i-am-your-mom

after my little hiatus from posting, ellen brought an iaym.com worthy article from the ny post to my attention…

And here is an excerpt from a truly bizzaro story.  Got to love a woman who marries a man who mocks her on broadcast television.  (Plus, they stole my NYE idea.  Bastards.)

 Rebecca Whitney and David Mandel

By DEVAN SIPHER

Published: January 14, 2007

SHE gets me,” David Mandel said of his bride, Dr. Rebecca Whitney. And Mr. Mandel, an executive producer of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO, is not an easy man to get.

“I don’t like human beings,” he said, only half in jest. “I’m bothered by real and perceived slights, and I hold grudges for billions of years.”

He lives in a dark Los Angeles apartment with blackout shades covering all of the windows to protect his collection of comic books, toy robots and “Star Wars” stormtrooper helmets.

. . .

[I]n spring 1995, Mr. Mandel was hired as a writer for “Seinfeld.” The week he was to move to Los Angeles. . . .  They began a long-distance relationship, but soon he was working around the clock. Within a year they had broken it off.

Mr. Mandel’s response was to write “a ‘Seinfeld’ episode about her,” he said. “It’s the modern equivalent of a Shakespeare sonnet.”

He explained that in the episode, called “Bizarro Jerry,” Jerry Seinfeld dates a woman with “man hands.” Dr. Whitney, who winces when he mentions it, chimed in, “I would like to clarify that my hands are farm hands and not man hands.”

. . .

On New Year’s Eve this year, 250 guests gathered in the Art Deco grandeur of Cipriani 42nd Street in New York. . . .

Just before midnight, waiters passed out black leis, silver noisemakers and colored hats. Then, as 2007 began, gold and silver balloons dropped from the ceiling. Holding each other close, as if to make up for years of separation, Dr. Whitney and Mr. Mandel beamed while the Beach Boys sang:  God only knows what I’d be without you.

Judith Hernandez and Christopher Castro

By COREY KILGANNON

CHRISTOPHER CASTRO had no worries about where his fiancée was, even though she was more than an hour late for their wedding on Dec. 30. He calmly placated the guests and the minister fidgeting in the crowded chapel. He had been in tighter spots with his tardy bride, and this, after all, was just a late limousine.

Judith Hernandez and Mr. Castro are New York City police officers and, as onetime partners in the department’s housing bureau, they made heroic rescues during the 9/11 attacks.

The searing memory of that day — how they cheated death together, the lives they saved together, and those they could not save — pulled them steadily closer afterward, as did the year of 16-hour days they spent together sifting through the ruins at ground zero. It finally persuaded them to end their police partnership and become partners in marriage.

As they stood exchanging vows and lighting candles, Ms. Hernandez, 42, and Mr. Castro, 33, said that they could not help but think about how they stood together five years ago watching the chaos around them.

On that day in 2001, Mr. Castro, Ms. Hernandez and another officer working with them, Steven Oemcke, were near City Hall in a patrol car when the first plane hit the north tower. All three entered that tower looking for injured people to evacuate from the sublevels of the building. When the south tower collapsed, it rocked the north tower and spewed smoke and debris into the concourse below.

“Chris and I called out to each other and realized neither of us were hurt,” Ms. Hernandez said.

When Ms. Hernandez recognized that Officer Oemcke was unaccounted for, she began searching in the dark. The collapse had thrown him down an escalator, where he was unconscious with severe back and shoulder injuries. She found him by feeling her way along until she came across Officer Oemcke’s gun belt, said Ms. Hernandez, who is just over 5-foot-1 and weighs 110 pounds. When she yelled his name, he regained consciousness. “I crawled under him and carried him on my shoulders two levels up the broken escalators,” she said.

No easy task — Officer Oemcke is six feet tall and weighs 190 pounds.

They soon reunited with Mr. Castro on an upper concourse, and he helped her carry the injured officer to the street and to safety just before the second building trembled and collapsed. For her efforts, Ms. Hernandez was awarded the Medal of Honor by the Police Department, its highest award for an officer. (more…)