Agitarius | Day 55

Unwelcome Lamb Shanks On The Craft Services Table, And Illegal Offerings Of Grapes And Bagels

Friday, March 22nd (Moon in Libreto to Agitarius, 5:02 p.m.)

It is Friday, the mirror pool of weeklong trepidation! Reflect! Look back through your Slack messages: the congratulations from your vicarious, ignorantly blissful, child-free coworkers; the adulations for being a “forever home father” who’s adopting the “embrace of inclusivity” and “disrupting ethnocentric exemplars”. Look back through the flip book of memory at the other children in the studio and their roles in the photos and video footage for the grocery store advertising campaign: an Indian boy (aged eight years) dressed like a laboratory scientist, watching strawberries fall out of a colander in slow motion (18 takes, 120 fps); a Korean girl (age 12, whose adoptive Caucasian parents will appear at first to be a femme-dominant throuple but will turn out to be two separate infecund talent agents and one lonely, overcompensating father who will repeatedly announce how “Quinn usually works for scale,” and ask if the shoot is on “social media blackout” as he takes dozens of photographs of his daughter and the craft services table with his telephone) dressed like a baseball player with strips of eye black on her cheeks, tossing a soaking wet head of lettuce like a softball (23 takes, 240 fps); two Chinese boys (aged, at most, nine years) dressed like construction workers, each drinking from gallon jugs of oat milk as they flex the lumps of their avocado-sized biceps (1 take, 29.97 fps); a Muslim girl (aged 13 years) in a sport hijab, dressed as an ice hockey player, shooting a dark brown bran muffin into the camera with the blade of her stick (56 takes, 240 fps, until they run out of muffins and switch to a halved orange, facedown on the ice, 2 takes, 240 fps). Remember the felicitous faces of The Brothers, the marketing director, and the H_____r’s executives—glistening white, wet teeth shining in the 5,600 kelvin splash of the studio lights, lunging out from behind their joy-stretched mouths—as they watched the replays of each take on the video screens. Remember how quickly those teeth receded behind suddenly sphincter-tight balloon knot lips when Nestor’s Junior walked into the studio: a four-and-a-half-foot-tall gaucho enswathed in a wool poncho, bombachas, and a brand-new pair of especially resplendent horse boots. Ruminate on the pandemonium that ensued when you placed Nestor’s Junior’s cooler full of roasted lamb shanks on the craft services table, and the notable magenta hue of the marketing director’s bloodshot eyes when you told him your “son” is legally forbidden from being offered grapes or bagels. Cogitate on the level of physical violence involved in The Brothers’ response to being told that they were legally forbidden from asking Nestor’s Junior to doff his Patagonian prink and don the teal scrubs and stethoscope of a juvenile Mexican doctor spinning a loaf of ciabatta on his finger like a basketball (0 takes, 0 fps). Perpend the multitude of disharmonious, consonant-heavy attacks (f_ck, f_gg_t, c_ck__ck_r, cl_wn, w_k_, etc.) spewed by the H_____r’s executives, The Brothers, and the marketing director when you calmly explain to them that Nestor’s Junior is at least three quarters Scandinavian, was born in Mi___uri, and that his elected cultural identity is Argentinian. For now. Because he is six and likes your neighbors’ clothes. Your Kismet quotient is 1/60 (3 shots, ISO 400, f.2.8).

---