JN70: What should I do about these DOPES?! Vote now!

Dear everyone,

For weeks now the fiancée and I have been trying to plan our wedding. By “we,” I mean Jameelah, and by “planning,” I mean Jameelah coming up with some sort of idea and me furrowing my brows and muttering stuff like “Party favors? What are party favors?! I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies, Miss Scarlet!” Then I’d claw at my face and run screaming into the darkness.

So that’s the update on the wedding planning.

Work has been going well, and by well, I mean it’s been driving me a little nuts. I learned from a recent workshop that there are four basic personality types when it comes to work. To simplify things, I’m going to distill these personality types into the Dove, Owl, Peacock, Eagle (DOPE) model:

• Dove: Likes peace and harmony; hates interpersonal conflicts; good at stabilizing things; can be indecisive.
• Owl: Likes data and processes; hates chaos and lack of structure; good at getting things right; can be argumentative.
• Peacock: Likes being around people and being the center of attention; hates boredom and solitude; good at connecting to people; can be unfocused.
• Eagle: Likes action and movement; hates over-planning and delays; good at getting things done; can be impatient.

Think about the people you work with and see what kind of DOPE they are, and what you are. In the office, we have several owls, and they can’t stand the peacocks. The eagles, meanwhile, can’t stand the doves or the owls. One staff who is an owl complains that the peacock staff plays music too loud and that his random bursts of singing is distracting, so she would rather work from home, and she ends up arriving late for work and leaving early a lot. The peacock, meanwhile, thinks the owl is cold and unapproachable and no fun, and that it’s not fair she gets to work from home often. The owl thinks it doesn’t matter that she works from home or is late, as long as she gets her work done on time, and she looks down on the peacock because he sometimes drops the ball on things. The peacock, however, has put in long hours and is charismatic, so that brings in lots of partners and community goodwill. The one eagle in the office is fed up with everything and seems rude sometimes. I realize that I’m a dove, so I’m a pretty good listener but can be indecisive until I hear everyone’s opinions, so they end up coming to me to complain about the others, to the point where I just want to grab them by the collar, knock their heads together, and say, “You’re adults! Find a way to work out your differences!”

This is arguably the toughest part of running a nonprofit. It is just easier to write a 30-page grant for $95,000 than to mediate personality clashes. It keeps me up at night, thinking that one of these days I’ll come to the office and there will only be piles of beaks and feathers because an all-out war broke out.

Thoughts? Advice? What should I do? I’m going nuts. Everyone loves the mission and does good work, and I like them all, but they don’t all get along. Vote now:

1. You should have a staff retreat, with candles and blindfolds and trust exercises and everyone sings Kumbaya around a campfire. Retreats solve everything.
2. Build a battle cage and lock all the disgruntled staff inside and not let them out until they either settle their differences or else fight to the death.
3. Fire them all and hire migrant workers.
4. Fire all the DOPEs except for doves, because doves are cool and always get along with each other.
5. Have a “Survivor”-type of competition where each week, a staff will be voted off the company. As a staff leaves, divide up his/her work responsibilities with the remaining staff.
6. Switch over to the business field instead of nonprofit, because people in corporations get along better.
7. Build a time machine, go back in time, warn self about the challenges of running a small nonprofit, buy a hundred shares of Google, come back to present.

Let me know what kind of DOPE you are and what I should do. I think I need a Trader Joe’s bar of chocolate.

JN69: Scary things to think about for Halloween

RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

Sometimes I stay up late at night thinking about the meaning of life. Other times I think about what name I would use if I were to enter the adult entertainment industry. I think  “Maybe Randy Teriyaki.”

My friends,

This weekend Jameelah dragged me to a haunted corn maze. What is a haunted corn maze, you ask? Whenever I think of corn maze, I always think of some redneck at the breakfast table, saying “Maw, can you git me a bowl of that thar corn maize chowder?”

No, a haunted corn maze is a giant corn field where a path has been mowed, and scary effects and actors are placed strategically on the path so that groups of people can be terrified wandering in the dark among the corn rows around Halloween time. “Eeek,” I said, “I’m too scared! 30 bucks per person, that’s gonna give me nightmares for weeks to come!”

“But I want to experience being scared with you! We’ve never had that experience together before!” said Jameelah. As with every argument, I stood my ground, exclaiming that it was a waste of money when we could just stay at home and watch a scary movie rental. Two minutes later, we drove to the corn maze.

So we entered the maze in the dark. Some parts were lit with strobe lights. They were very creative in decorating the place and staging actors who were dressed like zombies and mad scientists. Coffins opened when we walked by. Shadows jumped out and followed us. At one point, it was pitch black, and some random girl from a different group grabbed my hand. At one point we walked through an abandoned school bus with fake corpses on the seat, one of which rose up and screamed at us. There were some guys wielding chainsaws. Jameelah was terrified, screaming at each turn, and having lots of fun. I felt bad, because besides being startled once a while, I was not scared, and that was disappointing to her.

