Wedding on Silent Hill
My brother's wedding == unique (And not in a bad way!)!
Let's see.. my paternal Grandmother (Grandma Green, for short) kept exclaiming that she'd "never been to a costume wedding," to which we kept replying "neither have we, grandma!" That may not be strictly accurate, since we wore swing-era clothes to my Aunt Lynn's swing-themed wedding, but Ezra's theme was considerably more costume-oriented. (Potential newlyweds take note--if you're going to have a swing band and swing outfits, it's a good idea to hire an instructor, as my aunt did, to make sure you've got swing dancing to go with them.) Anyway, we drove out to Athens on the afternoon of the wedding, put on our costumes, and strolled up to the city courthouse just as two meticulously blood-stained zombies approached from the other direction. If you look closely, you can see the zombie veins a friend carefully airbrushed onto them over a couple of hours (making their flesh look like a well-aged cheese). You don't have to be looking closely to see the Bride's eyes though! Gretchen wore white contacts and had some special kind of powder-based fake blood splashing out from around her eye sockets. The resulting contrast startled me all evening.
It was a quick and orderly civil ceremony, and I was reassured to see the bride getting all choked up. She was close to crying red-tinted tears of joy, I think, and it really brought home the idea that they were serious about the whole wedding. So much of what Ezra does seems to me unplanned, or for a lark, and while I still don't know his wife well enough to be sure, I worried that she had a similar approach to things. Seeing how much the ceremony struck her, though, made me realize that this was something very real and important to them after all (for all that they seemed to want to dilute it with the costumes, small audience, and civil ceremony). It was surprisingly moving, and they looked great together.
So, with the seriousness of the ring and kissing over, the joined families took group photos on the courthouse steps in our various costumes. Grandma Green was a good angel, so I got to modify my attire and be a fallen angel instead. Gretchen's mother was very beautifully made up as the "Mummy of the Bride", and her father was dressed in what I can only call the best Carl Marx costume I've ever seen (even if that's not what he intended). Dad finally wore a costume Mom's been trying to get him into for years: the computer wizard ( get it!?), and Mom wore the Justice costume she'd put together for an antiwar rally earlier this year. Jess was some kind of fairy--I can't tell you exactly which kind because I was blinded by her cuteness (she really is unbearably cute).
The couple when to dinner with us at the Basil Press, a delicious local restaurant, after which Ezra raced off to retrieve his real costume--a monster called "The Butcher" from the movie/video game Silent Hill.
Here's a mini-review of Silent Hill: It'll give you nightmares. Not because it's particularly scary, but because it implies that Hollywood will continue to lavish funding on directors who promise to deliver the "look" and "feel" of popular video game series. If you like video games: sorry, it's non-interactive. If you like horror movies: well, it's pretty horrible. If you like surreal and disturbing images: go buy yourself a book of H.R. Geiger's work (at least it doesn't pretend to have a unifying story).
Anyway, it did provide copious material for costumes.. though I'm a little surprised no one attempted the "tortured-toilet" character (if you have to ask.. don't).
I think Ezra came really close to the mark on "the Butcher"..
That movie was the inspiration for both of the couple's costumes, actually, as well as a few of their friends (and they were all pretty startling). Ezra met us at a local bar (Room 13), in his actual costume--2 foot foam elevator shoes (hidden under a bloodstained butcher's apron), a huge foam pyramidal helmet (made to look like rusted iron), and a 7ft, quarter-inch steel sword he'd spent a day making. With the cossack he'd worn to the wedding off, we could see that their friend had used her airbrush to shade his ribs and muscles in a goulish contrast.
Ezra and Gretchen's friends had made a second wedding cake, and topped it with hand-crafted action figures made to mirror their costumes (they were almost perfect!). We all enjoyed a little more cake (we'd had a different cake at The Basil Press) while the happy couple opened wedding gifts. My father kicked my butt in pool.. right up to when he scratched on the eightball, at which point I suddenly became competent again, beating the pants off of Gretchen's mother in several consecutive games (Gretchen's parents are apparently quite good, though the tables must've been too bad for their skills to really shine. I guess that's my advantage in being a generally indifferent player!). Mom and Dad joined the two grandmothers (who'd left right after dinner) back at the hotel, and Gretchen's parents and I headed out to find the new couple (who'd disappeared amidst all the "butt-kicking"). We caught up with Ezra at his studio (where he was repairing his helmet), made plans to meet together for breakfast the following morning, and headed back to the hotel for a well-deserved rest.
Alas, it was not to be.
For reasons too numerous to mention, none of us managed to sleep the night through, and around 6:30 or so, the Grandmothers began calling our room to find out what the plan for breakfast was (effectively ending the quest for rest). Now, anyone who's seen me in the morning knows I wake rather easily in the morning--especially when a hotel phone goes off right next to my head. Twice in 10 minutes.
In fact, I didn't have a good night's sleep till I returned from GA, and managed to pick up a bit of a fever from my little sister in the bargain. I should note that in the intervening 3 days we managed to move over 4000lb of concrete and rusted steel from Ezra's studio to the gallery for his show, but the details of that story deserve their own entry. Suffice it to say, I hung out with him for the rest of the week, supporting his frantic efforts to finish on time, and ended up taking most of the time as unpaid leave. But hey--what's family for? (Answer: unpaid labor!)
