Headvoice

Candles Not In The Wind

What have I done in the past couple of months? Not much other than blow in the wind... and that is now over. Now the world can blow me.

With a change in the seasons unresolved problems and recent losses are highlighted yet again. But from now on you have to wear a sweater when dealing with life's flickers and burnouts...

No Show

It was a weekend to hide and feel sorry for ourselves. So we did.

Zoolander in the Twilight Zone

So, in my last post I wrote about my impending debut as a male model. At the time I had no idea what the shoot was for and what exactly would be required, other than some vague instructions about wardrobe.

At the same time I found a picture I had taken of an apple in our front yard... and cropped it tight and high showing the connection to the stem mostly. Here it is again. I just liked the shot at the time, nothing more.

Fast forward to yesterday morning. T. picked me up early and we drove to the shoot, which was about an hour away. It was 8 AM at the farm where the shoot was―lush with ripe apple trees and ravenous mosquitoes. Eventually all arrived at the site; the art director, the photographer, the account person and a few assistants. Cameras are on tripods... we are ready to go.

What I am asked to do? Stand next to a lovely women and hold an apple still on the stem, and appreciate it with great concern. The product we are advertising is apple specific. My 'job' is to stare at the apple where it joins the tree and hold it there for a magazine ad. I did not know this when I posted that cropped shot.

Cue the 'Twilight Zone" theme music please...

The 'Talent'

Dateline: yesterday at noon
It's T. on the phone. Her partner B. is looking for two models 40-45 for a shoot. One female and one male. It is for a print campaign. Farm products or something.

"We thought you and Mark might be interested."

Male modeling. Just above blood donation as a career in an internal rationale for me. But...

Off went a few recent jpegs of me that weren't completely embarrassing. She chose a couple of them and forwarded them on to the agency.

email from earlier this afternoon;

-----Original Message-----
From: K.
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 11:04 AM
To: T.
Subject: RE: Stephen

Hi T.,
We would like to proceed with this person. We no longer require female talent. Please confirm that Stephen is available for 8:00 am Wednesday September 24th for a shoot in the Cambridge area (Hwy 24 - 5km north of 401). Please send a revised quote for shoot. As for wardrobe please ensure that he brings/wears a collared shirt (golf shirt is acceptable) with no logos, no patterns, neutral colours. Jeans or khakis would be appropriate with work boots or casual shoes(not running shoes).

Thanks,
K.

Is this some sort of sign? Shouldn't I be working on a monologue? A screenplay?
I don't even have a headshot, awkwardly ironic when your site is called headvoice.

But... wait. My first real question is... where is my trailer?

The Old Zips

If you use computers consistently for over a decade, eventually there comes a time when you lose track of exactly what you have and where it resides. Back ups on other hard drives, CD-ROMs of files from old jobs and various sites, web content, flash files, audio and video media files are all dumped on zip drives, cds, tape drives, floppy disks, and now, dvd drives.

And, even though we all want to label like Martha Stewart, and build albums of organized archives, the reality often is a loose collection of vaguely organized snapshots in time. Whatever was sitting around on that computer that was considered essential to have back-ups created, was burned onto a cd and thrown into a bin or up on a shelf somewhere to age.

It can be dangerous to sort through this electronic dust bin of the past. For example... take this hair.

My dear friend Michelle managed to get these pictures taken of us in the early 80s, years that I like to consider my Dietrich period, living glamorously in a torrid threesome, spending nights in loud dance clubs sipping an endless Cognac, turning the beat around. There are very few pictures of me from this time. I wanted to be alone.

You can only imagine my shock when these pictures were exhumed. I had chronic Barry Manilowsis!

She looks much the same today... still glowing with intelligence and focus. I have carb face now. Great. And check out this pose. Ack.

Maybe some periods in one's life are best left to be forgotten, or left to disintegrate on an unlabeled cd in the basement.

Fall Fruits

Last gasps of the fading season... orange berries hanging low in the yard next door, and leafs falling already. Of course it helps the process when a hurricane whips through on a Friday morning. Who knew that kitten would head straight for us? I always thought they stopped at the border, either running out of tropical air or confused and stymied by the use of the metric system.

We had a quiet anniversary evening. Thanks to everybody who posted or wrote an email. Quite a typical evening actually, with Mark on yet another hour plus phone call and me getting the prime rib roast just right. Some horseradish sauce and green beans almandine completed the picture. Yes, the one of me being a Stepford Wife cooking anachronistic suburban menus!

Rumors of the remaking of that very movie—not so sharp segue alert—are interesting. And the cast is amazing. But after a summer of clammy and massive turds in the movie theaters doesn't leave me much other than hoping for a surprise. Alternatively, I am slowly watching my way through the "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" DVDs sets which eveal how masterly some television can be. Brillant writing... and performances. What can compare today?

Our Day

Six years ago today I clicked on a link... and it led me to the love of my life.

Today we received no cards or emails acknowledging this. Our surviving parents didn't know unless we reminded them. Our brothers didn't call.

I spent many years sleeping, and living, as one. This is better.

Happy Anniversary, my love.

No prescription

Do you know somebody that hasn't seen a doctor for a check up in a long time? How about 30 years? That's me.

In a shocking act of self respect I managed to get a doctor, take samples for blood tests and schedule a complete physical within the last 10 days.

The results are in. I am healthy. Completely normal across the board, except especially blessed with high levels of 'good' cholesterol instead of the bad stuff.

"That's especially genetic," my personable new female doctor informed me.

Time for burgers and cheesecakes!

A Summary of Summer

Anything as crappy as the last four months deserves a bit of summation― mostly in the hope of sealing it off, putting a tight fitting lid on it, and throwing it into some yawning, smoke-belching fissure in an abandoned mountain pass. Well, I suppose it could have been worse. It could always be worse.

