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Consuming Heteroscripts: The Modern Wedding in the American Imaginary
Stephanie Harzewski
Elizabeth Freeman. The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture. Duke University Press, 2002.
Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck. Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding. University of California Press, 2003.
Feminist and queer scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have begun to defamiliarize the wedding industry, most recently estimated in the United States at exceeding forty billion dollars annually.1 Chrys Ingraham�s White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture revealed how this sector positions the wedding as a familial-consumer event to market whiteness, particularly white beauty norms. Jaclyn Geller�s Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique expanded Ingraham�s survey of the wedding�s increasing commodification and argued that with the unprecedented cost of living in the United States, gifts and cash received at wedding-related festivities serve as powerful incentives to heteronormativity. A variant of National Organization for Women founder Betty Friedan�s �feminine mystique,� the �marriage mystique� signifies not an unnamable suburban malaise, but the idea of marriage as a fetishized relief to all psychological or economic insecurity. Sociologist Sharon Boden�s Consumerism, Romance and the Wedding Experience marked the first book-length study of wedding consumption in Britain since the 1994 Marriage Act, legislature which licensed approved premises for civil ceremonies in England and Wales. The first empirical study of wedding consumption to engage fully with sociological consumer culture literature, it presents data on the beliefs and actions of brides and grooms as well as exposes the rhetoric circulated in popular culture that renders the wedding experience meaning (150). Though divergent in tone and methodology, these three pioneering studies engage the white wedding as what Boden has termed �a within-reach consumer fantasy� and interrogate the ideologies the industry works to bolster (46).
Two new book releases on the sociology of the modern American wedding continue to challenge and demystify the politics of this national obsession and perhaps quintessential heterosexual ritual. More importantly, by divorcing the wedding as an event from marriage as a state-sanctioned institution, they signal a shift in conceptualizations of love and American love of spectacle. Boden begins to articulate this point when she notes that given the statistical likelihood of divorce, having a wedding today becomes celebrated for the romantic, feast-like pleasures of the day itself. The image of the wedding as a luxury consumer item dissociates itself from marriage and particularly the married life it presages (19). Elizabeth Freeman�s The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture and Cele Otnes and Elizabeth Pleck�s Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding both work to detach the wedding from marriage. Instead of a portal to �happily ever after,� the wedding serves for Freeman as an unreliable guarantor of narrative and social closure as neither its popular version nor state-sanctioned contract can ensure a marriage, or, as we will see, qualify its members to two. Approaching the wedding as market analysts and historians of consumer culture, Otnes and Pleck do not so much critique what has become, they argue, the major ritual of the entire life span, but instead show how the lavish wedding increasingly functions as powerful mechanism for the communication of social prestige (4, 6).
A Duke �Series Q� title, The Wedding Complex offers an alternative paradigm for understanding the work of the wedding in literature and media culture. Scholars have typically assessed the wedding as lending narrative closure, even if forced or problematic. While critics have long linked the dominance of �wedlock� with narrative �deadlock,� Freeman insists that the wedding often produces anything and everything but a successful endpoint of a courtship teleology (xiii). Instead of narrative closure or acquiescence to a dominant social ideology, the wedding grants its participants various kinds of transitivity: the ability to be both black and white, both child and adult, both male and female, or the desire to travel somewhere else in space and time (xiv). In this way, weddings, Freeman argues, �made forbidden (or forgotten) alliances tangible�as points of resistance to marital supremacy, and as figures for a different social order� (xiv-xv). In her gathering of texts from a diverse body of antebellum literature, film, and social history, Freeman finds that the wedding serves to illuminate and critique the power of marriage law to maintain structures that do not seem immediately related to it, such as the nation-state and racial taxonomies. The selected weddings, then, perform cultural work analogous (or slantwise) to that of marriage law (xiv). The contradiction between what weddings can do and what marriage law really does, Freeman playfully muses, might be one reason people cry at weddings (44).
Freeman complicates Ingraham�s appraisal of the wedding as the archetypical heterosexual event by assessing the weddings of her study as fundamentally queer in their �doubled work of wild fantasy and rigorous demystification� (xv). Further, the wedding offers not only a queer sensibility but also one deeply femme in its hyperfemininity and �improper, delicious self-aggrandizing dramatization� of what is ostensibly a common social rite (xv). Freeman is justifiably hesitant to label every non-marital or even failed wedding as queer, yet she asserts that the social alternatives exposed by the excessive and/or failed weddings in her sample dovetail with a queer politics, one that in the widest sense engenders the ongoing production of shared meanings and unanticipated constituencies (xv). The volume operates in a Foucaultian mode in that Freeman views �queer� as neither identitiarian nor anti-identitiarian, but socially constructive, imaginative, or reparative. Freeman qualifies this arguably too broad characterization of �queer� with the assessment that the label is relatively useless unless it encompasses social forms beyond hetero- or homo-normative couplehood. This bold yet perhaps too democratic treatment of �queer� is balanced by a careful historical grounding of marriage itself. While Freeman�s wielding of terminology may be faulted, The Wedding Complex succeeds in utilizing fictional texts as a means of imagining, enacting, or even extracting lost or new possibilities of social engroupment.
Consisting of a preface, six chapters, and a coda, The Wedding Complex employs close readings of fiction, film, and wedding custom to carve out new territory in the study of the wedding as a cultural phenomenon. For example, in chapter 1, �Love Among the Ruins,� Freeman presents highly original but historically-grounded readings of early modern wedding law and ritual. Here we learn that during the 1660s elaborately iced and marzipanned hard-shelled cake began to substitute for the breaking of bread or showering of grain over the bride�s head, gestures that had once symbolized her fertility. This period, more specifically the mid-1660s with the emergence of bridal white, marked the long historical process of distinguishing the bride�s body from that of her groom and her peers. The separating and enclosing of the bridal body operates metonymically in the form of the white casting covering the grain cakes. Freeman interprets the cake�s material history as a symbolic acquiescence to the Catholic Church�s previous efforts to appropriate and spiritualize the wedding�s more carnal elements. Yet, she posits, the converse is equally plausible: the showcasing of the bridal body may have been symbolically resisting the church�s standpoint on marriage as a sacred lateral bond between relative equals (19). The cakes, as symbolic miniatures of the bride�s body, may have encoded earlier views of marriage as a communally sanctioned transformation of the bride�s status, and partaking of the cakes symbolically upheld the ability of the community to participate in her fertility. Freeman throughout does not eschew complexity or potentially competing readings. She instead maximizes such entanglements to their advantage as she successfully makes the chapter�s larger argument that such customs most likely both acknowledged emerging forms of controls over marriage while reanimating earlier ones (20). Each chapter serves to situate and amplify the larger social argument that the queerness of the wedding lies in the kinship and quasi-kinship possibilities embedded in it as residues of various institutional controls over marriage.
While Freeman works to elucidate the thematic and social connections among the fictions in her archive, several chapters operate as stand-alone essays as they devote attention to a single author or text. This method enables Freeman to achieve extraordinarily detailed, original, and incisive readings, but ones whose density sometimes impairs readability, at least for non-specialist readers. This aside, chapter 2, �The We of Me: The Member of the Wedding�s Novel Alliances,� stands as arguably the most trenchant close reading of Carson McCullers�s novella. Earlier critics interpreted the 1946 novella as a bildungsroman in which tomboyish Frankie Addams trades her childhood imaginings for feminine excess and then for a proper young adult social life (43). McCullers employs the wedding to connect Frankie to World War II, as her brother Jarvis�s wedding enables his sister to transform the imperialism of U.S. heterosexuality�its defense and expansion of its borders�into a �vision of safe space expanding to enfold an entire (queer) planet� (56). As the text ends with a displacement of the African-American characters from the household, the visually white wedding becomes a racially whitening marriage with Frankie�s earlier challenges to the Jim Crow racial order checked in its conclusion (71).2 Yet Frankie�s assertion that her brother and fiancée Janice represent �the we of me� begins to formulate a queerer social bond than that of the family, nation, or dyadic couple.
This section offers thematic continuity with Freeman�s analysis of Faulkner�s Absalom! Absalom! (chapter 3) in which Freeman reads the novel�s wedding as giving form to the possibility of a multiracial economy engendered by forces beyond cross-racial, heterosexual reproduction. Absalom! Absalom!�s wedding works as a vortex to spin out narrative and social economies in opposition to the marriage plot, as the wedding operates as a vexed but productive site for negotiating race. The close reading of the novel proper is extended into a judicious observation of the problematic legacy of marriage in the U.S.: Absalom! Absalom! clarifies how the civil ceremony derives its meaning from religious and folk forms, yet these are culled from models of belonging that challenge the hegemony of couple-centered marriage itself (100). Both novels use their respective weddings to forge alternative paradigms of temporality and to make visible affective ties between individuals denied legal sanction for their sexual longings and conduct (66). Attributes identified in the wedding at the center of Faulker�s novel carry over into Freeman�s discussion of Joseph Kirland�s Zury: The Meanest Man in Spring County (chapter 4). In this nineteenth-century fiction the wedding operates as a centrifugal force, with Kirland employing the Puritan wedding to inquire what makes a marriage �real,� whether its sexual consummation, civil contexts, or community approbation (131).
