Movie Makeup Artist
Hmm--somebody punch you in the eyes? Oh really? I guess I just don't get "heroin chic". But isn't that passé now? What do I know, though? You do? For a living? Hmm--okay, it might go something like this:
You'll first go to some esthetician school or something, where you learn to wax, buff and pluck. After you pay your dues trying to find the outer beauty on some truly scary looking clients, you are taken under the wing of the head makeup artist. She teaches you the same sort of skills you see used to work miracles in those makeover t.v. shows. Then she turns you loose on the weekend mall demo crowd, and soon you'll prove you can not only work the makeup magic, but you can charm the customers, which helps book appointments and sell product.
Still, your dream is to do makeup for the movies, right? You'll save up your money, while living in your parents' house, until you head to L.A. to the "Hollywood Makeup Artists" school or some such sketchy operation--it will be overpriced and overhyped, and after you finish your course, their "inside track" to the movie business is handing you a sheet with out of date studio contact numbers on it.
When you take a job at an upscale day camp in Laguna Beach painting faces for pampered rich kids you get your first break. The owner of an exclusive salon chats with you after his daughter gushes about how great you are, and next thing you know you're hired to work at beauty spa.
There you begin to finally make the connections you need, and although most of the in-town shoots are filled with union makeup artists, you hear about a movie that's filming on-location in the Andes, and you sign on for your first screen makeup stint.
You are the junior makeup person on the crew, so you get to do the extras and the minor characters, but you also get to help the special effects team create the "cannibal zombie Inca warriors" and everyone is quite pleased with your work.
You head home with your bank account fatter, and more imporantly, with your foot in the door of the movie industry. Soon you're one of the regulars, and everyone admires your artistry, but you have one problem that gets you several warnings from crew chiefs--you tend to get chatty with those whose egos feel you beneath their conversational efforts.
This rubs you the wrong way, and soon you're one of the most relied-upon moles feeding information to gossip columns and blogs--all the while making sure no one would ever suspect you.
It all comes to a head when you're called in to work exclusively with the geriatric star of a much-anticipated remake of a classic. The actor first repulsively hits on you, which you deflect as gracefully as possible, then complains when you can't make him look 35 years old. He's gone almost a decade since last performing on camera and he attributes the deterioration he sees when watching some of the first day's filming to your lack of makeup skills.
The movie staff acquiesce to his demands and give him another makeup artist, who quits when he targets her with even more disgusting overtures than you faced. You are forced to keep working with him, while he continues to make your life miserable.
The final straw is when you are doing a touch-up on set while he's giving a quick soundbyte to some tabloid infotainment show. As you lean in to try to blot out a few more wrinkles, he laments to the interviewer the "sad state of hollywood makeup artists compared to the good old days". You bite your tongue when the interviewer sticks the microphone in your face for a response--you know your place in the food chain.
Still, you are observant, and when you are called to his trailer for yet another touch-up later that day, you notice a bag of adult diapers in the corner. He may have noticed you look at them; he seems in a rush to get you out of that room and out of the trailer a little too quickly.
You wait a suitable 24 hours to call your friend who pays you two thousand for the exlusive. The actor and his agent deny it, of course, but your camera phone's evidence allows the reporter to avoid a lawsuit and the quick backing off by the studio and the actor's agent just proves to all the truth of your story.
Somehow, despite the reporter's promise to protect your identity, your name gets out as the alleged "leak about the leaker", as some gossip-monger phrases it. You are finished in the movie makeup business, but you have a variety of other opportunities sent your way, and you accept the offer to make you a partner in an upscale salon in Beverly Hills.
You head back to the studio to pick up your effects, and are surprised when the guard who escorts you to the back lot from the gate suddenly complains of stomach problems and leaves you unsupervised to head back to the makeup area.
You never notice the Lexus until it's too late. The actor, of course, is shocked and horrified by the accident, and after sending a lovely bouquet to your funeral, has his agent explain to the media he will be surrendering his driver's license, since it's clear after this unfortunate "accident" he's simply too old to drive.
You will be an answer in trivia games for years to come.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a
Plumber
So--sorry to keep you waiting. You seem a little impatient--but maybe that's good; I see on your appointment slip you want to be a plumber--so for you, time will be money. At least for a while...
You'll go to trade school, probably after you find some plumbing contractor to take you on as an apprentice, in return for your agreeing to stick around for a while and work cheap for them. You'll think it's a great deal at first, but when you meet your fellow initiates in the trade, they'll roll their eyes when they hear the deal you agreed to. All this does is make you resentful for the three years you reluctantly give to your "benefactor" once you are a full-fledged plumber.
You'll quit there after you've done the minimum to fulfill your agreement, and you'll go to work for a big plumbing company. At first it will seem great--you'll almost double your hourly wage, but after a while you'll see all the private contractors who work for themselves and can write off everything from their lunches to their computers at tax time.
