Movie star

Here is a first for me: I was interviewed for a documentary on Friday.

First they painted my face to remove all the bad colors, and then they painted it again to put back the good colors. Then they put me in the center of a dark room with bright lights shining on my painted face and asked me to talk. Talk talk talk. Talk. I blathered on and on and on, lots of nonsense coming out of my mouth, feeling stupider and stupider until our time was finally up and I left, cringing somewhat over the blather that had come out of my mouth.

Out of an hour long interview, three 15 second clips may be used in the film. Good luck to them with that, I say.

You will have some questions at the end of this story.

1. What is the purpose of the documentary?

To encourage high school students to continue taking math. Specifically because math will make you brilliant, rich, and ultimately it will Save the World. Or at least keep our country ahead of the Chinese. Go Math! These were the sorts of things they were looking for as I blathered for an hour. On and on and on. But by half and hour in, I felt pretty fake. If I really wanted to influence a high school student, I would sit them down and ask them their interests and then explain various opportunities they could look into. Not pretend that I knew anything about what it takes to Save the World. And I'd say that even to a Chinese high school student. So there.

2. Given that attitude, why did they want you to be in the documentary in the first place?

No one told me why. They just told me to sign up for a slot on Friday. Intrigued, I signed up. But in retrospect, I can guess at their reasons. I think they are related to this post.

3. Wasn't that great getting a free makeover?

Yeah. I guess. I didn't actually look at the result until I was getting ready for bed that night, when I noticed that my cheeks ran straight up into my eyes. The makeup artist wanted to cover those dark blue patches under my eyes, you know? And I ended up with my cheeks terminating at the eyeballs. It was a bit of a shock.

I had to scrub my face to clean it off. Then scrub it again to really clean it off, trying to rub it out of my old lady pores. When I was done my face was all red in the nose and blue under the eyes -- back to normal. But worse, my skin felt really dry and tight and raw from the scrubbing, so I coated it in an overnight moisturizer. I conclude that although the makeup job disguised my flaws for the high definition movie, overall it was not a good thing for my skin. So I won't have it done regularly.

4. When can we see this awesome movie?

I have no idea. I don't know if I will want to see it. I mean, it's going to be high definition, right? Which means I'll get a really good view of my pores. Plus all that blather coming out of my mouth was truly embarrassing. And the 15 seconds they keep will sound more embarrassing on film, with a billion people watching. Since undoubtedly billions of people will want to watch a math infomercial for high school students.

5. Are you now considering a career in film making?

No. But now that you mention it, I think it would make a good addition to my list of 100 things to do before I die.

Number 79: Participate in a movie making project.
Status: Done.

I am totally smoking my way through that list. Awesome.