And now...

If you watched SportsCenter at all on Thursday you know that comedian Will Ferrell announced the starting lineups at Wednesday night's Bulls/Hornets game. In case you missed it, here it is...



Ferrell's intros reminded me of how I introduced the wedding party when my two friends got married last March.

It all started in November of 2010 when I got a call from my friend Grazi. Grazi is two years older than me and one of my brother Jimmy's closest friends. Although he's two years older Grazi and I are very close as well. His cousin Brady is my age and is one of my closest friends from high school.

So when Grazi called in November of 2010 and said, "So Maura and I have this wedding coming up in March" I immediately thought that he was going to ask me to be in his wedding party. Maura is a year younger than me and one of my closest female friends from high school. In fact, as Brady would point out in his best man speech, Grazi and Maura met at a party that my brother Jimmy and I threw at our parents' house.

Instead, Grazi asked if I would announce the wedding party. I used to work for Grazi's dad during the New York State Fair at the famous Villa Pizza Frite stand (fried dough) with Grazi. He made a bunch of CDs that blasted out from a speaker on the top of the triangular stand. On one of the CDs was the Chicago Bulls Entrance Music.



When the song played during the fair I would use by best announcer voice to announce our product as if it were a person...

"At guard, standing at an impressive 24 inches tall, it's hot, it's sweet, it's straight from the the fryer, it's Pizzzzza Fritttte!!!"

I would then mock introduce some of the people that were working with us.

So when Grazi asked me to introduce the wedding party I first asked who was in it and then what he had in mind.

He said, "You know, height, weight, college. At least that's what I told Maura."

"So you basically want me to rip people to shreds," I asked.

"Haha exactly."

A week or two before the wedding Graz asked for a rough draft which I emailed him and we were good to go. I'm fairly confident that he didn't show it to Maura. Nothing was that bad, but I'm pretty sure that she wouldn't have approved of everything.

After the wedding my friends and I went right to the hotel where the reception was to watch a Syracuse basketball game and we got wrecked pretty quickly. My buddy's dad started a tab at the hotel bar and things got out of hand in a hurry. I was hammered before we entered the actual reception.

During the cocktail hour Graz and I went into the dining area to run through the logistics with the MC. After he walked us through how things would work he handed me the microphone and began to give me some instruction, but I cut him off and dropped the most arrogant line of my life, "I work for ESPN Radio. I know how to work a microphone," or something to that effect.

Later on in the cocktail hour Grazi found me and told me to avoid Maura at all costs. Evidently she caught wind of something that I planned to say about one of her bridesmaids. This particular bridesmaid went to Notre Dame to play lacrosse and one night early in her senior year she got arrested for underage drinking at a house party. Don't ask me why, but her mug shot was posted online shortly thereafter. Now ironically enough, in the same week two other former athletes from my high school got in trouble with the law, so I decided to blog about it. 10 months later I got a call from her asking me to take down the post because her mug shot from this very blog was the first image that showed up when you googled her name. Despite Grazi and others telling me not to, I removed the post, but the image kept showing up (it's finally gone).

Grazi took me into the men's bathroom for a solid 10-15 minutes to hide from Maura. Brady was also in there rehearsing his best man speech, so it was quite a little meeting spot. Eventually we left and Maura caught up to us. She asked if I planned on mentioning her bridesmaid's arrest in my introductions and I told her that it wasn't bad and that no one would even notice. She asked if I would just say something else because the bridesmaid's mother would cry if I brought up the arrest. Behind her at the time was Grazi mouthing "do it" "do it" as his bride was asking me not to.

Eventually it was go time and I was more than sufficiently rocked. The intro in question just so happened to be the first one on the docket, so I didn't have the heat of the moment excuse. I didn't want to upset Maura on her special day, but I also knew that my joke was very tame, so I went with it.

The intros, set to the tune of the Chicago Bulls Entrance Music (Grazi extended the song significantly, so I didn't have to rush), went a little something like this...


And now the starting lineups for your 2011 Kenville-Zazzara wedding

Leading off, she’s got one of the best mugs around and he’s set to get married in 4 short months. The lovely Lauren Demello and Dave Marshall.

She’s from Boston College where they called her “sweats” and he’s the most pessimistic kid I know. It’s Katie Deblois and the Lycoming Warrior Tim Brown.

She’s a psychology major from Holy Cross and he’s got the brightest hair in the room (bright orange). Tracy Koval and Providence’s finest Ryan Kenville.

She’s straight off the boat from South Korea (she spent a year teaching English there and returned just in time for the wedding), in a few hours he’ll be a completely different person (he blacks out a lot and when he does his friends call him Mij), and he describes himself in just two words…”young” and “hot”. It’s Kim Jong SheIL-a Catanzarita, Jim Stanczyk, and Matt Cusano.

She’s from the front of the Villa and he’s straight from Mr. Hermo’s math class (my friend Hermo teaches math at our old highschool and he taught Grazi's little brother J.R.). Please give a warm welcome to Kathleen and J.R. Zazzara.

She’s Maura’s smoking hot friend from college (I knew nothing about her, but I had met her once and she's a smokehouse) and they call him “Trick Daddy”. It’s Katie Knudsen and Pat Kenville.

She’s Maura’s lovely little sister and he’s a wee bit Irish, it’s the Maid of Honor Clare Kenville and the Best Man Brady O’Malley

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for….

She’s the star of the day and he’s the luckiest guy on the face of the earth. For the first time ever, please give it up for Mr. and Mrs. Grazi Zazzara.