Elephant's Memory – "Don't Put Me On Trial No More" (1969)

I’ll make you feel like a king

Just give me that ring!

This is the third of four consecutive 2 or 3 lines posts about New York Times wedding announcements.  (You’ll be sorry if you miss number four, which will be published in a couple of days.  Believe you me, it’s a doozy.)

The wedding announcements that are featured in the “Vows” column in the Times are many things.  Mostly, they are parodies of themselves.  

Let’s begin at the beginning:

Christopher Ahnberg cannot quite put his finger on the moment he started identifying as a feminist.  But his appreciation for women who aren’t the shrinking-violet type goes way back, and for the sake of his future happiness, it should probably go way forward, too.

“Growing up, my favorite shows always had strong female leads, like Kate & Allie,” Mr. Ahnberg said.  “In my fifth-grade yearbook, I wrote down Murphy Brown as my favorite show.  Plus, I grew up with two strong older sisters.  So I never saw women as anything but very strong people.”

(You know, I felt much the same way as Mr. Ahnberg when it came to favoring TV shows with strong, independent female characters – for example, Charlie’s Angels.)

The effect Mr. Ahnberg’s sisters and Candice Bergen had on his views of gender roles may help to explain, at least partly, why he fell in love with Cristen Conger, who is part of a duo of “girls-next-door gender experts” who host . . . “Stuff Mom Never Told You,” a weekly podcast that has attracted a loyal audience, mostly of young women.  

Wacky feminist podcaster Cristen Conger

The show, known as SMNTY to its viewers, trains a clear-eyed focus on subjects like fashion, differences between the sexes, and women in the workplace and beyond.  Titles of recent episodes include “Free the Nipple,” “Period Pride” and “Are Women Bigger Whiners?”

(Can you excuse me for just a moment?  I want to subscribe to that podcast before I forget.)

Click here to hear Ahnberg and Conger talk
about women who don't shave their armpits

Ms. Conger describes herself as a “liberal feminist” — one who believes that women should be free to pursue the lives they want.  The recent dust-up over the somewhat tongue-in-cheek suggestion by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that damnation awaits women who fail to vote for Hillary Clinton caused Ms. Conger more frustration than anything.

“I thought it was completely understandable within the context of history, if politically foolish,” she said.  “What upset me the most was that it only spurred more narrow media coverage of feminists being pitted against feminists.”

(What in the world is this discussion doing in a wedding announcement?)

Mr. Ahnberg, 33, met Ms. Conger, 31, when both were students at the University of Georgia in 2004. But it wasn’t until August 2012, when Ms. Conger was in need of someone to go with her to the wedding of a friend, that they began dating. . . .

[D]espite her status as an emerging feminist voice, Ms. Conger had to concede that mustering up the courage to ask Mr. Ahnberg to be her date was a little unsettling.

“I was nervous because I liked him,” she said. “I tried to play it off as a friend-date, like, ‘I have to go to this wedding; can you come with me?’ But I didn’t tell him I had been counting down the days, that it was really such an event for me.”

Conger shows off her engagement
ring on the Great Wall of China

(I know you’ve been waiting for the romantic stuff – here it comes!)

The evening turned out to be less feminist than fairy tale.

“We had a magical night,” said Ms. Conger, who is tall and slim and has a tendency to wave her hands to make a point. “I bought a new dress and had my hair done, and he showed up all dressed up in a suit and sunglasses, and he looked very studly, and the setting was this beautiful home in Marietta with a beautiful garden.”

(Who knew that studliness was the number-one quality that feminists look for in a man?)

Ms. Conger knew early on that Mr. Ahnberg had a sharp, quick sense of humor.  But it was only after a few dates, when she and Mr. Ahnberg were drinking Bloody Marys during brunch on an Atlanta restaurant’s rooftop patio, that she began to realize he had more to offer her than punch lines and someone to be her plus one at events like her friend’s wedding.

“We started talking about feminism, and it was the first conversation I had ever had with a guy my age about feminism that was in-depth and engaging,” she recalled. “And he was not at all nervous about the term.  I just remember sitting there thinking, ‘This is incredible’.”

(I always figured that trying to get a feminist drunk would not be an effective strategy.  Silly me!)

Mr. Ahnberg says that feminism is a factor for him when voting and when he’s choosing which businesses to support.  His feminist umbrage may be most on display when someone suggests that women cannot be funny.

“I’m always shocked when anybody says that,” he said, and understandably so, when you consider that his partner does what, despite her protestations to the contrary, looks and sounds vaguely like a very good Russell Brand imitation.

Not-so-funnyman Russell Brand

(I’m not sure what Russell Brand has to do with being funny, but we’ll save that discussion for another time.  Do you think that the statement that our blushing bride “does what . . . looks and sounds vaguely like a very good Russell Brand imitation” is really a compliment?  Would you consider it a compliment to say that an amateur singer “sounds vaguely like a very good singer,” or praise a young fiction writer by saying that his writing “reads vaguely like that of a very good writer”?) 

