For the past decade I’ve been subjected and abused by my lifelong friends in the form of a primitive masochistic human event known as the “wedding”. I want to try and get right to the point here and not beat around the bush. I HATE WEDDINGS. There. I said it. Why the fuck should I have to be inconvenienced, bored, and made to suffer both physically and financially because of someone else’s mistake? You’re in love and you think you’re gonna spend the rest of your life with someone else- awesome. Let’s face it people- statistically 1 out of 2 marriages fail. In fact, the first wedding I went to is already over. Kaput. Fin. And I dropped over $1500 on that mistake! You know what? From now on if you invite me to your wedding, I want a money back guarantee. I want a voucher that says “Should this fling come to an abrupt end with irreconcilable differences or (better yet)…should I ever come home to find my wife with some other guy’s baby batter all over her chest…I promise I will reimburse you for every dime you shelled out at my expense.” And I don’t care how “special” you think your day is and how beautiful you and your new husband/wife look or how glad you are to have everyone there to witness your love…nobody really cares. You want your friends to bare witness to your love? Make a sex tape and put it on-line. At least that way I can bare witness to your love without having to fly anywhere- and depending on where I’m watching your tape and what kind of shape your wife is in…maybe I can actually get something out of it while I’m at it.
I’ll spare you the dollar amounts I was forced to pay to attend weddings right out of college- when I was still trying to break-in here in Hollywood and was so poor that I spent nights sifting through my own feces to try and find nourishment. I’ll spare you the story of the ‘destination wedding’ from hell where I traveled to a 3rd world country and was forced to sleep in a hallway because I was the last one to call “not it” and get a bed in an actual room. I’ll even spare you the story of the wedding at Jimmy Hendrix’s old mansion where the bride did too much blow before stepping up to the alter and wound up telling everyone in attendance to “fuck themselves and get out”. (It was later discovered that she was in fact a HE at one point- but that’s a whole different blog for another day.)
But a point I simply MUST get across is that the whole “Maid of Honor” speech HAS TO GO. I don’t care that you pulled me away from my life, made me travel, drop thousands of dollars, get dressed up, rent someone else’s clothes, dance to ‘Love Shack’, and sit through canned ‘vows’. DO NOT MAKE ME SIT THROUGH ANOTHER MAID OF HONOR SPEECH. When did this travesty start? Whatever happened to a solid “Best Man” speech, a toast, and a sit-the-fuck-back-down-and-eat wedding? It used to be that the “Best Man” would get up and give a quick heart warming speech about his buddy and what the bride means to him. He would get everyone laughing (and if he’s halfway decent) a little teary…and then we would move on to “Love Shack” and “We Are Family”. But NO!! Now, in an effort to be equal and not shown up, the “Maid Of Honor” has to attempt a speech. And it always ends up being this teary stupid rambling about shopping, inside jokes, a list of other female names who you don’t know or give a shit about, and a final blanket statement about “sisters”. Sometimes they are REALLY sisters in which case they should be slapped for being so obvious. But other times they think they are delving into ‘cinematic speech gold’ by referring to their friend as a “sister” and should be slapped for going there and thinking it is a good closer to their weak speech. If I’m gonna pay all this money and travel the world to be there…I want to be entertained goddamnit! Don’t subject me to this bullshit. I like me a good speech. Deliver on this small detail and I am a happy guy. But now all of a sudden everyone who ever knew the bride and groom has to stand up and talk? Bullshit. I was at a wedding where the “Maid Of Honor” actually got up there with a notebook. Sorry, bride and groom. If your guests of “honor” can’t even commit to memory how they feel about you or get it out on a note card or two….they shouldn’t be talking in the first place. THINK OF YOUR GUESTS! This is a show, goddamnit! Entertain us! And I have no shame in the fact that from here on in I am asking if the reception includes an open bar before I accept or decline the invitation. “Hey thanks for coming all this way to be here- now pay $8 for a Bud Light.” Fuck you.
If I were to actually try and write out all of my wedding horror stories it would be a novel. In fact, that’s it. Right after I write the book on dating- I’m gonna write the book on weddings. I’ll call it “My Big Fat Inconvenient Hassle of A Fucking Wedding”. The next time I am bitching about weddings, people will be all like “What, did you write the book on weddings?” And then I’ll be all like “Yes.”
