VIEWERS’ GUIDE TO DON AND KATHY’S WEDDING CAKE

Marriage of: Kathryn Barnes and Donald Wedding

March 21, 1998

​

DINOSAUR CAKE (DON’S CAKE):

 

This cake cleverly employs plastic dinosaurs and toy soldiers as a vehicle to comment on modern day social injustice. Please enjoy the artistic beauty, but do not lose sight of the message that this work of art is trying to convey.

 

The theme of this cake is dinosaurs emerging from the past to wreak havoc on America. Unlike Jurassic Park, these dinosaurs have not been cloned from DNA fossilized in amber. Instead, they are “living fossils” escaping from the Labraya Tar Pits where they have been entombed for the past ten thousand years.

 

The dinosaurs find 1998 to be a wondrous time filled with modern marvels such as cellular telephones, hydrogen bombs, and striped toothpaste. Being confronted by that which they do not understand, the dinosaurs have turned, quite understandably, to violence. The object of  their wrath? Man.

 

Man, of course, will not sit by idly while his evolutionary dominance over the world is wrested from his control. Man will fight the terrible thunder lizards from the past with the victor gaining the Earth itself! There will be no second prize in this primeval battle royale. The only thing that the loser can expect is... extinction.

 

Man, of course, will require a champion to engage the terrible reptiles in this battle to the finish. And who better to be that champion than Hitler’s war machine of Nazi Germany? Here we find the elite Afrika Korps, lead by none other than the Dessert Fox himself, Erwin Rommel*. Notice his strategy. Rommel, being caught by surprise, needs time to get his armor into position. He needs to distract the dinosaurs and divert their attention while this is accomplished. As human life is a cheap commodity for the Dessert Fox, he sends unsupported infantry into a desperate frontal assault on the dinosaurs. As his ground troops are mercilessly ripped to shreds by the carnisaurs, Rommel has time to maneuver his Panzers towards his enemy’s flank in a pinscher movement. This is the same strategy he successfully employed at the Battle of the Bulge.

 

Who will win in this titanic struggle for planet earth? In war, there are no winners. And that’s what the hidden message is with this cake.

 

* Note: Many people have pointed out to me that Rommel is the "DESERT FOX" and not the "DESSERT FOX". I know that. See, this story sort of takes place on a wedding cake, so I thought it would be pretty funny to spell his name "DESSERT" and not "DESERT". It's sort of a joke. Get it? Apparently, it was none too funny of a joke, considering how many needed this explanation.

​

JAPANESE CAKE (KATHY’S CAKE):

 

Kathy has held a strong interest in Japanese culture and language for many years and has chosen to decorate her cake in this motif. 

 

The central figure on her cake is the Japanese goddess of the happy marriage, Yesdeer. Traditionally, married couples approach the statue and pray to the goddess asking for her advice. Yesdeer then instructs the husband as to what action he should take to maintain his happy marriage. This advice usually involves allowing the wife to get her way while the husband performs ritualistic suicide on the front lawn (allowing the wife to collect the life insurance money).

 

Although her memory of Japanese writing is a bit fuzzy, Kathy decided to adorn her cake with it anyways. On the top of the cake, she is reasonably certain that she wrote either “Don and Kathy, happy marriage, many children” or else “The banjo is not for sale”.

 

Along the sides of the cake she placed some of those umbrellas that you get when you order exotic drinks. There isn’t any significance to these umbrellas other than the fact that they look really Japanese, don’t they? The same goes with the metal lions. We were looking for Japanese stuff, and were running out of ideas and getting pretty desperate. Then Kathy saw them in a store some place and knew that this was exactly what we were looking for. If you’re looking for some deep social meaning to the metal lions, I guess it would be that we should never hunt an animal to extinction. In Japan, the lion is the national animal, but ever year millions are slaughtered by poachers so that their tusks can be used to make jade trinkets to sell the tourists. So I guess our hidden message on this cake is, don’t buy jade.

 

Along the sides of the cake we put some fortune cookies which is a traditional food in Japan. In fact, next to chop suey, fortune cookies are the most widely consumed food in southeast Asia and is the number one exported crop in Japan. Nobody is exactly certain how the Japanese grow cookies with those little pieces of paper in them, or why the papers invariably contain some pithy little saying written in English. That is apparently a very closely guarded national secret.

 

A fun game played by the Japanese people and trailer park trash everywhere is to add the phrase “in bed” at the end of your Japanese fortune cookie fortune. It makes it sound a bit racy and makes consuming the actual cookie a bit more palatable.

​

MIDDLE CAKE (BOTH DON AND KATHY):

 

The middle cake symbolizes the marriage of Don and Kathy and cleverly employs the use of the Japanese zodiac. Please note that Kathy and Don did substantial research for this cake spending almost fifteen minutes reading the placemat in a nearby Chinese restaurant while waiting for their dinner.

 

Note that Kathy was born in the year of the bunny rabbit. The bunny rabbit symbolizes a happy, fuzzy creature which everybody likes. Don, on the other hand, was born in the year of the snake. Nuff said.

 

The bunny rabbit on the cake was given to Kathy at her first Holy Communion. We thought it would be really nice to have it on her wedding cake. We couldn’t find one of those plastic snakes anyplace, so we just drew one on the cake with frosting. We were pretty pleased with how it turned out.

 

Lastly, Don and Kathy are getting married in 1998 which is the year of the tigger. The little plastic figurine on the cake was “donated” by Don’s two year old nephew, Andrew Arthur, during Don and Kathy’s last visit to Toledo. During that visit, Don distracted young Andrew while Kathy began secreting some of his favorite toys out of the house so that we could use them on our wedding cake. This is the kind of cooperation essential in any happy marriage. So we guess that’s the hidden message that we’re trying to say with this cake.

 

ROUND CAKE (DON AND KATHY):

 

This cake symbolizes Don and Kathy’s love for one another and how their lives are now joined. It merges the ideas of dinosaurs, Japanese culture, and the cooperation involved in stealing toys from a small child

 

On this cake Don is represented by none other than...Godzilla, king of lizards and lord of reptiles. He is the giant monster that breaks things just by walking around. This is the obvious melding of dinosaurs and Japanese culture. 

 

Kathy on the other hand is depicted by a Siamese cat. OK, so that isn’t exactly Japanese, but pretend that it is for a minute. Now as long as you’re pretending that the Siamese cat is Japanese, you may as well pretend that it’s a saber tooth tiger (which merges Japanese culture and dinosaurs). The cooperation involved is symbolized by the fact that we decorated the cakes together and had a lot of fun doing it.

 

And so that’s what we’re trying to say with this cake. Like Godzilla and the Japanese Saber Tooth Tiger, we are happiest when we are together and will always love one another.

​