POP MUSIC / THOMAS K. ARNOLD : What Did You Expect, a Traditional Wedding?

It was, perhaps, the biggest social event to hit the San Diego rock scene in years, and certainly the weirdest. Last Saturday afternoon, more than 200 local musicians, club owners, deejays, and assorted hangers-on converged at the Go Kart Ride race track in Imperial Beach to witness the union, in holy matrimony, of manic Mojo Nixon and his longtime sweetheart, Adaire Newman.

Nixon, nee Neill Kirby McMillan Jr., has spent the last seven or so years wreaking havoc on the average cranium with everything from tongue-in-cheek odes to Bigfoot and former MTV veejay Martha Quinn to vitriolic tirades against banks and mandatory drug-testing. He recently achieved national fame with his uproarious debunking of the Elvis Presley mystique, “Elvis is Everywhere,” and a series of wacky promo spots he cut for MTV.

He’s a strange guy, all right. And his wedding--filmed by an MTV camera crew for possible future airing on the 24-hour, cable music-video channel--was even stranger.

Shortly before 4 p.m., the groom--wearing a gaudy, red and white satin cowboy shirt and a pair of black jeans--drove up to the wedding arch in a go-cart. Then the bride, dressed in a fur-trimmed white gown and escorted by her landlord, slowly walked up the aisle as Mighty Joe Longa of the Jacks played the obligatory wedding march on a portable organ.

The ceremony began with Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers, who also happens to be a mail-order minister from the Universal Life Church, solemnly telling the crowd through a megaphone, “We are gathered here today to unite these two psychotic spirits in holy mackermony before God, Elvis and Mojo’s mother.”

“Customarily, at this point the preacher will ask for any objections to this union,” he continued. “However, due to the extraordinarily high level of instability in this gathering, we will forgo opening the floor to such belittling discussion.”

The two lovebirds then vowed to “love, honor, and take suggestions from” each other. Newman also promised to keep her job, keep the refrigerator stocked with Mountain Dew, and not “melt his record collection while he’s on the road.” Nixon, in turn, agreed to lift the toilet seat, keep his nose hairs trimmed, and keep “the money rolling in till death-- death! --do you part.”

After an exchange of rings, Montana said, “I now pronounce you man and wife--suck her lips off, Mojo!” And then, to the accompaniment of a 21-water-balloon salute, Mr. and Mrs. Nixon--er, McMillan--drove off in a pair of his-and-her go-carts for the “traditional” wedding lap. The groom’s go-cart had “1-Elvis” license plates; the bride’s, a plastic bust of The King as a hood ornament.

The lap completed, the couple returned to the wedding arch and walked back down the aisle, hand-in-hand, while guests threw birdseed and unleashed into the air a torrent of helium-inflated “I Married a Bigfoot” balloons.

The ceremony was followed by a tumultuous reception downtown on the second floor of the old City Hall building on G Street. The entertainment was provided by the Beat Farmers, whose fourth album, “Poor and Famous,” is scheduled for late-spring release by MCA/Curb Records; the hot item on the menu was one of the late Elvis Presley’s all-time favorites: peanut butter, bacon, and banana finger sandwiches.

Among the celebrity guests: John Doe, from seminal Los Angeles punk-rock band X, and various members of current MTV darlings Camper Van Beethoven and the Dead Milkmen. Also in attendance was a veritable who’s who of San Diego rock ‘n’ roll heavyweights, including Buddy Blue and Chris Sullivan of the Jacks, Paul Kamanski of Comanche Moon, and identical twins David and Douglas Farage, who back in the early 1980s functioned as the heart and the soul of pioneering local new-wavers DFX2.

Nixon’s next album, incidentally, will be released later this month on the Enigma Records label. And come summer, Nixon will make his Silver Screen debut in “Great Balls of Fire,” a cinematic biography of rock ‘n’ roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis in which he’s been cast as the Killer’s drummer.

LINER NOTES: Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians have postponed the entire West Coast leg of their current world tour, including a scheduled Feb. 21 engagement at Symphony Hall, until sometime in April. According to local promoter Bill Silva, the folk-rock upstarts are doing so well on the road in Europe that they’ve decided to extend their stay abroad by more than a month.

Tickets go on sale Saturday for Eddie Money’s March 18 appearance at the California Theater . . . Last Saturday, tickets went on sale for the March 16 concert by R.E.M. at the San Diego Sports Arena. By the time the box office closed for the day, more than 5,600 tickets had been sold, nearly half the arena’s capacity. And with the show still more than a month away, a sellout appears likely.