Do what you like, but I refuse to believe that everything in The New York Times is worse than five tablespoons of castor oil, canned peas or getting a cavity filled without Novocain. The “news” and “Guest Opinion” sections are always irksome at best, although, and it’s hard to believe, they’re a tick above the insult known as The Athletic. I skip the recipes, puzzles and podcasts, but man, when Philip Galanes (a 63-year-old who’s contributed to the Times since the mid-1980s) has a new advice column in the Sunday “Styles” section, I’m already cued up for a laugh. Straight talk! Tough love! It’s all there.
Galanes didn’t spare the rod on Sept. 16th with his lead item, “How Could My Friend of 40 Years Not Invite Me to Her Son’s Wedding?” The gist: a lonely-hearts club sergeant-at-arms from an undisclosed location—her idiocy isn’t limited to Brooklyn, my bet is Martha’s Vineyard or Sag Harbor—complained that a “close” (who knows the reality) friend of 40 years snubbed her on the occasion of her son’s wedding. The groom’s mother explained the wedding was small, that even her step-children were excluded, and told the friend she was overreacting, “even after I started to cry!” The aggrieved poured it on thick at the end, saying she was alone and wondered why “family always takes precedence over friends.”
Galanes starts his response with a lime gumdrop, saying, “Feeling excluded can hurt,” but then lowers the boom. Reading between the lines, he thinks she’s a needy nut, and is right on the edge of saying so. Galanes, who’d win a hug from Dear Abby, writes: “I do not believe it serves you to say that you have no family and leave it at that, expecting others to accommodate you. Most of us have faced difficulties… Explore affinity groups, therapies and chosen families. I know that your feelings are hurt, but only you can remedy that.”
Translated: get thee to a funny farm! Since this appeared in the Times, and giving the benefit of the doubt to Galanes that he didn’t make this doozy up, I’d guess the offended correspondent is seven time zones from indigent, just a sad-sack looking for attention, and maybe she’ll follow the admonition to seek the $400/hr. help of a shrink.
Weddings are tricky, although I haven’t until now thought about it too much. At my own, in 1992, we invited around 60 people—family and friends from all over the country—had a five-minute ceremony presided over by a lesbian priest (still can’t figure that one out, but she was pleasant if severe), glasses of champagne and then a party at the now-closed Mexican restaurant El Teddy’s, a block away from our Tribeca co-op. (By happenstance, my wife was “with child,” so our son Nicky says to this day that he was an honored guest, although my one-year-old nephew Rhys, smartly dressed in a sailor suit, took home the fashion honors.)
The first wedding I attended, aside from those of my two oldest brothers in 1965 and ’67, was a hippie free-for-all in Huntington, New York in 1970. It was casual, and all were invited per a mimeo sheet on the bulletin board at Kropotkin Records—right next to the “shit list,” which included deadbeats who’d exhausted their credit at the store—and two buddies and I attended. We knew the couple in just the vaguest way, and even though the ceremony was at a New York Ave. church—that struck me as weird—there was no dress code, and, as you’d expect, the very fetching bride looked lovely with flowers in her long blonde hair that fell to her tie-dyed blouse. The groom wore jeans, a denim shirt, but no shoes.
Afterwards, the 50 or so people on this Saturday afternoon walked to Hecksher Park, listened to music from a primitive boom box, passed around jug wine and sloppily-rolled joints. I hope the couple is still together, like the guy and gal on the cover of the Woodstock album (that commonly-seen then/now photo popular on social media which might or might not be apocryphal) and have lived a spiritually-rich—that’s for the folks!—life together. I’ll never know, so that’s a minor wish-upon-a-star sentiment from this old softie.
The accompanying photo is from the wedding reception in Ruxton, Maryland of my friends Phyllis Orrick (a colleague at Baltimore’s City Paper and then New York Press) and Jamie Day. Pictured are Granville Greene (a ribald and enterprising CP intern) and art director Michael Gentile. It was a swell party, but, unfortunately didn’t include a croquet match, which was a regular spring/summer/fall pastime at the Ruxton manse.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Pee Wee Reese elected to MLB’s Hall of Fame; the Yankees Ron Guidry wins the Roberto Clemente Humanitarian award; the Expos’ Tim Raines led the Majors in stolen bases (75); the L.A. Dodgers were first in attendance, the Cleveland Indians last; The Karate Kid is released; Vanessa Williams resigns as Miss America; The Pretenders’ Learning to Crawl is released; “We begin bombing in five minutes”; Joshua Safdie is born and William Powell dies; Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities begins serialization in Rolling Stone; Gore Vidal’s Lincoln and Joan Didion’s Democracy are published; and David Mamet wins the Drama Pulitzer.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023