying.  Some city council people were there talking about how Wal*Mart has done all these great things for East Oakland.  (East Oakland is the rough side of Oakland.)  And a marching band.  My life is so random and awesome.

Then, they cut the ribbon, and we all piled inside.  It was really awkward, since 75% of the people there were employees.  20% were official people in business formal.  4% were in costume.  And then there was me.  As the employees walked in, they lined both sides of the aisle, like cheerleaders greeting football players onto the field for homecoming.  I actually needed something from Walmart:  green makeup and brown tights for my Halloween costume, so I thought this would be a ridiculous atmosphere for doing some mundane shopping.

All throughout the store were these characters, and little booths that each one manned giving away freebies.  Dora the Explorer was cutting Grand Re-opening cake.  The Coca Cola polar bear was making root beer floats.  Cowboy Twinkie was continuing to add to the obesity of our children.  So on and so on...

It actually took me back a decade.  If you knew me in high school, you knew that I was a very dedicated Wal*Mart employee.  Back when Wal*Mart actually had a star in between 'Wal' and 'Mart'.

I primarily pushed carts.  I also carried out big items.  And I emptied the full can return machines.  I actually loved it.  It still remains one of my top jobs ever.  It kept me in good shape, I got great sun, and I got to enjoy the continuous circus that is Wal*Mart employees and clientele.  We had a Grand Re-opening when I worked at the Monroe Wal*Mart on Telegraph in Michigan.  (It's since moved across the street and turned into a Supercenter.  So jealous.)  The Grand Re-opening was planned for a day that you probably remember:

September 11th, 2001.

No joke.  We worked for weeks to prepare.  Everyone was staffed almost like it was Black Friday.  Carts were allowed (for the first time ever) to take over some close parking spots as a holding spot for the mad rush of craziness that we were expecting.  And nobody came.

You saw footage of long lines at gas stations where people were freaking and getting gouged.  But, apparently, nobody was that worried about stocking up for impending doom.  Just gas?  Really?  A few people came, but at no point was there more than 1% customers and 99% employees in our huge, sparkling store.  At one point, I think I fell asleep on top of a row of carts out in the parking lot.  It had been a rough day.  They even sent me home early to 'spend time with my family'.

So, aside from NYC, and the twin towers, and terrorism, and one of my best high school friend's 16th birthday, September 11th will always be the Grand Re-opening of the Monroe Walmart.  I'll take that with me forever, too.  Thanks, East Oakland Wal*Mart Grand Re-opening, for reminding me of that.

Once, just once, I had to clean up poop in a bathroom.  It was everywhere.  It was like explosive peas.  It was not awesome,
~RoB

Gloria

♫ Get On Your Feet! ♫  This is Big!!

I always picture Gloria in the ♫ Reach ♫ music video.

I have a big thing for Gloria Estefan.  Well, her music, at least.  She is the queen of my music collection.  Though, she might be tied with Whitney for most number of CDs that I own.  Co-queen, I guess.  (Yes, I still purchase CDs.  I like them.  Eat me.)  (I think I've technically owned more Weird Al Yankovic CDs throughout my life, but not now, and he was hip in middle school, so lay off.)  [Wow, I feel surprisingly defensive about my music all of a sudden.  Lord knows I take enough heat for the music I listen to.]

Own it. ♫ One, Two, Three ♫

Anyway, when I mention her name, all I can think of is another regret of mine from almost a decade ago.  I can't even believe that I remember it.  I was driving around in Monroe either before college or the summer between my freshman and sophomore year at Michigan.  There was one of those 'caller number 9 gets tickets to the concert' callouts on the radio.  Probably Tower 98.  It was for Gloria Estefan tickets.  Her last tour, since she was retiring from performing.

Own it. ♫ Turn the Beat Around ♫

I remember thinking that I should do it.  If, for no other reason, because I had this feeling that not many other people where I'm from would be calling in for that particular venue.  I had this gut feeling that I was going to win if I just called.  I didn't.  I don't know if it was laziness.  I had never been to a concert before, so maybe I was a little apprehensive.  Maybe I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to convince anybody to come with me.  Maybe it forced me to consider rather or not I was gay.  I couldn't tell you why, but I didn't call in.

