First the gays, now fat people? Who won't we let get married?
This piece by her husband is pretty good, although it peters out a bit at the end.
They seem nice and all, but a public wedding proposal still seems like a bad idea.
If there's any doubt about the response, yes. If it's a theatrical moment for a couple who's already kinda-explicitly agreed that they're getting married, not so bad. Not my thing, but not so bad.
I can easily see a guy who has no doubt about the response because he's that kind of a guy, not because it's been discussed. Mostly, I just don't like to do anything in public.
I had a real crisis of conscience when one member of the couple who hosts the weekly potluck I sometimes go to decided to use the potluck to propose publicly, which is something I've always thought was weird and gross. But I brought food and helped decorate and the two of them were adorable and happy and were already living together and raising kids, so a shocking rejection wasn't likely. Their wedding was lovely and then they got to be poster children for marriage equality in their state but not part of the Supreme Court case since they'd had an extralegal wedding.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/science/playing-mozart-piano-pieces-as-mozart-did.html
This is quite interesting.
>
That's very cool. Is it really true that modern players hold their forearms almost perpendicular to the keyboard? That doesn't seem right.
I just searched for my one of my favourite videos, of a woman saying no to a public proposal. I did find this, which is similar. Searching for "rejected proposal" on google video turns up lots of very similar ones. The common theme is that it's the job of the mascot to comfort the rejected guy.
8: Yeah that seems weird to me too. The "old" way described in that piece is exactly the way I was taught way back in the .. 1980's. Sit up straight, elbows at your sides, wrists slightly above the keyboard. Maybe some super-intense concert performers hunch over the keyboard with their forearms vertical, but I'd be very surprised if that's orthodox technique nowadays.
9: That is awesome. I love how the mascot gives the guy a beer at the end.
10 is my experience, too, and Hawaii seems to be getting taught the exact same thing.
I mean, I don't doubt the research is very cool, but that article didn't describe it in a way that made me understand what was different.
9: BUT WHAT ABOUT COMFORTING THE HONEST WOMAN??? I am not even joking about this. It made me sort of ill to watch and I should probably feel awful for both of them, but there she is walking away with a fucking camera in her face.... Ugh.
But, when I think of "public proposal," my first thought is about the mortification of public rejection. My second thought is about the emotional and social blackmail of the proposee by the proposer because of the mortification of public rejection and how that is probably not even a little bit unintentional in most cases.
9: That is awesome. I love how the mascot gives the guy a beer at the end.
That is awesome and horrible and hard to watch (for the reasons that Thorn mentions.). I did notice, however, that when the woman walks past the camera on the floor it doesn't follow her -- the cameraman lets her walk past and doesn't turn. Small favors. . . .
The article linked in the OP and the selected pull-quote are both fabulous, however.
19: Agreed! The article linked in 2 is great too.
I'm going to have to add "radical" to my list of prohibited words, joining "awesome," "palimpsest," "Yeats," "pas de deux," "fine writing," "pimpmobile" et al.
Yeah, I felt bad and a bit horrified/frightened for the woman. How horrible to be put on the spot like that, just the look on her face. Emotional blackmail is right. Ugh. Why do people do this?
The mascot reminded me of the strange and discomfiting phenomenon of mascots observing minute's silences.
I don't think you need to go as far as Hitler did and only propose in an underground bunker. I'm just saying that bringing in the whole family or a bunch of sports fans is way too much.
From working in the kitchens of high end restaurants let me tell you how bad an idea the public proposal is, universally loathed by restaurant staff. Even if it's just the two people at a small table, there really is a decent chance there will be a rejection and boy howdy does that ruin the evening for everyone, staff, fellow diners, etc. Bad idea! Don't do it! Poisons the entire dining room for the rest of the night.
Better 23 is Moby at 17 which is just so right on the money.
22: Dude, sometimes "palimpsest" and/or (!) "Yeats" are the only words that will do.
Agreed on "radical," though.
23.2 is so amazing and makes me completely happy. Sorry that I am humorless and unfun about other stuff!
14: I wholeheartedly agree. Poor woman just about ran out of there.
17 is right. I've been completely thrown off my work for the afternoon by reading about rejected proposals. There are quite a few stories of saying yes under public pressure and then retracting it in private.
28 Glad to be of service.
Don't give up on "pimpmobile" Flippanter, it's still got some mileage left.
Wait, what's wrong with "palimpsest", "Yeats", or "pas de deux"?
Yes, 14 and 17 are right. On the other hand, there are public proposals, and there are public proposals.
That stylish young poet, John Keats,
Was shocked when he first met Bill Yeats,
For the latter was clad
Like a suburban dad
In tennies and t-shirt and sweats.
