Underpants On The Outside

In theory, when I refer to the Greatest Wedding of All Time I should be talking about my own.  It’s still possible, I guess, but it’s going to take a lot in order to top the wedding I went to last weekend.  It seems so obvious now, but I never realized before what the two elements of a perfect wedding are: a donkey and a water slide.

The wedding was in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  It’s a great town, where the only downside is the $70 cab ride to get there, although that also keeps the tourism below the point where they would have to build a Senor Frog’s.  There are enough ex-pats and retirees so that if you get lost you know you’ll run into an English speaker sooner or later, but the town still feels like authentic Mexico. (Except for the Starbucks.  And the Dunkin Donuts.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t really “authentic”, but there were several hot dog carts where you could buy corn slathered in mayonnaise that had been sitting in the sun for days, which one girl in our party referred to as “sex in a cup.”  That’s authentic enough for me.)

The best part of town was a house on the outskirts that some friends of the bride had rented.  For $900 per week, they got a three story house with two sundecks, a pool and a waterslide.  There were four girls staying there (one hot) and whenever we went over there they were in swimsuits and (true story, I swear) the hot one was making bacon.  Plates and plates of bacon. I’ve seen heaven, and no one believes me.

What was interesting about the girls staying at the heaven house was that every night they’d get drunk and invite me and my group of friends over, but they next day it would be painfully obvious that we were not welcome anymore.  (It was similar to the beer goggle phenomenon, except applied to our personalities. I’ve decided that they listened to us through beer headphones.)   One time they even left the house right after we showed up, hoping we’d take the hint.  Their plan might have worked if they hadn’t told us how to turn the water slide on.  Oh yeah, AND LEFT A PLATE OF BACON. Surprise surprise - we were still there when they got back.

And then things got even better. Immediately following the wedding ceremony an eight piece mariachi band showed up, along with a donkey carrying a bottle of tequila.  Again: this really happened. The donkey’s name was Benito. At first I thought the donkey was total bullshit - everyone called him “Benito the Tequila Donkey” as if he had some sort of tequila-based talent.  A more appropriate title would have been “Benito the donkey with baskets on his back which could fit a variety of things such as a bottle of tequila.”

The band, the donkey and all of the wedding guests then paraded around the streets of San Miguel in our suits and tuxedos drinking tequila from small clay cups on strings that had been hung around our necks. And while Benito exhibited no additional talents other than the ability to be walked on a leash, he gave the procession an air of spectacle.  We were celebrities; there were parents with kids by the side of the road taking photos.  We weren’t just a bunch of drunken white people who hired a mariachi band and decided to go for a stroll - we were people with a donkey. Make room. 

I figure Wonder Woman and I can top it if I can somehow arrange an appearance by Roy the Beer Gorilla.  The only tricky part will be convincing WW to make room in the budget, but the way I see it, it’s not like anyone is going to be looking at the flowers when there’s a gorilla walking around with a keg strapped to his back.

Okay, so I thought the footage from the Comic-Con would be up right now, but apparently the guys at Crave Online are still burning the midnight oil getting it ready. Surprise, surprise - I require a lot of editing. It sounds like it should be up tomorrow (along with another Superhero Diary!)  Unfortunately, by that time I will already be in the air.  I’m going to Mexico for the wedding of a good friend of mine, and between the sun, tequila and tacos filled with unidentifiable meats, I’m afraid I will be unable to post my incredibly hilarious Comic-Con recap until I return on Monday.  Hopefully somebody will be in a lot of suspense.

In the meantime, make sure to go to Crave sometime after Wednesday and see what they have up there, and I’ll be back soon, having been reminded of the ever-present nightmare of wedding planning.

I didn’t post last week, for which I should be flogged with something soft and not too painful. But where I’m not too reliable for regular or comedic material, I am incredibly dependable when it comes to excuses, so here goes.

First, I’m getting married. That excuses everything, starting with the blank open-mouthed stare I wear 24-7. Nothing can make a man want to be married more than the process of planning a wedding.

Second, I spent most of last week in the throes of my most deep-seeded social anxieties. The fanTAStic people at Crave Online asked me to cover the New York Comic-Con (Comic Convention) for them, and they wanted it done… on camera. [Ed note: Despite the title of this post, the Underpants will not be on TV at all, but “Underpants on the Streaming Video” did not have the same ring to it.]

