roblathan.com

Yesterday I was robbed. Not by judges. Or sportswriters. Or the Academy. But by a real live burglar. You know the ones with ski masks and crowbars? Well those guys robbed me. Except instead of holding me up at gun point or breaking down my door, they simply walked down my building’s fire escape from the rooftop, slide open my window, grabbed my laptop and Niki’s digital camera, and left. The laptop was unintentionally well hidden under a pile of clothes on a chair in a corner of my bedroom. So it was a little weird they found it, since they took nothing else and it looked like nothing was tampered with or anything. I’m thinking it was probably somebody who either lives in the building or works in the building. But who knows? At this stage I’m not ruling out diehard fans of The SugaBabes. Maybe they thought they could get a first glimpse of the new SugaBabes video on my laptop or something?

Whoever robbed me, I hope they’re enjoying all of my “Jerry Foxworthy” sketches, as well as the footage of me wearing a neckbrace on CNN Talk Back Live. It would give me great solace to think they were sitting around watching my comedy shorts saying to themselves, “You know what? This guy is pretty funny. Hey Bruce, check it out! Now he’s in this Kids Show, and everybody keep punching him in the balls. That’s hilarious! Let’s return his laptop. Maybe he can do some jokes for us.”

In your dreams, Latham.

So I’ve been listening to nothing but SugaBabes lately. And I gotta say their music rulez! I mean, I can’t get them out of my head. Earlier today I had a presentation for a major client at work. After I was done with the PowerPoint slides, I dimmed the lighting a little and said, “You’ve seen all the numbers, but I think there’s ONE more way I can convince J&J to do business with us”. Then I pulled out my boom box and cranked up The SugaBabes classic, “Caught in a Moment”.

During the bridge I slowly started ripping off my suit to reveal that I was wearing nothing but spandex shorts with “SugaBabes” written across the buttocks area. After gyrating my ass in front of the J&J CEO, I launched back into the song full force. I might have missed on a few notes, but basically I was singing with the same gusto as all three SugaBabes (Keisha, Mutya and Heidi) in one. I was so caught up in the song, I barely noticed it when my boss, Janice, turned off the music and sternly asked me to leave the room.

Needless to say, we didn’t get the business. But I gotta say, it was a lot of fun. Luv those SugaBabes!

So I did indeed book the SugaBabes music video, amazingly enough as a “stiltwalker”. It was shot yesterday in an incredibly hard to find warehouse somewhere between Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Long Island City, Queens. The conditions of this warehouse were horrendous - there was no bathroom, no light, just dust and grime - enough to make Jacob Riis puke and run for cover if he had been alive to see it.

And of course within the confines of this grimey warehouse were the people that would be in the music video with me - the circus freaks. There were jugglers, mime artists, transvestites, sword swallowers, break dancers, tumblers, magicians, little people, karate experts, ballerinas, and me. When I arrived on set carrying my stilts, one of the circus freaks announced, “Hey look, it’s the stiltwalker!” So I guess I was one of them. If all of this wasn’t enough, as I went to put my stuff down, I overheard a conversation in which a guy holding a white dove said, “Yeah I’ve been in this industry for a while.” Now normally when I’m on a film shoot of somekind and somebody brings up the word “industry”, they are talking about the film or TV industry. This guy was not. He was talking about the MAGIC industry!

Now, let’s talk about the actual band, the SugaBabes. When I said earlier that they were big in the UK. I actually meant they were big in… The University of Kentucky. That was a joke. According to a few fans on set the ‘Babes are actually big in England. (Even though no one I know has ever heard of them). Some are touting them as the next Spice Girls. For a sampling of what the next Spice Girls are all about, here are the lyrics to their new song, “Ugly” (which is what the music video was for):

“when, i was 7 they said i was strange
i noticed that my eyes and hair weren’t the same
i asked my parents if i was ok
they said your more beautiful and thats the way
they show they wish they had your smile
so my confidence was up for a while
i got real comfortable with my own style
i knew they were only jealous cos

chorus
people are all the same
and we only get judged by what we do
personality reflects name
if i’m ugly then so are you, so are you”

Apparently the theme of the video was that even though “people are all the same”, we’re really different in our own way. And that’s where us circus freaks came in. When the filming begun, they lined us up. And one at a time we got in front of the camera and did our thing. When it was my turn I simply danced around as best I could on my stilts while the song, “Ugly”, with the above lyrics, inspired me. I realized then the important message: “If i’m ugly (because I’m up on these stilts), then you know what? So are you! Ha! Gotcha!”

I don’t think this video will ever air in the states. Let’s hope to God it doesn’t.