The Assignment:
A couple months ago, my friend Dee-Dee asked if I would take her niece Kelsey’s senior photos. It would be my first official gig as a photographer, and I was excited, but concerned. I don’t really know much about high school, or seniors, or portraits. My own senior portrait still hangs in the hallway at my parents’ house, a bitter reminder of the summer of 1988, when I decided to cross-dress before gender confusion was edgy and hip. I am forever immortalized wearing a thrift store necktie and old man’s cardigan. I’m pretty sure there are horses on my shirt, and I don’t even like horses. That’s all I’m going to say about that. The Homework:
Knowing that I couldn’t rely on my own experience, I started to do some research. I went online and pored over sample shots from portrait studios across the country. I consulted with friends, who were all surprisingly eager to share their opinions on the quintessential senior portrait pose.
“Prayer hands!”
“Holding a rose!”
“Chin on fist!”
“Cat burglar eyes!”
“Riding a horse!”
“Cradling a saxophone!”
One thing was certain, I needed to be careful. I didn’t want my first assignment to turn out like Annie Liebowitz’s controversial Miley Cyrus shoot. I made sure Dee’s sister Cheri was there the entire time to supervise. No one was going to accuse me of exploiting a minor. Not again. The Bloodletting:
Cheri had done her homework and scouted out several different potential locations. The first site took us down a few winding Wisconsin roads and into a clearing. She told us that the narrow path through the woods led to an old stone church.
“Are we going to get eaten up by mosquitoes?” Dee-Dee asked.
“No, once we get to the church there will be a nice breeze so they won’t bother us.”
I’m going to remember that naïve exchange in case I ever find myself in the Amazon and someone asks me, “Are we going to get eaten up by those piranhas?” because my response will be, “No, once all the flesh is ripped from your bones they won’t bother us.”
About five seconds after we stepped into the woods, a wall of fat mosquitoes rose from the tall grasses and swarmed at us with a viciousness and spite I had never before witnessed in insects. The four of us immediately sprinted back to the clearing, but it was no use – the scent of blood was in the air.
“Cheri! Light a cigarette – now!”
She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke at us. It wasn’t working.
“You need to go to town – get us some bug spray now! The poisonous kind – the kind with DEET!”
“Leave your cigarettes!”
Cheri tossed us her cigarettes and sped off to town, leaving the three of us stranded. We couldn’t go back into Dee-Dee’s car because the second we opened the doors, fifty mosquitoes hijacked the vehicle. Instead, we hopped around, wildly swatting at ourselves and each other.
I had been bitten so many times that I started to get light headed, and got a sudden craving for orange juice and Nutter Butters.
“We need more smoke – Kelsey! Get over here and smoke this cigarette!”
“What? I’m not smoking! Smoking kills.”
“That’s the point!”
After what seemed like hours, Cheri finally returned with what turned out to be the last can of Off! in the entire town. She sprayed us all from head to toe with the sweet toxins, and we were free, at least for the moment. The Shoot:
We quickly ran through the path to the church to set up our shots. I knew it was only a matter of time before these mosquitoes mutated to develop a resistance to the bug spray.
“Ahh! I have mosquito bites on my neck!”
“Don’t scratch them!”
“They’re going to look bad in the pictures!”
“I’ll Photoshop them out.”
Cheri and Dee acted as my assistants, helping to set up the shots and lug the step ladder and spray us all down with Off! at regular intervals.
We had only a couple hours to work in five different locations and four wardrobe changes before Kelsey had to get back to her job at the A&W, so time was of the essence. I barked out poses like a drill sergeant.
“Stand by the mausoleum!”
“There’s a tombstone in the background.”
“I’ll Photoshop it out.”
“Smell that daisy!”
“It smells like poo.”
“Okay, just pretend to smell it.”
“Dangle your feet in this murky swamp!”
“There’s a dead carp.”
“I’ll Photoshop it out.”
“Stand precariously on those two wet rocks over by the rushing toxic dam!”
“It’s slippery!”
“Brace yourself on that moss-covered tree.” The Aftermath:
We were all exhausted by the time we reached the final location, and needed to reward ourselves with ice cream. As I looked over the photos the next day, I was sad that I never got the prayer hands pose, and that we couldn’t find a horse or a saxophone, but all in all, I think it was a success. And not once was I accused of trying to manipulate a minor. Except when I forced her to smoke. And made her kick a dead fish. And told her to sit on a grave.
At least I didn’t make her wear a tie and a cardigan. There’s only so much you can do with Photoshop.
Q: Popping in the second DVD of Season 3 of Weeds at 10:21pm on a school night. Good idea or bad idea?
A: I’ll let you know tomorrow morning.
**Update**
Watching the second DVD was a good idea. Starting to watch the third one immediately thereafter, however, was not. So, so tired.
I guess now I know what happened to all the Juicy Fruit in the vending machines at work. Dave, I know you’re behind this. You’ve taken things too far this time. You can hide behind masks all you want, but if you hurt so much as one stick in that Juicy Fruit’s pack… so help me… well, just don’t do it. C’mon, please? I miss my Juicy Fruit! TAKE ME INSTEAD!
