June 27, 2004

• I Hate Philly...

  
  

  This is my series on weddings I’ve attended this year.  This wedding was on June 26th:

  
  

  Wedding #4 – Sheraton Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA

  
  

  The skinny:  Can I just say, I hate Philly.  I've always hated Philly as far back as I can remember.  When I decided I was going to Westminster, I specifically chose the one in CA over the one in PA, cuz I couldn't stand the place.  I even got ripped off by this guy from Philly, detailed in this post from last year.  I'm not sure why, but I think my dislike for this particular city started after watching the original Rocky movie.  Man, the neighborhood and people Rocky hung out with were pretty darn grungy, which is central to the story I'm sure, but that doesn't matter much to a 10 or 11 year-old kid.  That was my first impression of Philly and it hasn't changed much since.  What does this have to with the wedding?  I digress.  This was Bobby and Jinny's wedding.  The only notable thing I can say about the wedding is that it was the first time I've seen the father stand between the bride and groom for the entire first half of the ceremony.  It was kinda bizarre.  The father walked the bride up to the front of the altar, and then just... stayed.  He stood next to her for the whole sermon and only left before they said their vows.  It was kind of an optical illusion cuz you're sitting there watching them and in all of your past experiences, you're used to seeing the groom standing next to the bride, but here, from the back, the guy looked like the groom, but in your mind you know it's actually her dad, which makes you feel kinda icky for some reason, and so your mind and your eyes never really get it together.  Other than that, it was a nice wedding.  Then I went to get my car.

  
  

  The hotel employs one of the local garages to store the cars during overnight stays and events like weddings and conferences.  John Chae had earlier in the evening gone back to the garage to get something from his car and found to his surprise that it was just sitting in the garage with the doors unlocked, keys in the ignition and no one around.  He was alarmed, and told us about it, but we didn't think much of it.  But when the valet went and retrieved my car I found that my lovely little mp3 player was gone from my glove compartment.  After complaining to the attendant, I get a lecture about never leaving any valuables in the car ("It says it right here on the ticket.  We are not responsible for the loss of any personal items from your car, blah, blah, blah..."), and he tells me the manager will come and talk to me.  So I'm waiting for the manager for an hour, until I lose patience and ask the guy where the garage is, and I go there and wait for the manager for another 30 minutes.  Finally, he comes and gives me the same shpiel about you're supposed to take anything of value out of the car, blah, blah, blah... we're not liable, blah, blah, blah... it's printed on the ticket, blah, blah, blah.  The dude makes it seem like it's my fault for getting something stolen from out of my car while it was in his care. 

  
  

  Now I know that this is fairly standard policy for all parking garages.  They all have this stupid disclaimer, but you never think about it until they actually steal something from you.  What a positively, ridiculous policy this is.  Basically, they're saying, don't leave anything in your car or we're gonna take it if we feel like and you can't do anything about it because you were warned beforehand.  That's crazy.  The employees all know this policy, so they can go through your entire car and take what they feel like.  Besides my mp3 player, I had a bag full of clothes in the trunk, a few pairs of sunglasses, $20 emergency money in the glove compartment, etc...  Theoretically, they could've taken anything.  Positively amazing.  Of course I could have gone to the police station and filed a report, but it was 11:30 PM, I was already aggravated, and I had a 2-hour drive ahead of me.  So I just left.  I am NEVER going to leave my car in a valet parking garage ever again if possible.  Parking garages are the devil.  But y'know it's not really about parking garages.  It's about Philly.  I hate Philly.  And Philly hates me.

  
  

  
  

  On a scale of 1 to 10 -
  

  Food:  5.  Hors d'oevres were ok but limited, and the best part of the dinner was their grilled shrimp and broccoli rabe with hollandaise sauce, but for some godforsaken reason the chef decided to saute the broccoli rabe with jalapenos and each dish came with about 9 or 10 slices of jalapenos on top of the broccoli.  I mean, that's just nuts.  The hot pepper oil just killed your taste buds and I didn't even eat any of the peppers.  The chef must've had a really good laugh.

  
  

  Female talent:  1.  Bobby's a musician, a rocker, and Jinny plays in the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra, so I was hoping for some hot emotional violinist friends from her side maybe or at least some groupies from his side, but it was a very small wedding, maybe a 100 people and no hotness anywhere. 

  
  

  Fun: -10.  What little fun I may have had at the wedding was negated by the parking garage from hell.

  
  

  Projected forecast:  Bobby cried during the vows.  That's a good sign... 

  • 11:39 pm
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