Today’s soundtrack: I feel a little bit cheaper than I need to
Today at 6:32pm: in an empty café, reading a book about Bruce Lee



I get to Brooklyn by 5:30pm. My new thing is to be on time, or early. Decided I’d rather be thirty minutes early than thirty seconds late.

The minutehand is facing due south, and our meeting isn’t until it hits due north. With thirty minutes to kill, I park my ass in a café and suck down some horrible, horrible ice coffee.

Williamsburg, man. In my opinion, hipster neighborhoods always have shitty coffee while working-class districts have the good shit. And by good shit I mean good ol’ blue-collar Maxwell House or Café Bustelo, not that fucking frou-frou Starbucks-Timothy’s art-coffee shit. I don’t give a fuck if it’s from Sumatra; I want the shit they serve in god-honest diners and damn your Kenyan Vanilla Roast.


Today’s mission is Wardrobing for the Movie Talkers project. Director Woman a/k/a Juyoung asked me to show up in Williamsburg at 6pm, at which point I’d meet the Art Director and we’d all go to some thrift store so they could suit me up. The following day there will be a photo shoot for the promos. JuYoung apparently has some outrageous costumes in mind.

I get to the corner of Bedford Avenue and North 7th at 6pm on the dot, and find JuYoung standing with a tall, handsome actor-type. Korean by the looks of him, but I later find out he’s Chinese.

“This is Derek,” says JuYoung, introducing us. “He’ll be replacing Jackson.”

“Ah, what happened?” I ask, shaking Derek’s hand.

“Jackson got the callback for The Sopranos,” explains JuYoung.

“I actually went out for that part too,” says Derek. “But I knew I wasn’t gonna get it. The part is for a pothead, and I’m kind of, well, you know...”

“Clean-cut?” I say, grinning, and he nods. As far as Derek’s actor-ly good looks, Banana Republic catalog, yes; drug-addled Rastafarian, no.


We head to some ridiculously hip little boutique filled with old, funky clothes that smell like relatives you abhorred as children. Waiting for us there is Chaeyo, the fashionable young woman who’s the Art Director for the production.

Chaeyo’s picked out some outfits for us to try on, and my heart sinks when I see what they’ve got for me: It’s a fucking dress, dude. Well not really a full dress, it’s more like a long, flowing white overcoat, but it is unmistakably women’s clothing, with a Princess-waist or whatever the hell you call it.

I put the damn thing on anyway because hey, I’m not the director, this is her project and just because I can’t comprehend what she’s going for doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. I look absolutely ridiculous but I model it for them gamely, and thankfully they both agree it looks wayyyyyy too femme.

Derek has it even worse: They tell him he’ll be appearing on stage shirtless, with body paint. Derek blanches at this, pulling his shirt up and checking out his flat but featureless stomach. “Dammit, I’m gonna have to hit the gym harder and produce that six-pack,” he says. “I didn’t know I’d have to be shirtless.”


Next we head over to an even larger boutique, positively warehouse-sized, and it looks like a relief mission for Afghanistan, if everyone in Afghanistan wore secondhand hipster-wear.

JuYoung and Chaeyo spend the better part of thirty minutes picking out potential outfits for us. The four of us head into the fitting room area with a shitload of clothes and I find myself undressing in front of these two women and this male actor guy I’ve just met. Well, whatever. Good thing my boxers are clean.

It gets worse when I see the clothes they want me to wear--they put me in a succession of women’s fucking blouses, some of them sheer for fuck’s sake, and tight, white pants. Then tight, black leather pants. I have to bite my tongue to keep from protesting.

The worst part about thrift clothing is the smell. They always smell like their previous owners. One top I had to put on was made out of a sheer black material and stupid tight. My nipples were sticking out and I smelled like a cheap hooker. I would’ve much preferred to smell like an expensive hooker.


They ultimately settled on a flaming orange Betsey Johnson women’s shirt for me, don’t fucking ask me why. Even worse, the shirt actually appears to be made out of, get this, plastic. I started sweating just looking at it, and putting it on feels like being wrapped in Saran Wrap.

I’m also being suited up in a flourescent-green felt vest.

During the whole try-on procedure I took pictures of each and every outfit because I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I was going to post these pictures up to give you all a little laugh, but having had some experience with cyber-haters I’ve decided this is a bad idea. Embarassing pictures, strangers who hate you and the internet is a bad combination.


Derek got to wear some cool shit, this grey smoking-jacket type-thing, but they ended up putting him in a white leather vest and nothing underneath. We took turns laughing at each other.

The director and the art director are both from Korea so their aesthetic sensibility is different. This immigrant vs. aesthetics theorem was proven to me at a young age, when my mother would occasionally put me in clothing that other kids on the playground felt should be broken in with fists.

Well, whaddaya gonna do. I said yes to the project, and the way I see it everything is the director’s call; I’m just here to help out.


When I got home I took a strong shower, then changed into clean, nondescript brown clothing and felt much, much better.