the party went on and on…during dinner, i gave a root beer toast.  here’s the story:

on the evening of Friday October 9th, 1959, mom and dad got married in Brooklyn.  They met at the University of Illinois; both were painting majors.  After graduating in May, they moved to NY in September and married in October.  The only person they knew in New York was out of town when they got married, so there was no one to stand up for them.  The nurse at the doctor’s office where they had gotten their blood tests that day stood up for mom, and the super in their apartment building stood up for dad.

Afterwards, their apartment landlords fixed them an Italian dinner.  No wedding cake, but a lovely meal accompanied by root beer – apparently they thought mom and dad looked too young to drink.

So i told this story and we had a root beer toast.  the toast was my friend Sandy Bellatti’s idea; she is full of great ideas.

Here’s me, blah blah blah.

and here’s some of the people root beer-toasting.

after the toast, somebody presented dad with a stick of butter.  he’s always up for a photo op.  later in the night, our friend margaret told a story of dad stealing her butter at a Muni banquet many years ago.  dad has always been known for his great love of butter.

i don’t know who captured this photo of kevin and jim taking bites at the very same time, but i really like it.  none of us sat down in ate; we were to busy continuing to rush around.

after dinner everybody walked next door to our house for dessert and entertainment.  i like this photo of the risemans and sandy marching along; they look very serious  about it, as Paul and Wanda cling to each other, determined to keep going.

mom and dad were among the last to leave amy and jim’s house, i guess.  i like it that mom is carrying a present and a bunch of cards, as though somebody might steal them.  no, of course that’s not it, she just wanted that stuff and she didn’t want it go get out of her sight.

over at our house, i had supplied randy with lots of gold stuff and he had gone to town, putting it all together.

the giant fan is something that dad left in the basement.  the glamour shots were from when they were in Muni plays.

the picture cake is from Sam’s, and it was quite delicious and i wish i had a piece right now.  those are two cute photos of mom and dad when they were little; i think i’m going to add some of those pictures to the slideshow here on the site.  it took me almost forever to remember how to upload a video, but when trying to figure it out i saw all the slideshow stuff and i certainly need to add to that.

sandy bellatti’s other suggestion was that i make a cake in the shape of a wedding cake.  i had planned on making a carrot cake, so i decided this would be a good idea.  on saturday morning when i was assembling the cake and thinking about how much easier it would have been to slap some frosting on a regular pan of carrot cake, i was thinking dark thoughts about sandy and her suggestions.  but of course it was a GREAT idea and it all got done.

before the dessert, we showed sandy’s video, “Instilation.”  i got some stills from the video.  This is Jim, Amy and sandy, and a very pissed off cat, Cougat.  this is the first sequence in the video, and if you watch it, notice that the cats keep changing – first it’s Cougat, then it’s Ellie, their black cat, and they switch a couple more times.

i love this shot of my usually beautiful sister.  on top of her head is a snood she has for their dog Numie.

when we weren’t in the video, we were doing something else.  kevin had to lie on the floor and run the teleprompter for this shoot, while i did the videotaping.

kevin, randy and i were in the next sequence.  Sandy shot it and David did the telemprompter.  i’m thinking of wearing this outfit for Halloween because it’s already assembled.

in the last segment, David is supposed to be a folk art painter whose dogs actually do the artwork.  this was our favorite part of the video, except dad and mom thought that amy, jim and sandy were the funniest.  What is really funny is that mom didn’t even recognize david here until he did this crazy high laugh…and dad NEVER recognized him at all!  the rest of us used accents and crazy wigs, but david was talking in his own voice and the only different thing he wore was that big beard that was falling off him so you could see his face.  plus he wore this costume last halloween.  so i’m not sure why dad didn’t recognize him.

i wish we’d taken photos of this, because this video frame is awfully grainy.  we were in a big hurry to shoot the whole thing all the time, though, because we were always afraid that mom would show up and ruin the surprise.

and here’s sandy, who appears at the end.  i drew a moustache and goatee on her and she looked hysterical.  Sandy did tons of work for this video; she wrote and directed it, and she created all the bad art we used in the beginning, and actually she had also done all this folk art of our pets and given them to us for christmas.  it was all her vision and we weren’t sure how it would go over, but the audience laughed a lot.

afterwards, sandy had another brilliant idea – we wrapped one of the piece of bad art in fancy gold paper with a big bow and presented it to mom and dad.  The next morning before going back to Chicago, Sandy signed it for them.  A true collector’s item.

a good time was had by all.

and now i’m trying to think about the halloween party which is in a week and a half, but it’s a little bit hard trying to get motivated by another party.  this one can’t possibly be as much work, at least…

ok then,

wednesday grace.