Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Spencer Tunick
Last week Mizzy and I, along with 100+ other folks, shared a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We posed nude, in the amazing rock canyon just up from our house, for world-famous artist Spencer Tunick. What an adventure!
We prepared for the event by covering one another, head to toe, with sunscreen and as requested, dressed for quick disrobing - sans underwear. Ironically, however, the moment we all got down to the area where we were supposed to pose, and just before we disrobed, we were drenched by a sudden thunderstorm, postponing the shoot by nearly one cold, wet, miserable hour. When the sun finally re-emerged, I can tell you, being unclothed never felt so good. Of course, we then faced the challenge of clambering, naked and barefoot, over huge boulders, and trying to avoid thousands of hidden cacti, to get to the places this artistic madman wanted us to occupy. At one point he asked us men to lie down in a field of small barrel cacti, posed so that the cacti shielded our genitals, making it look, I guess, like we all had thorny green boners. When I got up, I found three clusters of thorns embedded in my back and butt cheeks. (The red rashes are just now starting to disappear.) And to add insult to injury, for the final shot of the day, he asked me and two other gringo guys to step aside because he thought our skin was too white! Ah well... It was still a great experience to have shared with a bunch of our closest friends. In fact, our friend Mary's niece, who was visiting from Charleston, celebrated her 34th birthday naked on the rocks with the rest of us. And what a trooper Mary was, just a few days shy of another chemo treatment, she was climbing up and down the rock formations, with a "Fuck you, cancer" look of determination on her face. A wonderful memory!
If you're not too squeamish, you can view a short video Spencer created of the shoot for our recent San Miguel TEDx conference. If you look closely, at about the 2:15 mark, you can see Mizzy featured in the bottom-center of the frame hugging a lady she'd just met for the first time.
Epilog: Saturday evening, after the TEDx conference, we headed over to Café Rama, our favorite San Miguel restaurant, for mescal and tapas. A new waitress approached us from behind and asked for our order. As Karen turned around and looked up, their eyes widened and both let out a little yelp. You guessed it. She was the "stranger" Karen had shared a nude embrace with just days before.
We prepared for the event by covering one another, head to toe, with sunscreen and as requested, dressed for quick disrobing - sans underwear. Ironically, however, the moment we all got down to the area where we were supposed to pose, and just before we disrobed, we were drenched by a sudden thunderstorm, postponing the shoot by nearly one cold, wet, miserable hour. When the sun finally re-emerged, I can tell you, being unclothed never felt so good. Of course, we then faced the challenge of clambering, naked and barefoot, over huge boulders, and trying to avoid thousands of hidden cacti, to get to the places this artistic madman wanted us to occupy. At one point he asked us men to lie down in a field of small barrel cacti, posed so that the cacti shielded our genitals, making it look, I guess, like we all had thorny green boners. When I got up, I found three clusters of thorns embedded in my back and butt cheeks. (The red rashes are just now starting to disappear.) And to add insult to injury, for the final shot of the day, he asked me and two other gringo guys to step aside because he thought our skin was too white! Ah well... It was still a great experience to have shared with a bunch of our closest friends. In fact, our friend Mary's niece, who was visiting from Charleston, celebrated her 34th birthday naked on the rocks with the rest of us. And what a trooper Mary was, just a few days shy of another chemo treatment, she was climbing up and down the rock formations, with a "Fuck you, cancer" look of determination on her face. A wonderful memory!
If you're not too squeamish, you can view a short video Spencer created of the shoot for our recent San Miguel TEDx conference. If you look closely, at about the 2:15 mark, you can see Mizzy featured in the bottom-center of the frame hugging a lady she'd just met for the first time.
Epilog: Saturday evening, after the TEDx conference, we headed over to Café Rama, our favorite San Miguel restaurant, for mescal and tapas. A new waitress approached us from behind and asked for our order. As Karen turned around and looked up, their eyes widened and both let out a little yelp. You guessed it. She was the "stranger" Karen had shared a nude embrace with just days before.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
To Our Female Friends...
...And Those Who Love them.
Yesterday we attended San Miguel's second TEDx event. For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept, TEDx events use the TED brand identity (Ideas Worth Spreading) and follow the general format of the large international TED conferences, but are independently organized and for the most part, are locally focused.
As you might expect, several of the presenters were less than captivating and the event was plagued by minor technical glitches, but overall we were really impressed and inspired. We heard from a man who does "transformational art," teaching kids in the poorest neighborhoods of Mexico City to create colorful caterpillars -- socks filled with soil and seeds, that when left out in the elements, sprout into living vegetable gardens. Another young guy discussed his efforts to bridge the huge digital divide in Mexico by setting up pre-fab computer centers in poor neighborhoods to provide access and training for local citizens. We heard from a lady trying to transform Mexico's huge, bureaucratic education system and from a passionate South African director who's making a film about ordinary citizens in Mexico's Sinaloa state who are are standing up to the drug cartels. The composer who created the soundtrack for the The Piano, Wonderland and a bunch of other films, spoke and played. And we watched a video made by Deepok Chopra specifically for this San Miguel conference.
But once again, as you might expect, the most riveting presentations were taped talks from previous international TED conferences, the best of which was delivered by the Chilean author Isabel Allende. If you haven't seen it already, I urge you to watch it here. And then pass it on to every young woman you know and love.
Yesterday we attended San Miguel's second TEDx event. For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept, TEDx events use the TED brand identity (Ideas Worth Spreading) and follow the general format of the large international TED conferences, but are independently organized and for the most part, are locally focused.
As you might expect, several of the presenters were less than captivating and the event was plagued by minor technical glitches, but overall we were really impressed and inspired. We heard from a man who does "transformational art," teaching kids in the poorest neighborhoods of Mexico City to create colorful caterpillars -- socks filled with soil and seeds, that when left out in the elements, sprout into living vegetable gardens. Another young guy discussed his efforts to bridge the huge digital divide in Mexico by setting up pre-fab computer centers in poor neighborhoods to provide access and training for local citizens. We heard from a lady trying to transform Mexico's huge, bureaucratic education system and from a passionate South African director who's making a film about ordinary citizens in Mexico's Sinaloa state who are are standing up to the drug cartels. The composer who created the soundtrack for the The Piano, Wonderland and a bunch of other films, spoke and played. And we watched a video made by Deepok Chopra specifically for this San Miguel conference.
But once again, as you might expect, the most riveting presentations were taped talks from previous international TED conferences, the best of which was delivered by the Chilean author Isabel Allende. If you haven't seen it already, I urge you to watch it here. And then pass it on to every young woman you know and love.
