sushipanda

An interesting thing happened to me on the way to the forum…for the first time in my life, I could have used some Ex-Lax.

(If you couldn’t tell from that sentence that the ensuing entry might be a tad bit disgusting in a grade-schoolish way, you might want to skip this and go straight to amazon.com, or whatever else you were doing. But if you’re a sucker for reading about how I once again embarrassed the crap out of myself (literally), feel free to go on…)

Anyway, the whole Ex-Lax thing is more of a build-up to one fateful night this past month, the day of my first ever participation in a Chinese wedding. One of my favorite coworkers, Shirley, was getting married to her boyfriend of 3+ years. I was very excited for her, but also excited for myself. Not as much as I was a few weeks prior after I had learned that Chinese weddings don’t consist of drums and firecrackers and lots of red veils and stuff anymore. I was half expecting it to be an arranged marriage, whereby Shirley’s three year engagement would be to some dude that she had never met before. Alas, I learned that the whole ceremony was going to be much like it would have been in the States, with the bride in a flowing white gown and the groom in a dashing black tuxedo. Dude, there was even going to be a minister supervising the vow-exchange…and it was to be a white guy! One Chinese tradition that was going to remain intact, however, was the “Nao Dong Fang,” which literally translates to “Raucous Room.” After some inquiry, I learned that the “Nao Dong Fang” tradition is one where the bride and groom invite guests to their room on their wedding night, where the guests are supposed to give them a hard time by making them do silly things to each other. The newlyweds cannot reject any request, so it’s kind of like the Godfather, but without all the Italians and the shooting. With that seemingly being the only real Chinese element of the wedding, I was a tad disapointed. Still, weddings always hit me r-i-g-h-t h-e-r-e, and with my lubricated tear-ducts and uncooperative personal eject system in tow, I gleefully snapped pictures and chatted it up with the guests before the actual aisle-walk down.

Poor Shirley is blind as a bat, and with her decision to not wear glasses during the ceremony combined with the inevitable emotion of marrying someone she loves, I was half afraid that she would kiss the white minister by accident. We sang Chinese hymns (or Ashlee-Simpsoned them, in my case) and tried to hold back our own tears as Shirley was given away by her father, then led around blindly by her doting new husband. The follow-up banquet was nice, as I bonded with co-workers and practiced my one full sentence of Shanghai-nese (“Why does it smell so funny in here? Who farted?”). One of my co-workers (Derek), who always drives his car to these functions, had the foresight to park his vehicle at his girlfriend Audrey’s (another co-worker) nearby so that he could drink to his heart’s content. Big mistake…for me. This guy apparently drinks red wine like Gatorade, and before I knew it he was challenging me mano a mano. Predictably, I lost, and found myself wandering in the rain in the general direction of the “Nao Dong Fang” after the banquet with 3 boxes of Dove mini-chocolates under my arms. Thankfully, a team of co-workers drove by and picked my sorry ass up to take me to the magical room where mischief lay ahead.

Once I arrived in the “Nao Dong Fang,” I tried my best to keep my eyelids open for as long as possible, watching them play the first game “Groom does 20 push-ups on top of the Bridge” and the second game “Groom find 36 different spots on the Bride’s body to kiss.” Around this time, I found a fantastic balloon next to my head, and used it as a pillow. What genius! What comfort! The next thing I knew, my co-worker Sylvia was kicking me in the shoes, telling me to wake up, everyone was leaving. I stood up and rubbed my eyes, and was a bit aghast at two things: 1) the Bride and Groom were apparently naked under the covers (what did I miss?!) and more importantly, 2) I really had to go #2. Now!

Obviously, the last thing I would want on my wedding night is some cretin to overstay his welcome by unloading a horrendous souvenir in the adjoining porcelain receptacle in the bathroom of my newlywed suite. Thankfully, this was not MY wedding night, and after four days of ingesting horrible cafeteria spinach in an attempt to fiber up, I was not going to let this moment pass. I walked into the bathroom and, by the power of Greyskull was able to lighten my own mass by a not insignificant amount. WHEW! Time flies when you’re in your own personal bowel utopia, and as I closed my eyes and laughably attempted to sober up, I dismissed the screams outside of “ERIC! ERIC!” and the incessant vibrating of my cell phone. Nothing, not even the wondrous union between a man and a woman, was going to mess up THIS union of man and toilet.

