Feeling Famous

For some reason, every time I celebrated my birthday in Milan the most amazing things would happen. This first season, the agency party happened to fall on my birthday and I got the honor of getting to grace the party invitation's cover along with Eye for I's other "top" girls. I really didn't consider myself one the agency's "tops" but maybe they did...so I wasn't gonna go run and complain about it. LOL! My second season in Milan I ended up celebrating my birthday in Monte Carlo during the Grand Prix....but I won't give out all the details now because I want to stay chronological and not give away all the juice just yet. Suffice it to say P.Diddy, Prince Albert, Naoimi Campbell et. al. were there......not for me per se, but STILL! HAPPY FREAKING BIRTHDAY TO ME! LOLOLOLOL!



Oh yeah...for this particular birthday, I brought all of my friends to Old Fashion Cafe and we ate and drank and made merry until the wee hours of the morning. All paid for by Eye for I who literally "eyed" my male model friends wishing they repped them...since they were already taken by Riccardo Gay, WhyNot, Fashion, etc. The men's division booker actually told me that if any of my boys were unhappy at their agencies to let him know. Yeah, my friends are hot.

My Salvaged Milanese Tearsheets.

I have this huge Rubbermaid container that I keep in my husband's studio full of all of my old tests and tearsheets from the very beginning of my career to the current day....one of these days I'll go through them and organize everything. For now, I'll just share a few of my original Milan tearsheets. Lord knows the rest are probably buried under old portfolios in that container. I've only had enough time & patience to rustle up a few for each trip....and sadly but truly, quite a few of my pics have stuck together from years of neglect and heatwaves and are thus rendered unsalvageable. *sigh*

Some of these shots were for fashion and/or editorials, one is from the Vogue Sposa shoot (guess which one, lolol!) and the last two are from a super cheesy job I did for Donna Moderna but which took me on a two day location shoot in Tuscany. We got to stay in an unrealistically beautiful Tuscan villa where we gathered for meals in a ballroom that made me feel like I had been transported in time every time I sat down to inhale orrechiete or whatever was the food du jour. It is jobs like that that made me want to pinch myself just to make sure I wasn't dreaming and that I was actually getting paid to spend time in locations like these, smile, wear nice clothes and just be alive.














Ah yes....the gardens of the Tuscan villa I got to stay in for the DM shoot...bellissimo!

My First BIG Booking in Milan

Although working for catalogs and department stores should qualify as "big bookings" because the day rates are phenomenal, what really makes a booking "big" is the name of who you are working for. If you work for a major magazine, you will probably make a few bucks...literally...nothing to speak of, but you can say that you shot for Elle or Bazaar....or, prize of all prizes....Vogue. And when other clients find out that you shot for any of the afore mentioned mags and their partners, the chances of landing even bigger and better bookings (yes, money jobs!) grows substantially.

A week after my insane ride in Venice, I got a call on my cell from Fabio at the agency letting me know that I had booked an editorial for Vogue Sposa. Vogue Sposa is a cutting edge bridal magazine put out by Italian Vogue. I was thrilled! Even though it wasn't like I had booked a high fashion editorial for Italian Vogue itself, this was pretty damned close and good enough for me. After going to several castings at the Vogue offices and feeling like an imp next to all the preteen, amazonian gazelles with their 30 inch hips and waist length coifs.....I have to admit that booking this job gave me a prettty big confidence boost.

The following is my journal entry from the day of the booking, still magic to me after all these years.:

5/2

I worked for Vogue Sposa today. Me...working for Vogue! We shot on location at a magnificent 18th century villa with rolling lawns and splendid gardens. The kind of setting I once imgained myself living in as a child with fairytale dreams. I looked like an Edwardian princess in black & white billowing skirts, top hats and velvet blouses with kravats. So magical. I felt like I was transported in time. A dream come true on so many levels. I can't wait to see this editorial! I shot with 5 male models and it was all laughter and candid shots. I have to admit though that I was really self conscious about my skin. It broke out pretty badly this past week, and even though the make-up artist was reassuring me and told me that all models have problems with their skin in Milan because of the water, it didn't make me feel any less gross.

So, I hope the shots turn out great & the photographer & clients love them. Getting tearsheets from this will be huge for getting more work. Tearsheets from Vogue Sposa! I have to stop being so paranoid and worrying that they won't like the shots & won't use them. Yeah, I think I am a basketcase...but a happy one!!

Crazy French male model (can't remeber his name, but he was side splittingly hilarious) and me at the shoot.....he made the photographer's assistant take this polaroid of us....

A Tiny Little Hiatus

My rants are not over....have no fear, Peacocks on Leashes is still alive....but I am taking a week off to spend time with my new baby girl who arrived three weeks early and who, believe it or not, already has a modeling contract with my agency in New York! A week old and she is already a little model. LOL! Some girls have it so easy!

So check back in in a week and I'll be back on with more pics and posts.....each better than the last. I promise! :-)

The Legendary Naked Venice Bridge Jump

I have to admit that it makes me chuckle to this day when I hear models and bookers at random talk about the supposed urban legend of a group of models jumping totally naked off of the Rialto Bridge in Venice Italy. Urban legend? Ha! The only thing that is remotely mythic about this bridge jump is that it is STILL to this very day talked about by completely random people in the industry.....how could I have imagined this would go down in modeling history when I was boarding the train from Milan to Venice with my friends that fated morning.

En route to Venice!:



Rather than try to re-tell things as they happened, I'll just go ahead and copy my journal entry from that day. Here goes....the myth, the urban modeling legend......IS REAL!

4/25

Yesterday, Jean-Paul, Ned, Paul, Muffin, Jennifer, Katarina, Jason, Sam and I all took the 9 am train from Milan to Venice. We had a blast piling into the compartments and joking around. Then once we got to Venice we ran around the city like crazed teenagers eating, singing, laughing, joking. I was once more amazed at how exquisitely beautiful that city is.

Models DO eat junk food...and lots of it. Burger King in Venice....they should have paid us for this!:



We bonded so well as a group and our energy together was amazing. As evening approached, we went into a small liqour store down a tiny, cobblestoned alleyway and bought cheap wine that we commenced to drink while walking around the streets and piazzas of the city until we were all in a drunken state of sheer bliss.







We ran around like children hiding and chasing each other down dark alleyways, peeing in the canals, window shopping for masques and loving being with each other. And then, at midnight, the boys decided to go skinny dipping in the Grand Canal...by way of jumping off of the RIalto Bridge.

Maybe because I was raised by outrageously straight laced parents, and I could hear....even while inebriated...my mother's voice stating the cliche "If your friends jumped off of a bridge, would you?", I abstained from the event. Instead I contented myself with taking pictures of everyone although somewhere inside of me I wish I would've joined them. By the time the second person had stripped down and jumped, there was a pretty sizeable crowd of tourists and locals that had stopped and become spectators....even at midnight there were people out with their camcorders and cameras. I wasn't the only one recording this event.

One after another, my friends all dove off of the bridge in their birthday suits and then commenced to run back up the bridge and hurdle themselves off again. It was amazing, funny, beyond words. The onlookers we had attracted were cheering, people were hanging out of their canal & bridge view windows.....it was getting insane. And then all of a sudden we saw the police rushing up in their boats.

I am all about respecting everyone's comfort level....hence the strategically placed star:



JP pulled me away and we made it down off of the bridge. We saw the police running with their billy clubs out and ready and they ran right past us. I will never know why they didn't stop us.....I was dry, but JP was still dripping from the jump.....and they caught up with Paul, Jen, Kat, Sam, Muffin & Jason beating them with their clubs and then handcuffing them. JP and I ran into Ned who had somehow also escaped unscathed and, after some little Italian kids ran up to us and told is to flee because our friends had been arrested, we ran back up to the bridge and watched the police drive off in their boats with our friends. We were stranded in Venice.

So, we wandered the streets. The three of us. The Mod Squad. Finally at 1:30am we found the train station and it was locked so we sat outside for an hour. After freezing our asses off, we decided to wanter down a road and look for some food. Next thing we know, we are in a nightclub with a hairy backed transvestite in a tight red dress dancing next to our table. We just sat there not knowing what to do or think or if this was all really happening to us. I couldn't stop laughing. I was delirious.

Then a group of young girls came up to us and asked us if we wanted to smoke with them, so we all left the club and followed them to a piazza where we sat on the the steps of a church and shared a joint while one of their guy friends twirled a flaming baton in the air. Surreal. They sat with us and chatted for hours and at 4:30 am they took us to a bakery where they bought us each a jam filled brioche straight out of the oven. We said our good-byes, headed back to the train station and 45 minutes later our friends, who had spent the night in jail, were released. We were so happy & relieved to see them.

