Joe's getting married down the road from me.

Check out Joe at work, talking about our wedding on top of a hill in Western New York, at the wrong Ellicottville ski lodge. 

Darling, it's HoliMont lodge. Not Holiday Valley. Ah well! He's so cute when he tells people we're getting married somewhere we're not. I'll let is slide.

PS. This video is one of several segments spun from Creative Loafing's 2009 Summer Guide. For more summer lovin', click here.

Hello, romantics. This one's for you.

IF YOU'VE BEEN FEELING SURLY LATELY...

HERE ARE SOME PHOTOS... 

FROM A WEDDING I PHOTOGRAPHED LAST MONTH...

ON CASEY KEY BEACH.

THESE FOUR ARE SISTERS.  

SUSANNE (2ND FROM RIGHT) GOT MARRIED AT PAULINE'S (FAR RIGHT) BEACH ESTATE...

NEXT DOOR TO HORROR NOVELIST STEPHEN KING'S HOUSE.

THERE WERE ONLY 25 PEOPLE THERE.

IT WAS SIMPLE & BEAUTIFUL & QUITE LITERALLY...

TOOK MY BREATH AWAY.

EVERYONE WAS SO CHARMING & PHOTOGENIC... 

I FELT LIKE I WAS IN A SCENE TORN FROM THE GREAT GATSBY.

I HAVEN'T PHOTOGRAPHED MANY WEDDINGS...

BUT IF I DO, I'M CERTAIN THIS ONE WILL BE MY FAVORITE.

EVERYONE WORE PAISLEY PRINTS AND BRIGHT COLORS.
IT WAS ALMOST A SHAME TO EDIT THEM INTO BLACK & WHITE.

THEY CALL THEIR HOUSE "THE TREE HOUSE..."

BECAUSE IT'S LITERALLY BUILT UP INTO THE TREES...

LIKE TOWN & COUNTRY'S VERSION OF THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON... 

TREE HOUSE.

I BARELY POSED ANYONE.

EVERYTHING FELT SO NATURAL...

TO ME. 

SUSANNE & PAUL ARE FROM MUNICH, GERMANY.

SO I ASKED SUSANNE'S FATHER (BELOW & ON THE LEFT) IF HE HAD HEARD OF THE TINY TOWN...

WHERE MY OMA IS FROM.

AND HE KEPT SAYING, "VHERE IS DEES PLACE?"AND I KEPT SAYING, "BAD SOODEN-ALLENDORF...IT'S A SPA TOWN SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF GERMANY."

A ROMANTIC POET NAMED WILHELM MULLER ONCE LIVED THERE.

IT'S A PLACE RIPE WITH MINERAL SPRINGS AND SHOEMAKERS' KIN... LIKE MY OMA'S SIBLINGS & THEIR CHILDREN & THEIR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN.

BUT SINCE I DON'T SPEAK GERMAN...I DIDN'T EXPLAIN THIS TO SUSANNE'S FATHER...WHO WAS WEARING THE MOST AMAZING SUIT COAT I'VE EVER SEEN.

INSTEAD I THOUGHT...

AS THE SUN SET ON THIS AFFAIR...I HOPE MY WEDDING IS AS AWESOME AS THIS ONE...

OR MORE SO.

short & sweet

LOVE THIS.

It's beautiful and clever, simple and joyful. I wanted to bump Steve-O's ugly mug down a notch with something Zen and inspirational, and when I saw this stop-motion video on my friend Ricci's blog, I gasped and said A-HA! I had not heard of Oren Lavie until this afternoon, so thank you Ricci for giving me something pretty to watch/listen/ and reflect to.

For those of you who've filled up on ugly stories today, consider this dessert:

A little ditty about wedding songs

I had a wedding song before I met Joe.

It was a ditty by a girl on a guitar. Burned onto a mixed CD given to me by my old friend Sarah, whose imaginary cowboy this blog is named after.

I wasn't even sure who sang the song, or what it was titled, until my friend Ricci and I listened to it on repeat one afternoon in my Sarasota cracker shack, and Ricci went home, Googled the lyrics and discovered it was by Rosie Thomas and that the title was Wedding Day.

So much for love

Guess I've been wrong

But it's all right

Cuz I'm moving on

I've got my car all packed with cassette tapes
And sweaters and loose change and cheap cigarettes

The lyrics were neither romantic, nor bitter, somewhere in between Jewel and Alanis Morissette, which suited me just fine from 2005 to 2007.

I was single then. Somewhere in between grounded and orbiting space.

Working in a marble yard. Trying to write a novel. Living in a 1920s bungalow with exposed rafters and no air conditioning. No television. No wireless Internet. Just a black laptop computer that no longer held a charge, that was given to me by my best friend Ro in exchange for one roundtrip airplane ticket from Buffalo to Tampa.