After about ten minutes, I tidied myself up and opened the door with a gleeful smile on my face. The screaming stopped as everyone watched me as I marched out the door. They were already in the hallway, holding my jacket. I paused as I headed out the door. After taking so much attention away from the bride and groom on this oh so very special night, it wasn’t right of me to leave a souvenir like that without a classic signature to go with it. I whipped around, saluted, and yelled out “Congratulations Shirley!” in Chinese, then turned back around and left down the stairs. Mission accomplished! I had pooped many a party in the past, but never had I done it with a naked woman screaming my Chinese name and yelling at me to get out through the walls. What other “firsts” and surprises lie ahead!

I think a good satire has a soft spot for what it is satirizing. Christopher Guest, who helmed the wonderful “Waiting for Guffmann” and even better “Best in Show,” refused to call his work “mockumentaries,” which is the term by which his films were often referred. He believed that the term “mock” was an unfair description of satire, because he was not making fun of his subjects, but joining them and bringing their spirit to the screen. If the films themselves are funny, it is not because the subjects are worthy of ridicule, but it is because the subjects take themselves more seriously than the audience does.

“Election” is one of my favorite films of all time, because writer/director Alexander Payne creates a satire here that pokes fun, but in such an assuredly loving manner that the entire audience shares the same soft spot for the film’s characters. We laugh at them not because they represent broad caricatures or cartoonish representations of traditionally funny stereotypes, but because in almost all the scenes, they seem as real as can possibly be. The humor in this satire, like Guest’s films, stems from watching the subjects take themselves seriously, but we believe in the sincerity and genuine feeling with which they conduct their actions or speak their words. It is not an easy trick to pull off.

The film stars Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, the culmination of every ruthless, amibitious overachiever that all of us who ever attended a public high school remember. She is running unopposed for the position of president of her school’s student body because, in her mind and in the minds of the rest of her classmates, it is the next logical step in a high school career that has included every possible resume-bloater available. Tracy isn’t disliked, but she is alienated by her own determination and sense of self-destiny.

Standing in her way is Mr. Jim McAllister, a popular and veteran teacher of history and civics, played by Matthew Broderick. Behind his smiles and voice-over claims of unfettered happiness, the sight of Tracy Flick barreling down the road of success greatly irks him. He recruits the “most popular kid in school” Paul Metzler, played by Chris Klein in his first ever acting role, to run against Tracy in the school election, hoping to topple what he believes an evil force that threatens humanity beyond the borders of Carver High School.

It is the seriousness with which this set of protagonist and antagonist (which character is which depends entirely upon which side you choose) take this school election that makes up the wonderful satirical tapestry of this film. Payne then proceeds to decorate it with snippets of mundane, mid-western suburban life (the film is set in a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska) that, contrasted with the hilarious surfacings of taboo but clearly extant elements (student-teacher affairs, infidelity, teenage raunchiness), make for a delightfully skewed satire that makes small jabs at familiar stereotypes without denying that they exist for a reason. Payne realizes that sometimes truth can be funnier on its own than when it is ridiculed.

One of my favorite moments in film is when Tracy first sees Paul Metzler’s campaign table across the cafeteria. The camera zooms to her face and the soundtrack blares a harsh, strident banshee war cry. As the voices shriek behind her, we see the obsessive fury overtake her as her face changes into battle-mode. Witherspoon plays her go-getter role with the perfectionist touch of her character. She sees only greatness for herself, and everyone else in her life is either a stepping stone or an impediment. To be able to convey this without ever uttering a line that would hint at this is a remarkable feat. Klein also does the naive Paul character justice. In a painfully sweet scene, he walks into the voting booth and is suddenly conflicted about which name he should mark down for president. He just doesn’t feel right voting for himself.

Because the angst and torment and ambition and tragedy all orbit around a high school election, the unraveling of the lives of some of the characters becomes more funny than sad. Tracy’s obsessive behavior is only matched by Mr. McAllister’s growing obsession with repressing his obsessions, until everything melts down in a climax that seems all too real with a following epilogue that is all too perfect. Who knew that the forces of good versus evil could place the balance of humanity in one high school election? Wait, does it sound like we’re taking it too seriously? Well, I guess the film hits us right in the soft spot.