Codename: CHAOS
The Mountain of Oh, once the Bald Mountain, once the Mountain of Love, is no more. I have been asked by his wife to never again mention nor make reference to a single member of her family; as her husband, he clearly falls under this prohibition. The remainder of "The Wedding Album" excepted, I have decided to honor her request; for the rest of the series, he who was the Mountain shall be known as generically as possible as The Bridegroom/The Husband while his beloved will be The Bride/The Wife. After that - POOF! - they are off-limits, out of bounds. Never again to roam these shabby corridors and hidden passages.

How do I classify The Husband's buddy and groomsman Seth? I enjoy his company quite a bit, but I am uncertain whether our association rises to the level of true friendship. I cherish the English language, but in this area is it damnably imprecise. We have precious few words to bridge the gulf between acquaintances and friends. Bugger it, Seth - not to be confused with Dr. Hee Haw, whose Christian name is also Seth - is my friend. So, my friend Seth was given the opportunity to weigh in on his Secret Base codename, but he declined. Consequently, though he is from Queens, I am going to run with The Guy's excellent codename suggestion: Brooklyn. (The Guy is also the inventor of "Brother-in-L.A.W." I envy his skill.)

The Irrevocable Shackles of Matrimony: The Wedding Album, Part 3, Mark II
I am sorry that the resumption of this series has been so long in coming. With the exception of the hot tub section, all the events herein were covered in the regrettably deleted "Part 3, Mark I." Still, this is a brand-new post, written from scratch and chockablock with my trademark literary flourishes. Enjoy!

...or else.

Lobster Bucket
Rented raiment in our arms and visions of schoolgirl-clad lovelies dancing in our heads, The Bridegroom, The Guy, K. Steeze, The Professor, Brooklyn, and I caravaned back to The Shire with a couple hours to kill before we were due to depart to the church for the wedding rehearsal, with dinner to follow. The Guy marshaled his possessions and departed for the hotel where he and The Gal, due to depart later that afternoon via jetliner, were to spent the next two nights before journeying back to their beloved Soulard.

Retreating to my temporary room, I disrobed and clothed myself in naught but my newly acquired swimming trunks, intent upon availing myself of The Shire's greatest amenity: the hot tub. (This is what I had forgotten when I wrote the first "Wedding Album, Part 3.") It was, in a word, delightful. I entered with a can of pop in one hand and a stack of comic books in the other, but soon both distractions were set aside and I laid back and let the too-warm water and the hypnotic bubbles wash over me. My only complaint originated with my most persistent foe, the accursed Sun. The fiend is always trying to blind me! But, I moved to another of the four walls and soon found myself again in the soothing shadows. No one else joined me, but a couple of my fellows came out to chat. I emerged after perhaps twenty minutes, and we whiled away the rest of our free time with idleness and pleasant conversation.

Time waits for no man and soon enough we suited up, literally, and embarked upon a journey brimming with more adventure than any of us could have guessed.

Bum-Fucking Egypt
The church that was to house the wedding was located on the outskirts of Anonymous, OH, due east of the middle of nowhere, a twenty-to-twenty-five minute drive from The Shire. We trekked to the vicinity of Anonymous on a freeway marked "North," a fact that will increase in importance with the lateness of the hour on this most fateful evening. Once off the freeway we found ourselves on country roads that in the dark of night would be most unwelcoming, devoid as they were of signs, lighting, or landmarks. We drove and drove and drove, farther and farther from civilization (or whatever passes for civilization in Ohio). At length, we reached the outer environs of Anonymous and the church. The steeple was the first non-farm structure we'd seen since leaving behind the freeway. I turned into the first entrance that presented itself and made a right hand circle around the rear of the structure until arriving at the parking lot, where we disembarked from Lumi and met up with The Guy and The Gal.

The church was ornate, beautifully so, an aged structure first erected in the first half of the nineteenth century. I delighted in greeting The L.A.W. and The Maine Man and paid my respects to my mother and father. I was surprised to see Aunt Meg, The Goldbricker's younger and only sister, at the rehearsal, but her presence made sense on two counts: 1) she is the family historian and though this was only a rehearsal my siblings and I are the only children, her only niece and nephews, on the Wilson side; she would understandably want to make as big a deal as possible of the occasion. 2) What else was she supposed to do, sit in her hotel room in Anonymous until the rehearsal dinner? We who were lodged at The Shire remained in a loose conglomeration while meeting and greeting the arriving assembly.

