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How NOT to Write a BEST MAN SPEECH (AKA: The White Buffalo)
Posted on April 28, 2011 at 02:35 AM
THANK YOU ALL who contributed and all who tuned in as The Raccoon Society invaded Josh Madden’s Idobi Radio show Apr 14 and Apr 21. We had a blast answering your questions, playing songs, and due to your support, it was the largest audience to date (over 31,000).
If you missed it, listen to the Podcasts #37 and #38 HERE
I’ll be transcribing those questions as well as a few of the one’s we didn’t get to on the air. So many of them affected me deeply and confronted such heavy issues, but once in a while it’s fun to answer a lighter one like this:
Dear Mat,
I'm a long time fan and I'm really hoping you can help with this. I'm best man at a friend's wedding and I'm really stressed about writing and giving the speech. It's really hard since my friend is Native American with older and traditional parents. I know it's a lot to ask, but I would love some thoughts on a speech or at least some notes. Thank you.
R.C. Denver, Co, April 17, 2011
R.C.,
I've come a long way since I single-handedly destroyed Dan's wedding with my improvised sentiments in 2009. Perhaps this is my chance to finally make it right.
Instead of wine, several mild horse tranquilizers, and too much faith in your own "natural showmanship and charisma", COME PREPARED with a thoughtful speech-- one that touches on the sanctity of the union, while peppered with a couple winning anecdotes and apt metaphors. That way, when the microphone is in your hand, unlike me, you can rest easy knowing that you will honor the family and the occasion, and that the Groom's decision to elect YOU as his Best Man, was not a “colossal mistake”.
Native American families in particular are steeped in rich tradition, so I understand your panic to find JUST THE RIGHT WORDS. Would you do one thing for me please? RELAX. Papa Raccoon wrote it for you.
Just plug in the Bride and Groom’s names below where indicated, and await the tender accolades.
Xo
Mat
“And now it’s time for the Groom’s Best Man, R.C., to share a few words to commemorate this blessed day.”
“Thank you, [Governor / Bishop / Rabbi / Elders / Chief / Your Honor / Your Holiness].
I’ve known [ Groom ] for over a decade. I’ve seen him try and fail with so many women it’s not even funny.
Those were mostly whores, but, we have an endearing term for special girls like [ Bride ]. We call them the White Buffalo- the most elusive, most sacred, and most prized of all the buffalo. The luckiest little Indian may catch but a glimpse of one, ONCE, in his entire lifetime. The Perfect Girl.
When [Groom] announced his romantic plan to manipulate and seduce [ Bride ] via a relentless barrage of text messages, we were fascinated by his charming, child-like lack of perspective.
His dearest friends and beloved family all said vaguely the same thing: “You have stars in your eyes! You’re a dreamer! She’s out of your league! You're so ugly! Her face is angelic, and yours looks like Yogi Bera’s catcher’s mitt! She smells like the Garden at Versailles, and you smell like the Hunchback of Notre Dame’s dick! Your brain is fried from being a Crystal Meth addict in Phoenix from 1992-1997! Also, you owe me money!” And so on and so forth.
But what many fail to realize, is that [ Groom ] is a born hunter. He may not have the sharpest blade, the biggest spear, or the intellect of his Cro-Magnon colleagues, but he’s got something arguably more lethal: Determination-- and the patience of a monk- An old decrepit feeble-minded raisiny monk with NOTHING going on in his life. Like, AT ALL.
So there [ Groom ] is, hunting in the Midwestern plains, with his janky little bow and arrow, tracking and stalking this perfect White Buffalo. His little loincloth hanging loose like a wet leather diaper-- his giant nasty balls flapping around— it’s absolutely disgusting.
Anyway, so there he is running after this buffalo for YEARS. Every Day. Wearing it down, slowly. If [ Groom ] runs 500 yards, the buffalo would run 510 yards. On and on and on.
Eventually, this buffalo becomes infected with some disease (carried by fleas that have hopped off of [ Groom ]’s sack). And one day, the poor sick exhausted buffalo loses it’s balance, and falls 200 feet down the side of a craggy cliff.
“At last!” Oh boy, [ Groom ] couldn’t be more excited. He starts skipping gleefully down the hill, singing and hollering like a Mongol. At the bottom of the slope, he halts. With great reverence, he approaches the beast; the object of his sick, depraved, at times illegal, four-year obsession.
To his surprise, our White Buffalo still clings to life- gasping, gurgling, begging for the sweet, sweet release of death.
[ Groom ] steadies himself, draws his bow, and prepares to deliver the coup de grâce. At point-blank range, he strikes the buffalo directly in the jugular vein- the ideal spot!
But, the animal doesn’t die— It would’ve expired moments later from internal bleeding, but the annoying sting from his janky dull arrow has triggered a release of adrenaline, merely serving to keep it alive LONGER!
