You know, when I did it, I thought the fortune cookie thing would come off as cute.
"Don't bother saving it, honey-- I had to buy a gross of 'em."
What I want to know is how that fat bastard (see picture) was ever in a position to juggle women. And she hit on him? What kind of crazy must she be?
So much of that is just being willing to break the ice and keep talking. In my experience, that, more than anything else, determines who "gets the girl" and who doesn't.
just being willing to break the ice and keep talking
True, but dependent on what is said.
And given what this freakshow was saying ... ummm?
What's the secret to that? How do you bring out and highlight the worst in people while looking like you're congratulating them? It's a real neat trick, and I'd like to learn it.
I wonder if they had any of these at the wedding?
Re: #6: That's exactly what I was thinking. Are the Vows writers in on Veiled Conceit's joke? Or is what we read actually the best the writers have to work with for these people?
Yup, wondered the same thing here. I'm sure they read it, and I'm sure they can't help but think about how what they write is going to play.
Maybe I'm just jealous and bitter that I can't for a day carry off the level of irreverence, spontaneity, hipness, correctness, creativity, etc. that the Vows' couples live on a daily basis.
Part of me would like to believe that I live in a world where even the authors of articles like this hold their subjects in contempt. The rest of me thinks that's not a terribly flattering sentiment.
Can someone explain to me what's so horrible about this thing? I mean, I find these wedding announcements kind of creepy in general but why is this guy such an "incredible tool"? (Kind of weird, sure, but why's that such a bad thing?)
Was anyone else creeped out by how his opening line was (loosely translated), "Well, I'm not wanting to marry my secretary. You'll do. Interested?"
Speaking only for myself, and granting that we only get a view of him as presented in a very short article, he's a tool because:
took her to a memorial service for a legal scholar he respected that turned into a discussion on constitutional law
Inconsiderate and self-centered.
He followed that, Ms. Parker recalled, with a tour of San Francisco "in a car with a gazillion miles and duct tape holding closed the glove compartment door while playing one song over and over on the CD
Inconsiderate and self-centered.
He talked about a mentor who said if you don't meet your wife in law school, you are doomed to marry a secretary
God forbid you marry a secretary. And what Cala said.
"She's thoughtful, humble, has good values,"
Marrying someone because they "have good values" strikes me as picking an acceptable specimen--old world, not a sin, but I don't like it. Also, "humble" is kind of a strange thing to mention, isn't it?
"I plan to have Gwen open another fortune cookie every anniversary, "
Controlling, self-centered.
I'm sure there are charitable ways to explain all those, but...
overall interpretation is valid, I think, but:
"a tour of San Francisco in a car with a gazillion miles and duct tape holding closed the glove compartment door while playing one song over and over on the CD"
is respectable, no? Since he had to listen to the same song as well, ignoring his discomfort by taking pleasure in hers? Schadenfreude is cool, no?
Schadenfreude is cool, no?
Dude, not until the third or fourth date at the latest. Second, maybe, if you met the person at the Mineshaft.
What Ogged said. I found her initial email charming, and he responds by taking her to a memorial service.
Further info here.
Huh, you can be a John M. Olin fellow and still work for Bill Bradley. All what you guys are saying, but I approve of taking the Olins' money and then going off and being a liberal.
As Cala and ogged both pointed out, the "if you don't meet your wife in law school, you are doomed to marry a secretary" line just totally, totally pisses me off.
Maybe it is because I come from rather humble beginnings, and maybe it is because I have seen first hand "there but for the grace of God go I" tragedies.
That simple, plain, thrown away line speaks volumes about sexism and classism and plain old snobbery, and it really pushes my hot button!
I'd love to stand in front of this guy and ask him just who the hell he thinks he is.
I'd love to stand in front of you and push your hot button, Tripp.
This sort of thing is why everyone hates lawyers, isn't it.
