1. It's more fun.
2. So my mother won't know how often I use the F word.
3. Every good superhero has a secret identity. Even Marty McFly was Calvin Klein/Clint Eastwood as he went about his adventures (and yes I count Marty as a kind of superhero, because if time travel doesn't count then Bill & Ted are less-likely to qualify.)
And I don't want to live in a world where these guys are not heroes.
What being anonymous emphatically is not is hiding behind a moniker so I can lambaste who I want without fear of retribution. I don't dig that. I openly despised Russell Brand for both his unfunniness and his marriage to my otherwise future wife, and upon meeting him face-to-face for the first time I extended my hand, pulled it back before he could shake it, and let him know that "Really I just want to touch the hand that gets to touch Katy Perry." (His response was a "That's a compliment!" followed by a bear hug, which caused me to slightly re-evaluate my disinterest in him.) And I sure as hell don't wear a mask when I go to MSG and shout ridiculously obscene things at LeBron James, who almost certainly never hears me but still.
The point is, what follows is a crazy story, kind of like any story in the fashion industry. But seeing as I'd prefer to remain anonymous for the sake of my mother's sensibilities/my future as a comic-book-worthy world-saver, I'll refrain from naming names here. Not that there's even anything Jezebel-worthy here, I'm moreso just bored in the airport and this is kind of an extended response to a recent Twitter exchange.
Don't you just love intros like that? No wonder nobody reads this thing. I need a fucking editor.
Anyway, I get a go-see for a job from this pretty solid photographer. It's at their apartment. To clarify, going to a casting at someone's apartment is not really out of the norm despite the protests of some my friends, particularly after hearing this story. I arrive, and the photographer couldn't be friendlier. They direct me to put on one of the outfits for the job, and I oblige.
The outfit, though, is something akin to if you had killed and skinned a muppet. It is a light-green, furry thing that comes in two separate pieces-- one that is like a suffocating cutoff shirt that stops just under my nipples, and another that feels like I'm wearing Kermit the Frog as panties.
Not quite like this.
The strange-o-meter is rising, but it still isn't blaring-- this is fashion, afterall, and ridiculous is just one of its currencies.
I get a couple of pictures taken, and then-- because it's for some sort of show-- I'm instructed to walk, as if on a runway. I'm led into the adjacent kitchen where the photographer spins me around to face the living room and, to accompany me in this act, puts on this musical selection of a Karlie Kloss interview set to a beat...
I am now officially rolling in this currency.
Let's recap:
--I am a wearing a tight barely-outfit that is the equivalent of a sports bra and volleyball spandex made out of green cottonballs.
--I am in the apartment of someone I just met, and it is just the two of us.
--The above Karlie Kloss music is playing.
--From the kitchen to the living room couch, I am pretending to do a fashion show on a runway.
This is my JOB, folks.
And it doesn't stop there. Finishing up my faux-catwalk routine, the photographer and I have struck up a conversation, which has drifted to the subject of philosophy because, well...I mean isn't it well-established by this point that I'm a total nerd? Anyway, the photographer asks me who my favorite philosopher is, which is a notoriously difficult question to answer since picking a favorite philosopher doesn't mean you agree with everything they say. It's like asking what your favorite snack is-- just because you answer "ice-cream sandwich" doesn't mean you only eat ice-cream god damn sandwiches all day long. Especially if you're a model.
Before I can even utter an over-thought answer to this though, the photographer lobs another question my way.
"Wait...do you believe in aliens?"
Talk about loaded questions. It really only has two outcomes-- either you answer "Yes," in which case you can totally bond over your mutual belief in extraterrestrial life, or you answer "No," and express that, and maybe struggle not to sound insulting about it, and basically just try to get the hell outta there.
The latter is the route I tried to take, though my "No" came out as a still-taken-aback "Wha-huh?," and thus I lost my opportunity to totally change the subject and got stuck listening about a History Channel show called "Ancient Aliens," and how if you're skeptical about aliens you should just watch it, cause all the evidence is there, and it all clicks together, like how they're the source of the Pyramids, and of human evolution, and...
...and nothing about the weird green fur-bikini and the distorted Karlie Kloss mixtape, which are really some of the more alien-esque things I've ever encountered.
In fact...maybe the photographer was just an alien the whole time or something?