So there it is, writhing, horribly disfigured, it’s ear-splitting groans heard from miles away-- blood squirting from the neck- and in the final page of this living nightmare, [ Groom ] drops his soiled loincloth and fucks it to death.
The majestic White Buffalo. That’s you, [ Bride ]. Congratulations to you both.
SO please, raise your glasses one and all, to a magic little word I like to call perseverance.
To Love. L’Chaim. To Life.”
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DEAR MOM (Part IV): Health Food is Killing Me, How to Curse in Indonesian, Pics From My Blackberry + NEW POEM
Posted on April 11, 2011 at 12:34 AM
CLICK HERE TO READ MAT'S DAILY TWEETS
Dear Mom,
I made the mistake of looking in the mirror when I woke up this morning. Skin tone even more pale and clay-like than usual. “Hey, Quazimoto, down from the clock tower so soon?” Guess it makes sense why that dickhead Euro newsman literally used my forehead to whitebalance his camera during Fashion Week. (BTW next FW I'll be wearing a big baseball mitt to all events-- to carry multiple hors d'oeuvres at once.)
Anyway, the reason I look anemic is because I’ve begun consuming what they call “health food”. Everyone in the theatre district eats it. Aside form the expense, there's only one significant problem: It sucks.
Honestly, did I just pay $9 for Kale? Do you even know what that is, Mom? It’s just spiny tough bitter cabbage. You might as well climb up into the attic and put some soy sauce on the mistletoe and plastic wreaths from the box of musty Christmas decorations. Or save yourself the trouble, just walk over to Central Park right now and lick the bike path.
Then Mr. Miagi behind the counter conned me into paying $7.50 for a bottled drink called “Kambucha”. He said I looked hungover (bingo) then bragged that each “revitalizing” bottle contains “millions of living microorganisms”- Like that's a selling point? C’mon. If I wanted millions of microorganisms I’d drink my hair.
Before I forget, I’ve been meaning to ask you a couple things:
1. Should I be concerned that there’s a charge on my credit card at 4AM last night to “YUM YUM Bangkok” of which I have no memory? Desperately hoping it’s a restaurant.
2. Is it true they put electric eels in Buckingham Fountain to prevent beggars from stealing the coins? If so, would the same safeguards be in place at the Plaza Hotel fountain? I need to know before next Friday night.
3. Can you “wring” your hands? The reason I ask, there's been a new development in my scheme to fake my own kidnapping this summer. I've found a Hasidic Rabbi in Chinatown who, for a price, will convert all my assets to raw uncut amethysts and book an untraceable flight via balloon to the Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia. Obviously I'll take care of splatter patterns and the like, but listen, when this shit goes down, I’ll need you and Dad to indulge the Feds and grieve convincingly. That means REAL TEARS this time, Mom. I’ve mailed you a copy of Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps so you can study the tantrums of Carey Mulligan. Best trembling chin work I’ve seen since Romy Schneider.
In terms of acquiring random knowledge, it’s been a fruitful month.
I've learned that cockroaches’ favorite food is stamp glue. (At least we agree on that.)
I've learned that Barbara Newhall Follett was a literary prodigy, born in 1914, who stunned the world with her novels, then at 26, walked out of her house with $30 and disappeared forever. (Remains unsolved.)
I've learned to speak a little Indonesian:
Makmu sempakan seng (Your mother wore metal underwear.) + Kamu mata sapi (You are a fried egg.)
…and brushed up on my Serbo-Croatian:
Baja pojela ti jaja! (I hope a bug eats your balls!) + Dabogda ti majka prdnula na roditeljskom sastanku! (May your mother fart at a school meeting!)
I've learned that Pemba Flying Foxes are bats with a 6-foot wingspans (fuck that); Flying Mobulas are stingrays that can literally fly out of the water (fuck yes); and that Fennec Desert Foxes are becoming the next big trendy pet for rich hipsters (cute as hell. radar dish ears).
I've learned that, if you find yourself sitting alone under a tree in a scary park at night, and a pack of shadowy figures emerge nearby, you should remain very still, and in a high-pitched voice say, "No one to rape here, just us mice!" At least it worked for me on Tuesday.
I've learned to become a fan of The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. ("Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us.")
I've learned that there are hundreds of websites and culinary experts who defend cutting the rind off of Brie before serving. Just FYI, so you don’t have to call me your “petit barbare" (little barbarian) in front of company next time. It’s just a personal choice.
I've learned that Brachydactly (shovelthumbs) is NOT a telltale sign of bad breeding or alien abduction. (Am I maturing?)- that Cameron Diaz and Derek Jeter are both taller and more extroverted than I imagined-- that Exotic Berry gum sucks-- And that, when asked to DJ, one should never show up early enough to see the club in daylight. There are few things more depressing than a disco ball covered in dust.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I've rented some films on Netflix:
Metallica; Some Kind of Monster (When Lars sold a Basquiat for $5 million, I almost went outside to punch a complete stranger in the face.)
