Monthly Archives: April 2014

Weddings Today: Short on Ceremony, Long on Food Stations

07 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Concepts, Men

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Frank wedding cake

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I had an interesting cultural experience recently when I attended a wedding of two friends of my daughter. Since these were not relatives, and in fact were people I hardly knew, I was able to sit back and take a dispassionate look at the state of wedding culture today. Being over 60 gives me the perspective of a parent, and the fact that I still have an unmarried daughter adds some relevance to the matter.

You should know up front that this was an Italian wedding, though not the Italian Football Wedding Pat Cooper spoofed 50 years ago. This was a classy affair in a high-rent-district wedding facility. But years ago, this would have been the site of just the reception after a church wedding. Now, it housed both the wedding and the reception. That’s because many young people no longer want to jump through the hoops required by the Catholic Church to receive the sacrament of matrimony. So they forego the sacramental church wedding and are married by a deacon or justice of the peace. That’s a fundamental change over the past 40 years.

So everyone gathers for the ceremony in a chapel provided by the facility. The ceremony is short and sweet:
Do you take him?
Do you take her?
You’re married!

And of course, the last thing the presider at a wedding always says no matter whether it’s in church or on a beach is, “You may kiss the bride.”
Frank wedding article
So we always have the money shot of the two people kissing just before they head down the aisle.

This time, as I watched the bride and groom kiss, suddenly the words of the Paul Williams song made famous by the Carpenters started playing in my mind, “A kiss for luck and we’re on our way.” The bride and groom bound down the aisle, but no one throws anything anymore. Years ago, people threw rice, and later, the more ecologically-minded moved to birdseed and bubbles. Now we seem to have given up on it altogether. That’s fine with me. Let the cocktail hour begin!

So we all walked over to a nearby hall where the latest wedding innovation was in evidence – stations. Where we once had cocktails at a bar while waiters roamed with hors d’oeuvres, now we have a shellfish station, a meat station, a salad station, a pasta station. At this wedding, there was even a sliders station. I think stations are a big improvement over the old days. In fact, I ate so much at this cocktail hour I would have been happy to proceed directly to the dessert table.

But after an hour of drinks and great food, we headed to yet another room where tables were set up for dinner. We were seated close to the music. The music these days is mostly deejays. All the music is in their computer and so they can please just about every musical taste. I do miss live bands though. They were often mediocre and wedding singers were hit and miss. But every once in a while you got a great band, and that’s when you really appreciated live music. No matter how loud the deejay makes his music, it doesn’t compare with a live guitar, drums or trumpet. I think the convenience of a deejay, and the vast variety of music they can play is helping them drive wedding bands out of business. Anyway, these days I’m stoked when I see that a wedding features a live band.

Despite all the changes in wedding culture over the years, most weddings I have been to recently still feature the obligatory dances with the bride’s father and the groom’s mother. And most also still have a ceremonial cutting of the wedding cake. Although the nonsense with the garter seems to have thankfully faded away.

The finale to a modern wedding is the Venetian Table, which usually features just about every dessert known to man. Here, again, we have stations like the chocolate station, the pastry station, the cake station and the ice cream station. As someone with a gigantic sweet tooth, I give the modern wedding dessert festival two sticky thumbs up. The dessert table brings the wedding festivities to a close for people my age, though younger guests dance until the deejay closes up shop.

We as a society devote a lot of time and money to weddings. In fact, it’s an industry unto itself. But at the end of it, what matters is whether the bride and groom are willing to work at being a team, respect each other and live together in harmony. Everyone who has been married knows how tough it can be at times, but if you work hard, with a little luck, you end up with a life partner. That reminds me of another song. If memory serves me it was written by Carole King. It says, “I know that each of us is all alone in the end, but the trip still seems less dangerous when you’ve got a friend.” And that’s why we get married.

I Still Love You, Dean

04 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by in Confessional

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Dean Martin

No shortness on seduction.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

I just found out that Dean Martin was only 5’10” tall. I had pegged him as at least 6’2″. No matter – he still measures up.

I’ve had a lifetime love affair with Dean Martin. Ever since I first liked a boy (12 years old?), I had hoped that all boys would grow up and turn into Dean Martin.

Everything about him moves me. Like some sort of swirly, swooning chemical substance, his voice – that heartfelt tremolo, mixed with a suggestive cadence – is the kind that closes eyes, quivers lips, sways heads. And weakens knees. I wish I could drink wine and eat meat with Dean.

But beyond all the obvious – his swagger, his cool (the bedroom eyes, the Colgate smile, those hands!) – what is just as striking is the nuance of Dean. He didn’t seem to sweat the small stuff. He didn’t try too hard. His confidence was as innate as that square jaw. Put all of Dean together – his manliness, his poise, his mystique, his talent, his flair – and he is downright poetic.

Dean died on Christmas Day in 1995. I was 40. And a hard-core rock and roller. But I remember buying a bunch of his Christmas albums when he died, and I still put them on every December 25. He’s my go-to Pandora guy, and I have the “Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show” on my iPad.

