weekend update

waste of a weekend.

it started off ok on friday night when the 'rents and i picked marley up from the airport in chicago and went to dinner. we found a terrific greek place right off the highway and got mom sloshed. she spent the next hour in the car on our way to wisconsin saying things like "we have to pay a toll? I'd rather pay a troll! Get it? Troll! Ha!" and laughing until she snorted and thought of something else entertainingly retarded to say. (Driving around one's drunken parents is a new experience. It would have been more fun if I had been drunk too, but then I wouldn't have been able to drive. So there it is.)

We got to Miss Happy's condo rather late, and her and her Mumsy were up waiting for us. Mumsy was rather rude. I had never met her before, and she made no effort to greet me or even get out of her chair. The only word she spoke was "hello." I thought, I drove 5 fucking hours through construction and weekend traffic for this? We left and checked in to our hotel, which did not think it necessary to provide blankets and pillows for all its guests.

Saturday. The ENGAGEMENT PARTY. Our purpose for driving to Wisconsin. I was informed on Saturday morning that I would be helping the spoilt obnoxious 4-year-old neice of the bride, Rocky, to decorate the condo for the party. Yay. I arrived early to help decorate and discovered that the party was NOT to be held in Miss Happy's condo, but rather in Miss Happy's GARAGE. Granted it's rather nice as garrages go, but it's still a fucking garage. I didn't drive 10 hours from Michigan in one-lane construction zones to eat hotdogs in someone's fucking GARAGE. Fucking hell. I know from hospitality, and that ain't it, sister.

The party started at two, at which time the other losers began to arrive. I have never met a more boring collection of single-celled "life" forms in the span of my existence. They could have been replaced with cardboard cutouts and we never would have known the difference. Not only were these people completey incapable of actively engaging in a conversation, they couldn't even answer questions with more than two syllables. We tried to draw them out, we tried to make interesting conversation, we tried to discuss things, but to no avail. They just sat there, blankly looking at me and my family as though we were speaking a different language. My father was brilliant. He got tanked on the rather nice Los Vascos reserve cabernet sauvingnon Marley put out and managed to spend 6 hours having a lively, one-sided conversation with about nine people. It looked like he was talking to a ward of comatose hospital inhabitants, only wierder. Brilliant man. Mom gave up trying and just sat in the back of the room, shaking her head in dismay and moaning to herself, "does he know what he's marrying into?" I went and found Curds, Marley's aptly-named Best Man, and his fiance', who were the only realy people there, and spent the entire afternoon with them. Charming, intelligent, interesting people. Lovely people. I felt so guilty that they drove even further than I did to get to that party. What a waste of a weekend. Thank god for Curds or I would have choked myself to death on a mustard-coated garage dog.

Then there were the aunties. I love the aunties, but they do drive me nuts. Actually, just one of them drives me nuts. Sister Pick-Up-My-Soap Aunt. The other one is fine. Sister PUMS Aunt was in top form, and it was my job to drive her and my other aunt home on sunday. So I got to spend that 16-hour-constrction-zone-in-a-raging-blizzard-at-night-drive defending all music of all genres that had been composed since she entered the convent in 1802. The conversation went something like this:

SA: No one writes good music any more.

Me: Yes they do. We're listening to good music right now (it was Paul Simon).

SA: I mean, no one writes any good music with a social message.

Me: Actually, lots of people do. The song we're listening to right now (Diamonds on the Souls of Their Shoes) is about aparthide.

SA: I mean new people. Paul Simon is from another generation.

Me (beginning to get seriously annoyed): Lots of country music is on the cutting edge of social issues. The Dixie Chicks had a number one hit about spousal abuse, and rap music was the first genre of music to address the issue of AIDS. And folk music is just as social-justice driven today as it's always been. Have you ever listened to Boris McCutchen?

SA: Well I've never heard of any of those people. (Because anyone she's never heard of is of no consequense by default).

Me: That's because you live under a rock. You still have your secratary print off all your emails because you don't know how to open them on the computer, and the only radio sation you listen to is NPR. If you bothered to listen to some contemporary country, rap, or folk music you would hear lots of social issues. Just because you don't know its out there doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

SA: But I don't like that kind of music.

Me: *CRASH!!!* as I deliberately drive the car off the road at 80 mph into a tree, killing myself and my two passengers so as to avoid having to continue the conversation. I love people who make sweeping, all-encompasing statements on subjects about which they know absolutely NOTHING.

What a waste of a weekend. And I didn't even mention the mass in the morning to which I was dragged against my will where they sang really awful christian rock/lounge lizzard muzak and paraded a naked baby around the church 3 times before it was sacrificed and burnt as an offering. You think i'm joking?