You’re a young model, trying to make it in the city. Maybe Kansas wasn’t the place for you. Maybe your peers didn’t understand you. You liked fashion and acting and you were pretty hot and skinny and you thought “Hey, screw the 1st Baptist Church Christmas pageant. My friend Drew lives in New York, someplace called Williams Burg and he said I could stay with him and maybe I could be an actor or a model.” So you load up your parents old Volvo — Dad still isn’t talking to you so you have to do it all alone — and you drive all the way to New York where the only “acting” job you can get is something that involves fellating a 43-year-old “comedy coach” in front of a webcam and you respectfully decline.

Your agent, a 60-year-old woman who you found in the back of the Village Voice, finally calls you up one afternoon and, after coughing back some phlegm, hoots into the phone: “I got you a job, honey. Come down, wear something cool and casual.” So you get dressed, try to do your hair up nice but wonder if they’ll have a hairdresser there — maybe they’ll even have catering! — and take the train into the city.

When you get there, they tell you to stand around with a few other models and then hand you a phone. You’re supposed to model the phone. You clomp out onto stage and see a sea of pale, pasty faces, their mouths sneering, their attention elsewhere. Most of them are drunk. These are tech journalists, not industry bigwigs. Anna Wintour is nowhere to be seen. You come back to the green room — really just a hallway — and someone gives you an envelope of cash. You ride the train home, wondering what they’re doing in Kansas, wondering if this is what you wanted.

Last Night: Verizon Fashion Show [TechieDiva]