Thursday, May 1, 2008

My Latest Assignment

This is it. My latest assignment. Helicopter lands on boat. Make this subject interesting, and spend 2500 words doing it. And turn it in by next week. Funny thing is that there are a lot of videos just like this one on the internet. They're taken by what's known as "yacht paparazzi." These are folks who hang out in the marinas or in the bushes outside design facilities and take photos or video of new yachts. There's quite a veil of secrecy over the whole yacht industry, which inspires this kind of spy stuff. A friend of mine went to tour a factory for building these megayachts, and the owner led him all around the hull of this 500 foot boat, talking about it and the Russian businessman who had commissioned it, but then added, "But if you tell anyone, we'll deny this. Because we're not really building this. Because we don't really have this client. Because we've never heard of the project." Okay, Mr. Crazy, thanks for your time.


2 comments:

kt said...

So this weekend Ben and I are sitting in an upscale coffee shop in chichi Lenox, Massachusetts, drinking overpriced limeade and only passable coffee. I'm reading brochures and he's got some magazine he pulled from a rack on the wall.

"Man," he says with a sigh, "I don't have a boat you can land a helicopter on..."

I grabbed the magazine away. "Hey, who's the author on that piece? I know her!!"

Michelle said...

Oh, that's wonderfully funny. You know I never believe that people actually read these stories, but maybe they do, even if it is by accident in chi chi coffee shops. I love it.