The last time I did a filmed performance, I played Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Yes, yes, I was a bottom. Have your laughs, you philistines.) And while I nailed the role - seriously; I killed - this was in sixth grade. There was a good chance I’d be a bit rusty.

My assignment was to provide coverage of any news coming out of the convention and conduct “Man-On-The-Street” interviews with the freaks and weirdos along with any creators who would talk to me for five minutes. To increase my legitimacy, my cameraman would bring a microphone with one of those cubes that identifies what station you’re from. Later I would learn these are called “mic cubes.” Go figure.

I was nervous because, modesty aside, I know I am funny from time to time, but as a writer, it doesn’t matter if it takes me a half hour to find the joke, and I have as much time as I need to edit all the instances of, “Uh, y’know… like… fuck…” that make up most of my small talk. That’s not the case if I’m on camera. Plus I’m bald and not all that good looking. Double Whammy.

But I wasn’t about to let this opportunity go by. I attempted to prepare, but the best idea for a question I had was, “How do you decide which onomatopoeia you’re going to use? Are you ever sitting around thinking, ‘Oh, this is totally time for a Kawhang!’?”  I don’t know why I was worrying with material as golden as that. [Ed note: Late into the convention, I was interviewing random fans when one of the cameramen suggested I ask “If you could be any superhero, who would you be?” First I thought he was asking me, so I said, “Easy. Batman,” but when he explained it again, I realized how perfect of a question it was, and how dumb I had to be not to have thought of it.]

The day of the convention (Friday) I woke up and spent a few hours preparing my body and spirit. First, I drank a lot of caffeine so I’d be talkative. Then I took some Immodium, because caffeine gives me the runs. Then I coated my nuts with Cortaid because caffeine also makes me sweaty and I didn’t want to get chafed. I smelled like ointment and coffee, but I was heading into an environment where I figured that would be the norm.

No matter how much I may consider myself to be a comic book geek, on the relative scale of geekdom I actually think I rate pretty low. I play Magic, but only a couple times a year. I read comics, but I don’t maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of what’s going on in them. I was on my way to the convention and I realized I already had an attitude of snobbish superiority and condescension. I did not think that would work out well for me. Luckily I was listening to my Ipod; at that precise moment a Belle & Sebastian song was immediately followed by They Might Be Giants. I walked into the convention center feeling cooler than absolutely no one.

I’ll end my intro there. As of this post they haven’t put the footage up yet, but as soon as they do I’ll be back with more recap.

 Wednesday night, Wonder Woman and I went to a wine tasting hosted by her alumni society.  I was pretty excited to go, because I’ve never been to an event like that before.  I went to school with 20,000 other people; needless to say, we don’t exactly get the gang back together very often.  I didn’t even go to my high school reunion, because I didn’t know when it was happening and none of my friends thought to let me know they were going.  (They did report back, however, to let me know that - and I quote - “only Asian chicks age well.” Thanks, fellas.) 

There were probably 25 people at the wine tasting.  They all had on name tags with their names followed by the year they graduated, except for me; I just had a blank space next to my name.  I arrived before Wonder Woman, and as I was standing about, trying to assume the stance of someone who attended a small east coast liberal arts school (feet at ninety degree angle to suggest fencing training; brow furrowed to suggest contemplation, reinforced by goatee rubbing) one guy came up to me and asked me if I was still in school.  To which I replied, “Nope!  Just here for the drankin’!”  (I really suck at small talk.)

Here is my impression of an alumni society gathering: no one knows each other, so people spend a lot of time talking about buildings.  That’s kinda it.  But that’s also how I heard that Wonder Woman’s professors would regularly invite students over to their houses for dinners, which I find fascinating, because I would not have been able to recognize my professors from less than three hundred feet away.  I bet that instead of A’s and B’s Wonder Woman’s grade was equal to the number of marshmallows her professor put in her cocoa. 

While I was excited to go to my first reunion, I was just as excited, if not more so, for the wine tasting.  No, not because I like drinking (though I do…immensely…) but because I don’t know dick about wine, and I appreciate any opportunity I have to learn how to be more condescending. I have good company: from what I gathered, the entire wine industry is based on people trying to sound smarter than everybody else.

