Thursday, April 29, 2010

Texting and Transpo

I'm in the middle of a big house move, so my promised pics of the infamous Night of Wine in the Bushes will have to wait another week or two....but in the meantime, let me entertain you with some stories of texting and transportation in Milan.

Like I've said before, in most markets outside of Asia and Los Angeles, models find themselves walking out of their agencies on their first day there with a map the size of a tarpaulin and a list of go-sees. This is survival of the fittest. There is no big black Escalade on twenty-two's waiting to take you anywhere....not even a tore-up Toyota Corolla with your name on it. You get to Milan, Paris, London, Hamburg, Barcelona, Miami or wherever else you may land and it is up to you and only you to get your pretty little model arse to where you are supposed to be. None of this America's Next Top Model girls-getting-driven-around shite. Nope.

Yet, somehow, we all seem to hit the ground running just fine. So fine, that our little network of friends was in contact with each other on the trams, subways, and busses of Milan at all times via our Omnitel Savvy cell phones. We'd be sending each other texts about who was hot and who had a crush on who. We'd message each other random song lyrics with words substituted in that only we would find funny...so I won't bother boring or twisting your minds with that....;) If a casting was too full or just sucked in general, there we were warning our buddies about it. When we were hankering for gelato or happy hour the texts would get sent out and within an hour we'd all be practicing mad gluttony together. It was great.

Had we been driving our own cars, this would've never been possible. We'd have been too busy worrying about traffic and if the car's water pump needed to be replaced. Texting on public transpo was AWESOME......and that was back then....on our archaic little plastic phones. I can't even imagine how great it would be with all the gadgetry the baby models have now!

Our cellys were used for nothing more than pleasure. It was all about the gossip and plannification of great times together. We didn't need our phones to figure out the weather forecast for the next millenia or whether we could find reliable Chicago auto repair or check our Facebook pages. Facebook? Love it now, but back then...did it even exist? We were actually all together...just a text message away...no need for the social networking...we were living it.

Oh yeah...the good old days of public transpo in Milan. Good times. No worries about anything....oh man, take me back to that, even just for a minute!

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Back on Course In Milan....(Wine in Bushes and Other Moments of Greatness)

Ok, so let me get back on course with the happenings....last thing I wrote about my last season in Milan was that I had issues with my crazy agency owner and that I had moved on to Names and into a great new apartment. In the interim, when I was staying for a few days at the hotel that my friend, Marcus, had so generously paid for is when I first was reunited with members of my old posse.

Kari had flown into town and moved in with Derek (who by the way is now a regular on the new season of the Real Housewives of New York City!!!! He's as fab as ever and I am so proud of him!!) but was spending some nights with me at the Hotel Serena where we would stay up into the wee hours catching up on life, drinking wine and just being happy. A few days into Kari being in Milan, Jeremy (remember my Canadians?) arrived. We met up for a little prefunk in my hotel room his first night back which we prepped for by going to the local supermarket and buying ludicrous amounts of cheap vino and lugging it all back to my room.

At some point in the night we decided that we would WALK to Gasoline to see if any of our other friends were in town yet. Keep in mind, that we all had cells and texting was a new thing for us....so we really were all playing it by ear as to when we would run into the rest of our crew. The walk from Hotel Serena to Gasoline must've been something like 30 minutes long...we're talking opposite ends of Milan....but we had bottles of wine in hand and my trusty camera to keep us company. God, the pictures from that night...THE PICTURES! I'll be scanning those in this week and posting them. They are BEAUTIES.

Once we got to Gasoline we figured it would be an amazing idea to hide our wine bottles in the bushes outside of the club. Since we were there early on in the season we weren't sure that there would be table service provided for us and we had to make very sure that our sweet buzz would continue unaltered throughout the night. After stashing our bottles, we got in line, were escorted to the front (love being a model...heh heh) and into the VIP section at the back of the club. I was drunkish at the time but remember clear as day getting pinched by random hands almost the entire walk to the back. Not cute.

Once there we met up with Derek who was also in the throes of Bacchus and somehow ended up on the floor in the VIP with all of us laying there with him. Lovefest, what can I say? LOL! A little after that I looked up to see Jason, one of my other Canadians standing with another boy model and his de rigeur Jack & Coke in hand. I called out his name and when he looked over (and this is one my best friend/reuniting moments ever) he stared with this look of joy on his face over at us and literally dropped his glass out of surprise. It was beautiful. He ran over to us and there were hugs and kisses all around. Seriously the best thing ever. Imagine being in a foreign country for just a few days and all of a sudden seeing a close friend out of the blue. Like that...so good.

We all drank and danced and loved each other (and not in any way durrty...so please....minds out of gutters, stat.) and took breaks to run out to the bushes to gulp down more wine (even though Derek made sure that we had endless champagne...) but we were kids and high on life and so, why not drink that wine in the foliage? We also made damned sure to do pole dances od the random metal tube stuck in a block of cement that was outside of the club too....again, why the hell wouldn't we?

Milan, Milan, Milan....Kari, Jeremy, Jason and Derek......I miss the hell out of you.