Wedding Pet Peeves, Part 3 -- Long Dances

[Part 1 - no date]
[Part 2 - long wait]

Friends,

When certain things are drawn out for an abnormally long period of time, they become super awkward.  Sometimes TV shows (I'm thinking of The Office and Family Guy) masterfully extend a conversation, gesture, or pose to create a hilariously uncomfortable scenario.  However, when it comes to real life and the players aren't Dwight Schrute or Stewie Griffin, this kind of awkwardness is simply uncomfortable.


Pet Peeve #3 -- Aaaaaaaawkwaaaaaaard
And I STILL haven't gotten to the garter toss

I understand that weddings are steeped in tradition.  I know that each of the common rituals carries different weight with the various brides out there who are planning weddings.  So I'm not calling for a blanket removal of any of the following dances.  But I ask all fiancees to consider their length; imagine the following:

1. Bride and groom's first dance
This is, of course, a staple of wedding receptions.  And as the newlyweds romantically kiss and gaze into each other's eyes, it is cute and appropriate to watch... for about 30 seconds.  Each additional minute doubles the awkwardness and the feeling that I shouldn't be in on this intimate moment, whether they've invited me into it or not.

2. Bride dances with her father
Cool for about 10 seconds.

3. Groom dances with his mother
5 seconds.

4. Groom dances with bride's mother while bride dances with groom's father
Less than 1 second.

5. Entire wedding party dances with each other
This step shows up in maybe 20-40% of the weddings I've attended.  It is completely unnecessary.  This not only adds pointless spectacle for everyone outside the wedding party, it's actually pretty dumb if you're in the wedding party, too.  Suppose you walked down the aisle with a bridesmaid who's married; you'll now be slow-dancing with her as her husband looks on.  Why not just open the floor up to everyone at this point?

Summary: the comfortable attention span of the crowd, or at least one bearded member of it, for the entire "special dance" segment is about 45 seconds.  And yet, if each of the above is given a full-length song with some annoying emcee banter throughout, you're looking at about 18 minutes.

At some weddings, you have the freedom to ignore all of this after the first 45 seconds and return to drinking and talking.  But at others, respectful attention is demanded for the duration.  This is, without too much exaggeration, an experience on par with a sitting through a mostly-out-of-tune children's strings concert.


What do you think?
As per TS(s) policy: no arguments, just friendly disagreements

What is the ideal number and length of these dances?

Have you experienced any long and/or awkward wedding dances?

Jon

Happy HallowThanksChristmas

Friends,

Two weeks ago I was hanging out at some friends' apartment -- eating lunch, enjoying the Christmas decorations, having a good conversation, and... wait, what?!  Did I just say Christmas decorations?  More than a week before Halloween? 

Yeah.  I'm not making this up.

This (along with an idea from my friend kmech) made me think about the spectrum of different times of the year when people start putting up Christmas decorations.  These are my thoughts, though because I don't have the media or graphics skills to make a visual in spectrum form, we'll have to settle with a list for now:

What your Christmas decor says about you
specifically, what the timing of your Christmas decor says about you


1a. No start date (i.e. year-round Christmas decorations)

• You really, really love Christmas, OR
• You're really, really lazy

1b. No start date (i.e. no Christmas decorations)

• You hate Christmas, OR
• You're really, really lazy

2. Before Halloween

• You really, really love Christmas.  Like, too much.

3. Between Halloween and Thanksgiving

• You love Christmas a lot, OR
• You like seasonal decorations a lot and realize that since turkeys and cornucopias are the only ones specific to November, you might as well skip straight to Christmas, OR
• You are a store trying to capitalize on America's greed in order to increase revenue

4. Between "Black Friday" and December 9

• You have a healthy, normal attitude toward Christmas, OR
• You don't care about Christmas but feel crushed by pressure to conform to cultural norms, including the one to put up lights and trees during the two weeks after Thanksgiving

5. Between December 10 and December 24

• Your procrastination slightly outweighs your Christmas spirit, OR
• You don't care much for Christmas, but have a personality that gives way to people's constant badgering to put up decorations

Scrooge------------ Where do you fall? -----------------Jolly
You can answer that question and/or just answer the one below and let the above (foolproof) spectrum/list say the rest


When do you put up your Christmas decorations?

