theparkerfamily

in a sign that we have officially become “those” people, the lady sparkler and i got a video camera today.and i feel dirty.

we are the couple that callously laughed off the idea of a video-grapher for our wedding ceremony, and explicitly banned video cameras at our reception.

to make things worse, i’ve personally had nothing but bad video experiences … three of which immediately spring to mind:

• 11th Birthday — I said something about somebody’s present that I shouldn’t have, and I still feel awful. The fun thing is that this is one of my earliest memories and it is preserved on tape somewhere, taunting me from afar.
• Thriller — my brother did a spoof of the Michael Jackson “Thriller” video for a high school english project, which was perfect with the exception that you could hear me tittering in the background.
• Yellow Journalism — I got stopped by a local TV news station during the blizzard of 1996, and blew them off by making an off handed remark about the need for global warming, which they of course used on the 6 pm and 11 pm broadcasts.

so, in the face of all this … what could have possibly made us throw all the caution into the wind and go against our every best notion?

Baby Sparklet is just so damn cute.

as such, we bought a little tiny Flip MinoHD with a gift certificate that the super fabulous people at my work gave us, and have started documenting the incredible cuteness of sparklet without rest.

given my love of film, we’re obviously going to restrict use of this fabulous machine to furthering the forces of good, but the type of video camera we bought has two characteristics which (we hope) will help minimize some of the emotional damage.

first, the flip is all digital (no tape) so we’ll have to be very judicious about what we decide to keep — meaning “bad” footage won’t be around for long. second, the whole interface (it’s tiny, no bigger than a pack of cards) is really setup to tape 30 second snippets. As such, we’ll be filming small moments of mundane cuteness and not long home documentaries and travelogues.

of course, my other hope is that the lady sparkler won’t want to learn how to use the camera … because if i’m the one filming, i probably can’t be the one caught on tape embarassing himself.

watch the video on youtube:
test video