The sommelier had laid out five different wines.  The first was a “sparkling,” which is what pretentious people call champagne that wasn’t made in Champagne.  Personally, I call it “Horny Fiancee Juice.” The second was a white wine. All I know about white wines is that when my friend John Law (who introduced me to the concept of a “sparkling”) drinks them, I get to make jokes about him being gay. The third was a rose’, which make white wines look like Ray Lewis, and the last two were reds of some sort. 

I asked the sommelier what the reasoning was behind the progression.  He looked confused.  I asked him what spectrum the wines covered.  More confusion.  I asked him what we were drinking these wines with each other, and he said, “Oh, I just thought they’d go well together.”  I mean, c’mon - TRY a little.  The least he could do is give me some long-winded explanation that involved the words “dry,” “full-bodied” and “tannins.”  I mean, shit, there had to have been an “oaky nose” or “hints of raspberry” somewhere, right?

Nope.  He told me that all of that was just meaningless fluff put out by wine makers; pure marketing.  Then he asked me what I did for a living; I told him I was in marketing.  He suddenly noticed two people with empty glasses at the other end of the table. (I really, really suck at small talk.)

It reminded me of the only other wine tasting I’ve to.  I wasn’t even twenty-one at the time, and my friend Big Game James was seeing (read: occasionally hotrailing) a hostess at a restaurant.  She and one of the waitresses had been invited to a tasting held by six or seven vineyards, and they invited Big Game, who in turn invited me. Then, at the first table, the girls thought it would be funny to introduce me as the owner of their place.  Here I am, twenty years old, in sneakers, and I’ve got a bunch of people giving me wine and kissing my ass.  I played the part, too: if I liked a wine, I’d ask the proprietor how much it would cost for a dozen cases, because I thought it would go great with the new lamb dish we were rolling out. 

By the last couple of tables I was hammered.  Each vineyard brought several wines with them; I am nothing if not thorough, and over the course of the afternoon my character had…evolved a bit.  I’d started out as a young, successful businessman, but by table four I was a significantly wealthy eccentric, a member of the nouveau riche with Silicon Valley millions.  My restaurant was merely one of my many expensive hobbies, and with my wealth I no longer felt the need to be constrained by societal norms.  To be clear: I wasn’t being an obnoxious dickhead because I was drunk; I was doing it because I’m a very good actor. 

That’s when one vintner told me that I had probably noticed his wine’s “chocolate aftertaste.”  Uh oh.  I looked at him and said, “Y’know, I gotta tell ya [one of the societal constraints my character rejected was proper English] I don’t know shit about wine.  I just know what I like, and my customers seem to like it too. [I was really on a roll.] Now a bunch a’ you [I gestured grandly, probably spilling wine] have mentioned some ‘chocolate aftertaste.’ But I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.  There’s nothin’ about this wine that tastes like chocolate.” 

The winemaker replied, “Do you notice that film that you get in your mouth after you eat chocolate?” I told him I did.  I did not mention that I find it disgusting. “Well, the wine leaves a similar film.”  I pointed out that it was quite a stretch to relate the flavor of chocolate to the nasty, sticky saliva feel it leaves in your mouth.  I did this by saying, “Really?  Wow.  That’s some bullshit right there.”  Big Game and the ladies suggested it was time to leave.  Good times, good times. 

Something tells me I’m not going to be invited to many more wine tastings…

This weekend, Wonder Woman and I went to Crate and Barrel to register for gifts for our wedding. [Editor’s note: it occurs to me that mentioning our wedding registry may seem tacky: a blatant ploy to extort presents. Clearly, that’s not true - if I was trying to get presents I’d point out that my birthday is Saturday. The long gaps between my posts aren’t because I don’t WANT to post; I just never know what to post about. In that way my virtual Underpants mimics my actual underpants - a lot of desire is in there, but it has nowhere to go. I digress, but my point is that sooner or later I just have to write about whatever’s going on with me. And there’s not a lot going on with me, so… registering is what I’m posting about.] I’m going to try and sum up the experience as succinctly as possible:

• Step 1 - Wonder Woman informs me that we need a new [fill in the blank]
• Step 2 - I point out that either:
  • 2a: nothing is wrong with our current [fill in the blank]
  • 2b: I don’t know what a [fill in the blank] is, then I come up with a sexually explicit use for it. For instance, Crate and Barrel offers a terrific line of butt plugs that, in a pinch, can be used to keep your wine from spoiling.
• Step 3 - I suggest that we ask our friends to buy us a Wii.
• Step 4 - I whine that I’m bored.
• Step 5 - Wonder Woman decides which [fill in the blank] we’ll be registering for.
• Step 6 - I inform her that her choice was the wrong one.