As part of my new healthy lifestyle (What? Sometimes I care about my health!), I just finished my third Low Sodium V8 of the day (Now with 70% less sodium than regular V8!). The only thing that would make this better is if it had about 70% more sodium. Oh, and some vodka. Maybe a celery stick. Slim Jim might be nice. Four olives. Nice dill pickle spear. Mmm. I love livin’ healthy!
The lovely and charming Shari emailed me, worried that I had fallen and couldn’t get up since my posting has been so sporadic. But no, I’m not even mostly dead. I did get pretend-engaged yesterday, though, when I found this ring on the floor by the Panda Express in the train station.
Don’t worry, I’m not keeping it. I plan on turning it in tomorrow to whatever sort of Lost & Found black hole they have at the Metra station. It’s not that I’m a Good Samaritan; it’s that I’m scared shitless of what the owner might do to me if she found me. Seriously – this ring is enormous. I have gigantic man hands and arthritic knuckles and my fingers were swimming in this thing.
I may decide to just post a sign myself that says something like: Found!
Possibly gold, but definitely hideous ring belonging to a woman no less than 7’4” who likes Chinese food and public transportation.
Conspiracy. CONSPIRACY! Action: I write about how much I love Juicy Fruit gum. Reaction: The vending machine guy has refused to stock the machines with Juicy Fruit for the past week. And not only that, he’s now stocking two rows with Double Mint. DOUBLE MINT! Action: I write about how much I hate fist bumping. Reaction: Michelle and Barack Obama fist bump on national TV and everyone’s buzzing about how down-to-earth and charming the fist bump is.
Clearly, people in high places are reading my blog and conspiring to destroy my life. What’s next? I get an anonymous shipment of pistachios that are all closed shut?
Well guess what? I’m on to you, whoever you are. And now that I know you’re watching my every move, I’m going to mess with you so bad! I’m gonna go all LOLCats on your ass – im in ur hed, messin wif ur brainz!
Maybe what I write about will be true, maybe it will be lies. You’ll never know. Next week on Run Jen Run:
“Why I hate when people send me money with no strings attached.”
I’m not a paranoid person, really, but just this weekend, I started to think that maybe the world was against me because I was eating a bunch of pistachios and I kept finding ones that wouldn’t open. Is there anything sadder than having a handful of pistachios that you are happily eating and then looking down and seeing that you only have three left so you’d better really savor them, only to find out that two of them are closed shut? There’s really no way to recover from that. It’s like when the last M&M in the bag has a bad peanut in it, and there are no M&M’s left to wash away the taste of that previous rusty peanut. It basically negates all the happiness you got from the whole bag.
I don’t know, I just got really mad about these pistachios and then looked at the bag and discovered that pistachios are grown in California, and I thought, “Big surprise there. Californians have always had it out for me.” I just got so angry at the nuts, and then at the Californians for knowingly packaging so many bad nuts. I was steamed.
But then today, something changed all that. I was breezing through my feed reader when I saw a familiar face… my own. I had won an award. And not just any award, but a major award. A MAJOR award! I won a major award!
Hilly over at Snackiepoo bestowed upon me her coveted “Blogger of the Month” award for June. That’s right, I totally OWN June now, and no one can take that away from me, not even some tight-assed pistachio.
After I got over my initial shock and glee, I remembered that Hilly lives in California, and Hilly clearly doesn’t have it out for me because otherwise she wouldn’t have given me this award. Unless she’s trying to lull me into a false sense of security so that she can trick me into giving her my Social Security Number and start destroying my good credit, but that just doesn’t seem like her style.
So what I learned today is that I was really wrong to demonize all of California just because their pistachios are a big rip-off. It’s just not fair. I don’t hate Californians, I hate pistachios. I mean I love pistachios, but I hate what they stand for.
Anyway, I just wanted to clear the air with California, and thank Hilly again for making my day with this awesome award. I will display my badge loud and proud!
Honesty. When is it right, and when is it wrong? If one of your friends still fashion-cuffed his jeans (you know… circa 1985, fold the cuff over, then roll extra tight at the ankle), would you tell him that he is no longer in style? What if it were a co-worker instead of a friend? Now what if, instead of fashion-cuffing his jeans, he insisted on doing the fist bump every time you saw him at work?
Because that’s my real problem. I’ve tried to leave him hanging for a suitably awkward amount of time, but then I always cave in and give him a piece of fist. Sometimes I don’t even lift my eyes from my monitor – I just keep typing with one hand and silently knock my fist against his with the other.
I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty certain that I said something like, “Are we still doing this?” or “I thought the fist-bump went out in 2002…” at least once or twice, but the bumping continues.
Now I just try to make sure that whenever I see him, I have my hands full. So far, an armful of reports and notepads doesn’t seem to faze him. My next tactic will be to walk around the office with a scalding cup of coffee in one hand and a newborn baby in the other.