We got on the first train back to Milan and slept the whole way back, piled on top of each other like puppies. What an amazing 24 hours. I will NEVER forget this.

Tonight we all went to dinner at Louisiana. We have bonded eternally from this experience. I love these guys. JP leaves on Monday. I will hate to see him go, but now I know I can hang with my boys anytime. I can't wait to develop the pics from this adventure. What a rush. This is life!


***Note***

The next day one of the guys bought a Venetian newspaper from a newstand in Milan and there was an article, it may have even been on the front page, describing the previous night's event. Funny thing was that in the article we were described as "drunk, American youths" and they likened the bridge jump to desecrating the Statue of Liberty. I have to clarify that only Ned, Sam and I were American. Nice generalization, huh?! And I, one of the Americans, didn't even partake in the jump! I just photojournalized it. Guilty by association....yes! My friends that got arrested ended up having to deal with Italian attorneys. pay court fees, and were told to take a course of antibiotics because the canal water was so polluted. I'm not sure what all ensued after that.....but they are all still alive and well, so I'm assuming none of them contracted the plague that night.

Playtime in Milan....A Pictorial

The clubs that were considered hot in my day were Hollywood, Gasoline, Old Fashion Cafe, and Louisiana (on Wednesday nights). Favorite (or only) method of transportation to said venues: foot or public transpo. After arriving at whichever place was considered the hot spot du jour, we'd be escorted to the VIP where we would usually have a table along with other models and the drinks would appear and reappear all night....playtime! The only exception to this rule was at Hollywood where I would be allowed into the VIP but since I always had all of my guy friends with me, they would be turned down more often than not. The guy to girl ratio always had to lean strongly towards the girls.....and since I had too much fun hanging out with my friends, and the alternative would mean getting liqoured up by middle-aged (and older) modelizers wearing wedding bands, Hollywood was my least favorite place. Gasoline and Old Fashion were our definite favorites.

One night in Gasoline:



The party boys, prefunking in the C-1 courtyard:



More prefunking and modeling of what are not quite whities or tighties (sent by one of their moms....moms have AWESOME taste in underwear, eh?):



No free drinks at the VIP in Hollywood? No problem....the panini stand outside the club always had excellent vino in a box complete with the ever classy plastic cups to drink it out of!



When you're a middle model you ride trams and subways...NOT limos....to parties:

Thank God We Spoke Spanish!

When Penny and I found out that Blink 182 was going to be performing at the Fila Forum in Milan, we ran out and bought tickets. Going to a rock concert in a huge venue in a foreign country was going to be a blast!! And I was going to get my otherwise shy roomie out of the house and maybe rockstar her up a little. I couldn't wait! But, two days before the concert, Penny booked a job and had to fly to the South of France, so she generously offered me her ticket and told me to give it to Jean-Paul so I wouldn't have to miss it or go by myself. JP was as excited as I was to go, we both liked the band and had a favorite song from our Miami days that to this day always reminds me of the good times we had together.

The night before the concert JP took me to Antlantique with 8 of his roommates. There I was, little me, with an entourage of eight beautiful boys. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night! Atlantique was a "cafe" that served free buffet lunches to models during the day and at night was an over the top nightclub that indulged in a little too much Europop, but when you are with good people and libations are free flowing , the music, the venue, and everything else matters not. This was one of my first nights out on the town in Milan with my new crew, and these boys could party like the best of them treating me like one of them and not just a hanger-on or some fragile girlie girl. I can't imagine how bored and lonely things would have been for me my first few months in Milan had JP not been there at the same time and introduced me to his roommates.

So...back to the Blink 182 concert.....JP and I boarded the bus that would take us to the outskirts of Milan where the Fila Forum was situated. The bus was full of Italian youth going to watch the concert as well....so JP and I decided that instead of seeming obviously American we would stick to speaking solely in Spanish (he is from Puerto Rico). And thank God we did. Nobody looked at us twice, they must ahve assumed we were from Spain. Thank God.

During the show the band got incredible accolades from the crowd, they sounded amazing, adrenaline was pumping and so was the sound system. Fila Forum was fit to burst full of concert-goers and JP and I were loving the fact that we spoke something other than English. It was already pretty obvious that we were models....we just didn't really want to branded with the Stars & Stripes in this huge crowd. See, anti-American sentiments have existed abroad for a while.....much as I would love to blame it on the jackass that is our current President. When I was studying in Austria while in college we were warned by our professors to always say we were Canadian when asked where we were from. As a matter of fact, during the entire concert, the guys in the band would make quips and throw out random jokes, none of which were laughed at, and I am assuming it was due to the fact that the punchlines were lost in translation. Finally realizing that their witicisms were getting nothing out of the crowd they all flipped the bird and yelled out "F***K America!!" at which time EVERYONE in the crowd cheered as if they were told that they were all going to walk out of the Forum with a million dollars in their pocket. It was disturbing. I can't imagine what it must be like now......I think I'd be walking around with the Canadian maple leaf tattooed to my forehead just to keep my anonymity. So yeah, I was ever so grateful that day that my mom was so adamant about speaking to me only in Spanish as I was growing up. !Gracias mami!

So the concert rocked. JP and I left before the last song in order to get a spot on one of the busses back into town and made it to C-1 in time to meet up with everyone for another night out painting Milan a brilliant shade of rosso.

Trippin to the Tip of the Boot.

My first location shoot in Italy was for an Italian department store called La Rinascente....God, I hope I spelled that right, my preggo brain lapses on me quite often nowadays.....and location was in Otranto at the very tip of the heel of the boot that is la bella Italia.

I packed my bags, thanking the modeling gods that I had a roommate like Penny that would not take off with the rest of my stuff while I was gone, and headed to Linate Airport. Now I mention thanking the modeling gods about Penny, because I had heard many a horror story from other models about leaving for an out of town location shoot only to return to their apartments after a few days to discover that their roommate had taken off with all of their belongings. Now how on earth do you go about tracking down a girl in Lithuania so that you can get back your Samsonite full of pretty much your entire life on the road? Not something I ever wanted to deal with.

At Linate I spotted another model that I figured I would be working with. She didn't seem at all approachable so I kept to myself and off we went. Upon arrival in Southern Italy we were picked up by the client's driver and taken to our hotel. It was late at night by the time all was said & done (the car ride from the airport to the hotel was a long one), so we checked in and found our rooms. After gingerly looking around my room...something I always do no matter how nice the place, because yes, I am totally OCD about cleanliness...I started unpacking my bag. To my awesome surprise I realized that I had left my toothbrush behind and I would be on location for three days with no way to scrape the plaque off of my pearlies. Fanfreakintastic. If the shoot had been in a CITY I could have hoofed it out somewhere and found a toothbrush no problem....but the hotel was completely isolated and therefore I was pretty much shit out of luck to put it bluntly.

So, while muttering a lot of choice profanity under my breath, I prepared for a shower which I hoped would help make me feel somewhat clean even if I was gonna be stuck with yuckmouth. Well, my friends, my shower was the equivalent of standing under a stream of lukewarm urine...not that I have ever partaken in a golden shower, but if I could equate it to anything, that would be it. A tiny trickle of lukewarmth.....shaving under those conditions is not a good thing,....you end up razoring off your goosebumps. It feels divine, let me tell you. So there I am shivering, razor burning and cursing the fact that I can't even so much as brush my teeth when I get the brilliant idea to use one of the cotton balls I had packed in lieu of a brush. Okay, not so bad, I put toothpaste on it, rubbed it on my teeth, rinsed.....much better. At least I wouldn't be killing anyone with dragon breath or developing a severe case of gingivitis anytime soon. But the combo of what was happening in my hotel bathroom was not in any way, shape or form helping me feel like the model I was supposed to be. I could almost forecast waking up with an entire colony of cystic acne on my forehead at that point. Luckily, that didn't happen.

The next morning, talent and crew gathered for a quick breakfast and we were off to shoot. We drove around Otranto and its vicinity shooting in cobblestone alleyways, piers, seaside cliffs, by a lighthouse.....it was a long day. Beautiful but long. This culminated in a very large and loud pasta dinner at a local restaurant where a random patron had a rose sent over to me. I got eyeball daggers from the other model who was left with nothing, but what the hell, the dude that had sent me the rose was no Prince Charming. Think Tony Soprano with gold teeth.