Jon

My second best made-up holiday tradition

If this hasn't been made clear to you by knowing me or reading some of my previous posts, I'm a huge fan of holiday traditions.  Not necessarily the stupid ones that society tells us to do, but those unique ones that somehow develop within our families or groups of friends.  These not only give us something to look forward to each year, but they strengthen our relationships with those who take part in them with us.

Now, before I present my Valentine's Day tradition, it should be noted that there is much disagreement as to the status of V-Day.  Is it a romantic holiday, or a gigantic cog in the inexorable machine that is American consumerism?  The obvious joke to make is that your view depends on whether or not you're single, but with the wisdom I've gained with age, I realize the far more accurate litmus test is whether or not you're a 14-18 year old girl. 

Well, before I get carried too far away on a different tangent, I'm here to tell you a story:


The greatest two-single-dudes-hanging-out-on-Valentine's-Day ever

The year was 2004.  Just one year had passed since the Ultimate Valentine's Day Triple Date of 2003, and a lot had changed.  I had no girlfriend.  No date.  No plans.  All I had was one friend, Jon, who also had none of those things.  He wasn't like a mental projection of myself or anything; Jon is a common name.

So Jon and I went to our college's worst cafeteria ("the 'Stro") and had Valentine's Day dinner for two.  This place was usually packed with smelly, nerdy misfits, but alas, on this most romantic of nights, even they had dates.  The emptiness of the place should have suffused our souls with despair.  But there's something about the company of a good friend that can cause light to shine in a dark place.  And if you haven't gotten the picture, an empty "the 'Stro" on V-Day is a dark, dark place.

But our friendship (we called it "The Alliance" because A. we were the only single guys around, and B. naming friendships is cool, right?) kept our spirits high.  That night, eating what was probably macaroni 'n cheese and Cap'n Crunch, we reflected on life, and love.  This means we made fun of our friends who had dates.

In all this contemplation, one of us Jons pondered, "What do you think we'll all be doing next year on Valentine's Day?"  And thus, Valentine's Predictions were born.


The tradition's evolution and struggle to survive

So that night, and the remaining three V-Days of college, no matter whom we were dating or how many tears we were shedding into empty Ben & Jerry's containers, Jon and I would meet to predict how (or, more accurately, with whom) we and each of our friends would spend next year's Valentine's Day.  This was clearly the tradition's golden age.

But life moves on, whether I want it to or not.  We graduated, Jon got married, I moved to Pittsburgh, Jon became a father... you know the drill.  I was faced with three options -- let the tradition die (too sad), do the predictions by myself (too sad), or find a replacement for Jon.  And so, the last few years my friend Matt has filled in admirably for Jonny.

But life moves on, whether I want it to or not.  We graduated, Matt moved to Virginia, I became a missionary, Matt moved to Africa, I grew out my beard, Matt moved back to Virginia... you know the drill.  Sadly, it just dawned on me last night that Matt is now out of V-Day Predictions, and so I had no time for a real replacement search.

If Christmas Eve Eve is any indication, when a friend drops out of a cherished holiday tradition, my sister is usually waiting in the wings to fill in (read: is willing to patronize me and prevent my traditions and dreams from dying).  And so, as of last night, for at least one Valentine's Day, my sister is my co-predictor.


What about you?

Are you a 14-18 year old gi--- um, that is, do you like Valentine's Day?

Do you have any awesome or hilariously awful Valentine's Day stories?

Jon

Facebook birthday wall posts: part 2/3

[Part 1: At what time did people post happy birthday?]
[Part 3: What did people write on my wall for my birthday?]

This tangent, we move forward to the second installment of Facebook birthday analysis: who, exactly, posts on one's wall on shis birthday?  You might be thinking, "I have my own birthday and my own facebook wall.  Why would I need this study to answer that question?"

Well, let me answer your fictional thought-question with a question: Do you have the time or inclination to scour through dozens and dozens of posts and think through how many ridiculously non-friend people show up or from which eras of your life the people hail?  Assuming you have a job or a life, your answer's probably "No."  My answer, however, is "yes."

