Smile, you're on my camera

I went home to Evansville last weekend to attend the wedding of two friends I went to high school with.\nIt was a very nice wedding overall. But my favorite part is when you get to throw rice at the bride and groom as they're leaving the church. I never take the rice out of the little bag before I throw it directly at the groom. I do this because I'm kind. I know how much of a mess it is to get rice out of the hair.\nThe reception was a lot of fun, too. I even got to be the kind of, sort of, semi-official video camera guy for the first half of it because the guy who was supposed to do it mysteriously disappeared. I blame the dingoes.\nThese are a few of the things I learned while holding the camera:\nFor some strange reason, people don't like it when you film them eating. Especially if they're sinking their teeth into a big piece of juicy fried chicken and you zoom in on the grease floating down their cheek. And then you comment to them how disgusting this looks on videotape. They really hate that. I just don't get it.\nNo matter how cool you may think it will look on screen, putting the camera directly in the way of a cork about to be popped from a champagne bottle is a very bad idea. Trust me on this.\nAnother seemingly cool shot that can have disastrous results is holding the camera in the middle of a bunch of single women right before the bride tosses her bouquet into the group. This can be devastating if the bouquet falls on the camera. Luckily, this didn't happen to me, but I could imagine what would happen if it did, and more than likely, I wouldn't be alive to write this column anymore. I swear I've never seen that many females with bared teeth at the same time before.\nIt's really hard to see little kids while walking around with a camera, but I'm pretty sure I didn't cause any permanent damage to any of the tiny tykes. Little kids are tough. When my brother and I were little, we used to stuff each other in sleeping bags, tie some ropes around the bags, and then put the bagged body in a closet and see how long it took before the trapped one would scream for mercy. My brother became claustrophobic around the age of 10. My parents could never figure out why.\nThe kind of, sort of, semi-official video camera guy (me, in this case) can really annoy the official photographer guy. Particularly when he keeps on wandering in and out of the photographer's shots on accident. He also didn't appreciate it when I made goofy faces at the wedding party while he was trying to take their picture. \nThe camera was finally taken away from me following the first dance. The powers that be thought my dancing with the camera was just a bit too much of a hazard to be allowed to go on. Oh well.