After two more days of shooting, and all the while I am loving my lack of a real shower and my cottonball dental hygiene, the clients let me know that they had called my agency and told them that they wanted to keep me for two more days. Great for the money, but no so great for the fact that that meant my personal hygiene would really suffer now, especially since I, still being something of a modeling tenderfoot, had only packed just enough underwear for the time I was supposed to be away. I will spare you the details, but whoever the maid was who had to clean my room out must have gotten a kick out of seeing my knickers hanging from the shower rod. Shampoo makes for great laundry detergent if you are ever in a pinch. Smells good and it leaves your items smooth and tangle-free.

The last two days we spent shooting this job took us to another seaside town called Gallipoli. It was amazing, breathtaking, and a million other descriptive words for "beautiful" that I just can't think of right now. We shot all over the town and every square inch of it was a dream. Whitewashed buildings, azure waters, cobblestoned streets, stunning architecture, painted fishing boats in the harbor.....it was the kind of place you honestly wondered could truly exist....had you just walked into a painting? I was humbled and happy and in no hurry to ever return Stateside.

Gallipoli.....amazing....





On our last evening in Southern Italy, we were invited to have dinner at a villa belonging to a close friend of the photographer. I won't bother to describe it to you other than to say that it was my dream house. The minute I walked in I fell in complete lust with that house and it's gardens. It was some crazy hybrid of Pottery Barn New York loft & Tuscan dreamscape. Oh to be rich.......At the end of the evening the photographer approached me and let me know that his friend wanted to extend an invitation to me to spend a weekend at his villa whenever I wanted. Flattering? Yes. Tempting? Nope. Although I would have taken the house in a heartbeat, it's owner I could have done without. And since I have always had an aversion to sugar daddies, that little dealio was nipped in the bud. But I have to say, roses from Tony Soprano and villa weekend invitations from a would-be Casanova were making me think that this whole hot shower, shaving, tooth brushing, clean underwear wearing thing was overrated.

The next night found me in my little Chinatown hovel taking an embarassingly and completely non environmentally conscious loooooooooong and very hot shower. I was so glad to be home. Oh, and I prectically kissed my toothbrush and lingerie when I got home too. Penny must have thought I was completely out of my gourd.

Milan Travel Journal Part 2

3/31

I feel so fortunate. I walk down the streets of Milan and can now look past all the graffitti and pollution and see the true beauty of this city, its buildings, its narrow cobblestone streets and broad, shop-lined avenues. I am in Europe! I have always loved Europe and somehow have always known that I belong on this continent. As my mom has always said "tu tienes el espiritu Europeo" (you have a European spirit). I am amazed and at home here.

For a person my age, I have traveled so much....I have covered so much of this earth and still have so much more to see. I can't stop now! Between modeling and school I have been to Japan, Taiwan, England, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Greece and all over the West Coast of the US, Miami and Jamaica. There are people who live to be 100 and never see half of what I have seen. I will never take this for granted. Thank you so much God for blessing me this way! I have to continue traveling for work as long as I can. I have to.

I have ben here for a couple of weeks now and I have already shot editorials for DONNA and DONNA MODERNA and tomorrow I fly out to Southern Italy for three days to shoot a catalog. I'm on option next week for VOGUE SPOSA.....oh my God, that would rock to get! That would be brilliant! Fingers crossed on that one. Gotta go start packing....

My Beautiful Band of Brothers

My first weekend in Milan, Penny decided to stay in as she usually did, and so, after getting a phone call from Jean-Paul I decided to head out on my own and meet up with him and his roommates at Parco Sempione, which is Milan's huge main park crowned by a stone castle & fortress complete with a moat. Behind the castle there is a large clearing where on any given day you can find bevies of models just taking in the sun, playing soocer, smoking herb, and just basking in how good life is. This would be my first of very many trips to the clearing.

Parco Sempione's castle-fortress:



I walked from my apartment to the park taking it all in and so excited to see one of my best friends in this foreign town. Halfway through the park I was accosted by a short, swarthy guy with a heavy and non-Italian accent....he had a little group off to the side that must have been his posse, and I was pretty intimidated. I had my purse around my neck and held with one hand....my wallet and passport were both in there and I was not about to let go. The guy kept walking very close to me speaking to me in English and Italian asking if I wanted any "hashish, verrry verrry gooood hashish" all the while rubbing up against my purse. I took off at a faster pace until I got to the clearing where I would be looking for Jean-Paul (who I am just gonna call JP from here on out) and he finally backed off.

The clearing:



I was lucky I got away with my purse intact as he was one of many gypsies that are notorious in most European cities for cutting holes in your bags and extricating the contents with the precision of a neuro surgeon, or cutting purse straps completely and taking off with the whole enchilada. In all of my travels to Europe I have encountered quite a few of these characters, many of which use their own children to rob from tourists, luckily, all I ever lost was an agency cell phone on a crowded tram.

A bit flustered, I started looking for JP and finally picked him out in a crowd of several beautiful boy models who would eventually become what I like to call my crew, or my little band of brothers. Although our relationship had always been platonic and nothing more than the best of friends, we ran to each other like out of some cheesy romance movie scene and ended up in a huge bear hug. Here we were in Italy, not knowing anyone, but we had each other. It was a comfort for sure.

JP then introduced me to his roommates, and he had a lot of them. JP was with WhyNot Model Mgmt. which placed their models in what are called the Celebrity Apartments. These apartments were owned and managed by a woman named Lori who allegedly was married to Eric Clapton once upon a time and who, rumor has it, was the mother of the the little boy, Eric's son, who fell to his death, hence the famous song.....JP lived in Celebrity Apartment number one, otherwise known as C-1, with 11 other guys. The ones I met that day at the park were Ned from Maryland, Geoff from Texas, and Paul from South Africa. Ned and Geoff had girlfriends at the time, and the girls were there as well. So we all hung out and talked, about what, I don't remember, but I do remember being really glad to be there and to be making friends with cats who were cool and smart and just all around good to be with.

As dusk approached they invited me over to their apartment where I met the rest of the crew, Jason (Canada), Kerry (California), Muffin (South Africa), and Sammy (Boston). There were other boys living there too, but these were the ones that became my friends, the others were either too elusive, unfriendly or who knows what. Their apartment could have been luxury digs had it been furnished. It was an enormous space surrounding a marbled courtyard with a gazebo in the middle, very pretty, but the guys were relegated to hanging out on benches in the courtyard or in their bedrooms where the only furnishings were beds and armoires....maybe a chair if you got lucky. Their "hausfrau" was an Italian guy named Ale, who said he was a model, but which we all doubted unless he was booking work for GNC Creotine bottles. He was short, outrageously buff, and ever so fakely tanned and blonde. He was always nice to me and the other girls that would visit, but definitely had an issue with the male models. If any one of them would leave a dirty pot or dish in the sink he would come out to the courtyard where everyone was and throw the pan across the floor while screaming about everyone being a pig or something. Later I heard accounts of his threatening the guys with butcher knives and even of confiscating and destroying another model's acoustic guitar. Ale was insane. But that just added to the entertainment value of hanging out at C-1.

C-1 became my second home that season. My apartment was so quiet and lonely, and my friends were always text messaging me to come over and hang out, I was officially one of the boys.

Journal Entry: Milan

3/03

I left Miami yesterday...full day of castings & go-sees today. Roommate is sweet, but I wish I could just pick up the phone & call Kari. I wish I could've said good-bye to Linley. I hope he doesn't forget me. Thank God Jean-Paul is coming tomorrow. A little Miami sun in Milan! Sweet boy will help me overcome my homesickness.

Milan...Without the Naked Fat Guy on Silk Sheets

Initial apprehensions aside, once I returned to Milan I have to admit that I was pretty damned excited to be back. It is not the most beautiful of European cities esthetically speaking but it is a European city nonetheless and being that I am also a hopeless Europhile I had to love it.

After somehow jigsaw puzzling all of my luggage into the Smart Car, my driver took off down some narrow cobblestone streets at a velocity I did not think possible of what could not be more than a 2 cylinder car....I swear every Italian was born to be behind the wheel of a Ferrari.....and miraculously got me to the agency alive and in one piece. Eye for I had their offices on the top floor of a beautiful old building with sweeping views of Parco Sempione. It was stunning.

I walked into the agency, looking a bit (ok, a lot) worse for wear after an International flight...what do you expect?! Patty and Giuseppe, the owners, walked right over to me and gave me huge hugs as if I were the prodigal daughter returning to make amends and then introduced me to who would be my bookers, Fabio, Giorgia and Federico. What an awesome team, I have to say. I felt at home with this group immediately. The vibe was good, not seedy....things were off to a good start. Giorgia then took me to the conference room where I had to proceed to strip down to my underwear (totally protocol, they have to see what you look like under clothes, jeez!) so that she could polaroid me and take my measurements. Thank God I wasn't in some granny panties and a sports bra! I did get a little warning though.....as my hips had dared stray to 34 1/2 inches...that I needed to stay away from the pasta. Well, that was gonna be easier said than done, my friends.

