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Why I Should Love Baseball, Weddings, and Country Music (But Don't)
6/27/05
by Shaw

So, 'tis the season for baseball in the Washington Metro Area! The Nationals are staying in or around first place, the games are well attended, and Frank Robinson is continually making nationwide headlines for his tough attitude on the field and his candor during press conferences off the field. How can anyone not like Frank Robinson? A talented manager, a likable guy, and he's got a good team with no superstars to overshadow him. How can anyone not root for the Nationals? A DC team for the first time in a generation, and in this time of heightened patriotism, everyone is behind them. How can anyone not love baseball? The weather is good, the games are exciting, and RFK is a nice intimate place to go see a game. I'm going to my first one of the season on the Fourth of July. It promises to be a great time! Right?

And weddings! How I (should) love weddings! I just got back from one right before I sat down to write this column, and boy oh boy was it a wonderful night. The couple looked beautiful, the drinks were free, and the deejay was spinning some of the classics:

The wedding tonight was the third of four that I will attend this year, after three last year and one the year before. I have been in two of these weddings, best man in one case and singer in the other case. Clay's wedding, for instance, was a real barn-burner: the liquor poured out fast and the dancing went on all night. One of the weddings took place on the cliffs of southern California in the actual OC. The other ones were similarly picturesque--there were the Green Mountains of Vermont, an ornate cathedral, an Ivy League University Chapel in old New York, and three outdoor weddings with perfect weather. The sampling of pictures below is just a taste of the aggregate euphoria I experienced at these weddings. (You also might notice that I only own two suits. Go to hell.)

And I should mention that the really great thing about weddings for me is my uncommonly feminine aesthetic. After helping work on Justin's wedding (top left, with me and Clay) for a week, I learned some tricks for making beautiful wedding decorations that would rival a Trading Spaces episode. Put me to work with some wedding programs and I will make your dreams come true; ask me to create the schedule for the reception and I will do you proud; show me a groomsman with an unkempt pocket handkerchief and I will show him three ways to fold it properly; give me a microphone and I will MC the hell out of your night. While in Peoria for that week, I realized that my true calling might not be mathematics after all, but that J-Lo-liest of occupations, a wedding planner. I was even told by Justin and Meg's real wedding planner that I could be her apprentice. I salivated at the thought.

And, oh, the time spent with friends! The free drinking! The top shelf liquor! The Irish Carbombs, Tequila shots, and whatever it was at Clay's wedding that made everyone sick! The glass breaking, the wedding cookies and cakes, and the tables of gifts! The first dances, the mother-son dances, the bouquets, the garters! Can anything be more beautiful than this wonderful tradition? So I have another wedding to go to in October. It's going to be awesome! Right?

While I mention a feminine aesthetic, you should also know I have a strong interest in masculine things as well: fishing, hiking, fighting, knives, camouflage, dingy bars with bikers and truckers, tattoos, sports, darts, and cars. Does Bob Dylan sing about these things? Does Nelly (Furtado or the guy with the bandaid whose name is Cornell Haynes Jr.) have any "Friends in Low Places?" Do the Beatles mention fishing or the mountains? No, country is the music of the man. Country is the music of the hunter, the fisherman, the outdoorsman. Country is the music of the sportsman. Country is my music, and it's your music. So shouldn't I own Garth Brooks's Sevens, or Kenny Chesney's new album?

Well I'll answer the first one first. Attention, everyone that loves baseball, everyone that watches this sport on television. Have you ever tried to watch a game stone cold cober from start to finish? It is absolutely the slowest 5 hours you can possibly spend. Baseball has to recruit their best players from high school instead of college because no one with education beyond the fifth grade can manage to stand on a field unstimulated for 5 hours, where the only physical activity comes from the occasional fly ball scare, fly swat, or side change. Can anyone tell me who won the College World Series last year? Baseball is a dying sport, and thank God I don't live in Washington DC proper, because I would move out of the city before allowing my tax dollars to go toward building a NEW STADIUM 2 miles away from the perfectly good one they're using right now. In two years the Nationals will be just like the Expos: terrible, no fan base, and dirt poor.

And, well, weddings. No matter what you do, who you are, and what the status of your relationship is, if you are a wedding guest, your job is to be a professional tool. God forbid you do something to ruin the wedding, so you have to smile the whole time, respond with excitement to the deejay's charge that "Y'all get ready for this!" and "Okay, let's get this party started!", cheer for them to cut the cake, cheer for them to kiss, cheer for them to dance with their relatives, and just generally watch them make out. We allow things to go on at weddings that are generally punished with beatings anywhere else. Public displays of affection, terrible music, deejays who wear sunglasses indoors and dance in place with both hands attached to the table. It's the year 2005 and people still go up to wedding deejays to request the Electric Slide. Haven't we reached the point yet where enough people have an iPod or a laptop and can just set up their own music without having one of these guys, who is probably a carnie during the week, do it for them? The bouquet toss and subsequent garter toss, which is the most uncomfortable ridiculous thing--I attended a wedding this year where one of the bridesmaids caught the bouquet, and her boyfriend clearly didn't want to catch the garter because he let the ring bearer catch it. Then the deejay put on his 1950's Pink Panther music and we all watched while this poor 8 year old boy shoved his hand up a 26 year old girl's dress in front of 150 people. I don't think I have ever seen anyone try to catch the garter. It's about time we do away this tradition. And finally, the absolute worst part: going stag. One thing I don't understand: how is it that everyone I know is getting married, but at the same time, at every wedding I go to, everyone else there is already married? Where are these unmarried people before their own weddings? For two of the weddings I have gone to, my girlfriend came with me, and then it was fine--good, even! We danced together, we were part of the crowd. But for various reasons, she couldn't come to the last few, and invariably I spent the last half hour or hour sitting at my table with my other stag friend while a hundred people made out on the dance floor in orgiastic pleasure to some Mariah Carey song. No thanks. So what is the solution: do I say no to weddings that my girlfriend can't come to? Problem is, I just can't get enough of that cake...

And finally, this one's easy. Have you ever actually listened to country music?

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