These Are "Top Tens"...Until I come up with a better title...

"So my good friend SamWow (@therealSamWow and at this site) and I (@tiwytk and at this site) had a brilliant, booze fueled idea this past weekend. It started with a comment about people who have dry weddings hating all their friends and quickly evolved into a 10 things you need to know to have a good wedding. We hope to have quite a few of these 10 things posts so hopefully you'll enjoy reading them as much as we enjoyed writing them. If you don't then take a few moments to pretend I'm deeply hurt by your lack of approval and then continue on with your day. Love ya, mean it.  Really, we do.

1. Don't have a dry wedding. Chances are you're friends won't like you very much because lets be real, people don't really want to think about how happy other people are while sober.

2. Don't plan your wedding on the same day as a major sporting event. It's just rude. (Note: the only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, OR NFL) are the days before and the day after the Major League All star Game.)

3. Make sure there's hotties invited for your single friends. Just because you're getting married doesn't mean you're both done being a good wingman/wing woman.

4. Dance floor. Everyone should see G-Swizzle and SamWow do the "Shamlbin".

5. No reception line. I've always found this to be awkward. You're not a celebrity and you're family members probably aren't either. So lets just skip this and move on to the food and drinks!

6. Don't invite exes (Ted and Stella wedding episode anyone?). If you're that committed to making your ex to see how much better off you are without them, maybe you shouldn't be getting married.  We're looking at you, Eileen.

7. Food. Have lots of it. Simple as that.  And make sure there's finger food so people don't starve while waiting for the main courses, that communion wafer at mass doesn't fill anyone up.


8. For the brides, spare us the bridezilla behavior. Contrary to pop cultures misguiding TV shows, planning a wedding does not suddenly give you the right to crap on the people around you whenever you have a mood.


9. For the grooms, pick your battles during the planning. That's all I'm gonna say.


10. You know that frat brother/sorority sister that always got really drunk in college and was a huge sloppy mess that you think will be a good time? Just don't. I gaurantee they won't be as much fun as you remember."

Friend's Who "Love" Me...Or Don't...

I know this my come as a whopping surprise to many of you, but I have friends. I know right? Crazy stuff right there. Well, maybe they're not friends, but they're people who tolerate me and invite me places so that counts right?

I'm just kidding, I have friends. Most of them from Anne Arundel County and I have absolutely no idea how that happened, but somehow it did and I still haven't been invited to their country clubs, private jets, or Gatsby-esqe parties. What the hell "friends"? What the hell.

But yeah, I like to write (hence this crappy blog) and on occasion I'll write my friends letters or emails just cuz I'm bored or I'll make them crappy collages of crayon-drawn pictures of us doing stuff. Really crappy looking. Terrible, the better gift would have been the empty frame.

All that self hatred aside, on occasion, my friends will write/email/make something for me in return. I'm gonna show one of my personal favorites from my best friend on the face of this Earth, Kelly. Enjoy it, God knows I do every time I read it.

By the way, she's a freak. That's why it's so weird. Just kidding.

---------------
Dear {Top Secret Nickname},
I just wanted to say thank you for a few things, so I thought I should express my gratitude by putting it down on paper so you can remember it forever .
First, I just want to thank you for being awesome.
A- almost as awesome as watching paint dry while sitting on a seat covered with shards of glass when it's raining outside, and then a monkey comes along and pokes you in the eye with a sharp stick. And then you fall on the shards of glass and have to get 165 stitches, and years later find out that you have lead poisoning from the pain n the wall. And that tick gave you lyme disease.
W- would you please shower every once in awhile? It's getting kinda gross.
E- exceptionally nonchalant about showering.
S- smelly, and not in a good way (probably has to do with all that not-showering).
O- offends 4 out of my 5 senses; just sometimes you smell so bad I can feel it.
M- mentally exhausting to be around (especially when you don't shower).
E- emotional like a tween who hasn't had a shower in a week.
Second, I'd like to thank you for being awesome:
A- awful, just awful.
W- way you make me want to vomit.
E- extremely large head.
S- softball player.
O- optical illusion, you are not.
M- my dreamboat, NOT!
E- exceptionally clean (seriously, who takes that many showers?).
Third, dayum son. Thank you for being so ridiculously good looking:
H- homey, you so fine.
A- all the ladies frock to your crock...pot that is. We hear you're a good cook.
S- snookums, can I get your number?
W- wow, check out them sweet cheeks.
A- are those real?
R- Ripped to the core.
T- twinkle toes, just like the twinkle in your eyes.
S- save some sugar for me.

