With This Dance, I Thee Wed…

As you may or may not know, I am about to get married. And, while I prefer to pretend that I never made a Huge Mistake, the disastrous horror that was my first marriage cannot be omitted from my experience, and so I must regrettably acknowledge that this will be my second walk down the aisle. I wish it wasn’t. I wish I could grab a Magic Eraser and Mr. Clean the stain of those wasted years away, but I can’t. They’re still there, and they’ll always be there to cloud my thoughts and haunt my dreams, even as time slips by and I think of them less and less.

Mostly, I try ignoring the dark and lunatic times of my unfortunate experience, in the hope that they’ll eventually go away and bother someone else. I don’t like counting my first marriage. It was a strange and hollow thing, filled with strange and hollow years spent bound to a strange and hollow person, and I don’t like thinking about any of it. However, every so often something comes along to rattle my braincase and jog loose a few forgotten memories best left repressed and unremembered, locked safely away and lost in the dark and cobwebbed corners of my cluttered mind. Last week, just such a nasty little terror of remembrance came along in the form of a seemingly well-intentioned YouTube video that Brittany asked me to watch. She thought it was cute and sweet and precious, and she wanted to share its joyous nature with me. By now, I’m sure most of you out on the wide world of the Internet have already seen the JK Wedding Entrance Dance, and I’m sure most of you think it’s the bee’s knees. Most of you probably thought the choreographed chorus line of a wedding processional was brilliant and unique and sweet. Most of you probably smiled and giggled, then passed the link on to share with your friends and brighten their days. Most of you are, of course, ignorant fools!

This is the video, for the two people on the planet who haven’t seen it:

Alright, maybe you’re not fools. Heck, some of you might not even be ignorant. Maybe you watched the video and had the same reaction I did – but somehow, I doubt it. Apart from a few holy-rollers getting their sensible and modest undergarments in a bunch over what they view as a show of blatant disrespect for God and the sacred observances of the occasion, most of the buzz around the Internet is overwhelmingly positive and supportive of this recently wed couple. I, however, have a different take on the whole thing, a view colored and scarred by my own experience with reducing a wedding to frivolity. (Read more about that tomorrow, in part two!)

Now, before you go and get yourself all riled up, thinking that I’m about to poo-poo the whole dancing-nuptials enchilada, let me make one thing perfectly clear. Yes, I have Issues and Views concerning the video, the couple, the wedding party, and the probable motivations behind the whole idea. However, I don’t write any of the following to try and cast a shadow over Jill and Kevin’s future life together, however short I think it might be. I sincerely do wish them all the best, and hope they prove me wrong with everything I’m about to write. That said, it’s time to address the newlyweds directly, as we move on into the Festivus portion of today’s essay…

I got a lot of problems with you people! To begin with, you’ve trivialized the real and serious business of getting married. Yes, it’s supposed to be a special day to celebrate your love in a way that’s unique to you as a couple – but I have strong doubts that what you did actually represents any of that. You wanted to do something unique and special, I suspect, not for the sake of creating a lasting memory for each other to enjoy for years to come, but to compete with all of the other recent flashes in the great popping pan of the Internet Meme Kitchen. You had to do something that hadn’t been done before on YouTube, that hadn’t been seen yet or copied yet. You needed to stand out against the white noise background of all the other copycats and showboats competing for a few minutes in the warm glow of an Internet Famous spotlight. And so, you took the most important day and decision of your lives thus far, and reduced it all down to the simple, marketable level of linkable spectacle and farce. Then, you publicized it.

That’s all well and good, and it’s not even that dumb of a thing to do. Usually, people wait until the reception to try and pull off one of these memorable/sharable surprise dance moments, but you knew that post-ceremony dance numbers were becoming a dime a dozen. A million imitators. Milquetoast. Lame. You knew that to stand out, you needed to raise the stakes, so you moved things into the church, and lightened up a normally serious and reverent affair with dancing and silliness. You knew that if you could pull it off, you might have a shot at stealing your entitled Warholian minutes away from any would-be usurpers of your glory. You wanted to be Internet Famous, for whatever reason. You found a way to accomplish your goal, and you did it. You made it onto the web, you became a sensation, and you even found your way to national television. Congratulations!
But why did your wedding need to be your launch vehicle to mini-stardom? Why did you have to record it and share it and publicize it on the Internet? If you truly wanted to simply capture your unique and playful spirit as a couple, wouldn’t it have been enough to dance down the aisle and leave it at that? Gathered friends and family would have witnessed your cute cleverness firsthand, and you could share the video with those close to you who were not there – so why did you need to make it the world’s business? What was the motivation? Was is something so mundane and boring as Internet fame? Hopefully not. Maybe it was with a mind towards AdSense revenue from your website tie-in? I could understand if it was for the money. Young married couples need all the clams they can get their hands on, so if that was the whole reason for doing it, I could let it slide. I honestly could. You saw an opportunity and you took it, and now you’re cashing in. It’s like the American Dream, only with trendy music and a well-fed chorus line. I get that. I do.