F for Fake (remarkable – the value of art TRULY is arbitrary. 30 years later, watch Exit Through the Gift Shop and see nothing’s changed.)
Heavy Metal in Baghdad and Vice Guide to Travel (Re-learning to re-love Vice lately)
Big River Man (My Bloody Valentine used in title sequence)
Hearts of Darkness (No one impressed me more than Mrs. Coppola)
The Ice Storm (finally)
...and took some more pics w my Blackberry
...and wrote another poem:
Untitled Mar2k11 by M.D.
Stick your head thru the bars at Gramercy Park
Fall asleep to the sound of slaughtered dogs
Ricochets in the alleyways
Gang initiation, or Latin celebration
Either way, be unafraid.
It’ll fade with the reverb of a passing train.
Swallowed by New York.
Miss you berserkly.
Your loving infidel,
Mat xoxo
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RACCOON SOCIETY GOES ON THE AIR (2 special nights only)
Posted on April 6, 2011 at 01:07 PM
Due to the overwhelming number of profound and incredible questions submitted, not only will I answer several in the blog (posting soon) but in addition, I've decided to enlist my friend, Josh Madden, to get through as many as we can ON THE AIR, over the course of TWO online radio broadcasts.
CLICK the image above to tune in Thursday night!
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@ Molly-Rose. @Hitch Fan. @ Raccoon Society,
Hey Hitch Fan & Raccoon Society, Hey Molly-Rose :)
¶
I perused a quote about reason and faith, here, so just wanted to leave a quick insight. Times still ticking. So, get ready, like the countdown goes, remember get your dose of Caffeine and ample supply ready, time is here and now, handy keys to the DeLorean, ready, count it down .... 4,3... is seven,2,1... twenty-one go!
¶
Bringing in “reason” as a debatable perspective is an arbitrary moot inception of hanging on over a cliff after getting caught in suspended animation. In earnest, I’d rather crony up with a like-minded anarchist that befuddles the imposition-ers of faith is somehow equatable to ever be torn asunder by absence of reason as a supposed and dull exploitive of why not to have faith or presumes faith constraints reason. How tired and bored is that perspective, faith is sans reason, etcetera, as how tired and uninspired the word medley of “how tired and uninspired” is in a sentence. Truly, think, open-mindedly, if you are going to stand to incept reason into the mixture.
¶
Faith is not constraint of reason. Human expectations are the constraint of reason. When you expect an outcome, expecting defies the natural progression of reason and the possibilities of reason, cause and natural common-sense by reason. Esp if an expectation is only geared or rendered for a specific outcome that is meant to propagate a furnished idea – that is what constraints reason and undermines reason. Faith itself is not a constraint in and of itself.
Faith scrutinizes reason in the same manner that reason scrutinizes faith. Even if you are construing my comments in a sense of Biblical faith, (my own affections on Faith is, faith is faith, regardless of own individual’s personal sentiments) it should be applied to bare it as a pertinent truth of your conscience, if it is in tune with your own accordance of Faith. The insight is similar of a notion and passage Mat Devine shared in a previous entry, from the Bible in 1 Thessalonians “"Test all things and cling to that which is good." 1 Thes. 5:2
¶
The insight is, by mere contemplative states of the least of reality that is truly, utterly, ever known or knowable is dependent upon the realization those that follow the limited intelligence of humanity are no different or variable than those who believe in an infinite power or being. Except, that, the latter ones are not contained w/ limits of other people’s interpretations as to what the individual(s) believe or have faith in believing. In other words, of course, there is an open defiance of censorship. As the effect of censorship in many formulations is non-productive or progressive, plus attempts to suppress individuality and environmental compatibility and functionality. Individuals have an innate right and will, to believe / have faith in what sets their own life in accord with how they truly feel and be able to live according to a sound in-tact own conscience. The utopic is it ought to be a morally/ethically approach that is not projecting undue negative renderances into another person’s life. Give and take , choose battles, our world is further everyday from a utopia considering the majority has shunned itself to ignoring the dystopic qualties that are here right now and that media at large has veiled in elaborate dunce cap shrouding that dystopic societies are in the future although the dystopic future written about as Fiction is actually happening now. If you need hot lead dead giveaway tell-tale, read the Hunger Games. Reality shows and a corresponding match like Survivor and the way our governments handle it citizens and slowly revolve into revolutions is starkly illuminating in contrast to what science and governments would sooner have you believing recently. Citric awakening happens, just like heads up 7-up, goes round by round like kisses on the forehead of what you’re willing to fight for and go to battle.