Rinse and repeat for several hours until someone needs a snack.

Yeah - we disagreed on a lot of things. And as I have for the past six months, during each disagreement I imagined myself ten years down the road, pointing out to my divorce lawyer that I should have seen this coming the moment she didn’t see how it would be totally awesome if we got the electric mixer in purple. So I can admit that I probably made things into much bigger deals than they needed to be. But I know I’m right about the forks.

I know she’s going to be my wife and I should try and find a nicer way of putting this but I just can’t - Wonder Woman picked the stupidest set of silverware in the joint. (There were actually two stupider sets, but one was gold and the other was black. Of the silver silverware, Wonder Woman’s was the silliest.)

First of all, the pieces are all very long. Like the length of my forearm. Conversely, Wonder Woman and I are both very short. From the look of the spoons, a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios will now require a coxswain behind me yelling “Bite! Bite! Bite!” I’m especially looking forward to the day when I stab myself in the face because I’m not used to long distance feeding. I should practice by eating off of pool cues. [”Why is there a cork on his fork?”…”So he doesn’t hurt himself.” Thank you, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.]

The utensils are also very narrow. The dinner fork looks like a chopstick with a bad case of split ends; any meal involving scooping will be served with a piping hot plate of futility at no extra charge. I’m going to feed Wonder Woman rice and peas until she stabs me in the leg.

Let me stop myself for a moment. It tends to be funnier when I talk about the mishaps, so I want to take a second to acknowledge that planning a wedding is pretty fun, in ways I never would have thought of. Take gift registering: one of the items we registered for is a dish rack. Normally not a big deal, right? But I’d have a hard time describing how excited I am for the new dish rack. I’m actually looking forward to doing dishes.

Or maybe what I’m really looking forward to is starting a family with a wonderful woman (get it? Wonder Woman?) and the dish rack serves as a symbol of that union - something that will belong to both of us equally.* It sure is a lot nicer to think of the dish rack in that way, since the alternative is seeing it as an indication of just how old and lame I am, and that even though I’m only going to be twenty-nine I’ve somehow come to a point in life where I can actually get a semi thinking of a brand new dish rack. Because if that were the case, I’d have to cry. A lot.

So here’s to our dish rack of unity!

*Yeah, right! Last time I checked, I have the penis. That shit is MINE. [Ed note: When I first wrote this, I meant it in the chauvenistic, “I own everything” sort of way; it’s the type of humor that I enjoy so much and makes my mother sad. Then I read it again and realized I’m making a claim on a dish rack. Move over, Archie Bunker. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get quarters so I can do the laundry all night.]

As the day fast approaches (I have no idea how fast, because I have no idea when it will be) I will endeavor to leave regular updates about the fun/trials and tribulations of planning our wedding. That way, readers can feel like they’re right there with us, which should be particularly helpful for those who I do not like enough to invite. And if any of you think it’s tasteless to name this feature using a quote where Darth Vader predicts the success of the fascist Empire and the Dark Side, well… you probably have a good point.

This weekend, Wonder Woman and I flew to Los Angeles to meet vendors and scout venues. It was a busy Saturday: at nine am we were in Long Beach to meet with a photographer. By noon we were downtown to look at possible venues, crack addicts and prostitutes. By three we were in Playa Vista, by four we were in Culver City, and by five-thirty we were in the Palisades. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Los Angeles geography, let me put it this way: if I could have just added “disarm bomb in Reseda” to the itinerary I would have successfully completed a season of 24. This was especially fun after I woke up Friday morning and the top story on Yahoo’s homepage was “Gas prices in California hit record high.” Bonus.

