Top 5 Awesome Adventures of 2007 - Part 2

Days till 2008: 4
Days till Menopause: 18

Happy Friday! It may only be 9:33am (oh my god) but there's promise in the air - it's almost the weekend! My mother and I are both feeling rather ill today (I think I'll go with "interesting tropical disease" rather than "the 4 margaritas we each had last night at dinner") so I have a warm, cozy, and comfortable Friday night to look forward to. We're going to order in some Rumi's Cafe (only the best Mediterranean delivery in the city), watch The Office Season 3, and polish off the bottle of wine that my boss gave to me for Christmas. I love family time.

With only 4 days left until the New Year, I've been thinking about what my New Year's Resolution will be. Last year it included something about a threesome and using my cell phone more (hopefully not at the same time) but that was a night I've mostly blacked out (for various reasons) and since I never made either of those "Resolutions" come true, I'm in need of an actual goal for this year. Some ideas I've come up with over the past week or so are:

- Have a threesome
- Use my cell phone more

Obviously, I'm having a little bit of trouble. I've been pondering this for all of the 33 minutes I've been at work and I think I have some more to add:

- Figure out if I really want to go to Law School
- Figure out if perhaps I want to go to Graduate School
- Fuck school, and go on a Reality TV Show
- Write a Book
- Pick up a boyfriend that doesn't speak English
- Become a Desperate Housewife
- Go back to Europe

I think out of all of those, the most logical is to write a book. Of course Law or Graduate school would be logical, in a sense, but that means I'd like somewhere around $40,000,000 more in debt, and I'd have to actual work once I was finished with the program. Writing a book means I'd be stretching my creative abilities and possibly seeing some kind of monetary gain in the end. Now, if only I had something interesting to say...

Speaking of Interesting Things to Say, it's time for:

Top 5 Awesome Adventures of 2007
Number 4: DC Fashion Week: Fall 2007 Collections

Oh, Fashion Week. That glorious week where models are so hungry and so bitchy that everything degenerates into arguing, cat fights, and girls black out eating and stuffing 4 slices of Extra Meaty! pizza down their throats, right before they're supposed to squeeze themselves into a leather pencil skirt that's so tight you can't breathe in it to begin with. It's a wonderful time.

Now, most of you imagine this, for Fashion Week:

And you would be right, if we were discussing Fashion Week in Milan. DC? Not quite Milan. But I was pleasantly surprised that there were several big name designers there (namely Betsey Johnson and DSquared and whatever those Russian women's company was - I knew they were big, but they were so horrifyingly cruel that all the models fled from them, and no one seemed to actually be able to utter their name.)

When I went to tryouts for Fashion Week, I was rather alarmed to see that most of the models were nowhere near the so-called "standards" of the modeling industry. DC has a much more diverse group of women, in a multitude of sizes. Luckily, several designers were far more into the International aspect, and their clothing fit far more sizes than, say, that show in Milan would fit (considering they would MAYBE go up to a size 4 - MAX - and that would be on a 6' tall model.)

But sizes aside, the overwhelming model pool was... hilariously lacking. Sure, there were maybe 15, 20 girls that really had that "it" factor that designers wanted, but the rest of the bunch were awkward, odd looking girls that would scream at anyone who would listen that they were going to be the next Gisele. My favorite was a huge bitch that kept declaring this, even though she was 5'4". Just so you know, runway usually has a cut off of 5'8" and even then 99% of the models will still be at least 5'9". At 5'8" myself, I was definitely at the shorter end.

Oh, and Gisele is 5'11". FYI.

That really set the stage for Fashion Week. We were surrounded by tiny, vicious girls (that's giving some of them too much credit) who were determined to scramble their way to the top, no matter what. They droned on and on about their extensive experience and how all the top New York agencies were fighting over them (question: then what the fuck were you doing at DC Fashion Week????) and how they had to decide between Wilamayna and Dina. I think they meant Wilhelmina and DNA.

I did make friends with a couple of really nice girls, so at least there were a few good ones in the bunch. The Betsey Johnson show girls, in particular, were a lot of fun, even if I was older than most of them. At 22, my only saving grace is that I've been modeling on and off since I was 14; otherwise, I could be considered a dinosaur in the industry. Not that I'm really going anywhere in the industry, but still. At least everyone thought I meant I was a senior in high school, at the time, and not a senior in college. Oops. It's the freckles and baby face, I tell you.

