Venice the Redoux

Sometime after Kari and I got done with our weekend in Monaco, she took off to travel Europe by rail and I went back to Milan. My castings, bookings and parties commenced and it was life as usual. At one point I was out on a Friday night at Gasoline with the boys and Josh brought up the idea of going to Venice the next day. By that time it was past midnight and we would be taking the morning train out. Early. I have a vague recollection of getting home, washing up, going to bed for a couple of hours and then racing over to the train station to meet up with everyone. Everyone ended up being Josh, Isaak, Ryan, Daryl and I.

Once on the train everyone passed out promptly except for Ryan and I. I remember having this great, three hour long conversation with him. For some reason we also ended up having these really interesting conversations at the most random places! Our convo was interrupted only once by Isaak who after waking up to go the the bathroom discovered that his enormous yellow sunglasses had gone missing. We searched high and low, and since we were the only ones in the train compartment, and those sunglasses were HUGE, it was really perplexing that they had just literally disappeared into thin air. This started Isaak off on a story about how he was sure that this was part of a curse that a model in London had put on him prior to arriving in Milan. To be honest, it was hard not to believe him because normally things don't just got *poof* and disappear. However, Isaak is amazing with the stories he tells...soo.....ya never know. ;)

Once in Venice, we walked, ate, talked, acted the part of the tourists we were and got back on the train later that day to go home. This time in Venice was completely normal and uneventful compared to the first trip I took the year prior with my motley crew. No naked bridge jumping, no drunkeness, no arrests, no hairy trannys....just me and my boys who I miss so much.

My boys in front of some excellent grafitti.




Blue Steel in Venice



I love this city....the Rialto Bridge is in the background...that is the very same bridge that a year prior saw my friends jumping off of it sans clothing in the middle of the night....model history. ;)

Empty Promises & Google Maps

I am almost embarrassed at the fact that I have hopped on here sporadically the past year and half or so and promised to get my bum back on the blogging wagon...and failed. Is there a 12 step for that? *Sigh* Motherhood, general insanity, freelance writing-hood and the like have left me in a vegetable like state during all of those free moments that I should've been spending on here....pouring my memories into these posts, scanning in pictures...you know...

I did have an epiphany reading part of my friend, Ned's, blog Mr. Mister (http://nedshatzer.blogspot.com/) that I needed to get back to Leashing my Peacocks so that I can eventually actually write the play by play of my life as a Middel Model TODAY, in the moment, ahora.

My 2nd epiphany came when my other friend, Jeremy, emailed me with a link from Google Maps of where he thought he used to live in Milan. We were both scratching our heads over this link for a week or so until we figured out that we were looking at a building several blocks up Via Fiamma from where he actually lived. Before we figured this out it was something of an Inception moment...seeing things on the computer screen that were NOTHING like what I had in my mind's eye. The streets, apartments, shops, piazzas and cafes were totally different then what I so vividly remembered....what was going on here? Was I remembering something that never existed? This was Milan, after all, and unlike so many American cities, it wasn't like the Milanese were tearing down historical buildings to make way for the new Target Supercenter or anything like that.....so yeah....luckily we figured out that we were looking at the wrong building....I was uncomfortable thinking that perhaps I was so vino addled during my time there that I had created a whole other parallel reality then what actually existed and still exists in that fine Italian metropolis...

So thanks to Ned and Jeremy I have become re-inspired to continue on this blogging voyage and eventually bring you all up to date on what Middle Modelhood is all about....

Ready, Steady, GO!!!!

More Crazy in Milan

Ok, where was I...this Swine Flu fried my brain.....ah yes....Milan.

So, there I was living in an overloaded models apartment, not being able to shower or sleep or keep food in the kitchen. I had made my agency a lot of money the season before and felt that I deserved better living conditions. Why not, right? I mean, I know that models apartments are pretty much crap no matter where you go, but this was ridiculous.

