It all started inauspiciously enough.
Sarah was out buying sunflowers at a fancy flower store. Her mission was to carry sunflowers at her wedding as Grammy was not allowed to at hers. (Side note: I’m the only one who calls my wife her real name on the blog? Is that a faux pas? Should I call her Kissyfur from now on? Ok, I will. Thanks, spam commenters, for the tip.) I travelled to Enterprise Rent-A-Car to go through what should be the mundane motions of renting a car.
Note that I don’t have a credit card. I had one once, it didn’t go so well. So now I don’t have one.
I get to Enterprise, they’ve got my reservation. I show the guy at the counter (who is the more respectable and in-charge type of the two guys behind the counter) my credit/debit card.
He says, “Um…,”
He says, “Do you have a credit card, or just this?”
I says, “Um, just this.”
He says, “Um, well, we have specific policies here. You should have read them on the Internet when you signed up.”
I says, “Um.”
He says, “Well, can you prove your residency?”
I says, “Um, well, I could probably go print out a gas bill.”
He says, “And, can you prove full-time employment?”
I says, “No. I’m a consultant. What’s wrong with my debit card? It’s money, right?”
He then at this point tries to explain that a credit card is to a line of credit, and a debit card is to… my bank account! NO SHIT! I use the word “suboptimal” a number of times, I make sure I have no other options, I make sure I can’t use someone else’s credit card to pay for it, nope. The card and the driver have to match, and it has to be a credit card. (Note that I’ve rented cars successfully in multiple cities, and had cars rented for me on other people’s credit cards in multiple cities. New York is clearly full of crooks both unsavory and clever.) In the middle of calling people to try to find a solution, my phone, which had registered 1/4 battery power when I had turned it on that morning, suddenly loses all juice.
I wound up walking to James + Michelles, cranking out on them like a motherfucker (sorry, guys), using their phone and internet, renting the Most Expensive SUV In The World from Budget, whose rates I guess are so high because they’ll rent to thieves like me, and no they didn’t say SUV or I would have objected, they said “Minivan.” Which would have been even better for singing soccer mom songs, and made me think fondly of driving around in The Giant Air-Conditioned Box with Sarah Braun in the waybackwhen.
Said SUV was driven with fervent Americanness to Poughkeepsie, where all was cranky, pizza was eaten, and we were, as mentioned, DENIED ACCESS TO THE BIG TV. What is that house, but a gigantic black hole being sucked into the TV? (Ok, I’m being grandiosely hyperbolic. Fine.) YARRRRRR! I’m a professional-quality A/V guy, jeezus christ. So there was some lividness, until We Love Katamari was actually turned on, and then lividness faded into Katamari glory.
WLK’s gameplay was nicely inventive, within the rubrick of rolling a katamari around and picking up stuff. We did an underwater level, and a flower level (which was beautiful), as well as two town levels. The flower level had two different gameplay modes — one counting how quickly you could get to a target level of flowers, one wanting you to pick up as many flowers as possible in the alloted time, which added variation. The cut scenes are my favorite aspect of the sequel — they explains how your father, The King Of The Cosmos, got to be such a supreme dick. And he’s still a dick. Though they have his codpiece strategically hidden this time, which I think takes away from the true Melanie Klein-ness of the relationship. He’s sitting on a pimpin’ heart chair though, and it’s got a joystick built in. For His Royal Pleasure, assuredly. But the cut scenes are, so far, all about him being abused by his father. Heartwrenching. The only disappointment thus far has been the music — not that it isn’t fine, just that I don’t want to download the MP3s and listen to them obsessively. We only did 4 levels though — the music has lots of room for improvement.
We were woken early the next day (though I got about an extra :30 of sleep, as my Bird Flu had gotten slightly worse overnight, and I’m quite allergic to Teddy, The Polenberg Pooch, who is looking a little better after what was apparently a lengthy convalescence). We got dressed up all fancy. Much steaming occurred. Guests arrived. Much schmoozing was done. The few social awkwardnesses that could have been exacerbated by guests were not exacerbated, which was lovely. I got to meet many Porters and Harts who I hadn’t gotten to meet, and many Polenbergs as well, and many, many Mah Jong ladies. Who probably know more about my childhood than I can even remember.
The catering was lovely, the ceremony, though very late, went quite well (Thanks Twin C for officiating, and Twin D for manning the 1s and 2s, and Br. Bacon for what I’m sure will be lovely parent-pleasing photographs!), there was much weeping of joy, and Mom and Dad (!) were really really pleased. With the ceremony especially. I’m really happy that we were able to bring so much of our playa wedding experience back into their context and keep it unchanged, and that they still appreciated it.
Everyone ate lots o’ damn fine catering, and Br. Bacon mocked barfing on everyone’s shoes. A bunch. Many adults got goddamn shitty drunk. (I did not, though I had mentally kind of planned to.) A fine time was had by all, pretty much. Or anyone who did not have a fine time didn’t kvetch about it, which is sort of like everyone having a fine time.
Later we went home and rubbed our bellies. And went to sleep, double-married. Which is like when you’re cooking a chicken on a rotisserie, and you turn it, and it sizzles.
So that’s the story. Cheee-rist, this may be my longest blog post ever. That’s what happens when I got the MEAT RAGE. Yup. Dat’s right.