Maybe I have lost some of my childhood wonderment, and that’s why I can’t be scared easily by pretend things any more. Now that I am older, I think real terror comes when you know there is no escape from a situation. I think I could design a very scary corn maze for much cheaper: You start at one end, and as you walk farther, a replica of your fridge opens and a low voice groans: “You haven’t cleaned me for a year!” A little further, and you encounter a sign that says “Palin-Limbaugh 2012!” Turning a corner, it gets pitch black, and a gloved hand reaches for you. “Time for your prostate exam!” By this time, I’d be peeing-in-my-pants scared. Kim Jong Il pops out, then you are showered by dozens of unpaid bills and some empty bottles of swine flu vaccine, and then, just when you thought the worst is over, a person jumps out with a calculator screaming “Do you know how much college tuition will cost when your future kids are 18?!” Eeek!

Those are the things that scare me, not fake zombies and severed heads. “Next time,” said Jameelah as she drove us back, “I’m going with someone who likes being scared. You’re no fun.”

Let me know what scares you.

Hugs and bunnies,

Randy Teriyaki

JN68: I might have had too much chocolate when I wrote this post

Dear everyone,

I just finished reading Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, and I could not stop weeping. Well, the story was a sad account of childhood poverty and family tragedies, but the weeping was because Frank McCourt was able to write an entire book with endless amounts of neverending sentences and no quotation marks and yet so much beauty and music and here I am on the couch watching reruns of Law and Order and feeling my own brain atrophying and not producing a paragraph that is worthy of being spat on by Frank McCourt. I can’t help it. I come home from work exhausted and the last thing I can do is drag myself to the laptop that I bought especially for this purpose and force myself to compose something witty and lyrical when Eliott and Olivia are busy questioning some sort of murder suspect. I am a horrible human being and, worse, a terrible lazy aspiring writer. To cheer myself up I had a pound of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate and now I’m kind of hyper and Jameelah’s eyes widened when she discovered that I had eaten this much chocolate and she said you ate that much chocolate I can’t believe you ate that much how is that even possible and I said it was good so I ate it and that’s that.

Today Jameelah and I went to talk to the owner of a popular Vietnamese restaurant to negotiate with him the catering of our wedding reception. We gave him our catering budget and waited for him to laugh at us and kick us out of his restaurant but he was very nice and didn’t do that. The quest for a good wedding gets more and more complex. Who knew there was so much to think about. We’ve been searching for a place to have the reception and we want it outdoor but we have to worry about renting chairs and what if it rains. We’d have to rent some sort of cover but that costs like 900 bucks, can’t you believe that, 900 bucks to rent a tent? That’s ridiculous, ridiculous I said and Jameelah said calm down Sweets calm down and I calm down because she calls me Sweets. We wanted it outdoors next to a cherry blossom. That’s it, one cherry blossom tree, but I’m not even sure that they would still be in season in the middle of April when all manners of weather might destroy the cherry blossoms and the guests would stand there and say oh Lord poor Huy and Jameelah getting married near a sad and barren tree the poor heathens so now we’re looking for some place indoors. We looked at a Unitarian church but they charge 800 dollars so I say that’s ridiculous and Jameelah says mm-hm she agrees.

And what the heck is a rehearsal dinner? I’ve never heard of such a thing, but again I know nothing about birthin’ no babies when it comes to weddings. Right now we’re thinking of hiring some Bhangra dancers or a belly dancer or a palm reader or a caricaturist because the reception should be fun and what is more fun than watching a belly dancer after having your palm read at a wedding reception? Nothing. And I’m thinking of how to tell Dad if we have a belly dancer because surely he’ll have a heart attack, especially after we’ve decided, after weighing all of your thoughts, to have a vegetarian wedding, which, with a Vietnamese caterer, will pretty much be vegan.

It is Fall now and the trees are turning colors, and sometimes driving home I look at the leaves drifting down the street and I gaze at little houses I pass and think how nice it would be when J and I could have our own little place where we could grow tomatoes and blueberries and rainbow chard and have a compost bin. I get wistful sometimes thinking that my youth is over long over but I also get a little excited thinking of the pitter patter of little footsteps which will be that of a bunny the family pet and the small voice of Huy Jr. saying Daddy look the blueberries are ripe can we pick them and feed them to the bunny and I would say of course son of course. That’s how I would talk when I’m a dad, all patient like that.

So I guess the wedding is not too bad. We should enjoy the moment, for there is much after that to look forward to.