It had been her computer when she was in college. My friend Troy called it my Carrie Bradshaw laptop. Having never seen Sex and the City, I had no idea Carrie Bradshaw had a laptop, much less the fact that it was, according to Troy, a big black one with loud keys.

But I thought it was pretty rad that when I was single I owned a Sex and the City prop, a chic accessory for a girl from the sticks.

I'm gonna drive through the hills
With my hand out the window
And sing 'til I run out of words
I'm gonna stop at every truck stop
Make small talk with waiters and truck driving men
I'm gonna fall asleep in the back seat
With no one around but me and my friends
It's gonna be so grand
It's gonna be just like my wedding day

Ricci and I hung on every word of that song. Blasted it when we'd drive from my bungalow to the public pool to swim laps. Loved that we didn't need boyfriends to have a wedding song. Loved that the lyrics evoked a sense of bliss some girls only experienced on their wedding days.

I'm gonna stop at every bar
and flirt with the cowboys in front of their girlfriends

Obviously, eventually, we got boyfriends.

Consequently, but not on purpose, we stopped listening to Wedding Day. It wasn't that we were making egg souffle for our boyfriends while whistling Dixie. It's just that in general, we spent a little less time together, a little less time driving to the pool to swim laps, a little less time pedaling our bikes, a little less time thinking this song would be our one and only wedding song.

I've had enough of love
It feels good to give up
So good to be good to myself
I'm gonna get on the highway with no destination
And plenty of vision in mind
And I'm gonna drive to the ocean
Go skinny dipping
Blow kisses to venus and mars

When Joe and I got engaged this fall, we didn't start discussing wedding details until months after the Question Had Been Popped. When we got on the subject of wedding songs it seemed neither of us had any one song in mind, so I suggested Etta James' At Last, not realizing Beyonce had recorded a version of it for her role in Cadillac Records, also not realizing the Obamas would dance to it five million times the night of the inauguration.

Recently, I interviewed Bobby Vinton, the 1960s crooner responsible for such wicked ballads as, Blue Velvet, Roses are Red (My Love), I Love How You Love Me, Mr. Lonely, and the 1970s Polish love polka, My Melody of Love.

I did my fair share of Internet research before meeting Vinton, downloading corky love songs my Nana probably loves, leaving Joe voice mail messages to the tune of Blue Velvet. The innocent schmaltz had kind of grown on me – and not in an ironic hipster way.

I started thinking: what kind of love song best describes me and Joe, the couple?

After I left my sunglasses at Bobby Vinton's beach estate, I figured we had to go with a Vinton ballad. It lends itself to a good story and I'll be damned if I pass up a good story, even if I have to dance to a Polish love polka on my wedding night. Besides, Joe digs the fact that Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco dance to Roses are Red in Goodfellas.

I'm gonna drive under skyline and sunshine
Drink good wine in vineyards
And get asked to dance
I'm gonna be carefree and let nothing pass me by
Never ever again

This song was my wedding song when I was single. It was appropriate. I could relate to it. I could belt it out in cars. I could be single to it.

What I need now is a song I can be married to.

--

PS. The picture was taken in the first two months of our relationship. We were staying at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale and we had just gotten out of bed. I remember thinking at the moment, I'm happy just watching this man put his contacts in.

PPS. For more on Rosie Thomas.

"She's the other half of my zipper."

ST. PETE – Today I had lunch with one of my oldest friends in Florida.

It was at a Thai restaurant called The King & I, and we were talking about relationships – his not mine – and I could tell by his blushing and squirming that the chick he's dating is turning his insides to goo.

If he hadn't squirmed and hadn't blushed, I'd be writing about his smile. His smile was a billboard that flashed: DUDE IN LIKE, as it was one of those punch-drunk smiles that you cannot, no matter how much you think you're in control of your facial contortions, pinch shut.

Basically, the man is smitten and getting smitten-er by the day.

Before I tell you what he told me today, which I'm pretty sure you garnered from the title of this post, I've gotta give you context. I've gotta paint a picture of this kid so you can squint him into focus in your brain.

I won't tell you his name for fear that She, whom he is falling for, might read this. We're not Facebook friends or Twitter friends, but who knows? We might one day be, and just you watch this relationship go in the shitter.

Ey! I pray it doesn't. At heart, I'm a romantic. By trade, a cynic. It's just that in the event that She screws Him over, or He screws Her over, I don't want to air His vulnerabilities on the Internet.

This friend of mine. He's analytical. Nerdy in the best way. Wears T-shirts with ironic expressions and dinosaurs decals. He's a whore for gadgetry and all technological advances. And despite his CNET membership and frequent use of the word, "app," he's devoutly religious. I think the only friend I have who goes to church every week.

For four years he has insisted on paying for our lunches and dinners, which usually run several hours long and have functioned, for me, as food-talk-therapy sessions.

