Category Archives: modeling

Don’t Call Me. I’ll Call You…Back.

Posted by taylorharris330 in Acting, FAIL, modeling and tagged with , , ,

Oh schnap. We got a callback from last week’s audition.

Getting the news was sort of like getting baptized again—only this time the water was warm and I wasn’t wearing white underwear.

As the good book sayeth, “He hath opened the heavens and rained down blessings upon the Umble.”

The Hebrew word for blessings literally means: “opportunites to star in very local commercials.”

And the English meaning for “umble” is simply “humble.” Ahh, the good Lord giveth the H and the good Lord taketh the H away.

But this post isn’t about theology; it’s about awesome acting.

When we walked into the audition site, we were forced to do that whole meet-and-greet thing. You know, pretend like we weren’t sizing each other up. I tried to keep my compliments simple but exciting and truthful. Like “Oh, little Bobby has boisterous ears!” and “That Victoria has the sweet eyes of a sick kitten.” And when all else failed, I went with something poignantly bland: “Oh, would you look at those feet in those shoes!”

But after 90 minutes of waiting at the audition site, even Elie Mae was over it. She had eaten all the peach-flavored puffs her belly could handle, and when the other kids decided to watch Winnie the Pooh, she was all, “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

Then they called us. I grabbed Eliot with one hand, straightened my mom jeans with the other, and hoped my eyebrows weren’t touching in the middle. This was going to be a good day.

We stepped into the back room, and it was all hot and schweaty.

I sat down with Eliot in a wicker chair, facing all the big guns. And it went a little something like this:

DIRECTOR: “Taylor, you are over it. You are tired of being on this plane.”

ME: #FAIL. #DON’TQUITDAYJOB. #SOMEONECALLHERMANCAIN.

DIRECTOR: “Let’s try it again. And this time, Taylor, you are almost catatonic.”

ME: This hurts me more than it hurts you, BET–I pretended I was watching “The Game.” I think I was perfect, because soon after, they let me leave.

Some people might celebrate a callback by going back to work. But Me and Elie Mae? Nahhh, shun. We grabbed us some beef patties and coco bread. We prefer the kind where the grease soaks through the brown paper bag, which is why we never watch Dr. Oz. But on the way home, we got back to business. We practiced our skills just in case we book the commercial.

Watch a video of our improv acting exercise, “The Man,” below.

No Take Five. Take Me Home.

Posted by taylorharris330 in Acting, modeling and tagged with , , ,

DISCLAIMER: I did not sign up for this. Do I look like Sharon Leal to you? No, I don’t act. I took DRAMA 101 because I heard it was a gut.

A few months ago, I told you about my trip with Eliot to a New York modeling agency.  That mission was a FAIL, probably because my leggings were too tight. I’m almost sure the way my calf fat suckled when I sat stole Eliot’s chance at a H&M photo shoot. Oh, schnap.

So the other day I got a call from another agency. They had a client interested in Eliot’s photo. Cool.

All I needed to do was send in a picture of baby and mom together.

Say whaaaaaaa….?

I wanted to shout through the phone, “Didn’t you talk to your NYC colleagues? Check your sources, lady! I have calf fat!”

Instead, I sent the picture by close of business. Eliot looks smashing in the photo, but my front teeth look scarily flat, almost inverted.

Certain that I had yet ruined another chance for Eliot, I ate a bagel.

But then the unthinkable happened. I got a second call. They liked the picture and wanted us–as in US–to audition for a commercial.

I did what any responsible, carb-loving mother would do. I grabbed two slices of pizza and hit the road.

When we got there, they called us back to a room. “So, have you seen the storyboards?” The Guy asked.

Whaaaaa?

“Okay, so the setting is we’re on an airplane. I’ll pretend to be someone, and you react to what I say as though you’re a passenger.”

I smile, my teeth now so flat they are against the roof of my mouth, like palate expanders. I’m sure I have a ring of sweat and heat bumps from my cowl-neck sweater. Acting makes me schweaty. So here’s how the audition went down:

THE GUY AS A FLIGHT ATTENDANT: “Please settle into your cramped seats on the plane and prepare for a long flight…”

ME BEING A NON-ACTOR: Think African-American deer in headlights of Mac truck with a Confederate Flag bumper sticker on a highway in West Virginia. [Eliot follows my lead. She totally knows my stars and bars face.]

THE GUY AS A HEROIC FELLOW PASSENGER: “Now who wants to get off this plane and come with me on vacation? Come on, let’s go!”