It is now almost 1am and I should go to bed. My stomach is hurting a little bit. I shouldn’t eat this much chocolate again. Tomorrow is another day and I hope it gets foggy because I love waking up on fall days when the air is saturated with fog and the warm damp earthy scent of barely decaying leaves. I love fall in Seattle even if there is a wedding to worry about. Life is good. Talk to you soon.

Huy

JN67: Wedding planning, like root canals, can be fun with the right attitude

Dear everyone,

Apparently only a few people felt the same way about containers as I do. Thank you, Sharon, for sharing your story about how plastic containers changed your life (“We actually eat the leftovers at my house now because they look so much more appetizing.”) The rest of y’alls, stop sending me hate mail and death threats with pictures of broken pieces of Tupperware. I will not be cowered by your lack of appreciation of the finer things in life.

I will now gracefully transition to another topic. After much pain and hardship, and the occasional projectile dining utensil, we’ve decided on the wedding date. We had thought of April 3^rd, but apparently that will be Passover, and we should be respectful of our Jewish friends. April 17^th, 1941, was when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany, but since no one has yet complained, we’ll stick to April 17^th, 2010.

I’ve realized that I’ve been able to run a small nonprofit, but I know nothing at all when it comes to planning a wedding. It’s bewildering. Yesterday, for example, Jameelah approached me with a piece of paper. “OK,” she said, “I have the perfect idea for the invitation. Watch. OK, imagine this piece of paper—well, it would have to be bigger, but just imagine it for now—and we fold it over three ways like this, then this side could be turned into a pocket. We’ll slip a small RSVP card into this pocket. The center section, meanwhile, will be bilingual with all the details. This fold will be cut diagonally like this and stamped with cherry blossoms. Now, if we flip it and reverse it, it’ll turn into a pop-up origami phoenix, and when people touch it, it’s rigged with a hidden mechanism that will cause it to burst into flames, revealing the time and place of the ceremony. I’m ordering liquid nitrogen and some duct tape.”

OK, I exaggerated a little bit, but that’s exactly how I interpreted it. It sounds like a foreign language. There are certain things in life that have befuddled me (fashion, interior design, the rules of baseball, soufflés, musicals where people sing EVERY line of dialog, electrical engineering, quantum physics, why women find Orlando Bloom attractive when he looks like a chipmunk), and planning a wedding is one of those things.

The families on both sides, meanwhile, have been excited, which is good. But then they start offering helpful advice. “Have them made in Vietnam,” says Dad, “it’s like fifty cents per piece there. At 300 people, that’s only $150. The wedding invitation should be white with silver ink. No, wait, silver is too light. Have black ink. No, black is too plain. Blue. Go with blue.”

“We’re not having 300 people!” I say. I am impressed, though, that he actually puts thoughts into the details. Jameelah’s mom calls in from Louisiana. “You should have your cousins over here as part of you bridal party. You’ll offend them otherwise. Are you going to make your sister the Maid of Honor? Also, what about having your grandfather do your ceremony? Since you’re combining two cultures, the food should reflect that. Have spring rolls with gumbo or dirty rice or something.”

We’ve been arguing about a few items. Planning an event is always draining and never ever fun. I’ve known this from countless fundraising dinners. But there have been a couple of things we both are excited about. For example, having a Latino DJ to play salsa, merengue, and reggaeton, along with hip-hop, bhangra, and other multicultural dance songs. People are going to dance. Fewer speeches, more crazy dancing. We’ll open with my theme song, “Back Dat Azz Up.” (Lyrics: “Girl, you looks good/won’t you back dat azz up”). OK, I haven’t run that one past Jameelah yet, but I’m sure she’ll be fine with it.

Today, a friend offered this brilliant observation: “I don’t know what you vegans do. For all I know, you’ll have us throw flaxseeds at you instead of rice.” That’s brilliant, and totally beats my idea of throwing small pieces of deep-fried tofu hot from the fryer. Probably safer, too.

I guess the wedding is only as painful as we make it. Just like taxes and root canals, it can be fun if you just change your attitude. If you’ve been to a good memorable wedding, let us know what you liked. Creative ideas or no-nonsense tips are always appreciated. I’m going to go look for some good Bhangra songs.

JN66: Am I wrong for thinking plastic containers are sexy? Vote now.

My friends,

The nonprofit that I direct recently got some new staff, and one of them observed to me that I seem to hate everything. In fact, I’ve even developed a “Claw of Hatred,” where my right hand goes up in a claw a few inches from my face whenever I talk about something I despise. “Facebook!” I would say, one hand clawing at the air. Here are some other things that also get The Claw: Crocs, orange juice without pulp, that curly-haired repulsive-looking freecreditreport.com guy who looks like a troll on crack, fundraising dinners, children singing backup in unison (it’s creepy), people dressed up as animals (even creepier and more disturbing), whole-wheat pasta (disgusting), people who spit a loogey in public (almost as disgusting as whole-wheat pasta), and  that stupid song by Jason Mraz “I’m Yours,” the lyrics of which are so insipid and inane that I want to claw off my ears each time it comes on.

