Friday, December 09, 2005

Diva-licious!

Because of a confluence of events I won’t detail here, yesterday I was the subject of a photo shoot for a print ad that will be in a regional business magazine.

A friend of mine is a sales droid for an awsome local ISP and they needed a warm body to stand in front of a rack of computers in their data center. (One of our servers is in their data center). Turned out that they really needed me to stand outside in the cold in front of their building. Marginally more exciting, but a tad colder, given that the median temperature here in Utah is about 4° F these days, it seems.

So herein I will detail the behavior which has earned me a reputation as “difficult to work with” as a model. I’ll let you decide Intarweb, who was in the Right on this one.

The rider in my contract specifically requires the following:

• One (1) pound of M&Ms with all the nasty brown ones removed.


• One (1) Waterford crystal pitcher and two (2) Waterford crystal tumblers.


• Two (2) litres of Evian water, chilled to 5° C. (NO ICE)


• Aveda Hair Care Products only on set. (they make you smell nice!)


• Wham!’s “Make it Big” to be playing during the shoot (Careless Whisper repeated at least THREE TIMES).


• All nudity must be tastefully lit. NO harsh lighting for those shots, please.


• NO wind machines. The noise they make drowns out the Wham!.


• The photographer must refrain from using tired photographer clichés, i.e. “Make love to the camera, baby!”, “Work it, honey!” and “Fabulous!”


• Two (2) pure (100%) oxygen tanks and sanitized breathing mask for my sole use.


• For the duration of the shoot all cell phones set on vibrate and placed in my various pants pockets.


• Three (3) large, white bath towels, freshly laundered with Snuggles™ fabric softener. (That bear is sooooooo cute!)


• One (1) masseuse of Turkish descent who specializes in Oriental deep tissue massage.

Were any of these contractual obligations met? NO, not a one! The M&M’s were littered with brown ones. I don’t even think they tried to get rid of them. So I stormed off set and told them how it’s “impossible to work under these conditions” and threw the TEPID tap water (NOT Evian, yes I CAN tell the difference, you morons!) in their marketing chica’s (Emily Something-or-other) face.

I can’t believe they just let me walk away. Last mistake they’ll ever make.

Anyway, I’ll have the shot and the ad up next week sometime just for fun. A not insignificant amount of Photoshop work is necessary before the image is presentable, I assure you. Someone needs to make me look less pale and pasty. Add hair to the top of my head. Take out the hair coming from my nose and ears. Clone out the acne scarring and remove the remaining blackheads. Basically replace my head with the head of $GOOD_LOOKING_GUY and then decide to re-shoot the whole thing because they can’t really find a picture out of the seventy or so they took in which my body shape isn’t laughable and lumpy looking.

Mostly I just stood there, tried and failed to make love to the camera (how are you supposed to do that when it’s all the way across the room?!) and smiled and thought, “I wish I’d started running sooner, I’d look less bloated. And I should have stopped eating in October in order to prepare for this.” And, “I wonder if my butt looks huge?”

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