Enough guesswork Q&A.  I give you the two questions of today's tangent, both of which look at the personnel of my online birthday:


1. How close to me were the people who wished me a happy birthday?

This is, I think, one of the most interesting and pressing questions in our whole study of Facebook b-days.  There always seem to be people showing up on your wall once a year whose name is barely recognizable, or whose last real-life interaction with you was a violent blood feud.

To answer this question, I had to (somewhat morbidly) assign closeness categories to my wall posters.  Everyone fell into one of the following categories:

Family: relatives through blood or marriage.
Friends: people who have a consistent, positive presence in my life and from whom a wall post on a different day of the year wouldn't seem strange.
Barely: this weird limbo exists for people who are distant acquaintances or people who were in my life years ago.  A wall post from them on any other day would be odd.
None: these people have absolutely no part in my life, and their post to me, even on my birthday, is somewhat mystifying.

Well, it's a pretty even split between Friends and Family (48%) and... everyone else (52%).  It really goes to show how powerful a force the Facebook Birthday is -- it can create a social interaction that would otherwise never be there.

One final interesting note on this is that one person who posted on my wall existed on shis own special level of "No relationship."  This was a person (friend of a friend) with whom I have literally never had an in-person OR online interaction.  How we became facebook friends in the first place is an enigma.  How a birthday post came about might literally make my brain explode with mystery.


2. From which phase of my life did these well-wishers first know me?

They say high school will be the best years of your life.  Then when you're going off to college, they hope you've forgotten that statement and tell you the next four years will be the best.  Middle school, well, everyone pretty much concedes that's going to be a dramatic, hormonal disaster.

But when it comes time for the annual "crawl out of the woodworks" online fiesta, which era will represent?  In my social network, there are three 4-year time spans that figured to make solid birthday contributions: high school, college, and "Pittsburgh" (the four years I've spent here in grad school and with my current ministry job).  And here's what happened:

As you can see, the general rule was that the more recent the era, the greater its contribution.  There's a logic to that, as these are people I've met, become facebook friends with, and interacted with more recently.  So the relationship, as "distant" or "non-existent" as it might have been on the previous chart, is fresher.

The one meaningless but funny exception to this law of diminishing wall posts was the dreaded middle school.  We must have really all tried to blot that crap out of our memories.  Except for my perennial locker and homeroom neighbor Cherie.  The alphabet has a funny way of affecting unimportant parts of your future.

Help build momentum for the dramatic conclusion

Next time we'll look at the most interesting topic -- what, exactly, did people post on my wall?  Until then, please tangent with me:

What's been your experience with super-distant people or mortal enemies wishing you a happy birthday on facebook?

Was middle school as bad for you as it was for everybody else?

Jon

Facebook birthday wall posts: part 1/3

[Part 2: Who posted happy birthday on my wall?]
[Part 3: What did people write on my wall for my birthday?]

A real blogger recently reminded me (more on that in a future post) that when people decide to read a blog entry, they're not necessarily willing to give it 3 hours of their lives.  And so, O reader, I will try to make these musings short enough for one sitting.

So when a topic comes along about which I have a lot to say, I'll break it up into multiple entries.  And if facebook birthday wall posts isn't one of those topics, what is?!


Where we're going on this two-part tangent

Everyone who has bought into facebook (i.e. has a bunch of friends and stays pretty active with posts, comments, messages, etc.) gets bombarded on shis birthday with wall posts.  It's just the way of the world.

But have you ever really thought about what kind of bombardment your wall is enduring?  I had a birthday recently, and I decided the 121 birthday-related wall posts I got would be a large enough sample size to figure out exactly what happens to someone's wall on that special day.  And, in fact, I think it will do more than that -- it might tell me something about my own social network.

The questions I wanted to answer all fall into roughly 3 categories:

1. When did people post on my wall?
2. Who posted on my wall?
3. How/what did people post on my wall?

These questions will be the three parts of this Tangent Series.  I think the second and third are much more compelling, but I arbitrarily typed the three in the above order, and so we start with the questions of timing.  Would the biggest rush be right at midnight, or the 8am-ish start of most people's day?  Would the fact that my birthday was on a Friday eliminate most or all evening wall posts?


When did people post "Happy Birthday" on my wall?

The graph shows the concentration of birthday wall posts in hourly slots.  The hour listed on the x-axis is the beginning of that slot, so, for instance, "10am" means the hour from 10am to 11am.