The 'doomed to marry a secretary' is an awful thing to say. There is something real underlying it, in that single big-firm lawyers are pretty screwed -- it's very difficult to meet people and date on a big-firm schedule. I actually can't think of any single male lawyers I know well enough to sympathize with this about (everyone I can think of offhand is married), but for single women lawyers, who I do know several of, they have a hell of a time meeting anyone.
If I hadn't gone into law-school already dating Mr. Breath, I'd be telling stories about my multiple cats now.
And I have no idea why I hyphenated law school in that last comment.
it has a nice mideval-English feel to it- like you're the first one to come up with the idea.
Yeah, this is where I rip off the latex mask and reveal that I'm really T. Herman Zweibel, publisher emeritus of The Onion.
I wish they still ran his column.
Seems this dude isn't working at a big firm anyway.
Did you say that in response to me, LB? If not, it's synchronicity.
What, you're really T. Herman Zweibel?
that column was great, except for the tin-man archnemesis.
ben,
I'd love to stand in front of you and push your hot button, Tripp.
Ha. Well, if that did it for me that would do it for me.
Unfortunately I have to pretend to be all sensitive and stuff in a pathetic attempt to get attention from the babes. Such is my lot in life.
Sniffle sniffle (peek at babes).
What Ogged said. I found her initial email charming, and he responds by taking her to a memorial service.
So what? He didn't kidnap her, for Christ's sake. He asked and she accepted and she obviously didn't mind too much since instead of kicking his ass to the curb, she spent a while talking with him about constitutional law afterwards and then, you know, married him. Who cares whether you found her email charming or didn't find his response charming? They obviously find each other charming and that's what matters.
So he's odd, big deal. There's nothing wrong with that and since she seems to like it, what's the problem? As far as I can tell, the main complaint here is that he isn't doing things the way you would do them. That doesn't make him a bad person. It makes you all small-minded and judgmental.
The secretary thing certainly sounds pretty bad, but I think Lizardbreath has it right: all that's really being said there is "Once you leave school, it's much harder to meet people (besides your secretary)." That is both true and not a bash on secretaries. Yes, there's probably a little bit of that there but, frankly, the ghoulish glee with which you all are extrapolating the hell out of a few anecdotes in order to piss on someone else's wedding seems far worse. I suppose this means that none of you should ever get married either.
Well, honestly now, bitching about other people even getting laid, let alone married, is pretty much what we're about. I don't even want nice, good-looking people to get any love, nevermind guys whose defenders are compelled to say things like "he didn't kidnap her."
The larger point, of course, is that if you put your wedding announcement in the Times, people are going to make fun of you, and you'll deserve it.
Remember that it's part of the game we're playing that my opinion has no practical relevance. My belief that Eugene Mazo is a tool does not interfere with his marriage; it's not like the happy couple needs my approval. It may cause him some discomfort to learn that I think he's a tool, but that's the price of sending a wedding announcement to the NYT, isn't it?
Wait, he didn't kidnap her? My bad. I thought this was a kidnapping. I take it all back.
It makes you all small-minded and judgmental.
This is news? Small-minded and judgmental is what I come here for.
It just disturbingly reminded me of the guys during undergrad who would do stupid things like propose to their girlfriends of three weeks at the end of senior year because they were terrified they'd never meet someone after college EVER. AGAIN.
And that seems like a strange opening move.
Sorry, folks, I took this rather personally because virtually everyone I know is a bit eccentric (to put it mildly) and yet - miracle of miracles - despite this they manage to be wonderful people who don't deserve to have nasty things said about them (even by people of "no practical relevance"). Not on an average day, and certainly not on their wedding days (some of which are coming up soon).
But, yes, you want to revel in your small-mindedness while I happen to think that people should be treated with kindness and respect. Obviously there's no meeting ground here so I won't waste anymore of your time (or, more importantly, my own).
Well, that was a carefully missed point. But we won't abide eccentrics for any price.
Eugene Mazo doesn't seem that bad. Gwen Parker looks so happy in the Times photo. Plus, she has the same name Gwen Stacy would have had if she had married Spiderman.
