Yeah. Like that.

Happy Wednesday!

Random Tavinisms

Yes, it's true what you heard!

Last Friday night TG and I -- together with Audrey -- met at The Channel in Greenville for a performance of Tavin Dillard Live!

We also met Tavin -- a/k/a Joel Berry -- after the show. What a dollbaby he turned out to be.

Ironically, for someone who spends as much time in front of the camera as Joel/Tavin does, making people laugh like hyenas, he seems a trifle shy in real life.

But he's a homespun sweetheart, and very giving to his fans, of whom clearly he has (and deserves) many.

Unfortunately the lighting wasn't good enough for an amateur like me to get large numbers of decent pictures.

Plus which, I was laughing so hard I could barely hold the camera steady.

But I got a few.

When we got to Greenville the weather was near perfect -- eighty-two degrees with humidity well under fifty percent -- and we enjoyed sitting outside for dinner.

Said repast was one of my favorite things in the whole world: hamburgers.

By the way if you happen to live within driving distance of Greenville, South Carolina, I encourage you to drive there and have a hamburger at Grille 33 on Main Street.

It'll make you forget all about Five Guys.

And that's saying something.

I hope you get to sit outside on a balmy evening like we did, with a server as efficient as she is friendly, as was ours, and enjoy your burger done just the way you ordered it.

Speakin' of eatin' here's a quote from Tavin's book (the one I won from commentin' on the Twitter), Milktose Analogy & 88 other things Tavin Dillard said:

"He eats like a horse and works like a dead man."

- from Trailer Park Guests

Speakin' of burgers, here's another Tavin quote you might like, from an episode that happens to be set at the Burger Shed:

"Bud's sister-in-law is down there and Bud, he runs the Burger Shed, but his sister-in-law, she don't run nothin' but her mouth."

- from Brother Bailey

Oh about those burgers we enjoyed? They had bacon on 'em.

"People said it took a long time for humans to get on the moon. I say if there was bacon up there, we woulda got up there a lot quicker."

- from Bacon

Oh and Tavin signed my book! He wrote:

Jennifer, Happy readin'! Tavin Dillard

And he gave me a big hug. I smiled all the way home to Columbia.

Happy Monday! Happy Week!

Welcome to the Caribbean, luv

Erica sent me this.

Pirate!

Happy Weekend!

Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to JohnnyJack, who turns 49 tomorrow, June 9th.

Treasure the dress. Trash the stupidity.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s a new-ish trend in wedding photography.

It’s called a Trash the Dress session.

For which a bride hires a photographer to take pictures of her the day after the ceremony, destroying her wedding dress.

As in, deliberately besmirching said garment with paint, garbage, food, dirt, mud, and whatever else infantile minds can think of to hurl at or smear upon an article of clothing.

At the very least the women go demurely wading, as if they’re only brave enough to gray the hemline.

Then again, a more adventurous bride may choose to saturate her dress by cavorting in the ocean, a pond, or the front-yard sprinkler.

They even set them on fire.

One female lay at the edge of a pounding surf underneath a man I assume to be her husband, the skirt of her dress being pushed up to her waist by waves. Soooo HAWT!

Nawt. 

Sometimes brides even dismantle the dress entirely, ripping seams, pulling at lace and pearls with the abandon of a baby decimating its first birthday cake.

One shoot involved making it look as though the bride had been unceremoniously offed, then stuffed into the trunk of an automobile while still wearing her wedding gown.

Both she and her once-pristine dress were turning a sickly green as corpses (and, apparently, their bridal attire) are inclined to do.

“Show him you’re committed!” Some photographers crow on their sites, drumming up interest in TtD sessions, apparently so greedy that charging a bride upwards of five thousand dollars to memorialize her actual wedding just isn’t enough.

Show him you’re committed? Say what? Are they suggesting that if you preserve your wedding gown clean and intact, your husband may infer that you’re saving it for when you marry the next guy?

Girls, if the person to whom you’re betrothed is that insecure (or that weird), perhaps it’s better if you move along.

But keep the ring. That way, he can’t give it to the next girl.

Another TtD shoot took place in a jungle where, according to the photographer (writing about it on his blog), “the dinosaurs became instinct after getting bitten by the super-vicious mosquitoes we encountered there!”

Oh! They became instinct. I always wondered what really happened to the dinosaurs.

The post is punctuated by pictures of a distinctly unhappy-looking young woman plastering herself against trees, twining herself in vines, crawling across the jungle floor, lying prone on big rocks, I think there’s a snake in there  ... all while dressed in her wedding gown.

Her brand-new husband is present, looking bored if you ask me, standing by until needed as his wife of less than twenty-four hours turns the first day of their honeymoon into a photographic booty call.

People. This is nothing but narcissism wedded to inanity, both run amok.

Another enterprising dress-trashing ex-bride has even written a book. Wait till you hear its catchy title! Trash the Dress: Stories of Celebrating Divorce in Your 20s.

She has no husband now (I wonder why) but she does lay claim to “fur children” and a new boyfriend.

There’s a picture of this second-rate second-hand dame on the web site, pretending to take her wedding gown apart. She had the skirt made into sassy single-again short shorts. And she hasn’t even got the legs for that.

Say ... have you ever watched Say Yes to the Dress?

In which bride after bride parades through Kleinfeld in New York or bridals by lori in Atlanta with their entourage, each in relentless pursuit of “the perfect dress” and/or what they constantly refer to as their “dream dress”?