The kinship possibilities that glimmer through the weddings in Freeman�s archive are the very ones policed by church and state: same-sex relations, polyamory, cross-racial liaisons, and adult-child relations beyond parenting. The last is treated in chapter 5, �Honeymoon with a Stranger: Private Couplehood and the Making of a National Subject.� This chapter begins by offering a cultural history of the honeymoon, in which the U.S. landscape takes on the role formerly occupied by the extended family as by 1840 newlyweds increasingly traveled alone. It then surveys man-girl honeymoons from Nabakov�s Lolita, Poe�s prose sketch �Three Sundays in a Week,� to the Irish-American writer Captain Mayne Reid�s The Headless Horseman, generically classified as what Freeman terms the �pedophiliac picaresque.� Such narratives consist in part of honeymoon journeys in which the child bride has an explicitly tutorial relationship with the male that is not only sexual but also geographic as well as cultural and whose directionality is inverted such that the girl dominates the show (150). The child bride is responsible for making the U.S. intelligible and available to the male protagonist, who can no longer depend upon frontier logic, Romanticism�s cult of nature, or familial sentimentalism to mold his relationship with �America� (154). Freeman concedes that this mode has more to offer the male than the female whose role in the honeymoon actualizes his fantasy, but the man-child bride relationship in its mingling of the roles of parent/child and husband/wife undermines the very relationships the honeymoon was designed to separate. This attribute, coupled with the honeymoon�s historical shift as an occasion for visiting people to visiting places, indicates a crisis in kinship itself.
The Wedding Complex adopts a cyclical chapter structure as its first and last units feature analyses of wedding-related cinema. The final chapter, �The Immediate Country, or Heterosexuality in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,� presents a serial analysis of classic twentieth-century Anglo-American filmic, televisual, and theatrical weddings, such as The Godfather and Father of the Bride, as well as recent performance forms, such as the off-Broadway interactive dinner play Tony �n� Tina�s Wedding. These primary texts are linked by their status as �productions of situational ethnicity� for the white middle class (185). They afford opportunities for an ethic group to experience themselves as keepers of tradition and producers of uncommodified culture without resurrecting the Anglo-Saxon and racial paradigms of the earlier part of the century. While the readings of individual staged weddings are incisive, the chapter suffers from structural disjointedness. Greater attention was needed to maximize the connections between moving portraits and the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, the year historians cite as the emergence of the couple-centered honeymoon among the American middle class. This quibble emanates, I suspect, from the work�s general challenge to the reader in its jump cuts from twentieth-century to nineteenth-century to contemporary texts, with various permutations. Yet those willing to follow its non-chronological structure will find reward as the canonical and non-canonical juxtapositions render a fierce originality.
Freeman apparently completed her manuscript just as Ingraham�s White Weddings came to press. Freeman amplifies (or misses the opportunity to) the theses of Ingraham, specifically the latter�s concept of �the wedding industrial complex� that she uses to structure and title chapter two. This term refers to the industry�s virtually recession-proof constitution and reflects the nexus of associations among weddings, marriage, the state, religion, media, and popular culture (Ingraham 26). Ingraham offers an overview of the various components that comprise this complex to reveal the historical and material foundation upon which this exemplum of the heterosexual imaginary relies.3 Freeman�s �wedding complex� signifies both the totalizing nature of the industry, as Ingraham has dexterously shown,4 and the narrative and psychoanalytic movement toward closure through marriage, which feminist literary critics such as Rachel Brownstein have well established.5 Yet she shifts her focus to the wedding complex: �the tangle of icons, semiotic transformations, and temporal rearrangements through which social being becomes tangible, if not strictly legalized� (43). A creative endeavor, certainly, but one in which Freeman occasionally gets carried away or sacrifices clarity. For example, phrases such as �English political collectivity� and statements like �[p]erhaps, in exiling the personification of coverture, Endicott becomes a protofeminist �marriage protester� like Lucy Stone, far avant la lettre� reveal an abused penchant for original phrasing, alliteration, and assonance (119).
It is unclear how the initial chapter title, �Love Among the Ruins,� connects to the subsequent content. Because it implicitly references the eponymous 10,000 Maniacs album, a recent Robert Clark novel, George Kukor�s classic film staring Laurence Olivier and Katherine Hepburn, and a Robert Browning poem, it ultimately falls vague. In this forty-four-page chapter too many readings, however lucid, of other texts, such as Michael Cimino�s The Deer Hunter, Judith Butler�s Bodies That Matter, and Shyam Selvadurai�s Funny Boy, compete with her analysis of Su Friedrich�s experimental film First Comes Love. While the paragraph units are structurally sound, there is too much going on as an individual chapter, though the sections themselves are excellent. It would have benefited from returning more often to Friedrich�s film to ground the reader or perhaps including the film�s analysis in her last chapter. Finally, the assertion that the honeymoon �easily outdoes� the cost of the wedding is hyperbolic as the average American honeymoon is presently around $4,000, albeit no small sum by most, with $22,000 as the wedding with honeymoon mean cost (Freeman 146; Otnes and Pleck 2).
Despite these relatively minor shortcomings, The Wedding Complex stands as our most original and theoretically sophisticated work to date on the American wedding. It establishes Freeman as an exciting and important scholar not only in popular culture, but also in American literature, queer studies, antebellum history, and race theory. It is a dense work, which, especially its preface, is best read more than once. The interdisciplinarity of the study reflects not only the variety of methodologies and optics the wedding lends itself to, but also testifies to Freeman�s dexterity in these terrains.
Though distinct in tone and devoting greater attention to the wedding�s commodified aspects, Otnes and Pleck�s Cinderella Dreams works according to Freeman�s concept of �queering�: to �queer� something is �at once to make its most pleasurable aspects gorgeously excessive, even to the point of causing its institutional work to fail, and to operate it against its most oppressive political results� (xv). Far more than a tiara and cake topper vendor, the wedding industry must be perceived as a complex media, lifestyle, and retail network. Structured in ten chapters, Cinderella Dreams meticulously documents the cultural history of the rituals and icons surrounding primarily North American weddings. While the authors date the growth of the lavish wedding to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert�s wedding in 1840, the study focuses on weddings since World War II, as the wedding industry began to boom with the introduction of Bride�s magazine in 1934. This undertaking was no small task, as weddings have exponentially grown in elaborateness and scale since the New England colonial period when most brides married in their best clothes at home, declaring consent before a justice of the peace (Freeman 20). The work examines then not only traditional customs like the proposal and bouquet toss, but also new forms such as the bachelorette party as the reemergence of the engagement party, the latter diminishing in popularity for several decades and revived as the average engagement period has grown to thirteen months. The analysis of various prenuptial traditions is unified by their attempt to cultivate the perception of the engagement period as a �magic, liminal time� (80). We learn wedding factoids, such as the history of one of the most successful advertising slogans: De Beers�s mantra �A Diamond Is Forever� was coined one night in 1947 by Ayer agency copywriter Frances Gerety, a high school graduate from Philadelphia who had been working for the company for four years (66). This �Life Passages� series title synthesizes a tremendous amount of research, as the work doubles as a reference book. Otnes and Pleck have achieved a crossover book suitable for academic readers and wedding aficionados, as it also features thirty black and white reproductions of wedding paraphernalia, film clips, and industry advertisements. It would be no surprise if an excerpt appeared in one of the major bridal magazines, which I suspect will keep the book in-house for its compendium quality.
The book�s central argument concerns the democratization of the lavish wedding, once typically only for royalty or the upper classes. Now, except on the lowest strata of the socioeconomic ladder, the decision to plan and execute an elaborate wedding is seldom questioned. Further, the lavish wedding, the authors maintain, has attained the status not only of a rite but also a personal right as access to credit cards and loans have become more egalitarian (3). It functions as one of the most visible means by which couples and families can showcase and augment the quantity and quality of their social network (5). After delineating and challenging explanations for the growing popularity of the lavish wedding (e.g. a fancy affair as �divorce insurance�), the authors identify the lavish wedding as possessing the ability to achieve four major functions, and more so than any other occasion: 1) �marry� consumer culture with that of romantic love, 2) enact magical transformations, 3) offer memories of a �social and singular� event, and 4) legitimate luxury consumption through an �ethic of perfection��the desire for flawless beauty and a perfectly orchestrated performance enjoyed and recognized by guests and hosts (7-8). While earlier wedding historians such as Geller, a NYU English doctoral student and self-proclaimed spinster by choice, have condemned the wedding as a bastion of patriarchy or a me-fest for the bridal couple, Otnes and Pleck opt to recognize and explore the mixed messages of the wedding day: an odd but riveting composite of patriarchy, sex-role conformity, egalitarianism, and individuality. The latter is increasingly significant as its cousin, distinctiveness, is now of equal importance to luxury and as much or more so a marker of class as money (6, 113).
