3.10.05-- "You Orientals have such big hands..."

So all those years of private high school, SAT prep classes, late night studying, acting classes, and college paid off yesterday when I was high up in the mountains of Chatsworth dressed like a doofus Japanese milkmaid, sporting a bowl haircut wig, wearing huge prosthetic hands and yanking around a live goat that had a prosthetic udder dragging to the floor.

This is the polaroid that wardrobe took of me.

That's right folks. Kristina shot a commercial. It was thus far, the pinnacle of my commercial acting career. So that means... uh oh... Is it too late to enroll in real estate school?

Check out our hands!

Why do the milkmaids have such big hands? Because the goats they milk have have such big udders. Of course! These hands were made by the same folks who did the Fat Bastard costume for Austen Powers and they also make many other big movie prosthetics. The skin of the hands is detailed down to the prints on the fingers and the veins on the back. The fingers don't move. The hands are worn like a mitten and are glued closed around the wrist. We had to wear them ALL day. Yes, fun for the first few minutes but then it was like having club arms. You can't scratch your face, pick your nose, dress yourself, or do shit. And it gets all hot and sweaty inside. They also thought that it would be cute if we all wore bowl cut wigs, like the main girl who has that hair cut normally. That's why I look as such.

Here we are trying to eat. I had to take the wig off because I lost the feeling of blood circulating in my head.

After this pic was taken, the milkmaid in the middle decided to eat her donut like how a dog eats. It was much easier that way.

This was a very strange commercial directed by a very hot Swedish Director who has worked with Moby. It's actually one in a series of short films that has nothing to do with the product. It's one of those things you look at and are like "Oh yeah, have you seen those weird films for that product" type commercials.

Here we are chilling in the shade. We were getting dehydrated because if we drank alot of water, it meant that we would have to use the bathroom, which meant, someone had to help us take our pants on and off and even help pull up our panties. Most of us avoided the hassle and settled for slight dehydration. I can't imagine what a bigger pain it would have been if I was on my rag. Yikes.

At lunch, they cut slits in the palms, so we could pry our hands free to hold a fork. It was still hard to eat. Our hands were pretty constricted. After lunch, they glued those slits shut. Sometimes during breaks, I had crew members throw pretzels into my mouth because I couldn't do it on my own. It was life as a seal.

At one point they had me walk around with this goat that had a huge prosthetic udder attached under it. The hands can't grip too well, but the animal trainers wrapped the rope around them. I was walking and walking and these goats were good sports but would get antsy and try to pull me over to the grass so they could eat.

Anyway, it was quite fun. I've been doing so much live theater, I forget how awesome it is to be on a movie set. There is so much food on film and commercial sets. And they have always have an EMT around who has a stacked truck of ginseng, mouthwash, and other stuff that you can try. That's what I miss, getting to consume so much on Hollywood's dime. Except these hands kept me under control. I ate like 1/5 of what I normally devour on a shoot.

When it comes down to it, I think the most you'll see of me in this spot is in a big wide shot where I wave with my back to the camera. They had top prosthetic designers work for two weeks on these fake hands and it took a good hour to get them on and glue them in, then paint them to match our arms, and they had two animal trainers to watch these goats, dozens of crew members, make-up and hair people working on us meticulously, big budget production details, and amazingly detailed sets. All this, after auditioning and picking from close to a hundred actors.

So much work, so much money, for such short moments.

That's showbiz,

Kristina