Sunday, June 18, 2006

Wedding Season





Molly's Wedding click for some more pictures.

We had a family wedding this weekend. The Weasel Wedding Chronicles were so enjoyable that I wanted to post one myself. Think of it as a sequel to Weasel-Wedding.

The bride and the weather were gorgeous all weekend. Festivities began on Friday night with a rehearsal dinner for a huge number of people. The church wedding, on Saturday afternoon was beautiful. The highlight was when the family's long-time housekeeper got up on the altar and sang an a cappella gospel number. She got the whole church swinging and clapping with her and went into one of those fainting collapses at its conclusion. The reception party at her parents home, was smashing. The food, toasts, music and dancing -it was just so much fun. Mactech had many memorable (yes I remember them) cocktails at this great celebration.
We left the after-party to the younger generation and headed to our hotel when the kegs were being rolled down to the boat house and people were jumping naked into the pool. Mactech-son reported that the good time lasted well into the early morning. We returned to the scene of the crime for brunch on Sunday and to hear the happy recap.

One mishap - The bride and groom arrived at their wedding night hotel to find that their bridal suite reservation had somehow been "lost." After much yelling and sobbing the hotel went to work finding them a room somewhere. They arrived at the second hotel and were given a room but when they opened the door, there was a naked couple in the bed doing what you might expect a naked couple to be doing.
The exhausted bride and groom returned to her parents' home and slept on a cot. The house, big though it is was, packed with overnight guests.
Well, it'll be a good story to tell the grand-kids someday.
Now it's off to Africa for three weeks of safari-ing. Then back to the news beat at NY 1.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Tasty Leftovers



Leftover Stories to Tell is a tribute to the late, depressed, anxious, dyslexic and brilliant Spalding Gray. Daily writing was his most effective therapy, and it was through his writing that he came to know himself most fully.
When he died, by jumping off the Staten Island Ferry into New York Harbor, in 2004, he had been suffering for three years from the effects of a car accident in Ireland in 2001.
He left a young family behind. His wife, Kathie Russo, worked with Lucy Sexton, a performance artist based at PS 122, to craft this series of readings from known and unpublished pieces, including a recording he left for her before his death. They were read by the above cast, joined by guest readers each night of the performance. I was lucky enough to catch Aidan Quinn and Steve Buscemi reading for Friday night's show.
The familiar parts were wonderful reminders of how he could make us laugh. The pieces from his journals and diaries were riveting. Small nuggets of raw truth about a life full of both psychic pain and pure joy.
He would have turned 65 on June 5.