I don't really care about any of this. Someone sent me your blog entry (I haven't been here in a while) and I was totally confused. I was baffled by Veiled Conceit blog and I couldn't even figure out who the "tool" was--was it Veiled Conceit? Was it the Zach Stone who's the best man? Was it the writer? But the writer would appear to be female. Finally I read the comments and I realized that the "Tool" was the groom. So yeah, I'll just put that out there as evidence that independant of any argumentative desire, I (a fairly selective red blooded feminist gal who doesn't like real putdowns on secretaries) saw no toolishness at all.
The larger point, of course, is that if you put your wedding announcement in the Times, people are going to make fun of you, and you'll deserve it.
Well, FL is right. This doesn't matter. I'm sure Mr. Mazo ocould give a damn what any of you think, and good for him. And I realize most people read unfogged for gleeful snark and sarcastic wit and barbed tongues. You are not high on my list of earnest, kind-hearted blogs, and I know you don't care to be, nor should you try to be. I think anon realizes this too. But I'm sincerely curious---do you (you being addressed to both ogged and the regular commenters) care at all about the effect this habit of reflexively making fun of people in the most barbed way possible will have on you and your spirits in the long term? I'd just honestly like to know.
It occurs to me that some people get their weddings sent into the times by friends and family. Maybe these two grudgingly went along with a parent or advisor's desire, too happy and stressed to think about how they're going to get made fun of for it in the most unkind ways.
It makes you all small-minded and judgmental.
It's nice to see someone say this in a big-hearted, non-judgmental way.
this habit of reflexively making fun of people in the most barbed way possible
Please. In fact, there's almost none of that here. We make fun of conservatives, and occasionally we make fun of people like Mazo, but usually, we're making fun of ourselves and each other. Just take a look at the front page, or any page from the archives and count the number of posts "making fun of people in the most barbed way possible."
Well, to do Saheli justice, she does have a point, in that being casually cruel isn't good for the people who are doing it. I don't think it's a terribly strong point in this case, because this isn't real cruelty and isn't meant as such -- the people being mocked almost certainly aren't reading it, and the Vows column is almost certainly far enough off-base about them that if they were reading here, they could shrug off the mockery as uninformed and not really applicable to them. No one's actually being hurt, and the commenters here aren't meaning to hurt anyone, so no real harm is being done. If I thought it were, I'd be agreeing with Saheli.
As it is, I knew guys just like that in law school. Complete tool.
That was cross-posted -- not a response to 41.
Look, I'm sorry if I made a somewhat measured assumption about your blog based on my obviously limited experiencs. I plead guilty. I don't have time to go through your archives in any empirically meaningful way. I'm really only looking at this b/c a friend of mine asked me to. So maybe you're right. But I do know this isn't the first time I've been sent here to look at something snitty. . .more like the fifth or sixth. Maybe you have a point about your general habit. I'll take your word for it. But the fact that you are calling someone a tool (a pretty stiff insult, one I would almost never use to someone's face) based on his bride's gushing quotes to a wedding reporter, well, I gotta wonder how easily tool rolls off your tongue or keyboard. Your declaration that people deserve to be made fun of in public (a blog is in public) on the not-solid-assumption that they themselves sent their wedding in also gives me pause. That was the real basis of my question. If you think you're not very into mean-mockery, well, bully for you. It only really matters what you think anyway. So, if you think that's an acceptable frequency of meanness, then that's what you think, an you don't have a reflexive habit to reflect upon. So my question no longer stands. We usually don't think we do. It's always a surprise to me when someone catches me being unkind, or says they have. Sometimes I try to bite the bullet and reform, sometimes I think they're full of crap, and sometimes while I agree with them in my heart of hearts, I maintain my bluster b/c I don't want to look foolish.