You save up what you can, get a loan, and soon you've got your own company van with your slogan and phone number on the side. Before long you pay off the loan and join the construction boom, installing the plumbing in the fancy houses in the new subdivisions where everything looks pricey but is shoddily built.
That aspect of the gig grows tiresome, though, when you put your fifth lien on another bankrupt project in a year, and you realize you'll again be lucky to get 20 cents on your dollar when the proceeds from another court-ordered sale is finalized. It doesn't help that you're newly married and your bride has a penchant for designer labels.
You decide the old fashioned business plan is best--you'll become the emergency plumber whose ad jumps out of the yellow pages because you start your name with more "A's" in front of it than both "Aardvark Plumbing" and "Triple A Plumbers". You know people will be desperate when they call your "24-hour hotline" and hear the recording say that by punching the number to speak to you they agree to the $10 surcharge on your already-exhorbitant prices for the after-hours callout.
Your wife grows tired of being woken your beeper, even though it's providing a nice upscale lifestyle for your family, eventually you find yourself sleeping most nights in the downstairs guest room. There will be other problems, as well--you lose your eyebrows and are nearly killed when repairing a crawl-space pipe on one of the shoddy projects you helped build--seems the gasfitter got careless when he knew he probably wasn't getting paid for that job, and this leads to a small explosion when you light a match after your flashlight burns out.
Still, it's not gas or the scalding from a leaky steam pipe that will finish you in the end--it will be a little less accidental than that.
You see, for many criminals, the toilet (or maybe sometimes the sink garbage disposal) is the last hope when the cops are pounding on the door with a search warrant. Whether it's the drug dealer's kilo, the pervert's hard drive, or the serial killer's collection of spleens, much of what they try to flush will cause them problems they can't easily fix without outside plumbing expertise.
It's only a matter of time until one of them figures you're not to be trusted with their secret, and you have a little accident--lead pipes may not carry water any more, but they still pack a punch.
Have fun--oh, and do the world a favor--coveralls, not lowriders, okay?
So--sorry to keep you waiting. You seem a little impatient--but maybe that's good; I see on your appointment slip you want to be a plumber--so for you, time will be money. At least for a while...
You'll go to trade school, probably after you find some plumbing contractor to take you on as an apprentice, in return for your agreeing to stick around for a while and work cheap for them. You'll think it's a great deal at first, but when you meet your fellow initiates in the trade, they'll roll their eyes when they hear the deal you agreed to. All this does is make you resentful for the three years you reluctantly give to your "benefactor" once you are a full-fledged plumber.
You'll quit there after you've done the minimum to fulfill your agreement, and you'll go to work for a big plumbing company. At first it will seem great--you'll almost double your hourly wage, but after a while you'll see all the private contractors who work for themselves and can write off everything from their lunches to their computers at tax time.
You save up what you can, get a loan, and soon you've got your own company van with your slogan and phone number on the side. Before long you pay off the loan and join the construction boom, installing the plumbing in the fancy houses in the new subdivisions where everything looks pricey but is shoddily built.
That aspect of the gig grows tiresome, though, when you put your fifth lien on another bankrupt project in a year, and you realize you'll again be lucky to get 20 cents on your dollar when the proceeds from another court-ordered sale is finalized. It doesn't help that you're newly married and your bride has a penchant for designer labels.
You decide the old fashioned business plan is best--you'll become the emergency plumber whose ad jumps out of the yellow pages because you start your name with more "A's" in front of it than both "Aardvark Plumbing" and "Triple A Plumbers". You know people will be desperate when they call your "24-hour hotline" and hear the recording say that by punching the number to speak to you they agree to the $10 surcharge on your already-exhorbitant prices for the after-hours callout.
Your wife grows tired of being woken your beeper, even though it's providing a nice upscale lifestyle for your family, eventually you find yourself sleeping most nights in the downstairs guest room. There will be other problems, as well--you lose your eyebrows and are nearly killed when repairing a crawl-space pipe on one of the shoddy projects you helped build--seems the gasfitter got careless when he knew he probably wasn't getting paid for that job, and this leads to a small explosion when you light a match after your flashlight burns out.
Still, it's not gas or the scalding from a leaky steam pipe that will finish you in the end--it will be a little less accidental than that.
You see, for many criminals, the toilet (or maybe sometimes the sink garbage disposal) is the last hope when the cops are pounding on the door with a search warrant. Whether it's the drug dealer's kilo, the pervert's hard drive, or the serial killer's collection of spleens, much of what they try to flush will cause them problems they can't easily fix without outside plumbing expertise.
It's only a matter of time until one of them figures you're not to be trusted with their secret, and you have a little accident--lead pipes may not carry water any more, but they still pack a punch.
