I have one more day left in lovely Minnesota-land. Still at Waitress-Chick's house in Blaine. Will likely get a tattoo before I catch my flight back to the Blue State Frontier.
SHoP Overlord SixHertz and SHoP Overlady Shiraz were married over the weekend, and Your Favorite SHoP Overlord Tio Jaime was present as the Best Man. Here is my toast, reprinted for your enjoyment.
You'll see that the toast actually did say "to the bridge and groom". This is probably because I had work on the brain. They called me twice, despite my being "2051 miles away from Candlestick Park and our five Vince Lombardi Trophies".
Don't really want to go to work tomorrow. Screw that. OK, enough space filler for now, the picture should line up just fine, and I have to put some pants on and take Waitress-chick out to lunch in Sweet Home Minnesota.
Jihad Jimmy, Minister of War Crimes and Chief Defender of the Faith
ps- Well fuckity-fuck me in the goat ass. I needed one more line to get the pic out of the way of the <div align=center>
| Best Man Toast, courtesy Jihad Jimmy |
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| Mr. and Mrs. SixHertz, Mr. and Mrs. Shiraz-- and of course Mr. and Mrs. ShirazHertz: I am greatly honored and truly blessed to be here today on what is the happiest day of your lives to date. And I highly doubt that anybody in this room would would think me presumptious in saying that they too are greatly honored to be here to share this day. My name is Jihad Jimmy, and I'll be your Best Man for tonight. Just for clarification, Jihad Jimmy and Tio Jaime are the same guy. If you've been introduced to me through SixHertz's parents, then congratulations, you've been grandfathered-in to a select number of people who are allowed to call me that. I haven't been called Tio Jaime since 1992, when SixHertz and I were in the graduating 8th grade class of St. Chrissy Academy back in lovely Santa Clara, CA. Almost fifteen years ago, that was the last time that he and I were around each other regularly before going our separate ways to two different, rival Catholic high schools in the Silicon Valley. But let's back up for a minute to 1983-- some of you weren't married yet, some of you were still in school, some of you weren't even born-- but it was there, 1983, in Miss Jones's First Grade class at St. Chrissy Elementary where I met SixHertz. We were the two smartest guys in our class, and... we knew it. But we were best buddies, completely inseparable. Where he'd go, I'd follow. First Confession, First Communion. And after quick stopovers in Denver International and Blaine, MN, I've followed the SixHertzes to the Twin Cities for the blessed Sacrament of Marriage. Three out of Seven is pretty good, wouldn't you think? If I can play my cards right, well I'll just have to have the SixHertz clan down to Las Vegas for my wedding-- lemme just find a nice Catholic girl who won't mind spending her honeymoon playing craps and betting on the ponies. And if I can't find that nice Catholic girl, then the SixHertz clan has front row tickets to my Ordination ceremony at St. Joseph's Cathedral with the bishop. SixHertz and I grew up about 15 mins away from each other in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley, for you Midwesterners out there, is pretty much an hour away from both San Francisco and Oakland. Forty-five minutes if I'm driving. So, an hour south of San Francisco, but it is beyond the shadow of a doubt Niner Country. And SixHertz and his dad are two of the biggest 49er Faithfuls I know. And naturally, as a budding Niner fan of 8 or 9 years old, who did I turn to for anything and everything 49ers? One of our fondest memories was Super Bowl XXIII when we beat the Cincinnati Bengals 20-16 on a touchdown pass from Joe Montana to John Taylor with 34 seconds left. And the fond memory before that? Beating the Minnesota Vikings 34-9 and then the Chicago Bears 28-3 for the NFC Championship. (Tough crowd... We're a long way from Candlestick, aren't we?) Oh, we loved the 49ers. SixHertz, the artist between the two of us, each week he would draw these amazing comic strips about the Niners and their opponent that weekend. I loved those. He found a bunch of them once many, many years later, showed them to me, and we busted up laughing because they were still the funniest things we'd ever shared together. I was thinking about those comics a couple of nights ago, and I don't recall him showing those to anybody but me. Nobody but me. Just plain-old me, his 49er faithful best friend growing up. But like I said, he went to Schmidty which was co-ed, and I went to Bellarmine which was all-boys. The first day of high school without my best buddy who I'd gone to seven or eight first-days-of-school? I'll tell you, it was scary. I turned out OK, though. I'm here-- in front of a lot of strangers I don't know, giving a toast written on a mixture of caffeine, adrenaline, Skoal, and what I'm learning is the SixHertz favorite Patron. I'm not nervous, I'm not stuttering. The fine product of a Catholic all-boys school education. With exception of taking potshots at the local football teams. So at our Eighth Grade graduation, I told a friend of mine: You keep an eye on him for me, can you? She agreed. And it's a good thing too, I hear that when you go to school with-- girls-- it gets tough. You gotta supress all of your engineer traits and instincts. You gotta worry about looking good for that cutie in your Computer class. You can't talk about Star Trek with 'em-- believe me, I've tried. In any case, we've all passed the SixHertz-baton to one another in our own special ways. And so, from Mrs. SixHertz to myself, eventually to these upstanding men you see before you and to a few girlfriends on the way to whom I was strategically never introduced you were handed the SixHertz-baton and you ran. And here in Minnesota on a fine August day, two time zones and just under two thousand fifty-one miles away from Candlestick Park and our five Vince Lombardi Trophies, today it comes time for the baton to be passed to the newest Mrs. SixHertz. Shiraz, the man you see before you is one of my oldest and dearest friends. He is a cherished and integral part of my history. Without this man, I could very well be a Raiders fan. While you may see bits and pieces of him in his family and friends, know full well that there are parts of us which have been painstakingly and meticulously crafted into the man who today has the honor of calling himself your husband. I don't care that he's going to business school, he'll always be an engineer to me. From Miss Jones's class back at St. Chrissy we were destined to be engineers. And so, in typical engineer fashion, he's crafted up... a comprehensive list of duties for us men on his side of the wedding party. As the Best Man, it is my duty and privilege to offer... the first toast of the evening. SixHertz, I am truly blessed to be able to count you and your parents amongst those who I sincerely do love. Shiraz, we entrust our beloved SixHertz to your loving and capable hands. May health and happiness shine upon your new life together. May you find new reasons each day to love one another, each day more than the last. May your love and devotion serve as a potent reminder of God's presence among us here today. And may God bless you both here and forever, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. To the Bridge (sic) and Groom... |
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