¶
Morning tune ready for the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSkb0kDacjs
¶
Personally, I think, plus, prefer, to be limitless w/ willingly choosing to have faith in an infinite that harkens possibilities that exuberate all realities and endless potential for the greater good and bless those who are willing with talents that incorporate into their environments rather than something that devoids humanity of its own existence and destroying itself within by the contraptions of limiting itself like is so often seen and has already been duly established by the acts of science and people having a follow mentality to the state of science and scientists own propulsions of ideas and constructed basis’s that are feasibly assembled for mass production to the herd mentality that those of lower I.Q’s or sheer follow mentality will gobble up without having to test and proof it and prove that the theory itself or basis of scientific belief is sketchy. Esp taking into vantage perspective, equal opportunity intelligent licensures that can compute the information readily on-hand and disseminated to be shredded apart by the citizens sans academic luxury degrees handling inspecting statistics, quantities and exacts, in other words, the scientific misnomers blatantly compiled as derivations alleged to be fact sans exact intricate intra-acted ways of actually testing and provable.
¶
Thus this ///.... “"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me." ~ Christopher Hitchen ...////
The quoted sentiment is also a mentality that ought be evenly distributed and thus applied to science in the same rigor of scrutiny; otherwise, science in a whole would be an easily reasonable standing on reason sham completely. People whom fully put their faith (be earnest and real, that that’s what is happening) into science, as a bunch of atheists often do blindly, are, again, as I wrote briefly to “Fellow Heathen” no different than the people they claim they are different from whom have faith including certain atheists that are attempting to devalue those individuals whom believe faith in God or deity/deities, et al. So, let’s prevent the ostracization by some ethos that eludes incorporating the fragility of the argument done towards only shunning the hypocrisy of its actions in statement, as is clear with the ///....“Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.”...//// bit of the quote. Anyone with a brain embedded permeating reason plus own foresight is able to tear it tinker tape red, pulling apart the fallibility of the application of exclusion. So, well, let’s say it for what it is, for those who may get a bit riled or bewildered by the notion that that Hitchens quote has to be able to stand soundly to its own accord and then some to win over anything in such a debatable topic of query. Which whoever posted it aka the person behind “Hitch Fan” left it to, what is surmised as an attempted permissive gainer for something it isn’t rather than be seen for what it is. It is what it is; so let it stand to be, and let it be what it is.
¶
So, what to do, what to do…carry a smile, just smile at all times, esp. smitten. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKrbAUjBbvU&ob=av2e
¶
Charles Kingsley, said, ///....“And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but content with what we do not understand—the habit of mind which theologians call—and rightly—faith in God.”...////
If you consider the application of – ///....“we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but content with what we do not understand”...//// – you would sooner or later come to deriving the conclusion, if you apply it to theologians that it would then need fairly be dispersed to be applied to scientists and science’s schematics, as well.
¶
Since, yes, a bunch did catch the flip-syde subtleties and am no longer so-so much M.I.A on-the-grid stats as prior (except at a backwards C//S, let those bones right ;) and sticking true and loyal to odes n’ codes Patrick Henry stylistic lovers “Give me Liberty or Give me death” stance of a prose writer and a bit of an unconventionalist, by art and its unconfined nature, I’d rather par up with movers and doers and standers, with the following quotes. As, this vantage scope of the playing field is where and why art comes into play and tests the grounds. Art endures. Art offers the companionship of the formidable connections of now, urgency and longevity. Legacy – such a regale atoning attenuation intonation inflection to the word while delivering an infliction to naysayers. Cruxly, appropos, regardless, if all there is, is this, every day, every time, I’d rather know within all is aligned in my soul anytime death knocks. Just, must gotta have something to share and faith upon for all those marvelous and wonder-filled death feats after-all. Nil sin Numine.
¶
Maybe humanities’ expectations need to be readjusted? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO1OV5B_JDw
“Skepticism Is The Beginning Of Faith.” ~ Oscar Wilde
¶
///....“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.”...//// ~ Blaise Pascal
¶
///....“I heard once of an American who so defined faith, "that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue." For one, I follow that man. He meant that WE SHALL HAVE AN OPEN MIND, AND NOT LET A LITTLE BIT OF TRUTH CHECK THE RUSH OF THE BIG TRUTH, like a small rock does a railway truck. WE GET THE SMALL TRUTH first. Good! We keep him, and we value him, BUT ALL THE SAME WE MUST NOT LET HIM THINK HIMSELF ALL THE TRUTH IN THE UNIVERSE.”...//// ~ Bram Stoker, Dracula
¶
///....“We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other...except through faith.”...////~ Stephen King
¶
///....“That in such righteousness /// To them by faith imputed they may find ///
Justification towards God, and peace /// Of conscience.”...//// ~ John Milton
Ciao.
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///catch the captcha exjst9////