Golden Touch CRAPS

My wonderful niece Melanie is getting married next Sunday. Her father-in-law is the minister of her church, a fundamentalist Christian one where the services last so long they prove the existence of infinity.

Okay, fundamentalist religion is her thing, fine, good, if that is what she wants. (I am hoping she outgrows it.)

My niece's side of the reception is composed of Italians; many "just off the boat" as they say, some of whom speak little or no English and if someone dies the women wear black for the rest of their mortal days, and American Italians and mixtures such as me and the beautiful AP, my sons, grandchildren and cousins.

The groom's side of the reception will have mostly Italians "not just off the boat" but close and many and various blazing-eyed pastors and ministers from various fundamentalist Christian churches. Some marriages don't have a prayer; this one will have hundreds!

The reception is being held at - hold your breath - a kosher caterer! No mixed milk and meat (so long veal parmigiano!) and probably that horrifying coffee-mate with your coffee. I don't even know if the men and women will be allowed to dance together.

The Italians just off the boat have no idea of the kosher world. They should be interesting to watch during the festivities.

Where the real thunder and lightning comes in will be with all those fundamentalist pastors, ministers and followers. They like to pray - a lot. No meal goes by without a long, loving tribute to Jesus (the darn food gets cold) and then there are all the hallelujahs and even some speaking in tongues. All that should go over big in a kosher place!

Now we will be able to tell whose side God is on. If lightning comes out of the sky, striking those pastors and ministers and followers yabbering in tongues, I am converting to Judaism. If nothing happens, I'll stay where I am, comfortable in my "I don't have any idea of what it is all about" mindset, thank you. I will also continue to eat dairy and meat.

Next Sunday, March 13, will be a very, very interesting day.

It is now Sunday, March 13

The day before my niece's wedding I had a 24 hour bug that made me go great guns to the bathroom every few minutes. I thought I might have to miss the wedding on Sunday, March 13. No such luck. Keep in mind this was the wedding of Christian fundamentalists where the reception was being held at a kosher caterer.

As you also know, my dash board went out the day before the wedding and now needs more than a thousand dollars in repairs and also AP's watch stopped working. So things were not going well.

Keep in mind this wedding ceremony was packed with evangelical Christians of the extreme variety. My cousin Michael, an actor, wanted to know if they were bringing poisonous snakes to bite them. Sadly no one spoke in tongues or flailed around on the floor foaming at the mouth but there were dozens of ministers present and most were of the slick television variety that you usually see down South on television condemning every damn thing except condemnation. They wore expensive suits, colorful ties, big diamond rings; they had perfectly coiffed hair - you get the picture.

The groom's minister father is slick, but he is also a nice guy, and he did the ceremony. He was very good. He has a strong stage (or is that altar?) presence.

The church was being rented and it was a beautiful church. I asked one of the guys who worked there what denomination it was.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Is this a Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist church?"

"I don't know," he said and wandered off.

Then the custodian came by - I assumed he was the custodian because he was dressed in blue work clothes and looked a little unkempt, he was also sweating like crazy too - and I asked him the same question.

"Denomination? The church? Who the hell knows?" he said.

The ceremony was long; a lot of bible passages about the wife being subservient to the husband. I kept nudging the beautiful AP when those "obedience" passages were read. AP had removed the word "obey" from the "love, honor and obey" portion of our wedding ceremony and substituted "cherish." She hasn't obeyed me once in 18 years!

There was a second minister helping with the service. He looked like he came from "The Sopranos." A bruiser; tall, big boned, fat with a scary face. He had some scars on that scary face too. He definitely looked like the muscle of the outfit. He had no stage presence. He muffed everything he had to say; fumbled and mumbled fifty million times. It was as if he had never done a wedding ceremony before. Maybe the only thing he was good at was breaking the knee caps of sinners.

During one point he went psychotic. He started howling, "Damian [the groom] you will forgive Melanie [the bride] and Melanie, you will forgive Damian!" Okay, said once, even with the minister's eyes bugging out, fine, okay, fine, let's move on and get this interminable wedding over with. But no, no; he kept going, "Damian you will forgive Melanie, and Melanie, you will forgive Damian! Damian you will forgive Melanie, and Melanie, you will forgive Damian!" Over and over and over. Some of the members of the congregation rhythmically moved their heads back and forth.

Finally the minister's psychotic episode receded and we moved on and finished the wedding. Actually, the wedding was not really bad; just a little nutty at times.

This wedding was packed. There were around 250 people. We were not allowed to throw rice at the couple outside the church because rice kills the birds. A true New Yorker said, "They aren't birds; they're pigeons."

