The Red Wedding

If it hadn’t been for Tom, I wouldn’t have started my Substack…

For the last two years, I have been thinking about starting a podcast. Since I’m the most interesting middle-aged guy in my office, I usually have a crowd of people waiting to get me wound up on some topic just to see what happens. However, a few weeks ago, I got the inspiration to start writing instead of creating a podcast because I went to the Red Wedding.

This was the wedding of my college friend Tom, who also happens to be the most politically connected friend that I have. The guest list was an eclectic mix of famous personalities on the right, some Navy grads, and the bride’s family from East Tennessee. The weekend’s festivities started with a roast of the bride and groom at the PB Shore Club, which also happens to be where my wife and I ended up on our first date. Once we arrived, we spent the next hour listening to guest after guest somewhat mercilessly mock the bride and groom to be, especially for their 15 year age difference. This became a bit uncomfortable at times, but everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun.

Once the festivities ended, my wife and I let loose and enjoyed some drinks for the first time together in a year. Next to us at the bar was a guy that goes by Sal who also happens to be a famous critic of US military policy. Over the next few hours as the wedding guests dwindled, we got to having some Jaeger Bombs and talking about how to create a podcast that maybe someone would listen to. Sal gave me a lot of good advice, but in the process talked me into to starting a Substack page instead. As a result, here I am and so are you.

Now is probably a good time to lay out what this space is all about. As someone on the right who’s not a conservative, I find that there isn’t much culture that is produced to my tastes. I’ve thought ad nauseum for the last couple of years about what I want to talk about, and finally I realized the best place to start is by making sense of my own life. This will be my story, a real “what does it all mean” kind of thing, where I am going to create some culture of my own. Think of this like my midlife crisis but with pithy tales instead of a new Harley.

We were having dinner with Tom and his fiancé about a month before they were married. The conversation came up about wedding gifts, and I offered to make them a clock in my wood shop. As could be expected, both my wife and the bride-to-be reacted to this idea like I just offered to buy her a treadmill for her birthday. I started to think about what would make a good wedding gift, and so decided to make the first story about my time with Tom over the years. Since I didn’t get to roast him at his wedding, why not do it for all 5 billion internet users instead?

Tom and I met back in college, where we were debate partners. Since we attended the minimum-security federal prison on the Chesapeake, we always tried to find a way to get off campus on the weekends. Debate was a way for an exceptionally argumentative 19-year-old and a guy who hasn’t stopped talking for more than 3 seconds in his life to do something productive other than party. Over the course of that year, we got pretty good at debating and then ended up hanging out on and off for the rest of our time in school. He also told me the funniest thing I have ever heard while quite happy in a bar one night, but he is a family man now, so I’ll keep that to myself.

Over the next several years, Tom always seemed to show up randomly in my life when major changes happened. We reconnected in San Diego a few times around when I was deploying overseas and really losing my belief in the wars we were fighting. When I moved to Italy and became a father, my annual flights home always stopped in DC and included a night hanging out with Tom. Finally, when I moved back to Orange County to start a new life outside the military, Tom started a business five minutes away from my house. Over the past year, we’ve met up every couple of weeks to talk about our lives, families, and made sense of the craziness that comes with changing careers in our late thirties. Even though he hasn’t ever been my closest friend, Tom always seems to be around for the times when I am growing and changing the most, so he just seems like the perfect person to include in my very first story.

Now back to the wedding. There was an interesting mix between the military crowd and the twitter famous folks. I was at the military table and had a great time talking to some guys I hadn’t seen in 15 years, exchanging stories about our lives since that time. The two groups really didn’t seem to mix much until late in the evening, when Tom, through sheer force of will, seemed to bring a crowd of about 25 around a table to tell stories and smoke cigars. Throughout the weekend, he seemed to be so worried that everyone was having a good time that I’m not sure how he managed to do it himself. But, he did a great job and that was the best damn wedding I’ve been to since my own.

One thing really did stand out to me during my time at the Red Wedding. Over the course of the weekend, I got to meet several rather famous voices on the right, and I came to realize one thing. I am at least as interesting as any of these people, so now is the time to get to work on proving it. Thanks for a great time, Tom and Nat, and just so you know the offer to build that clock for your living room is still on the table. But for now, I hope you enjoy the Ravings of a Lunatic instead.