Otnes and Pleck offer a large-scale investigation of Boden�s observation that while Cinderella is a childhood story, it has become symbolic of the commodified romantic images of weddings (Boden 121).6 Indeed, the fairy tale has inspired countless adaptations and respective consumer paraphernalia. The study details how the wedding enables the betrothed not only to consume, but also to produce their own rendition of the tale (132). The couple commissions a cast of professionals to videotape, cater, and decorate the event, typically set to music, yet the crew often attempts to impose scripts and a schedule on the performance, evidenced in a photographer�s checklist of shots or a master of ceremonies� standardized reception timetable. In light of staged performances, the chapter �Hollywood Hosts a Wedding� surveys silver screen wedding movies, particularly those of the 1990s, a record decade for weddings in film. Films of this period generally endorse the lavish wedding but not without debating its merits (168). Also, the class distinction regarding who is entitled to such a wedding, a major concern of 1950s films such as Father of the Bride and The Catered Affair, had vanished by the 1990s (186). Otnes and Pleck argue that the Cinderella fantasy is more detached from dreams of marriage (Cinderella�s �Some day my prince will come . . .�) and more connected to the self-fashioning and escape afforded through shopping for the �big day� (274, 278). The chapter reflects the larger thesis that weddings can be consumed as spectacle apart from a marital context and have become more closely aligned with the world of entertainment, as evidenced in the popularity of Tony �n� Tina�s Wedding, which premiered off-Broadway in 1988 and has since run continuously. Genuinely entertaining, this chapter would make a fine contribution to a film and popular culture anthology.
While concentrating on North American weddings, Otnes and Pleck devote a chapter to the globalization of the lavish Western wedding. In varying degrees, brides across the globe are increasingly appropriating the interdependent elements of fantasy, magic, and romantic love permeating Western popular culture and Hollywood films. Attributes of the Western wedding, particularly the white gown, embody not only the cross-cultural appeal of the Cinderella fantasy, but also modernity, sophistication, and status. It is particularly popular in the Pacific Rim, where in Japan the average cost of a wedding is the highest in the world ($66,000 in 1996). The adoption of Western wedding features is a function of the global wealth divide, but Otnes and Pleck note that this division is further demarcated by a spatial dimension: in most countries the location of the lavish wedding is typically the largest city in the nation, such as Cairo, Tokyo, Mexico City, Taipei, Beijing, or Kampala. While partly due to an alacrity for the pleasures of consumption, there is also a strong correlation between the spread of the wedding and the decline of arranged marriage (225). Further, the importation of the Western wedding is not always a one-way route. The Japanese, for example, minimized the time expenditure of wedding planning by introducing the concept of the wedding package, which has been widely adopted throughout much of the Pacific Rim as well as in the West, where it serves as the model for the destination wedding (224).
In The Commercialization of Intimate Life sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild draws an analogy between the Reformation and the sexual revolution of the last thirty years: what the former did to the hegemony of the Catholic Church, the latter has done to romantic love (123). The ideal of heterosexual romantic love, which the modern first-time wedding strived to embody, is now a slightly smaller model with a growing pantheon of love, each with its respective supporting subculture. For instance, while still denied the right to a legally binding marriage in 49 states, gay and lesbians are beginning to receive positive acknowledgment through greater media exposure (e.g. The Ellen DeGeneres Show) and in some cases access to health coverage in the form of partner benefits. Though heterosexual marriage as the proper place of romantic love has been challenged by the queer liberation movement and the sharp increase in heterosexual cohabitation, the ideal of romantic love, Hochschild argues, seems to be retaining its stronghold by extending and adapting itself to more populations (123). Otnes and Pleck in their chapter �Variations on a Theme,� an analysis of the politics of gay marriage, pregnant brides, and interfaith couples, offers a complement to Hochschild�s thesis. This penultimate chapter considers not only same-sex marriage as �alternative� weddings, but also vow renewal ceremonies and encore marriages, the latter one or both members� second (third or fourth) marriage. These weddings also reveal more often than not a penchant for luxury and consumerism, legitimated by the rules of etiquette�s accompanying relaxation.
Continuity between alternative weddings of the earlier century is established with those of the latter. For instance, the hippie wedding has become this generation�s environmental or �green� wedding: both ceremonies value the outdoors and endorse an ethic of voluntary simplicity. Green weddings, while incorporating a much higher level of consumption than their predecessors, do away with disposable and single-use items, set up recycle bins for bottles, reduce fuel consumption by holding the ceremony and reception in one location, and serve organically grown vegetarian food. The section devoted to jumping the broom, while immensely interesting, is out of place in this chapter, especially as it has become relatively commonplace in African-American weddings, which are ill-grouped under �alternative.� An old tradition that was revived with the 1977 airing of Alex Haley�s Roots television adaptation, the custom was a slave-devised form of self-marrying by jumping over an ordinary broomstick. Witnessed mostly by other slaves, jumping the broom appears to have been borrowed from Welsh neighbors who lived among slaves in the South, but after the Civil War it was relegated to a game as ex-slaves desired a type of wedding once denied, one legal and lavish.
Cinderella Dreams is indisputably our most honest account of how the wedding industry controls and shapes the subjectivity of real or aspiring brides. An eminently readable study, it strives to convey the wedding�s intense affective dimension and achieves this brilliantly. Yet Otnes and Pleck are at times overzealous in rhetorically conjuring the wedding�s appeal:
[T]he lavish wedding allows participants to experience unabashed magic in their lives and to spend freely to achieve that magic, without a guilt hangover the next morning. It does so within the framework of a very famous fairy tale. Cinderella�s dream was one of enchantment and escape, two goals often impossible to achieve in the real world. But under a lace veil, behind a twenty-pound beribboned cake, in the reflection of a flawless two-carat round diamond solitaire, or hand in hand on a beach in Aruba, the lavish wedding may be the one time when true transformation and transcendence of the ordinary seems not only possible but also, to those who embrace the tenets of romantic consumer culture, well deserved. (279-280)
The study is in part self-reflexive as its tone at times borders on a wedding industry publication. This is the risk any scholar faces in conveying a compelling, empirical treatment of the wedding�s allure. However, the imperialist aspects of weddings�conditions and treatment of diamond miners, grossly underpaid Asian bridal garment workers�are barely acknowledged. Far more space is devoted to the brilliance of DeBeers�s marketing campaigns or the �magical� quality of consumption. The study would have also benefited from even a nod at wedding-related debt�not only a testament to the allure of luxury goods, but also for millions of Americans a serious and growing concern. Granted, a significant treatment of the wedding�s exploitative features would be counterproductive to the project�s aims, if not simply jarring, and the authors from the get-go inform us that they strive neither to praise nor condemn the lavish wedding. In the end, Otnes and Pleck�s prose succeeds in holding the reader under their authorial spell as the nearly 400-page book, like a good wedding reception, never lags. The bibliography is a testament to their passion for the subject and an outstanding resource for inclined scholars or wedding enthusiasts. The index�s detail is also exemplary.
Both studies reflect the development in the past decade of what we can call critical heterosexuality studies, though this growing body of work has its origins in the early years of American feminism�s second wave. In the late 1960s radical lesbian feminists began to mount an attack on heterosexuality as a patriarchal institution. Classic feminist polemics such as Luce Irigaray�s �Women on the Market� and Gayle Rubin�s �The Traffic in Women� protested the phallocentric order in which women function as transferable circulating commodities of exclusively male consumption. Adrienne Rich�s landmark �Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence� posited heterosexuality as a non-choice for women and an institution through which male power is manifested and maintained. Monique Wittig�s The Straight Mind furthered Rich�s call to question �unexamined heterocentricity,� denouncing it not as an institution but a �political regime� that �rests on the submission and appropriation of women� and the political-philosophical categories of �men� and �women� (Wittig xiii-xiv; Rich 203).