After my measuring session I went back to the booking table to get the low down on what bookings I had coming up and what my holds were. Nice. I had been in Milan for one day, gone to zero castings and was already booking work. I like. I like a lot. You have to understand that even though I had been to Asia and Miami, Milan was one of the big dogs when it came to fashion and rather intimidating because of that. And seeing that I am not a "model's model", meaning that I am on the shorter end of the modeling scale, and while thin, I am far from skeletal (Cuban ass. Amen.), nor do I have any odd or edgy features, I was humbled and surprised that things were starting off so well. I honestly came back to Milan with zero expectations beyond getting some cool tests done to expand my portfolio. Obviously I had been placed with the right people.

Within the hour, I was done with all of my agency business and was handed the keys to my new apartment and driven, once again within an inch of my life, to my new digs on Paolo Sarpi which is the main vein that runs through Milan's Chinatown. My roomate was out of town for a booking and would be back that evening, so I got to nurse my jet lag with a nap and hang out on my own for a while. The apartment was a tiny one bedroom that had seen far better days. It was dirty....a recurring theme in model's apartments....since the cleaning lady only came once a month and apparently the girls that lived there previously had a hard time finding the trash bins in the courtyard or cleaning supplies at the local supermarket. Oh well....I was starting to get used to this.

View from my living room window:



My new roomie ended up being a sweet girl from South Africa named Penny. She was darling and immediately I felt like a mousy dwarf standing next to her. Here was this 5'11'' blond beauty with porcelain skin while I was tan, short haired and feeling very androgynous. Was this what all of my competition was going to look like? I hoped not! Anyways, she took me on the rounds, showed me where the local Blockbuster was that rented American movies out, not dubbed, and where I could buy a map of Milan and get my groceries....all things essential.

The next morning we headed back to the agency to get our list of castings for the day. Luckily we had many of the same appointments so I got to tag along with her. This made things a lot easier since normally, in European markets, you are given a map and a list of places to go by your agency and the rest is up to you....totally sink or swim. The amazing thing is, when that happens you learn your way around a foreign city in a matter of a few days....by the end of my first week there I knew where pretty much everything was and how to get there. You also want to learn this as quickly as possible, since there is nothing more frustrating, or obviously touristy & embarrassing, than lugging out your huge city map every few blocks or so to see where on God's earth you are supposed to be heading.

At the end of the day, and after making a few stops for the best cappucinos on earth, we headed back to the apartment. I got a call from the agency to give me feedback on the appointments I had had that day and for another list of go-sees for the following day. We cooked dinner.....pasta of course!...and watched some really awful Italian MTV then I crashed out. The end of my first official day in Milan.

Oh, and no weird agency dinners this time around. No shady phonecalls at this apartment, thank God. Penny was quiet and reserved and therefore avoided the hounding P.R.s.....I missed Miami, yes....but Milan was gonna be okay after all.

My new Italian business card!

And It's Back on the Road...

My first season in Miami was over and it was time to pack my bags and head back on the road. This time to a lovely little fashion capital named Milan. Wow. And even though by this time, between my travels in college and my initial modeling trips, you could start to call me a seasoned traveler, I still always seemed to make that great faux pas all of us girls are infinitely guilty of.....overpacking. I hit Miami International Airport with two large suitcases and two carry-ons that I am still amazed made it on the plane without being confiscated and forcefully checked in at the gate.

Why so much stuff? Well, I was going from a warm, tropical climate to a chilly Northern Italian spring which would eventually turn into a scorching summer. I needed more than one season's worth of clothes & shoes! And I was also a huge monogomist when it came to the toiletries and hygiene products that I used. I would pack several bottles of everything that I normally used, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, bodywash, you name it. And since I have also always suffered from seasonal allergies, I would pack at least half a dozen boxes of antihistamines.....thank God this was before the whole "meth epidemic" hit the States....I would have had some serious cop action following me around asking why in hell I was purchasing so many boxes of pseudoephedrine. Do you really think they would have accepted my answer of "because I enjoy breathing through my nose and not having my eyes swell shut on a regular basis and I am about to leave the country to where they may not have Sudafed or Drixoral" as a legitimate answer? Something tells me no.

Anyways, it was a few trips later, when I finally decided that I could buy whatever I needed anywhere I went and it didn't have to be made in the freakin' USA to be good....as a matter of fact the foreign products (and I am not just talking pharmaceuticals here) were far better and often times cheaper than the stuff I was buying at home. But until then, my suitcases looked like I had ransacked the local CVS. It amazes me I never got stopped by customs and asked if I planned to shampoo their entire nation. Although, if you spend one summer in Milan and have to take public transpo there, you might seriously consider smuggling in a stick of deodorant for everyone in that city.

My carry-ons were huge because back then the advent of the ever compact MP3 player had not yet occurred. This meant that I, and anyone else who enjoyed music and traveled, had to carry a Discman and enormous CD cases full of whatever favorite CD's you had. I happened to have two of these cases and I swear that that alone took up an entire carry-on. I loved my music, and it helped the time pass on those really long flights....also helped avoid conversations with the creepy dudes that inevitably got seated next to me. So there were the CD's and then my books. I am a bibliophile. 100% addicted to reading, which is why I always had at least 3 or 4 books on me at all times. Throw in my portfolio, travel papers, some toiletries and a huge bottle of water and that meant some serious on board baggage. Mmmmm, my bottles of water. Flying would always dehydrate me and the thimbles of water that the airlines would hand out every 10 hours just never satiated me....thank God I did all this traveling before airlines and the government decided that water could be turned into an explosive mid air. I would have arrived at my destinations parched and needing an immediate IV.

My flight to Milan was uneventful. Lots of reading, listening to Live, Incubus, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Foo Fighters ad nauseum....well never really ad nauseum, since I could and still can listen to those guys forabsolutelyever, and anticipating my tiny tray of airline deliciousness....remember, I truly do enjoy airline food. I arrived at Malpensa Airport in Milan, called my agency, followed directions to get on the Malpensa Express and got off at Cadorna Station in the center of Milano......bella citta...where a driver from my agency was waiting for me in a miniscule blue Smart Car with Eye for I emblazoned proudly on the side. Flashback to Japan.

The next chapeter of my adventures was about to begin....la dolce vita style.....

South Beach Travel Journal Part 2

2/25

I leave South Beach in less than a week. My heart aches. I already feel homesick for this place, for my friends. I don't think I've ever grown so attached to a place before, and it's probably because this is where I grew into myself. I comfort myself by knowing that I will be back in 9 months. I have a lot to do and many difficult decisions to make between now & then and the months will fly by. I wonder what kind of person I will be when I return.

I'll never forget last Saturday. Dinner with Kari, Mandy, Jason, and Jen at Big Pink. Four shots of tequila at Amnesia and dancing non-stop for four hours with Linley. We left Shag at 4:30am with Linley, Shay & Todd and went skinny dipping in the ocean. The water was warm. I kept thinking about sharks. We ran to Linley's beachfront apartment all covered in sand and salt water and he let us pass out in his beautiful home. The next morning he bought us all cafe con leches and made us pancakes, omelettes and bacon He is an amazing cook. We went back that night for the best barbeque that I have ever had. He invited us to spend a week in Costa Rica with him this August where he owns some land that he plans to develop into a resort. We have to figure out a way to go.

"It's not how long you live, but how MUCH you live that matters."

A Glimpse Into My Travel Journal Part1

Just recently, while doing something of a major organizational overhaul in my house, I discovered a few of my travel journals and a binder full of emails that I would send out to family & friends as my modeling seasons were coming to a close. I'll go ahead and share these sappy entries that often waxed and waned poetic....or something like that.....LOL! I am a Gemini and therefore subject to being both very attached and very detached to people and places all at the same time. So I hope that explains some of the emotion behind my entries. Here is the first of many....

2/18

I am still in South Beach. The shallowness remains, but I have made some of the best friends I could've ever imagined. I love them all. I will miss then and this place with all my heart. I don't want to leave. I don't want this all to end. I have found my true happiness here and must return next season. South Beach is ingrained in my heart and psyche. Being here is like a drug. I know I can't go for long without coming back. It is here that I became both a woman and lived the childhood I never truly was allowed to have. I have somehow fallen in love with this place. It is inexplicable. It is mad. But, it is true. I cannot deny myself this. I have lived more in three months here than in all 22 years of my life. I will return and live fully again when I do! I FEEL SO ALIVE!