After a few days I decided to go in to talk to the owner of my agency about moving me to another apartment. I knew that there was room for one more girl at the apartment that I had lived in the season before and I wanted to move over there. The owner, Patti, freaked out on me and told me that I couldn't live at the apartment on Paolo Sarpi because I had let an Italian man move in there after I had left and gone back to the States. WTF?!?!?!?! She said that a month after I had left, the cleaning lady had walked into the apartment and there was a guy living there who threw the keys at her when confronted and told her that I had sublet the apartment to him. Ummmm...WHAT?

The thing is, when I left, there was a Swedish model moving in...she was in the apartment for a few days before my departure and during that time she had another female model move in as well who had been kicked out of her agency and was therefore pretty much homeless. The Swede was a BITCH. She was an older catalog model and patronized me to no end for the few days she was there. I hated her and I'm sure the energy was apparent. I'll always believe that she was the one who handed my apartment keys (which I had left on the coffee table and asked her to return to the agency...to which the bitchnazz agreed) to one of her Italian friends with an aside that it was me who gave him the keys should he get caught in there. Aaaah...just thinking about it makes me so mad still!!

So, there I am trying to relate the story to Patti about Swedish C**nt and her key trickery, but she would have none of it. I didn't even have any male Italian friends the entire time I was there.....we models hung out together and didn't have much to do with the locals. Just how it was. So, Patti insisted that I stay at the apartment I was in and that was that.

I decided to take things into my own hands....I moved out and in with my make-up artist friend, Derek, from Miami who was in Milan for the season. I stayed there for a few days, and then when my friend, Marcus, from Taipei found out that I had nowhere to stay he booked me a room in a nice hotel for a week so that I could get my bearings and figure out what I wanted to do. I've since lost touch with him, but that was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.....I'll never forget it.

After moving into the hotel, I found out that my booker from last season had moved on to Names Agency so I gave her a call and went in to meet with the bookers. Names signed me right away and found me a gorgeous...and I mean NICE apartment with a sweet Bolivian roommate....yes, just ONE roommate....to move into right away. They faxed Patti at Eye for I and told her I was moving on....Patti got mad...oops....but that was that.

Names ended up being an even more top notch agency and they really housed the models in the best apartments of any I've seen. You cannot imagine how happy I was! The caliber of my castings went up too and I was seeing Armani, Conde Nast, Byblos (for whom I booked showroom for a month), Diesel, RePlay and more....it was great. My roomie was amazing, we got to speak in Spanish all the time, and so my new season in Milan began.....

Euros, Gold Coins and Scoliosis

I have to clarify....when I was working in Europe the Euro was still kind of trying to make its way into the banking system...so I would get paid in whatever the currency of the country I was in was at the time. And while traveling around for pleasure or direct bookings, I would have to change over my money at Forex stations. At the time, it was fine...I didn't know better, but I would have killed to have just used the Euro! One currency no matter where I went....talk about simplifying things. Also, I'm sure I would have had a happier bank account had I been paid in Euros as opposed to, say, lira. Euros would have been as welcome a form of payment to me as a nice pile of gold.

The economy was a bit better when I was traveling for work...not GREAT, but better....I still managed to make a nice living for taking pictures and wandering the earth. I didn't need to be paid my weight in gold coins (cue the model/waif jokes) to ensure that my bills at home were being paid as well as my stomach was being filled and I could shop if I so wanted...and yes of course, I wanted.

The thought of looking into alternate currency or investments never crossed my mind then, like they do now. I find myself listening to CNN's financial advisors and wondering if I need to convert all of my dollars into gold bullion or talk to my bookers in town about which client will be willing to pay me out in a big fat gold coin rather than the customary payroll check. It's crazy. I miss my carefree money days...even if I did have to carry a bag full of foreign coins heavy enough to give me the scoliosis I am pretty sure I have now.

And if you have no idea what all this talk of gold is about, there are plenty of websites that can inform you about what a great investment gold is. Sites like GoldCoinsAgain.com are great for keeping you updated on the value of gold, the trading trends, as well as can tell you what exactly bullion is....which is a good thing. You don't want to walk around telling people you are making an awesome crockpot creation using bullion.....yeah....

All this talk of gold coins, Euros and money in general is reminding me that I need to start getting all of my receipts and tax schtuff in order....almost that time of year. I am a Qualified Performing Artist after all! ;)