But that’s only going to last so long before someone asks me what the hell I’m doing with that cup of coffee. They all know I don’t drink caffeine.
So I’ve decided to come up with my own move to replace the fist bump. A move so ridiculous that it will force my co-worker to seek out infants and dark corners just to avoid my signature move.
Here’s how it works:
1. Extend the index finger on your right hand
2. Wait for the target to extend his index finger
3. Slowly reach your right arms out toward each other
4. Let your index fingers touch, then pause for a moment as you look deeply into each other’s eyes
5. Pull your arm back to your side
I call this move “The E.T.”
If you want to add an extra flair, you can also say, “Ouch,” slowly and in a raspy voice. My guess is that after the third or fourth time I make him do this, best case is he’ll duck into the copy room whenever he sees me coming down the hall, worst case is he calls HR to file a harassment suit. Either way, I’m free of the fist bumping.
Be good.
I’m not sure if it technically qualifies as an addiction, an obsession, or just an intense passion. Whatever you want to call it, however you choose to label it, I simply cannot get enough Juicy Fruit gum.
About a month ago, they started stocking it in our vending machines at work. I remember clear as a bell the first day I noticed it, inconspicuously positioned at the bottom of the machine, right between the Tums and generic Life Savers.
“Huh,” I thought. “I haven’t had Juicy Fruit in ages – didn’t even know they still made it.”
I didn’t give it much more thought than that. I just bought my bag of Cheez-Its and went about my day. But later, during meetings and on conference calls, I noticed my mind kept wandering back to the Juicy Fruit.
“I wonder if it still loses its flavor as fast.”
“Did it really say it was only $0.50? That seems like a good deal. Even the low-fat animal crackers cost $0.65.”
The next day, it wasn’t even 10:00am before I found myself jingling two quarters together in my pocket, a nervous habit I picked up from my father. I don’t like people prying into my eating habits, so I waited until a couple particularly chatty co-workers left the kitchen. I slid the money into the slot, punched in the numbers and watched as the yellow pack shot out of its holding cell with a satisfying thwack.
I liked the way it felt in my palm, but I didn’t dare open it while I was still in the kitchen, so I slipped it into my pocket and went back to my desk. As I opened the wrapper, the first thing that struck me was the color.
“Yellow? Juicy Fruit is supposed to be grey. All Wrigley’s gum is grey.”
Obviously a few things had changed since the last time I had tried the gum, so I didn’t get my hopes up too high.
“Why can’t they just leave well enough alone?”
But the second I put the crumbly stick of gum into my mouth and started to tentatively chew, I was sucked into a tidal wave of memories of Proustian proportion. The park! Playing games! Some balloons! Got an A! Those friends! So happy! Favorite shoes! Hey, kittens! Dilly Bar! New bike! Summer vacation!
And then 90 seconds later it all stopped. The buzz had worn off. The gum was hard. The flavor all gone. I spit the gum into a tissue, took a sip of water and started running some reports for my next meeting. Every so often I would glance down at the yellow pack of gum on my desk until finally I couldn’t resist any longer. I popped in another piece.
Oh fun! Catching fireflies! Best friends! Turtle sundaes! Snow angels! Big wheels! Baby hamsters! Shrinky-dinks! Pizza party! Coleco-vision! New jeans!
This cycle of intense and instant gratification followed by utter letdown and depression continued for weeks, leading me to my current four pack a day habit. Now I just wait until people leave for the day and then buy up all the Juicy Fruit so that the vending machine guy will stock more. It is my greatest hope that one day someone at B&H Vending will take a close enough look at their inventory management records to understand that they need to get rid of the Cinnamon Dentyne that no one ever buys – EVER – and stock at least two full rows with sweet Juicy Fruit.
H2. It’s always in H2. Every time I approach the machine, I feel a slight electric buzz of excitement and fear. What if I got there one day and it was all sold out? I don’t even want to think about it.
Sometimes, when I’ve finished off a pack, I just smell the wrappers for a while. The best is when you take the empty foil pack and squeeze it open a bit, then lean forward and take a deep whiff of the sweet stuff. God, it’s so awesome.
What kind of fruit is in Juicy Fruit anyway? If I could find out what fruit tasted like Juicy Fruit, I would gorge myself on it until I became sick. If they made Juicy Fruit scented perfume, I would bathe in it. If I were Willy Wonka, I would make scratch-n-sniff wallpaper that smelled and tasted like Juicy Fruit. If I were a coroner, instead of rubbing menthol under my nose like Clarice Starling did in Silence of the Lambs, I would just stick a fresh wad of Juicy Fruit over my nostrils. Juicy Fruit can make even death smell sweet.
I guess maybe this finally helps explain why I’ve always felt such a connection to Chief Bromden from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We’re both passionate. We’re both thinkers. We both love Juicy Fruit so much. And we would both smother our closest friends with a bed pillow if they were ever lobotomized.
If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.
