More. Partying. Shots. This is the official shower, I guess. The best man and maid of honor welcome us all to the shower, the theme of which is "Love and Lust." Well, none out of two is...well, the null set of premarital bliss, is what it is. In accordance with this, Ryan doesn't not smile once the whole night. And then -- oh, god -- Bob. "Ladies and gentlemen," he announces, the gayest Leading Player character I've seen on a stage since Pippin, the gayest of all plays, "we are going to play a little game with Trista and Ryan." A sea of stone faces meets his intro. Trista and Ryan sit next to each other in two chairs, facing the audience, holding oak tag and black magic markers. Is this the ceremonial "Making Of The Premarital Shoebox Diorama" you hear so much about in traditional wedding lore? Because I can make Abraham Lincoln's boyhood home out of Popsicle sticks and a raw umber crayon faster than you can say "Other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mr. President?" Except, sadly, no. Instead, they're playing some kind of Newlywed Game thing, except they're the only team and, mercifully, you don't have to use the word "whoopee."
Bob poses Question #1, which is, "Trista, what is Ryan's most annoying habit?" They both guess correctly that it's "hanging up the towels." They kiss, and I could join in the celebration that these two soulmates know each other as well as they do, or I could finally get on the side of the attending party and try to strike Bob dead with my mind. The next question is about how many kids they're planning on having. Trista says two. Ryan hedges "two or three." Like it would be another number besides those, as if Trista would write, "My Mormon beliefs mean I would like as many kids as the Good Lord intends for me to have" or Ryan would write, "I would like eleven kids, one for each of the Colonel's herbs and spices, because garsh dang it if I don't love me some chicken." Next: "What city were you both in the first time that you had sex?" The tittering crowd is delightfully shocked by the ribald, non-whoopee-esque direction this game has taken. Where is this game taking place, anyway? I wasn't aware that Le Meredien was a Victorian drawing room that exists in The Past. Everyone calm down. Trista whispers, "I don't want to give that up," and one of the guys who I think is soon going to emerge as That Jerk Ben calls out, "You gave it up already!" Now see, that is a very funny line. Bob feels the need to piggyback on the laugh, literally hollering, "Is it me, or is it very hot in here?" It's you, you greasy freak. And not that I'm an enemy of the adverb to any extent, but you really needed to lose the "very" on that sentence. And you needed not to make a joke about how hot is was in there. When, considering the context of the event, "Take my wife, please" would actually have made a better quip than the one you made, it looks like you lost your emcee privileges. And, scarily enough, it actually would have. Ryan, protecting his wife-to-be's honor, holds up a card reading, "We haven't." Everyone is very filled with rejoicing at this answer, but I can't hear the television above my screeching Bullshit Detector to know if anything else was actually said. ["Huh? Of course they haven't, Djb: they are not married yet. Sheesh!" -- Wing Chun]