Today I need to sketch the highlights of three past lowlights. That, and find the nearest open fissure which I will probably need a printed application, a permit fee, and an obliging notary to use. Too much whining is bad. We need to laugh more, or at least look back with a sense of the absurd.

#1. The Bee’s Have It
As previously mentioned, our patio has become a virtual wild kingdom since our hound died. We didn’t realize the cumulative effect of a consistent presence of dog on the overall population. Now squirrels casually stroll about, furtively gathering stores of food and building materials for their nest way up in the pine tree at the corner of the property.

But there are only a couple of them. Our subterranean community of bumble bees is much larger. In fact, I really don’t want to know how many there are as of now. And the bastards are almost uniformly big!

Despite two visits by men in scary outfits, and the application of some yellow powder down the sides of the pool, their numbers continue to increase. Here is one on an approach to the entrance with landing gear already down…

And, to prove Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest, one afternoon I actually saw a squirrel pounce on a bee as it began to land, grasping with both front paws and slurping it down on the spot. Who knew that bee tartare was on the squirrel diet plan?

#2. Passive Aggressive Gardening
Weeds grow fast in a summer with many sunny and warm days. And we sure didn’t keep up with them for the most part, except for one ambitious Saturday in August. Both of us spent an hour in the midday sun pulling up weeds and cutting back vines. I moved on to a clump of what I thought were weeds closer to the back of the yard opposite the pool heater on the other side of the fence, meaning not on our property. In another half hour my good deed was done. The weeds now filled a large garbage can, and I went inside for a slug of seltzer.

Ding dong. The doorbell rings shortly.

It is our neighbor, who wants to know what happened in his back yard. Mark intercedes on my behalf. And then his wife appears, whom I haven’t seen once in the four years I have lived here. She strides barefoot across the front lawn with eyes bulging on the verge of hysteria. She is three times the size of her husband, with one of those asses that defies logic. It was as if she had tied a gassy and bloated midget in a tight sack over her posterior. The mud colored stretch pants and stained matching top completed the picture. Enter a maniac…

“I’m going to call the police! My daughter’s golden raspberries! We planted them two years ago!”

I apologized. And then I apologized again, stammering this time. Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream.

“That’s not good enough! What are you going to do about it? That’s not good enough. I am calling the cops.”

She was wild eyed and trembling. Her husband stood by, silently. The cops never came, and after an hour or so, he sheepishly reappeared at the door, aplogized for her behavior to Mark, and then came back and did it again a few moments later.

I spent the rest of the day in bed, hunkered down with back issues of “The New Yorker” and wondered why I had ever left Manhattan.

#3. The Fog of Unemployment
After a year and half at my last job, as a Director at an ad agency with a generally recognizable name, I quit in May. In the best of times it was stimulating to be in such a creative environment and at the worst of times it was fractious, frustrating, and finally, futile.

Unhitched from the daily grind, a cloud of aimlessness descended soon thereafter. Then it just got silly.

Dinner parties became two day productions, requiring elaborate shopping excursions and lots of ‘swiffering’. I would cook for hours and hours. Cheesecakes, thai food on the grill, schnitzel... name the cuisine and I worked the bitch.

Books have been read in one sitting, or more accurately, one lying. As in bed. As in a bathrobe. As until 2:30 in the afternoon, when I finished “Remembering Kate”, the book about Hepburn released shortly after her death. I had picked it up at 9 in the morning.

Car washing has become way too commonplace if I want to actually keep the paint on my car.

It goes on, but you get the drift. My recruiter told me recently that it was taking four months to place folks like me, after a good interview with a VP of a big Telco. Jesus, It just might be time for an Amazon wish list link…

There. Now I can safely close the books on the summer of 2003. What did you do on your summer vacation?

New Season

The time for reruns is so very over, and not just on TV. We laughed in bed this morning on waking... as we both started the day exactly like we have for the previous four months, despite chanting how everything is now all new.

So with that in mind, it is my sincere (but somewhat tentative) pleasure to introduce the new line-up here at the headvoice network.

First we have the "Crazed Carb-less Cook" where yours truly rampages around the bungalow heaving any and all edible carbohydrates into trash bags in the first episode. Series highlights include a séance with the late Dr. Atkins, how to make the perfect Bearnaise, learning how to love lard, and a special continuing segment featured on each show where celebrities create pate entirely from the bodies of entertainment reporters.

Next up is "Drunken Fatty Boom-ba-lotti" the world's first exercise program for enthusiastic consumers of alcohol. Grab those empty magnums of Sauvignon Blanc for use as dumbbells and stumble onto the mats for a frantic half-hour of gut churning aerobics. Learn how to perform "Cosmopolitan Crunches" so that you can finally reclaim that six pack of abs that you mistakenly returned to the Beer Store for a refund last May.

Also new this season is the "The Aimless Adventurer" where our guide vacillates week to week between travel plans from one spectacular travel destination to another. No trips are actually made... but we closely track the exotic locales on three computers until the power grid fails again. All five hours of this weekly program are co-sponsored by the North American Sedentary Association and Domino's Pizza.

Every Sunday night join us for our first new reality show here on the headvoice network, otherwise known as HVN.

"Human Resources" premieres with an exciting 90 minute special where contestants are dropped into a large corporate campus armed only with a vague cover letter, a three year old palm pilot that functions erratically and one copy of their resume. Players will compete for attention at recruiting events, calling old bosses for references and impressing middle management with business buzzwords. The grand prize winners will get to spend a long holiday weekend at a "team building" retreat in a sunless hotel ballroom somewhere in Ohio.

Please tune in!