It took until the early- or mid-1990s for heterosexuality as a conceptual category to receive sustained theoretical debate as one of several sociological components in the �race, class, gender, sexual orientation� feminist scholarship checklist. Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger�s introduction to their Feminism and Psychology special issue on heterosexuality begins by asserting that heterosexuality has been largely untheorized within both psychology and feminism and that feminist theory too often assumes heterosexuality as a given, producing analyses in which it occupies a �taken-for-granted, but never explicitly addressed, substrate� (1). in In New Millennium Sex Styles Carol Siegel contends that with scant exceptions feminist theory of sexuality relies on a dichotomy between lesbianism and heterosexuality, with the latter �always complicitous with the systems of male supremacy we usually refer to as patriarchy� (10). In the largest sense, critical heterosexuality scholarship strives to challenge common representations of heterosexuality as a coherent, stable monolith and to investigate the diversity of meanings, social arrangements, and hierarchies within this category.
Jonathan Ned Katz�s groundbreaking study The Invention of Heterosexuality arguably catalyzed the proliferation of critical heterosexuality texts in the past half-decade. Katz traces the transition of �heterosexual� from a stigmatizing clinical diagnosis for non-reproductive, pleasure-oriented perversion to a normative socio-sexual identity label.7 The making of the urban middle-class and the construction of heterosexuality occurred simultaneously as this sector sought to distinguish itself from the decadent upper class and sensual proletarian via the development of a sexual ethic that validated different-sex desire apart from human reproduction. According to Katz, the process of normalizing heterosexuality was fostered by Freud in his �Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,� first published as a brochure of sorts in 1905 and expanded up until 1924, where �heterosexuality� comes to denote the healthy endpoint of sexual maturation. Freud�s developmental model coupled with his concepts of the pleasure principle and individual libido detached heterosexual desire from its supposedly innate link to the acceptable arena of species propagation. Katz contends that the discourse on heterosexuality had �a protracted coming out� not completed in American mainstream culture until the end of the 1920s (83). By the 1930s �heterosexuality� appeared in mainstream English dictionaries, such as Webster�s Second Edition Unabridged, where instead of signifying a morbid medical term as in its previous edition it was defined as �normal sexuality� akin to current conceptions of heterosexuality (Katz 92).8
It would be gross hyperbole to claim that The Wedding Complex and Cinderella Dreams work together to return heterosexuality to its original etymology. Yet the studies� level of defamiliarization casts aspects of wedding ritual as perverse. With varying degrees of intent, both titles function analogous to the effect of drag Judith Butler identifies in her reading of Paris Is Burning�s drag balls: a reflection on the imitative structure by which gender norms are produced and a dispute of heterosexuality�s claim on naturalness and originality (125). The considerable, sometimes tremendous, amount of work expended to create a lavish wedding as a paean to romantic heterosexual love belies its vulnerability and exposes its increasingly media-made edifice.
In conclusion, Freeman adroitly dissociates the wedding from marriage as a regulatory norm and explores this fissure. Otnes and Pleck articulate a richly detailed perspective on this iconic heterosexual ritual and reveal the growing difficulty of separating such inquiries from those of American consumerism. We cannot help wonder if the trend of the �bigger and better� wedding reflects not only American ideals of optimism and progress, but also a fault line in heterosexuality itself.9
1 According to a recent survey by the Condé Nast Bridal Group, the U.S. wedding industry annually totals nearly forty billion dollars. If honeymoon and gifts are included, wedding-related expense accrues to an additional ten billion a year. Such figures exceed not only the national revenues of McDonald�s and Pepsi, but also that of the gross domestic product of Aruba ($2 billion) and the Bahamas ($5 billion), as well as many other island nations that are popular honeymoon locales (Mead 78).
2 State laws against interracial marriage were not overturned in many states until 1967 (Freeman 23).
3 Ingraham appears to have overlooked Trudy Nicely Henson�s sociological examination of the wedding industry in the 1970s, The Wedding Complex: The Social Organization of a Rite of Passage, from which Freeman borrows her title.
4 Ingraham�s concept of �the wedding complex� is contiguous with a new fortress identified by journalist Kate Zernike as the �Dating-Industrial Complex.� For example, in the first half of 2003 Americans spent 214.3 million dollars on personals and dating sites, almost three times what they spent in all of 2001 (Egan 66). Matchmaking services (It�s Just Lunch!, 8minuteDating), on-line dating sites (love.com, eHarmony), and a growing number of reality TV shows (Average Joe, Mr. Personality) reflect and perpetuate what psychologists such as Bella De Paulo have termed a �fetishization of coupling� (�Just Saying No to the Dating Industry�).
5 In Becoming a Heroine: Reading About Women in Novels Brownstein writes that the domestic novel�s paradigmatic hero moves toward a goal, while the heroine tries to be it (82).
6 While Charles Perrault, a French poet and lawyer, did not write the first version of the Cinderella narrative, his Cendrillion (1679) became the best known.
7 �Heterosexual� made its first appearance, along with �homosexual,� in 1868 in the private correspondence of German sex-law reformer Karl Maria Kertbeny (Katz 52). Though in the making since the 1860s, our modern conception of �heterosexual� as a sex-differentiated erotic category began to be constructed in late-nineteenth-century Western European and American medical discourse. Its earliest-known use in English occurs in an article by Dr. James G. Kiernan published in 1892 (Katz 19).
8 Though I concede with Mason Stokes that �[t]o imagine that the appearance of words like heterosexuality in medical journals exists in a causal relationship with people�s sexual behaviors is to overestimate the popular currency of medical discourse and to underestimate the uncharitable complexity of sexual behavior� (15), I wish, like Stokes, to retain Katz�s larger argument that this shift in the meaning of �heterosexuality� parallels the broader shift from what Stokes identifies as a �reproduction-based sexuality to a pleasure-driven heterosexuality,� and 1930 approximately signals the endpoint of this paradigm shift (16).
9 From 1984 to 1994 the average cost of a typical American wedding quadrupled from $4,000 to $16,000 (Otnes and Pleck 2).
Works Cited
Boden, Sharon. Consumerism, Romance and the Wedding Experience. New York: Palgrave, 2003.
Brownstein, Rachel M. Becoming a Heroine: Reading About Women in Novels. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Egan, Jennifer. �Love in the Time of No Time.� New York Times Magazine 23 Nov. 2003: 66-71, 124.
Geller, Jaclyn. Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001.
Henson, Trudy Nicely. The Wedding Complex: The Social Organization of a Rite of Passage. Omaha: Park Bromwell, 1976.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Ingraham, Chrys. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Irigaray, Luce. �Women on the Market.� The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity. Ed. Alan D. Schrift. Trans. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke. New York: Routledge, 1997. 174-189.
Katz, Jonathan Ned. The Invention of Heterosexuality. New York: Plume, 1996.
Mead, Rebecca. �You�re Getting Married: The Wal-Martization of the Bridal Business.� The New Yorker 21 and 28 Apr. 2003: 76-78, 83-88, 91.
Rich, Adrienne. �Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.� Signs 5.4 (Summer 1980): 631-660. Rpt. in Adrienne Rich�s Poetry and Prose: Poems, Prose, Reviews and Criticism. Ed. Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi. New York: Norton, 1993. 203-224.
Rubin, Gayle. �The Traffic in Women: Notes on the �Political Economy� of Sex.� Toward an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna R. Reiter. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975. 157-210.
Siegel, Carol. New Millenium Sex Styles. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Stokes, Mason. The Color of Sex: Whiteness, Heterosexuality, and the Fictions of White Supremacy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
Wilkinson, Sue, and Celia Kitzinger. �Theorizing Heterosexuality.� Heterosexuality: A Feminism & Psychology Reader. Ed. Wilkinson and Kitzinger. London: Sage, 1993. 1-32.
Wittig, Monqiue. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon, 1992.
Zernike, Kate. �Just Saying No to the Dating Industry.� New York Times 30 Nov. 2003 <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/fashion/30SING.html>.
Copyright © 2004 by the University of Iowa


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Man punched after bar fight clings to life
WATERBURY — John MacBeth, a 56-year-old city employee, is clinging to life in Yale-New Haven Hospital after being punched in the face Sunday in the parking lot of the Diamond Lil's Cafe on Watertown Avenue. A prosecutor said Monday his survival "is not certain."
Witnesses told police MacBeth, a city native, was trying to defuse a bar fight when 23-year-old Jerome Hamlin punched him the face, knocking him to the grounds and causing the back of his head to smash against the pavement.
