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June 8, 2007

Why I Don't Do Weddings.

By: The Dude on the Right
Look, I know that in the grand scheme of life today didn't suck that bad, but, well, it hasn't been the most unchallenging day either.

It started out pretty nicely.  I slept in a bit, caught an early showing of "Ocean's 13," and then was off on some errands for a company I do consulting for.  With my day being pretty well structured, I was hoping to get the errands done quickly, be back in time to get my review of "Ocean's 13" posted, then head to help my buddy Stu with some photos he wanted taken.  But as plans would have it, things didn't go that smoothly.  Well, they did up until leaving the movie.

First there was a larger amount of traffic in my cruising the Chicagoland area.  This was a slight bummer as I knew it meant I probably wouldn't have time to get the movie review written and posted in the afternoon.  No biggie, I would just take care of it after my photo assignment for Stu.  So I get back to the Dude-Pad and notice my internet and cable TV are down.  With the high winds that have been buffeting us in the past couple of days I figured there might just be a cable down, and since I really only had time for a shit, shower, and shave before I rounded up my spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch, and, well, camera, before I had to leave, I figured the internet and TV would be back up by the time I got back.

And now is the reason why I am not a wedding photographer.  You see, my buddy, and our staff member, Stu, is an ordained minister, and has actually married people, but he was lacking some photos he could use for publicity purposes.  With that he asked if I could come to a wedding he was officiating over and snap some photos.  The bride and groom had no problem with it, I had some free time, the weather was nice (it was an outdoor ceremony at a local golf course), so I told him I'd be there.  I got there early, took some test shots before the wedding guests showed up to check on lighting and stuff, and things looked great.  Then the big moment came, Stu was up there giving the "Do you take...", and "Do you take..."'s, and for whatever reason, my fancy, digital, SLR, wouldn't snap a picture to save its life.  I frantically tried turning the camera off and on, popped out the memory card and re-inserted it, thought it might be a lens issue so snapped a different lens on, put the camera in full manual mode, but as Stu was going through the entire ceremony the camera would focus, would say everything was fine, but wouldn't snap a picture.  As bummed as I was I didn't get a picture of Stu performing the ceremony, I almost had a self-induced panic attack picturing if I was actually the photographer the couple hired and didn't get any photos of their big day.

I told Stu what happened and that this was why I didn't do weddings, then walked back to my car.  For the hell of it I pointed the camera at a building across the street, pushed the shutter button, and the damn camera snapped the picture, snapped the next picture, and snapped every other picture I shot before I climbed into the dude-mobile just wondering "What the hell went wrong?"

So then I get home figuring I could at least write my movie review, get it posted, and play BINGO during America's BINGO Night, or whatever the show on ABC is called.  I open my door, look at my cable modem, and realized my cable TV and internet are still broken, down, unfunctional, don't work, screwed up, messed up, or all of the listed.

Before eating, before peeing, and before feeding my kids I jump on the phone to the cable TV folks.  There aren't any reported outages in my area, they transfer me to the internet support folks where, according to the girl who transferred me, internet takes priority, but in my brief conversations with them I'm pretty sure none of the support staff really has a clue what a cable modem is.  The dude sets me up with a "technician's appointment" for Saturday, between 1PM and 4PM.  Then I call back because it seems the internet side might be different from the TV side, stressing to the girl my cable TV is out, and the best she can do is get a technician out on Sunday between 1PM and 5PM.  I guess the internet side is a little quicker.

So here I am, flustered, because I have no TV (guess I should buy a nice set of rabbit ears for just such an occasion), I'm on dial-up internet (it sure takes a hell of a lot longer to get things posted this way), and sure, maybe I could read a book, do some cleaning, or enjoy nature, but how the hell am I going to post about Paris Hilton going back to jail, or getting out again, in a timely manner on dial-up?

I suppose it could be worse, it could be raining, but right now I wouldn't mind a little rain.

That's it for this one!  I'm The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 8:42 PM | Comments (0)