Baby's on Fire

I did something a while ago which was completely out of my comfort zone. I saw that one of my favourite bands, Die Antwoord, was in the process of preparing to shoot a new music video and it had asked ladies (read: ZEF cherries) to send in head shots and body shots to appear in the video. I thought “what-the-hell”, had some photos taken of me and sent them in. Imagine my surprise when I received a callback and was asked to attend the casting…with my bikini in tow. The whole week I wavered between a sense of utter panic (at the thought of having to prance around to heavy techno-rave in my bikini) and a sense of hilarity (insofar as I hadn’t thought anything would come of it). On that fateful casting day in question, Ric drop-kicked me out of the house (following numerous stand-offs where he’d informed me that I was going to go to the casting and I’d told him to sod off).

The casting entailed motivating why you wanted to be in the music video, followed by a sequence of dancing to the (ZEF-rapper i.e. ZAPPER) song and a brief stint in front of the camera in your bikini. I thought it went pretty well but, of course, I had nothing to compare it to. I was told that I would hear from them on the Monday. I didn’t hear from them on the Monday. I didn’t hear from them on the Tuesday. On the Wednesday it finally sank in that I wasn’t going to hear from them. Queue: utter devastation and self-doubt…had I been too serious or too easy-going, was it because I didn’t swear enough or because I swore too much, was it because I said I was an attorney (WHY did I say I was an attorney, they can’t like "SQUARE" attorneys, they probably thought I would sue them on the set) or because I forgot to say that I’m a vegan (Yolandi is a vegetarian, fuck WHY didn’t I say I was a vegan), was it because I was too skinny or too fat or…because I still have my two-front teeth. WHY didn’t they like me? WHAT was wrong with me and my puny existence in this world? After a few tears and numerous chats with my loved-ones we reached the conclusion that I simply wasn’t what they had been looking for. I love this band so very much but I can't help feeling a small stab of pain in my heart (life’s-hard) when I listen to them and anticipate seeing the music video that I didn’t book.

Looking back at it all, I’m proud of my old-anal-self for stepping out of my comfort zone, (temporarily) forgetting my fragile ego and giving it a shot. Once I’ve got a better handle of the inevitable string of rejections that endeavours such as this entail, I might just give it another shot.