♫ Come on, shake your body, baby, do the Conga! ♫

Gloria came.  Gloria went.  And I would never see her perform live.  That realization hit me a few months later.

...

And now she's back.  She better get her Latin ass on tour.

She's back, and I'm not missing her this time.

Three songs you should check out that never made it big:

• ♫ Hoy ♫  Entirely in Spanish, and I don't know what she's saying, but I love it.
• ♫ You Can't Walk Away from Love ♫  Annie hates this one, but it feels so exotic and cool to me.
• ♫ Heaven's What I Feel ♫  A dance mix that would probably be big now as a throwback... 13 years later.  (This music video is embarrassing, otherwise I would have included it.)

♫ Rhythm is Gonna Get You ♫,
~RoB

Remembering Joe

[I apologize beforehand.  This wasn't supposed to be so long.  It turned into a stream of consciousness, so I just let it keep bringing more and more memories to the forefront of my mind.  It was thoroughly therapeutic.]

10 years ago, today, I was a 16-year-old boy.  I had been driving around with my fresh license for 6 months.  I pushed carts at Walmart (I just got my first job on June 26th of that summer), and I worked full time since it was summer break.  At that time in my life, I was thoroughly devoted to band and the Red Cross.  And though I wasn't very popular any more (like I had been in middle school), I had a few circles of very close friends.

I started writing this post to detail a few of the specific moments that I remembered centering around this day, August 4th, 10 years ago.  All it made me realize is how fuzzy the whole time is in my mind.

I don't remember how I found out.  I do remember hearing that a fire in Detroit Beach had made the news, and that it was on 5th Street.  I lived on 4th Street for years, so I wondered if I knew anybody.  I remember hearing that one of my closest friends had shown up on scene just before emergency responders, and that she was trying to help get people out of the house.  I remember hearing that not everybody made it out of the house.  I remember finding out it was David's house, and that alone was devastating.


David lived a few hundred feet from where I had lived.  We shared the same bus stop from 3rd grade to 8th grade, until I moved (though he was a year ahead of me in school).  One of the most epic childhood fights I can remember happened in his yard, though strangely, he didn't have any part in it.  David had a cute little sister, and I remember wondering how old she must be now.  My first instinct was to call Joe and ask him if he knew anything about David and his family, since they were cousins.


I don't remember if I tried to call Joe, but if I did the line to his house was busy.  I remember hearing details about how the fire had something to do with the boiler, and that David's mom's oxygen tank blew up and made it even worse.  Again, it's fuzzy, but I do remember finding out that Joe may have been staying the night at David's last night.


Then there are huge gaps missing.


I remember speeding around turns on the long road leading from my house in the huge, red conversion van I drove at the time.

I remember breaking down crying while pushing carts at Walmart when it hit me that Joe had severe brain damage, and if he recovered it was likely that he would no longer be the Joe that I knew.  It was so awkward, and kind of embarrassing, as I ran through the store bawling.  I ran straight to the manager's office and told him that I was leaving for the day.  I tried to explain, but it was obvious I was distressed.  Though I was scheduled to work, I didn't show up again for over a week.

I remember hearing that everyone was at the hospital, and having mixed feelings on rather or not I felt like I should be there.  I remember his parents asking if I would be a pall bearer.  I was so honored, yet I felt like I didn't deserve to be.

I remember begging my girlfriend (who I was thoroughly in love with at the time) to hang out with me, alone, but all she wanted to do was hang out with friends.  Years later, I can kind of understand that, since I wouldn't have wanted to be alone with me at the time, either.  It's not like I lost a brother, but something about our relationship and the timing and my age at the time really left lasting effects.

I remember staying with my close group of friends every minute for days.  We switched houses every once in a while, but we all slept in the same room and stayed in constant sight of each other.

