Wading in the Velvet Sea

The only trouble came with a 5-mile detour to pick up my tuxedo. I'll just never get used to the logic of some of the roads here in Jersey: this whole "get in the right-hand lane when you want to take a left" is beyond the beyond. Jughandles should not exist unless they are part of Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas, damnit. (If you don't know who Emmet Otter is, I don't want to hear it; I feel old enough as it is these days. This kid knows how good Emett rocks it.) For those of you not acquainted with jughandles, I suggest never finding out. They are evil incarnate.

Essentially, someone in Jersey at some point in the past decided, "Know what? Rather than turning left when you want to go left, like all the cool kids are doing, let's create a roundabout off the right lane that takes you up to a quarter-mile out of your way and dump you off at essentially the same spot you would have had you been able to turn left in this first place? In no way does this not make sense. I only pray some commie heathen from Massachusetts doesn't complain about this in a blog at the outset of the 21st century." (OK, fine, YOU tell me how this inane idea got started.

So I'm on this 5-mile stretch, feeling like I've left America for some backwards, 3rd-world country, like Somalia, or worse, France. Nothing makes sense to me, though The Girl, as a Jersey-native, thinks that this is all perfectly normal. We go from Defcon 5 to Defcon 2 in roughly four blocks as reason rapidly leaves my world in favor of Tony Soprano's Rules of the F#cking Road. I can see the place I need to go for my tux, but I have NO CLUE how I'm supposed to get from Point A to Point B. It's on the other side of the road divider, but when it comes time to turn around, I encounter a circle, not a jug handle, so I don't know if I should get in the right-hand lane or the left, because what was once up is now down and I'm screaming and she's screaming back and oh Lord, make it stop.

Turns out, to get through, I had to be in the left-hand lane, but avoid the first left, which, while I could legally take, would leave me on a road that would prevent me from taking the second left necessary to complete my 180. Unreal. The second left, however, allowed me to essentially jughandle back, but I nearly ran the cleverly hidden red light at the end of this turn, and by this point, I'm fully prepared to attend my brother's wedding naked versus having to drive on this road anymore.

Luckily, it was only another 100 yards to the store after this point, so I resisted all urges to drive through the front store, "Blues Brothers"-style, and walk in to try on this tux. I give the employee, a large and in-charge guy, my name, and as he walks back to get my order, he says, "Ah, a Hibernian eh? Not many of us left, after, you know, the English killed most of us off!" I had less than no idea how to respond to this. I just prayed that he didn't walk out from the back carrying a green suit screaming, "This tux is not a rebel tux!"

So hopefully that's all the drama this weekend will provide. Tonight's the rehearsal dinner, tomorrow's the big day. The Girl has to wake up early to have her hair done; I myself will not need that long, I imagine. No more blog updates until Sunday's "Lost" podcast, unless my brother or fiancee bails mid-ceremony, in which case I'll be live-blogging the carnage in real-time.

Until then...