A moped, a bottle of rooster sauce, and solid proof that photographers mean what they say.

I sometimes have a story told to me and I don't want to believe it. I will brutally call that person a liar and deny anything that comes out of their mouth to be true for at least a month. But then they show me photographs as solid proof and I look like an ass.

So here's how the story goes. A good friend of mine is riding his moped home at around 5 in the morning and runs into a girl who is on hers. She starts talking to him about his moped, which leads to her inviting him to join her moped gang. Curious, he follows this girl to a parking lot where her other friends are. Her moped was faster than his, so he had to jump curbs, cut through parking lots and battle cars to keep up. Kind of like in the game Need for Speed Underground. Where you are in your car, and you meet a girl in hers and in order to infiltrate their subculture, you have to find a way to keep up and not lose her in the mix of all the traffic out there. He manages to keep up and finds out upon reaching the parking lot that these girls are all strippers and they have their own moped gang. The conversation then leads to how she likes to be in front of the camera and that they should go take some pictures for fun. My friend (who happens to be a photographer, but does not tell her this) informs her that his camera is at home and so she follows him to his house. As he is getting his camera out of his room, he turns to find that she had gone through his closet, stripped out of her clothes and is now wearing a pair of his favorite boxer shorts, an old leather jacket and is weilding a bottle of Sriracha.

From that point on, this is what he said happened with the photo shoot:

She said she needed to fake herself in an accident and that I was going to be the one to save her. She needed to have fake blood, so she took some Sriracha and sprayed it all over her face and legs. She then laid her scooter down, and pretended to be dead right next to it. I kept shooting.

Our next shot was supposed to be me carrying her up to my place, so we set up that shot, had the camera on timer and took that one as well. The following shot we took was her in my bath tub with the lucky shorts and a towel over her chest. Followed by her a little more cleaned up but almost naked on my bed.

She then proceeded to put on her stripper gown and layed back in the bath tub. after we got all these shots, she said thanks, we traded info and she said she had to head off. It was then 8:30 a.m. in the morning and she realized she needed to be out or something. I was left with a big mess at my place, with hot sauce and lip stick finger prints on my walls and floors and some dirty laundry.

After he told me all of this, I had to ask about the Sriracha. It's one thing to be wierded out by Alton Brown huffing a bottle of fish sauce, but it's another when a stripper is rubbing Sriracha all over her body. I asked him, "Why would anybody in their right mind spray Sriracha all over their body?" He said her reason was for the "art" of it all.

If you don't have a moped, or a camera, or a wildly random life that makes many of your friends jealous of you, BUT still want to see some unbelievable photography in the name of art (that will still make you jealous), I highly suggest going to the Art Insitute of Chicago tonight for After Dark: Celebrating the photography of Jeff Wall. His work is said to be epic, so don't miss the last chance to see it before the exhibition closes on September 23. Also catch Life During Wartime DJ Bald Eagle and UR Chicago's very own Matt Dufour spinning throughout the night. Don't forget to compliment Matt's new hat.



After Dark: Celebrating the photography of Jeff Wall
Friday, September 21, 6-10 p.m.
111 S. Michigan Ave.
$20 at the door/$15 members

Again, we sometimes don't believe the things people say they can do, but they have the photographs to proof it. Don't deny a photographer's words. If you do, they will probably take the worst, most unflattering picture of you, and sell it to the world.

--Lizelle