Part I is here…
So our photographer was named Moses. This should have been a sign that things were about to get AWESOME, but instead of noting the fortunate omen I think I just made a half-assed ten commandments joke and then tried to compensate for the next few minutes by complimenting his pictures and stroking his delicate, delicate artistic ego.
Kris eventually arrived wearing purple eyeshadow and a shell-shocked look on her face. We raced to the bathroom to change and update each other on our ridiculous makeup experiences. Unable to decide whose was worse, we bravely smoothed our matching dresses and toddled off to the studio to get shooting.
At this point I’m just going to cut to the chase and show you this:
and this,
(in which I play a rich baroness, Helena Von Trapp, who has decided that she is displeased with your performance and has thus decreed that you should be fired (FIRED!) from the huge media conglomerate over which she currently presides (Baronesses have jobs too you know. Probably.))
So, I mean that’s where the photo shoot was headed.
We were pretty stiff at the beginning because the ridiculousness of showing up to a photo shoot with no good reason, matching dresses and horrible hair and makeup jobs was not lost on us. At one point an assistant walked in and I could tell she was really struggling to not give us the side eye until I invited her to mock us openly, “It’s ok!” I cried generously “We are fully aware of how strange and ungainly we look! Mock away!”
Needless to say, the first batch of pictures were…awkward. Actually to say that they were simply awkward would be too kind – they are awkward at best. Mind-numbingly unattractive at worst. However as the shoot progressed something shifted. I hesitate to say that our posing skills improved, but Moses definitely warmed up to us and started giving us helpful instructions on how to move our legs, where to place our arms and the right jut to make our necks looks longer.
He started having fun with us and what was supposed to be a one hour, 100-shot photo sesh turned into a two hour, 800+ photo sesh. Towards the end we were crawling on the floor, consumed with laughter and guys, y’all should just go book a glamour photo shoot right now. We had a Groupon and it was $60! SIXTY DOLLARS for 800+ pictures, providing family and friends with ammunition to ridicule us for years to come! What a deal!
At the end of it all we sat and chatted as he burned the cd with our photos on it, he seemed really happy with the shoot and mentioned that he would be shooting promo photos for a club later that night and would put us on the VIP list if we wanted to come in. This was probably a good summary of our reactions:
Me: VIP? Club? List? Partying? People? *brain exploding*
Kris: Yeah…I have a triathlon in the morning, so….
A triathlon. This is Kris’s life. Glamour shoot and celeb stalking Friday night, triathlon Saturday morning. No Big Deal.
We politely declined Moses’s offer but made a solemn vow to reenact this photo shoot every year, perhaps in themed costumes, and shook his hand and left the studio.
Up until this point we had inadvertently followed the same eating habits as real models, having consumed nothing but a shot of vodka each, but unlike real models we were now ravenous. We ate at a raw food restaurant where we sampled ravioli made out of beets and a kelp-noodle pad thai (both unbelievably delicious, for serious!)
Ok, NOW. Onto the good stuff. After dinner we figured we would walk over to Roy Thompson Hall for the Ides of March premiere. As we emerged from the subway we could see throngs of people waiting in line to get into the theatre and somewhere the distance, high pitched, frenzied screams that could only mean that a celeb was walking the carpet. We followed the sound and ended up standing at a barricade with a few hundred other people, watching …what exactly?
A guy next to me asked “Who is it?” and the middle aged woman to my right, with the camera and magazine clutched tightly to her chest spoke sharply “It’s HIM! Ryan Gosling! There in the tan suit!”
We had been there for all of five seconds, but yes, there he was, strolling down the walk on the other side of the barricade, shaking people’s hands and signing autographs.
Now, despite what you may think of my embarrassing fangirl Gosling crush, please note that I did NOT dress up like a bride, throw my panties or scream “RYAN!RYAN!RYAN” at ear-shattering decibels as he approached, as did other women who were waiting. I was silent, and sort of confused actually.
I need to process my thoughts on this a little further, because my reaction confused me too, it was just, “Oh! There he is. Hm….Weird….He’s just a guy.”
He’s JUST A GUY. People, why are you screaming? It suddenly seemed very strange that one one side of a metal barricade there was this one man, and on the other stood thousands of people who had lined up and were now screaming and crying and losing their shit because the man looked at them.
How weird is that? How weird is it that this, THIS experience is now a normal part of his existence? I couldn’t absorb the strangeness of the situation and it made me feel uncomfortable. I snapped this picture as he approached, because hey, a significant chunk of this trip has been spent talking about Ryan Gosling so lets do it but also, I don’t think I actually realized that he was a real person.
Do you know what I mean? Because obviously I KNEW he was a real person, but now that I actually saw him and could have spat on him if I wanted to (which, I mean I’m not THAT disillusioned that I would have, but I could have, I was that close, you know?) I’m just sort of over it. I want to be like, “People, he’s just a MAN! You probably have a few of those lying around at home, and they’ll probably let you touch them, too!”
I don’t really get it, why are we doing this, exactly?
As I said, I need to collect my thoughts more fully on this one, because I don’t think I’ve ever experienced being in the strange world of celebrity culture and my mind needs time to process what happened and why I am being so weird and over-analytical about it.
I’m sorry, was this anticlimactic? I didn’t scream, I didn’t fangirl, I just thought about it a lot – which, really, is SO my style.
What can I say guys? I’m all talk.