Let's see.. my paternal Grandmother (Grandma Green, for short) kept exclaiming that she'd "never been to a costume wedding," to which we kept replying "neither have we, grandma!" That may not be strictly accurate, since we wore swing-era clothes to my Aunt Lynn's swing-themed wedding, but Ezra's theme was considerably more costume-oriented. (Potential newlyweds take note--if you're going to have a swing band and swing outfits, it's a good idea to hire an instructor, as my aunt did, to make sure you've got swing dancing to go with them.) Anyway, we drove out to Athens on the afternoon of the wedding, put on our costumes, and strolled up to the city courthouse just as two meticulously blood-stained zombies approached from the other direction. If you look closely, you can see the zombie veins a friend carefully airbrushed onto them over a couple of hours (making their flesh look like a well-aged cheese). You don't have to be looking closely to see the Bride's eyes though! Gretchen wore white contacts and had some special kind of powder-based fake blood splashing out from around her eye sockets. The resulting contrast startled me all evening.
It was a quick and orderly civil ceremony, and I was reassured to see the bride getting all choked up. She was close to crying red-tinted tears of joy, I think, and it really brought home the idea that they were serious about the whole wedding. So much of what Ezra does seems to me unplanned, or for a lark, and while I still don't know his wife well enough to be sure, I worried that she had a similar approach to things. Seeing how much the ceremony struck her, though, made me realize that this was something very real and important to them after all (for all that they seemed to want to dilute it with the costumes, small audience, and civil ceremony). It was surprisingly moving, and they looked great together.
So, with the seriousness of the ring and kissing over, the joined families took group photos on the courthouse steps in our various costumes. Grandma Green was a good angel, so I got to modify my attire and be a fallen angel instead. Gretchen's mother was very beautifully made up as the "Mummy of the Bride", and her father was dressed in what I can only call the best Carl Marx costume I've ever seen (even if that's not what he intended). Dad finally wore a costume Mom's been trying to get him into for years: the computer wizard ( get it!?), and Mom wore the Justice costume she'd put together for an antiwar rally earlier this year. Jess was some kind of fairy--I can't tell you exactly which kind because I was blinded by her cuteness (she really is unbearably cute).
The couple when to dinner with us at the Basil Press, a delicious local restaurant, after which Ezra raced off to retrieve his real costume--a monster called "The Butcher" from the movie/video game Silent Hill.
Here's a mini-review of Silent Hill: It'll give you nightmares. Not because it's particularly scary, but because it implies that Hollywood will continue to lavish funding on directors who promise to deliver the "look" and "feel" of popular video game series. If you like video games: sorry, it's non-interactive. If you like horror movies: well, it's pretty horrible. If you like surreal and disturbing images: go buy yourself a book of H.R. Geiger's work (at least it doesn't pretend to have a unifying story).
Anyway, it did provide copious material for costumes.. though I'm a little surprised no one attempted the "tortured-toilet" character (if you have to ask.. don't).
I think Ezra came really close to the mark on "the Butcher"..
That movie was the inspiration for both of the couple's costumes, actually, as well as a few of their friends (and they were all pretty startling). Ezra met us at a local bar (Room 13), in his actual costume--2 foot foam elevator shoes (hidden under a bloodstained butcher's apron), a huge foam pyramidal helmet (made to look like rusted iron), and a 7ft, quarter-inch steel sword he'd spent a day making. With the cossack he'd worn to the wedding off, we could see that their friend had used her airbrush to shade his ribs and muscles in a goulish contrast.
Ezra and Gretchen's friends had made a second wedding cake, and topped it with hand-crafted action figures made to mirror their costumes (they were almost perfect!). We all enjoyed a little more cake (we'd had a different cake at The Basil Press) while the happy couple opened wedding gifts. My father kicked my butt in pool.. right up to when he scratched on the eightball, at which point I suddenly became competent again, beating the pants off of Gretchen's mother in several consecutive games (Gretchen's parents are apparently quite good, though the tables must've been too bad for their skills to really shine. I guess that's my advantage in being a generally indifferent player!). Mom and Dad joined the two grandmothers (who'd left right after dinner) back at the hotel, and Gretchen's parents and I headed out to find the new couple (who'd disappeared amidst all the "butt-kicking"). We caught up with Ezra at his studio (where he was repairing his helmet), made plans to meet together for breakfast the following morning, and headed back to the hotel for a well-deserved rest.
Alas, it was not to be.
For reasons too numerous to mention, none of us managed to sleep the night through, and around 6:30 or so, the Grandmothers began calling our room to find out what the plan for breakfast was (effectively ending the quest for rest). Now, anyone who's seen me in the morning knows I wake rather easily in the morning--especially when a hotel phone goes off right next to my head. Twice in 10 minutes.
In fact, I didn't have a good night's sleep till I returned from GA, and managed to pick up a bit of a fever from my little sister in the bargain. I should note that in the intervening 3 days we managed to move over 4000lb of concrete and rusted steel from Ezra's studio to the gallery for his show, but the details of that story deserve their own entry. Suffice it to say, I hung out with him for the rest of the week, supporting his frantic efforts to finish on time, and ended up taking most of the time as unpaid leave. But hey--what's family for? (Answer: unpaid labor!)