Solicitation: How to Get What You Want from Women in Their Underwear Without Pissing Them Off

Late last year, I was approached by the editor of a magazine and asked if I would consider submitting some photos.  This editor and I have a number of mutual acquaintances, one of whom is a good friend of mine so, on the strength of that, I happily agreed.

Thus began an ongoing communication, during which I shot not one but two sets for the magazine, both of which I agreed to keep exclusive until after they had been published, and made sure I kept the editor apprised of the progress of both shoots as progress was made.  No specifics beyond general themes were ever discussed, but since this editor came to me based on the work in my portfolio that he had already seen, he knew my style.  The photos were submitted well before the deadline for the issue, and when emails were sent out to let contributors know which high-resolution images needed to be sent, I found out that one image from one set would be published, and the submission of the second set was not even acknowledged.

Flash forward a few months, and a dear friend of mine finds herself in an almost identical situation, with a different magazine; approached by the editor, asked to submit a photo set based on the strength of her portfolio with only a very general description of what they’d like to see, time and money spent on the shoot, photos kept exclusive and submitted well within the required timeframe and, after several attempts to find out the status of publication, finally given only a lukewarm “maybe” as to whether they’ll ever be used.

I’m not going to say, now or ever, that any editor is obligated under any circumstances to guarantee publication of unseen work, regardless of who initiated the contact.  The editor’s job is to make sure all work published is in keeping with the quality and overall image of the magazine and, until you’ve seen the pictures, you can’t know they meet the criteria.  So my issue with the above mentioned situations is not that the photos asked for weren’t used.  My issue is with the communication, or rather lack thereof, from the editors’ sides.

In both of the above situations, the burden was on those editors to let me and my friend know as soon as possible that the work submitted was not what the magazine was hoping for.  A simple “you know, I appreciate you taking the time to do this, but it isn’t quite what we’re looking for” would have been fine.  A simple “you know, we’d love to see a set from you in a bar-type setting with mood lighting and a sheer black robe” prior to the shoot actually taking place would have been even better.  What is not at all even a little bit okay is “just send something Christmas-y” or “we’d like photos of you wearing red lipstick” and then leaving the model hanging for an answer, or ignoring the submission altogether.

I do not consider myself the be-all and end-all of magazine editors, far from it.  But I know what I want and I know the only way I’m ever going to get it is to ask for it, clearly and concisely, from the people I think are most likely to be able to provide it.  Case in point: I received a cover art submission for an upcoming issue that was almost what we want.  I emailed both the model and photographer and said “can you redo this same concept, making these changes and adding this?”  They said “hell yes we can!” and I have no doubt that we’re going to have an amazing cover that is exactly what we want.

Communication.  Is.  Key.

And it’s not actually all that painful.  Editors don’t like sending out rejection emails any more than contributors like receiving them, but you know something weird?  I’ve lost count of how many emails I’ve received over the past year from people who have sent work that is not in keeping with what we publish, thanking me for taking the time to let them know we wouldn’t be using their submissions.  They’re not thanking me for turning them down, because that would be silly and masochistic, but they are thanking me for not just letting their hard work vanish into a black hole of sent-and-never-answered emails.

To anyone who takes the bullshit line of not having time to reply to all submissions, no.  Just... no.  If you have time to ask for submissions, and time to profit from other people’s work, you have time to create a form letter that you can cut and paste as a reply to work that you don’t want to use.

Rejections are like band-aids.  A quick and clean rip that stings for a second is far better for everyone than ignoring it until the adhesive rots and it falls off on its own and lands you don’t even know where until it gets caught in the vacuum cleaner belt and starts to smoke and stinks up the entire room.

Unsolicited submissions to open calls deserve at least the token formality of a standardized rejection notice.  Solicited submissions?  Yes, those deserve considerably more.  If you ask someone for something, you are placing two burdens of responsibility on yourself.  First, that you communicate your requirements clearly.  Second, if you do not communicate your requirements clearly, and leave the details up to someone else, that if the end result is not what you had in mind, you at least have a big enough pair to let the person who did the work know you won’t be using it.

Why Small Boobs Are Awesome

Among other endeavors in the pinup community, I am part of a panel that judges a monthly photo contest.  There are five of us, and our group goes by the name Tits On A Unicorn.  We run a page on Facebook that has two regular features, the Daily Unicorn and the Daily Bazoombas.  The Daily Bazoombas feature is open to any woman who wants to submit a photo, and the photos are, well, boob-emphatic.  The lady who handles the scheduling for the feature wanted a St. Patrick’s Day-themed photo, so I sent her this one to have on hand in case no others were submitted.