I can’t wait to get married. Not so much to live happily ever after- but to get back at every friend who made me go to their wedding so they can see how much it sucks. Give me a solid Bar Mitzvah, Sweet 16, funeral, or circumcision any day…but NO MORE WEDDINGS PLEASE, for the love of God. And before you all start leaving comments about me being heartless and not believing in love…I’m not heartless and I do believe in love. I just don’t believe in the rituals surrounding it and how they ruin everyone else’s life. At MY wedding? Pyrotechnics. No joke.
Now that we have all of that out of the way…let’s begin the story, shall we? I started writing this blog from the floor of LAX. A childhood friend who I love dearly decided to tie the knot…in a place that’s not within 4 hours of a major fucking airport. So unfortunately, the only way to get there involved some sort of layover. I hate layovers more than I hate having to fly next to a sweaty nervous suspicious looking person of Middle Eastern decent, OK? Layovers suck cat ass. So not only were my girlfriend and I looking at a full day of shit- but now, the city we were supposed to transfer in was having some “weather”. So there we were….HOURS later….sitting on the floor of the world’s nastiest airport. At this point we’ve already missed our connecting flight and have had to face the fact that we’re gonna be spending the night in a hotel in my ‘layover city’. Of course, I’ve already paid for the hotel in East bum-fuck where my friend decided to get married…so I’ll be paying for TWO hotel rooms in two different states- and a car rental that I won’t be using. Fucking awesome.
Eventually we arrived in Chicago. As expected, we had missed our connecting flight and we were looking at spending the night there. So we wait in a line and talk to the “ticketing agent”. We explored the option of flying into a neighboring state and driving in to the wedding…but unfortunately, my girlfriend had checked her bag and it was nowhere to be found by this point. So we agreed to fly out in the morning. The “ticketing agent” gave us tickets for the next morning.
“So do you guys put us up in a hotel now or anything?”
“No.”
“What about a distressed rate or something?”
Turns out the “distressed” rate is at a hotel an hour away that costs $120 a night. Someone explain to me how that is a distressed rate? So- a $60 cab ride later and we arrive at this hotel. We step into the elevator to find that we are standing in a floor full of vomit. Yes, you read correctly. We were standing in an inch of someone else’s half digested food. Needless to say, by the time we arrived at our floor- we were pissed. But no, the adventure was really just beginning as we discovered that we were actually in the movie Labyrinth and each hallway lead to more mystery and staircases…but no actual room. At one point David Bowie actually leaned over the rail and sang to us. On any other night it would have been cool- but not tonight.
So we get to our room. Finally a shower. Unfortunately- this particular hotel only provides COLD water. I know, what was I supposed to expect for such a low rate of $120 a night? So no shower for us- but that’s OK seeing as how all of our toiletries were in a big suitcase with red cherries all over it somewhere over the United States. Don’t even get me started on the fact that you can’t carry toothpaste onto a fucking plane anymore. You know what? If a terrorist could figure out how to take down a plane with a tube of Crest- I’d be more than happy to die on that flight. I mean, come on. That takes talent! My last words as I plummeted to my fiery death would be “Nice, dude!” He would retort: “Chaaalam Dirkadirka Jihad!”…which actually means… “Fuck you, you filthy Jew. I don’t care if you’re impressed with my toothpaste bomb making skills- the whole point of this was to kill Americans…not to impress your Hebrew ass.”
So no shower. No clothes. Shoes full of vomit. Man, were we hungry. But strangely enough- there is no food in Chicago. I swear to God. We approached the front desk and asked where we could go get some solid Chicago Deep Dish Pizza and the woman actually chuckled. “Not at this hour!”
It was 9:25pm.
Refusing to believe her, we made our way to a nearby restaurant. Sure enough, she wasn’t lying. Everything on the block was closed. One place even said “Open ’til 11pm”. When I inquired why the sign on the door said that…the waitress responded “I don’t really know.” The city of Chicago is now up there with weddings in my book. What a fucking terrible place. And FYI- eventually we did find pizza and you know what, Chicago…? Your pizza sucks. Go to New York and get some real pizza. Fuck you, fuck the Bears, and fuck your kick-off return in the Superbowl that you lost. I still can’t believe that the “Windy City” has to close their airports because of “wind”. Needless to say, by the next morning- we were ready to leave Chicago. (Note: it had now been 24 hours since we left Los Angeles and this is all for a fucking wedding.)