Practice Makes Perfect
The Reverend arrived and herded us to the front so that the business of the rehearsal might begin. He was dressed in blue jeans and a golf shirt with some manner of embroidered cross on the left breast. From the first, every aspect of the man - his garb, his speech, his body language - screamed that he perfectly fulfilled my derisive expectations for a Protestant "man of the cloth." A Catholic priest is just a man, but he is a man charged with a sacred and terrible responsibility by God's Holy Church; a Protestant minister, Lutheran in this case, is too just a man, a man of good faith who has spent a large portion of his life studying the Scriptures so as to divine God's Will, but in the end just a man with no more ecclesiastical authority than you, me, or a ficus. The Reverend lavished attention, enunciation, concentration, and affection on an interminable series of staggeringly lame jokes, which could have been forgiven as a mere stylistic difference of opinion had be not mumbled and stumbled his way through the stage directions for the wedding party.

I understand that hundreds if not thousands of weddings are taking place all across America on any given day Saturday and most of them go off without a hitch; so, the stage directions could not be terribly complex. However, we had journeyed well past bum-fucking Egypt for a wedding rehearsal, not The Reverend's personal open mike night at the Improv! Was it unreasonable to expect to be told plainly where to stand, where to walk, and when to alternate between the two? As mentioned, the mechanics of the actual wedding ceremony are not terribly complicated and we got it all sorted out in very little time, but only after suffering through The Reverend's floor show, including the "It's all about the bride!" debacle.

It's All About the Bride!
The central thrust of The Reverend's presentation was summed up by the mantra, "It's all about the bride!" I am ashamed to tell you that I obeyed his admonitions and dutifully chanted "It's all about the bride." All that I can say in my defense is that in my capacity as best man my own judgment was subservient to the will of The Bridegroom. I was not my own master; so, defending the honor of my family, all of whom were in fact there for the groom, not the bride, was not within my prerogative. (It is shocking to me how poorly understood is the genuine meaning of the word prerogative.) So, there I sat and parroted The Reverend, he the organ grinder and I the monkey.

What is the meaning of "It's all about the bride!"? No interpretation I have been able to surmise reflects well on the bride. And please note, here I shall ruminate generically on brides; none of this is meant as aspersions against The Bride. "It's all about the bride!" could be the rallying call of the Princess Cult, the frankly misogynistic notion that every little girl dreams of a fairy tale wedding, that the wedding itself is more important that the groom, a happy marriage, or an independent sense of self-worth on the bride's part. Popular culture tells us that every woman, no matter how fierce and magnificent, harbors inside herself this terrible shrew, that all of her other accomplishments pale beside the wedding, The Most Important Day of Her Life. My many distaff friends have shown me that this is, most fortunately, not true, at least not in the case of any girl worth befriending or marrying. Or "It's all about the bride!" could be the rallying call of the Huge Rock Cult, the philosophy that a man may make manifest his love only through a string of luxury purchases, beginning with a preposterously titanic diamond on the engagement ring; continuing through the wedding, where the price of the floral arrangements is of greater concern than their beauty; and culminating in the purchase of an obscene mansion for a home. Whichever way you see it, "It's all about the bride!" speaks ill of the bride, reducing the wedding from a celebration of two families coming together to a profane ritual of the bride's apotheosis.

The mechanics of the wedding were all sorted and soon the entire company decamped to the finest restaurant in Anonymous, which for purposes of anonymity we shall call "The Restaurant."

The Eats
The sky had grown black by the time we exited the church, and the clouds that had in the light of day been gathering had begun to issue forth a drizzling rain. A caravan of cars made plain the route to The Restaurant. A gasoline station was directly across the street, but I neglected to check my instrument cluster for an assessment of Lumi's fuel status. As soon as I had parked behind The Restaurant and opened the driver's door, my nostrils were filled with the divine aroma of not just pizza, but pizza of astounding deliciousness. This, I thought to myself, augured well for the meal ahead. No sooner had this flitted across my mind than I was informed that the aroma arose not from The Restaurant, but from the pizzeria next door. Thusly vexed, we made our way to our designated eatery, my heart, nose, taste buds, and stomach longing for a pizza pie.