We did have some luck on our side, as we found our photographer on the first try. Actually, luck had very little to do with it - we found her because Wonder Woman has been tirelessly searching on the internet. I can’t express how much I appreciate her efforts, but I will give it a shot once I get done playing Assassin’s Creed on my Xbox 360.

I just hope she appreciates my own contributions as well. I believe I was particularly helpful during our interview of said photographer. First of all, I doubt Wonder Woman would have noticed that the photographer was pretty hot if I hadn’t pointed it out. I also took the initiative when it came to tactfully asking the photographer the tough questions, such as where her restroom was, and how she dealt with adversity: “What was the worst thing that’s gone wrong at a wedding? Because a lot of things are going to go wrong at ours. Like, A LOT. For instance, what would you do in the event of a grease fire?”

Though I have to admit that by then I was just going through the motions for WW’s sake. I had already decided this woman was the right photographer for us, and no, not because she was cute. It was based on a much more objective standard; one that can be purchased semi-annually from 14-year old girls. That’s right, I’m talking about Thin Mints.

It was the first thing I noticed when we entered her studio: a plate of Samoas, Thin Mints, and one of those other Girl Scout cookies that are bullshit when compared to Thin Mints and Samoas and therefore don’t even deserve names. I felt compelled to mention how impressed I was with her portfolio - shouting, “Sweet! Girl Scout cookies!” as I stuffed two in my mouth just in case they weren’t meant for me - and on the outside chance I wasn’t sold yet, the photographer then said, “Sorry, I didn’t have time to freeze them.” Keep in mind that my love for Wonder Woman was initially based on her refusal to eat in restaurants that serve Pepsi. Suddenly it felt like the photographer and I had grown up together, except I had never actually eaten Thin Mints off a plate before. (My initial reaction: thumbs down. They don’t taste any better, and now you have to wash a plate. Booo.)

Note: some of you may not be impressed that the photographer knew that Thin Mints are meant to be eaten frozen. I, too, once assumed this was common knowledge, but living on the east coast has introduced me to scores of the unwashed masses that eat Thin Mints warm, like peasants and dogs. Believe me, they exist! They also leave their batteries in unrefrigerated drawers, the fools! Nevertheless, we must show pity, no matter how much we are disgusted.

After that the day becomes a bit of a blur, but the bits that I remember only reinforce my already-strong campaign for MVP of this wedding planning process. For instance, I drove us all over the place, and only managed to get us lost in my hometown twice! (National is north of Washington? Since when???)

We’ll be making at least one more trip back there to meet with more vendors, but I don’t want them to read this and think they can plunk down a box of Thin Mints and expect to get our business. No - the bar has been raised, and now my deposit check goes to the first DJ with kosher salami on Ritz crackers. (Turntables optional.)

MVP! MVP!

My second officially published Superhero Diary went up over at Crave Online.  To be clear, I’m getting paid to be a comic book nerd.  AND I occasionally have sex! 

I’m living the dream, one day at a time.

P.S. (Technically this counts as my post of the week, but I will try and get some nonsense about a supermodel up before tonight’s Lost.  No promises though - I have some very time-consuming sandwiches in my near future.)

Getting engaged is awesome. (Even when it doesn’t go according to plan.)  I’m confident that getting married will be awesome.  The stuff in between has an awful strong tendency to suck. 

Let me be clear from the outset: I’m not doing SHIT.  It’s been strongly suggested to me that I should never forget that this wedding is Wonder Woman’s day.  What she says goes, and unless she wants my opinion, I shouldn’t do a thing.  I like not doing a thing, and besides, Wonder Woman plans everything we do anyway.  In our two-man organization, she is officially the Vice President in charge of Social Coordination.  (She also holds the titles of Chief Wardrobe Officer and Executive Gift Chooser.)

Yet even with my minimal involvement, planning this wedding still manages to blow from time to time.  It’s been brought to my attention that I have way too many friends and way too little money, and in one of life’s great injustices I can’t sell my friends.

I don’t even know how many times we’ve gone over the guest list.  When all is said and done, if you’re a friend of mine and you get invited to the wedding, (and I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you… Dad) it’s only because I couldn’t think of a reason why you suck.  That’s right: things have come to the point where I find myself searching for reasons to dislike my friends.  Remember that time we ordered pizza but you were out of cash?  If you never paid me back, you better BELIEVE you’re not invited.  (Though we will gladly accept that $4.50 from 2001 as a wedding present, if you’d like.) 