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ericj wrote on Jan 26, 2010 9:41 AM:
employee wrote on Jan 26, 2010 10:27 AM:
fustrated wrote on Jan 26, 2010 10:39 AM:
anonymous wrote on Jan 26, 2010 12:25 PM:
Ciarrai wrote on Jan 26, 2010 12:47 PM:
Heather wrote on Jan 26, 2010 1:21 PM:
frank wrote on Jan 26, 2010 1:43 PM:
Ant wrote on Jan 26, 2010 3:09 PM:
hopehegetsJAIL wrote on Jan 26, 2010 3:51 PM:
anonymous wrote on Jan 26, 2010 4:27 PM:
Prayersforhim wrote on Jan 26, 2010 4:35 PM:
people need help wrote on Jan 26, 2010 5:02 PM:
My prayers go out for the man in the hospital. He was the undeserving victim of 23 years worth of bottled up anger & hurt. "
Human wrote on Jan 26, 2010 5:24 PM:
Prayersforhim wrote on Jan 26, 2010 6:09 PM:
Joni Lynn wrote on Jan 26, 2010 9:37 PM:
Nicole wrote on Jan 26, 2010 9:43 PM:
dayle wrote on Jan 27, 2010 7:08 AM:
Kellie wrote on Jan 27, 2010 8:32 AM:
If you go to a place that asked you for id & you get upset because they did this then you don't need to be going out... OR better yet stick to the place that just served you & your underage friends & cause trouble there. Stay away from good places like Diamond Lil's where its mostly groups of friends having fun for a night & enjoying the company of their friends, staff & owners & either a band or dj. I hope ALL them dirtbags get jail time.... especially the big piece of crap Jerome Hamlin who already has a violent & drug record. Keep him in jail & make him work & not have a good ole time in jail.
John.... we're praying for you, your family & friends!! "
SandraH wrote on Jan 27, 2010 9:30 AM:
Eve wrote on Jan 27, 2010 9:56 AM:
Shame on you!!!!! "
CF wrote on Jan 27, 2010 12:37 PM:
Rosa wrote on Jan 27, 2010 5:59 PM:
Are you serious? People like that are beyond help. I am sorry but with his criminal back ground, he is nothing but a thug & has no cares what so ever for society. The Law is the Law, 21 to drink & enter a Bar. No ID no entry. So because of that you are going to attack people. I guess my friends should of just turned their cheek, and allowed people under age to drink & god forbid they got into an accident & being under age they would of been the ones in trouble. My friends were only following the Law. This criminal has no respect for the Law. I have 3 kids, me as a parent I know what my kids are doing, my oldest son knows he is under age to drink, out of respect for what I believe in & the Law he does not drink. He knows that when he becomes of age he does not drink & drive. There was a reason why they have a drinking age because people under 21 are not responsible enough to know that driving while intoxicated is very dangerous, many lives have been lost & can be lost with negligence. Me as a responsible person, yes I drink, but an hour or more before I leave to go home I stop drinking & I stick to water. We are all responsible adults there & we always look out for each other & make sure we all get home safely. My friend john is a good guy, he is funny, loving, decent & very caring. Someone mentioned how John will give you the shirt off his back, yes that is so true. I have been without a car due to an irresponsible person who hit me because he was speeding & not paying attention, before John leaves he always asks me if I am ok, if I have a ride home or else he will take me. John is a great person, he is the one that needs help now. He needs everyone to pray for his recovery. This criminal is beyond help & should have the book thrown at him. I hope he has a good stay with Bubba "
Kelly B wrote on Jan 27, 2010 7:05 PM:
dayle wrote on Jan 28, 2010 7:21 AM:
Rosa wrote on Jan 28, 2010 9:16 AM:
dayle wrote on Jan 28, 2010 1:40 PM:
JC wrote on Jan 28, 2010 4:38 PM:
im not telling wrote on Jan 29, 2010 5:22 PM:
bristol wrote on Jan 29, 2010 9:18 PM:
concerned Bristol friend wrote on Jan 30, 2010 10:34 AM:
Kelly B wrote on Jan 30, 2010 12:33 PM:
concerned bristol friend wrote on Jan 30, 2010 1:34 PM:
Darcie wrote on Jan 30, 2010 2:27 PM:
Excuse me, I am also praying for the victim but Jerome is one of my best friends and no one has the right to judge him or anyone! That is God's purpose, and his ONLY!! I have carefully read each and everyone of these postings and I don't think any of you bashing jerome, his family, or stereotyping him know what you are writing! You kelly B called jerome a thug! why b/c he is of african american decent? someone else said something about his family values...he has a wonderful mother that takes very good care of Jerome and brought him up to be a decent young man. To John's brother-in-law CF:You have stated yourself John is a fighter and is involved in violence. your exact words are, "there is no way in hell that John goes down like that unless he was "sucker-punched". John may be 56 years old, but in a fair fight that idiot wouldn't stand a chance." Everyone who has commented on this incident, that was not at the fight, needs to watch what they say b/c no one knows the truth. As stated above the only witness testimony was from John's friend and patrons/owner of the bar..so it is only that side of the situation. They need to get statements from EVERYONE present that night, even Jerome's friends. This was a big bar fight, I want to see a doctor with a degree state that man is in critical care from Jerome's one hit. John should let the police handle this situation b/c he knew what was going on and what he was getting himself into. To all of you people speaking about Jerome's previous record, none of you truly know the details of anything he has gotten charged with. Jerome has been at the wrong place,at the wrong time, such as John, and he has taken the wrap for his friends b/c was tryin to be a true friend in many cases. He is not a monster or a bad individual. He may have a problem with alcohol but he has the biggest heart. Everyone is making this case into the innocent white man against the black "thug!" That is NOT fair. Jerome has walked miles to make me laugh when I was having issues in my life. He put all of his friends first. How do we know he wasn't protecting one of his friends or his very own life? We don't know all the facts, only what the "society" and papers say! And you guys call that justice...the people making comments on here need to get all the facts and even get some education. "
Darcie wrote on Jan 30, 2010 3:46 PM:
So you know Jerome Hamlin right? All the good and bad qualities he has as well, correct? You have NO right to say there are many more Jerome's being developed...YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW JEROME HAMLIN! He is not a drug addict or a "thug", if that were the case he would not have some of the friends he has, including myself. I am a good person and have a 3.75G.P.A. in college. If he was such a thug, I would not be defending him at all! He was brought up to have values and respect! I'm sure many, if not ALL of you people have blammed some inicident or action you have made in the past on alcohol consumption. If that is not something society tends to do, the song Jamie Foxx created, "blame it on the alcohol," would have not been such a big hit! In my opinion, everyone is responsible for their actions regardless, but when too much alcohol is taken in, it clouds each and everyone of our judgement. No one should be jumping to conclusions here and no one has the right to say anything about Jerome if they are not willing to look at the fact John got himself involved and even his own brother-in-law stated he could defend himself. John made his decision and we all pay consequences for the wrong one's we make! I'm not saying this man deserved to be in a hospital bed and I have been praying for him and his family everynight as well as my friend Jerome. This was an unfortunate event, but cannot be changed. Bashing Jerome or John will not make John live or free Jerome. This was a bar fight and the owners of the bar or police should have been called sooner but the bar and everyone involved wanted to handle it without the police, evidently and havoc was reeked. With that said, I'm sure there were many events that led up to that one hit! The whole group of people, Johm included should have been arrested, it almost seems like the authorities just wanted to pin John's situation on one bad black "thug!" "
Darcie wrote on Jan 30, 2010 3:50 PM:
First of all study basic grammer sweetie! It is "frustrated!" Why not any other animal? Why a monkey? Because he was black? You should be ashamed of yourself! Does that mean you are a savage b/c you don't even know basic english? You should be arrested for this racial remark and should rot in hell buddy! I am going to say this again, You DO NOT KNOW Jerome! Thankyou and go back to elementary school hun. "
Kelly B wrote on Jan 30, 2010 7:04 PM:
Just so you know wrote on Jan 30, 2010 7:39 PM:
Rosa wrote on Jan 31, 2010 2:01 PM:
JOhn does not deserve was done to him. Your friend is a lost cause & he is going to jail. There is nothing you can do to defend him or stop it. Your friend has done a lot of damage to many lives. Hi family & friends spend each day worrying about him , praying that he pulls through because if he doesn't our lives will not be the same without him. I have no sympathy for your friend, The law will make sure he pays for what he did. There is no excuse for his actions. "
dayle wrote on Feb 1, 2010 7:31 AM:
Laura wrote on Feb 2, 2010 12:35 AM:
There were 6 of us that gave the police statements, some of us were driven straight to the police station by the police themsleves. So, ya, we didn't have time to get our stories straight. So, how is it that 6 of us saw the same thing if it weren't the truth??? Tell me that!!! And please he did Not accidently hit this man, he hit him with such force he knocked him out cold.
Yes, John told him to leave. We all did. He ruined a perfectly awesome night, all because his friends who were underaged couldn't stay! And yes I know that for a fact too, because I was the one who told him this. So, yes, we do not have a nice opinion of your lovely friend Jerome. Anyone who saw the fight or was told about the fight. It was senseless, and now a good friend of ours is Stil fighting for his life. What a nice guy he is.