So the first night of Fashion Week was the Fair Trade Show at the World Bank. Not actually in the World Bank HQ, but in some giant theater that they had several blocks away. I don't remember which country/continent it was that I was supposed to be representing, but I'm fairly certain it was for the geriatric label. Here was my outfit:


Yep. Actually, I sort of rocked the hat, and I got a lot of compliments, so at least no one was laughing at me. Well, no one that I could see, at any rate. I'd like to think that Tyra would be proud, since I was "smilin' wit my eyes!" and everything.

I was actually supposed to wear a pair of embroidered jeans and this crocheted halter... bra thing (it looked like a bikini top?) but the pants kept falling off and no one had a belt small enough to hold them up, so I ended up with the pink outfit. Frankly, I'm surprised I was chosen at all for the show, since everyone looks at me and says "Oh, hello, you're from British Heritage, aren't you?"

Yes, yes I am. I don't particularly pass as anything exciting.

Although the most exciting thing about me after that show was the horrific state that my hair was in. The hair stylist and I were so impressed with her work that we didn't want to wear the hat, and my hair was done up so the hat wouldn't fit - but then I had to wear the hat so it was squashed down and beaten to a pulp. Here's what it looked like after all the pins and clips were taken out:


My friend Jim asked: Is that from your segment of A&E's Intervention?

The second show was the men's show, and although there have been a few questionable pictures of me floating around out there, I don't actually look like a man all the time, so I was not permitted to walk in that show.

The next night, however, was the best: The Betsey Johnson show!

Now, I've never taken modeling all that seriously. Is it fun? Hell yeah it is. I like the adrenaline of the shows, I actually really like the catwalk, and I love getting to play with all the clothes backstage, but I've never really given my blood, sweat and tears for it. Until the Betsey Johnson show. I've never seen girls get so psychotic over getting picked for a show before. Everyone and their grandmother wanted to walk for the show, and girls would constantly be dropping by and asking if the reps "accidentally forgot" to tell them that they would be a part of the show. And I can't say I blame them - the clothes were fucking adorable, and the show was actually properly run: it was fun, it was young and fresh, the models actually looked (for the most part) like models that could have a shot at the big time, and there was so much electricity both backstage and on the runway that people really got into it.

I found myself getting ridiculously competitive about the show: flash the reps a smile, add some extra hip movement during the evaluations, try to do something "wacky and fresh" on the runway (although I left the cartwheels for the professionals), skip the Power Bar I was planning on eating for lunch, convince that girl that she had indeed put an extra half a pound on, etc. The claws came out, and suddenly I realized perhaps why the girls on ANTM were as insane as they were. I can't imagine being in a constant state of competition, in which you're fighting to the be the prettiest, the thinnest, and the most photogenic. Quite frankly, I'm surprised no one's killed another contestant on the show yet.

When I found out I was picked for the show, I shamefully will admit that I did a few fist pumps and may have danced around in front of my mirror. Yeah! I thought to myself, I'm one sexy bitch, and I beat out those other ugly nobodies! I'm not particularly proud of that sentiment, but as I've explained, any common sense or rational thinking had long fled me at that point.

After walking around with a swelled head and ego for a few days, it was finally the day of the show! (Which resulted in some more swelling of the ego, but I promise that went away.) Here's what I wore:




I wanted that pink cupcake dress so badly I contemplated smuggling it into my rolling bag and rushing off into the night with it. Then I realized I may not ever get any work doing things like that, so I sadly let the reps take the dress back. If only...

The last show was the giant International Collections Show at the French Embassy. That was a lot of fun because I'm pretty sure everyone running the show was drunk, and we had to sit in that freezing cold Embassy for hours and hours while we waited for the designers to get their asses there. I was included among the Black Out Eaters group, and devoured several slices of pizza in under a second flat (I was hungry!) and then remembered I was wearing a dress at one point that had the entire middle section cut out, so my now-distended stomach would be hanging out for all to see. Awesome!

Here's the offending garment (which was actually really nice):


Please ignore the stupid look on my face, I think I was digesting.

There are more outfits (and some awesome hats) but for some reason I can't find the shows on the DC Fashion Week website. So, perhaps someday I can regale you all with the loveliness that is me, but I don't want to overwhelm you with my beauty so I'll only show you one more:


This is from the end of the very last show, where I am super pissed off, super cranky, and so hungry I want to cry. We ran out to Friday's (they were the only ones open) and I ate a cheeseburger with french fries, nachos, mozzarella sticks, and like 4 gigantic margaritas. YAY FOOD!

And thus concludes Number 4 on my list of Top 5 Awesome Adventures of 2007!!! Get ready for the fabulous top 3, including Mormons, Graduation Rites, and a Certain Marine named Sorbie.