“So what makes you happy?” one of the new staff asked. So that made me think. I’ve been too bitter and negative lately, hating everything. But life is too short to spend in hatred and bitterness and making small voodoo dolls of the freecreditreport.com guy and punching it over and over. I thought about the things that made me happy: Roasted seaweed sheets. Soy flan. The apartment, when it’s clean and smells like Febreze. Rainy Saturday mornings. That Geico commercial lady, Flo. She’s hilarious.

None of those things beat food storage containers. On Sunday I was so excited to open the newspaper ads section. Rubbermaid Stainshield containers are on sale! 20-piece set for twelve bucks, a saving of 48%! Run, don’t walk, to your nearest Target! What are you waiting for? What’s wrong with you people?! This deal won’t last forever! Jameelah and I had to go to three Targets before we found one that had them in stock! But after calling around, and getting a raincheck at one store, we were able to buy the last two sets.

I have been thinking a lot about what makes people happy, and have found no discernable pattern. Why do so many women obsess over shoes? What’s so great about shoes? I have three pairs of shoes, and have used them for the past ten years, which averages to be about one pound of shoe per year. Shoes don’t make me happy. They’re just things that cover your feet so you don’t step on sharp rocks or get frost bitten. That’s it.

Containers, on the other hand, are awesome. After much reflection, I think I understand their appeal. Containers store food, but they also contain hope and potential and security and friendship. When you store leftovers in a plastic container, you are thinking “I have food for the future. I will not starve tomorrow. I can live to pass on my genes.” When you give someone food in one of your container, you are giving them both a gift of your trust and friendship, and also of your resources, a gesture of community bond. When I look at a clean and empty container, I see potential, visualizing all the things that could go in there: flan, soup, chopped raw vegetables to cook the next day. Containers, like the dehydrator, which preserves food indefinitely, are symbolic of preserving the moment, the reality, and thus, ourselves and our own mortality. The clear plastic container represents immortality. And the Stainshield technology, which repels tomato stains, represents the unblemished perfection of this preserved existence.

Am I the only person who thinks this? Am I weird for liking containers this much? Vote now:

1. No, you are not weird at all. Not any weirder than normal.
2. 20-piece Stainshield set for $12? OMG, I have to tell my Rubbermaid Stainshield fan club!
3. Yes, you are a weirdo. Why don’t you find happiness in normal manly things such as beer and football and meat?
4. Wait…did you say you hate Jason Mraz? What’s wrong with you?! You just don’t appreciate good music. Jason Mraz is a saint. My sister had depression for eighteen years after she lost her leg in a car accident. Then she listened to Jason Mraz, and miraculously her leg grew back. So there.
5. Sorry, dude, Pyrex all the way.
6. Did you really spend an entire blog post writing about CONTAINERS? Really? Containers? Have you run out of things to talk about? This is five minutes of my life I will never get back again. Really. Containers.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the kitchen, polishing my new containers.

JN65: Celebrating twenty years in the US

Dear everyone,

This morning my older sister, Lynn, texted me to remind me that today is the 20^th anniversary of the first day our family arrived in the US. September 25^th, 1989. It’s been twenty years. Sometimes, I stay awake pondering. Most times, it revolves around finding a way to profit from the sale of homemade fruit leather or opening an Alpaca ranch in Peru. But on occasions I wonder what my life would be like if we had never left Vietnam.

It is interesting to think of the infinite alternative realities. In one, I am a space pirate looking for riches on different planets. In another, I become old and escape to find adventure by tying thousands of balloons to my house and floating to Venezuela. All right, those are plots of animated movies. The closest reality I could imagine is one of a boy whose family lived in a small mountain village in Vietnam. If we never came to the US, I would probably grow up in that village, raising crops and learning how to ride a motorcycle. I would marry my childhood best friend, Ha, and have two kids by now.

And sometimes, in the village, I would ponder what it would be like, in a different reality, if I lived in the US. In the evening, while tending to the chayote and passionfruit plants, I’d stare at the distant mountains, wondering what lay beyond them. Covered in sweat and dust, I would walk home to a small hut. Then I’d probably go on the internet and blog about it. What, just because someone lives in a village, you don’t think they’d have access to technology? Stop stereotyping people.