Have fun--oh, and do the world a favor--coveralls, not lowriders, okay?
Saturday, January 13, 2007
The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains
The Lord of the Rings
So on account of I didn't bother to go to summer school and I read all the stuff--well, I say I read it--from last year, my teacher says "you gotta read Lord of the Rings" and I'm all "dude, I failed and that book's hella big" and he's all "challenge yourself" and I'm all thinking to myself "I'll watch the movie" but there's like three movies and I tried to watch them but I kept falling asleep--partly on account of how I was partying with my buds on New Year's Eve and this was the next day. Anyway, the power went out and my playstation wouldn't work so I figured, what the hell--I'll read it. But it isn't an "it"--it's a "them". Three frickin' books. So maybe, well, I kinda skimmed some parts.
Anyway, this Tolkien guy--JJR or JRR or JJJRRR or whatever his initials are--he was all "I finished The Hobbit and I've got all these other names I've made up I didn't get to use and geeks who live in their parents' basements everywhere need a fantasy world and a made up language to prove their geekdom so I better write three long boring books that only the geeks will love."
Well, he wrote one book of six books then they published it as three books--don't ask me why. Rather than suffer them yourself, all you need to know is:
Frodo is Bilbo's nephew. He gets the ring. He travels. People, other hobbits, a dwarf, an elf, and random temporary companions like Gandalf--who's pretty much a rip-off of Merlin--travel with him.
They climb hills, they cross rivers, they stay at inns and fancy homes and castles. They eat, they drink. They fight various creatures like orcs and ringwraiths. They travel more. They eat, fight and learn countless stupid made-up names of places, people and things. The ring is important for some reason. The creepy gollum with the speech impediment follows them. They run into some giant thinking spiders--nice rip-off by the way, JK Rowling--or should I say JKK Rowling?
Anyway, a couple thousand pages of travelling, fighting, eating, drinking and learning names later--oh, and there were these walking trees--some stuff happens in some volcano or something with the ring and the hobbit guy has his finger cut off and then goes home but it's all in trouble and then he goes somewhere else.
And besides all the stupid names, there's this language Tolkien made up. I was in math yesterday and our teacher was explaining inverse relationships, and asked for an example.
"Learning the Lord of the Rings language and getting dates in high school," I said. He wasn't impressed. Apparently he's a master at it. I notice, by looking at his hand, he's still seeking any finger bling himself--maybe that hit too close to home...
I asked him if he knew any Klingon and he sent me to the office. School sucks.
So on account of I didn't bother to go to summer school and I read all the stuff--well, I say I read it--from last year, my teacher says "you gotta read Lord of the Rings" and I'm all "dude, I failed and that book's hella big" and he's all "challenge yourself" and I'm all thinking to myself "I'll watch the movie" but there's like three movies and I tried to watch them but I kept falling asleep--partly on account of how I was partying with my buds on New Year's Eve and this was the next day. Anyway, the power went out and my playstation wouldn't work so I figured, what the hell--I'll read it. But it isn't an "it"--it's a "them". Three frickin' books. So maybe, well, I kinda skimmed some parts.
Anyway, this Tolkien guy--JJR or JRR or JJJRRR or whatever his initials are--he was all "I finished The Hobbit and I've got all these other names I've made up I didn't get to use and geeks who live in their parents' basements everywhere need a fantasy world and a made up language to prove their geekdom so I better write three long boring books that only the geeks will love."
Well, he wrote one book of six books then they published it as three books--don't ask me why. Rather than suffer them yourself, all you need to know is:
Frodo is Bilbo's nephew. He gets the ring. He travels. People, other hobbits, a dwarf, an elf, and random temporary companions like Gandalf--who's pretty much a rip-off of Merlin--travel with him.
They climb hills, they cross rivers, they stay at inns and fancy homes and castles. They eat, they drink. They fight various creatures like orcs and ringwraiths. They travel more. They eat, fight and learn countless stupid made-up names of places, people and things. The ring is important for some reason. The creepy gollum with the speech impediment follows them. They run into some giant thinking spiders--nice rip-off by the way, JK Rowling--or should I say JKK Rowling?
Anyway, a couple thousand pages of travelling, fighting, eating, drinking and learning names later--oh, and there were these walking trees--some stuff happens in some volcano or something with the ring and the hobbit guy has his finger cut off and then goes home but it's all in trouble and then he goes somewhere else.
And besides all the stupid names, there's this language Tolkien made up. I was in math yesterday and our teacher was explaining inverse relationships, and asked for an example.
"Learning the Lord of the Rings language and getting dates in high school," I said. He wasn't impressed. Apparently he's a master at it. I notice, by looking at his hand, he's still seeking any finger bling himself--maybe that hit too close to home...
