Scenes from an Italian Wedding..

A bottle of red,
A bottle of white,

Fuck that, pass the Jack.

Yesterday I had to attend a wedding. In Jersey. My wife's brother in law's niece was getting hitched. It was, about 85 degrees and humid and I had to put a fucking tuxedo on to attend this massive italian wedding in Jersey. That meant, not only putting the most complicated and pointless gear ever worn (studs, cuff links, suspenders, bow tie), but driving to Jersey, against the traffic so that I would be stuck in weekend traffic on the way home.

The family on my sister in law's side is great. She married a great guy. Italian, catholic. His brother, the bride's dad, is a DEA agent, formerly undercover. He's cool as hell but being surrounded by all those cops made this drug user a bit uneasy, even if I wasn't carrying anything (sadly).

We got there in no time and I knew we were in for some people watching fun when we pulled up to the place. This was right out of Real Housewives Of NJ. One of those party halls, all marble and sparkles. The cocktail hour room was the size of a fucking football field and there was enough food to feed all of Africa into food comas. We're talking every conceivable appetizer under the sun, and then some. They had a raw bar adorned with a massive ice sculpture of the Jets logo. Not a joke. Both families are big time Jets fans and the hapless team was given its props throughout the wedding.

Since I don't eat carbs, I had to wander around this massive room in search of the proper foods. I hit paydirt at the pulled pork counter. They had a whole pig sitting there and the guy serving the pork would lift the skin back and literally pull the meat off the carcass. If that isn't nasty enough, the pig was wearing a little chef's hat and sunglasses. I was, as a jew, mildly offended.

Of course the pork was delicious so I ignored the totally unkosher aspect of this portion of the evening and I devoured as many handfuls of the tender, stringy meat as they could yank from the ass of the poor, dead animal.

Once this portion of the evening was over, I was easily 5 drinks into the night and, somehow, barely buzzed. If the Jack wasn't going to work, I was fucked.

We were ushered into a ballroom that dwarfed the cocktail hour room. We found our table and watched as they played a video on two massive screens. The video was a Jets promotional video, complete with some warlike music, that was cleverly edited to include pictures of the bride and groom and their respective families. Then the lights went out and spotlights lit up the wall above the dance floor.

Suddenly, curtains pulled back, revealing a room upstairs, overlooking the ballroom. It was as if the owner's box and the stadium was opening up to view a game. Guns N' Roses "welcome to the jungle" started playing and the band (band in the sense that they played the recorded songs and then sang over them) announced the wedding party, one by fucking one. As the party was announced, they would walk down the steps and head towards the other end of the room. Each guy in the wedding party was carrying a small Jets football which they proceeded to throw at the guests.

Then, after the entire wedding party was on the dance floor, the first strains of Van Halen's "hot for teacher" played over the sound system. (The couple are both teachers, get it? Cute, right?)

Sorry, I had to swallow my vomit.

The couple came out and then they did their first dance and then the bride danced with her dad, the groom danced with his mom, the band still not playing anything, only moving around to the prerecorded music of actual bands. Then they kicked into a very extended Michael Jackson tribute with a couple of singers singing over the actual Jackson songs.

The meal itself wasn't bad. The toasts were horrific. Long, boring toasts by the Maid of Honor and the Best Man, made even worse by the shitty sound system. Then, at some point, the tarantella was played. The families from both sides got up and held hands and started dancing around in a big circle and...what the fuck?

The tarantella is the hora. The same fucking dance, different music. Truth is, I kinda felt like I was in the Godfather with the music playing. After the tarantella the band kicked into...wait for it...VOLARE!!!

No kidding. My only knowledge of this song is from the movie The Wanderers (great fucking flick) and The Hollywood Knights (another great movie).

For those not in the know, in Hollywood Knights, Nubomb Turk (Robert Wuhl) farts Volare. Classic scene.

Ken Wahl in Wanderers, Robert Wuhl in Hollywood Knights. Coincidence? I think not.

We ate, I drank a ton, we danced and then, the did the bouquet toss to the single broads. The women were clawing and fighting and jockeying for position and one fat chick actually dove for the flowers. She caught the bouquet, hit the floor, rolled and jumped up to show off her victorious grab.

Somewhere in the room, her date contemplated suicide.

Then they called for the single guys so the groom could throw the garter.

5 or 6 guys reluctantly meandered onto the dance floor, shoved by their aunts, uncles, parents, girlfriends.

The groom slid his hand up his bride's dress, removed the garter and then, with his back to the guys, threw the garter.

And it whistled through air, turning and rolling and the crowd parted and it landed on the floor in the middle of the single guys. One of these poor schmucks, realizing everyone was watching them, bent down and picked it up.

Everyone cheered.

Somewhere in the room, his date felt a little moist in the crotch as she contemplated their wedding.

They cut the cake and then they did some serious pyrotechnics. I'm unsure as to what the hell they were doing but there was a massive fire being tinkered with as they put on some strange show.

This was a standard diversionary tactic.

Why?

Because, while they were playing firestarter in the middle of the dance floor, the wall behind me was being rolled away to reveal the biggest fucking dessert buffet known to man. They had ben and jerry's ice cream bars, cotton candy, chocolate fondue towers, cakes, pastries, ice cream, even burgers and chicken nuggets that were, actually, desserts made to look like mcdonalds meals.

This is always the toughest part of the night for me so I decided it was time to pee.

I'm standing at a urinal, doing my thing, when two young guys walk in, saunter over to urinals and as they stood there pissing, one guy says "Andrea Boccelli?"
The other guy said "yup. I always feel like I'm about to get whacked when I pee here."

It was that kind of crowd.

The women were mostly short, fat and wearing too tight dresses. Lots of boobs jiggling and spilling out of outfits. Lots of women dancing with beer bottles in hand.

Class, to this group, was something you did at the community college.

I managed to drag my wife away from the desserts after her third trip through the room.

We left a little after 11 and were in our apartment a little after 12:30.

The ride there took less than 20 minutes. Getting the car and then sitting in the fucking bridge traffic we witnessed on the way there took over an hour.

Highlight of the night was talking to the dentist who sat next to me. When he asked how I knew the family, I told him my sister in law married the grooms brother and he said "the jews?"

I was about to say something when my wife asked me a question. When I then told her what he said, her response was "that's what they call Jon, Juice."

A little while later, he was talking to a guy on the other side of the table and the other guy asked if he still hung out with Joe something and the dentist said "nope, he's crazy."

He then went into detail, talking about how, every time he was with the guy all he ever said was...he looked over at me, then my wife, then my mother in law, then back at my wife, then at me...."jew bastard this, jew bastard that."

He must have said jew bastard a dozen or more times.

He could have easily said "the guy was a bit too anti-semitic" or "the guy is a bigot" or some other description but he opted to say jew bastard over and over again.

Good times.