I also happen to know for a fact, that in Terryville he was arrested for hitting another 50 year old bouncer because he couldn't get into the bar, since he was underage. I know this because friends of mine who were there that night, were the owners of the bar. I guess he enjoys hitting older men, must make him feel real good about himelf. Ya, he is just a fantastic person!!!I think you should really invest in some new friends!! "
CK wrote on Feb 10, 2010 5:36 PM:
Darcie & concerned bristol friend- I'm with you. Nobody knows what they're talking about & should really get a life!
If you all feel the need to continue discussing this, meet for coffee or something! You people disgust me, saying these horrific things about someone you DON'T EVEN KNOWWWW! You're no better than anyone! And its not helping the situation at all- your comments mean NOTHING!! So why waste your time talking CRAP about someone you don't even know? What you're all saying is VERY hurtful & it makes me literally sick. Notice the people on here that ACTUALLY KNOW Jerome have nothing bad to say about him?! What happened, happened, and as much as we'd all like to, NO ONE can go back & change anything. Many of you mention "praying"... well if you really had a relationship with God, then you'd know that forgiveness is KEY and He would tell you to pray for Jerome also. Even though its hard to accept & very unfortunate, this is all in God's plan. I pray for a sense of peace & forgiveness for all of you. "
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- Four people injured in Waterbury crash; driver leaves scene
- State labor commissioner, Waterbury native dead at 65
- Naugatuck veteran, community volunteer dead at 85
- Naugatuck burgesses to vote on school bailout funds
- Laws, contracts make it difficult to fire police chiefs
- Gridlock on the highway
- Torrington no closer to decision on revaluation numbers
- Torrington executive admits secret life in court documents
- Naugatuck man killed in I-691 accident
- Man punched after bar fight clings to life


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1940 Lombard Street, Marina District, San Francisco, CA 94123, United States of America – Show map
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Hotel Vitale, a Joie de Vivre HotelLatest booking: 7 hours ago There are 2 people looking at this hotel.
Hotel Diva - A Personality HotelLatest booking: 4 hours ago There are 2 people looking at this hotel.
Less than a mile from Route 101 and just 2 blocks from the Great American Music Hall, this motel features free Wi-Fi in all rooms and free parking.
Score from 813 reviews Review score
Parc 55 Wyndham San Francisco - Union SquareThis downtown San Francisco hotel is a block from Union Square and the Hallidie Plaza, which features a cable car stop. The hotel provides massage services and a tour desk.
Score from 2006 reviews Very good
In the Marina District of San Francisco, features a free parking spot. This inn is less than a 10-minute walk from Marina Green and renowned shops and cafes on Chestnut and Union Street.
Score from 900 reviews Very good
Courtyard by Marriott San Francisco DowntownThis hotel, in downtown San Francisco, features an indoor swimming pool and a hot tub. A flat-screen TV is included in all of the luxurious rooms.
Score from 283 reviews Very good
Checking out to leave and not coming back.
Dirty bathtub/sheets/bed cover/floor, unsafe, no elevators, noisy, unpleasant breakfast, not trained staff (hardly spoke english), recepcionist with bad appearance. Not worth the amount paid at all.
Doors slamming constantly
Friendly staff Laundrette opposite so we were able to leave our washing and collect later Parking was a big bonus
Toilet became blocked/backed up soon after our arrival and we were offered to use the toilet at reception. For the cost of the room we should have been offered an alternate room or blockage cleared.
The location was good, but the hotel was just par. The staff was very helpful.
Didn't know the hotel allowed smoking and the walls were paper thin.
I thought it was too pricey for what you received.
Nothing. Even the toilet paper was cheapest stuff possible
Cheaply furnished rooms. Smelled like dirty carpet. Cheapest toilet paper. Parking for maybe 1/2 the rooms. Just over priced for the quality. Location is not enough to charge this much.
Close to town
Small room Small beds No elevator Limited parking Room smelled bad
Location only. Needs updating. Could be great hotel.
When we required a second wash cloth the clerk responded very quickly, as he did when we had difficulty understanding the T.V. remote.
Parking was very difficult, with the spots being extremely close. If the care next to you was even a little bit on the dividing line, you had difficulty squeezing in. We got a significant scratch/dent on our car from the pillar in our first attempt to park. I suppose the rates were comparable with other sites in today's economy; but the rates seem a bit high for having a room in which to sleep and shower, and with no view at all, nor easy parking, nor close proximity to sites to visit.
The room was not clean. The coffee make was not clean and the head board on one bed was dirty. The sheets had stains on both beds.
Staff was very friendly and cooperative
Rooms were not well maintained and in poor condition.
Condition of facilities
Excellent staff for whom nothing was too much trouble. Definitely went the extra mile to help.
The rooms are exceedingly gloomy and quite claustrophobic as a consequence. Bathrooms are dated and the porcelain is very worn. And just why do other guests think it is acceptable to speak to each other at normal volume (in other words, very loudly) during quiet hours in the central public area. I've never known such inconsideration anywhere else in the world - perhaps a gentle reminder to guests via notices or at check-in would help reduce the problem.
If you want to sleep at night do not stay here. It was so loud every night we were here.
-toilet didnt flush, and one time overflowed, so had to change rooms again -show pressure poor -bedboard broke off the wall the first night, within 5 mins of being there, so we had to change rooms, on another level of the hotel, with no elevator. -no security, anyone can walk into hotel. -not enough car spaces - not able to talk to management with all these problems -stayed 3 nights and each day we had to get our keys reset, unable to leave early as it was already paid for. -no fridge, and when asked for a fridge for medication storage, was told there was a $20 per day fee. Overall, a very frustrating stay with poor customer service skills and this place was overpriced for the run down facilities
dingy, frayed towels and linens, dingy ironing board, smudges on walls
weak wireless signal, bad breakfast
You have to carry your own luggage up the stairs (no elevator) Price for that hotel shouldnt be more than $80 a night. "Breakfast" consisted of coffee, juice, danish, bananas, and what it look like cereal but no milk. When i asked the lady for milk, she didnt have any. Will not stay there again, would rather pay a little more and get a better hotel.
Extremely friendly and helpful staff.
Can not consider the breakfast offered, a continental breakfast. Breakfast included: coffee/tea, bagged pastries, bananas, mysli, water and orange/apple juice. No milk for the mysli or yogurt.
The room reaked of cigarretes , didn't have enough parking spaces had to park a mile away
The location is good, although there are many more hotels nearby that are better.
We had to bring up our luggages all the way up to 2nd floor. The hotel doesn't look that proper from the outside. Will not recommend this. Breakfast choices was very limited.
The location was great.
Towels are old thin and hard
Nothing, we never got in.
They advertised on Booking.com as "free parking, no reservations required." After we checked in the clerk said no parking was available and suggested parking on the street while acknowledging there was no street parking available. He then called his manager, advised the situation, and added that we had booked through Booking.com. Manager told him to reverse the credit card and put us on the street with our unparked car.
Beddings were dirty, had lots of hair on them. Asked staff to change the sheets and they did not have any clean sheets available. Staff was also very unfriendly and unattentive. They were more concerned with using their cell phones and playing on their xbox rather then helping customers. The included continental breakfast was also a joke. The waffle iron looked like it hasn't been cleaned in weeks. Cleanliness was certainly an issue.
Very good location and a decent place to stay. The staff was friendly and courteous.
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Philadelphia (8-8 last season) at Cleveland (4-12). The Eagles and 14th-year coach Andy Reid add LB DeMeco Ryans to a defense facing 28-year-old rookie QB Brandon Weeden and promising RB Trent Richardson. Browns CB Sheldon Brown played 8 years in Philly.
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Things to see and do - Cracow
Leaving for Poland
Cracow :
Unmissable tourist sites
Where to sleep?
Cracow Hotel tips
Sheraton Kraków Hotel from481 PLNBook
ibis krakow centrum from170 PLNBook
Hotel Kossak from296 PLNBook
Cracow Leisure tips
Sightseeing Bike Tour of Krakow
- 19.0 €
- Book
Wieliczka Salt Mine Half-Day Trip from Krakow
- 30.0 €
- Book
Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Half-Day Trip from Krakow
- 34.0 €
- Book
Cracow Travel guide
Cracow : Michelin's recommendations
Krakow is the historic capital of Poland: a place of deep religious significance, the final resting place of the Kings of Poland, the site of the venerable university where Nicholas Copernicus studied and Pope John Paul II attended the seminary. It seems almost miraculous that the city escaped destruction during the Second World War. The exceptional architectural heritage is a result of the influence of Casimir the Great (14C). This influence extended beyond the city and well into the 16C with the arrival of the Italian Renaissance.
