The B. Party

Some guys have bags of silicon bounce on their foreheads. Others take the refund money from returned Bed, Bath & Beyond engagement gifts and put $1,000 on black at the Hard Rock in Vegas.

Me? I'd prefer to get shot in the face with 190-mph pellets.

One feature of my 68-hour bachelor party last weekend was a vicious paintball game at one of the most notorious paintball places in the world. Twenty-two of us broke up into two groups, based on the period of time which people happened to have met me. It was 1996-2000 vs. 1990-1995 & 2001-2005. I have no idea who won, but I do know that the referees on our squad were named Knife and Gomer, and they accidentally secured a $180 tip.

I also know that I wore a white jumpsuit (see top of pic) while the rest of the team wore camouflage one-pieces that were ridiculously impossible to detect in the woods . We had the fields to ourselves, and there were games in which one team would man a three-story castle with 10 towers and the other team would have to storm the castle, kill everyone it and then take the killed people back onto their own team as mercenaries.

There was a game where one of our men, Stuart Pines, got shot in the goggles, swallowed some paint and wandered around looking for the rest of our team for a good 45 minutes. A search party was dispatched.

Typically, being hit with a paintball signifies a kill. But for one particular experiment in idiocy, in a match called "President," I was on a team with just three other dudes. And instead of one shot anywhere on my body, I would only "die" if I got hit FOUR TIMES IN THE FUCKING HEAD.

As "President," I had 5 minutes to hide in the woods with my three "Secret Service" agents. When the time was up, the rest of the 18 men were sent to hunt us down. They had 15 minutes.

Eight minutes in, as I lay in belly-down in the grass enjoying my time at one with Mother Earth, I heard: "I see a head moving!" With nowhere to run, and with my Secret Service all but gone, I was doomed. I was shot five times in the head, a couple of times in the jugular, seven or eight times across the rest of the body. A failed jump and body roll into a bush didn't seem to work at all. It also didn't make me look good. I screamed each and every time I was hit, for some reason, adding to the legendary wussiness of the moment.

Best bachelor party ever.

Flip That Invite

One friend flips it daily. Another likes to flip it backwards, just for fun. Some have never flipped before, but now they know the flip is hip.

Because the the wife2be is brilliant, our wedding invitation came with a custom-made flip book. A couple of months ago we shot a short video (see above) on the roof of our apartment building. I wore red; she wore green. Twas a rainbow, ya know.

I double-timed the video on FinalCut Express, and we sent it to FlipClips, which turned it into a series of pictures compiled in a flip-book invite. Deborah designed the accompanying card and the cover, which features a rainbow, the skyline of Philly and the phrase, "come join us under the rainbow..." That makes sense, because of this.

There were mishaps. A flipbook or two cut through the envelope and made a run for it at the post office. One or two folks were thoroughly, thoroughly confused. We were even accused of wasting paper (our response? this is a keepsake, dammit).

But for the most part, our people seemed pumped to get an invite that wasn't written in cursive on off-white soft paper with a faded rose in the background. In fact, the response has been a little too overwhelming. With so many people RSVPing in the affirmative, the line for the bar at the wedding might just be unbearably long.

The Bloggin' Brides & Me

I awoke from the fog of my bachelor party this weekend to realize that something funny happened: I am now the most famous male engaged blogger on earth.

Months ago, I surpassed my only competition, So I'm Engaged, who hasn't posted since April. It's a shame, too, because he was willing to go places that I'm not: "If I could have it my way, Cousin Michael and Brother Andrew would engage in a Best Man Death Match to suss out who will be at my side when it comes time to sign the ketubah in my blood."

Signing the ketubah in your own blood! Brilliant. He also says the dress theme for the wedding is "pimps and hos," and it will take place on Long Island, the "home of innovation." I hope that's ironic. Either way, funny.

So now it's just me. And guess what? The bloggin' brides have discovered me! It seems that it began with 122lovesme, 23, from Seattle, who blogs about her adoring fiance, Mr. 122. I got a little love from Guilty Secret in London, who got engaged only after her boyfriend stopped slinging drugs. Thoughtfulday in Brooklyn is a designer, just like the ole lady. And two women getting civil unioned in DC (see above) named me an "allied bride"!

And then it rolled from there, when Meg from the uber-famous A Practical Wedding said I had filled the "black hole of groom nothingness," and then began a campaign to get me more comments and "peer -pressure" me into posting more.

Love ya ladies! Welcome! My world is a little rougher around the edges, but let me tell you something sister -- when it comes to weddings and the taking-over-your-life thing, I feel you. I feel you. Mmm, hhhhm.

Bobble Bobble Bobble

We said we would, and oh yes we did. Did we ever.

Instead of the (boring) plastic bride and groom atop the wedding cake, we are taking a different, more personal, more awesome tact: Bobblehead dolls of ourselves. In superhero outfits, of course.

We sent our pictures to the geniuses at a bobblehead company who used high-tech imaging to transfer our faces to the bodies of miniature superheroes. These will sit on our wedding cake on our wedding day, and then they will retire to the proverbial mantle place of our home, where our children and their children and their children's children will come to see us for the creative superheroes that we are.

Either that, or once they're in therapy they'll have something to talk about.

Love Yoy Babe

My poor fiancee, just trying to do her part in continuing 5,000 years of beautiful history.

The rabbi told us that it is a tradition in Jewish weddings for the bride to give a new tallis, or prayer shawl, to the groom. So on a Judaica web site run by some fly-by-night company (based either in Tel Aviv or Crown Heights, or possibly both), Deborah found a pretty awesome -looking tallis threaded in rainbow, which has sort of become the color scheme for our wedding.

Then she decided to add her own non-traditional flourish -- having "Love You Babe" written in thread right there on the tallis itself.

But that isn't exactly how it turned out, as you can see. When I opened the box, I initially assumed that this was some sort of Yiddish pun...Oy! Goy! And Yoy!

That now doesn't appear to be the case. The company goofed. A refund/replacement request has been filed; I will keep yoy updated.

(P.S. Dear Mom, That thing you got Deborah for her shower is pretty much the greatest thing ever. Thanks!)

Rainbow Chuppah!

"We need the biggest gay flag you have," Deborah said.

"This one?" asked the clerk at Giovanni's Room.

"Bigger."

$56 later, we have a 5-foot by 8-foot multi-colored chuppah.

The chuppah is the traditional Jewish canopy that the bride and groom stand under as they get married.
People do all kinds of different things for their chupah -- sometimes there's lots of greenery, like the Garden of Eden, other times four friends or family members hold a simple white sheet above the couple.

By popular demand -- if you consider a 16-8 poll on my blog "popular demand" -- the gay rainbow flag will be our chupah. And we're stoked. Gays may not be able to get married, but they will at least be symbolically represented at this wedding.

When you search "rainbow chupah," a link to this blog is the first to come up on Google, which I think is hilarious. But it's not just us. Last month the first lesbians to get married under South Africa's new civil Union Act purposely chose a rainbow chuppah.

If it happens one more time the New York Times Sunday Style section will do an article on this "trend"!

Fun With Photoshop

One good thing, or the only good thing, about having photographer friends who also happen to be insomniacs is that they send you photoshopped gems like this picture -- a hybrid of Deborah's new engagement ring and the unique-looking jeweler who created it.

The question, of course, is whether the jeweler could even make a ring that looks like the one in this picture. And if he could, would we even be able to afford it?

[Pic from Philadelphia Magazine...And as always, more procrastinationary goodness over at tokoni.]