In the email, I told my dear uni-sister that if another photo were sent in that she would prefer to use, to please go ahead and use it, this was a just-in-case submission so we’d have the holiday covered.  I am well aware and will be the first to admit that I am not a boob pinup.  I can pad, push up, lean and bluff my way through boob shots when necessary, but they’re not my real strength.  I am a leg & butt pinup, and am perfectly fine with that, in fact rather proud of it.

This is what I do best

The photo was posted on the page, and received the following comment:

“Humm... are a bit small, but I like them”

A bit of a kerfuffle followed and was quickly smoothed over, when one of the ladies on the panel jumped to the defense of my girls and the original commenter stated that he hadn’t meant any offense, just that we usually post larger-breasted women in the feature.  Which is true, we do.  We post every photo that is submitted, and encourage women of all shapes and sizes who are of a mind to share their boobs for appreciation in our boob-friendly community.

But here’s the problem; it isn’t that smaller-breasted women don’t want to celebrate their boobs, it’s that most of them feel they don’t have a pair worth celebrating.  The majority of the submissions we receive for this feature are from large-breasted women because “bigger is better” is accepted as the standard by which boob worth is measured, and those women have been made aware from the time they developed them that their large breasts are great.  Comments like the one posted above, while not intended to be offensive, in truth intended as a compliment, are part of the problem.  It’s not that he pointed out the obvious, that I have small boobs.   It’s the inclusion of the word “but”, implying that liking small boobs is somehow exceptional.

It is not.  At least, it shouldn’t be.  Because small boobs are awesome, and here are just some of the reasons why:

1 – SMALL BOOBS ARE EASIER AND LESS EXPENSIVE TO CLOTHE

I hear large-breasted women complain constantly about the difficulties they have finding bras that fit and, when they do find them, they’re seldom the pretty lacy girly ones.  I wear a 36B.  I doubt there is a bra manufactured on this planet that isn’t available in my size.  I have never had a problem finding bras, and I’ve never had to deal with the price bump that seems to be integral to purchasing anything larger than a D cup.

And sports bras?  I am golden.  I can buy those in the children’s department.

2 – SMALL BOOBS ARE FAR LESS SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE EFFECTS OF GRAVITY

It is rumored that, over time, all boobs eventually find themselves doomed to show the effects of constant downward pull, and there is only so much that good muscle tone and underwires can fight.

Or is there?  These are my boobs, from the age of 19 to the age of 43.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t see any appreciable difference in the distance between them and my bellybutton over the course of almost 25 years.

Small Boobs: The Decades-Spanning Non-Sagging Saga

Maybe when I’m 50, that will change.  Or maybe it won’t.

3 – SMALL BOOBS ARE MORE COMFORTABLE IN HOT WEATHER

No matter how you arrange them, large boobs are going to have skin-on-skin contact somewhere, it’s just a matter of whether it’s between or beneath, and that means a higher likelihood of sweat and irritated skin.  Unless you put them in a serious lift & separate sling, which just creates a larger ratio of skin-to-fabric contact and doesn’t help matters much when you’re already dealing with being overheated.  We small-boobed women don’t have this problem nearly as much, and most of us have the option of going braless on particularly hot days.

4 – MEN ACTUALLY LOOK AT YOUR EYES AND LISTEN TO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING

Okay, not all the time, but the likelihood is greater that they might.

It’s really easy to find reasons to not like your body, to think you’re too heavy or too skinny or your boobs are too small or your ass is too big or your legs are too short or or or or or.  There will never be a day when you will have difficulty finding something to dislike about yourself if you want to try.  The good news is, with the same amount of effort, you can find something to like, and a damn good reason to like it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go organize my collection of $9 sports bras.

Dear Food Network: HUGE Mistake

Dear Food Network,

Allow me to introduce myself.  I am a woman in my forties, a full-time homemaker with a comfortable middle-class income and a love of cooking.  Sound like a demographic you’d be interested in targeting?  I thought so.

Yes, I am your customer.  And I wish there were a nicer way to put this, but there isn’t; you have just done something that I consider unbelievably stupid.  That something is Justin Warner’s Rebel Eats.

When the last season of The Next Food Network Star aired, there was little doubt in my mind that Justin would emerge triumphant.  The kid has it all.  He’s adorable without being intimidatingly male-model perfect, he’s quirky without being off-puttingly odd, he’s funny, he’s smart, he’s imaginative, he’s everything you could have hoped for.

In short, he is a gold mine.  A gold mine that, instead of prospecting, you decided to shaft.

In addition to the specifics mentioned in my introductory paragraph, I also have a functioning vehicle, a valid driver’s license, table manners well-developed enough to allow me to eat in public without getting arrested, and a debit card.  I don’t need a show that tells me how to drive around, buy food from other people, and eat it in their restaurants.  I am already equipped to do that, and even if I wasn’t, you already air that show several times a week.  How can you possibly think shoehorning a new face and voice into an already overdone format is a good idea?