It’s still unbelievable that we’ve been here for 20 years now, traversing the soils of the US from Philadelphia to Seattle to Memphis to Chicago to St. Louis. “One day,” my father said to one of his American friends, “the Le family will be all over the United States.” Right now, it’s still just the few of us. In twenty years, the clan grew by only five members, and lost one, my mother. Her absence makes this otherwise ordinary day bittersweet, like waking up from a really good dream.

“We should go to celebrate,” I texted back. We never paid any attention to this. No one noticed any of the other anniversaries. Vietnamese people don’t take notice of yearly markers, except when someone dies. But twenty years is a lot, especially for my older sister, who is the reason we were able to come here. Half-Vietnamese, half-American, she was called here, and we, her adopted family, came with her. More than 2/3 of my life has been spent here now. I love my older sister, and I am grateful she brought us all here to this great new world, where I have a flat-panel TV and can complain about the government without being put to jail. Of all the realities, this is the only one I know, so it’s the best one. What should we do to celebrate 20 years of this reality of being Americans? I think we’ll just go out for a drink, and to celebrate our Vietnamese heritage, go to karaoke afterward.

JN64: Do we Americans hug too much? Vote now!

My friends,

I am gradually losing this battle against Facebook. It seems everyone on earth has an account, a sad realization I came across when I happened to be glancing at Jameelah’s page and saw that “Lolo,” one of my nieces, has an account. She’s only 9. The staff at the office have labeled me ancient, unfit to lead our organization in this technocratic society. I believe they are plotting some sort of mutiny. Yesterday, I was very happy to meet Lena, a very nice woman in her 40’s, who does not have an account. Instantly we felt a bond. Yup, me and Lena, against the evil Facebook Borg. We’ll show them, Lena, we’ll show them all!

But this post is not a rant about Facebook. That will come later in a post called “Facebook: The Unraveling of Society, One ‘Friend’ at a Time.” It’s about people hugging each other. When I went to Vietnam for the first time a decade ago, the relatives came and waited for three hours outside the airport. I was ecstatic to see them, so, like an American, I ran up and hug the first cousin I saw. It was a terrible mistake. To this day, I think he still has PTSD and on occasions wakes up in a cold sweat screaming “Those skinny arms! Those skinny arms!” Hugging is not something you do in Vietnamese culture. It would be more culturally acceptable to punch your favorite aunt in the neck than to hug her.

So why do we Americans hug so damn much? We hug goodbye. We hug hello. We hug to celebrate. We hug in condolence. We hug when it’s Tuesday. Am I the only one who wonders if hugging has become obsolete by its ubiquity? Or are hugs like bunnies and oxygen, and we can never have too many in the world? I still haven’t figured out all the unwritten rules of platonic embrace. At least on two occasions I spread my arms wide, bracing for a voluntary invasion of space, thinking of it as the American thing to do, while my Vietnamese side thinks “Jeeze, just punch me in the neck!” But nothing is as awful as being left hanging when you offer yourself for a hug.

So what are the rules? Here are some that I’ve discovered: 1. Always hug someone who solicits a hug with arms wide open; otherwise, they feel awful. 2. A hybrid “man-hug,” wherein two men will shake hands, then simultaneously lean forward to hug, is a good default hug among men 3. Where two people come to hug, then realize that the other one didn’t expect a hug, they can quickly change the hug, ending up in an acceptable one-armed “side-hug.” 4. Children shouldn’t be hugged, except by their parents; they tend to carry diseases.

Last week, I had a meeting with a new acquaintance, Rhonda, and we had a great conversation about writing, philosophy, tips on wedding planning, etc. At the end, when we parted, I automatically moved into a hug, while she simultaneously extended her hand in a handshake. We ended up hugging, but I left feeling horrible, wondering if Rhonda thought I was some sort of weirdo. Nothing is worse than being forced to hug someone. I realize I actually dislike chronic huggers, and now I have started becoming one. Hugs, like “I love you”s, should be rare, so that they are meaningful. This is one of the reasons I hate Facebook, because if you have 180 “friends,” then is anyone actually a friend?

I think for the rest of 2009, I’m not going to hug anyone. I think the world would be better if we decrease emphasis on the quantity and increase the quality of our interactions. So down with Facebook! And stop hugging people.

What do you think? Do Americans hug too much? Vote now:

1. I agree with you. People hug way too often. It is best to not touch people at all. We all have germs! Germs everywhere! Eeeek!!
2. It depends on the context. If someone’s pet hamster died, hug. If you met a stranger on the bus who lost a job, also hug. If you’re getting mugged, don’t hug. Unless the mugger told you his hamster died.
3. Hugs are wonderful and necessary. Hugs and rainbows and butterflies. In a perfect world, everyone hugs everyone. The world would be a better place to live there were more hugs and drum circles.
4. Hey, why do you hate Facebook so much? You’re a no good, very bad person! Stop dissing it! Facebook is amazing! It saved my uncle’s LIFE, ok? He was suffering from DEPRESSION, and then he went on Facebook and became a FAN of the Crocs Lover Club, and now he’s all BETTER. I’m going to update my Wall right now to let people know what a no good, very bad person you are, you hater.

