Tip #1 – Devise a Plan

As soon as the date for the wedding is set, you may already be behind the clock. Therefore, to ensure the wedding preparations that you initiate are successful, you will need to start out by devising a plan. This plan normally consists of a long list of things that must be done before the wedding date. From selecting and notifying the bridal party to making sure the bride has her dream dress, each of these events usually takes some time to complete, especially if you want things done right and according to schedule.

Tip #2 – Hire a Wedding Planner

Today, the bride and groom do not have to spend all of their time planning for their wedding in advance. Particularly, because there are professionals who have a specific expertise to carry these venues out successfully every time. With a wedding planner, the preparations get a lot easier since they have the exact layout that they need to get things done in a timely and strategic manner. For instance, the wedding planner will communicate the dates to the people involved and then follow up to make sure they are completed prior to the wedding.

Tip #3 – Leave Some Wiggle Room inside Your Wallet

Everyone who has ever been involved in a wedding can attest to the fact that even the little expenses can add up easily. Therefore, going over budget is not difficult to do. So, when the plans and preparations are being made, it is essential that the finances needed are available. In these situations, the budget that is established must be reasonable and not too high. Because the cost of buying flowers and other things can vary each year and they can increase substantially, the budget amount that is allocated should accommodate a little extra to deal with an increase in services.

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Niedzviecki’s 2009 non-fiction book, The Peep Diaries, cast an unflinching eye on how watching each other through the engine of the Internet has distorted our ideas of who we are as individuals, and how our interactions in society grow worse daily.

In a way these stories are often a bizarre riff on the conclusions of Niedzviecki’s intense observations of contemporary culture. They are also a cry from a moralist who warns us of the growing coldness out there, and presses us in his sardonic, crazy way to hold on to our humanity, however screwed up that may be, in the face of the ugly world of ubiquitous security cameras, reality TV and Internet overload.

Take what happens to the men in two almost complementary stories, Real Estate and Undead.

***

In Undead, another ordinary guy who has some unease dealing with the death of his wife’s best friend, whom, he notes, he hardly knew, discovers a funeral home’s webcasts of its services. He becomes, first unwittingly, then with growing fervour, a fan, even an expert, on the rabbis orating, and the speakers, or “guest stars,” as he calls them.

Meanwhile, he slowly surrenders his job, even his wife, to follow, in the rituals of a funeral, the one place, where he feels alive. The ending is a knockout, being both inevitable, and yet a surprise.

***

Displacement is the most humane of the stories, though it too shows Niedzviecki’s abrasiveness and unsentimentality.

An old man remembers his life as a child in displacement camps after the Second World War. In the present day we see him as a flavoured-cream-cheese mogul, though even he thinks some of the flavours go too far. Invited to a conference, one more of so many over the years, he finally decides to go and finds peace of a sort. Here absurdity abuts tragedy in a moving, quiet way, as it may in all lives.

That screwed-up humanity mentioned earlier shines through, as well in the other stories in this remarkable collection. Niedzviecki’s characters, nice or decidedly not, remind us that our contemporary life is messy and not safe.

It could be worse, he warns. Best hang on to what we are, and turn off that computer.

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Peep Culture is the documentary inspired by my book The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors.

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Niedzviecki covers considerable ground in Look Down. “The Sexographer” grimly deflates any high-mindedness the reader might possess about the art world, while “Undead” takes apart the relationship between commercialism, death, and the rituals that give us closure. The claustrophobic “Sometime Next Sunrise” is the closest Niedzviecki comes to a typical family drama, while “Real Estate” would be a classic story of erotic awakening if it weren’t so profoundly unsettling.

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“But when Niedzviecki applies his astute observational powers to themes he understands through and through, he’s superb. In the very sharp Undead, about a man obsessed with videotaped funerals, he taps the web consciousness he displayed in The Peep Diaries. In the comic Sometime Next Sunrise, a couple go on holiday in Florida with the guy’s parents. And the last story, in which students take an assignment in their sociology course on terrorism a little too far, suggests Niedzviecki has a terrific future as a ferocious satirist. Displacement, about an internment camp survivor and cream cheese mogul who loses his sense of self when he starts developing flavours to appeal to the non-Jewish market (chocolate cream cheese, anyone?) is the best of the bunch.” –  Now Magazine review of Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened.