Speaking of heretofore undiscovered manuscripts, I hear that the new Harper Lee novel just sucks. Not just the "Atticus Finch is a racist in it!" complaint, but it's described as "dreadful," "embarrassing," "not something you want to bother to finish," something that "should have stayed in the vault," "very bad excuse for a novel," "due for the remainder bin."
8: I think it depends on how you think of the orientation of the keyboard. I assume what they meant is that you're pressing the keys directly downwards, so it's easier to think of the keyboard as pointing upwards, and then (modern style) you're holding your forearms perpendicular to that.
the failed marriage proposal bit at professional sports games is faked using actors:
This is a brutal marriage proposal prank (part of a brutal series of escalating pranks):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMHidjDB_Uk
Speaking of heretofore undiscovered manuscripts, I hear that the new Harper Lee novel just sucks. Not just the "Atticus Finch is a racist in it!" complaint, but it's described as "dreadful," "embarrassing," "not something you want to bother to finish," something that "should have stayed in the vault," "very bad excuse for a novel," "due for the remainder bin."
Probably that's why she resisted all efforts to publish it over the last 50 years of her pre-dementia life.
36: Possibly they are all faked, but then I have to assume the accepted ones are fake, which seems unlikely.
34: I sort of disagree. I just finished it and I found it fascinating.
39: I'm afraid I don't expect to read it, so I can't say. I can imagine that the treatment, the subject matter, is fascinating, esp. as a follow-up (or precursor) to To Kill a Mockingbird, particularly as, from what I understand, it's written in the third person, while TKAM was in the first. It's just that if it's really badly written, like seriously badly written, I might find that a barrier.
40: After first discovering that Atticus is a racist, Scout then goes on to discover that Calpurnia is her mother. When she confronts Atticus he mocks her as being a mongrel, and she kills him and then subsequently herself. Her last words are "God Damn America!".
45: You're welcome. I hope no one minded the spoilers.
A private wedding proposal means the guy is ashamed of his bride, so ashamed that he's proposing (literally!) to take advantage of a public institution to publicly proclaim that they are a couple? I'm pretty sure that his family and friends might have noticed when he suddenly had a wife! Only thin girls get public proposals? "Fat women shouldn't have to prove" that they're hot/attractive/can get male approval but that public wedding proposal is totally different because that proves that she's... well, honestly, I'm not sure.
I mean, yeah, the wedding-industrial complex is dumb and way too focused on appearance for your perfect day, and trying to turn yourself into a size two to fit a gown that was made to be easy to alter instead of to be flattering is dumb.
(Not a fan of the dress, alas. Shape and cut are fine, but the color just disappears into her.)
47: She was drunk when she went on that tirade. I don't think it was ever supposed to hold up to academic scrutiny.
48: Yeah, but the rest of the piece about how it's a political statement to propose publicly to a hated body in front of...family, friends, and four random drunks? Eh, sometimes drunken rants don't need to be justified later on, you know?
The sober version she gives is:
the longer I live in a fat body, the harder it is to depoliticise even simple acts. A public proposal to a publicly valued body might be personally significant, but culturally it shifts nothing. A public proposal to a publicly reviled body is a political statement.
which is not well-paraphrased by 47.1.
Her husband doesn't seem to be all that. Why should she be thrilled that he was open about proposing? What better deal is that checkered-suit weird haircut loser gonna get.
I assumed he was rich. Also, you should never, ever give a wedding toast.
54: I'm assuming the picture from that article was bad, because she's written before about how attractive he is.
He is conventionally desirable and I am a "before" picture in an ad for weight-loss tapeworm eggs.
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I'm going to a wedding this weekend for Tim's best man. The town/city is kind of far from a major urban area. Tim is in the wedding party and had to rent a tuxedo, because they are supposed to look identical. He would have bought a new white shirt of his own if he'd known that they wouldn't let him wear his tuxedo shirt. A new white shirt woudl cost him about $50. He's renting a crappy white shirt for $20. The tuxedo rental is costing him $200 USD. (I'm shuddering at what that is in Canadian dollars.) Around here, you can rent one for $50. You can buy a crappy one for $$200.
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I assumed he was rich
He's a musician you haven't heard of. Therefore, not rich.
I never thought of it as crappy until now.
61: Okay, where I am, without a shirt, tuxedos start at $189. Tim had one that was baggy and didn't fit well. It was uncomfortable. In other words, it was crappy for him.
My horror of rented clothing may be disproportionate. But I don't think so. *shudder*
I suppose I should adjust for inflation as I bought it a dozen years ago.