Particularly when the face and voice in question are as unique as this kid’s.  Justin Warner is the last person I want to see shilling other people’s food.  Because I want to see Justin Warner’s food.  He’s fun to watch, largely because I don’t know what he’s going to come up with next but I do know that, whatever it is, chances are it will be something I never would have thought of on my own.  Which is saying more than you might think because I am not at all afraid to let things get weird in my kitchen.

That's Chocolate Chicken with Blueberry Cayenne Sauce.
That's what I do when I'm bored.

He’s also fun to watch because he’s having fun when he’s cooking, and it shows.  A lot.  He clearly loves what he does, and that goes a long way in convincing viewers to love what he does.  Will he love driving around letting other people do the cooking?  Maybe.  Will he love it as much as he loves doing his own cooking?  Unlikely.  Will he love it so much that I will be compelled, week after week, to tune in to watch him not teach me a damn thing?  No.

There’s two strikes against your new project.  First, you are making a show that you’ve already made, one that in small doses can be entertaining but is not what anyone would call particularly instructional.  Yes, you are in the entertainment industry, but your niche is educational entertainment.  No one ever watched MacGyver expecting to someday rescue their great aunt from a bank-robbery-turned-hostage-situation using nothing but a palm frond, a Q-tip and half a can of flat Pepsi, but they do expect to learn something about what can and should go on in their own kitchens when watching The Food Network.  So there is a limit to how much “here’s how to go eat food in a restaurant” programming you can reasonably expect your audience to sit through, and you have enough already.

Second, in order to remake this show you’ve already made, you are taking a talent out of his element and, frankly, just wasting him.  You don’t take someone whose love of wacky experimental cooking shines through every morsel he makes and every word he says, and put him on the road to talk about other people’s food.  You put him in a kitchen and let him go crazy.  And let us go crazy along with him.

Now, before you start to think I’m just here to complain, rest assured that is not my style.  I try very hard to not be the kind of person who says “here is a problem” if I can’t follow that assertion with “here are some possible solutions”.  Here are two ways in which I, as a viewer, think the package that is Justin Warner could be best utilized.

1) Improv Cooking

This is actually a suggestion from my best friend, Jerry over at Muddled Ramblings, that I think is awesome.  You put Justin in a kitchen stocked with random ingredients suggested by viewers, with absolutely no idea what he’ll have to work with, and let him work with it.  The element of surprise would work beautifully with his style because he is the element of surprise.  For added twists, throw a couple of extra required ingredients at him mid-show.  It will be fun to watch, it will be something viewers can relate to because we’ve all been in the place where you just have to figure out a meal with whatever random crap happens to be in the cupboards that day, and by letting the audience suggest the ingredients, you earn points on two levels: 1, they feel involved and will watch to see what their suggestions turn into, and 2, they will very likely suggest things they have in their own kitchens, and consequently learn something new that can be done with those things.

2) Dorm Cooking

You have a guy who looks like he could still be in college, and you have a demographic that desperately needs to learn how to cook, guys who actually are in college.  Put together a show that focuses on limited space, limited cooking facilities, and limited cash.  Raw food recipes, things that can be cooked in a microwave or on a hot plate, things that will impress girls, things that are not pizza.  A cross between Poor Girl Eats Well, and Recipes That Will Get You Laid sans nudity and profanity.  You could do an entire month of episodes about ramen noodles alone.  And all of this is information that will translate to boarding houses, small apartments, etc., it doesn’t end with college guys.  I would watch that show.  Even though I don’t want or need to cook at that level, I would still watch that show because 1, it has the potential to be funny as hell with someone like Justin hosting it and 2, it would teach me something I currently don’t even know that I don’t know, I’m sure it would.

Just a few thoughts.  Take from them what you will, but please, stop putting guys on the road.

With sincerest hopes that you will reconsider wasting your talent & my time,

A Loyal Viewer

Adventures in Shopping: Washing Machines

I was 42 years old before I ever needed to buy any major appliances.  For most of my adult life, I rented an apartment that had a fridge included and a laundry room on site, and prior to that I lived with my parents, where my input on the purchase of such things was limited to the occasional “I like the green one better”.

Then we bought a house.  This particular house also had a fridge included (a really nice one, too; thank you, previous owners), but we did need a washer & dryer.  And since our household setup is based on the somewhat old-fashioned model of him earning the money and me spending it, the task of selecting, purchasing, and arranging for delivery of said appliances settled on my full-time-homemaking shoulders.

Which was cool because, frankly, I love that kind of stuff.  The thrill of the chase and what have you.  The bigger the prey, the greater the satisfaction when it is brought down.

I began with a short list of requirements.  For the washer; top-loading (I have a completely irrational paranoia of front-loading washers), high-efficiency (because I’m a tree-hugging “California-is-in-a-constant-state-of-drought”-raised hippie at heart), and able to fit in the space allotted to it and the dryer.  For the dryer; the one that matched the washer.

