Jamie and Shannon O'Leary got married Sunday, but there weren't any drunken Irish hockey fights at the reception. Just good food and good times. As entertainment goes, it was a real snoozer.

My good friends Jamie O’Leary and Shannon Gunn got married Sunday, and because they know I’m an asshole, they’re probably expecting me to use my rapier-like wit to skewer their wedding.

But I’m not going to do it.

Not yet.

I’m going to wait just a few more seconds for the line of attack to make itself self-evident. What will it be this time? Parody, gross exaggeration, farce, or something I haven’t thought of yet?

Wait! There it is! Fantastic idea, if I say so myself, and I do. I do! Hah, that’s hilarious double-entendre wedding humor right there! But let’s take this comic piece of literature a step farther by breaking the ceremony down into its components, analyzing individual details of the event for flaws—like the lawyers’ frame-by-frame analysis of the Rodney King beating video, but with less blood and violence.

The Setting

This is the first wedding I’ve attended that was conducted: a) outdoors; b) on an island; c) on a golf course; d) in the middle of a water hazard. The bride and groom actually arrived at the chapel on golf carts, and the venue was stunning! I mean “stunning” literally, mind you, as we quests were forced to keep a nervous eye on the skies overhead to keep from getting pinged in the forehead by errant Titleists. Fore! At least Jamie and Shannon could say it was a Top-Flight wedding. Hah, hah! When’s the last time you read a funny wedding story laced with golf ball jokes? Never, I’ll bet! Hah! I am the Big Bertha of wedding humorists! Fore!

The Weather

Most of us quests stopped worrying about golf balls during the ceremony–Fore!–because we passed out from heat exhaustion long before it started. It was hot, hot, hot—I’m guessing about 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, except there wasn’t any shade in the outdoor chapel. Remember Tom Hanks blistering and withering away in Cast Away? It was worse than that, because we didn’t have a raft to float away on with our imaginary soccer-ball friend, Wilson.

So, we sat there dutifully, facing the white-hot Colorado sun, our skin melting faster than the Earth’s polar ice caps. Fore! With all the profuse sweating, it was like a Christian wet T-shirt contest with opaque suits and formal dresses instead of filmy T-shirts. Everybody agreed it was an amazing service, though, as well as educational; Jamie and Shannon lit their unity candle using only a beam of sunlight that Jamie cleverly bounced off his balding head and focused through the enormous diamond in Shannon’s wedding ring. Fore!

The Pastor

I know all of us were severely dehydrated–Fore!–but the minute the pastor picked up the microphone, my wife and I swore he looked like Matthew McConaughey, sounded like Matthew McConaughey and smelled exactly like what we imagined Matthew McConaughey would smell like, which is a sickly sweet mixture of sweat and coconut oil. Our suspicions were confirmed–Fore!–when the Right Rev. McConaughey suddenly left the pulpit and stormed down the aisle into the audience, dramatically throwing his suit coat to the ground and ripping off his shirt and tie.

“Yes! It is I, The McConaughey!” Father McConaughey shouted boldly in a Southern drawl. “Gaze upon my deeply tanned, finely sculpted pecks–Fore!–and thank Almighty God for His works! For what He is about to join together in Holy matrimony–Fore!–let no man tear asunder without going through these guns first! Fore!” And then Minister McConaughey flexed his biceps and washboard abs, causing most of the women who hadn’t already fainted from heat stroke to faint with joy. This was the first time I’ve seen a preacher flex his biceps at a wedding ceremony, and it was impressive. I was so frightened, I nearly converted to Christianity all over again. Fore!

The Photographers

Shannon works in the motocross industry and, naturally, hired her friends at Hansel and Gretel’s Motocross & Wedding Photography to take pictures. Fore!

Not surprisingly, Gretel is a striking blonde. Fore! I mean this in two ways: She’s attractive, but she also wasted an undue amount of time striking Jamie’s younger brother, Teddy, a former hockey star at the University of Denver. Teddy is young and single, and clearly something of a horndog. The bridesmaids were fully warned, but nobody remembered to mention it to poor Gretel. Fore!