Okay, for serious: for any of you who don’t make the cut, I want you to know that this isn’t easy for us.  Please believe that you are in our hearts and minds, and understand that this decision isn’t about you.  It just came down to the fact that you, y’know, eat.  And you drink.  And we can’t have that sort of thing going on all willy-nilly.  So if you’re looking for someone to blame, perhaps you should look in a mirror…

BTW, here are a couple tips for anyone else out there tying the knot soon. 

1) When your fiancé gets stressed out about planning this thing, don’t say, “Well, look at it this way: you’re learning some valuable lessons for the next time…”

2) Instead of “fiancé”, do not refer to your bride-to-be as “Ball with Chain Pending.” It’s not as funny as you think it is.

More tips to come as I learn them the hard way…

Thursday night I proposed to Wonder Woman. She said yes.

Some of you might think that it’s tasteless to distribute this entry via blog message. Well, up yours - I need the traffic. Also, when you tell someone you got engaged, it’s not like,

“Hey, I got engaged.”

“Sweet.”

(High Five)

Everybody wants to hear a big long story. And as much as I like talking about myself, it is, in fact, a big long story, and not one I want to tell eighteen times today. [Editor’s note: for instance, I started writing this on Friday. It is now Sunday.] Instead, I figure I can tell the story on the Underpants, then send people here - it’s one stop shopping: z’s engagement story AND dick jokes about the latest episode of Lost!

Now I can only hope our marriage will go a hell of a lot more according to plan than the proposal.

Wonder Woman has been bugging me for over a year to marry her, and being a lawyer, she had several stipulations concerning how I was to go about it. Above all she wanted to be surprised, which was going to be difficult since she was on the lookout like an unmarried-and-thirty-year-old hawk. In order to surprise her I’d have to be a Ninja o’ Love. Well, fear my Tiger-Crane style!

Here was the plan: on a random weekday (in this case, a Thursday) I made up an excuse for WW and me to go to our usual date-night restaurant: a sushi place around the corner. It’s nice as far as we’re concerned, but not enough to for her to go to WedCon 2. (WedCon: WEDding preparedness CONdition. Hovering at an elevated state of urgency - WedCon 3 - ever since WW’s thirtieth birthday. Analysts fear an unprecedented WedCon 1 alert sometime in 2009.)

Despite what you may be thinking, I wasn’t about to get down on one knee (in accordance with paragraph 4, subsection 17 of the “Propose to Me Already, Dickhead” memorandum sent to me in April of 2007.) Nor was I going to have the waiter place the ring in a glass of champagne. (Paragraph 32, subsection 6) What I did is I wrote a custom prix fixe menu for the waiters to give to us as we sat down. Each course had a romantic sounding title, then a funny caption with cutesy inside jokes, and finally a contextually relevant dish to tie it all together. For example: on our first date WW and I ate cheesesteaks. This was the 2nd Course…

“The Circle of Life” - No matter what hardships we may face, no matter what we may disagree on, two truths are eternal: our love for each other and our love for beef. As new lovers, as newly betrothed and in every stage of our lives, we hope to be filled with both. Beef Negi Maki - “The Cheeseless Cheesesteak”

In retrospect that could be read that I hope we are filled with both beef and each other, which is kind of gross. I meant that we would be filled with beef and love. But whatever - the menu was adorable. I even worked in a reference to our second meeting, when WW flew out to L.A. to stay with me but I spent the entire time in bed because of an insanely painful TESTICLE INFECTION. (Apparently you can get them from the flu, which I had had a few weeks before. Trust me, it wasn’t a VD - I was in a very very dry spell at the time.) Do you know how tricky it is to come up with a barely-tasteful sushi-based reference to a testicle infection??? Pretty freaking hard, as it turns out - the local sushi place doesn’t serve a Swollen Goose Egg Roll.

