COLLECTION: Boredom times infinity

A little back-story is needed to fully appreciate the pictures that follow. Basically, what happened is this: Midway through my fourth year at FHM I started getting antsy. It was understandable really; it had pretty much been the only real job I’d ever had, a gig I signed on for at the tender age of 21, several months before issue one even hit newsstands. I was Associate Editor at the start, and though it was quite a fete for a guy without a collage education, four years is still a long time to be doing anything. Like I said, I was ready to go, but I didn’t know where or why. Finally Scott Gramling, newly minted Editor-in-Chief, offered a solution: Why not move to LA, where he could keep me on the pay-role as Editor at Large while I figured things out? Awesome.

Sadly, things didn’t go according to plan. A few months in, the FHM gig fizzled and I was left wandering the Hollywood hills aimlessly. That is until Tony Romando called. Tony was another of FHM US’s founding editors and he’d recently got a big job at Men’s Fitness. They were going to turn it into a fitness/lad magazine, something like FHM but with crunches, and he wanted me on the team. He even got Men’s Fitness to pay for the moving vans that brought me back. Sadly, this too didn’t work the way we’d hoped.

I’m not going to call anyone names, but lets just say I didn’t fit in in the Men’s Fitness office. What’s more, me and the Editor-in-Chief Peter (later fired) didn’t see eye to eye on nearly anything. I had so little respect for him (or maybe so much respect for myself) that one day I showed up and demanded a 30% raise—and got it. When the company decided to abandon the fun new tone I’d been brought in to hone, before even our first issue hit stands, I felt lost once again. Alone and confused, I took solace in the only place I could find it: The color copier by my desk. What follows is the result of 10s of hours of killing time…



Peter: "July is right around the corner, I was thinking maybe we could sit down and talk ideas for some kind of Americana, apple pie, red, white and blue theme issue..."


Me: "Just one minute, I'm kind of in the middle of something."


Peter: "We're getting ready to ship March, we should do cover-lines. Got any thoughts?"


Me: "Ah, something about Abs... I don't know... look, really though, can't this wait? I think I'm on to something."


Peter: "OK, when's good for you? Just run it by Tony, be sure he can come too."


Me: "Will do. Look, I don't mean to be rude, but when I talk it's hard to keep from drooling on the glass."


Peter: "Alright. Hey, that piece you..."


Me: "Damnit..."








This went on for hours... days even. I literally must have 100s of these. Cool huh? Occasionally I'd drool, but other than that, nothing much happened.


Then I realized something: By moving my eyes as the scanner passed by, I could make some pretty cool faces.


See.


Moving my whole head did some pretty cool stuff too.


One day Jess came by and I let her in on the action too. Did I mention these make great Christmas cards? Anyway, about this time—mid-way though a work-day—I realized I'd been limiting myself by only putting myself under the hood. I'll bet this thing could do a pretty good group portrait too.


See, two is better than one.


Incredibly, it never occurred to me to press some anatomy against the glass. I don’t know why not though, secretaries have been doing it at office parties since the beginning of time.


Wouldn't that have been cool? Instead, the dirtiest thing I could come up with was this hand gesture.


Oh well.


Something else I never considered was enlargements.


Just thing of the fun to be had with genitals on the glass and the machine set to like 300%. They'd look huge!


I only zoomed in once though, for this head-shot, minutes before a jam forced an end to the fun.

When FHM finally invited me back, Scott asked what I’d been up to since leaving the office. Honestly, I had little to show except a file of portraits taken by my dear friend Xerox. Well, that and some car vouchers...