Your "Has Anyone Seen My Lighter?" Quizo Update

No, seriously, I just sat down to write the e-mail and it's nowhere to be found. What the deuce.

So how was everyone's weekend? Aside from temperatures 20+ degrees above normal - global warming, bah, what's that - I hope everyone had a good time.

I was at a wedding on Friday which was primarily notable for the actual wedding itself - I am not making this up - lasting less than three minutes. I'm serious. It was at one of those riverside mansion places up in Bensalem. We're sitting in folding chairs out on the lawn (like you do), there's the whole little collapsible-arch-thingy for the ceremony, a guy is off to the side playing vaguely classical-type music off a Powerbook - you know, a wedding. The Pachelbel Canon starts playing and the bride/groom/assorted hangers-on start walking up the aisle.

This is where it gets weird.

The wedding party gets up to the arch-thingy, the priest guy says "dearly beloved..." and at this point a helicopter starts flying directly overhead. The mansion we're at is maybe 800 feet from the junction of 95 and Woodhaven Road, so I'm guessing it's a traffic copter. I can barely make out the proceedings - I catch an "I do" here and there - and almost before you can finish buttoning your jacket from standing up when the bride passes they're walking back down the aisle. Done! Married! It's taken you longer to read about it then it did for the actual wedding to occur.

I turned to the guy standing next to me and said, "you've gotta be fucking kidding me."

I wasn't timing it myself but I am informed by reliable sources that the entire ceremony, from dearly beloved to walking back down the aisle clocked in at about two minutes and forty five seconds. After I got past the initial shock I said, "this is the greatest wedding ever."

Of course, it did not go all super-nice, as at the after-party after the regular party I had to say to the groom, "yeah, before you go on your honeymoon, I need you to make sure that your Dad doesn't think I'm a giant drug addict." Now you have to understand that for many years now the groom's parents have, to put it charitably, scared the living shit out of me. They are very intense people; I am fairly certain that if his mother concentrated very hard her gaze could actually shatter plate glass. Before the ceremony I ran into his father at the men's room sinks and, trying my best to both be pleasant and seem brave (they can smell fear) I said, "so how we doing?"

He said, "eh, pretty good. Can't wait until I can get a drink, though."

"Well," I said, "some of us are luckier than others on that score."

For the first time I can remember in the last seven years he looked at me as though he did not want to eat my liver and said, "that's right, you don't - how long now?"

In a rather catastrophic example of totally blowing the coverage, I said, "eight years since I stopped drinking. But, you know, I still do massive amounts of cocaine to keep myself limber."

The liver-eating look came back, and I thought "FUCK!" very loudly.

Saturday night, of course, was the Springsteen show, and I don't think anything needs to be said about that.

...

...

...

Oh, come ON, you didn't really think THAT was going to happen, did you?

Going to a Bruce Springsteen concert is something of an odd experience if you aren't used to it. It's a bit like being in the chorus of a musical. Everybody knows every song in its entirety, but you only have to sing certain parts at certain times. You have choreography to remember, which is slightly different than what the leads are doing. Everybody knows who the real star of the show is, but damn if you don't still feel like you're an important part of it. And he played Thundercrack! FUCKING THUNDERCRACK! OH MY GOD HE PLAYED FUCKING THUNDERCRACK!

I am going to restrain myself at this point because if I don't I could go on for literally thousands of words about the amazing transcendent awesomeness that is a Springsteen concert. If you are not an especially religious person - and "not especially religious" is a pretty accurate way of describing how I roll with such things - a live Springsteen show is as close are you will ever get to pure, unadulterated joy. It is, truly, awesome. As they said on the Office, if you don't realize that it's awesome, well, you just need awesome lessons.

For a taste, most of the concert can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=cgb77&p=r

And, finally, I am publicly calling out Cum From Behind and The Darg Whores, both of whom have been notably absent the last few weeks.

JLK