[Mr. Ahnberg’s older sister] said he and Ms. Conger can break out into an improv comedy routine at a moment’s notice.

“They make a comedy routine out of everything they do,” she said. “They could be slicing peppers to make fajitas and all of a sudden they’re breaking into a fajita song, trading verses.”

(Sounds hilarious.  Let’s get back to the romantic stuff.)

During that rooftop brunch with Ms. Conger . . . she was not the only one who felt the stirrings of love that day.

By then, something had occurred to Mr. Ahnberg, who usually carries a warm, wide smile atop an athletic frame.  “I realized I had been an idiot the entire time I had known her,” he said, “because we had been on-and-off friends since college, but she was everything I ever looked for in a woman. I wasn’t going to let her slip away.”

(“I realized I had been an idiot the entire time.”  You certainly won’t get any argument from me on that point.) 

He eventually decided to do what one of Ms. Conger’s feminist icons has famously suggested in song: put a ring on it.

Ms. Conger’s love of Beyoncé is no secret. She has praised the singer on the podcast, and last year, she performed a comedy routine she wrote, “The Gospel According to ‘Yonce,” at Song Missing, an Atlanta literary variety show.  In it, she apologizes in advance to Mr. Ahnberg, who may not be fully aware that she is “beysexual.”

(I wonder if she did that comedy routine in her Russell Brand persona?)

At the Ahnberg-Conger nuptials

Ms. Conger has chosen to keep her own name, but both she and Ms. Ervin agree that it is also possible to find power in a woman who takes her husband’s last name, an issue that has been a hot topic among SMNTY listeners since an episode titled “A Practical Wedding” aired in January.

The wedding expert Meg Keene, who was a guest on the show, insisted that brides should keep their names. 

(I don’t understand why Ms. Keene feels so strongly that married women should stick with their fathers’ last names rather than taking their husbands’ last names.  Either way, the woman ends up with a man’s last name.)

Mr. and Mrs. Conger

For Ms. Conger, deciding which elements of a traditional wedding to keep and which to toss in the name of feminism involved careful consideration.

“Ultimately, we’ve moved away from the wedding-industrial complex to do what honors us,” she said.

But some rituals proved trickier to excise than others.

Accepting an engagement ring, for example, required some soul-searching.  “In its historic sense, the ring signified possession rather than partnership,” she explained. “But I also knew it meant a lot to Chris to make the gesture.  And I know that does harken back to old-school gender norms, but I wasn’t going to trivialize something that was important to him.”

(In other words, Ms. Conger agreed to take possession of a pricey 1930s-vintage art-deco engagement ring just so she wouldn’t hurt Mr. Ahnberg’s feelings.  That’s so sweet!)

* * * * *

The obvious choice of a song to feature in this post is “Single Ladies,” by Beyoncé.  After all, Jay-Z's better half is a special favorite of the bride, and the lyrics to that song are very apropos: “If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it!”

But “Single Ladies” was featured in a previous 2 or 3 lines.  (You can click here if you missed it.)  And 2 or 3 lines has a strict policy of not featuring the same song twice . . . except when it does.

So instead we’re featuring “Don’t Put Me On Trial No More,” by Elephant’s Memory.

Elephant’s Memory was a funky, bluesy New York City band with a horn section – think Electric Flag or Big Brother and the Holding Company.  After contributing a couple of songs to the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack and releasing an eponymous debut album, they became John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s backup band. 

Here’s “Don’t Put Me On Trial No More,” which absolutely kicks ass:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Brad Paisley – "Ticks" (2007)

I'd like to kiss you way back in the sticks

I'd like to walk you through a field of wildflowers

And I'd like to check you for ticks

You would think that the wedding announcements published in the “Vows” column of the New York Times would typically feature the Ivy League-educated sons and daughters of the rich and powerful.  Couples like Chelsea Clinton and her hedge-fund-founder husband, Marc Mezvinsky, in other words.

The Times is usually so starchy that it insists on the use of courtesy titles — like Mr. and Ms. – in news stories.  So a story about the Rolling Stones will probably refer to Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards.  (For some reason, athletes are an exception to this rule.  So you won’t see an account of a Wimbledon final reporting that “Mr. Djokavic prevailed over Mr. Federer in five sets.”)  

But while “Vows” does use honorifics, nothing else about it is the least bit Times-like.

In today’s 2 or 3 lines, we take a look at a “Vows” column that tells the tale of the courtship and eventual marriage of two Hamptons yoga instructors.  (You can click here to read the entire column.)

The column opens by introducing us to the bride:

People describe Erika Halweil, a longtime yoga teacher in the Hamptons, as someone who has a lot of backbone in every way.  She has great posture.  She rarely gets upset over things like parking tickets or bad-hair days. (Naturally pretty, she probably doesn’t have many.) . . .

