Happy Life Day!
There are many ways to celebrate the season: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the little known Life Day on the planet Kashyyk. Regardless, each holiday is intended to involve one thing that 99.9% of us want: peace on Earth and goodwill towards all. But since it's likely that we won't see that in our lifetimes, we'll have to settle for lots of presents.

On behalf of the three of us, I'd like to wish you the happiest, safest and most wonderful of holidays, no matter how you celebrate. May the joy of the season find you no matter where you are.

(I do think, however, that George Lucas would prefer that Life Day passes into the forgotten mists of time very soon.)
- posted by Jon @ 11:25 PM

 
Strawberry Fields Forever
Twenty three years ago, this date was also a Monday night. Somewhere around 11 PM, my dad and one of my brothers came into my room and woke me up.

"Somebody shot John Lennon. Cosell just said it during the football game," my dad told me.

Strangely enough, I didn't realize the gravity of the situation at the time. It was certainly shocking enough that someone would shoot John Lennon, but with the matter of fact way the news was delivered to me, I just assumed he was ok. I got out of bed to check out the news reports only to find out that the attack had indeed killed him.

It's hard to believe that it's been this many years now since an artistic genius and pioneer was silenced before his time. One can only wonder at what he could have accomplished these past 23 years not just with his music, but his views and actions. We are definitely much poorer for not knowing.
- posted by Jon @ 8:34 PM

 
Fairy Tale Wedded Bliss
What is it about the modern wedding that can drive a person to drive other people to drink heavily? No, I'm not talking about the beauty of an open bar. I'm talking about the absolute over-the-top nature of some of these events, where the bride-to-be obsesses over whether the diamond stud in the toe of their shoe matches the cummerbund around the live swans swimming in the punch bowl (how would you like to have a sip of that punch?). Weddings where the closest friends of the bride show how deep their friendship is by wearing the most humiliating dresses seen on Earth, held in reception halls that you’re afraid to sit down in because you don’t want to scratch the marble. And all the while some form of power struggle within one or both families is coming to a climax over the way the napkins are folded.

I have heard of and nearly been involved in some of the most elaborate weddings known to mankind. We're talking weddings that cost more than the GNP of a small European country (of course with the Euro as strong as it currently is, maybe that's not so much the case anymore). Everything is choreographed. Everything is perfectly beautiful and enough of Dad’s money has been spent to ensure that the coach does not become a pumpkin at midnight.

The problem though, is that very often the coach does become a pumpkin in the aftermath of the wedding. So often, the obsession is all about creating this great fairy tale like show, and one very important thing is completely overlooked: the marriage. You have to wonder what the purpose of having the wedding was. Was it to have some elaborate ceremony so that someone could brag about how big theirs was (oddly enough, I don't know many men that brag about the size of their wedding, and we usually like comparing sizes), or was it to celebrate the union of two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together? I'd like to think it was the latter. I know it was for me and for any of my friends who also have joined (or will join) in the bonds of holy matrimony. Not to generalize, but it really seems that the bigger the wedding, the less it's about the marriage. You know, as you walk in with the gift from Macy's, that this one's not going to work out, so you made sure to wear your "divorce tie" to subtly signify that you called the split first.

Now don't get me wrong. There are definitely things that I personally believe are fundamental for a wedding. It was really cool to wear a tux that had a cummerbund with a very subtle Mickey Mouse pattern (how many of my friends out there noticed that I had that on my wedding day? Huh? Huh?). And as long as I live, I will never forget the sight of seeing my wife for the first time on that day in her dress coming towards me down the aisle. Or how I had a difficult time slipping the ring on her finger at the appropriate moment. Or even the large burp emitted in the middle of the ceremony by my little nephew.

Some people might be aghast at those last two items occurring in the modern wedding ceremony, but that's exactly what was so great about it. The fact that a few things didn't go as planned are what made the day that much more memorable, enjoyable and human. Well, except for the bakery that tried to pull a fast one on us and accused us of losing a cake pillar. That was just mean. But we had two main goals for our wedding: A) have fun and 2) throw the biggest party known to man that you can throw.

We achieved that and more with a little help from our friends. Not from a wedding planner, a dress designer, a web page tracking our progress or guys named Franc or Serge. And we also realize one thing-the wedding is a beginning, not the culmination of a master plan more complex than a military offensive.

Though I will say this. The bouquet-garter thing? That can provide lasting memories, especially when one of the participants is a cop that claims she's never done this before.
- posted by Jon @ 9:45 PM