It's just that there are plenty of ways to make fun of them in a kind, amusing manner. Wow, what law geeks! They'd probably blush and take that as a compliment, and their friends would laugh. Duct tape? etc. etc. etc. As soon as you called him a "tool," it seems to me that you made it clear you had no interest in being kind. You can say that doesn't matter because he will never know, and I address that below. But the heart of my question still stands: why no interest in being kind? What has he done to you or anyone else? The secretary line is ambiguos at best, and the only other person he has done anything to as far as we can see is his very much in love bride. I kind of feel like people who aren't hurting other people are generally deserving of kindness. So the heart of my question is, how do you feel about that proposition? Or do you still stake his undeserving of kindness completely on anonymity and your interpretation of his eccentricities and the circumstances of this article? These are honest questions. When we make fun of conservatives without kindness, I hope we make sure they're conservatives doing bad things and that we're making fun of them in a way that's not meant to be disproportionately cruel. I mean, I kind of see kindness as a big core of what it means to be liberal.
Actually the only reason I even bothered to comment is b/c I think it is quite possible the bride and groom or other members of the wedding party will see this. Why? Technorati. If I was Mr. Groom's or Ms. Bride's mother and I was as technologically adapt as my mother is (which is to say, ever increasingly so), sitting at home in the maternal honeymoon afterglow of a happy wedding, I would TOTALLY do a Technorati search on that NYT article. And I would, of course, find this. (And another blogpost where some guy assumes that the memorial service is the same as a funeral, and that "he respects" means "doesn't know" or "doesn't belong at memorial." Plus a comment from a high school classmate saying "he was weird." Great, we can't even escape high school snark in our thirties, thanks to the blogosphere. ) I can totally see plenty of about to be or just got married friends' parents doing exactly such a thing. In a few days a Google Link search may very well catch this blog as well. Mr. Mazo is not the one who would be hurt by these comments. People rarely care about things said about themselves. Its Ms. Parker and Mr. Mazo's other loved ones who might be upset by them. Mother Bears* might not be as coolly shrugging as LizardBreath suggests. It usually really hurts Moms and Dads to see their son called a tool, all other things being equal. Maybe they're total blog-illiteratres who woudn't dream of seeing if anyone was chatting about their kids or their husband. I sure hope so.
Really, I have no desire to pick a fight. It made someone I care about a little sad, so I looked into it. It's not a big deal. I'm sure you're all wonderful people. Every now and then when we are busy are having a lot of fun at someone else's expense, it's important to have a reality check. That reality check may come out negative, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea. The agent of that reality check is usually not seen as cool and witty, and there are very few ways to make such a reality check gracefully, but it's still necessary once in a while. Otherwise we can get carried away. We're just like that as a species. I'm sure Mazo and Parker are so happy right now they couldn't care. And yes, when I have read your blog on my own (as opposed to being sent to a specific entry) I find it quite interesting and amusing, and also beautifully designed. Though something about the font you use for comments is making it very hard for me to catch typos, so I apologize for them. I certainly don't mean to offend or hurt you in return. I now feel bad since you've provided this space and it sounds like I'm totally sussing you out. I'm just trying to reframe the discussion meaningfully rather than have it just be yet another fight of witty comments. I think, however, that this was a poorly chosen forum. Sorry to waste everyone's time and be so unamusing, and thanks for reading.
*I can't believe I've been reduced to applying the term Bears to the mothers of Stanfraud grads. I'm getting really carried away with this kindness thing.
Awww, fuck. Well, personally, I feel like a bit of shit now, especially since apparently he was a Bradley guy. I think LB (#42) is right; none of this is meant as meanness directed at the happy couple, just as a catalyst for the amusement of an embittered lot. We don't know the couple, only a couple of inches in the NYT. I would have assumed that neither Mazo or Parker would ever see this corner of the world. I do feel a bit guilty, because I don't know either, and to that extent I apologize for my part and wish them the best (b/c I assume one of the two has read this).
That said, such is my fidelity to the integral snarkiness of Unfogged that I propose the following: if there is some sort of unhappiness in the marriage, and this post and comments precipitate a divorce, and one of the co-bloggers manages a date with Ms. Parker, then ogged should re-title the blog "George" for at least a week.