Ms. Halweil, 36, grew up in New York in a tightknit family of four who loved to spend weekends together foraging for elderberries in Central Park, watching old Laurel and Hardy movies or surf-casting on Long Island. . . .

Two paragraphs in, and I’m already speechless.  (“She has great posture”?)

The bride and groom warm up
for their wedding night

Now it’s time to meet the groom:

[Corey] De Rosa, now 40, grew up in a big Italian family in Hempstead, N.Y. . . . In 2003, while living in a loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he started biking across the Williamsburg Bridge every morning to practice Ashtanga yoga with Eddie Stern, a well-known teacher in SoHo.  “I needed to transition from my party life into my balanced life,” he said. “It takes a long time. It’s not easy.”

Three years later, he opened his own Ashtanga studio, Tapovana, in Sag Harbor.  He painted the walls dark red, installed almost-black wood floors and put yellow candles everywhere.  “It was like a womb,” he said. “It took you somewhere else.” 

(Red walls, black floors, and yellow candles doesn’t sound that much like a womb to me, but I can’t honestly say that I remember my time in utero all that well.)

More about Mr. De Rosa:

At first, he was terrified, not at all sure he wanted the responsibility of owning a business.  “You always need to go a little further than you think you can in order to make progress,” said Mr. De Rosa, who in a single conversation might discuss Hindu deities, the connection between the knees and the ego, an energy healer he admires, Indian spices, juice cleanses and his ideas about love (timing is everything).

(“The connection between the knees and the ego”?)

The groom wore white

The next paragraph really comes out of left field:

On Aug. 17, 2008, Ms. Halweil was driving on Montauk Highway when a 5-year-old girl rode a red toy wagon down a steep driveway and shot out onto the road in front of Ms. Halweil’s car.  When she recounts the accident (the child died and Ms. Halweil was not charged) you can really see her calm, philosophical and open demeanor.  In an almost plaintive voice, she said: “It was clear sky, clear road.  I saw a flash of red coming toward my car.”  She swerved but still hit the wagon.  “I got out of the car and this really beautiful little girl with pale skin and blue eyes was laying in the road.  Her eyes were glazed over.  I knew the spirit had left her body.”

Today, she says the accident taught her about fate, her own and the girl’s, but at the time she was devastated. 

Fortunately for her, Mr. De Rosa’s yoga studio was just down the street:

She started taking daily classes . . . and finding comfort in Ashtanga yoga’s rigorous, some say purifying, series of poses that are practiced in silence.  Sometimes, she stayed after class to discuss meditation techniques or the yogic perspective on suffering with Mr. De Rosa.  He said he found her “amazingly beautiful and radiating,” but because he had a longtime girlfriend at the time, he said he felt bound to resist falling for Ms. Halweil.

“I was really looking for things to not be interested in,” he said. “She reminded me of my mother, her intelligence and wit and the fact that she loves to sing.”

In the fall he asked her to stop taking classes at Tapovana.  “I just had this realization that it wasn’t time for me and Erika to even be friends,” he said.  “I chose not to spend any more time around her.  Our relationship was totally innocent but it was getting stronger.”   

That winter, Halweil and her husband agreed to divorce, while De Rosa and his girlfriend split up.  Faster than you could say “Jack Robinson,” they were a couple.  

The Halweil-De Rosa reception

There are sooooo many other quotable lines in this story.  But I’ve got places to be and people to see, so I’ll limit myself to just these few:

– “She’s so light and fun,” Mr. De Rosa said. “No matter what’s happening, it’s fun.  And if it’s not, it turns fun really quickly.”

– “I would cook all the time at her cottage,” said Mr. De Rosa, who is so knowledgeable about food he can tell you what to eat to feel more grounded, to get over a broken heart or to sleep better.  

– Their daughter, Neelu, was born at home on June 15, 2011, shortly after Ms. Halweil drank a concoction of castor oil, pineapple juice, vodka and baking soda prescribed by her midwife to speed contractions.

The column ends with a description of the wedding ceremony, which one guest described as “just super-solid and super-honest”:

The ceremony was led by the bride’s brother, who shared several pieces of advice about marriage that he had collected beforehand from family members and friends: think, laugh and love as often as possible; save money; check each other for ticks nightly to prevent Lyme disease; let the other person win sometimes; and, during difficult times, remember, this too shall pass.

“Check each other for ticks nightly to prevent Lyme disease”?  The brother must be a Brad Paisley fan.

* * * * *

“Ticks” was a #1 hit for Paisley in 2007.  

Reviewer Kevin John Coyne was not a big fan of the song.  He wrote that “this may be the very first mainstream country single to completely skeeze me out.”

Here’s “Ticks”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: