Take a good look at my face

Eric and I went to a friend’s wedding in Santa Cruz on Saturday. It was a small wedding at their house in the mountains and a disproportionate share of the group were Iowans. The ceremony was untraditional and three hours long, but had some nice moments.

As we got into the evening, the dance party, courtesy of someone’s laptop, started to get going on the deck under an awning onto which they were projecting the laptop screen and showing the youtube videos along with the songs. People would shout out requests at the end of each song, and then someone would search it and bring up the video. This was all going swimmingly (assuming you like random German techno music) until someone shouts out “Smokey Robinson Tracks of my Tears” (yes, I suspect this was one of the parents who were also very much part of the dance party).

It was searched and clicked on; everyone is dancing. The video is not of Smokey himself but instead is showing pictures of happy cows- the Iowans are loving it. Then the screen goes white and shows the words “now for some real cows…” The next image on the screen is of a CAFO cow that looks, um, kind of messed up. There’s a collective confused noise from the dancers.

Next image: CAFO cow with half its face missing, covered in pus and blood and slime. The whole crowd goes “uuuggghhhH!!!” and someone dives towards the laptop to stop this delightful PETA video from ruining the wedding reception.

I laughed so hard I cried. It might have been my favorite moment from the whole wedding.