And now for the last, but certainly not least, reason I want to thank you. Thanks for speaking without a lisp:
N- nothrils on your nothe (nostrils on your nose).
O- only Thamothy/ThamWow I know (Only Samothy/SamWow I know).
L- livths in a houth (lives in a house).
I- ith thooo thmart (is sooo smart).
T- things thongs (sings songs).
H- hath to wear glathes (has to wear glasses).
P- pethky prithoners with pethts prante on punpkinthhh.
Well, there you have it. Thanks again.

---------------

Well, that's what she wrote me. Sounds like a hater but that's the relationship we have, we just rag on each other all in good fun.

If you're wondering how this came about, I joked with her about writing me a letter about "How awesome I am, how awesome I am, and how good looking I am." and she added the stuff about the lisp.

Guest Post.

Ok guys, so this is my first ever "Celebrity Guest Post" and in case you're wondering all that really means is that one of my friends was bored enough to write a post. The inagural guest post was written by world famous movie producer Dave. I'd love to explain more about Dave but words aren't coming to me. Dude's my best friend and through him I've met some awesome people that I hope to have around for the rest of my life. Anyways, let's get into the post.

"Guest Post: Abandonment

It's hard for me to find words that are meaningful to me. It's damn near impossible for me to find words that are beautiful. However, by chance I found a few sentences that had both, and while you may disagree, the words I read were as follows:

"People come and people go. Some people stay for a while. Most people don't."

I recently had a conversation with my friend Matt who has been one of my best friends my entire life. We went to kindergarten together, played soccer together, adventured together, lived, loved, and laughed together. We know just about everything about eachother, yet despite what he told me something has been weighing heavy on my mind ever since. "We've got to do something this summer dude, a road trip or something, because pretty soon we'll have wives and kids and see each other only a few times a year."

When he said this, it stung a little but I couldn't be upset at him; I knew that he was right. We're all getting older every day and though day to day things don't change rapidly, the truth is people come and people go. Friendships all have an experation date. Even love is fleeting, and while I am saying this as a single man with no kids, I can tell you with experience that even families grow apart. Eventually kids move out and parents move on. It's hard to swallow, and in the end it doesn't matter if you agree or not because sooner or later you'll see it for yourself.

This thought can be a dark one, and if left unchecked it can have a real negative effect. Losing friends hurts, and I know people who say it's better to have loved and lost then to have never had a cliche preached to you so you can tune it out, but we are a species that remembers pain more than pleasure. I challenge you to think about an old lover without feeling a little bit of sadness of pain. Even if your on good terms and you can force yourself to remember the good times, it comes with a bit of sadness when you realize it's over. And if you aren't on good terms, you probably hate them for how things ended. If you can remember that without feeling anything then you're either very strong or cery cold. It's how we're built, we remember pain.

So why try for any friendships? Well, I'm a romantic and an optimist (if only in my own mind) and glaringly naive but before I discredit myself entirely, I'd like to share the beauty I found in the quote that started this. Yes people come and people go. And yes, more people are transient in you life, and yes, no one is permanent.

Except, of course, for you.

You will be stuck in your own head your entire life. So help you God, no one will ever understand what goes on up there, at least not entirely. No one will walk in your shoes or see the world through your eyes. And in the end, you're going to spend alot of time with yourself. Given that, you might as well make life as enjoyable as possible.

Personally, I get a lot of enjoyment out of talking about zombie apocalypses with Wes and talking about how viruses encode themselves into our DNA with Mike. I like going for walks with Sam in the woods and letting James talk me into asking a girl to dance (and having Katherine convince me the girl was a lesbian after she refused to dance with me). I like making up games with Kelly (The This That!) and I like bowling with Leah (even if she did it knowing Mike was going to get pissed). I promise you I'll enjoy that road trip with Matt. Even if it will make me sad to see it end. I know that all of my friends now will one day move on with husbands, wives, and families. I know we'll lose touch, but one day I'll be on my death bed and I'll be able to look back and remember the good times and the hard times. And even though many people will have come and gone, I'll at least be glad that I got to know them and share a little precious time together with them. And that's the beauty of it.

Bonanno out."

There we go, end of my first guest post. I can't really think of anything else to say to close this out but I love the post Dave wrote for me and I have wanted to write a similar post. Hopefully this will make other people want to guest blog for me (you can write about anything at all) and Kelly, Friend to the Stars, is writing the next one.