Anyway. So he's dating someone new. A girl I've never met, but whose name I've invented a song for. (Well, not invented, per-se since the song I sing is a real song with a refrain that sounds like this chick's name, but more like a song I adapted in the spirit of her name.)

It's a nice name. Makes me think of gingham curtains and Ashley Judd in bare feet.

As grease dripped down my chin from the tubular spring roll I was eating, this glowy friend of mine explained in the most rudimentary terms, how this girl is just about perfect for him.

"It's like my zipper theory," he said. "You know how a zipper has two parts that are a little different, but kind of alike? We're like that. She's just different enough."

"You're so head over heels it's killing you," I said.

He blushed. Smiled like clothespins were pinching his cheeks and nodded begrudgingly in agreement. My supremely picky, painfully rational friend had found himself a lass.

As I began pounding the table in approval, he began pointing out that there was, of course, one problem.

The Perfect Fit had been really busy lately. So busy, that last month they went one whole week without speaking or seeing each other. So my friend, the self-preservator, decided to end the relationship. Nip it in the bud, as they say.

But of course, there was one other problem, he said.

He liked her. Good and plenty. He liked her tons. And when he dumped her, he felt cinematic-ly sad. Couldn't concentrate at all at work the next day.

"She wasn't making time for me, so I figured maybe she didn't like me. But when I broke up with her or whatever, I could tell that night, by her face that maybe she liked me."

So he decided to call her a few days later to see if she wanted to meet for dinner. And without officially reconciling, they began dating again.

As he told me this story, blushing and eating spring rolls, insisting he wasn't going to invest himself in the situation because he wasn't sure how the gal felt about him, I couldn't help but pound the table again.

"But she's your zipper," I cried.

"I know," he said.

11 people I've interviewed in Sarasota

Divine guidance can be found in a reporters notebook.

...

"No one ever wanted to ride with us in the winter because we only had two blankets. And in the summer, when temperatures reached 95 degrees, we choked from the heat because the car didn't have air conditioning."

- Roberta Tengerdy, with husband Tom, on the 1967 Volkswagon Beetle she bought her sophomore year at Colorado State University, the same year she met Tom. 

"You're lost if you don't believe in it. It's something you don't exactly feel. You just know it's there. You know that when you die, times going on forever. It's not the end. It's the beginning."

- 100-year-old Mildred Bessie Barton Hill on heaven. 

"That's a good question. If the cheese were square it'd stick out the side of the sub."

- Subway superstar Jared Fogle on why the sandwich franchise that made him famous cuts its cheese into triangles.

"He needs his shade. He's a very spoiled bird." 

- Johnny Malone on why he sits under the awning at Whole Foods with his cockatiel, Bobby.

"Everything has changed but everything has stayed exactly the same. Often people will say to me, 'why do you still have Cathy on a diet?' And I say, look at the headlines. It's an endless turf out there. While it's redundant in a way, these are the things we keep wrestling with - our relationships with food, our relationships with the opposite sex, our relationships with our mothers, our relationships with the clutter on our desks. The things we face each day are what I love writing about and women have this fabulous capacity to keep having hope even if there's no hope to be had."

- Cartoonist Cathy Guisewite on why she's refrained from changing "Cathy," to conform to 2008 post-feminist ideals. (The comic strip, which debuted in 1976, began as a series of sarcastic sketches Guisewite would mail her mother ripping on her pathetic mid-20s love life.)

"I'll tell you one thing. He changed. I think he saw a lot of things too young for his lifetime. He came back a  man and I never thought I'd say that. He's a little more guarded and careful now. He's quiet now."

- In 2004 Sherri Vroom's then 20-year-old son, John, served eight months in Iraq. Two years later he was deployed again.

"Well, she has beautiful hair. She has a beautiful face and beautiful eyes."

- Seven-year-old Caitlyn Gutierrez on why her mother is beautiful.

"I'm gonna de-bone them first. That way I'm not sitting on one wing for too long."

- Gilberto Noriega on how he planned to win the Munchies Fire-In-Your-Hole wing eating challenge. (He lost.)

"I look at the bus as a research and exploration vessel. It functions as an idea and information hub. We're researching, exploring and recording our findings."

- Roth Conrad on why he and friend Bob Downes (right) bought their old high school bus, converted it to run on vegetable oil and drove it across the country. See link.)

"I'm an outgoing person. I like to be the funny guy. I want people to notice me. If I had any other role, I wouldn't have been as funny as I was."

- Baseball catcher Connor Davis, 13, on how he knew he owned his middle school production of The Wizard of Oz when his drama teacher cast him as The Cowardly Lion. (His dream role: Dracula.)

"What I told the jury at the onset was that I was going to ask the questions that needed to be asked ... because if not me than who?"

- Assistant Public Defender Adam Tebrugge on how he handled the pressure of defending Joseph P. Smith, the man sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia. 

--

PS. Cathy Guisewite photo courtesy of People Magazine. All other photos are mine.