I remember watching porn in the basement of a friend's house, while we were all still together.  More friends showed up and found it awkward that we were watching elderly porn when we were supposed to be in mourning.  We agreed that it was strange, but life was fucked up, and we were enjoying making noises and narrating.  We were enjoying ourselves, and we were all at our wit's end, so it was nice to be doing something else.

I remember that I had snagged a picture of him on my cheesy little polaroid camera just a few days before.  The camera where you pulled out the thin strip and you were left with a mini one-square-inch picture.  I'm still convinced that it was the last picture of Joe before the fire.

I remember snagging his quads from the band room and bringing them to the funeral.  I remember driving all of the pall bearers around.  We had decided to wear Hawaiian shirts.  It seemed fitting that we shouldn't be dressed like stuffy penguins when Joe was always so light hearted.  I remember the casket being so heavy.  I was worried that it might slip, or that I might drop it.  How could it be that heavy with 8 of us carrying it?  I still wonder if it was really that heavy, or if there's some psychology associated with pall bearers that makes the casket so much heavier than it is.

I remember the line of cars in the procession was the most massive thing I had ever seen until moving to Los Angeles.  The traffic that we must have caused probably resides somewhere in Monroe record books.

I remember hearing his father crying out in the church.  I remember thinking that it must have been his mom, until I looked over.  It only happened once, but that shriek still haunts me.  I remember thinking that the whole family must be on ridiculous doses of antidepressants to even be sitting here going through this without going absolutely insane.

I remember not crying.  At the viewing, my best friend read something aloud that he had written in his bus ride back from Texas (where he had been spending time during the summer break).  Everyone cried.  I didn't.  It made me feel heartless, but I didn't cry.

I remember crying.  It is some sort of law that there has to be witnesses when the casket is lowered and the first few piles of dirt are thrown on.  That's where I lost it.  That's where most of us lost it.  Some guys had to walk away.  I remember not being the only one brought to their knees in tears at that particular moment.  The only other moment that came close to this, was when they handed the pall bearers the items from Joe's casket as they were closing it... for good.

I remember dedicating everything I did that year to Joe, and David, and David's brother, who were all lost in that fire.


I'm not sure how Joe and I became friends.  It's likely that it happened through band, but we had an interesting bond through computers.  We chatted on ICQ, hacked, and passed around cheesy video games before it was cool.  We were rock stars in our middle school computer class.  I stayed the night at his house once or twice (I wasn't one for sleepovers, so that's kind of a big deal.)  I remember that one time his mom made meatloaf, with green peppers throughout it.  I hate green peppers, but I smothered it with a ton of ketchup and choked it down, because that's the respectful thing to do.

The last time I saw Joe was at a bonfire.  He showed up with one of our friends; the two of them had been hanging out a lot at the time.  Hanging out so much, that I was kind of jealous.  When they left, I remember calling Joe our friend's bitch.  Those words still haunt me.  The last thing that I said about one of my close friends while he was still alive was awful.  It really put into perspective alot of the words that I choose in my life now, forcing me to avoid 'love' as much as I do the word 'hate'.  Be careful when you are talking about people.  Words can be so powerful and so everlasting.

I have this great picture of the two of us in our high school marching band uniforms after we performed at the University of Michigan Crisler Concert the fall before.  We were both going to go to Michigan for college and be in band.  He was going to be in the drum line, and I was going to play trumpet.  Easy enough.  Now the picture that sits on my wall is one of the few concrete objects that just the two of us shared.  It'd be a great picture to include here, but I never scanned it.  It just sits on my wall.  I did live up to my part of the deal, though.  I only applied to one college, and when I considered dropping out of the marching band before my senior year, he was one of the reasons I didn't.

Though I always feel like I'm discrediting those closer to him, like his family, whenever I express my feelings on the whole situation, it feels good to finally lay down everything that I remember.

Rest in peace, Joe.  10 years feels like yesterday, and I will always remember you,
~RoB