There's nothing earth-shattering there, but I think it describes facebook usage trends.  A decent number of people are on facebook after midnight, and some of them like to jump on the instant birthday post train.

It's no surprise there's a lull in activity during sleep hours, and then BAM-- from 7am to 11am is the peak of wall post activity.  My best guess is that most people who write birthday wall posts (I'm notoriously not one of them) tend to do so the first time they log onto facebook in a given day.  A natural time to log onto facebook for the first time in a given day is 8 or 9am.

The only other thing I have to say is that, despite my birthday's Friday orientation, there were in fact some evening posts.  But notice the awesome "social life lull" from 8-10pm.  I guess 10pm is the time when people get back from whatever they're doing and hop onto facebook.

I know facebook is how I spend my Friday nights.

Next time: Who writes on one's wall? Friends, enemies, people whose names you don't even recognize?

For now, just let me know what you think of the graph, if you have any thoughts or observations.  Also, share what your facebook life is like -- when and how often do YOU log on?

Jon

Christmas Eve Eve

People love Christmas, right?  They're all about it.  At this point I wonder why I'm using the third person -- I love it too.  We merrily sing "it's the most wonderful time of the year," and I don't ever find myself scratching my head and thinking, "I prefer March."

There are many reasons why people from all backgrounds love the Christmas season, but the tangent we are about to take isn't ambitious enough to tackle them all.  Without any further adieu, let's just get on with it: I think that along with the remembrance of Jesus' birth and the rampant giving and receiving of presents, one of the things that tugs at our heart at Christmas is Tradition.

The word "tradition" has lost some of its former glory.  Things, people, and institutions that are "traditional" seem to be boring, stuffy, or old-fashioned.  But at Christmas, Tradition steps back into the spotlight.  We appreciate its nostalgia, its familiarity, and its comfort.  And, if we're lucky, we may even have the chance to start new Christmas traditions...


The greatest Christmas tradition ever

It was 5 or 6 years ago (the record is unclear).  For some reason, my two friends (Zach and Chris) and I had the house to ourselves on December 23.  So we started to do what was somewhat common for us back then -- play games well into the night, then go to sleep in my room.

• [Tangent-within-a-tangent: I had bunk beds -- yes, when I went home to my Mom's house during college, I slept in a bunk bed.  It was funny when I'd have two friends stay over, which happened a lot.  I'd always sleep in the bottom bunk, and one guy would get the top one and the other would be on the floor.  I never really bothered to think about how they always worked it out, but I'm sure it was a moral dilemma that, if studied, would be quite fascinating.]

So it was probably around 2am when we settled into the bunk bed/floor setup.  But of course we talked once there, and our conversation was particularly lively that night.  Eventually, since spirits were high and none of us was close to falling asleep, one of the other two (the record is again surprisingly unclear; I'm guessing Chris) spoke these fateful words:

"I have an idea.  You can shoot it down if you want.  But what if we go back downstairs, and just play games... ALL.. NIGHT.. LONG?!"

A long pause.

Zach (if my memory is to be believed): I'm not going to be able to sleep tomorrow, I have family stuff, but... Let's do it!!  I'm in!!

This next part makes very little sense.  We got up and ran downstairs in a frenzy, and in the process the other two guys took off their shirts so they could run around like tribal warriors or something.  This is the opposite of everything I stand for (I guess I stand mainly for clothedness and civility), but in the chaos of the moment I had to go along with it.

Anyway, we played games until 6am and then went to McDonald's for Christmas Eve breakfast.  And thus, the tradition of Christmas Eve Eve was born.


My tradition, your traditions

The cast of characters for Christmas Eve Eve changes each year.  Chris and I are the only people who have been to every one (his absence from CEE in Orlando last year has been stricken from the record, since I stole the event and took it to Florida).  But every year we play games all night long on December 23 and, if there's a McDonald's nearby, we get breakfast there.

• You're invited!  Seriously, if you read this blog, you are qualified to take part in the festivities.  Let me know if you're interested and I'll get you the details.  You're not required to stay all night and get breakfast, but I don't think you'll want to leave once you've experienced the fun of CEE.
• What Christmas traditions do you love??

                                                         Jon

(a CEE favorite)