JN63: An Asian, a Jew, and a nerd walked into a strip joint…

Dear everyone,

For the past several days, my Jewish friend Rachel has harassed me constantly to write about her wedding, which took place last Sunday. Each day I get twelve text messages, each one increasingly more aggressive and vulgar. So I should write about it, lest she drives down here and stabs me on Rosh Hashanah, or worse, makes me eat gefilte fish or something.

But first, the bachelor party. Her husband, Eli, wanted to go to a strip club, so his Engineer friend, Stan, and I took him to one, which reminds me of a great joke that started with “An Asian, a Jew, and a nerd walked into a strip club…” but we’ll save that for another day.

Anyway, this was my first bachelor party, and also my first strip club. Luckily, I had cleared this up with the fiancée and Rachel, so it was all kosher. (Kosher. Get it?!) Eli, going all wild, ordered two appletinis. We watched the dancers on stage, and I was quite amazed. First of all, the women were all very talented and athletic. I dare any of you to try to cling upside down naked at the top of a metal pole using only one leg while tossing your hair seductively. I’ve only done this once, and let me tell you, it’s not easy, considering the high potential for friction burn.

 Second of all, it’s very hygienic. After every third performer or so, the mirrored wall was thoroughly sprayed with Lysol and wiped down, erasing all traces of hand, foot, and cleavage prints. If it weren’t for the constant stream of undergarments and dollar bills being artfully scattered, I bet the floor would be clean enough to eat off.

The women were very nice, coming up and asking if we wanted personal lap dances. Eli had a couple. I respectfully declined, somewhat awkwardly, not really knowing how to talk to strippers. For example, one dancer, whose skimpy outfit fluoresced neon green under the black light, came up to me and introduced herself as Jasmine.

Jasmine: So, what do you do?

Me: I work for a nonprofit. What about you?

Jasmine: I’m a stripper…

Wait wait, it gets even more awkward. I really need to polish my strip joint conversation skills.

Me: So…how do you like working here?

Jasmine: I love it! Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t! Are you all having a good time?

Me: Yes, thank you. Uh…we really appreciate all your hard work.

Anyway, at the end of the night, the two Appletinis and one Lemon Drop finally hit Eli, so we walked him home. Two days later, Jameelah and I drove through a fearsome rain to get to their wedding. This was our first Jewish wedding, and we were very excited and extremely ignorant. “So they stand underneath this piece of cloth called the Chuppah,” said Jameelah, who had been with Rachel for a simultaneous bachelorette party while we guys were at the strip club. My only exposure to Jewish culture comes from episodes of Seinfeld, so I imagined there would be someone being lifted on a chair, and people saying stuff like “Oy, no gefilte fish? What kind of a meshugah is this?” (Please don’t stab me, Rachel, Gwen, and other Jewish friends).

We arrived in time to see Rachel circling Eli seven times, gazing lovingly at him. They looked so happy, underneath the white Chuppah, which was held up at each corner by a pole carried by a friend. The ceremony was fast and painless, accompanied by the soft whisper of the rain and the gentle rumbling of the waterfall a hundred feet away. The setting sun cast a golden glow on the bride and groom, illuminating their beaming faces. It was perfect. Then the rabbi had them drink from a wine glass, and Eli smashed the wine glass with his foot to represent that their vows would never be broken, and that his shoes are strong enough to smash glass, which means he is able to afford shoes and thus is stable enough to provide for his family (OK, I made this second part up, but it sounds plausible). Rachel looked beautiful and glowing and not at all mean like usual.

The reception was small, about 50 people total, and very elegant. You know a restaurant is elegant when your food is tiny yet tastefully presented. Jameelah and I were excited when the servers brought us our special vegan entrees: four grams of delicious roasted vegetables, delicately presented on fine China. The free-flowing wine was especially appreciated. I didn’t drive, so I accepted the refills each time the server came around, which was four or five times.

The bride and groom cut the cake, a cute and very tasteful cake, and then everyone went outside for crazy circle dancing, during one song of which the married couple were carried around on chairs. It was the most wild, happy, fun experience you can ever having without involving a Karaoke machine.

For some reason, I didn’t remember anything else that transpired that night, except arguing with one of the other guests about the merit of having blank white walls in a house (why hang anything up? It just ruins the beauty of simplicity). Must have been tired. I woke up the next morning and got a text from Rachel: “Blog!!”

