It's Your Party & I'll Crash It If I Want To

A good friend of mine (let's call him 'Fabian' ... because that's his real name) recently announced his engagement to his diminutive-yet-lovely girlfriend, who I will now have to get used to calling his fiancee.

Wifey and I were delighted with the announcement.

They make a lovely couple, and will greatly enjoy driving each other crazy within the institution of marriage, as will become common practice for them in due course.

But first, they chose to hold an engagement party. Cue the invitations.

* Editor's Note: The following portion of this completely true story contains elements of heartache, pain, tragedy and suffering. Read on for a good laugh. *

Wifey and I were carrying on with our life, blissfully unaware that everyone we knew - everyone - was being invited to the party of the decade. Everyone, that is, except - of course - for us.

A mutual friend asked us if we were going to the party "this Saturday", to which we replied "er, ... you say what, now?" Realising her mistake, our mutual friend called Fabian over, and asked him if Wifey and I were invited to the engagement party. Looking uncomfortably at his feet, Fabian said no. Imagine my heartache! Actually, don't bother imagining it - here's a picture of it:



I couldn't believe it. I felt like he'd just slapped me.




(If I were more of a man, I might have said 'It felt like he'd just punched me', but I'm not, so I'm sorry, but you're going to have to deal with it.)




Wifey was also pretty upset. What had we done wrong, to be blacklisted from the group? I'm a loveable guy; Wifey's a wonderful woman; ... we're fantastic people to have at any party! Why would we not be invited? Fabian's a really close friend! In fact, he was the third of four groomsmen at our wedding!

After spending nearly a week becoming more and more offended as we debated with each other what our supposed sins were to be cut from the list, we came up with a bunch of possible reasons:


1) Numbers were too restrictive, and we didn't make the cut because we weren't family or bridal party members;

2) The bride-to-be doesn't know us as well as Fabian does, and she was already beginning to exert her dominance over him in all decisions;

3) We aren't Carlton supporters (why would you be, the way they're going?!);

4) Another good mate of mine and I labelling Fabian 'gay' whenever we went out as buddies and spoke to chicks throughout our early twenties had come back to haunt me;

5) The congratulations card we sent them a few weeks ago when they first announced their engagement didn't get there, and they were being unreasonably childish about it;

6) The congratulations card we sent them a few weeks ago when they first announced their engagement did get there, and they were being unreasonably childish about the picture of the ball-and-chain on the front, and the written message inside warning him not to go through with it at any cost, do whatever you can to get away, I mean really, think of the children, will somebody please think of the children!?!;

7) We had somehow offended one or both of them at some point that was totally escaping our memories;

43) We can't count;

9) When we had to turn them down for an evening of 'hanging out' together about six months ago, they took it to heart;

10) They never really liked me anyway (cue the song by The Corrs); and

11) Fabian is gay.


It turns out that someone who was meant to pass our invitation on to us, never actually got around to taking it out of her purse. And because the RSVP to the party was 'regrets only', Fabian and his lovely little lady didn't realise that our silence meant we didn't know anything about it. They assumed it meant we were coming. Meanwhile, we got offended that they hadn't invited us. If we hadn't worked this out before the actual day, they in turn would have been offended by us being 'no-shows'. What a tangled web we weave!




But what of Fabian's comment that Wifey and I weren't invited? Well, he was joking, of course. But because we didn't know any better and he was looking uncomfortably at his shoes when he said it, we interpreted it as him feeling awkward about having to admit it to our faces, when in fact it turns out that he was simply trying to pass wind at the time.

'So how did it all come out and get resolved in time?', I hear you scream in pained anguish:




Well, listen carefully.




Another friend of mine, who I shall call Captain Dingbat:




... put his foot in it last night on the phone by saying he was coming down from the country to attend the party on the weekend. He asked if he'd see me there, and I said we weren't invited. He then rang Fabian and said 'Ooopsie - sorry about that!', to which Fabian replied, 'But they are invited!'

Long story short ("too late!"), our forgetful friend heard me say we weren't invited, realised she still had our invite in her purse, and promptly handed it over. Fabian rang me today to check that we knew about the party, and all is well with the world.




Good thing, too. I was planning to crash the party - drunk out of my head and insulting all the guests!

Still, it placed us in the peculiar position of whether or not we speak to Fabian and his chick directly about it, or if we'd be better to let it go. One the one hand, we realised it was most likely that the invitation had somehow gotten lost. But on the other hand, asking if we were invited (or why we weren't invited) would be presumptuous, pig-headed, and likely cause a scene if it turned out that we had been cut for some reason. Plus, if there was a legitimate reason we weren't invited, it'd dredge up stuff I think I'd rather not know about. And it'd spoil the wedding lead-up for the happy couple, having friends causing a problem about not being invited. We didn't want to be that kind of friend to them.

Our only fault is that we cared so much about them, that we didn't want to ask, in case it embarrassed them. That's how much we cared about them! We're actually very good friends, and they'd be crazy not to invite us to any party they ever held, ever.

And then all of us - me, Wifey, Fabian, his fiancee, Captain Dingbat and our forgetful friend - can skip merrily down the lane into the sunset, happy in the knowledge that we're all so ace.




Until they send out their wedding invitations ...



.

Puppet Injustice - Part 2

"Where Are They Now? Productions" presents: Skeeter




Sorry for the poor quality of the image - she's a hard Muppet to find online! :)



Skeeter is the one on the far left, sitting on the yellow cushion.