So we were given bubbles. When the couple came out, we were to blow bubbles at them. Unfortunately for us, it was a hell of a windy day and the bubbles kept blowing in everyone's face. The wind seemed to only blow into your face so if you turned around, you still got hit smack in the face with the damn bubbles.

AP said, "Maybe we should have been given bird seed to throw? That wouldn't kill the birds."

A woman said, "No, I went to a wedding where they did that and a bird shit right on the groom's head. They shit on all of us!"

So now it was the reception at the kosher caterer. The cocktail hour had so much food that we wouldn't need to eat a dinner. Everyone started praying their individual prayers as they sat down with food. Jesus' name was mentioned a lot. I kept looking around to see if any of the Jewish waitresses were getting upset. (I knew they were Jewish because many had stars of David dangling from their necks.) I guess they were so busy they didn't hear anything.

The biggest question the beautiful AP and I had concerned who the heck was the hit man who seconded the minister at the wedding. When the groom's mother passed me, I got her attention.

"I was wondering who the assistant minister was helping your husband," I said.

"He's a prophet of the Lord," she said.

"A prophet; you mean someone who predicts the future," I said.

"He's always right," she said solemnly. I could, kind of, see him prophesizing. "I am going to break your legs, Bruno, with this baseball bat." Whack!

"Will he be prophesizing tonight?" I asked.

"No, he did so in church," she said and hustled off to get her third portion to eat. Ah, so the assistant minister's wild "Damian you will forgive Melanie, and Melanie, you will forgive Damian!" was really a prophecy. I wonder what Damian and Melanie are going to do in the future that will require all that forgiveness.

The catering hall was quite nice. The service was excellent. Once the cocktail hour was over we all went to our assigned tables. AP and I sat with our son Greg and his wife Dawn, our grandchildren John Charles and Danielle (he was the ring bearer; she was the flower girl - two better looking and well-behaved kids you will never find at a wedding), our son Mike, the chemistry teacher, Charlie and Donna who are Dawn's parents; my nephew Jason and his effervescent girlfriend Rebecca; and my brother-in-law Tony and my sister Susan, who is so thin you can't see her from the side. Susan and Tony were the bride's parents.

The usual stuff happened. The MC announced the wedding party, then the bride and groom, and then the DJ played music that (as always) was so loud you couldn't hear yourself think, much less hear anyone at your table talk. When people did talk, you just smiled at them as if you heard them. "My family was killed by terrorists." Everyone around the table smiled.

When the preliminaries were over, a big woman with dyed red hair got up to say the welcoming two-hundred-hour-long prayer. She disappointed me. She only said "Jesus," "Jesus Christ," "Our Savior," "Our Lord," "the Messiah," "God's son," "the second person of the Trinity" and the "one who will open the doors of heaven only for those who believe in him," about ten times each. (Okay, I exaggerate - five times each.) I checked the waitresses; they didn't even seem to notice.

Now as an aside, you will note that I do not make fun of Jews. I have two reasons for this. One, Jewish comedians make the best fun of Jews and, two; my friend and GTC instructor Marilyn the Goddess would break my legs if I did. But I do have to say, nevertheless, there was great Chinese food at the cocktail hour. (Bahda bing!)

The reception was a major disappointment because everyone danced and had fun, just like they do at a regular wedding - well maybe this was just a regular wedding and my skepticism was completely unwarranted...except....

I mentioned that we did have about twenty Italians just off the boat, some of whom might never have seen a Jew. One guy called over the waitress and in halting English said, "I want no margionae [margarine], I only eat butta [butter]." She politely explained that they didn't serve butter. He was confused but she smiled and walked away, thinking she had made a good explanation. Then the whole table chatted in Italian, with a lot of pointing, frowning and head shaking.

The wedding reception was long. It went from 5PM until 10:30. The beautiful AP and I danced with the grandchildren all night as they wanted to dance until I died.

And that is the wedding. You would think that would be that, but it wasn't.

Yesterday, the day after the wedding of the century, I had that damn diarrhea again. Then a giant truck drove by my house, caught the telephone wires way up there in the sky, brought them down along with part of the side of my house.

I didn't know it had happened, even though I felt the house shake. A policeman came to my door to tell me. "Your side has been ruined," he said. Cops don't show a lot of emotion, just ask Satch or Scan, two GTCers; they are trained to be cool. I, however, am not cool.

Immediately after the cop told me part of the side of my house had been ripped down, I quoted the Dominator, "Fuck! Fuck!" And then I had to take a shit. I closed the door, thanking the officer as I did so, and ran to the bathroom.

Now I have a watch to fix, a dashboard to fix, my telephone lines and the side of my house to fix and I have to get back to normal bowel movements.

And I swear; I will never make fun of a religious wedding again. God is torturing me because I did.