I found a washer that met all of my requirements and was within the price range I had set for myself, and then began the next step in the selection process, the reading of reviews.  For the most part, they were generically positive.  Then I came to this one-star review:

“This washer doesn’t get clothes clean.  They look clean, and they feel clean, and they smell clean, but they are not clean.”

A pause-worthy review if ever there was one because, based on the number of senses left to offend, I could only surmise that my clothes would either taste funny or start saying mean things about me behind my back if I subjected them to the processes of this machine.

Conclusion: Neither of those things, should they occur, would be the fault of the washer.

Still feeling the need for reassurance, I continued reading, until I came to this review:

“My husband likes this washer because the control panel looks and sounds like a video game.”

Sold.

Those Are Not “Free” Magazines

Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I have extremely mixed feelings about the print-on-demand magazine industry.  On the one hand, it provides an outlet for creative people to do some amazing work with no financial outlay.  On the other hand, that very lack of required financial commitment has created some rather callous attitudes among people who now claim the title of “editor”.

One recurring statement from these editors drives me particularly crazy, that they do not give “free” magazines to contributors.  And yes, they usually do put the word ‘free’ in quotes, whether for emphasis or irony I’m not sure.  In one distinctly memorable case, a magazine’s submission guidelines stated quite emphatically “we do NOT give out free magazines, so DON’T ASK”.  This is the attitude I have a problem with.

There is a difference between a contributor copy and a free magazine.  Free magazines are copies that you give to your mom, your best friend, or maybe a vendor that you would like to see carrying your publication so they can take a look at what you’re asking them to sell.  In other words, they are product given to people who did not in any way have anything to do with the creation of the product.

Contributor copies are product given to people whose work was crucial to the creation of the product, without which there would be no product.

See how those things are different?

Now, before you get the idea that I think all print-on-demand magazines are Satan’s work and the creators of them should perish in a fire fueled by the very paper their evil is printed on, let me assure you that is not the case.  A lot of really talented people are using the available print-on-demand technology to do a lot of really good work, I applaud them for it and I don’t want to see that change.  What needs to change is the “free” magazine attitude.

Let’s break this down, shall we?

Say an issue of your magazine is 60 pages.  To keep it simple, we’ll estimate layout time of 20 minutes per page.  Some may take longer than that, some may take considerably less time, but for the sake of discussion we’ll use 20 hours as the total time to complete the layout.  Add to that another 20 hours of reviewing submissions, and another 20 hours of chasing down hi-res photos, releases, miscellaneous nuts & bolts and legal crap, etc., and you have 60 hours total assembly time for a 60 page magazine.  That’s a week and a half at a full-time job and, using California minimum wage for an example base, we’ll say has a cash value of $600.

Now, say this issue of your magazine has 60 photos from 30 different contributors.  Each of those photos has a photographer, whose time we’ll value at $50 an hour for a two hour session, and a model, whose time we’ll go ahead and stick with CA minimum wage for a total of $20.  Somebody had to drive somewhere, so we’ll throw in another $20 for expenses.  Wardrobe, hair, and makeup, we’ll estimate another $50.  That’s $190 worth of work, from 30 different sets of people.

For a total of $5700 worth of content.  For your magazine.  From which no one will profit but you.

If you are creating a magazine via print-on-demand, your business model likely does not allow for the purchase and distribution of contributor copies.  There is nothing wrong with that.  But you need to say “we are not able to provide contributor copies” rather than “we do not give away free magazines”.  Because saying you do not give away free magazines implies that the people who might want them, the people providing the content without which you would have no magazine, have done nothing to earn them, and that is just not the case.

Most people don’t have the money it usually takes to start a magazine.  That’s fine.  Print-on-demand has provided the means to bypass that obstacle.  However, it costs you nothing to show a little respect for the people who are helping to make your creative dream a reality.

The Large-Breasted Geek Phenomenon: Some Theories

I have a dear friend who is, hands down, the most dedicated geek I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  She loves Star Wars, Doctor Who, Comic-Con, WoW, you name it, she’s into it to a degree I find not only endearing but fascinating in its dedication.

She also has really large breasts.  And apparently, there are women who believe these things cannot exist simultaneously in a single being, so they insist either the breasts are fake or the geekery must be.

I know for a fact both of these things are genuine in this particular woman, and I also know there are others like her in the world.  Which begs the question, where does the large-breasted geek come from?  How is she formed, in what environment does she thrive?  After careful thought, I have come up with three possible theories to explain her.