Moving On to Milan & My Dirty Little Secret

My season in Miami ended at the end of February. I had thought about staying for a few weeks into March, but by then my mother agency, Q6 Talent, had placed me in Milan with a reputable boutique agency called Eye for I. The owners were on the horn with my booker at Q6 on a weekly basis from the beginning of February asking when I would be flying out to Milan as they had a lot of clients showing interest in me and one photogrpaher was already starting to line up some jobs. I hemmed & hawed with them because I really didn't want to commit to a date since I loved being in Miami so much and I would be the first of my group of friends to be leaving.....but the pressure kept mounting so I booked my plane ticket and was off.

I have to admit that the prospect of going to Italy was both exciting and disturbing. I had toured the country and loved it when I was in college, but somewhere in between my Asian modeling trips I had actually, and this is my dirty little secret, gone to Milan with another agency and stayed for a total of 7 days before hightailing it outta there and none too quickly. I was scouted in Portland right after I had gotten back from Taiwan and asked to fly out to Milan within two weeks. I was besides myself with excitement and because my mother agency had not heard anything bad about the agency that scouted me I was on that plane quicker than you can blink an eye. I will not disclose the name of the agency as they have since grown to have a pretty powerful reputation, but trust me, when I was there, it was not a good place.

My first trip to Milan is not one that I like to count as a season or an actual modeling trip.....it was a bad experience, and since most of my modeling experiences have been nothing but positive, this is one that I prefer to keep locked away in the catacombs of my brain....but why write my memoirs & not include it...right? So here goes....I get to Milan, move into my tiny and filthy models apartment with two other models, Beata from Poland and Rikke from Denmark. They were sweethearts so that was great, although Beata was dating an Italian P.R. which meant our phone rang off the hook day & night with other P.R.'s asking us out to party and dinners.

As a model in Milan you quickly find out what a P.R. is and that you should stay away from them at all costs. P.R.'s are Italian men who are paid by the Milanese clubs & restaurants to take models out in order to provide eye candy for the other patrons. Yes, in Miami we also got VIP treatment at clubs and got invited to parties by promoters but the vibe was totally different. P.R.'s are very, and almost harrassingly, persistant and once you give them your number they will hound you like a stalker until you agree to go out with them....then they put the moves on you. Luckily, Beata's boyfriend was her boyfriend so the few times I joined them on a night out that week I didn't feel too weird although watching the other P.R. vultures in action was rather sickening. These men are notorious for slipping GHB in an ususpecting girl's drink and then welll....I'm sure you have all seen this kind of stuff on Dateline.

My third night in Milan, my roomates and I were called by our model scout, Fabio, and told that we would be required to attend an agency dinner later that evening and that he would be picking us up at 10pm. Agency dinners anywhere are a normal and good way to get to know who you are working with , meet your fellow models, make contacts, etc. I didnt think this was too odd of a request although being told that we were "required" to go should have been a red flag. Most agencies invite you to their dinners and whether you show up or not is up to you.

Fabio showed up as promised, took us to a very elegant restaurant and that is when things started to get strange. There were only three other girls there from the agency, and they were already in varying stages of drunkeness, there were no bookers or clients, but in their stead there was a handful of very old and very aristocratic looking men. Hmmmm. I sat with my roomates on either side of me and commenced to eat and make small talk with the other models all the while noticing how these men were eyeing us like wolves. Uncomfortable? Hell yes. After dinner we were then taken to the home of one of the men who happened to be an Italian count for "dessert" and espresso. Since the restaurant, and subsequently the count's house, were on the outskirts of Milan, we had no choice but to go along....had I been in Milan longer than three days, you better believe that at this point I would have figured out a way to get home and pronto.

The count's house was a palazzo....entirely divine and had been featured in an issue of Architectural Digest which was proudly displayed on a coffee table. What the palazzo did not offer however was dessert and espresso. Champagne was uncorked and served, and I passed time & time again on the offers of bubbly. At this point I was completely uncomfortable and my fight or flight instinct was on at full throttle.....and that was even before we were escorted to the basement...or should I say "love den". The man had a basement that was fully tiled in black marble with a black marble swimming pool in it, a sauna, tennis court (not marble...jeez!), and a huge round bed covered in black silk sheets. Had I somehow been transported to the set of some really bad porn? Felt like it.

When I saw what was going on I asked my scout to take me home and he not so graciously declined while stripping to his boxers right next to me. At this point the other girls, with the exception of one of my roomies, had started taking off their clothes and jumping into the pool with the lecherous geriatrics. I sat on the edge of the bed with my coat on even though I remember it was pretty damn warm in there and watched on in disbelief. The girls were squealing and flirting with these nasty old men, letting themselves be groped and lord knows what else. After what may have been 5 minutes but seemed more like an eternity I got up and started to leave. I had no idea where in the hell I was, had no money for a cab but I was bound & determined to get the hell out of that sex hole hell. Here I was, a model, a professional, being treated like an escort. The other girls may have been fine with it, but this went way beyond anything I would ever be willing to do or be a part of. When my scout noticed me leaving he walked over me, dripping wet, and told me not to be stupid, to loosen up & have fun since these were important men & I would not want to make a bad impression on them. WTF? I left anyways and took my one clothed roomate with me.

Somehow, and by the grace of God, the count's chauffeur agreed to drive us back into town although he got lost and we ended up hoofing it back to our apartment on Beatrice D'Este. I got on the phone immediately and made calls to my agency leaving messages and later talking to them telling them I wanted out and that I would be booking a flight home the next day. I ended up staying for four more days because of airline issues, and left swearing I would never return. Later I found out that this and several other agencies that are actually legitimate modeling agencies in Milan were participating in this kind of behaviour.....wealthy men would pay to have models come out and join then for dinners, etc. much like an escort would, albeit unknowingly. Highly disturbing. One of the girls that night was only 15.

Ok, so now can you see why I was a little hesitant to go back to Milan? I hate thinking about that trip, hate admitting that I got suckered in to a situation like that......it's been my dirty little modeling secret for a long time. What put me on the plane this second time was the fact that my booker at Q6 knew the owners of the agency (Eye for I) who were a husband & wife team and the fact that I would be meeting up with some of my friends from Miami while there. Jean-Paul was going to be in Milan with Why Not and Kari would be going to Athens and joining us later with IMM Agency. What did I have to loose? So it was time to bid South Beach farewell....but not without a promise to return.....


I'd be giving up my Miami comp to go overseas and see what Italy could do for me......

Attitude Adjustments & Calling Cabs South Beach Style

I ended up staying in Miami that season as long as I possibly could. I had established an amazing group of friends, was working several times a week and having the time of my life. And because writing about photoshoots is just not all that interesting.....okay, another day spent at the beach getting hair & make-up done, yadda yadda yadda....I always fall back on my memories of those times of debauchery that were ever so much fun.

After Kari and I moved in with Jason at the Decoplage, we quickly became regulars at Wet Willies which is a margarita bar of sorts on Ocean Drive. For $7 you could get an enormous frozen beverage in one of about 30 flavors and don't even get me started on how good the fries were. The best on earth. Nuff said. You could then take your drink and either walk across the street to the beach or sit on the second story porch and people watch....and you have not people watched until you have been to South Beach. This was a place we could go hang out toss back a drink and just chill, or prefunk cheaply before hitting one of the the main clubs. Prefunking is of the essence even though models get VIP treatment which includes free bottles of alchohol, etc.....but oftentimes you have to wait a while for your table or there are so many models already there waiting to pounce on some vodka that you end up sipping on cranberry juice pretending you have the most orgasmic blend of cocktail in the house. Always prefunk. Amen.

One drink at Wet Willies would leave you rubber legged unless you were a hardcore alchoholic, so cheap & tasty are the best way to describe a Willies frozen cocktail. I'd be lying if I said I don't sometimes wish I had one in hand...especially after a long day with a crazy toddler. Willies was also notorious for how strict they were about the legal drinking age, unlike pretty much every other party establishment on the beach. I have seen models as young as 13 wasted and dancing on tables in the most exclusive clubs there. At Wet Willies, you were either 21 or left outside. This was a nice perk since drunk people in general annoy the crap out of me (thank God I never met myself drunk) so you can imagine how annoying it is to have to be around a drunk teen. You inevitably become a babysitter and that is just not cool no matter how you look at it.

