M.I.A.

So it may seem that I have gone missing in action....but I am still very much alive and still very much wanting to keep my Peacocks Leashed. My husband and I have decided that we need to migrate back south next summer which has prompted us to put our house up for sale and look for a rental. That'll make it so that when we do move back to Los Angeles all we'll have to do is a give a 30 day notice to some landlord whose pockets we've been filling, pack up and get the hell outta Dodge...or Portland.....whatever strikes your fancy. So I've been excited,busy, stressed out, worried, sick to my stomach, melancholic and all the stuff that neurotic Geminis like me are prone to feeling....and thus, so suffers my blog.

But check back in in a day or two and I promise to have more pictures of beautiful people in strange and oftentimes stupid positions.

And maybe finally I'll tell you the story behind the name of my blog.

Go Home, You have Ugly Hair

Video castings (aka commercial auditions) in Milan are notorious for taking forever and a day. You sit in a room with pretty much every model that is in town and wait for hours on end until your name is finally called. I kid you not, it was pretty normal to sit at one of these castings for four hours before it was your turn to smile for the camera. Most of the time I would bail out after an hour and just go to all of my other appointments or to the nearest gelateria to stuff my face. I hated video castings.

Halfway through season I decided that I wasn't going to go to anymore of these castings unless the job seemed really promising and included a trip to some exotic location or something great like that. It just wasn't worth my time, and commercials in Milan generally paid crap compared to commercials in the US......I love me some SAG. And although I cringe at the memory, one of the few commercial castings that I did end up going to after I vowed to boycott them ended up being one of the most mortifying experiences in my modeling career.

I don't remember what the job was for, but apparently it was good enough for me to warrant spending too much time in a tiny room full of models, most of which had yet to experience the joys of deodorant.....just cuz you're purrty doesn't mean you don't stink......I think it may have been a United Colors of Benetton spot or something and I though it would be a kick in the pants to get it....their campaigns always look like so much fun.

Well, there I am, sitting on a plastic folding chair that is pinching my ass most fiercely and trying to maintain my composure because the boy that I was totally crushing on just happened to be sitting next to me.....all of a sudden the casting director comes out and starts doing the line-up of shame. She has us all stand up and points to each model with a "stay" or "no thank you". When she gets to me she asks me to let my hair down. Now, you gotta remember that at this time I was the Milanese hair job queen and my hair was short and impossible to style.....impossible for me, anyways, since I have zero talent when it comes to my hair and its upkeeping. I was famous for my tiny pigtails and that is what I would wear to manage my unruly coif....either that or a bandana/kerchief. So on this dastardly day, I happend to have my piggies in and when I took them out, my hair was tweaked out and well, just not cute. The casting director took one look at my unfortunate head and scoffed "Your hair is so ugly! You can go home!".

I felt a full body blush coming on at that point and with an Academy Award winning fake smile, I picked up my bag and walked out....all the while fighting back tears and the total shame of having been humiliated in front of way too many other models included Mr. Crush. Self-esteem is not something you gain from being a model. Nope.

Italian Nose Excavations

Everyone has their phobias, from the understandable to the nonsensical and I am not immune to my own phobic curses. Apart from being deathly afraid of cockroaches, I am completely phobic of boogers. Yes, boogers, nose crusts, nasal crunchies, call them what you will. I can stand the sight of blood, excrement, vomit and phlegm (in moderate servings, thank you) but boogers make me want to hurl instantaneously. My fear of such nastiness is perhaps what made the Universe play a practical joke on me one day in Milan as I was on my way to a Nivea commercial casting.

Jackie and I were riding a tram to the casting together. We were on the left hand side of the tram where the seats are singles so she was sitting in front of me. We were probably planning when the next time were gonna make our famous punch was gonna be or how we could get the boys we had crushes on to like us...you know the normal kind of stuff girls talk about, when to my complete horror I saw a man a few seats ahead and across from us digging frantically into his nasal cavities. Now this wasn't your average light nose pick...the kind you see people perform when they are in their cars and don't think anyone is looking. This man was digging deeply and rather enthusiastically in one nostril and then the other, alternating with complete synchronicity.

I was so appalled that I couldn't help but stare as my stomach turned and I probably turned a light shade of green. After a few seconds I tore my eyes away from the nose excavator and turned to Jackie with a look of complete shock, then turned my gaze back at the guy. She followed my eyes and then turned to me with her mouth wide open. We were speechless and nauseated. Almost instantly the man, who must have noticed our stares, shot up from his seat and walked over to us. He started smiling maniacally while still picking his nose and then stood right above me. He had a booger in his fingers that he was rolling into a ball and probably would have flicked onto me had I not screamed and jumped out of my seat with Jackie right behind me. We ran to the front of the tram with the booger man right behind us in hot pursuit. It is by the grace of God that the next tram stop was so close by, because we were able to jump off before that foul dude could get to us.

I have no idea if the guy was clinically insane or just mean and disgusting, and I really don't care either way. All I know is that I was seriously traumatized that afternoon and it took me a few days to ride the trams without looking around at everyone with a serious case of paranoia.

Milan Travel Journal Part 5

6/1

i just said goodbye to Muffin. Another member of the Dolce Crew has left Milan. I can't get used to this tearing away of people from my life. Who will go next? I hope that of those of us who are left I will be the next one to go. July 5th is when I am supposed to leave. Just 5 more weeks. It'll be easier if I am the next to go home, wherever that is, this has become my home......My heart aches at the thought of leaving. I want to see the Dolce Crew in South Beach. 4 1/2 months away. I don't want to think that when we all leave Milan we will lose each other forever.

Models Gone Wild, Part 2

And the Milanese festivities continue:


Get your minds out of the gutter....this is SO NOT what it looks like!



Sorrel, Paul and Sam posing in front of the first camper we had ever seen in Europe.



Jackie, Marty, Isaak, me, and Jeremy who could rock the cool hats like nobody's business.....Not sure where this was...Gasoline? Hollywood? Louisiana? Old Fashion? A street corner somewhere?



Paul & Muffin having a smoke outside my window on Paolo Sarpi



C-9 Killahs in da house.