The lapels are shinier than any fancy $300 tux.
Having to hire special clothes to attend a wedding so you all look identical is wrong. You're an honoured guest, not a film extra. And at least film extras get paid and don't have to supply their own costumes.
So is wearing a tuxedo at a wedding, for that matter. Morning suit or equivalent for weddings. Dinner jackets are for dinners.
Morning suit or equivalent for weddings. Dinner jackets are for dinners.
This, 100 times. Unless they're getting married in the evening.
Which said, I got married in a lounge suit which had cost me £10 three years before. Because we'd already been living together for 15 years and we had better things to do with our money.
But in those days £10 was the annual income of a landed knight, though.
Pretty much. It was a nice suit, though, charcoal three piece, pin striped. Being short and fat, there was a period when I could dress very well out of Oxfam, as people were donating their rich (fat) granddad's (short by present day standards) stuff. No longer, alas. They may still offload rich granddad's wardrobe, but he was too tall and money could no longer buy quality.
I didn't wear a suit at all to my wedding. It's probably why we got divorced.
Any American who owns a morning suit and can wear it without looking like a film extra is a deputy undersecretary of state.
Yeah, morning suits don't really exist in the US.
Also, men look better in tuxedos/dinner jackets than they do in morning suits. Proven fact.
Also, except for people who read period fiction and look up confusing things on Wikipedia, nobody knows that a business suit used to be a lounge suit.
Also, we eat fire and the u's from "our"s.
And at least film extras get paid and don't have to supply their own costumes.
These statements are both false.
75: not always. Friends of mine have worked as extras and were paid for doing so. Nor did they have to provide their own futuristic stormtrooper armour.
I was paid the time I was a movie extra! Wore my own street clothes, tho.
I've never understood why not just wear nice clothes in weddings rather than rented costumes.
I'd bet that a considerably plurality if not an outright majority of the people in the most-marrying age cohorts don't own "nice clothes" in the sense of formal clothing.
I've never understood why not just wear nice clothes in weddings rather than rented costumes.
Historical drift. Wearing some version of formal dress to a party used to be a lot commoner than it is now, so formal dress for weddings wasn't out of step with any other big-deal party. That changed: morning suits are, as Moby said, only for cartoon diplomats, and even formal evening wear for men is pretty archaic in any non-wedding context. Not that there are no white/black tie occasions other than weddings, but very, very few to the point where most men probably don't go to any. Dress for the wedding party fossilized, though, because that gets preplanned rather than just being what seems appropriate when the guest is getting dressed.
There'll probably be a break point when people give up on white/black tie entirely, and even wedding parties will reset to "Whatever you'd wear to a fancy party otherwise."
Having to hire special clothes to attend a wedding so you all look identical is wrong. You're an honoured guest, not a film extra. And at least film extras get paid and don't have to supply their own costumes.
So is wearing a tuxedo at a wedding, for that matter. Morning suit or equivalent for weddings. Dinner jackets are for dinners.
I don't know what a "morning suit" or "dinner jacket" is. Anyway, do you have bridesmaids over there in the UK who have to wear special stupid dresses? We certainly can't get rid of THAT tradition. So to even things out, the tuxedos are just for the equivalent members of the groom's party.
I'm pretty sure HBOs Rome used reenactors who brought their own kit. It's not unusual for reenactors to have better gear than the props department.
Googling around a bit I found a Roman reenactment group just down the street from me. I think I might have to go to one of their events. It sounds like a fucking blast.
Think cartoonish images of oldfashioned rich people. Morning suit is a jacket with tails -- it can match the pants in grey or black, or can be a darker jacket over grey or striped pants. Ordinary tie rather than a bow-tie.
Dinner jacket is UK for tuxedo.
As I learned back in Nebraska (from reading Class), "dinner jacket" is (or was) current lingo among the upper crust in the U.S.
Every wedding I attended, including my own, in the mid-seventies to mid-eighties was not formal at all. Grooms wore suits, some brides did wear wedding dresses but seldom touching the floor, let alone with a train. No bridesmaids outfits/coordination.
We honestly thought all that was gone for good.
I've seen the suits from then. I'm sort of glad those didn't stick.
I was part of a wedding party recently and was mildly annoyed by the request that all the groomsmen wear black suits (matching ties to be provided). At the time, I owned a dark blue suit and a dark grey suit, neither of which, I was informed, would suffice. So now I also own a black suit, which, sure, I can use, but it always makes me feel vaguely like I'm (a) heading to a funeral, or (b) filming a sequel for Reservoir Dogs.
On the other hand, going to a funeral will probably come up in the future sometime, and you'll have the suit for it.