Hansel brought some much-need comic relief to the ceremony by dressing in period costume. Fore! In this case, he chose to blend two distinct periods: rural German farm life circa 1840, and post-modern punk Berlin today. If you haven’t seen a Teutonic blond man wearing lederhosen, a Bavarian alpine hat, black work shoes, black mid-calf socks and multiple facial piercings at a wedding, you haven’t lived. Fore!

But Hansel did his job X-tremely well, especially for somebody who usually takes pictures of mud-covered motocross riders who are moving at 45 mph and airborne. Fore! I’m especially fond of the soft-focus candlelit shot of Jamie and Shannon catching Big Air in a sunset jump off the clubhouse balcony.

The Reception

The reception was cool! I mean indoors and literally cool, which was a welcome change to everybody who made it through all 30 days of Survivor 2009: Pelican Lakes Golf Course. (Sorry about the heatstroke, Grandma! See you in heaven!)

Everybody seemed very happy at the reception, especially the caterer, Scott, who’s another of Jamie’s good friends. Everybody’s aware that the restaurant business has been tough lately thanks to the recession, which feels an awful lot like a depression to me and all my friends. Fore! I suspect Scott and his crew were grinning broadly because they knew they’d easily make payroll this week. I also suspect that everybody who ate dinner on Jamie’s and Shannon’s dime that night was smiling because it was the best meal they’ve eaten in weeks, even if you count the delectable new Sweet & Spicy Asian Boneless Wings at Wendy’s restaurant.

Given his audience, Scott could’ve gotten away with handing everybody a cold bottle of Guinness and a boiled red potato. I can hear the reviews now: “This is the best tater ever, lad! You’re a fine one, you are, and I’ll be the first to raise my hand in a toast to the chef!” But Scott went all out, serving crab cakes, prime rib and chicken cordon bleu, which was an especially appropriate dish given the long-standing friendship between the Irish and the French. Fore!

The People

It’s people who make weddings memorable–Fore!–but I believe I speak for everybody when I say I was deeply disappointed in this department.

Jamie is a professional hockey coach, and the newlyweds’ guest list included hard-working Irish folk,  motocross gearheads, hockey players, at least one former NHL star and several people who work in the financial sector. Everybody hates bean counters these days, and the guest mix should’ve been a sure-fire recipe for trouble. Fore! I eagerly expected somebody to liven up the event by arriving drunk and getting drunker as the evening progressed.

But despite the open bar, I didn’t hear a single argument or witness a single fistfight, let alone an all-out family brawl like you see in all the movies about Irish families. I didn’t hear anybody say something titillating like, “You feckin’ clatty prick! I told you she had herpes!” Nobody named Mary Katherine Cate used a sheleighlee–an Irish nightstick–to whack the besotted head of her husband, Declan. Even the kids were well behaved. I tell you, going to this wedding was like winning free tickets to a mixed martial arts fight, only to discover that the combatants recently decided to become pacifists. Fore! Don’t these people realize they have a stereotype to live up to? Very disappointing.

Well, that’s my breakdown of the O’Leary wedding. I hope everybody believes I’m kidding–Fore!–even if I’m not. I really don’t want to get punched in the face by an angry Irishman, and Jamie’s got a few brothers who look like they’d enjoy doing it for him for free. Fore!

I will say this, in all seriousness: Jamie and Shannon, it was a fantastic wedding–one of the best ever–and you’re a terrific couple! I love you guys and I’m positive you’ll have a long, happy life together making babies, discussing hockey and arguing about money or what to watch on television. Marriage is a wonderful, blessed institution–but, Shannon, I’d keep that sheleighlee near the front door just in case….Fore!

I snapped this photo--one of my favorites--at a carnival in eastern Colorado. Nothing beats carnival lights at night. Except not puking, of course. Not puking trumps everything.

Every year, as soon as the weather gets unbearably hot, my wife and I load up the mini-van with our kids and nieces and make our way to Six Flags Over Funnel Cakes for a day of fun and fantasy.