If we cause a divorce, we should all pitch in and take George out for free drinks at the Mineshaft.
"Tool's not an insult here, baby."
calling someone a tool (a pretty stiff insult
Admit that this is funny, at least.
Is his name actually "George"? I was referring to the Seinfeld episode in which George breaks up a marriage by telling the woman, "You could have done better."
FL, why do you always have to be a hurter?
No, his name is Eugene, but who wants to take him to the Mineshaft? Let's find a guy named George. Jeff George, maybe. He could use a break.
While Jeff George has the cheesy 'stache for the Mineshaft, I vote we go with Deavan George. And given the money he's stealing in his contract, he can pay.
Speaking of Mineshaft-bound tools...
OMG. I can't believe I wrote that. My subconcious talking . . . Yes, FL, now that is hilarious.
I have to admit that I don't feel nearly as guilty as SCMT. What's the rule, no making fun of anyone? If you appear in the Times, you're fair game. If this were a substantive issue, I'd feel compelled to be fair, but it's not, so I'm going to have fun at his expense. He's an accomplished young man, doing good work, and I don't think this thread is going to push him over the edge. If he does read this, he can take it. If it bothers him, he's free to comment and give us the real story behind all the toolishness recounted in the piece.
Oh, and Saheli's been a good sport, and that's appreciated.
took her to a memorial service for a legal scholar he respected that turned into a discussion on constitutional law
Ogged says: Inconsiderate and self-centered.
Hmm, what if he's just good at the law and she found that, well, hot...
"she found that, well, hot..."
...and she couldn't help but stare at his decisis
Pronunciation here . Stare-ee di-sigh-sis, for those without audio.
Aww, geez. I'm not going to back down from my ire at the secretary comment. If George wants to explain it to me then I'll accept that, but not some lame second hand "maybe he was miscontrued" explanation.
Maybe this guy is just some poor victim who got used by a relative or somebody and the NY Times to boost their ratings but he is old enough to know better. I think an article in the Times deserves attention, and that means positive and negative. You can bet my marriage had plenty to amuse everyone, and you can also bet I kept the thing out of the newspaper. Well, everything except for the police reports that are public record and published as a matter of law even though I did my best to suppress those, too.
Huh, you can be a John M. Olin fellow and still work for Bill Bradley. All what you guys are saying, but I approve of taking the Olins' money and then going off and being a liberal.
Well, personally, I feel like a bit of shit now, especially since apparently he was a Bradley guy.
Leaving aside all of the larger moral issues, and returning to petty partisan politics -- this worries me a little. There's been a lot of conversation about how Democrats don't have the kind of recruitment and training institutions for college-age and entry-level political people that Republicans do, and this looks like a symptom of that. Is what happened here that Bradley wanted to hire people with a history of serious policy interest and engagement, and the people he could find were people who had been raised up in conservative institutions, because there aren't parallel liberal institutions?
If that's the case, I think that's a real problem, both because hard-core liberals will select themselves out of politics if the route in is through being an Olin fellow, and because you learn basic assumptions from the institutions you participate in. If conservatives get to train everyone who enters politics, then they have control of the conversation on a basic level.
But I thought there was no soft 'c' in latin. Goddammit.
FL: there isn't, but a long tradition of "modern" pronunciations of latin has grown up in the last few millenia, so whatevs. also, this guy is a fucking toolmeister of a tool, and I ain't having no back-talking about it. Tool. Meister. see secretary comment, et al., above.
This is why you originally wanted a BwO, right?
everything except for the police reports
So you guys getting along better now?
To fill you in on latin pronunciations, I mean.
To fill you in on latin pronunciations, I mean.
I thought that's why we had a b-wo.
My own response to Saheli would be more sociological, about the conspicuous consumption fests that weddings have become. That's why it's generally ok to make fun of people in the NY Times weddings pages, tools or no: Veblenesque critique.