Often their budgets exceed the Gross Domestic Product of a small third-world country.

And their egos, though clearly far from mature, are even bigger than that.

Some have flown in from distant states, attended by a cast of thousands including an older relative whose job it is to pay for their every whim, and admit to having tried on hundreds of dresses, unable to find the “right” one.

Others are shopping for not one but two dresses: one for the ceremony and one for the eight-hour booze-soaked reception. (No one's in any hurry to start the wedding night anymore; by then they've been "honeymooning" for years.)

Never mind that ninety-five percent of the brides featured on these shows are appallingly lacking in inconvenient (and supposedly outdated) traits such as social graces, modesty, class, humility, submission (Yes! To a man!), and discretion.

Not to mention purity. Blushing brides? I think the last time a bride blushed somewhere in America, Jimmy Carter was still getting lost on his way from the residence to the Oval Office.

People. It will always be impossible to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Remember that. And yes, I’m speaking politically and bridally.

Let’s go back thirty-three years, shall we? Jimmeh was locating his office with ease by then; he was going to be “done in one” anyway so it hardly mattered.

I was a starry-eyed jeune fille of twenty-two, engaged to be married, anticipating my wedding which was to take place in a matter of days.

My mother didn’t go with me to pick out my wedding dress. I lived six hundred miles from the nearest relative. I went by myself to Stefan's: For The Elegant Bride and placed myself in the capable hands of its owner. No slavish retinue attended me.

Also nobody but me paid for my dress. I had a job. My bridal ensemble cost five hundred sixty-five dollars, including the shoes. My going-away outfit was a cotton dress made for me by my mother-in-law.

Speaking of cotton, my wedding gown (incidentally it was the first of two I tried on) was made completely of cotton lace.

It came from Paris, designed by the house of couturier Jacques Heim (1899-1967). The label sewn on the inside, near the waist, reads Les Mariées De Jacques Heim which I think is utterly charming.

I loved the dress on sight because it was simple, modest, feminine, and different. In a way I could not explain, it suited me.

I would never, however, call it the “perfect dress” or my “dream dress.” There is no such thing as a perfect dress and I had never once dreamed of a wedding dress.

What I dreamed of from the first time I saw him in February of 1976, was marrying Greg Weber. And while it mattered very much to me what I wore as a bride, it was being his bride – and his wife -- that mattered most.

That’s the reason I’d sooner vote Democrat than do anything to harm the dress I wore when I took my vows. And I’ll vote Democrat on the day they open up a Baskin Robbins in H-E double hockeysticks.

Our wedding day came: Saturday, June 16, 1979. I wore my wedding dress for about four hours. Nobody has worn it since, except Erica who claims to have tried it on once when she was in high school.

“I couldn’t zip it up,” she says. “It was too small.”

Like I said: jeune fille. Teensy weensy. Them were the days. Size six.

Following our (real) honeymoon, I took my dress to the new home I shared with my husband. It was in its original plastic garment bag, on an ordinary plastic hanger with some tissue wrapped around said hanger to pad the shoulders a bit.

I put my dress in the back of our closet without having it dry-cleaned or boxed. We didn’t have an extra fifty dollars for that. I commenced to be a housewife (I love that word. I was not a “stay at home mom.” I was a wife, mother, and homemaker. In that order.) and to bear four children.

I’ve gazed at my wedding dress now and again over the years, but not many times and never for very long. Yesterday I took it out of its garment bag and, alone together, we communed for a few hours. It was inexpressibly sweet.

I examined the delicate folds of its material and fluffed the skirt and admired its flounces and took it outside for a photo shoot, which was great fun. It's in excellent condition, not torn anywhere, only faintly yellowed.

Nevertheless I was very careful. Rather than trash my dress to show TG I’m committed, I’ve proved my commitment by staying married to him. I treasure both my marriage and my dress. I wouldn’t intentionally harm one any more than I would the other.

This may come across as harsh or judgmental but so be it: I think the trash-the-dress crowd knows all of this. By destroying their wedding gowns in front of a camera, silly women are symbolically ripping at the fabric of traditional marriage and family.

Their intention is the opposite of the one they state.

By buying into this stupid trend, they are advocating not the sanctity but the demise of loving, respectful, committed lawful union between a man and a woman who have kept themselves clean and who are faithful  to one another.

By sullying a garment that was intended to be a symbol of purity, they are effectively demonstrating their disdain for the institution of marriage.

Indeed far too many women make a continual mockery of marriage, just as they did the first time they lay down with a man to whom they were not married.

God forbid anything good and moral and decent and right should be sacred anymore. What’s considered sacred now is all that degrades us as women, as couples, and as a society. Don't accept it. Teach your children the truth. Teach your grandchildren the truth.

The bride who would pose for a photographer while dirtying her beautiful dress – thought so “perfect” just a few hours before – should save her time, energy, and money.

That dress was trashed the first time she put it on.

=0=0=0=

Happy June

SkyWatch Friday: Sweet month of May, we must away

A sunny shaft did I behold,
From sky to earth it slanted:
And poised therein a bird so bold --
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted!
He sank, he rose, he twinkled, he troll'd
Within that shaft of sunny mist;
His eyes of fire, his beak of gold,
All else of amethyst!

And thus he sang: 'Adieu! adieu!
Love's dreams prove seldom true.
The blossoms, they make no delay:
The sparkling dew-drops will not stay.

Sweet month of May,
We must away;
Far, far away!
To-day! To-day!'

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Happy Weekend!