Neither of us truly looks forward to the trip, but we usually end up having a good time because it’s rewarding in a perverse way that only parents can understand to watch the kids having fun nauseating themselves on rides like the Spew-A-Lot and the XL-A-PUKER. The evil scientists who invented these rides should be working with Dick Cheney down at Gitmo, because they’re more effective at turning adults into weak, mindless automatons than waterboarding. Kids seem to like them, though. Kids are weird like that.

As for myself, I can’t ride anything that spins because I was born with a highly overdeveloped vestibular system, which is located in the inner ear and is supposed to contribute to our balance and sense of spatial orientation. In my case, it makes me vomit. It’s disappointing, because it’s a lot like having a superpower, but in reverse-a-world, where all things good and helpful are terrible and useless.

Because I hate hurling so much, I spend a lot of time at the amusement park sitting on a bench amusing myself by watching other people, and thinking. This year, I reached several important conclusions:

America needs to go on a diet. A surprisingly large number of Americans are surprisingly large. Unpleasantly large. A corollary to this observation is that the vast majority of U.S. citizens are too vast to be walking around with their shirts off or wearing bikini tops and short-shorts. The people who ignore this rule—the ones with bouncing belly fat and lumpy thighs–probably give us the best argument there is for wearing burkas, the head-to-toe, figure-obscuring robes attire women are required to put on in repressive Middle Eastern countries. Those who don’t—well, damn them, because they make the rest of us feel bad about ourselves. And low self-esteem leads to self-destructive behaviors like binge drinking and overeating, which creates more fatties in an endless downward spiral into blubber.

I need a higher-paying job to give my family the full experience. We cleaned out what was left of our retirement account after the stock market crash to purchase seven DISCOUNTED tickets to the amusement park. It’s true that we only had a couple hundred bucks left in the bank. But we could’ve spent several thousand dollars more on Dippin’ Dots ice cream, soft drinks, pretzels, barbecued turkey legs, bubble gum, personal pan pizzas, French fries, nachos, funnel cakes, corn dogs, popcorn, roasted ears of corn and cotton candy, not to mention funny hats, glow-stick jewelry, temporary tattoos, Star Wars light sabers, Olde Timey souvenir photographs, and tickets to play games of chance like the ring toss. I’ve wasted entire weekends in Las Vegas for much less, and that included free booze and tickets to see the Solid Gold Dancers. Thank God my wife, Kerry, brought snacks, or we’d be wading in a sea of stomach-churning debt right now.

Silly hats make you feel special. I don’t think there’s a man, woman or child alive in America today who doesn’t love the attention a goofy chapeau brings them. Fortunately, they’ve got plenty of funny hats for sale at the amusement park. My favorites are the colorful Renaissance court jester cap, the furry stovepipe hat and, new to me this year, the beer keg fez, which has the additional advantage of being shiny. Shiny is good in the “Hey, look at me, I’m special!” hat department.

Everything looks better at night. Amusement parks are best experienced at night, when darkness cloaks the ugly stuff—spilled funnel-cake grease, fat people, electrical cables, chipped paint and stinky heaps of funnel-cake vomit. The swirling, brightly colored lights of the park’s rides provide a sense of magic, mystery and motion that can’t be replicated anywhere except at an amusement park —unless, of course, you’re a gazillionaire who can afford your own amusement park. But there aren’t very many gazillionaires left now that all those General Motors executives are out of work. Most of those guys are forced to have fun at home like the rest of us do–by turning on the Chevy Cavalier’s headlights and running up and down the street waving their arms in the air, shouting, “Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo!” until the neighbors wake up and call the cops.

I love our kids. Visiting Six Flags Over Funnel Cakes is an expensive hassle, and I whine about it a lot—a lot! But I have to admit it’s fun to treat the kids to a day of sunburn and motion sickness. I love to hear my daughter, Rudy, scream with abandon as the roller coaster plummets 100 feet to certain doom on the Twister II, one of America’s most rickety wooden roller coasters. It’s a blast to see my daughter, Lindy, laughing wildly as she whirls around and around on the Thunder Bolt, which I still stubbornly refer to by its real name, The Zugspitze, America’s motion-and-light-activated musical tribute to Germany’s highest mountain. I can’t help but smile with fatherly pride as I watch my tough teenage son, Gabe, try very hard not to overreact even as the Mind Eraser drops nine stories at highway speeds and flips us upside down. (I guess you never know when teenage girls might be watching you.) And my young nieces, Kenzie and Kodie—well, let’s just say there’s nothing that makes me feel happier than holding their hands and listening to their excited chatter as we walk from ride to ride.