- DEFENSIVE SOCIALIZATION

Many naturally large-breasted women get really fucking tired of constantly being hit on, leered at, and otherwise made to feel like they are nothing but a great pair of tits that happens to have a voice and brain attached.  At a young age, a lot of them discover the easiest way to avoid this treatment is gravitating toward the guys who are too shy, awkward, and/or insecure to behave in this manner; the geeks.  By inhabiting a social circle predominantly geek-like in its interests, these interests are absorbed.

- PROTECTIVE MALE SIBLINGS

Many brothers of naturally large-breasted women get really fucking tired of seeing their sisters constantly being hit on, leered at, and otherwise made to feel like they are nothing but a great pair of tits that happens to have a voice and brain attached.  To combat this, they may choose to be a larger and more dominant presence in their sisters' lives than they might be otherwise.  Consequently, the sisters will be exposed to many more interests that are considered traditionally “male”, such as sports and geekery, and develop a fondness for those interests as a result of not only constant exposure but the sense of family bonding associated with sharing them.

- HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY 101

Brain development and breast development occur completely independently, and these two things actually don’t have a damn thing to do with one another.  Get over it, and if you want bigger boobs, go buy some.

Things That Are Not Plagiarism

Few things on the Internet bug me more, as an editor, an artist, and a human being who loves language enough to want to see it used properly, than the constant throwing around of accusations of plagiarism by people who don't seem to have taken the time to learn what that word actually means.

Plagiarism is when someone takes someone else’s original work and claims it as their own, either intact or after making only very minor alterations that leave it still recognizable as the original work.  For instance, if I were to post this

“Faith is the downy thing

That lands upon the heart

And dances a dance without a beat

Missing time apart”

as an original work by Harlean Carpenter, that would be plagiarism because, for any of you not familiar with it, this

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all”

is by Emily Dickinson.  Anyone familiar with the original would see immediately that I had ripped her off, blatantly.  And badly, but give me a break, that’s just something I dashed off to prove a point.

The following two things, the most common of the completely false accusations I see, are not plagiarism:

Someone buying a copy of your book and then selling it is not plagiarism, it is reselling.  If they took a marker, blacked out your name, wrote their own in its place and then sold it, that would be plagiarism.  And stupid, that would also be really really stupid.  But just selling something they own is not a crime.

Someone sharing your Facebook/Myspace/Twitter posts is also not plagiarism, and frankly it blows my mind that anyone would think it is, but apparently a lot of people do think just that.  So, to clarify for those people... no.  If you post something in a public forum, and someone shares it in the same public forum with your name still on it, that is not any kind of plagiarism.  I'm sorry if you don’t like the opinion of your comment/status/tweet they may have added upon sharing it, but that does not make them plagiarists.  It might make them assholes, but last time I checked that's still legal in most states.

Plagiarism is a huge concern in any creative field, and every time someone throws the word where it doesn't apply, it only makes it more difficult for the actual offenses to be taken as seriously as they should be.  So, boys and girls, next time you want to accuse someone of something, make sure what you're accusing them of is what they're actually doing.

How I Art Good

I was asked this evening “how do you constantly take pretty pictures that don't look forced or awkward? HOW DO YOU ART SO GOOD?!?!”

Before I say anything else, I would like to commend the asker on her use of “art” as a verb. Because, really, it is. It’s an action, a process. The finished product is where it becomes a noun, but first you have to get there. You run a run. You jump a jump. And you art your art.

As to how I art so good, there are a lot of answers to that.  I hardly consider myself the be-all and end-all of models, but I am asked often enough for advice on the subject that I feel qualified to give some.  So here it is, with the hope that you, my dearly appreciated readers, will glean something useful from it.

1) WHAT YOU SEE VS. WHAT THERE IS

An average photo shoot will usually gross between 200 and 300 images.  Of those images, a maximum of 15 to 20 will usually see the light of Internet or publication day.  Yes.  Those are the numbers.  Less than 10% of the photos taken will be used.  Granted, a large number of unused images are permutations of the same shot, and maybe not bad in and of themselves, but a large number of those images very often are just bad, for whatever reason.  So keep in mind that, when you see a photo set posted by anyone, you are seeing only the absolute cream of the crop, not the entire body of the work.

2) YES, THEY ARE EDITED

Every photo you see is edited.  Sometimes a little.  Sometimes a lot.  At the very least, they are cropped to best flatter the subject and minor edits are done to correct color and lighting.  At the most, well, sometimes the light hit your face wrong and you suddenly had dark circles where a minute before you had perfect makeup.  Sometimes you had a lock of hair fall where you didn’t want it.  Sometimes your bra strap was twisted, or you had a lipstick smudge on your tooth or a piece of white thread on your black skirt.  Things happen, things are not always caught during the shoot, and these things are fixed later.

3) THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “NATURAL” POSE

The essence of good photography is rendering three-dimensional objects in a two-dimensional medium in such a way that the objects still appear three-dimensional.  In order for the end result to not look completely flat, the three-dimensional objects need to be exaggerated in some way.  In the case of still life photography, this is usually done with lighting.  In the case of models, it is done with a combination of lighting and posing.  A shot where the model looks like she’s just sitting daintily back on her heels with one hand on her knee?  You’re actually working your ass off.  Your butt is barely even touching your heels, your back is arched to what feels like a ridiculous degree, your shoulders are angled out in a way they never would be if you were just sitting around, and your hand feels like its auditioning to drink tea with Elizabeth II.  Oh, all the while holding your stomach in, pushing your boobs out, and remembering to smile.  And pointing your toes, don’t forget to point your toes.

If you were counting, that’s eight things to be aware of in that one single seemingly simple pose.  Which ties directly back to the “200-300 shots taken vs. 15-20 shots used” bit, because missing any one of those eight things can net you an unusable shot.  And how do you avoid missing them?

4) THE SAME WAY YOU GET TO CARNEGIE HALL

Practice, practice, practice.  And when you’re done practicing, practice some more.  Learn the basics, and accept that once you’ve learned them, you’re not done.  I’ve been doing this on and off for almost 25 years, and I still practice poses and expressions when I’m not shooting.  That practice falls into two categories, planned and spontaneous.  Planned practice is usually right before a shoot, when wardrobe, hair, and makeup are taken into account for the specific needs of the day; twisting in front of the mirror to see how I can get the best angles for my body based on what I’m wearing, trying out my usual expressions and adjusting them according to how natural or extreme my makeup is, figuring out how to hold and not hold my head based on my hair, etc.  Spontaneous happens when it happens.  If I’m doing laundry, and I walk by a mirror and see an angle I like, I’ll back up and recreate it, analyze it, create a physical memory of what my head and arms and hips were doing at that moment, so I can put it in front of the camera when I need it.  If I’m brushing my teeth and notice the light hitting my face in a particularly flattering way, I’ll memorize that.  This isn’t narcissism.  This isn’t you stopping dead in front of every reflective surface you pass to gaze in awe and wonder at your own magnificence.  This is just being aware of yourself as a physical presence, and is part of the work that goes into looking like you’re not working when you’re in front of a camera.

5) LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES

There are some things that just do not work for some people.  There are some things that only work for some people to a certain degree, and no further.  I can not wink in a photo to save my soul.  I think I have one semi-decent winking shot in my entire portfolio, and even that I’m not crazy about, I just take other peoples’ words that it looks okay.  I can’t wear purple lipstick.  My shoulders and jaw are broad enough that being shot from too far below just makes me look like I should be wearing pinstriped suits and breaking kneecaps.  My eyes are light enough that if I go too far with the wide-eyed cutesy thing, the resulting image would make you think I’d just been bitten on the ass by a rabid parakeet.  And when you consider how difficult it is for avian species to contract rabies, you know just how bad those pictures are.

So, much as it may make you cringe, look closely at the pictures you hate, and figure out why you hate them, and what you can do differently next time.  And make sure there are as many next times as possible, even if it’s just you and a friend and a phone with a semi-decent camera built in, even if no one but the two of you ever see the results.  It’s like any other skill; the more you use it, the better you’ll get.

Art your art often to art your art good.

The Avenging Dark Chocolate Bacon Scourge Bundt of Doom

As many of you know, November 15 is National Bundt Cake Day.  Last year, I participated in an online roundup put together by a food blogger who then turned around and did something I find not only completely uncool and unforgivable, but also not at all in keeping with the spirit of something as fun and frivolous as the celebration of Bundt.

Seriously.  It’s a day dedicated to cake.  We’re not curing cancer here.  We’re not engaged in a particularly noble pursuit with lasting benefits to all mankind.  We’re just baking some fucking cakes.

So the bad taste left over from last year’s NBCD celebration, combined with the fact that apparently I don’t get to see any damn hockey this year, put me in rather a more violent mood than is my usual when I’m about to make a cake.  I didn’t want anything light, or fluffy, or fruity or delicate or anything that indicated in any way whatsoever that a nice person had baked it.  I wanted a cake I could kill someone with if I had to.  I wanted this year’s Bundt offering to both wipe out the distaste of last year’s, and provide at least some of the emotional satisfaction I usually get from watching large sweaty men on skates beating the crap out of each other twice a week during the winter months.

This year’s Bundt was all about blood, bruises, and vengeance.  And chocolate.

And bacon.

The Avenging Dark Chocolate Bacon Scourge Bundt of Doom

6 strips bacon

1 cup butter

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

3/4 cup hot water

1/2 tsp instant espresso OR 1 packet Starbucks Via Italian Roast

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar, packed

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups all purpose flour

The Players

Preheat oven to 350.