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From Booklist, Spring 2011.

“With dark humor and deep compassion, Niedzviecki, cultural critic and author of The Peep Diaries (2009), delivers a haunting collection peopled by characters on the verge of despair. An aging Jewish businessman, tormented by memories of his youth in a post-WWII displacement camp, becomes more popular than he can handle after creating a successful line of flavored cream cheese. A pregnant tenth grader is morally torn when her unborn fetus tries convincing her to abort it before both their lives are ruined. A dying man commissioned by the government to create new colors is challenged by a young revolutionary. God’s personal assistant, tired of his boss’s tyranny and hypocritical lifestyle, concocts a plan to rid the world of God once and for all. And a lonely husband develops an obsession with watching funerals online after his wife proves incapable of processing her friend’s recent death. Like David Means’ stories, these convention-defying examples written in tight, punchy prose examine the fine lines between love and obsession, failure and success. A moving and amusingly varied collection.”

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No one else seems to be there alone.

He eats six handfuls of pink popcorn without stopping to breathe. The popcorn is more chewy than crunchy. It tastes like old gum.

***

Shauna calls Mickers on the phone. Wants to know: Did you hear about Bradley?

I can’t believe it, Mickers says.

He hangs up. He’s got weight on him. He feels miserable. He grabs at the handles of his stomach. He spins around the room, stumbles over a coffee cup filled with stained water. A long time ago, Mickers had a best friend he insisted on calling Brado. They lived on the same cul de sac in a suburb named after a tree. What happened to that friendship?

There are one or two vague messages about getting together saved on his voice mail.

Mickers feels drunk. He feels the muscles in his body rigid against the impossibility of what he doesn’t know. His legs go straight and he collapses. Something happens to the phone. Scraps of paper and post-it notes orbit down. Decrescendo. The carpet smells like dog. I live here, and before I lived here, someone else lived here. Call waiting. Speed dial. Three way conference. Note pad dialing. Disconnection. Directory Assistance. A sound like a busy signal and then nothing.

Two hours later, someone’s mother calls and leaves a message. Mickers to the disembodied silence of his own rented appliance: Don’t go just yet. Take the time to leave me a message. Please. Leave me a message.

***

I’m not sure how I became involved in this. I was elected. Sent to see if everything’s okay. Given the circumstances. Given the tragedy and what not. Once involved in something. A person is known to speculate. I wrote it down the way I found it lying in my head. Like a corpse.Look. All we think about is stuff like going to the mall or checking the mail or canceling our extra channels before their cost gets automatically deducted from our bank accounts without anyone even asking us. We never think about love or death or grabbing onto a pet with both hands and squeezing it until its wet nose starts to bleed. Nobody ever asks us. I’m fine, I told them at work. I just need a half day, a full day, a week. No need to fill my position. Just leave my position empty, the way it’s always been.

The bat thudded against the window. Peter felt it – broken glass in his gut – though the window didn’t break. No alarm went off. The window still sat in its frame, intact but in pieces like an assembled jigsaw. Laurie was wearing a crimson scarf that covered most of her face. Her long hair glimmered in the dark night and made Peter think of the ninja girl character in Mortal Kombat 3. Racist, Peter admonished himself. Or sexist. Something, anyway. Laurie poked the window with the bat. The whole thing fell apart.