Nothing except, perhaps, not puking. I really hate puking.

Doctors confirmed what many fans suspected: Michael Jackson had plastic surgery to improve his looks.

Pop singer Michael Jackson paid his personal surgeons millions of dollars in hush money to keep extensive plastic surgeries he received top secret.

Fans speculated for decades that Jackson received multiple corrective surgeries on his nose, chin, lips, eyes, forehead, ears, neck, cheeks and eyebrows. He was also suspected of undergoing liposuction, skin whitening, teeth whitening, anal bleaching, hair implants, a Brazilian butt lift, nipple reduction, laser hair removal, pectoral augmentation and even penis enhancement. Perhaps the most unusual procedure he was thought to have had is called umbilicoplasty, surgery to change the belly button from an outy to an inny or, in very rare cases, vice-versa.

But Jackson, who was one of history’s most successful and beloved performers with more than 750 million albums sold, was notoriously reserved about his private life and refused to confirm or deny the operations prior to his sudden death Thursday at the age of 50.

This morning, however, a team of doctors led by Sanka Lonife, M.D., acknowledged in a hastily assembled press conference in Los Angeles, Calif., that Jackson had received dozens of corrective surgeries since the mid-1980s.

“Michael was a very private man who didn’t enjoy being in the public spotlight, especially after that whole man-boy controversy,” Lonife says. “In fact, we were well paid and contractually obligated to keep his surgeries secret so that nobody would know the pain and suffering Michael endured to improve his appearance for his many, many faithful fans around the world.”

Now Jackson has passed, Lonife said, “we feel the public deserves to know the truth. The face and body that Michael presented to the public in videos, television shows and movies were not entirely his. With his guidance and financial backing, we enhanced his looks in subtle ways that were extremely difficult to detect unless you analyzed the modifications in side-by-side photos under powerful magnifiers. Virtually no part of his body was left untouched. We’re very proud of our work because it was almost undectable to the untrained eye yet cumulatively very transformative.”

Lonife said countless Americans benefitted from Jackson’s work.

“Many of these cutting-edge procedures were experimental and unproven until Michael underwent them,” Lonife said. “Today, however, millions of people can get a Michael Douglas chin, Bambi eyelids or a Brazilian booty thanks to Michael’s bravery.”

“We admired him greatly,” Lonife said, adding that the surgeons “will miss him–especially since some of us still have kids in college but no long have what we called fondly referred to  as ‘Michael’s Annuity’ to help pay the bills.”

Some people hope Zac Efron will don the mantle of King of Pop. But it's not clear if he's willing to trade his soul and premature death for the sort of mega-fame and riches that Michael Jackson once enjoyed.

Music industry insiders say they are scrambling to name a new King of Pop now that Michael Jackson is dead.

The role of King of Pop is “more vital to the industry’s promotional efforts now than at any time in the history of this business,” says Harry Kensdahl, president of the world’s largest music publishing business, Universal Music Group.

Album sales dropped in seven out of the last eight years, including a 14 percent decline in 2008, according to retail data collected by the tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan. Some of the downturn can be attributed to Internet piracy, America’s economic slump, and a lack of musical talent that has led some critics to dub the 2000s “The Dark Ages of Rock ‘n Roll.”

But Kensdahl and other bigwigs in the music business say much of the blame for recent problems belongs to Jackson.

Jackson enjoyed remarkable success in the early part of his career, selling more than 750 million records and earning 13 number one singles and 13 Grammy awards.

