guy fieri army

i was working in france as an artist in training at madame tussauds. the doctor was still alive then and much of my work was anatomical and meant for him to use in his lectures to young medical students. i had spent so much of my time creating hearts, livers, spleens, lungs, tendons and vascular systems that was sure i could create the organs and muscles of the body with my eyes closed. the days i replicated butterflied cadavers were the best for me as i could at least give each body a face, neck, hands, feet... skin. my 'corpses' were always beautiful and i gave each a history as i sculpted to help me bring realism to my work. i would picture brothers, sisters, young husbands and grieving relatives sitting solemnly in a viewing parlor trying to hold back tears. 'lisette' had loved poetry, 'elodie' had been an avid bird watcher, 'marguerite' had married a man she did not love and died in childbirth. many of the young doctors would fall in love with a particular work and comment over and over that my pieces looked as though they were still alive but sleeping. this gave me great satisfaction but made my longing to work on 'living' sculptures even more intense.

one day a new apprentice arrived. i looked up from my wax and smiled at her before i continued to carve the details of the exposed knee joint i was working on. madame tussaud shooed me away from my piece and wordlessly indicated to the young woman it was now her task. i felt confused, but when i looked into madame's eyes i understood it was my time to work on the 'living'. i felt my heart would burst with joy. i followed her into the biggest studio and was immediately put to work dipping the figures into blue beeswax. i smiled so wide because i had always wondered how the depth of skin-tone was created (my 'cadavers' were always a pale white/pink) and now that i saw the giant vats of blue, red and yellow with the figures suspended above them, i immediately understood the beautiful simplicity of the process. i pulled on clean sleeve protectors and readied myself for work.

as i guided the first piece toward the blue bath, i was startled by a thunderous roar. i must have held the question in my face because one of the master workers said, 'don't worry. it's only the nuremberg car rally.' i looked out the floor to ceiling french windows onto the square below and saw at least a half a million 'car enthusiasts' standing next to their prized 1940's cars and all dressed as some interpretation of guy fieri. 'i, i thought we are in paris...' i stammered. 'we are,' answered another master, 'it's just that there are so many germans we can see them from here.'

i looked out over the sea of short sleeved flame printed shirts and badly bleached spiked hair and thought about how ugly it all looked to me. i resolved to block it out of my field of awareness and dipped my first wax figure into the hot liquid blue beeswax.