Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past. At least the things I can tell you..
We traveled all over the place. We, meaning fashion magazines and fashion shoots. Many times we went to places where foreigners were definitely not welcomed. A few places that I specifically remember are Guam, New Caledonia, and Tunisia.
Now, Guam is a bizarre place. It is pretty much cut in half. One half is the US military base. The other half is the indigenous people. Now, being on a fashion shoot, we all piled in the van and went to the indigenous people’s side. When we got there, oh man, the vibe was not good for us. We only stayed for a short time. Guam is a surreal place. Now a lot of Japanese honeymooners go there. On the main strip there’s all these signs of Japanese girls in bikinis with an M-16 on their hip. You can shoot an M-16 automatic assault rifle for a dollar a bullet. Totally normal right?
Oh, the other place was New Caledonia, (Nouméa). I think I told you this before, but I wanted to shoot on the beach, but the fashion editor insisted on shooting in the rain forest. Well, I didn’t argue. We all got in the location van and drove up to the rain forest. We got up into the mountains and were stopped by some Kanack rebels. They had a World War II 50 caliber machine gun trained on me. After I nervously told them what I was doing, we both agreed it would be best if I went back to the hotel with everyone else, of course.
Oh! and the last one was Tunisia. I told you already, I think, but everyone kept asking me if there were any American's on my crew. You see, I was shooting for Elle Québèc (Canadian Elle). Well, I was playing a video game at a bar with our driver. He stopped the game, looked at me, and looked at the game and looked at me again and said, and said, “Are you sure you’re not American? You kill everything like an American does.” I nervously said, “No mate! I’m from Australia.” Anyway, I’ve got lots of other stories. It’s sad we have to lie about where we come from, but that’s the way it is out there.
Next time I’ll tell you about my pleasant visit to Iran, South America, and, believe it or not, Canada, where they held me at Customs and made me write and essay about why I was a bad boy. That’s another story.
Talk to you next week. Love, B. Nice