Two of the most potent and popular drinks at Willies were the Call A Cab and the Attitude Adjustment. These would kick you in the ass and Jason was incredibly fond of the Cabs. By the end of season the boy could drink 5 (or more?) of those things and still walk straight. I remember one night my friend Wendy and I emptied an entire container of salt into Jason and her boyfriend, Travis', drinks while they were in the bathroom. They sucked those puppies down without noticing a thing after they got back. That is what those drinks do to you. So you can imagine the insanity that would ensue when we would go out to Willies, the boys would down drinks like they were going out of style and we girls would sip our one or two demurely.....heh!....then we would head out on the town. Club Amnesia was hot at the time and we would end up there on most nights, or Bar Room, then go eat papas rellenas and croquetas at 2am from one of the little Cuban greasy spoons before heading home for the night. We always traveled in our tight knit, thick as thieves pack, so partying hard was never an issue. We were safe in our numbers and after a while, when you are a model on South Beach, the entire place becomes a little like "Cheers"....everyone knows your name & face and you know theirs. They also happen to know your business so you don't ever want to go too crazy. But crazy is as crazy does. eh?

I always had my camera on me to record our antics.....but I just can't find the energy to scan in and crop every single one to show you how badly we all behaved, or how much fun we had....depends on how you look at it. But here are a couple.....

Jason, Travis, Wendy and Kari on the way home from a night out at Wet Willies:



My beautiful cousin, Melka, who was home from Duke Univ. & decided to brave a night out on the town with me & mine (not sure where the mystery rose next to my face is coming from.....):



Club Amnesia with Matt, Anna, me, Jean Paul, Kari, and Mandy:

Lechon Asado and Tanning on Christmas

It's Christmas Eve as I type this..in cold and ever dismal Portland, and I can't help but think of my first Christmas away from the West Coast that season....Christmas in Miami. All the agencies shut down on the beach for a couple of weeks so there is no work & nothing to do.....most of the other models go home, wherever home is. I got to stay behind. And even though there was something empirically wrong about seeing Christmas lights, wreaths and other decorations go up in balmy, palm filled South Beach, after all my Oregon Christmases, it was kinda nice to work on my tan while sipping on an egg nog latte frappucino with nary a goosebump in sight.

The reason I didn't high tail it out of there for the holidays with the rest of the model flock was because I have a bevy of relatives in Miami, Cuban of course, and they invited me to stay with them and gorge on homemade Cuban food...which is some of the best food on earth in my opinion. Ummmm, excuse me as I wipe the drool off of my chin while visions of lechon asado, yucca con mojo, moros con cristianos, and maduros dance in my head. It was a great holiday that year....full of all the family warmth, salsa music and delicacies Cubans are known for. Not to mention some family time and real world-ness that was missing from the ever glitzy South Beach scene.

Two weeks of holiday hiatus and it was back to the beach, work, and play. I think I may have been a few pounds heavier by then, but what can ya do, eh? Turn down lechon and tres leches? I don't think so!

The English Gentleman & His Outrageous Irish Sidekick

This was the season in Miami that Kari and I befriended two guys that would become fast friends and give us a taste of what it's like to be, well, extremely and wonderfully pampered.....Neil and Cormac. Neil was a self-made tycoon from London and Cormac was his wild Irish social secretary who would go check out the hottest clubs and restaurants and report back to Neil whether or not they were worthy of going to.

Kari was the one that met Cormac first, and if I remember correctly it was at an Elite agency dinner at Joia that we all happened to be at. They exchanged numbers and the following day he called her asking in his delicious brogue whether or not she would want to "join [him] in bed." Rather awkward question unless you already knew that BED was one of the hottest restaurant/clubs in South Beach at the time. Basically the decor consisted of enormous white cloud beds seperated by gauzy white curtains surrounding a DJ booth and dancefloor. You'd eat, drink and make merry on the beds and were served by a waitstaff wearing white pajamas.....think Sex in the City....

Anyways Kari turned down this invitation, but Cormac persisted until one evening she caved in, recruited me to come along and we joined Cormac and Neil for dinner at one of the many posh posh restaurants in Miami followed by VIP treatment at Opium Gardens. We had a blast. The first thing we noticed was that Neil traveled well....always in accompaniment of beautiful girls and interesting people, be they entrepeneurs, politicians, etc. Neil seemed to know everyone and be known by everyone as well. He was exquisitely mannered and soft spoken, eloquent and the epitome of what you would imagine dining with James Bond would be like. Cormac was wild, hilarious...and I mean side-splitting in his humor....and could turn anyone's bad mood into a good one. They were both absolute gentlemen, and to the surprise and/or suspicion of anyone that Kari & I ever told about our new friends, were far from shady or lecherous. Here were two perfect gentlemen who liked being surrounded by brains and beauty and for some lucky reason they decided that we fit into that description. No advances were ever made. We were treated to wonderful evenings out and had to give nothing but our presence and stimulating conversation. Neil and Cormac are living proof that there really are good, decent men in the world who just happen to have a lot of money.

Dinner with Neil at some insanely good restaurant....can't remember which one though!:



At the lobby of the Delano with Cormac & friends:



Thanks to Neil and Cormac, Kari and I got to check out and spend time in the most exclusive enclaves that South Beach had to offer.....they were even more of an "in" than the mere fact that we were models which is usually your E-ticket anywhere. They made sure we were well fed at the most ridiculously amazing restaurants, and we thanked our lucky stars for that. Thanks to those two we got to diversify our Taco Bell, Burger King diets and dine on Kobe beef and caviar. Ocean Drive parties and rockstar treatment aside, Neil & Cormac let us into a world where we got to really feel like royalty. And this was just a taste of what was to come....we met up with them in Milan later, Miami for second season and then Milan again for a side trip to Monaco for the Grand Prix. I miss those two. I'm still in contact with Cormac but haven't heard from Neil in ages...and I hope he is well.

Cormac in his PlayBoy Magazine cover shower curtain turned kilt...at someone's Star Island house party:

The Infamous Ocean Drive Party

So what was THE most memorable event/party that I got to attend my first season in Miami? I have to say it was the Ocean Drive Party hosted by the magazine of the same name and thrown with lavish proportions at the most luxurious hotel in South Beach. Geting to attend this party made you feel like you had officially entered the world of the gliteratti....and yes, for that one night in particular, my friends and I could have given any of today's celebutants a run for their money....and we would not for a second mind getting our hands on some of that cash.

Models Night Out.....pretending to be famous...there I am in the middle, sandwiched by my beautiful friends:



The Ocean Drive party was so exclusive that only a small amount of models per agency were allowed on the guest list which was reserved mainly for celebrities and other people that normally roll around with black Amex cards and a 20+ person entourage. Walking into the lobby of the Loews, the hotel it was held in that year, we were all exposed to the flashing lights and general obnoxiousness of the paparazzi (although when you are far from famous, this is actually more fun than obnoxious) after which we were all ushered into the grand ballroom where hedonism ruled supreme.

Kari and I with our friends Neil and Cormac...the REAL James Bonds:



In every corner of that massive room there were buffet tables layed out with food from different countries and bars overflowing with libations....all of which were free to us. Above the tables, you were either greeted by intricately carved ice sculptures or skin models on beautifully bedecked beds wearing practically nothing and literally in the throes of copulation in every position you can imagine. This was particularly disturbing since I am not a huge fan of naked body parts coming (take whatever definition of that word that you would like) anywhere near my food. But no matter how you looked at it, this was a P.A.R.T.Y. and a full blown one at that and you felt on top of the world just being there....especially after a glass of champagne or two.

Needless to say, this was one night when nobody would have made a good designated driver...or walker for that matter. An hour into the affair we were all but stumbling and inhibitions went by the wayside. At one point I snapped a picture of Steven Segal which I would NEVER in my right mind do, as well as walked up to Robin Leach and gave him a tremendous hug while calling him "darling". Whoah. After the party ended we joined Lenny Kravitz in the VIP of Crobar only to continue being served drinks which at one point, while dancing madly to Jay-Z, Kari and I spilled all over some guy who said he owned a publishing firm in NYC and must have been drunk off his own keester to not mind that we had soaked his Armani suit with Jack Daniels.

Steven Segal......I guess I thought I was one of the paparazzi for a sec:



The next morning we ran into this same guy at the News Cafe on Ocean Drive as we ate a late and greasy hangover breakfast....he had the waitress bring us over Bloody Mary's which we did not touch....not much into the hair of the dog thing....just made Kari & I want to hurl all the more. Luckily, we didn't run into Joe Publisher again and were able to enjoy the Volleypalooza model agency volleyball competition (imagine fashion models in board shorts and bikinis all competing to win for their agencies) followed by the open air Third Eye Blind concert during which I developed a 10 minute crush on Stephen Jenkins. Man, this was the life. I remember thinking at that point that life could never get better than that. My job was to have good friends and good fun at that point. Nice.