So, I still love you, Dean. You remain my touchstone, my dreamboat. And I love that you can still surprise me with stuff that I didn’t know. Like your height.

On a Dock, With New Perspective

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by in Confessional, Men

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Bob on dock

BY BOB SMITH

It’s funny how time can change your perspective. In 1968 I was a 13-year-old high school freshman just starting to wonder about my place in the world. Although full of energy and enthusiasm, I was also plagued by the usual teenage insecurities. I wore my hair long, and smoked pot, so I could fit in with the nonconformist “hippie” crowd, whose approval I coveted. I cursed the blotches of acne that were starting to bloom on my chin and cheeks, and I worried about being too chubby to be attractive to the girls in my class.

Still, while the insecure teenage-me sought acceptance, and feared failure, at my core, I firmly believed that anyone could succeed if only they worked hard enough. I thought things could never get so bad that you couldn’t find some good in any situation. That life was never hopeless; that dreams never died.

In January of that year, the Otis Redding song, “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay,” was released, and by March, it had reached the top of the pop charts. Part of the song’s appeal was the tragic story behind it: Redding and five of his bandmates all had died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967, just two days after putting the final touches on the recording. The song has since been covered by many other artists, and it’s been replayed endlessly over the years. In fact, in 1999, BMI declared it the sixth most performed song of the twentieth century, with six million performances.

But in 1968, I hated it. There I was, ready (or so I thought) to embark on the terrifying and wonderful adventure of adulthood, hearing this hit song about a guy who had nothing better to do than ” … sittin’ on the dock of the bay wastin’ time.” It seemed like a woefully misguided ode to indolence, glorifying defeatist behavior that I had been taught to condemn rather than applaud. This song seemed to fly in the face of all my beliefs, and I just couldn’t accept it.

The first verse sums up his day:

Sittin’ in the morning sun.
I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes.
Watching the ships roll in,
Then I watch them roll away again.

I pictured some bum dozing in a daze of creosote fumes against the greasy piling of a California pier, doing zilch all day long. Oh no – not nothing – he’s listlessly noting the comings and goings of “ships” like fishing boats, freighters, and ferries piloted by people who have actual jobs, and some sense of purpose in their lives. A couple of verses later, he says he roamed “two thousand miles just to make this dock his home.”

Why, I thought, would anyone in their right mind leave a home in Georgia to live on a San Francisco dock steeped in the reek of rotting fish and seaweed?

Fast forward 45 years or so, and a sampling of life in those intervening decades: A lost love or two, plus a whole host of unrealized dreams that withered, not for lack of trying or faith, but simply in the harsh light of reality. Chances are, I’m not going to be a rock star, astronaut, Olympic athlete, world-renowned poet, or any of a dozen other things I might have considered within the realm of possibility when I was young. Throw in relatives and friends who have passed on – sometimes after wrestling long and hard with diseases you wouldn’t wish on a dog – and top it off with random natural disasters that destroy man and man-made things alike with impunity at the drop of a hat.

So the more tolerant, late-50s, me brings a far different context to the song. “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay” now seems less the empty lament of a dissolute ne’er-do-well than a bittersweet mourning of the passage of worthy, yet unattainable, dreams, and one man’s peaceful acceptance of that fact. Loss doesn’t make you a loser; it’s just part of life. And sometimes, just sitting there resting your bones, watching the mad parade pass by, can be the most peaceful, and productive, way to spend your time.

The Beauty of Art is Often in the Eyes

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Art

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Above the door

BY JULIE SEYLER

Besides all of the touristy things to see in Naples, there are the unexpected finds, like this poetically museful door lintel wearing a rope of green beads. I saw it on an apartment building while wandering around the Vomero area of the city. Later that day, I was walking on the Via Toledo, a central artery and shopping street, and saw a sign that Caravaggio’s The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula was available for viewing inside. I had seen The Seven Works of Mercy at the Pio Monte della Misercordia and The Flagellation of Christ at the Capidomonte Museum. The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula was the the third, and last, Caravaggio to see in Naples.

I bought a ticket, and found myself standing in the Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, a ducal palace from the 17th century. Befitting the home of a billionaire of yester years, the interior was opulently excessive, from the bejeweled ceilings to the marbled balconies and the Caravaggio was as great as its reputation. He is a phenomenal painter from every aspect, be it composition, color, light or sensitivity. But what will live on in my psyche is this self-portrait by the artist Francesco Paolo Michetti. It was painted in 1877 when he was 26 years old. There is something in the eyes that I find mesmerizing and transportative.

Francesco Paolo Michetti Self-Portrait 1877

Francesco Paolo Michetti Self-Portrait 1877

I never get tired of looking at them, even in this digitally-transcribed photograph. They remind me of the door lintel above.

I showed Steve the two photos, and asked him if he thought the eyes looked similar.

“Sort of,” he said.

But his immediate association was that Michetti looked like the actor Robert Walker, who plays Bruno in Hitchcock’s 1951 masterpiece “Strangers on a Train.”

RW2

Which makes me think, it’s time to watch that movie again!