Arc de Triomphe
Jun. 11th, 2006 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porphyryI attended a wedding yesterday for one of my wife’s co-workers—refreshingly one of the few men I have seen that is less attractive than me (yet he had the temerity to have read out the passage from Canticles which among much else described the beloved as a young gazelle—he did not prove so on the dance floor!).
It was held in what must have been at one time a small farming hamlet but is now on the most extreme edge of the commuter communities of St. Louis. In the interval between the wedding and the reception we went to a bar there and had the stuffed mushrooms. They were covered with the most delicious combination of melted cheeses I have ever eaten. The cellar did not equal the kitchen however. The best brandy they had was VS; no port. I contented myself with Makers Mark—far worse than I would have imagined. For once I would have been better off following my wife’s example and randomly ordering a wine I know nothing about—her pinot grigio was quite good.
The wedding and reception were both held in some little hall that occupied part of an old factory. Another part was held by an unbelievably low church-the Church of the Living Waters—bringing Him to the world (a slogan they imagined to be encapsulated in the formula H2O).
The hall was called Alexander’s. In reference to this they had commissioned some ‘artist’ to make a tribute to Alexandrus ille magnus. What he made was a plywood model of the Arc de Triomphe, rendered as a pilaster against the wall supporting the staircase. The two exposed plaques he treated at honorary sculpture to Alexander—vague impressions of battle scenes, the left one presided over by Athena (seemingly forgetting that Zeus was Alex’s patron). The bas relief figures were simulated by the expedient of fixing children’s action figures in war-like poses and dressing them in the artist’s impression of chitones. I noticed that one of them was wearing a helmet that marked him as a member of C.O.B.R.A., the arch enemy of G. I. Joe. I suppose Athena to have been Barbie. The whole had been covered in some kind of thick grey paint-like substance to provoke the illusion of marble. But it had flaked away in some places, revealing the flesh-coloured plastic noses.
It was held in what must have been at one time a small farming hamlet but is now on the most extreme edge of the commuter communities of St. Louis. In the interval between the wedding and the reception we went to a bar there and had the stuffed mushrooms. They were covered with the most delicious combination of melted cheeses I have ever eaten. The cellar did not equal the kitchen however. The best brandy they had was VS; no port. I contented myself with Makers Mark—far worse than I would have imagined. For once I would have been better off following my wife’s example and randomly ordering a wine I know nothing about—her pinot grigio was quite good.
The wedding and reception were both held in some little hall that occupied part of an old factory. Another part was held by an unbelievably low church-the Church of the Living Waters—bringing Him to the world (a slogan they imagined to be encapsulated in the formula H2O).
The hall was called Alexander’s. In reference to this they had commissioned some ‘artist’ to make a tribute to Alexandrus ille magnus. What he made was a plywood model of the Arc de Triomphe, rendered as a pilaster against the wall supporting the staircase. The two exposed plaques he treated at honorary sculpture to Alexander—vague impressions of battle scenes, the left one presided over by Athena (seemingly forgetting that Zeus was Alex’s patron). The bas relief figures were simulated by the expedient of fixing children’s action figures in war-like poses and dressing them in the artist’s impression of chitones. I noticed that one of them was wearing a helmet that marked him as a member of C.O.B.R.A., the arch enemy of G. I. Joe. I suppose Athena to have been Barbie. The whole had been covered in some kind of thick grey paint-like substance to provoke the illusion of marble. But it had flaked away in some places, revealing the flesh-coloured plastic noses.
