Fun Jobs - Part One

This will be one of many stories regarding the crazy fun jobs I have had in my past. Going back to one of my very first posts (http://check-thegate.blogspot.com/2009/04/never-in-office.html) on this blog - you get the idea that putting me inside four walls in a conventional style office would kill me, or at least incur serious damage to others. Leaving school when I was fifteen, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, I was living with my parents (obviously) in East Sussex and briefly touched on some college classes, photography being one of them. Actually, I only took photography so I could have access to the college darkroom, that and the teacher was funny. He was a writer for a comedy TV show in England called "Not the Nine o'clock News", our class was the day after they recorded the show, but it hadn't aired yet, so we would get the inside scoop on the skits, the behind the scenes antics and consequently we wouldn't get much work done, but it was fun!

How did I get from Lewes, East Sussex (and later the wonderful Basildon, Essex) to working for Chippendales in Santa Monica, California? It was a long and winding road...

After my parents moved to Basildon I ended up working for Ultima II cosmetics in a department store in Chelmsford. That joyful bliss couldn't have lasted for more than 3-4 months before I moved onto Bournes Department store on Oxford Street, London. The only upside to this was at the time Depeche Mode had just hit it big, so there was many a time when I would catch the train into London and find myself standing on the platform with them in Basildon (home grown Essex boys that they were). My days at Bournes were filled with bomb scares (the heyday of IRA bomb scares in the center of London), drinks after work at the local pub and lots of make up...I think I gradually packed more on each day. Lucky for me Bournes closed down (as I might still be there, plastered in very bright eyeshadow) and I resigned to my bed...sleeping 'till noon and not a care in the world. Until one morning (afternoon) my mother walked in, tossed The Lady magazine at me (it was a magazine that advertised "household" jobs like nanny positions, butlers, maids etc.,) and said "why don't you become a nanny?"

I'll go into the nanny job another day - but I did end up working for a wonderful family in Bray, Berkshire in a beautiful home on the banks of the River Thames. It was their travels to the United States that got me over the pond so to speak.

There were many jobs between being a nanny and working for Chippendales - all of them fun of course - selling suntan lotion on the beach in Florida, working as crew on a luxury motor yacht, training dolphins. Each move got me a little closer to realizing what I wanted to do with my life, so in 1990 I moved from Fort Lauderdale to Manhattan Beach, California with the plan that I would soon be working as an animal trainer for the studios.

Sometimes the best laid plans go astray.

And so, back in the early 90's my friend and I went to visit my sister in Las Vegas. We decided it would be fun to go see a show on the strip, after scanning the options in the local newspaper we decided to see Chippendales. When we arrived at the hotel where they were performing we were confronted with a bloody great long line, you buy your tickets and then apparently its general admission, a free-for-all, first come first serve, you get the idea...Unfortunately this only meant one thing, we were going to be way in the back. Well, we needed to change that immediately. While the two of us tried to come up with a plan, I noticed a sound guy (man holding microphones) exiting the showroom from the first show, I stopped him and asked if he knew my brother-in-law, who works in the business as a lighting guy - he did! And quite swiftly he managed to get us in the VIP line, which was infinitely better.

The short version is we saw the show - thought it was great, went back home to Manhattan Beach, told our roommates that we should go to the Chippendale club in Hollywood, Lori called the club to make inquiries, she struck up a conversation with a guy I now know as Tom and she basically offered up my services for employment! I started working at the Chippendales offices in Santa Monica on the weekends under the tutelage of Claudia. Claudia did a lot of the casting for Chippendales and I remember one of my first jobs was to sort through the tons of headshots and z-cards of guys wanting to work for Chippendales, I also answered the phones for all the women calling in for reservations at the club.

I'm not sure at which point I started working full time and I think if I remember correctly I was hired as Steve Banerjee's assistant. Steve was the owner of Chippendales, he came up with the concept many years before and turned it into a very successful business.

It was an odd job to get - I had no office experience, I really had no idea what to do, but over time my job shifted back and forth with many different titles, and I kinda just learned as I went along. At the time I started working there, Chippendales had just started their European tour. Eventually we had four groups touring all over Europe to packed theaters. The show in L.A. was more your typical club setting, a bar, tables, small stage...The tours overseas were designed for a stage, a real production with singing and dancing (yes, and g-strings) all choreographed and rehearsed back in L.A. and then the guys played to full houses nearly every night on the road.

What were my many duties? Well, there were nights when I worked at the club, then there was the time I was production coordinator on one of the videos that was sold at the shows in Europe, I also helped arrange the photo shoots for the annual calendars. Whenever we had rehearsals in L.A. I would arrange rehearsal space, and assist Marilyn with wardrobe fittings that went on for 16-18 hour days (not as much fun as it sounds) rushing to reach our deadline. Weeks were spent flying all over the U.S. visiting nearly every major city and setting up casting with model and talent agencies in each and also scouring the wonderfully seedy world of male strip clubs everywhere I went - come to find out that flashing your Chippendales business card usually got you a private booth and lots of free drinks! Never ended up hiring any guys from strip clubs, mainly because they looked, well, like strippers. Steve was very picky about who he hired, he was looking for guys that had more of a "model look" that we could hopefully shape into dancers...

There was another time when that business card came in handy. I went to Paris to visit my friend Luci who also worked for Chippedales and was on tour with one of the groups . After the show everyone was going to head out to some clubs, but Luci still had some work to do before we were to meet up with the guys. Once she was done, we headed over to The Banana Cafe and were faced with a huge crowd of people trying to get in, velvet ropes, an onimous looking bouncer and no-one seemingly entering this establishment any time soon. We couldn't get a hold of the guys - this was before cell phones, so we pulled out our Chippendales business cards and passed them over the heads of the hundreds waiting outside...Well, the crowds parted and Luci and I were escorted like VIPs to meet the guys upstairs, pretty funny. Of course everything was comped, we left with jackets from the clubs owner and a brief glimpse into the world of a Chippendale dancer on tour in Europe. Crazy.

It was a job when I needed it and fun for the most part, but one day the FBI walked into our offices in Santa Monica, asked everyone to stay at their desks and arrested Steve. He was charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to murder business associates, arson, racketeering and murder of a business partner in New York. We had all heard the rumors over the years, there was much speculation and now our gossip was confirmed. The night before he was to be sentenced he hung himself in jail.

This was a wake up call for me to get back to the real reason I came out to California - to train animals for movies. I picked up the phone and started working/volunteering at Studio Animal Services where I have been for 15 years.

Since the end of Chippendales (as I knew it), it has changed hands, been sold numerous times and I believe there is a show at one of the hotels in Vegas. In the last couple of months a promoter in England decided to round up all the original guys from the early 90's and do a tour of England under the name "Here come the Boys". They still have a big following, and had their opening night at the O2 Arena in London. Its funny to see pictures of them on stage now - still looking good 16-17 years later, with a few new guys thrown in for good measure.

Working for Chippendales was one in a long line of jobs for me that equates to having fun and enjoying what your doing and when that fun ends, move on. I often wonder how long I would have stayed there if my boss hadn't been arrested for murder. I'm kinda glad I was forced to turn a corner and make that step toward my goal of training animals. Which, when you think about it, isn't much different from training a bunch of Chippendales...