Cook bacon on medium high until crisp.  Remove bacon from pan and set aside to cool on paper towels.  Strain fat through a paper towel or coffee filter (you should have about 1/4 cup) into a medium saucepan.  Add butter and chocolate chips, melt over low heat until smooth.  Set aside to cool.

That's what chocolate, butter, and bacon fat look like.  I would bathe in that if I had a big enough saucepan.

Dissolve instant espresso or Via in hot water.  Set aside to cool.

In a large mixing bowl, combine brown sugar and eggs.  Mix on low until smooth and slightly foamy, about 1 minute.

Mmm, smooth & slightly foamy...

Add vanilla, salt, baking soda, and coffee mixture, and stir until smooth.  Sift cocoa powder and flour into bowl, stir until danger of mixer causing huge cloud of flour and cocoa powder has passed, then mix on low for 1 minute.

Check butter/chocolate mixture.  It should be merely warmish by now.  Add to bowl, and mix on low until smooth.

Pure Evil.  This is a bowl of pure evil.  Right here.

Retrieve 4 of your 6 strips of bacon, crumble them finely, and stir them into the cake batter.  Pour batter into a greased Bundt pan and bake for 45 minutes.  Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto plate and allow to cool while you make the glaze.

And this is what pure evil looks like after 45 minutes at 350.

Glaze

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

2 tbsp light corn syrup

1 tbsp milk

Combine chocolate chips and corn syrup in a small saucepan and melt over medium-low heat.  Remove pan from heat, add milk and stir until smooth.

Drizzle over cake while both are still warm.  Retrieve remaining two strips of bacon and crumble them over the glaze.

Yep.  That's what I did.

Eat cake.  Make no attempt to restrain sinister laughter while doing so.  List enemies and plot revenge.  Wish you could eat a second piece of cake.  Which you can’t.  Because, seriously, this thing almost killed me.  It is that evil.

The 12 Worst Movies I’ve Ever Seen

The other day, I commented on Facebook that I did not like Blade Runner.  This surprised a lot of people, particularly when I went on to say that I would rank it among the 10 worst movies I’ve ever seen, and possibly in the bottom 5.  Which got me thinking about other terrible movies I’ve seen.  Which brings us to today.  It was going to be a list of 10, but I just kept thinking of more.

Before I proceed with the countdown, I would like to say two things.  First, I have learned over the years to differentiate, as much as possible, between movies I don’t like and movies I consider bad.  For example, I did not like Snatch, at all, even a little, but I can look at it for what it was and say that, despite my personal feelings about it, it was a good movie.  I hate capers, but I can still appreciate the effort behind a well-prepared Chicken Piccata.  I just won’t eat it.

Second, there are few things in this world so bad that I can’t find at least one nice thing to say about them.  So I will make every effort to find at least one point of redemption in each of these movies.

And now, to the countdown.

#12 – Session 9

There is a place for subtlety in horror, and a time to let the viewer’s imagination take them places no visual ever could.  However, when your attempt at subtlety drops to the level of being nothing more than the movie equivalent of dead air, and your attempt to nudge the viewer’s imagination in s specific direction just makes absolutely no fucking sense, and you realize these things three-quarters of the way through and suddenly try to make up for them by beating the audience over the head with all the things you were previously only hinting at, you end up with a movie like Session 9.

Point of redemption: David Caruso

#11 – Pulp Fiction

Draping a series of random violent events and catchy dialog over a loosely-built framework of coincidence and casting Samuel L. Jackson as the motherfuckingest motherfucker any fucker ever mothered does not make a great movie.  It makes a movie that people talk about, and quote a lot, and feel very badass for so doing.

Points of redemption: Uma Thurman is always nice to look at, and the soundtrack was good.

#10 – One for the Money

Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series is one of my most treasured guilty pleasures, and there are so many things that pissed me off about this movie I hardly know where to begin listing them.  The original book was an almost perfect balance of really scary stuff and really funny stuff.  The movie managed to straddle both of those things and completely fail to capture either.  It also broke what I consider a cardinal rule of moviemaking: I don’t care if you’re filming Star Wars 7: It’s the Great Baby Jesus in Oz, Charlie Brown!, you never use the assumption of audience familiarity with the original source material as an excuse to leave out large chunks of crucial plot and character development.  The people who are not familiar with the source material are going to be lost in the overwhelming WTF of it all, and the people who are will view even the slightest deviation from the original as a betrayal.  Oh, and then they cast an Irishman as Joe Morelli, the quintessential Italian cop from Jersey.

Point of redemption: Considering what she was given to work with, Katherine Heigl was very good as Stephanie.