No architectural aficionado am I, but if pressed I would classify The Restaurant's edifice as late-Victorian in style, a grand old house with a lovely wooden staircase that we alighted to our second floor dining room. We were among the first to arrive and I lead my fellows to a half-booth, claiming the plush bench side for myself. K. Steeze sat down to my left, with Brooklyn and The Professor across. The Guy and The Gal chose the half-booth to my right, oddly choosing the chair side. Aunt Meg sat across from them, saying, "I'll sit next to this guy," meaning me. I turned to Steeze and said quietly, "I hate that woman." I do not hate my aunt; she is my favorite Wilson outside of my immediate family. But once you get past her charm and wit, she supports my father's bigoted and xenophobic political beliefs, she has ever treated me with the benign condescension reserved for children who ride the short bus, and her fervent love of her adopted homeland, Texas, is hypocritical in that she exults in the independence of the Republic of Texas but glosses over Texas's part in the slave-based Confederate States of America. This was a bone of considerable contention between us before I ever suffered through my Texile. But the true tenor of my remark to Steeze was that while enjoying the company of my dearest friends, I did not relish the prospect of diverting my attentions to my relatives. Still, I made what smalltalk was demanded by protocol and even managed to learn a few new items about my family's history under the British Raj.

Our meals were of course complimentary, as were two drinks per guest, our waitress informed us. I demurred at first, but eventually availed myself of a Guinness, the relentless march of time having left behind Labor Day, and with it my summer beer, Red Stripe. Oddly enough, I demurred by citing my status as a driver, but this utterly failed to phase our waitress. A man of my ponderous bulk can drink a single beer over the course of several hours, accompanied by a meal, without feeling any ill effect, 'tis true, but even so the "I'm driving" excuse if normally a silver bullet. Ohioans are apparently big fans of imbibing and driving, as she kept pushing the beer (and later a second, which I declined); as I say, my metabolism was more than up to the task, but still, that was strange.

The three dishes on offer were chicken, steak, and fish. I decided to take a flyer on the chicken and lived to regret my choice. Never in my life had I devoured such a flavorless bird. It was as if it wasn't there! I felt the tactical sensation of the chicken in my mouth, but there was no accompanying flavor. None! I could taste my Guinness, I could taste the vegetables, later I could taste the dessert; so, i am confident the fault lay not in my tongue. Later, I heard both the steak and the fish praised. My instinct is always, in the absence of bacon, to choose cow; as I should have foreseen, I suffered for defying that instinct. Never order the chicken at The Restaurant in Anonymous, OH!

After dinner but before dessert, I spent a few minutes in the company of Aunt Robin, the wife of the older of my mom's two brothers, and her daughter, my cousin Jamie. In yet another reminder of my advanced age, I remember distinctly both Jamie's birth and the period of my life before her birth; imagine my surprise at finding myself sitting next to a high school senior, and a maiden of some not inconsiderable beauty at that. There is no Latin phrase so cruel as tempus fugate. They, too, live in Texas, and I listened with some surprise their bitterness at being among an increasingly small number of "Anglos" in their border city. Mostly, though, we made fun of Jim, Robin's husband, Jamie's father, and my uncle. Jim has a love of puns that matches The Professor's and an unrivaled love of intentionally lame jokes. Once he joined us, it was fascinating to observe how stereotypical were he and Jamie's interactions, exactly as unproductive and antagonistic as you'd imagine from a teenage daughter and her middle-aged father. I don't mean to make fun of them, but, honest to Bog, they could have been reciting lines from the cinema. Fascinating. Also, Jamie gave me her dessert, which she found distasteful. Score!

The Loot
As things were winding down, The Bride presented her bridesmaids with some manner of jewelry at which I never got a clear look, and The Bridegroom presented his groomsmen with personalized flasks. He made the unusual but endlessly appealing choice of having the flasks carved not with our names, but with a series of nicknames. Steeze's was made out to "Steeze," The Guy's to "The Guy," Brooklyn to "Sethy," and mine to "The Last Angry Best Man." Perfection is such a rare and precious thing.

Stuffed with a thoroughly forgettable meal (I really would have preferred the pizza), the party broke up, the parking lot was emptied, and the guests made their separate ways to their lodgings. In the course of just this one day already we'd driven to the airport, played Risk, been fitted for tuxedos, driven to bum-fucking Egypt, attended the wedding rehearsal, endured the "It's all about the bride!" cult, and gotten exactly what we'd paid for at our free dinner. Little did we know that our adventures were just beginning; nothing did we suspect of the perils ahead.

To be continued...

Hilarity courtesy of The Watergirl. Again, this is not representative of The Bride's attitude, it is just damn funny. And the logical extension of "It's all about the bride!"