The menu was also dated March 1, 2009. I thought this would really be the tip-off, because a while back Wonder Woman latched onto an offhand comment I made and convinced herself that I would propose in March. “March 2009!” I’d reply, and laugh uproariously. Even though I told it about two hundred times, she must have not gotten the joke, because I swear she never laughed once. Lastly, to really tie the whole thing together, the last line of the menu was, “Price: you have to say ‘yes.’”

It cannot be said enough times that I am an adorable motherfucker.

This is how I imagined it: first, the waiter would give us the menus. After a moment of confusion, it would dawn on her: this is actually happening. A sharp intake of breath; her hand covers her mouth. Tears well up, and she looks at me with the unspoken question, “Can this be true?”

Then I’d hold out both fists and tell her, “pick a hand.” (I may be adorable, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.)

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

WHILE this would be going down at the restaurant, Ex-Roommate Mary (who punched me when I told her about the “pick a hand” plan) would go into our apartment, straighten up, and leave a bottle of champagne on ice, surrounded by rose petals and a lovely flower arrangement sitting in a vase. When we arrived home WW and I would sip champagne, discuss our future together, then hump. Even better, my co-workers (very, very sweet of them) bought me a bottle of Dom Perignon, which was a lot nicer than the Korbel I was going to splurge on.

But if the best-laid plans of mice and men go awry, you can imagine what happens when a halfwit like me gets to thinkin’…

I called WW that evening while she was still at work and told her that I’d received some good news about a bonus at work and we should go out to celebrate. I suggested the sushi place. She loved the idea, so much so that by the time she got home, she was starving. This may have been the start of all the trouble.

We got to the restaurant and I made meaningful eye contact with the waiter. He knew the plan. He came over and told us there were special menus that evening, and handed them to us. I discreetly palmed the ring and watched Wonder Woman’s eyes for the moment she realized what was going on. That’s how I was able to see them SCAN THE MENU FOR A HALF-SECOND BEFORE DROPPING IT AND MOVING ON TO THE REGULAR MENU. (As I mentioned, she was hungry, which usually means she’s not in the mood to mess around with frivolous time-wasters like reading or exchanging pleasantries with me.)

Z: “Uh…Did you check out this menu?”

WW: “Yeah, but I’m probably going to get the usual stuff.”

Z: “Yeah, but…did you read it? It’s really weird. You should check it out.”

WW: (picks up the menu)

WW: “There’s too much going on with it…” (puts menu back down.)

[At this point I can feel my plan spinning wildly out of control. I start to panic.]

Z: “No, I’m serious. Read it.” [Editor’s note: WW recalls that I was acting a little scary right around this point.]

WW: (picks up menu)

WW: “You know what’s really weird? It’s not March.” (PUTS MENU BACK DOWN)

[Editor’s note: “It’s not March”????? By the way, that’s a direct quote; I’m not exaggerating. I mean… C’MON…]

Z: “Babe? Read the menu. Pick it up. Start at the top, read to the bottom.”

WW: “Why?”

Z: (angry glare)

Even when she had finally read it, I would say there was much more confusion and unease than emotion and compulsion to have sex with me. Certainly no tears, and I’ll be damned if I hadn’t earned a bucketful. I was close to drop-kicking a puppy if that’s what it took to make her cry. Desperate to get my plan back on track, I held out my fists, but I had jumped the gun - instead of cute, joyous frustration at me stalling the moment she’d been waiting for, the “pick a hand” game only increased the bewilderment. By the time I asked her to marry me, this was her response:

“Really??? I mean, of course, yes, but… really???”

Here I had put together a really cute bit and she was fucking it all up. In her defense, she told me that at that moment she kept waiting for the punchline. I had had so much fun making jokes about proposing to her that by the time I actually did it she figured it was a gag, so I got what I deserved.

From that point, we shared a terrific meal together, though frankly I could have done without this moment:

WW: “I still amazed you were able to surprise me… I mean, I can’t believe you didn’t m-… that no one screwed it up!”

Z: “Just so we’re clear, I know you were going to say, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t mess it up.’”

