Friday night, my cousin had a graduation celebration in the East Bay. Saturday morning, another cousin was getting married in Santa Barbara. As we are both good relatives, as well as veterans of two-day Southern California road trips, my sister Kelly and I attended both events. At 5 AM on Saturday, I regretted the decision immensely.
My two cousins are from opposite sides of the family, which made the parallels in their celebrations a little bit spooky. The graduation and wedding receptions both had Hawaiian themes, though not a single particpant had any Polynesian heritage whatsoever. I witnessed two different hula dancing exhibitions in sixteen hours. One revolved around forcing the graduate to do embarrassing dances, while the other revolved around making the groom and his brothers do embarrassing dances. Grass skirts were less exciting than they should have been at both parties, destroying some of my Calicentric fantasies about what hula dancers are really like.
Both parties also used songs by surfer-troubadour Jack Johnson for key emotional moments (first dance, slide show of childhood photos). Both buffets featured roast pork. Both bars had rum drinks and a lot of pineapple juice. My sleep deprivation and driving fatigue made me paranoid that someone was fucking with me. Someone like Thomas Sullivan Magnum, IV.
Where the wedding set itself apart was with the chocolate fountain. It was absolutely magical. Melted, delicious chocolate, cascading in a waterfall of sugary goodness! Strawberries and marshmallows to dip in the fountain! Diabetics had to avert their eyes, their pancreata twitching in wonder.
I highly recommend a chocolate fountain for any special event, or even to sit in your home so you can look at it and dream. It's a solid, a liquid, and a dream, all at once, which a scientist would refer to as a "chocolloid".
But Sean, you might say. Doesn't a colloid have to be suspended in a medium? Look, there's nothing medium about a chocolate fountain. Those things are outright awesome. Any faux-Hawaiian will tell you the same.