#9 – Blade Runner

Yes, I know.  This is considered one of the best movies ever made.  Which is why I felt compelled to detail on my original Facebook post the reasons for my dislike of it.  I thought the music was atrocious, disjointed and completely unsuited to scenes it was backing, but not so incongruous that the juxtaposition would actually add another layer to the action and emotion of those scenes, and it was bad enough to distract from any other redeeming qualities. I found Harrison Ford's character completely unbelievable as the one guy who was so good that he had to be forcibly recalled to active duty, and I also found Ford's performance to be surprisingly lacking. I always have a problem with the "I've only met you twice but I love you" plot device.  The dialog at times bordered on ridiculous.  Nothing about the character of Leon made the slightest bit of sense to me.  And I’m sorry, apparently this is considered an incredibly moving piece of cinematic history, but when Rutger Hauer came out with that “all those moments will be lost in time, like tears... in rain” line, I actually laughed out loud, it was so completely over the melodramatic top.

Points of redemption: Sean Young’s performance was exemplary, and Rutger Hauer was running around in shorts.

#8 – The Terror

I probably would have ranked this one much lower if not for one thing; when you see the name Boris Karloff, your expectations are automatically adjusted.  Even taking that into consideration, though, this movie was just awful from beginning to end.

Point of redemption: The very young and very pretty Jack Nicholson.

#7 – Hudson Hawk

Camp is good thing.  Over-the-top ridiculousness is another good thing.  Those two when well combined are a third good thing.  Those first two when not well combined, but when backed by some big names and a substantial budget, are a fourth thing, an engraved invitation to crash and burn in a spectacular flame of failure.  I wanted to like this movie.  I tried.  I failed at liking it just as much as they failed at making it likable.

Point of redemption: The soundtrack.

#6 – Cool World

Another movie I really wanted to like.  Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt are each strong enough on their own to salvage just about any salvageable movie.  When you have both of them, and still manage to produce an unmitigated shitpile, that is the sign of a project that was just fundamentally broken from the get-go.  And to all the supporters of this movie who insist that the critics just don’t “get” what they were doing, I “get” it just fine.  They just did it very badly, with the “OMG huge coincidence heretofore unmentioned or even hinted at as a possibility but that solves everything in favor of the good guys!” ending being the rancid cherry atop this truly abominable cupcake.

Point of redemption: Gabriel Byrne, Gabriel Byrne, and yet more Gabriel Byrne.

#5 – Waterworld

A classic case of budget poisoning.  Contrary to what people with lots of money to throw around seem to think, high production values can not and will not make up for a bad story, bad dialog, and Kevin Costner.

Point of redemption: Nobody does big and loud and crazy like Dennis Hopper.

#4 – Showgirls

I know.  I could just stop typing and go back to pretending I didn’t actually pay real money to see this in a theatre because you already know how bad this movie is.  But when it first came out, we didn’t know that yet.  There was a chance that it would be what it claimed to be, a raw edgy look at the grot behind the glam in Vegas.  We know better now.  Oh yes.  We know better now.

Point of redemption: Kyle MacLachlan is awesome.  Not in this movie, particularly, just in general.

#3 – Scared to Death

This was almost so bad it was good.  It stopped about 12 feet short of that crucial turning point, and ended up just being terrible.  Really really really terrible.  And not because they were at all shy about throwing more crap into the mix in the hope that something might actually work.  They had Bela Lugosi.  They had Mysterious Strangers with even more mysteriouser pasts.  They had dancers.  They had a deaf/mute little person who communicated primarily by kicking people in the ankle.  They had phantom reflections in conveniently moonlit windows. They had, in the midst of what was supposed to be an incredibly tense and dramatic situation, an idiot cop with chronic foot-in-mouth, in love with a maid who wanted nothing to do with him.  And they had a corpse narrating the whole thing.  But not narrating for the sake of imparting any useful information, just stating clearly what the next five minutes of action would show, right before they showed it all.

Point of redemption: The last spoken words in the movie were the title of the movie.  I guess they get cheeseball points for that.

#2 – Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama

I know what you’re thinking.  “With a title like that, what did you expect?”  I’ll tell you exactly what I expected.  I expected this to be so incredibly bad it would loop around and become awesome.  I expected over-the-top silliness with lots of fake blood and hot chicks in skimpy outfits saying ridiculous things, I expected expendable characters to be expended with great dispatch and the “good” guys to triumph, I expected a terrifically bad movie.  What I got was just plain bad, and if there is any decency and justice in this world, the people who made this movie will relinquish any rights they may have to that title, and give it to someone who will make Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama what it should have been.

Point of redemption: Nothing.  I’m sorry, I’ve got nothing.  The hot chicks weren’t even that hot.

#1 – Swamp Thing

I should qualify my listing of this as the worst movie I’ve ever seen, because I actually haven’t seen the whole thing.  It is the only movie I have ever paid money to see and walked out of 30 minutes in because it was so bad I literally could not watch another minute of it.  32 minutes in, it may have become amazing.  I don’t know.  Somehow, I doubt it.

Point of redemption: TBD