Tourist attractions Cracow : Things to see and do
Wzgórze wawelskie PL - 31-001 Kraków
Proudly standing between two bends of the River Vistula, this hill is the heart of the city of Poland itself. Discover the admirable Cathedral and the superb Royal Palace. Together they seem to watch over the city. Along the access ramp, an equestria..
Ulica Kanonicza (Canons' Street)
Ul. Kanonicza PL - 31-002 Kraków
This street, one of the city's oldest, has retained its medieval character with finely decorated façades, beyond which arcades line the old courtyards. The motifs on the entrances are geometric; note the statues, leaded windows and balustrades.
Wawel Cathedral
Ul. Grodzka PL - 31-006 Kraków
The Gothic cathedral dedicated to St Stanislas and St Wenceslas contains many works of art, including St Stanislas' mausoleum (1629 and King Wladyslaw II Jagiello's Tomb, in red marble. Italian artists created the finest example of Renaissance archit..
Hotels Cracow
Sheraton Kraków Hotel
Powiśle 7 PL - 31-101 Kraków
This 5-star hotel is located 40 metres from the Vistula River and an 8-minute walk of the Wawel Royal Castle. It features luxurious rooms, high-class service and modern recreational facilities. All air-conditioned rooms at the Sheraton Kraków Hotel ..
Hotel Kossak
Plac Kossaka 1 PL - 30-106 Kraków
Kossak is a design hotel located in the centre of Kraków, offering chic, contemporary rooms with free Wi-Fi and air conditioning. There is also a sauna and a fitness centre. Hotel Kossak is located in a picturesque area, near Vistula River, just 600..
novotel krakow centrum
UL. Tadeusza Kosciuszki 5 PL - 30-105 KRAKOW
Prix Prices from : 424 PLN
The 4-star Novotel Kraków Centrum hotel is situated in the city center, opposite Wawel Hill and just a few minutes from the Old Town. 3660 sq. ft. (340 m2) of modern conference space and free Internet access make it perfect for conferences and busine..
Leisure activities Cracow
Leave Krakow for a morning or afternoon to visit the UNESCO-listed Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. This sobering half-day trip will have a lasting impact, commemorating the lives of those who died in the extermination camps during the Holocaust of World W..
Our tour meets in the largest medieval square in Europe, the main market square of Krakow. After an introduction on Krakow's origins we lead our guests to our shop to equip each person with their own Beachcruiser bike. Our tour takes you through a ti..
Prices from : 58 €
Follow the Eagles Nest Trail to Czestochowa to see the "Black Madonna", a Gothic painting of Our Lady at the monastery of Jasna Gora. Returning to Krakow you will stop at the Renaissance Castle in Pieskowa Skala which is home to the Museum ..
Restaurants Cracow
ul. Powisle 7 PL - 31 101 Kraków
Cafe Oranzeria
Plac Kossaka 1 PL - 31 106 Kraków
Plac Kossaka 1 PL - 31 106 Kraków
ul. Barska 2 PL - 30 307 Kraków
Someplace Else
ul. Powisle 7 PL - 31 101 Kraków
ul. Straszewskiego 14 PL - 31 101 Kraków


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Obey Classic Crest White T-Shirt
Item # 186442
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Get that classic Obey style in the Obey Classic Crest white t-shirt.
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Gear Question
how tall are they? cause a I want a really...
Member since
how tall are they? cause a I want a really baggy one, not a short jacket
Member since
This is an XL in Bond Civil jacket, I'm 6'1 180 lbs. The fit between the National and Civil jackets are similar. I Get On Extra Grind.
View More Details on Bond National Jacket - Men's


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Limited-edition dachshund puppy figurine featuring a pup nuzzling up to its mother. Handcrafted and enhanced with faux gems and gold-toned accents.
Measures approximately 3" H
From The Hamilton Collection
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There's nothing cuter than the bond between a mother and her puppy, who's always there to keep a watchful eye, offer encouragement and a tender shoulder to lean on whenever it's needed the most. Now you can celebrate a mother's loving relationship with her child with this heartwarming dachshund puppy figurine, featuring a little dachshund pup nuzzling up oh-so close to his mom.
Available only from The Hamilton Collection in a limited edition, this darling puppy dog figurine is carefully sculpted by hand in artist's resin to bring out every nuance, from the finely etched detailing of the pooches' fur to their affectionate poses, as the puppy leans against his mom for loving support. Meticulous hand-painting captures every lifelike detail, including their heartwarming expressions. Sparkling faux gems and shimmering heart-shaped gold-toned tags on their collars clearly show that these pooches are pampered. Strong demand is expected. So, welcome these darling pups into your home and order now!
- Celebrate a mother's loving relationship with her pup with this heartwarming dachshund puppy figurine, available only from The Hamilton Collection
- Carefully sculpted of artist's resin and meticulously hand-painted to capture every lifelike detail, from the texture of the dachshunds' hand-etched fur to their affectionate poses and heartwarming expressions
- Sparkling faux gems and shimmering heart-shaped gold-toned tags on their collars clearly show that these pooches are pampered
- Premiere issue in the My Darling Little Dachshund Figurine Collection
- Edition limited to 95 casting days, so order now!
- Hand-numbered with matching Certificate of Authenticity
- Measures approximately 3" H; 7.6 cm H
- Buy This Item Now:
- Mother And Puppy Dachshund Figurine Accented With Faux Gems
A Dachshund Puppy Figurine Celebrating the Love Between a Mother and Her Pup. Puppy Dog Figurine Is Accented with Faux Gems.
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- 904470005
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- s&s


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Marten Transport Announces First Quarter Results
MONDOVI, Wis., April 16, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marten Transport, Ltd. (Nasdaq:MRTN) today reported a 32.2% increase in net income to $7.2 million, or 32 cents per diluted share, for the first quarter ended March 31, 2013, from $5.4 million, or 25 cents per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2012. It was Marten's twelfth consecutive year-over-year increase in quarterly net income.
Operating revenue, consisting of revenue from truckload and logistics operations, increased to $164.5 million in the first quarter of 2013 from $151.5 million in the first quarter of 2012. Operating revenue, net of fuel surcharges, increased 8.2% to $132.7 million in the 2013 quarter from $122.6 million in the 2012 quarter. Fuel surcharge revenue increased to $31.7 million for the first quarter of 2013 from $28.8 million in the 2012 quarter.
Operating expenses as a percentage of operating revenue, with both amounts net of fuel surcharge revenue, improved to 90.6% for the first quarter of 2013 from 92.2% for the first quarter of 2012.Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Randolph L. Marten said, "We were able to demonstrate the strength of our multifaceted business model with a 32.2% improvement in net earnings for the quarter on an 8.6% increase in operating revenue. These gains were in large part driven by Marten Transport's continued strategic focus on customer solutions, cost efficiencies and improvements in equipment utilization, with disciplined execution reflecting the talent and teamwork of the people of Marten." Marten Transport, with headquarters in Mondovi, Wis., is one of the leading temperature-sensitive truckload carriers in the United States. Marten specializes in transporting and distributing food and other consumer packaged goods that require a temperature-controlled or insulated environment. Marten offers service in the United States, Canada and Mexico, concentrating on expedited movements for high-volume customers. Marten's common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol MRTN.
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Average price per square foot for Wake Forest NC was $110, a decrease of 2.7% compared to the same period last year. The median sales price for homes in Wake Forest NC for Sep 14 to Dec 14 was $253,500 based on 189 home sales. Compared to the same period one year ago, the median home sales price decreased 1.1%, or $2,750, and the...


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Toll Scorched in Arizona
In a warning about upcoming fourth-quarter earnings, Simon announced a $50 million charge to write down the entire value in the venture. Simon gave few details of why it was writing off the project, only saying the move coincided with the writedown of the joint venture's value by the general partner, Toll Brothers.
On its own earnings call last week, Toll Brothers mentioned that there were write-downs related to the project, but it didn't give specifics. The issue wasn't addressed in the company's earnings release, and was only discussed on the call when an analyst questioned the builder about the project.
But the fact that Simon Property wrote off its entire investment in the project is turning some heads. As the company now likely pulls its retail development, some wonder whether the project will ever get built."My understanding is the venture itself, the whole group, is not thinking it is going to work at this time," says RBC Capital Markets analyst Rich Moore, who covers Simon Property and other real estate investment trusts. "It is rare for a developer to write something down unless they feel pretty certain it is not going to work." Moore says he doesn't know the precise details and hasn't spoken to Toll Brothers or Meritage. The Simon Property source says the company's writeoff does not reflect the overall viability of the project.