ME ADAPTING LIKE A DEAD CHAMELEON: I smile like Roberto Boucher at the end of Bobby’s wedding in The Waterboy. I smile at the camera, then at Eliot, and we walk off the fake plane.

THE GUY says, “You struck a nice balance.” I think he means between Herman Cain and Bambi. I’m okay with this.

As we leave, I say, “Eliot, I love you, but you’re gonna have to start pulling your own weight. My Drama 101 is only gonna carry us so far.”

Then I stop and apologize. I look at her feet. Her tiny but pudgy feet cramped into some Old Navy faux-leather boots I bought in a rush to complete her faux-airplane look. They are one size too small. I’m hoping there is still time. That they haven’t already given her hammer toes.

Elie Mae wants you to see her in her boots.

Begging me to withdraw the boots from her feet.

Once I removed the boots, I got this:

Post-Boot Smile

It looks like I should leave the Roberto Boucher smiles to the one and only Elie Mae.


No Toddlers and Tiaras Here

Posted by taylorharris330 in modeling

So I have a confession.

I took Elie Mae to a modeling agency. In New York. While wearing black.

You see, I had this notion that just because I was entering an agency, they would look at me before judging

Eliot. So I wore all black and tried to suck in my cheeks. I kind of puckered my lips when they called her name and gave them my best pouty eyes. I wanted this bad. The other girls are good, but they don’t deserve it as much as I—

Wait a minute. We were there for Eliot. Still, I couldn’t help thinking all those “Top Model” TV marathons would come in handy. I had to make Miss J proud.

Eliot wore black stretchy pants and an overpriced halter from Carter’s. And a splattering of baby oil on her head in a (failed) attempt to tame her burgeoning fro-hawk.

Did I mention my husband was there? He did the whole casual polo look, like, “Oh, hey? I’m in a modeling agency? I was looking for Chipotle. Sorry to bother you.”

Anyway, after giving Eliot’s small college fund to the man who claimed he owned a parking garage, we walked to the New Yorker Hotel. As we stepped off the elevator, I saw a line of women and their babies. Then I did what no mother should ever do. Or at least admit to doing on a blog that IS READ BY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE EVERYWHERE:

I judged the babies. Yes, punish me. Make me do what no black person has done before: order a rare steak.

I assigned them numbers in my head. (Was it in my head?) It was like, “You over there, yes, you. Multiethnic girl with a dimple and cute shoes. 8.5.” And I moved on without guilt. Like, “African-American-slash-Black boy with small fro at 9 o’clock. You have swagger. 9.” Then it was, “Androgynous baby in overalls. 5 and ¾.”

And so on.

Don’t get it twisted. The other moms were doing it, too. “Oh, she’s so cute!” they said about Eliot. But then one bent down and a guy standing behind her shot tranquilizer darts at us from his mouth.

Finally it was our moment. A skinny girl wearing these boot-slash-sandals that I’m sure are trendy and, therefore, not sold in Ohio, called Eliot’s name.

She said, “Hello,” as in, “Just because you’re breathing doesn’t mean I have to care.”

We walked into half of a room. Literally. I kept waiting for the two ladies “interviewing” Eliot to say, “Just kidding! We wouldn’t conduct an appointment in this shoebox! Come with us.”

And there were other doors. It’s not that they were struggling for cash and could only rent a coat closet. My theory is that behind those doors are mechanical babies bred solely for Huggies campaigns. They don’t even poop in color like real babies.

Maybe I’m saying that because the agency didn’t pick Eliot. They didn’t even ask her any questions. They looked at our information sheet and said, “Well, you live in Virginia, and we don’t like to take babies out of the tri-state area.”

[Cricket. Why are we here, then? Cricket. Why did you accept her pictures and ask us to come?]

Instead, I did the whole over-eager parent thing. “Oh, yes, I know. But you should see how fast an Amtrak train goes these days. And she just loves the train. Right, Elie? What sound does the train make?”

But they weren’t impressed by Eliot’s train whistle because their mechanical babies lying in cribs behind the trap door can speak 3 languages and know some Mandarin Chinese.

I sensed defeat. I grabbed Eliot and turned my back on that skinny girl wearing Jesus’ winter sandals. Who takes a job where you have to stare down smiling babies until they whimper like a tasered cat in need of a root canal, anyway?

In the end, we won. We got our car back. Not one of those minivans with the strange chalk outlines of our family on the window. Just a regular old Honda. And we headed back to the ‘burbs, a place that has something NYC will never have: Crocs.