I want a girl with shoes that cut and eyes that burn like cigarettes

When I first started this blog I posted evidence that I am a sexy man here, here, here, and here . Now I have one more line of evidence to suggest that. Last night I went to my first model shoot. I have a friend who works as a model, and a few weeks ago I told her that I liked a lot of her pictures and that I thought it would be cool to get someone to do some of me, so she invited me to come along to a shoot and said that she'd ask to see if they wouldn't mind snapping a few of me while they were at it.

She sent me an email with the directions, and said that she was going to get there around 6 for makeup and hair so if I showed up around 8 she should be ready. I got there a little early, so hung out in the art gallery downstairs where a guy had a bunch of screen shots of old Nintendo and Atari 2600 games. It was a really cool idea. With all the negative stuff in the world, it was kind of refreshing to see a giant picture of Mario jumping on a turtle, or of Link obtaining the TriForce.

After talking with the guy that shot those pictures for a while I went upstairs to where the model shoot was. My friend wasn't quite finished getting her makeup done, but she looked like some kind of Japanese warrior. It was cool. She had no idea what they were doing to her, and had just seen it for the first time when I walked in. She turned away from the mirror, saw me, and about jumped out of her chair because of how unexpected it was to see her face like that, then turn around and have me see her face like that. You probably had to be there for it, but it was funny.

I stood there and talked to her while they finished her makeup and started doing her hair. There were other models getting ready for their shoots at the same time, and it was a little strange to be talking and all of a sudden turn around to see a beautiful girl changing her clothes in the middle of the room. I'm certainly not complaining, it's just not something I see every day.

There were several galleries where the models could go get their shots taken, and when my friend was ready she and the photographer went and found one. It was interesting to see her pose. It was like she flipped a switch and morphed into a different person with each pose. After a while she came up and told me it was my turn. I posed for a few shots, but felt ridiculous the whole time. I don't know how people can do that and keep a straight face the entire time, because I probably ruined every shot by moving, or smiling and laughing when I wasn't supposed to. Hopefully there were enough in there that at least one of them will turn out good.

I spent most of the night standing there talking to my friend and her fiancée, or watching her pose for more pictures. She introduced me to a bunch of the other models, but one of them came up and introduced herself to me. We only talked for a few minutes, but she was definitely the hottest one there. I'm sure she was just being nice, but hey, a guy can dream can't he?

I am a sexy man

A few months ago I was working alone in the lab one afternoon when there was a knock on the door. I answered it, and standing there was the chair of my department along with three other people that I didn't recognize. He introduced them to me as people from the public relations department here on campus, and told me that they were going around trying to get pictures of people in our department doing research. I was actually getting ready to leave the lab at that point, but I had to wait another five minutes or so for some stuff to cool enough to place into the cooler. Since I was the only one working in the lab at that point, I couldn't really pawn them off on someone else (plus it looks bad if your department chair asks you for a favor and you flat out say no) so I decided that I would oblige them in their quest. They asked me what I was working on right then, and if they could take pictures of me doing that. I told them I was waiting for a gel to cool and that was about it, so they asked me if I could fake something while they took a picture. I thought that would be a waste of time to just act like I was working, so I looked around to see if there was anything I could do rather quickly. That would allow them to get their pictures, yet also allow me to leave the lab shortly thereafter (I didn't want to try starting a DNA extraction or something that would take another hour or so). After glancing around, I saw a jar of fish on my lab bench that still needed to be assigned museum numbers. There were only 10 fish in the jar, so I knew that I could tag them in a matter of minutes, get something accomplished that actually needed to be done (rather than faking work), and they would get their picture.

Little did I know how much time and effort goes into a photo shoot. Even an impromptu one such as this ended up taking more than a half hour. First of all, there was the matter of setting up some kind of lighting. Then we had to rearrange a bunch of things in the lab so that they could get their pictures from the proper angles. It was about all I could do not to just crack up at how ridiculous the whole situation was. I felt like some kind of model. I would grab a fish to tag, and the photographer would call out things such as:

"Oh, hold that fish right there. Perfect."

"Drop that fish and pick it up again, except this time tilt your head a bit more to the left."

"Ok, now do that again, except this time try not to smile. We want you to look serious."

On and on it went. I swear they took about 50 pictures of me, then wrote down my name, the fact that I was a Ph D student, and a few other things about me. They told me that they might be including these pictures in a university publication at some point, but if they did they would come get me to sign a form giving them permission to do so. I never did hear back (or sign a form) but the picture above came out in the latest issue of the University's magazine. Now I'm a star.

A few weeks after the 'photo shoot' a friend of mine printed up my star chart. She knows a guy who is supposed to be really good at interpreting these things, and a group of us were going to meet with him and have him interpret ours. If you don't know, a star chart is supposed to tell you stuff about yourself based on the positions of heavenly bodies at the exact time of your birth (for the record, I don't believe in astrology, but it is kind of fun to read horoscopes and stuff like that). My star chart includes about two pages worth of things about me, my favorite of which is "you protray an earthy, physical sexiness that others find quite seductive."

These two lines of evidence may not be enough to prove that I am a sexy man (surely having your photo published in a magazine is a sign of sexiness), but the evidence is mounting.