You could always join a Blues Brothers cover band.
Mine, admittedly from the end of the period, '84, still looks quite normal today. My son wore it to his prom.
Had it been from '75 it would be a period costume indeed. Although it would equip me to be a paid seventies re-enacting extra.
It's not like I don't know roughly the historical reasons and social pressures that lead people to wear the odd things they do but the societal wide failure of both taste and imagination is still on some level puzzling to me. Acquiring an attractive and flattering outfit to wear to festivities is probably one of the few reasons I can understand for having a wedding.
Also dudes have a comically unending list of bits and bobs - shirt, cufflinks, trousers, jacket, waistcoat, tie, pocket square, shoes ... when you are kitting out a rapidly growing 14 year old it sort of goes on and on. Women so much easier - dress, shoes.
I always though the dudes were easier. For on thing, you can wear the same pair of shoes with everything. For another thing, cufflinks, waistcoats, and pocket squares are all very much optional.
rapidly growing 14 year old
We solve this by clothing Newt mostly in stained rags, but yeah, he's having a year when it's hard to keep clothes on him that even approximate his height. I keep on thinking "Can't you just wear shorts for a couple of years until you stabilize?"
money could no longer buy quality
What is the world coming to?
I don't know whether to be amused or horrified that dairy queen's standards of dress for a fourteen-year-old include cufflinks and pocket squares. First of all, a fourteen-year-old in French cuffs is inherently comical; second, those things are decorations, and by those standards the counterpart fourteen-year-old girl needs a bracelet, necklace, hat, some kind of shawl or scarf or wrap or whatchamacallum and probably more.
Luckily my kid seems blissfully unaware of the concept of "floods" - he just claps on a brightly colored pair of socks and off he goes. I thought things would be easier once he was in mens' sizes, as you can get unhemmed trousers, but small enough around is still hard to find.
He's one of the brothers of the bride, Moby, so sufficiently resplendent is called for.
Luckily my kid seems blissfully unaware of the concept of "floods"
Of course not, he's from California.
Unless he's got a whole bunch of sisters, that's just a one shot deal. Maybe you should rent something?
He was 9 or 10 when she graduated from undergrad and definitely wore cufflinks for that.
He'll never outgrow the tie, cufflinks or pocket square so those are by definition not one off investments. The jacket has some room in the shoulders, I'm guessing he won't fill out enough to really outgrow it for 4 - 5 years, but got it and the waistcoat on a great sale. Trousers can be let down and gets lots of use from all his shirts, so not worried about anything really but the shoes. Got those on sale as well, but if he gets self conscious about the relatively light color they may not get much use after the wedding.
As far as I can see this all just proves my point - wear nice clothes of your own, have a good time and go to lots of parties so you get value from them.
My high school algebra teacher never outgrew or stopped wearing any of his ties from 1973.
He was 9 or 10 when she graduated from undergrad and definitely wore cufflinks for that.
Comical!
I guess it's different if you were actually trying to be comical.
If you go the website of the ace in portland and look around you can see a picture of him in his graduation attending finery. Maybe he was younger than 9? Can't remember and damn he is so small in that photo!
That photographer was by far the most polite and nice of all the bazillions of people that took pictures of him over the years.
I own a now somewhat ill-fitting tux which sees action maybe once every 7 years, and I guess one pair of cufflinks that I got as a gift from being in someone else's wedding. I don't think I've ever worn a pocket square. The tux/dinner jacket thing for even very formal occasions seems to be fading if not extinct, except for weddings that you're actually "in."
I have multiple sets of cufflinks, but no French cuff shirts.
The tux/dinner jacket thing for even very formal occasions seems to be fading if not extinct
where were you when I decided to buy a new tux for my own wedding (while in possession of a perfectly decent hand me down from my old man)? That was mumble hundred dollars I would have preferred to spend on not having a job. And I have not had the opportunity to wear it but one time since.
to be fair, I did have an average of two occasions a year before that. Something to do with the wedding season of my life, and having a somewhat public job with the occasional formal event.
at least I have occasion to whine about my tuxedo once every nine months.
French cuffs and cufflinks seem to be in style around here for formal business wear, but a pocket square is unusual. I think the business casual trend pushes slightly in favor of getting fancier when you do put on a suit, though -- it feels more like dressing up.
At weddings you see a lot of "black tie optional." Older male guests sometimes respond to this with a tuxedo, but more often by wearing the same grey or blue suit they'd wear to a business meeting. Younger ones, almost always the latter.
I do myself own an old tuxedo, not particularly expensive, that I wore maybe once or twice and that doesn't currently fit, but that I've never had the heart to get rid of.