Nice, Star growled. Peter had gone to high school with Star. When he walked into Advanced Social Theory 303Y (Special Topic: Terrorism) on the first day of class of his third year of university, he immediately noticed her sitting nonchalantly in the back row, bare legs protruding out of a short skirt and dangling over the seat in front of her. Surprising himself, he climbed the steps. Hey, he had said. Hey, she said back, her blue eyes already on him, a mimetic echo of his lost adolescent self, only 3 years removed. Star smiled, her lips full, her teeth straight and white. Didn’t you go to my high school? she asked jovially. I…yeah…I think…Peter said. Star had been in his 10^th grade Advanced Algebra class, his 11^th grade Geometry and English classes, and his 12th grade Honors History class. She was one of a group of smart girls who were also cheerleaders. Peter always sat behind her in the classes they had together. At night, he would think of her, the way her long blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders.

Tonight Star was dressed in dirty jeans and a faded dark blue track jacket. Peter stood next to her. Despite the grungy clothes, she smelled of soap and fallen leaves. Hey Petey! Star yelled. Peter startled. They were waiting for him. He stepped forward. The shattered glass under his sneakers sounded like snow. It was October. Next month, there would be snow. Peter stopped in front of the space where the window had been and looked in. The vehicle was massive, one of those super-sized trucks that seemed built to intimidate. Peter was 6-foot-3, but skinny like a weed. Peter glanced over at Laurie, who shrugged. Laurie Chung, lithe, quiet, 4^thyear poli-sci to Peter’s 3^rd year sociology. She was also way out of his league. For sure she had a boyfriend. At the campus coffee shop Star had talked about greenhouse gasses and rich assholes who don’t give a shit about the planet or anyone but themselves. Assholes, Peter thought. Laurie was short. Star was taller, but still only came up to the top of the door of the bulky truck. Even Peter had to stand on his toes to reach through to the lock. That’s why they were waiting for him to do it. Plus they had agreed that everyone would play an integral part. Those were Star’s words. Integral. So nobody could say afterwards that they didn’t actually do anything, that they were just there because it was an assignment.

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Right now, Griffin Brown’s way out ahead. Maybe because he vowed to give his winnings to charity and coined the instant classic catch phrase “A vote for Brush is a vote for infant mortality”?

But, as members of the very active comment board have pointed out, Brush has a knack for pulling out a big victory at the last minute, so nobody’s counting him out, that’s for sure.

It’s a fight to the finish! It’s the Deathmatch!

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*In Doing God’s Work, God’s personal assistant devises an outlandish way to kill the number one deity by playing to his never ending need for human attention.

*Punk Rock Roll Model is a rip-roaring mockery of the rock-n-roll lifestyle that revolves around a young man with an extreme attitude in the employ of a failing punk legend.

*Prenatal is a new take on “right to life”, wherein a pregnant 10^th grader finds herself struggling with her fetus’ insistence that she abort him before both their lives are ruined.

*The Useless and the Colorist both explore the commodification of culture – in The Useless an artist finds himself compelled by a politician’s resonant rhetoric to rethink his efficacy to society; in The Colorist, the old visionary appointed by the government to invent new colors is challenged by a young upstart.

*Real Estate and Undead are two stories with different takes on the rise of the Web. In Real Estate, a man uses the ‘Net to explore his obsession with young girls; In Undead, a man struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife’s friend, finds himself haunted by a funeral home website’s online broadcasts.

*Displacement explores the so-called ‘Holocaust Industry’, as a man haunted by his  childhood in a post-WWII displacement camp risks being consumed by his demons when he gives up everything in a bid to become a flavored cream cheese mogul.

*In the epic Special Topic: Terrorism, a young undergraduate gamer finds himself in way over his head when a group assignment to start a terror organization goes viral.

*Finally, the title story, Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened, is a vicious satire of nostalgia, a psychopath’s send-up of  the way high-school era friendships need to be cruelly cut back before they permanently choke off the possibilities of adulthood.

Ten years in the making, this wildly imaginative, gracefully executed collection romps through social conventions, confronts some of society’s most intractable arguments, and adds to Niedzviecki’s reputation as an astute commentator, a powerfully original thinker, and a master storyteller. Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened is a millennial masterpiece, an explosive book that urgently captures the zeitgeist of our fractured times.

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