I asked him if he knew any Klingon and he sent me to the office. School sucks.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
My little emo post
My better half is still in hospital, and in part, it seems the difficulties may lie in the cost-saving measure of getting rid of food preparation service staff a few years ago and contracting it all to a private company. When one is recuperating from surgery and needs a specialized diet, the company can't provide it. When this is all over, if I have any energy, I think I'll do some publicizing of how crappy it is--the nutritionist has been completely frustrated by the fact he prescribes the necessary diet but in order for her to get it, I have to go shop and bring it in myself.
She didn't eat anything for about 10 days--they were supposed to weigh her today, and I'm not looking forward to hearing that number--she's skin and bones right now.
Meanwhile, I visited the doctor's again today--trying a new strategy, and hope to get rid of my stupid cough. It's fine if I never talk or eat... not the best options though.
Trying to get my insurance claim sorted out--didn't realize until about a week ago that the "deadline" (I thought it was just the company's, thus the quotation marks) of the two year anniversary means if I don't get things sorted out by next wednesday, I'm hooped. I sent back a response to their same offer from 18 months ago pointing out it's about 2000 less than my losses/expenses alone, without any of the "pain and suffering" allotment that is usually taken into consideration. May have some legal wrangling ahead...
Trying to get on with my masters' research--got a hold put on my ethics approval back in mid-december--told by the university it needed approval from my district included in the application. Got told today, now the person is back from vacation in the district who looks after all this, that the district needs the university ethics approval before they'll give theirs. Anyone see a problem here? Thankfully, some phone calls and emails seem to have sorted this out.
The musical--Plan A was to teach the songs like last year--someone plays the four parts on tape, I make copies and kids go into parts and learn them through repetition before coming back to group. Problem: issues suddenly arise and can't get the piano person to do it--wish I'd had a Plan B in place--working on that now.
My set builder for the last 10 shows took a job elsewhere for the first semester. He called me night before last to inform me he's not coming back so he won't be in the building to build my set for me this year. Hmm--anyone care to take that on?
My marking is insanely behind. My parents are feeling neglected. My kids are coping.
There are some things I've just had to let go of, work related, this week. I'm thankful for the people I can turn to for help with that sometimes--a couple come to mind; one I know reads this.
Why am I taking time to blog? Good question. Thanks for listening.
She didn't eat anything for about 10 days--they were supposed to weigh her today, and I'm not looking forward to hearing that number--she's skin and bones right now.
Meanwhile, I visited the doctor's again today--trying a new strategy, and hope to get rid of my stupid cough. It's fine if I never talk or eat... not the best options though.
Trying to get my insurance claim sorted out--didn't realize until about a week ago that the "deadline" (I thought it was just the company's, thus the quotation marks) of the two year anniversary means if I don't get things sorted out by next wednesday, I'm hooped. I sent back a response to their same offer from 18 months ago pointing out it's about 2000 less than my losses/expenses alone, without any of the "pain and suffering" allotment that is usually taken into consideration. May have some legal wrangling ahead...
Trying to get on with my masters' research--got a hold put on my ethics approval back in mid-december--told by the university it needed approval from my district included in the application. Got told today, now the person is back from vacation in the district who looks after all this, that the district needs the university ethics approval before they'll give theirs. Anyone see a problem here? Thankfully, some phone calls and emails seem to have sorted this out.
The musical--Plan A was to teach the songs like last year--someone plays the four parts on tape, I make copies and kids go into parts and learn them through repetition before coming back to group. Problem: issues suddenly arise and can't get the piano person to do it--wish I'd had a Plan B in place--working on that now.
My set builder for the last 10 shows took a job elsewhere for the first semester. He called me night before last to inform me he's not coming back so he won't be in the building to build my set for me this year. Hmm--anyone care to take that on?
My marking is insanely behind. My parents are feeling neglected. My kids are coping.
There are some things I've just had to let go of, work related, this week. I'm thankful for the people I can turn to for help with that sometimes--a couple come to mind; one I know reads this.
Why am I taking time to blog? Good question. Thanks for listening.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Friday, January 05, 2007
CCC is back
I used to have all the Cynical Career Counselor posts on a page of their own; after some discussion with Nylon, we thought it best to remove that page, while we go over/edit them with the idea of doing something more eventually.
I like having a page out there though, so I'm putting a sampler collection online--14 of the 74 posts, which I suppose I'll change up from time to time.
Here it is.
On a different note, thanks for the kind thoughts those who contacted me or who I've chatted with in the last day or two. Things are going okay--the next several days will show us how successful the surgeon was.
I like having a page out there though, so I'm putting a sampler collection online--14 of the 74 posts, which I suppose I'll change up from time to time.
Here it is.
On a different note, thanks for the kind thoughts those who contacted me or who I've chatted with in the last day or two. Things are going okay--the next several days will show us how successful the surgeon was.
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