Cool

A post over at OhForFun jogged a memory, and I thought I ought to post this instead of cluttering up her comment space.

I was hired once to do a commercial for air conditioners, and we were "playing" the 4 Seasons. It was in my Tokyo days and I was asked to bring as many multi-cultural girl friends as I could drum up for $350 each. I told them up front they were being hired for their race and hotttness, and nobody said no. None of them played for real, and some of the instruments were lacking a string or two: it was hilarious.

Non-string players do the funniest stuff when they give the instrument a shot. Mostly there are lots of locked and swinging shoulders (think Thriller!) which results in the Cinderella sweeper bow maneuver: picture the motion of a scythe across the strings and you're halfway there. They also tend to go kind of cross-eyed while trying to keep that wily bow on the strings. Usually the viola-side elbow gets propped somewhere twisty on the torso, which makes their spine instantly shoot out backwards at an angle like that dude Igor in Young Frankenstein. I know it's mean, but come on, it's funny. I've found that most people can tell right off the bat if somebody in Hollywood is faking it, so that's always nice to know.

Anyway, my friends totally dug their 1.5 seconds of fame and as I remember since we were all professionally made up and young, we went out on the town that night. The finished ad involved lots of slow-mo and wide angle shots of a whole bunch of instruments with a soupy-sounding desecration of the already trampled Vivaldi piped in. We each had our split second of stardom- I swear it was at least as artistically fulfilling as a Bond CD.

I swear I would have traded the whole paycheck for a tape of that thing, but sadly for the whole internets, one never did materialize.