Another $60 cab ride and we are back at O’Hare. The lines are long. But we were smart and thought ahead. We got there early. So we get up to the ticketing booth and find out that our “ticketing agent” actually booked us on another airline.
“Oh, see the fine print here on your American Airlines ticket? These are actually for United now.”
Boss. So we’re out the door and on a train to get to the United terminal. It’s OK because we still have plenty of time. Of course, when we get to the escalator…it’s broken. Just one more kick in the balls. We finally get to the United terminal to find that the wait time for a ticketing agent is roughly 3 hours. No Fast Pass like Disneyland. Just a big “Fuck you, hope you enjoyed our escalator- have you tried our Pizza yet?” We’re never gonna make our flight. So I do my best to try and get ahead in the line. Thankfully, everyone in the mid-west is severely over weight, so I was able to snake my way up into the line by hiding beneath their fat. I tried bribing my way to the top with free tickets to Hatchet. When that didn’t work I tried to get Rileah to take her shirt off. When she wouldn’t cooperate- I spied an emergency phone in the corner that connects you directly with an agent. There was hope!
I picked up the phone and it had me enter all kinds of numbers. My ticket number, my confirmation number, the entire script for the movie “Number 23”, my favorite number, my birthdate, and my social security number. At that point it connects me to an agent who right off the bat asks me for ALL OF THE SAME NUMBERS. This may be slightly off topic…but why the fuck do phone services make you enter all of that info if they’re just gonna ask you for it again moments later? Are we hamsters? Do we just need to be “kept busy” because the Michael Bolton hold music is not enough? Who’s the corporate asshole, who said, “I know! Make them enter numbers while they are on hold! That way they won’t realize how long they are holding because they’ll be so busy!” Finally, the agent pulls up my info. Turns out that the tickets our “ticketing agent” gave us are NO GOOD.
“Why would she have booked you on a United flight? That makes no sense. You’re not in the system at all. She probably just wanted to get rid of you because it was so stressed over there last night. Go back to American Airlines and see if they can help you.”
Now I’m out for blood. I don’t want a manager. I want the fucking President of American Airlines! I want George Fucking Bush! I’m so mad my sweat is afraid to come out.
We walk back up the mile long broken escalator (somehow in Chicago you go UP both ways), get on the train, and head back to American Airlines. Now it’s mayhem there. Turns out their trick tickets could only divert the masses for so long. We wait in another line. Our flight is now long gone. (Note: it has now been 30 hours since we left Los Angeles and Chicago still sucks.)
When we finally get to an agent she informs us that there are no available flights out of Chicago heading where we are going for the next 2 days. (American Airlines had just joined Weddings and Chicago on my list.) The best she could do was put us on stand-by.
So there we are…stuck in Chicago. No way out. I was going to have to call my friend and tell her that I was going to pull a Tom Hanks and start living in the terminal. I would not be making her wedding. Of course, right after I did so…miraculously, two seats opened up on a full flight. Turns out 2 other people had missed their connection and would now be stranded in the airport of doom. Haha, fuckers! Welcome to Chicago! Have some pizza! We’re taking your seats!
Once aboard we realized we were on one of those “Buddy Holly” airplanes. But we didn’t care. After all, death was a welcome sight after spending the night in Chicago. Christ that city sucks as much as the band. We squeezed our eyes closed and prayed for safety. 38 hours after we had left Los Angeles…we arrived in East Bum Fuck.
The wedding was fine. Awesome “Best Man” speech. No “Maid of Honor” speech. No “Love Shack.” And a goddamn awesome open fucking bar. I’m writing this now from the airport in East Bum Fuck as we wait to board and complete our adventure. Hopefully we don’t have the same problems on our return flight. But to all of my friends who read these blogs, get used to seeing this from me:
“Unfortunately I am unavailable to attend your wedding on <enter date here> as I have another event scheduled that day. Enclosed please find a $5.00 coupon good towards anything at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Please note- the coupon is not good on Yankee Candle products, but you can probably get a nice magnet with it. Congratulations on your big day and may you both live happily ever after. – Adam Fucking Green”