Celebrate good times, come on!

I’d like to wish Porter and Marie a Happy Zero-th Anniversary and Casie a [CENSORED]th birthday!

Michael “Porter” Porter and Marie Johnston got married yesterday, which was one of the coolest weddings I’ve ever been to (and not just because I got to guard the guest book…). Why, you might ask? Well, if you did just ask, I didn’t hear you, but I’ll provide a Top 10 list of answers regardless:

1) It was held at the Science Museum of Minnesota, though we didn’t take pictures next to the dinosaur skeletons or the Bodyworks exhibit. For those who have never heard of Bodyworks, it’s an exhibit where dead people have had plastic stuff injected into their circulatory system or muscles or other aspects of the body, then everything else got removed. It might look like a sculpture of a bunch of arteries and veins, but there used to be flesh and bone surrounding them. (If I’m not doing the exhibit justice, well, that’s because we didn’t get to take wedding photos in there.)

2) We all had designated seats for dinner and each table was identified by a certain element. For example, there was tungsten, platinum and silicon (which some people kept calling “silicone”, thus providing a little insight into America’s obsession with boobs).

3) My designated seat at the tungsten table was between two hot chicks! Hell, yeah…

4) It was an M & M wedding. That’s not meant to refer to their first names both starting with M, though it’s an interesting coincidence. Maybe that’s why they fell in love, I dunno… But the “M & M” signifies a marriage between two members of Mensa, which helps explain the Science Museum, the elemental tables, etc.

5) Even though it was an M & M wedding, all of the places at the dining tables had a box of Nerds candy with a “thank you” note on the back and the little characters on the front wearing tuxes and wedding gowns.

6) The ceremony was performed by St. Toby, a local member of Mensa.

7) St. Toby concluded the ceremony with something to the effect of “By the power vested in me by the Flying Spaghetti Monster…” The result was a lot of laughter from people in the know and probably a lot of confused look on all the other faces. For those who have never heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you can find more information on Wikipedia. The Kansas State Board of Education’s requirement for schools to teach intelligent design creationism along with evolution—it happened in 2005, swear to FSM—so someone developed a religion in protest that… well, you’ll have to read about it.

8 ) Dinner was very yummy. Very, very yummy.

9) The reception was entirely dance music, some of which included Young M.C., Vanilla Ice, M.C. Hammer… three cheers for the early 90s! (I wish that there were a few slow dances in there—I would have liked to dance with pretty much everyone except for Porter, ’cause he refuses to let me lead…) And yes, that means I did dance, but #10 provided a little extra incentive:

10) The DJ gave everyone glow sticks to dance with, so there are going to be plenty of good pictures with those things spinning around on the dance floor.

So after having such a good time, I’m wishing the best for Porter and Marie for many, many, many, many years and maybe a couple more for good measure.

As for Casie (pronounced KAY-see) Perry, it was her [CENSORED]th birthday! Way to get older!

We were supposed to have met at the museum to wander around for an hour or two, go see the Bodyworks exhibit before the ceremony started, but she was held hostage by her friends during a birthday brunch. Bastards… (I had to learn about stem cell research and nanotechnology without anyone to keep me company!) Plus my sunglasses fell out of my pocket, so I’ll have to head to the optometrist to get another pair of those. But someone recognized me from Beauty and the Geek, so the afternoon was up and down.

Overall, yesterday was a day of celebration and I hope it’ll be worthy of a big ol’ party from here on out. (Mental note to self: August 27th is now an anniversary, a birthday and a good day to reminisce about how cool glow sticks are…)

The rise before the fall

The Gen-X Mensa group was meeting for dinner tonight, but I missed a change in the street address (Cleveland Avenue South instead of North). Consequently, I showed up at the restaurant a couple minutes late to find a pretty large group already sitting around the table.

“Shawn, we were just talking about you.” Normally, hearing that sentence would be a prelude to bad news—you’ve been fired, your parents found your stash of [insert illicit item(s) here], you’re the father. In this case, it was about Beauty and the Geek.

I’m not sure how I feel about the attention. Okay, that’s a lie—I enjoy the attention. (Part of the reason I ended up on the show in the first place was because I was on the outskirts of attention unless “we were just talking about you.”) I think it’s just because I’m unsure about the aftermath. Or the during-math, for that matter.

Garnering so much attention from others is like getting a massive dose of endorphins—SUPER EGO BOOST! (Technically, the endorphins create happy feelings more than anything else, but so do handjobs… hoo boy. Take that analogy in as many directions as far as they can go and you won’t be able to sleep tonight. Well, maybe the endorph—NEVER MIND!)

But my point was about SUPER EGO BOOST! I’m special, I’m important, yee-haw! And soon the show will play on the air. Will these happy feelings stick around or will my ego shrivel up like a prune? Will I still be pumped up or will it feel like someone slashed my emotional tires? What will “Shawn, we were just talking about you” mean? Just to be save, I better go hide my stash somewhere else…

Shawn-sploitation

After doing grunt work from Monday through Thursday, I was ready to have a little fun. More specifically, I was ready to have a little fun at First Friday. It’s a Mensa gathering that happens every… well, every first Friday of the month—pretty self-explanatory, really. But I wanted to attend for a very specific reason: I wanted to give my thanks to Paul Jensen. As you may have read before, he was the catalyst for my appearance on Beauty and the Geek—he told the casting agency about me and the rest is still becoming history. However, I’d wanted to wait to tell him until I knew when the show was going to debut so I could spring it all on him at once. I feel so devious… Continue reading “Shawn-sploitation”

Shawn Bakken, come on down!

Honestly, I had been a little skeptical of networking before. I’m not the kind of person to drop my name, job, favorite position, rank and serial number at the drop of a hat—I prefer much more casual, social connections. To my surprise, one of those turned into what could be the opportunity of a lifetime… or maybe just something to tell the grandkids… or maybe something that could give me cancer of the fingernail, for all I know. We’ll all have to wait for a while to find out the result. Unless it’s cancer—that takes a while to diagnose, especially if I keep it trimmed down at the source. Continue reading “Shawn Bakken, come on down!”

Word Play

I know, I’m stealing material from another source, but I felt the need to share. If anyone who submitted these quotes to the Mensagenda wants credit, just post a notice and you’ll get the props you deserve. If you’re lying about submitting these quotes, I’ll post a notice and you’ll get the anti-props you deserve. Plus your nose will grow really long. And I’ll tell your parents and you’ll get a serious paddlin’ when you get home. Continue reading “Word Play”