But “Michael gave the industry a black eye when it became clear that he was spending an inordinate and apparently inappropriate amount of time with young boys,” Kensdahl says. “We can tolerate drug use, alcoholism, gun play, on- and off-stage orgies, extramarital affairs and that crazy swan outfit Bjork wore to the 2001 Oscars. But Michael pushed the boundaries with children. Then came 1987’s album Bad, which not only sucked but marked the disastrous start of Michael’s crotch-grabbing phase. The final blows came when he moved to Dubai in 2005 and then sold Neverland Ranch in 2008. By then, most fans felt he’d abdicated the kingdom.”

There has been a noticeable lack of male pop music stars since the heady heydays of bands like Menudo, New Kids on the Block, Hanson, Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees and N’SYNC. But possible heirs to the musical throne once occupied by Jackson include Justin Timberlake, the Jonas Brothers and Zac Efron, hunky star of the Disney Channel’s smash hit, High School Musical.

Nobody seems to want the title for now, however, perhaps because the King of [insert your favorite musical genre here] title frequently is associated with tragedy and early death. Elvis was the King of Rock ‘n Roll and he died at 42. Jackson was the King of Pop and he died at 50. Rick James was the King of Funk and he died at 56. Hank Williams was the King of Country and he died at 29. Robert Johnson was the King of the Blues and he died at 27. Bob Marley was the King of Reggae and he died at 36.

“Everybody in this business working very hard right now to find a young, talented man who’s willing trade his soul, his sanity and a long life for instant riches and fame,” says Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone magazine. “We need to crown a new King of Pop asap. Maybe if we can spring that old rascal Lou Perlman from jail, we can all put something together to save the music business.”

Perlman, the force behind the Backstreet Boys, N’SYNC and many other popular boy bands, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2006 for conspiracy, money laundering and lying in court. He was running one of the most elaborate Ponzi schemes in history, and went from living a lavish lifestyle to being a disgraced mogul with more than $300 million in debts.

Justin Timberlake's best remembered for the role his hand played in the 2004 disastrous unveiling of Janet Jackson's right boob at Superbowl XXXVIII. Janet is the much-less-controversial sister of Michael Jackson, who died Thursday.

Will Justin Timberlake be crowned the new King of Pop now that Michael Jackson’s dead?

Fans and music industry insiders around the world started clamoring for the title to be passed to Timberlake almost immediately after news of Jackson’s death hit the Internet on Thursday.

“He’d be great at the job,” said Quincy Jones, the legendary music industry icon who was Jackson’s friend as well as the producer of his hit album Thriller. “Justin’s music is catchy without being complicated, and his lyrics are shallow enough to be liked and understood by everybody from the first grade up. Like Beyonce’, Justin can sing, he can dance and he can act. Not too well, of course, but pop stars shouldn’t be too good or they alienate their audience. Justin seems like the ideal candidate to slip into Michael’s sequined glove.”

But Timberlake doesn’t seem interested in claiming the throne. Consider this statement Timberlake posted on his website Thursday:

“I can’t find the words right now to express how deeply saddened I am by Michael’s passing,” he wrote. “We have lost a genius and a true ambassador of not only Pop music but of all music.”

“But,” Timberlake continued, “there’s no fucking way in hell that I’m going to let anybody name me the King of Pop. Elvis was the King of Rock ‘n Roll and he died at 42. Jackson was the King of Pop and he died at 50. Rick James was the King of Funk and he died at 56. I’m not taking the King of Pop mantle and kicking the bucket young—not while I’m still hooked up with Jessica Biel, that’s for sure. Have you seen her? She’s so hot! We’re bringing sexy back, baby!”

Timberlake was most recently seen golfing with Biel in London, England. His latest album is 2006’s FutureSex/LoveSounds. He’s made frequent appearances on TV’s Saturday Night Live and also appeared in the films Black Snake Moan, The Love Guru, Shrek the Third and Shrek Forever After.

Timberlakes’ probably best remembered, however, for his hand in the catastrophic unveiling of Janet Jackson’s right boob at Superbowl XXXVIII, which many fans simply refer to as Superbowl XXX. Janet is the much-less-controversial sister of Michael Jackson, who died Thursday.