Pittsburgh
In the interest of brevity (which is my new self-inflicted writing philosophy), I will not be providing the usual tedious essay detailing my recent trip to Pittsburgh. Instead, I will be presenting the trip through a series of pictures and short statements. Join us, won’t we?
This is the route from my house to Pittsburgh, site of my friend Mark’s wedding. The red dot signifies Towson, Maryland — where They Might Be Giants were playing the night of our trip. Note that Towson is not exactly on the way to Pittsburgh from my house. I did not learn this fact until I began falling asleep 2 hours north of Towson and 2 hours south of Pittsburgh.
This is the They Might Be Giants show. Or it might be a UFO I saw at the Recher theater in Towson. My cell phone sucks at taking pictures. Good thing it’s just a cell phone and not a camera. The show was awesome, by the way… but Lauri and my friend Jenn (along for the ride) seemed pretty bored.
This is an idealized picture of Breezewood, Pennsylvania, where we had to make an emergency stop for the evening. Breezewood is little more than a dozen motels, gas stations and cheap restaurants nestled at the foot of the mountains, just over the Pennsylvania border. I’m sure it must look like heaven to a truck driver (or a bad trip planner), but it’s not actually all that impressive. Still, there’s more to do there than in my hometown.
This is the official logo of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Pennsylvania is very proud of their turnpike, which is strange to me, because it kinda sucks ass. You have to pay to get off of it, and there are lots of potholes. Nevertheless, there are actually historic markers indicating where and how the turnpike began, and all sorts of amazing things that you never realized you wanted to know about a stretch of crummy road.
This is my friend, Mark. I’ve known Mark since 1991 or so, and since then he has become one of my closest and dearest friends. We lived together in Philadelphia for a time, and it was he who organized, programmed and promoted my hit adventure game, Brain Hotel. Mark was the reason we came to Pittsburgh.
This is Chrissy, Mark’s new bride. My official opinion of Chrissy is “I approve,” which sounds kind of obnoxious, I know. But, as I mentioned, Mark is a very close and important person to me, and his happiness matters. I always fear that my friends are going to end up with someone who doesn’t match their wit and creativity, or stifles them in some way. Happily, Chrissy does none of this. I haven’t gotten to know her tremendously well yet, but I am eager to.
This is the Holiday Inn in Monroeville, a suburb of Pittsburgh. I found this hotel completely at random on my recent trip to Chicago, and it ended up being where everyone involved in the wedding was staying.
This is my friend xAdam. xAdam is Mark’s brother, and was the best man at the wedding. He gave a speech that made me cry. Goatsucking bastard.
This is my friend, Data. His real name is Mike, but we all had goofy nicknames in high school, and they thought he kinda looked like Data from Star Trek, so the name Data stuck. I really only knew Data in passing, until we saw him in Chicago last month. That trip led me to suspect that he’s a really clever, funny individual and this trip confirmed that suspicion. Data, like me, was a groomsman in Mark’s wedding.
This is my friend Jason. We used to call him Littleguy, but he’s not very little anymore so we stopped. I occasionally slip and call him LG occasionally, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Jason lives in New York City, and was also a groomsman in the wedding. You may remember him as the voice of Impo in Brain Hotel.
This is me in a tux. My hair looks more mulletish than I would like, but I’m calling that my transitional period. Eventually I’m going to have beautiful, flowing locks like Fabio. Or, more probably, I’ll get frustrated with the idea of growing my hair and shave it all off. Either way I think I look pretty fat right now. I probably should do something about that.
This is the logo for the restaurant outside the Holiday Inn. We started our drinking here the day we showed up. The result was poor Mark getting about 30 phone calls within 10 minutes regarding various details of the forthcoming rehearsal and dinner. It is notable that Mark was actually planning a wedding at this point and really didn’t need 30 phone calls asking about pants. But that’s just how we are.
This, I think, is what it looks like inside the restaurant at the Holiday Inn. It’s hard to tell, because it was opening and closing at random intervals during our stay. They would open for breakfast until 11, then close till 1 for lunch, then close again at 3 for some reason. You really had to time things just right to survive in this Holiday Inn. The restaurant had some Irish name, but I’ll be damned if I can remember it. O’Hulligans or something. It doesn’t really matter.
This is Mark talking to Data at the rehearsal dinner. As instructed by Mark, neither man is wearing pants.
This is what it looks like inside Cosmic Bowling, where we effectively had Mark’s bachelor party. Really it was just the lot of us singing karakoe in the bar next door, then bowling in the dark. It was actually a lot more fun than it sounds like.
This is Jason and his longtime gal-pal Keren at Cosmic Bowl.
This is me and my longtime gal-pal Lauri at Cosmic Bowl.
This is Jason, Data’s longtime gal-pal Wendy and Data at (you guessed it) Cosmic Bowl.
This is the cover to William Shatner’s 1968 album, The Transformed Man. This album contains his… um… dramatic rendition of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which I flawlessly duplicated at the karaoke bar at Cosmic Bowl.
This is the movie most of us were quoting as we bowled. In honor of my favorite movie about bowling, my drink of choice for the evening was the White Russian (many of them). This was a very complicated bachelor party, man. Lots of ins, lots of outs.
These are pictures are from the wedding itself. They should be pretty self-explanatory.
This is the ring bearer. Poor kid didn’t realize he was only carrying symbolic rings (neither did any of us). The priest says “the rings please” and the kid steps forward, only to be shoved to the ground by a vengeful Adam! “Stay down, punk!” he says. “I have the rings!!”
This is xAdam, Mark and Chrissy at the reception. They wisely put the wedding party at a table facing the wall for some reason.
This is the new Mr. and Mrs. Darin at the reception.
This is Jason, looking really menacing.
This is me, Mark and Jason, cuddling on the bed not long after the wedding. This is seriously my favorite picture of the trip.
Turn your head sideways and this is Jenn, Mark, Lauri, xAdam and Jason.
This is the Human Pyramid we made out in the hallway at about 1 AM (I’m sure the people down the hall loved us.) Top: Keren. Middle: Jenn, Lauri, Wendy. Bottom: xAdam, Jason, me and Data.
The more imaginative, yet less inspiring Human Cone. The following are pictures of the lot of us, minus the person taking the picture:
Everyone but Data.
Everyone but Keren.
Everyone but xAdam.
This is Mark, Jenn and my wife. That perplexed look was on Mark’s face most of the time we saw him.
These are seriously hung-over things we did Sunday before we left, including a reprisal of the Human Cone and about the only word we could spell out using three people.