So what is the lesson from all this, you ask? Human beings are very interesting animals, and the concept of the bachelor/bachelorette party just proves it. Having such a party seems to say “This is your last chance at pho; after this, it’s just rice forever.” What sort of sane person, realizing the restrictiveness of marriage, would ever agree to it? And yet we do it all the time. The bachelor party, then, in a way represents the realization of and the surrender to one form of inevitable death: the death of romantic freedom. But after seeing how happy Rachel and Eli are, maybe not all surrenders are bad, and sometimes accepting an inevitable restriction of a freedom can itself foster the attainment of a higher form of that freedom. Don’t you agree?

Mazel tov, Rachel and Eli! Now stop texting me!

JN62: Are we being selfish for wanting a vegan wedding? Vote now.

Dear everyone,

Jameelah and I have been engaged for a week, and it feels like we’re baby angels wrapped in cotton-cloud blankets (in the words of our favorite show, Psych). I was especially elated because I thought my work was done and I could just show up at the wedding, and that until then, I could get back to what I was doing, which was surfing google for bitter rants against Facebook, which is a time-sucking vortex of festering evil. All ye who use it, repent! Repent and find something constructive to do! Such as blogging…

But no. Apparently we have to determine a date, mainly because people I meet scream “When’s the date?!” It’ll probably be in the Spring of 2011, under some cherry blossoms. This will give us time to go around to different restaurants, propose, and get free stuff. There’s no point getting engaged if you can’t get free stuff from restaurants.

Last weekend, my father met Jameelah’s for the first time. Now that we’re engaged, we thought they should meet. I was nervous. Her father has a shaved head and tattoos on both of his arms. His ears have at least seven holes in them, filled with studs and rings, one in his left earlobe big enough for a large pencil to pass through. I’ve heard rumors that he’s killed a rhino with his teeth alone. But scariest of all…he wears Crocs, which are ugly rubber shoes that rank up there with bathroom mold and that freecreditreport.com guy as some of the most repulsive things on earth. We were horrified to see some children in Vietnam wearing them!

It was a little awkward. There we were at a Vietnamese restaurant: Jameelah, me, my Dad, J’s dad, my little sister, J’s little sister.

“Look at all the tattoos you have,” said Dad, “Very nice.”

“Thanks,” said J’s Dad, rolling up his sleeves. “This one has a skull and some thorns piercing flesh. And this one over here is barbed wires ripping through bleeding flesh.”

There was some general chit-chat, during which time I told Dad we were engaged. Things started getting complicated. I had forgotten how difficult my father can be sometimes. Here’s what our dialog sounded like.

Me: So, uh, Dad, did we tell you we’re engaged?

Dad: I know. Your sister told me.

Jameelah: Were you surprised?

Dad: I thought it was about time.

Me: We’re going to have a vegan wedding.

Dad: No you’re not.

Me: Why not? It’s our wedding, we’re vegans, it’ll be a vegan wedding.

Dad: If you came to someone’s wedding, they would have vegetarian food for you. So if they came to your wedding, you should have meat for them. You must accommodate your guests.

Me: I guess we can talk about that later. We’ll keep the wedding simple.

Dad: No you’re not. It’s not as easy as you think.

Me: Why not?

Dad: My friends will laugh at me if you have a simple event. They’ll say, “That family is too poor to afford a real wedding. ” When your Mom and I were your age, anyone who wanted to get married had to buy enough bricks to pave 5 meters of road for the village. Back in those days, we had to make our own bricks too, and we had to walk five miles in the snow to gather the clay…

Me: What? Why?

Dad: That was the tradition. You don’t have to do that nowadays, but we will have to slaughter a live goat for your wedding ceremony.

OK, I exaggerated the last couple of lines a little bit. The conversation was slightly alarming, making me feel foolish and ignorant, and slightly annoyed by the growing layers of needless complexity. (“You have to invite all 300 of our relatives in Vietnam. None of them will be able to make it, but all of them will be insulted if they don’t get a fancy invitation, and one of them will probably hex you.”) We’re sticking to our guns about the vegan food, though. I’m not even going to tell him about the glowsticks, lest he rains on that parade too.

After a while, I was grateful to J’s Dad for pulling my father outside for a smoke. We saw them talking and laughing. Later he would report that J’s Dad is “Scary-looking, but nice.”

Are we wrong to want a simple vegan wedding with glowsticks? Vote now:

1. No, it’s your day, you should do whatever you want, including spitting in the face of traditions
2. Yes, a wedding is not just about you two, it’s about families and communities, and they have almost as much of a say. They also have a say in the honeymoon.
3. Uh…Is your Dad paying for the goat? If so, that’s fine. Goats are expensive, and if he pays for it, then what’s the problem?
4. Dude, did you say glowsticks? Partayyy! This will be AWESOME! I’m bringing a keg.
5. You should just elope and escape to a place so removed from civilization that no one will be able to find you. Such as New Jersey.
6. I’m an omnivore, and I find your idea of a vegan wedding reception offensive. For decades we meat-eaters have been subjected to ridicule, forced to scavenge for food at ridiculous vegan events. No more, I say. My brethren, rise up and tear down the tyranny that is veganism!