One odd thing about Hollywood is that no one wears suits for meetings -- lawyers, business managers, and executives included -- except agents, who always wear ultra-fashionable suits, often these days as Widget says french-cuffed with cufflinks, except for the very top tier of agents, who don't wear suits. I now feel like most of my suit wearing is the equivalent of putting on a barrister's wig to go to Court, and it's kind of become costume-dress for agents. Although for some stodgier non-Hollywood clients I'll still wear a suit. Oddly when we represent agents we'll go to meetings where the lawyers aren't wearing suits but the agents are.
One of the rules for Hollywood writers is to always be the worst-dressed in the room. The executive you're meeting with is snappy business casual. If you write drama, you're business casual, if you write comedy, casual casual.
I am disappointed in nosflow. I wear a French cuffed shirt pretty much every day. Mind you, I have almost never worn a morning suit. Kilt will substitute, as it will for so many things.
Hey! I wore a morning suit to my wedding!
(I already owned a tuxedo, but as noted, the wedding wasn't in the evening.)
112 -- do you wear the kilt to weddings actually in Scotland? Or is it a kind of national dress that's fun to wear as a symbol of pride in England, like Nigerians who wear dashikis to formal events?
Of course the dashiki is actually worn for real in a way the kilt isn't, so that was probably a lame analogy. But you know what I mean, maybe.
112: even when participating in military exercises?
A Scottish friend got married in a kilt in New Jersey a year or two ago, which was picturesque, and the Scottish members of the wedding party, as well as his father, were in kilts as well (not matching rentals). So if that's normal, I'd assume that people who own kilts do show up to weddings in them.
Kilts are perfectly acceptable formal wear for Scots. With hand knit kilt hose I trust, ajay.
I also still do not own a cummerbund. Slol and ajay can despise me in their formal duds.
Is two people meeting to despise a third, as entertaining as it might be, really an occasion that demands formal dress?
Also, there's no need to own a cummerbund, so long as you have sufficient formal waistcoats. So free your mind of that concern.
A waistcoat is really just an unusually large pocket square.
Ordinary tie rather than a bow-tie
That's no tie, it's a cravat! And a waistcoat (or what we foreigners call a vest).
Hey! I wore a morning suit to my wedding!
And you looked lovely! I think that's the first time I've seen an American male in the US in one (granted, it's not like I socialised with many people actually likely to wear one before I moved).
I've told my story about being invited to a DJ party, right? I assumed they meant there was a famous DJ. How wrong I was. Dinner jackets required. We barely socialise and yet I think we've attended one DJ-required event each year I've been here. Wedding-wise, since we got married at the registry office, he just wore a gorgeous regular suit, which is now in his work rotation.
Also me. I don't know what keeps happening to my name.
Sometimes people lose their name when they get married.
I also rented a morning suit for my wedding, because my own tails would have been inappropriate before 6:00.
do you wear the kilt to weddings actually in Scotland? Or is it a kind of national dress that's fun to wear as a symbol of pride in England, like Nigerians who wear dashikis to formal events?
I have only been to one wedding where I didn't wear a kilt - and that was because the groom had hired matching morning suits for everyone, which was slightly annoying but at least we didn't have to pay for the hire. At my brother's wedding there was only one pair of trousers in the entire congregation. (They had an Indian guy inside them. They weren't just sitting there on the pew by themselves because someone had inadvertently turned up not in a kilt and immediately evaporated out of shame.)
I had to look up "dashiki" but now I know what it is and it looks rather smart. Draughty, though, for our bitter northern climate.
Draughty, though, for our bitter northern climate.
And the kilt is not? Doesn't anybody wear dress trews any more?
The kilt is actually surprisingly warm. When you're wearing kilt plus hose, really only your knees are exposed to the cold; the kilt is heavy material and traps the warm air around your legs. Trews are in practice less suitable for a bitter and boggy northern climate, because they get wet when you wade through something and don't dry quickly. Hose will also get wet, but is right next to the skin and so dries faster. (You still see Scottish climbers wearing breeches plus long woolen socks, rather than trousers, for this reason.)
The only advantage of trews is that you can ride a horse in them.
The Virginia Governor is (still) traditionally sworn in wearing a morning suit:
Before taking the oath, McAuliffe, wearing a formal gray morning suit with a white rose on the lapel and accompanied by his wife, Dorothy, made his way around the Capitol rotunda, greeting legislators by name.
So, the list of people who wear morning suits: NW, non-kilted inhabitants of the UK, and Terry McAuliffe.
How do you get trews on the horse?
You're looking at the problem wrong. You should be asking "how do you make the horse want to put trews on?"