WW: “…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I mean, just because we’re both thinking it doesn’t mean it needs to be said. I also thought the peanut roll (included for reasons you can probably guess now) was not so wonderful. Overall, though, a very special meal, even when WW, completely unprovoked, said, “I’m not drinking a thing tonight. I want to remember everything.” Well, good thing I didn’t have a bottle of really expensive champagne being put on ice as we spoke…

This is getting long, so let’s just say that WW was able to convince herself to have a glass once she saw exactly what kind of champagne it was. Then she rushed off to spend the next four hours on the phone. I was fine with that because it gave me time to watch Lost, but Wonder Fiancée informed me that she and I were reveling in a very sacred moment, and was important to her that we share this moment together, though ‘together’ did not mean that we would necessarily be talking to each other or even in the same room. If I wanted to, I could either speak with friends or play online Scrabble, but I could not watch TV and most certainly could not go to sleep. This got a bit annoying around two in the morning.

One last thing: at 7:45 am on Friday, I woke up to find WW staring at me. I had just enjoyed five and a half hours of sleep. She looked into my eyes and said, “I’m so excited we’re engaged… How many groomsmen are you going to have?” [Editor’s note: again, that’s a verbatim quote right there.]

Something tells me I’m going to have a lot of material for the Underpants over the next year…

I bought a new TV last week, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. That’s because my new TV is very, very big. The stereotypes are true; I’m a dude, and therefore I wanted as big of a TV as I could possibly fit in my apartment. I was willing to take down a wall or two, if that’s what was needed. But the process wasn’t easy; certainly not for Wonder Woman. One day I guess she’d finally had enough. She turned to me and said, “You just want a bigger TV than M [a friend of mine], don’t you?!? Why? Does that mean that your dick is somehow bigger?” I forgot to mention: we were inside a crowded Circuit City, and Wonder Woman wasn’t so much using her “inside” voice as she was her “inside a KISS concert” voice.

It was a bit embarrassing. She was kind of implying that I might need a bigger dick, which I don’t, unless she’s expecting some kind of vaginal growth spurt. But more than that, it pissed me off because she was assuming the worst about me, that I could be so base and petty. So I explained that a big-ass TV is practical because I’m thinking ahead, to the day when she and I have a family together and move into a bigger place. (I’ve found that when your girlfriend is 30 and unmarried, this rationale can pretty much be used to explain anything. I could probably get away with a pre-marital affair by calling it an “au pair audition.”)

Of course I was lying. If* we get married, have babies and buy a new place together, I’m still going to want a bigger TV. I just didn’t want to discuss my junk in the middle of Circuit City. She had me pegged exactly: having a big ol’ TV makes me feel awesome, probably as much as I would with a twelve inch moose-cock. That’s why I thought that for the rest of this post I would refer to my big-ass TV as “My Dick”.

I love My New Dick. It’s so big I could probably sleep on it if I wanted to. It’s almost seven times as long as my other dick, and don’t get me started on its girth. Yes, I DO love that My Dick is bigger than M’s, but more than that I love the way it ticks him off that mine is bigger. In fact, My Dick is bigger than just about all of my friends’, except for Ex-Roommate Kat and Jackie Treehorn. (Not only is Kat a girl, but they’re both Asian, so I guess the stereotypes aren’t true…) My friend Maverick says his is bigger, but you know how guys talk; he’s going to have to whip it out before I’m convinced.

Admittedly, when My Dick arrived, even I was a little shocked by how big it was. I was worried that it would look awkward, or even worse - that I wouldn’t be able to find someplace to put it! But it didn’t take long before I got into the swing of things, and to her credit, Wonder Woman has been VERY accommodating. She spends more time with her eyes glued to My Dick than ever before, and trust me when I say that she’s found a whole new appreciation for it.

In celebration of My New Dick, I also bought an Xbox 360 along with Halo 3. These shall be known as “My Balls,” because when you pair My New Balls with My New Dick, it is a sight to behold. Even when they’re not doing anything, they look good just sitting there; but when you turn them on, what comes out is truly amazing (though if you’re not ready for it, it can be difficult to take all of it in on your first try.)

Lastly, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over how good attractive women look when I see them on My Dick.

There. That was my best effort at discussing my new television as lewdly as possible. As regular readers might expect, I’m rather proud of myself right now, though I wouldn’t be surprised to come home tomorrow and find Wonder Woman rubbing my new TV down with bleach. I only hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

*I imagine that people who know us find it cute to see me clinging to the delusions that any other options are still available.