So who is Skeeter? Fans of the Muppet Babies (which ran for a surprisingly-healthy seven seasons during the 80s and 90s!) will recognise her as the token female ring-in character who was created to help pad out the female contingent of the main Muppet cast when they moved to an animated baby format, following the success and popularity of the imaginary flashback scene in The Muppets Take Manhattan, when Kermit and Miss Piggy daydream about what it would have been like if they'd all known each other as babies.

As her name (and appearance) suggest, she is the twin sister of Scooter. Say hello, Scooter.



'Atta boy.

Anyway, Skeeter had never been seen or referenced before this, and to date, she has never been seen or referenced since. So what became of her? Did she become an Olympic athlete as her baby-version kept dreaming she'd become? Did she become a journalist as some online message boards on the subject would have us believe, and she's now off winning Pulitzer Prizes on a regular basis? Or has she simply been forgotten and ignored as a crappy incidental character we'd all rather pretend never existed?

None of the above. I found her. Scooter hasn't written to her for nearly ten years, but then, he's been busy carrying that clipboard around.

It's a tough job, but someone's gotta carry it.

Birthday Presents Rock!

The above title is not meant to indicate that someone or something called 'Birthday' is presenting a rock concert, or presenting you with a free rock ...



It is simply my heartfelt opinion that gifts given to me on the occasion of the anniversary of my birth both 'ro' and 'ck'.

They rock.



Yes, just like those people.

Or maybe I should be showing you this image instead:



But why would I be bringing this subject matter up?

Well derr - it's now officially less than one month until my birthday! (And unlike some people in the blogsphere, I choose to give advanced warning of the event so I can't cry about it afterwards when no one remembers!)

And just what has The Jim Henson Company decided to do to honour my special day?

That's right. Aren't they lovely people, down at The Jim Henson Company?

:)

So now the big question remains ... who's going to be the wonderful person who'll buy me this special surprise gift for my birthday??

Muppet Question # 1 Answered

Here's a comment timt left on my very first post:


TimT said...

Kermit and Miss Piggy got married, right?

Well, were there any legal or constitutional issues they had to work through in order to have their cross-species relationship recognised?


The answer, of course, is complicated. I say that partially to try and explain the fact that it has taken me a full 23 days to come up with an answer (I have been on holidays, bedridden with a terrible illness, and - of course - busy researching the topic in that time), and partially because it makes me sound so-much-more learned than the rest of you.

This is all bunk, however, as before we establish an answer to this question, we must first investigate the question itself properly.




The truth is, Kermit and Miss Piggy were never lovey-dovey on The Muppet Show. Miss Piggy was always infatuated with Kermit, and showed a massive amount of anger and jealousy if he ever got close to one of the female guest stars (or they to him). But for the entire run of the show, they were not an item - not by any stretch of the imagination.

However, in the Muppet movies, Kermit began to return Miss Piggy's affections (purely for the sake of providing the films with a nice, convenient, romantic subplot, it could be argued), and to this end, Kermit (unwittingly) married Piggy in The Muppets Take Manhattan.

That being said, subsequent events suggest that it was only their characters in the movie that married, and that their relationship is really the same as it ever was.

In both Muppets From Space and It's A Very Merry Muppet Christmas, where the Muppets arguably play 'themselves' (as opposed to the classic characters they play in A Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island, and the more recent Muppet Wizard Of Oz), it is clear that Kermit and Miss Piggy are not married and do not consider themselves to be spoken for.

I don't know if they got divorced, are happily separated, or if their marriage was some kind of scam played on the movie-going public of the 80s, but it's probably a good thing they didn't stay together and procreate. If they had, this would have been the unfortunate result:

A face not even a mother could love. Especially not Miss Piggy.

Which brings us back, with a creepy shudder up the spine, to timt's original question. I guess the point I want to make here is that in light of the above examination of the supposed 'fact' that Kermit and Miss Piggy married, it is in fact evident that they never did. Or perhaps they ran into the very troubles you were asking about in your question, timt.

Although it is true that anything goes, especially in America, it is perhaps pertinent to note that Kermit & Miss Piggy's wedding vows were originally made during the Reagan presidency.

Actually, I don't see the relevance of that at all ...

The point is, it is highly possible that after filming the scene where Kermit happily gave up fighting Miss Piggy's affections and married her, the pair was taken before the courts because of their unconstitutional inter-species marriage.

Bear in mind that this was years before gay marriages were permitted in the Proud state of Massachusetts, so a frog and a pig tying the knot would surely have been frowned upon, at the very least.

In fact, it is my opinion that Kermit only gave in and married Piggy because he knew the marriage bond would be broken by a court of law afterwards. It was a sure way to shut Miss Piggy up!

It's probably all for the best, anyway. If they were married, there would have been endless arguments about which of them was going to leapfrog ahead in their professional career so they could bring home the bacon.

*cue karate chop from Miss Piggy for such an obvious pun*

Welcome back!

Hi-ho,

That break took longer than expected, but I see no one was too concerned. Good on you.

I will finish my long-overdue response to timt's burning question tomorrow and post it for all to see.*

In the meantime, I had a great time in Sydney with Wifey, although I've been suffering from two pretty severe colds in the past month. Just as I got over one, the second one hit me. I wish I'd taken out shares in a tissue company.

I will endeavour to drag myself out of the depths of despair to soldier on, however.

More tomorrow.

* See the comments to my first post, below.