However, I can’t help but think that it goes deeper than Internet Fame and money. I think the whole idea digs down farther, deep into the dark and unsightly places of the human psyche. I suspect – and I could be wrong (but I’m probably not) – that the two of you actually believe what everyone else is saying about you. Do you? Is the video just a sweet expression of giddy love? Is it true that you thought your dance idea was unique and special, and you wanted to share it on YouTube out of a genuine love of what the two of you had done together? Maybe you thought it would make your special day even more special, and perhaps even inspire other people to come together and create something to top your video. I can’t speak for anyone else, but if any of this is indeed true, I can only predict eventual disaster for you, the happy couple.

Why? Because you’ve displayed the classic symptoms of an unfortunate case of hipsterism. The song, the sunglasses, the hairstyles. All contemporary-retro, all hip, all cool, all very Now. And, if you’re anything like all the other hipsters in the world, your sense of self is inextricably bound to your sense of fashion and awareness of trends. You took it a step further, however, and integrated your so-called ‘personal style’ into your wedding ceremony, and then put it out on the Internet as a way to gauge your own personal worth as people. More hits = more acceptance. Acceptance = trendy. Trendy = Sacred.

So you have your dance, you have your video, you have your Internet sensation, you have your talk-show interviews – and, somewhere along that bumpy ride to mini-stardom, you picked up a spouse. Kevin, you just married Jill. Jill, you just married Kevin. For life. Try not to forget that. It means you’ll be together long after the warm and fuzzy glow of your bright star has dimmed and grown cold. It means you’ll be bound to each other through the thick and thin times, long after trends have passed you by. You’ll grow old together. You’ll get sick. You’ll have boring times and exciting times and trying times. You will love each other. You will hate each other. You will have countless opportunities to walk away, or to sample the seductive wares of younger, sexier vendors selling false promises and alluring lies. You’ll fight, you’ll make up. You will laugh, cry, and mourn. You will be married. FOREVER.

Too many people see marriage as a rite of passage today, no more significant or permanent than any other coming-of-age ceremony. The institution of marriage has lost its sticking power, its meaning and its permanence. It’s all just something you do now, like graduating high school and going on to college. It’s something entered into lightly and with little commitment, because it’s just another stepping stone along life’s pathway, mixed in with all the other bits that seemed a really big deal at the time, but have since been neglected and forgotten as the years rolled by. As such, the desire to claim you marriage ceremony as your own and stamp your ‘unique’ mark onto the affair has grown stronger over the years. Nobody wants a traditional, humdrum wedding anymore. Everybody’s already done traditional. It’s so last week!

We’ve seen spectacles on the TeeVee and YouTube. We’ve witnessed celebrity extravaganzas that send midwest parents into triple-mortgage hell as they try to finance the unattainable dreams that “reality tv” has planted in their children’s minds. Everything has to be a show now. Everything has to be an expression of our uniqueness, even as mass production and mass consumption rob us of our personalities. Dancing to a hip song as you walk down the aisle doesn’t make you unique and special. It makes you just like everyone else, lining up to show how special you are through the appropriation of pop culture and Internet fads. The truly unique people are doing truly unique things, like getting married with serious faces and making serious commitments about serious things. They’re being quiet and reserved and contemplative during the ceremony. They may party hard at the reception later, but they’re being unique and special by taking the ceremony seriously. After all, everyone is dancing down the aisle these days. That’s so last week!

So what happens when it’s all over? Where do you go when you return to the normal, boring routine of the everyday? What happens when your bellies swell and your hair thins, and the music starts to hurt your ears? Do you think you’ll still be together? Do you think a marriage represented and defined at the beginning by the mercurial nature of trendiness can exist with true permanence? Do you honestly believe that you won’t get tired of each other, and find the easiest way out, once things come to that? How many one-and-only soulmates do you think you’ll have? Two? Three? Ten?

My advice to you, Kevin and Jill, is to take down the video, shut off the website, and stop answering phone calls from strangers. Enjoy your first years together, but know that the tough times will only get tougher, and however bad it gets, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Don’t be poisoned by the fairy tales, and try to stay faithful, even as you feel inexplicably unfulfilled at times. Don’t be tempted to fill the empty spaces of your life with someone else – they’ll never be enough. Learn to live an independent life together with someone else. Respect each other. Trust your spouse, but not too much. Love your spouse, but not too hard. Give, but do not spoil. Take, but do not expect.

The video cuts off before you get to your vows, but hopefully you said at least a few traditional words while at the altar, spoken in traditional tones and with traditional sincerity. These sorts of words and phrases should stick in your minds as real and as binding as the rings on your fingers. Phrases like “For richer, for poorer” and “In sickness and in health” aren’t just hollow strings of words; they mean something. Hopefully you understand the all-encompassing opposites of those words and are ready to stand together and embrace the good and the bad, the highs and the lows, the bliss and the misery that married life will undoubtedly bring you. Remember words like Love and Cherish and Forever. Especially remember Forever – it’s important, even long after the dances are over and the music has faded, and the Internet Fame has passed you by.

(Click here for part two of this little essay, in which I shamefully expose my hypocrisy to the Internet, because I care.)

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
Available now from the following retailers

The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
Available now from the following retailers

What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.