Let Me Interrupt....

Just had to go off track for a second and respond to a few queries as to why I am only using first names in my posts...Well, it's pretty simple. Although the majority of the people I am writing about are close friends, some have gone by the wayside and some have a lot of dirt to hide since they plan to run for office and other such things. Ha! And while no one has told me that they care whether or not I disclose their entire identity....with the exception of one good friend who insists that I call him "Golden Arms"....I think it's kinda creepy to give out THAT much information on people in a public blog. I'd rather just stick to writing about their drunken mishaps and so on as well as posting images of their naked bums running around Italy....oh, you'll see what I mean by this later...

Cheese and Sex

Not even in Miami was I able to escape the super smile-a-rific cheese that I had had to endure on one too many shoots in Japan. A lot of German and Dutch catalog clients like their models to smile till it hurts for their pictures, and since I had Asian tearsheets professing to my smiling abilities, I ended up booking many a job that would leave my facial muscles aching at the end of the day.

Here I am in the middle doing a campaign for a Dutch jeanswear company called "Cracker Jeans"...yeah, that really was the name, LOL!:



Cheese was not something I was soon going to escape....but you learn in the modeling world that Cheese can be a good thing...it pays...a lot. You may not end up looking like some drop dead Victoria Secret diva...but you get to pay your bills, and that is pretty damn okay.

From super cheesetastic and wholesome as can be, to severely naughty in 2.5 seconds flat.:







On the other hand, I also got morphed into a sex kitten while in Miami. Shooting for the likes of Spanish Maxim, H: Para Hombres, and Alex Pertile. Now these jobs made me feel fabulous, but like I said before....it's the cheese that pays. The glammy jobs were for magazine editorials which pay nickels and dimes. You do these jobs for the tearsheets, nothing else, because after the agency takes its cut (20%) you are often left with only enough to treat yourself to an awesome night out at Taco Bell.

This is how guys think we girls like to hang out when they aren't around.....dream on boys......

Bookings...Miami Style

Since I covered some base on what work conditions were like for me in Taipei and Osaka, I have to go into what bookings were like in South Beach.....and I have to say that besides the usual pre-dawn call times, the work was cake.

After getting used to working long hours in Asia, I was amazed at how quick & easy the bookings were in Miami (later I came to find out that pretty much all of the bookings I would have in the States would be like this). Like I said before, work in Miami is mainly catalog and commercial and done for an International clientele. I worked for several British, Italian, Dutch, Mexican, Spanish and German clients as well as a handful of American companies flying South for the winter. Although I shot a few magazines and covers, I mainly worked on catalogs and was booked for what is called either a "half-day" which is supposed to be 4 hours but many times is only about an hour and a half, or a "full-day" which entails 8 hours...which pretty much means anything over 4 hours.

The clothes were for the most part basic and comfortable, no overheating here, although shooting swimwear in the early morning, even in Miami, makes for blue skin and goosebumps. The clients were always super nice and accomodating, genuinely friendly and had motorhomes for us to change in, relax and/or stuff our faces with the veritable cornucopia of snacks that would always be layed out for talent & crew. Ahhhh, comfort! This, however, doesn't mean that I didn't sometimes have to change in make-shift conditions (which happened almost ALL the time in Asia) and which meant you were changing....yes, getting completely buck naked and changing....surrounded by the stylist, art director , photographer's assistant and make-up artist as they held up beach towels so that all the passing tourist couldn't catch sight of your naughty bits. Once you've done this a few times, you a) lose a lot of modesty and b) learn to change from one bikini into another without ever really getting naked. That one is on my resume, thank you.

Bookings would take place anywhere. Sometimes we would shoot in South Beach itself, and sometimes we would head out to Key Biscayne or the Everglades. On the days I would shoot in SoBe, I would normally get really lucky and end up showing up, going into hair and make-up, shooting for 20 minutes and then getting to go home....this would be considered a half day job even though I would only be there for maybe a little over an hour tops and I'd still make the same amount of money I would make in Asia for a 12 hour day. Spoiled? How could you not be? Most of my full day jobs were on-location off of the beach. Which basically meant, we, the models were getting paid to travel in a moho, shoot for a while, chat it up with the clients and basically just hang out. The clients were always in a good, layed back mood too (they were on pseudo vacation, remember?!) which made for a really great work environment. This was the modeling of my dreams!! Although, being something of a workaholic, I honestly never minded the grueling Asian work days. Long hours being dressed up and made up still beats long-hours in a cubicle.....and believe me, been there & done that.

That was what working in Miami was like in a nutshell! A pleasure, through and through. I'm sure people have had nightmare bookings there too...it happens, but I was lucky enough to have nothing but good experiences there and work with really great teams. Even the shot for Spanish Maxim where I had to lay on the floor of an old abandoned warehouse wearing a thong and some feathered wrap wasn't so bad....the clients made sure I was warm with a portable heater and scoured the floor to ensure that I wouldn't get tetanus from a rusty nail in my glutes. Oh, Miami......how I love thee.....

Of Awesome Views and Psycho Roommates

After living in our pension for a little over a month, our friend, EIleen, decided to go back to Portland. Kari and I would have been fine staying and splitting the rent two ways, but at that point the unit was having some problems, i.e. the bathroom from the apartment right above ours was leaking copious amounts of water through the ceiling and into our apartment & the owners were doing nothing about it. At that timeI was approached by two other girls from Elite about moving in with them.

Jada & Erin were the girls who were looking for new roomates to share their studio apartment at the Decoplage. Jada was a self proclaimed "Southern Belle" from Georgia and Erin was from a small town in Washington. They both seemed really nice at the time and they had an amazing, albeit small, unit at the popular complex, the Decoplage. The apartment was on the 12th floor of the building and afforded us views of the beach and its vast expanse of cerulean waters. At that time, the Decoplage was considered "model towers". Most of the models on the beach lived there which gave it somethng of a fab dorm atmosphere. The building sat at the end of Lincoln Road, right on the beach with a gym, valet parking, concierge services, pool and private beach access. It was luxury digs when it comes to model apartment living. But along with the "luxury" came steep rents so the more the merrier. Kari and I moved in.

The Decoplage....tall pink building to the right of the pic....not too shabby:



The VIEW!




After living there for several weeks, Kari and I started to feel uncomfortable. Jada and Erin were very clique-ey with each other and for some reason, Erin had a problem with Kari. This has, to this day, remained a mystery to us since there was never any real issue other than perhaps Erin was gaining a lot of weight and Kari could out eat a football player any day and still have a perfect body....being that they were both blond and therefore in direct competition with each other....jealousy maybe? Or maybe it was because she would be on the phone at every hour of the night & day with her boyfriend and we never got to use the horn because of it....or get much sleep. There is nothing more annoying than getting woken up at 4am by someone whispering a conversation over the phone with their sig other. 4 am? Seriously, what the hell do you have to talk about at 4am? Anyways, I think Kari may have mentioned something about this to Erin and therefore upset her. Like I said, it's a mystery.

Jada, on the other hand, I dismissed as shy rather than think that she was an outright bitch. I was wrong. The girl never, ever smiled, and also had some obsessively weird relationship with her fiance who lived in Georgia. Another all hours on the phone thing. We ended up all cohabitating in this studio and it got to the point where Kari and I dreaded to go home and would hang out with other friends and at coffee shops till we just had to go back for showers and sleeping. At this point we had met with a zany photographer from NY named Gary who perenially wore a black Stetson and who dubbed us the "anti-models" because we were such normal girls and just did the job for the sake of doing the job, nothing else. He took us under his wing and introduced to us a bunch of great characters, one of which ended up becoming my best guy friend, Jean-Paul. Luckily, this meant we had a lot of people to hang out with and that kept us out of the apartment.

I would say another month passed and my friend from Portland, Jason, who was also a model let me know that his two roommates were going back to Canada and he needed new roomies....and did I know anyone? Oh, did I know anyone? LOL! Jason had a one bedroom on the unfabulous third floor of the Decoplage....but it was a one bedroom! When I jumped on the opportunity, he offered me & Kari the bedroom and took the living room as his home base. Jason is and always has been the quintessential gentleman. Kari and I won the lottery with him as a roommate. We traded our beach view for a view of Burger King and the Albion Hotel and lived happily ever after that season.