Ooh, I better go. Someone just walked by in Crocs. I’m going to make sure it’s not Jameelah’s dad, and then I’m going to throw rocks at him.

Huy

JN61: We’re engaged

Dear everyone,

Jameelah and I are engaged. This may come as a shock to some of you for several reasons, mainly that anyone would actually want to marry me, but I think all those push-ups have really helped beefed up the sexy vegan man body. Word has spread very quickly through my nemesis, FaceBook, and many people have been asking for details, so I thought I would just go ahead and tell the story.

I proposed. I figured it was my turn. After all, Jameelah had proposed eight times before. She’ll argue with you that she only proposed once or twice, and only as a joke, but believe me, it was eight; twice during commercials of a Law and Order episode.

Let me tell you, proposing to someone is not easy. First, I didn’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies when it comes to the ring, so had to harass friend Rachel, who has a foul sailor’s mouth and limited patience, for help. Just like when I got my first suit this year, I felt like a country bumpkin who just came to the city carrying a wagon full of pigs to buy his sweetheart something special.

“What kind of ring do you want?” asked Rachel.

“What? An engagement ring, duh!”

“No, what kind of f***ing stone and band?”

“Uh…diamond. No, wait, peridot, that’s her birthstone. No, diamond. And, uh, white gold. Can we make sure it’s real shiny-like?” Who knew rings came in so many styles! They’re like snowflakes.

It was Jameelah’s birthday. I had been nervous all day, trying to remember what Rachel had said: “OK, you open the box like this. Don’t be a dumbass and turn it upside down or something.” I hid the box in the corner of the couch. Jameelah came home. I told her I had two gifts for her. First, Legend of Zelda, on our Nintendo Wii, which she had wanted for several months now. “Legend of Zelda!” she said, “yay! And what’s my second gift?”

“I’ll give that to you later, after we play some Zelda.”

The minutes flew by while we played. She loved the game. Finally, it was 2am. I asked her to turn on Dragon Quest VIII. She was perplexed. Dragon Quest VIII is a game that we played two years ago on Christmas. We had stayed up until 5am for many days to finish it. I had promised her that we would get tattoos of a Dragon Quest slime on her last birthday, and then chickened out.

“OK, close your eyes,” I said. I reached into the couch and grabbed the ring and put it near me. “Sweetheart. You know when we played Dragon Quest VIII?”

“Yeah?”

“And we had so much fun staying up all night for months?”

“Yeah?”

“I was thinking of how happy we were, just hanging out at home, watching TV or playing games and being together, and I was thinking that life is complicated, and I’ve been very happy during these times when I could come home from work and I’d see your car in the parking lot and know that you are there and we could just sit on our couch. Point is, Dragon Quest IX is coming out! And Final Fantasy XIII. And of course, Zelda, and there will be many more. And I was thinking that there was no one else on earth I would rather play these games with for the rest of my life. I love you. Will you marry me?”

Then I presented the ring, which had turned upside down, and when I opened it, the ring fell down onto the lid.

“Wait, wait, wait, let me put it back in. OK, here you go. Will you marry me?”

19 seconds of stunned silence. She buried her face in my chest, speechless.

“What, is that a yes?”

“I thought you had gotten a slime tattoo! Yes, I’ll marry you!”

Anyway, that’s the short story. Quickly she posted on Facebook and couldn’t sleep the whole night, having to text all her girlfriends. By morning, the staff all knew. All day, I had to write a grant and some program reports, but couldn’t really concentrate. It feels strange to be engaged.

There you have it. Probably not the most sophisticated proposal. I had thought of a fancy dinner, or going to Alki Point and proposing on the bluff in front of the Seattle skyline, where we had been many times.  But this way is more true to us. Now she and her dozens of female friends are starting to…plan…and it’s slightly overwhelming. “So when’s the date?” they ask, and “Where will you have the reception? Are you going to have a traditional Vietnamese wedding? Will the wedding be vegan? What are your colors? Have you thought about your bridesmaids and groomsmen? What about centerpieces? How many people will you invite? Will there be bunnies?”

Eeek! I’m sure it’ll be fun to plan a wedding, and I’m sure there is plenty of Jagged Noodles material to be mined for the next year or so. But I’ve accomplished my mission. Now I’m taking my wagon and going home to help paw fix the barn roof.