COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES -- peter buffa

I am not here. I am far away. I am in an airplane, about six miles above

the earth, somewhere between the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. I know that

because the pilot pointed out the Grand Canyon a few minutes ago and said

we’d be over Las Vegas a few minutes from now.

It’s easy to find landmarks from the air. Whatever side of the plane

you’re on, all landmarks are on the other side. Doesn’t matter what

direction you’re going. If you’re on the left side, the great view of the

Grand Canyon will be on the right side. If you slide across the aisle to

the right side, the spectacular view of the St. Louis arch will be on

your left.

Try it. It works.

Where am I going, you ask. (I know you didn’t. I’m just pretending.)

Well, I’m glad you asked. I’m going to a pretty little town called

Scarsdale, about 30 minutes north of New York, New York.

Interesting, isn’t it? New York is the only place where the city and

state go by the exact same name. There’s Oklahoma City and Kansas City,

but no one ever says “Oklahoma, Oklahoma” or “Kansas, Kansas.” OK. Maybe

it’s not interesting.

Anyway, my daughter, Lisa, lives there and she’s getting married

tomorrow. Her fiance, Chris, is a great guy who plays golf and skis, so

what more could you ask? Everything will go fine and everyone will have

fun.

The Rev. Gene O’Brien, who’s been a mentor to me since I was 15, is

coming up from the city to say the wedding Mass in an old stone church

that looks like something from a Robert Frost poem. To top it off, this

is supposed to be the peak weekend for the fall foliage, and tomorrow is

the first game of the World Series with that team I promised not to go on

about anymore -- even though if they win this year, that’ll make 25 World

Series in the last 100 years. Sorry.

With all those blessings, I’m still a little uneasy. I’m not sure exactly

what the father of the bride (FOB) is supposed to do. Since this will be

my first, and only, at-bat as an FOB, I want to discharge my duties well.

I understand the part about sending mind-numbing sums of money to people

you have never met, and will never meet. I got the hang of that early on

and with very little training. What’s expected of FOBs beyond that is

pretty fuzzy. I asked some friends who were experienced FOBs. Most said

they didn’t want to talk about it. That worried me.

I rented famous FOB movies -- “Father of the Bride,” the 1950 classic

with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor, arguably the best comedy of

American manners ever made, and the 1991 remake with Steve Martin and

Diane Keaton (MOB). Both are entertaining, but the original really is a

knockout.

I tried the Internet next. Try searching “weddings” on the Net. You’ll

be lost in a blizzard of Web sites, but you won’t find much about FOBs.

The oddities caught my eye straight away. There’s a site called “Weddings

as Fund-raisers.” Don’t ask. And there are etiquette guides for “Second

Weddings” -- something a lot of First Weddings lead to -- and

“Second-Plus Weddings.” I would think that after your third or fourth

wedding, whether to put out white candied almonds is not that big a

concern.

My two favorite sites were “Wedding Nightmares” and “Bridesmaids from

Hell.”

Apparently, bridesmaids cause more strife and turmoil than any other cast

members. Brides and grooms get off pretty clean, but a lot of people want

to kill bridesmaids.

The wedding nightmares are too scary to recount. They also bring back a

lot of memories from my youth. When I was still in the really Big Apple,

I worked as a banquet waiter at a wedding/bar mitzvah mill called

“Patricia Murphy’s” in Yonkers -- ironically, a few miles from Scarsdale.

Everyone has a wedding story, but spend two years of weekends at weddings

and you will see the best and the worst of the human condition. The

catalyst, as so often happens, is wine and spirits.

Alcohol makes people do strange things, of course, but there is something

about a wedding and wine that is explosive. A guy who is Mr. Peepers in

accounting the rest of the week will turn into Robert Downey Jr. after an

hour and a half at a wedding.

There were too many strange moments to recount, but most had to do with a

wonderful Puerto Rican busboy named Jose Pagan, whose nickname was Paco.

He was about 5 feet 8 inches tall, but 5 feet across with enormous biceps

and an accent that couldn’t help but make you smile -- even at the worst

moments. If you didn’t see him, you’d swear it was Fernando Llamas

talking.

Late one night, we were plodding along, cleaning up after a wedding that

was long, wild and woolly. From across the cavernous room, we heard a

high-pitched scream, unmistakably from Paco.

When he whipped the tablecloth off one of the rounds, there was an

extremely large, extremely drunk woman stretched out beneath it -- out

like a light, with her head propped on her purse like a little pillow.

Paco was near-hysterical and kept saying “Toll me she no dead, please

toll me.”

I explained to him that dead people almost never snore, then bent down

and shook her gently. Someone suggested sprinkling her face with water,

which worked. The woman looked at me, stared at the ceiling for a while,

then calmly asked us to help her up, a job we immediately assigned to

Paco. She straightened her dress, fluffed her hair, asked us to call her

a cab, then toddled away to the lobby, never to be seen again.

My opinions about weddings were formed early. Uh oh. Tray tables up and

seats to their full upright position. I’ll let you know how it all turns

out. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Fridays.

E-mail him at o7 [email protected]