I have to add that several years later, while living in LA, I did a shoot for Razor magazine with a photographer, Ian, who I had become friends with. When I arrived on set my heart sank as I saw that the other model working that day was Jada. It is a small industry, really. We were cordial to each other. That was that. The next day, Ian called me to say that Jada had talked some serious crap about me while they were shooting together. She said that she hated me because I had tried to steal her fiance. WTF?!?!?!?!? Psycho is the only word that comes to mind. Please note: I NEVER met her fiance and didn't so much as see a picture of him....ever. And even if the guy had been around, I am sorry, but I am not into the Confederate flag owning, cross burning, gun rack having type of dudes. No thank you. I like my boys urban & rough around the edges. Not to mention, that I have always had an internal rule that makes any man in a relationship completely taboo and untouchable to me. I don't care if Johnny Depp had walked up to me one day when I was single and asked me out....if he was attached, then he would be out of the question. I am a kharma freak so you can chalk my morals up to that.

So now that I have gotten my South Beach geography all ironed out for you, I'll be able to go on and tell more tales of work and play Miami style. And believe me...there is much more to tell.

The Night of the Grand Marnier

Before I get into how Kari and I ended up moving two more times that season, I have to share about the Night of the Grand Marnier. This one goes down in history for Kari and me even though no one else may find it funny. (Kari: Ha! Remember this!!!????)

Kari had been living in San Francisco before she came to Miami and about 2 months into season, her friend, Dante, came out to visit her. Dante was a hairstylist from SF full of mischief and party fever and we just felt it was our responsibility to show him a good time South Beach style. Eileen had gone back to Portland for the month to see her boyfriend so Dante was able to stay with us and we also somehow had acquired a new, temporary roommate from Spain. I don't actually remember how she ended up staying with us or why.....I think her work visa had run out and her agency was giving her the boot which meant she had nowhere to live until she could book a plane back home. Something like that. And I can't for the life of me remember her name, so from this point on I'l call her Ana.

So, there we were, an odd foursome in a little SoBe studio with altogether too much time and privilege on our hands. On South Beach there are always a handful of the "It" clubs (these change from season to season) and each of these offer a different party on a specific night each week. If you aren't booked for the next day, then you go out. That is pretty much it in a nutshell. The VIP sections of these clubs are always full of models and celebs on the designated nights, and when you are a model, you never, ever have to wait in line. We would show up in jeans, tank tops and flip flops and be let in behind the velvet ropes while hordes of regular people would be left dressed to the nines waiting outside.

We had to show Dante what it was like to be a pseudo celeb....so every free night we had that week we took him and Ana out with us....Bar Room, Club Amnesia, Crobar....we were there. We even accepted an invite to go to the Hawaiian Tropics competition and party at Level which was cheesetastic and one step up from going to a strip club. Note: Fashion models can't stand "skin models" calling themselves "models". It lumps us all into the same category, and well, that is just not cool. Sorry to sound like a pretentious bitch, but that is just how it is.

We had fun, but there was nothing close to debauchery going on. No blackout drunkeness or holding back of anyone's hair as they hurled their stomach lining into the commode. So far, Dante was having a great time, but he wasn't yet feeling like a rockstar. So on his last night in Miami we decided we really needed to give him a good send off. A rather large bottle of tequila was purchased along with some 40's and we prefunked at the apartment O.G. style. We'd be heading out to Senor Frog's for their Monday night party and then over to Nikki Beach for Beehive to close the evening out. Between the four of us, that bottle of Cuervo or whatever the hell it was emptied out at the speed of light and after some totally justified mayhem and creative make-up application we made it out the door.

Something wicked this way comes.....in a bottle:



I'm sure you can imagine that at this point we were totally obliterated & I cringe at the thought of what we looked like walking down Collins Ave. Then again, if you are in South Beach and it is past 10 pm and you are not falling down drunk, then you are an anomaly. I do remember at one point (and she swears this didn't happen...lolol!) Kari fell sideways and headfirst into a privet hedge outside a restaurant mid-song....we'd been singing something, and don't ask what cuz I can't remember, at the top of our lungs at that point. Oh, models behaving badly indeed....

Myself, Ana and Dante in full rockstar pose....getting ready....:



At Frog's we hung out with the usual crowd. Monday nights were popular with the model set since it offered $1 beers and live rock bands....and really good nachos. That I know of, nothing much happened there other than we met up with friends and then walked over to Nikki Beach. At the time, Nikki Beach hosted Beehive on Monday nights which was a weekly hip hop party held by my friend, Linley. Anyone from Ice Cube to Eminem, supermodels to Pauly Shore could be seen preening or on the prowl accompanied by their entourages on any given Monday night.

So, we get to Nikki Beach & since it's an outdoor club on the beach itself, we head straight for a table on the sand. At this point my buzz was wearing off and I was feeling that heavy & unpleasant ugh-ness that would always follow one too many drinks for me. It felt good to sit under the stars & feel the ocean breeze...respite from the thick as stew cigarette smoke at Frog's. At this point, Dante parks himself on top of the table and grabs the menu & before we know it he has ordered the cheapest item on it.....A $200 bottle of Grand Marnier. After it arrived, a couple of model boys also mysteriously appeared at our table, no doubt to partake in what would be free booze for them. I was liqoured out and Kari had passed out in full recline position against a palm tree, so Dante and the boys drank the entire bottle of GM. It was about 1 am at this point and being that I was the most sober of the group, I gathered our band of revelers (yes, Ana was still with us, and I am sure she hd wonderful stories to tell her cronies once she got back to Barcelona.....about los Americanos....lolol!) and we headed back to the homestead. Dante had to be at the airport by 6 am.

I'm sure genereal pukeage ensued after we got home, followed by room spin episodes and desperate clutching of pillows and mattresses before consciousness was lost. At 5am, Dante's alarm went off....and it is by the grace of God that it ever got set in the first place. I remember opening my eyes and seeing him pee in the bathroom sink, splash his face with water, tell his reflection he was a rockstar and then leave. That was the last time I ever saw him. A week later he called Kari to say he had never had a better time in his life & to ask if she knew what the $200 charge on his Visa card was from.

The morning after is not good, ever. Here is the ugly I promised to deliver along with the good & the bad...

Jumping the Agency Ship & Joining the Big Dogs

As happy as I was in Miami, and as truly in awe as I was at the new life I was getting to live, everything was not perfect. Although my bookers at Karin were sweet, I kept running into girls from other agencies with my "look" who were going on several more castings a day than I was, and I was getting a little weirded out by how long it was taking me to get paid for the bookings that I had already done.

Having gone only to Asia prior to this, and being under pretty stringent contracts, I had never had to really think about leaving an agency and looking for other representation. So, the prospect of looking for another agency that would be a better fit for me in Miami was pretty intimidating....especially since I didn't want to piss anybody off. That just goes to show how new in the game I was at the time. What you learn quickly in modeling is that you don't work for your agency, THEY work for YOU...a fact a lot of agencies would rather you forget. And if your agency just isn't working for you, then by all means find someone who will.

My agency was just not sending me out as much as I wanted, they weren't paying me in a timely manner, and I was getting screwed over when it came to rent. My apartment was costing me $1000 a month....so with Kari and I sharing it, they were getting $2000 a month for the unit while normal, non-model units in the building were renting for under $600. Even though the rent was being advanced, I was wanting to get more bang out of my buck, and not feel ripped-off in the rent department. So after weighing all my pros & cons, I called Justin, the owner of my mother agency in Portland, and he set up an appointment for me with Elite Model Management. The next day I went in, they were very excited to take me on board, and I "broke up" with Karin. This meant that I had to find a new apartment and pronto.

Luckily, Kari was game to move out with me even though she was staying with Karin, but she wanted to save on rent so we found a cute little studio apartment in a pension owned by an Argentinian couple just 7 blocks from the beach. With my friend, Eileen, flying in from Portland to work with Elite as well, we would be splitting rent three ways in a $1200 unit which worked out so much better than each getting charged a grand for a bed the size of an eraser and cockroaches declaring squatter's rights.

Eileen, me and Kari in front of our new digs:



Almost immediately, I started getting sent out on at least double the amount of castings than I was before, and more castings means more bookings. Elite put together a strong comp card that I felt confident in handing over to clients, and just the fact that now I was with one of the top powerhouse, international agencies opened a lot more doors for me. Had I stuck with my former agency because I was too "afraid" to step on any toes or hurt anyone's feelings I would have only been hurting my own chances at the game. Chalk one up to "growing up" in the industry!