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Jim Cramer's protege, David Peltier, identifies the best of breed dividend stocks that will pay a reliable AND significant income stream.
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New E15 Gasoline May Damage Vehicles And Cause Consumer Confusion
As North America's largest motoring and leisure travel organization, AAA provides more than 53 million members with travel, insurance, financial and automotive-related services. Since its founding in 1902, the not-for-profit, fully tax-paying AAA has been a leader and advocate for the safety and security of all travelers. AAA clubs can be visited on the Internet at AAA.com.
AAA news releases, high-resolution images, broadcast-quality video, fact sheets and podcast are available on the AAA NewsRoom at newsroom.aaa.com.
Stay connected with AAA on the web via: Twitter.com/AAAauto Twitter.com/AAAnews YouTube.com/AAA Facebook.com/AAAfanpage Facebook.com/AutoSkills
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080226/DC15031LOGO)SOURCE AAA
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Product Features:
- Model portfolio
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Dividend Stock AdvisorTry it NOW
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The 25 Craziest Twitter Reactions To Katie Couric's Interview With Manti Te'o
Manti Te'o has spoken! On Thursday afternoon, his highly-publicized, on-camera interview with Katie Couric aired for the first time on Couric's daytime TV talk show Katie—just one week after Deadspin published a report indicating that Te'o's "girlfriend" Lennay Kekua was a hoax perpetrated by a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. And, during the sit-down, Te'o spoke about a number of different things. He reiterated the fact that he was not in on the hoax, told Couric that he is not gay (after she asked), and talked about how hard it was for him to tell his parents about Kekua when she popped up last month after reportedly "dying" back in September.
So, how did the interview go over with the public? Well, all you need to do to understand the impact that it had on people is to look on Twitter. That's what we did, and, in doing so, we put together a list of The 25 Craziest Twitter Reactions To Katie Couric's Interview With Manti Te'o. From those who expressed that they still have questions about Te'o's story to those who wondered why an interview like this even needed to happen in the first place, the reactions to Couric's grilling of Te'o varied. Click through and check them out now.


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Set of 4 Red Christmas Poinsettia Placemats
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This set of Red Christmas Poinsettia Placemats are perfect for adding a festive touch to your holiday table setting. They will protect your table, while letting the beautiful wood show. Reversible and made of 100% polyester. Hand wash warm, or machine wash on gentle cycle and line dry. Set of 4 red Christmas poinsettia placemats, each measures 17 x 17 inches.
Machine washable with warm water, like colors. Line dry. Medium iron.
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17.00 in.


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Free Beer & Hot Wings: Guy Picks Perfect Time to Back Out of Garage [Video]
What's the best time to leave your house? How about during a tornado?
What's the best time to leave your house? How about during a tornado?
Why are people so stupid?
A group of oil workers in North Dakota found themselves in close proximity to a tornado the other day.
Instead of jumping in the car and hauling ass in the opposite direction, these guys did nothing. Absolutely nothing. They just stood there, laughing their stoner laugh and recording the destruction.
Things have been pretty crazy over the last few days with weather in the South.
Tornadoes have been wreaking havoc across the U.S.
In this video, watch as the weatherman at WTVA-TV in Tupelo, Miss., reports on a tornado that is, basically, right on top of the station.
Today (May 20), disaster hit Oklahoma, as a two-mile wide tornado left devastating damage, killing more than 50 people in its path. The deadly twister, which hit speeds up to 200 miles per hour, struck in the suburbs of Oklahoma City, and tragically a number of young children are among the deceased as an area elementary school in Moore, Okla., was destroyed.
A huge tornado touched down just outside of Oklahoma City earlier today, causing widespread destruction and leaving behind a yet-untold number of casualties.
To see how you can help those affected, see the list below


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Super Explosion
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I've been playing LoL for a little bit now, and Skarner is my favorite character. I don't jungle him, I play top lane, and after this rework, he's all but useless in lane now. I can't push towers, I can't escape or get close, I don't even have the sustain I used to have. It's very sad, and skarner isn't fun for me to play anymore
Urgot my Waifu
I don't even understand why Skarner was reworked at all. Hearing that his kit was "unhealthy" seems like a real BS term considering his only means of getting close was either using flash or chasing with W and since most champions have a means of escape, I don't see the problem. Unfortunately I commented on this rather late since I felt my opinion would be overlooked as someone who must have no clue what he's talking about, but after seeing the results, I decided to say what I always felt.
Do you know what is unfun in my opinion? Every aspect of Vi's kit. She does everything Skarner can do except for pull them back, which is redundant since she can initiate from over a screen away with Q and R.
Game Designer
just s reminder to take the poll on how you think Scruffy is handling the rework
© 2014 Riot Games, Inc. All rights reserved. Riot Games, League of Legends and PvP.net are trademarks, services marks, or registered trademarks of Riot Games, Inc.


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Humanoid robot to teach software class
Japanese students may soon welcome a 4-foot-tall humanoid robot that has been designed as an educational tool. The bot is based on ZMP's e-nuvo Humanoid platform.
Classrooms in Japan may soon welcome a new 4-foot-tall educational humanoid robot unveiled by Nippon Institute of Technology and other groups.
It will be used to teach software programming and hardware engineering to students, but will also be demonstrated in elementary schools and nursing homes. It will act as a "teacher" in class along with a human teacher.
As explained in Japanese in the video below, the kid-size bot doesn't have a name yet. With its boyish voice, the robot can be heard asking people to give it a "cool name." It then does some dancing and balancing on one leg.
But some details are available. It tips the scales at 33 pounds and has 21 degrees of mechanical freedom. It's equipped with sensing devices including a camera, accelerometers, and gyroscopes, and has a small projector in its head. It can be programmed with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.
The price tag is about $132,000, according to Robot Watch.
Its body was engineered by Tokyo robot firm ZMP, known for its small but stylish Nuvo bot. The underlying e-nuvo Humanoid platform is intended for education and research, and is priced around $77,000. The exterior was designed by Znug Design studio.
More photos at the Robot Watch page (in Japanese).
No word yet on how the robot will punish bad students.


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Nurse with hip replacement - page 2
Hi everyone. I am soon to graduate and I had a minimally invasive hip replacement 3 years ago d/t hereditary issues. I was wondering what your thoughts on a nurse working with a hip replacement are. When I had the surgery, the... Read More
- 0Jul 11, '12 by lexxipoo93hi i know you made this post a long time ago but reading your story really made me happy. because i am 19 years old and when i was 12 i couldn't walk anymore because i had an unbearable pain in my hip. it turned out that the cartilage in my hip deteriorated and i had to get my hip fused. when i am in my late 20s i will need a total hip replacement. i really want to be a nurse, i think i would be so good at it and it would make me proud of myself. the only thing is that i am scared that my hip wont be able to handle all of the physical activity. i have no pain anymore and when people meet me they dont even know that anything is wrong with me. i want to go to school for to be a nurse but my hip is the only thing holding me back.
- 0Jul 19, '12 by diva rnI know this thread is old but I just found it....it's a subject near and dear to me....I have had bilateral hip replacements in 2001 and 2002 (not mini invasive either).....GREATEST thing I ever did....I had avascular necrosis....without the replacements I would be in a wheelchair right now....
I have continued my RN career....the whole key is a good rehab...really work at physical therapy...I have not had 1 minute of pain or discomfort since my rehab was finished and unless I think about it, I dont' even know I have hip replacements......
and by the way....in 2006 I had Bilateral knee replacements...and they are just a wonderful....and yes, I am still working.


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Canon Bridges
Hello fellow STO players, I would like to start by saying that after playing this game since march 2010 its finally getting to a place it should be at and that the Devs are doing a fantastic job.
Now on to the point of my post, not only am I a gamer but I'm a serious Star Trek fan so seeing that 2 and a half years down the line there are certain little things still missing is quite annoying....
The main thing is canon bridges! 'We have them' I hear you thinking. well not a lot of them actually. the bridges missing that I think need to be in game as we've seen them a lot on screen are as follows but please reply with your additions and thoughts:
Excelsior bridges - Sulu's Excelsior, Enterprise B, Hathaway.
Nebula bridges - Sutherland, Prometheus, Pheonix (all TNG).
Nova bridges - Equinox.
Olympic bridges - Pasteur.
Miranda bridges - Reliant, Saratoga, Lantree
NX bridges - Enterprise, Columbia
All these bridges are easy to find but yet they haven't been added to game which is a letdown to the core fans who take as much pride in the interior as they do the exterior of their ships. thanks for your time div tor es musma
hathaway should've been on another line with stargazer for constellation bridges
See my sig for a link to a discussion regarding player customisable canon interiors and how they could be tied into episode missions and other game modes.
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