Lost In Pacific Time

I found myself browsing a Maxim Magazine at the YVR gift shop. My flight had come early so I was just waiting for my parents to come pick me up. I flipped through the first few pages where the interviews mostly of guys. But then a picture of a familiar girl appeared on one of the pages. Amber’s picture took up a quarter of the page. It was also the promotional picture they used on the print and ads for Decking Out Tinseltown. She looked great in the picture she really did. I bet she would disagree, on senior year picture day Amber said that she didn’t look good in pictures because she was the kind of girl who looked better when you saw her move. I thought she looked great whatever it was she was doing. In the picture her dark black hair was as shiny as ever and had a slight curl to it. She was sitting in what looked like a giant chair. Knowing her it was probably just a normal sized chair that could hardly fit me, honestly if you that girl from behind you would’ve mistaken her for a fifth grader.
I rocked on my heels while reading the article in the gift shop.

You know her or maybe you don’t, as the glamorous and slightly dorky subject of Bravo’s Decking Out Tinseltown with Ambrosia Li. According to the most recent Nielson Ratings she has gotten 15.7 million people hooked onto her show so far. Chances are someone you know has tuned into Ms. Li’s show. starting in the next issue Ambrosia or Amber as she likes to be called will be joining the staff here at Maxim with the start of her interior design column. Maxim Magazine got a chance to talk to the small screen siren at a Starbucks across the street from her now famous offices housed in the brick building. We talked to her about everything from Oreos to the Minnesota Wild.

MAXIM MAGAZINE: Hi Ambrosia, so can you tell us a little about your show?
AMBROSIA LI: It’s just basically me driving around LA decorating houses and of course there’s always some drama in the office. Thanks to my assistants Greg and Ivy and their dramatics.

MM: Let’s start this interview with a series of short questions. Sweet or sour?
AL: Sweet.

MM: Would you rather time travel to the future or back to the past?
AL: Past, but I’d love to palaces where the town’s king lives and I love how anyone can just pretend to be whoever they want. I would probably find some way screw up the chain of events like bringing my Macbook along and claiming I invented it.

MM: Favorite ice-cream flavor?
AL: Birthday Cake remix, no sprinkles at Coldstone Creamery in the Gotta Have It Size.

MM: You know that thing has a thousand calories right?
AL (laughs): Well I don’t eat it every day.

MM: Do you have any more guilty pleasures?
AL: Most of them are food. I love hamburgers and fries, and if you have hamburgers and fries then you have to have a shake. My favorite kind is Oreo. Anything with Oreos is a guilty pleasure. I’ve eaten them deep fried, barbequed and of course with milk.

MM: Glad to see you haven’t fallen victim to the Hollywood skinny bug.
AL: I’ll have salads once in a while and workout before work. Other than that my life is a nutritional train wreck.

MM: Favorite album of all time?
AL: All time is kind of bounding.

MM: Of the year, month, week?
AL: The album I have on repeat at the moment is Eyes to the Sun by Sparks the Rescue from Portland, Maine.

MM: Most interior designers go travelling because they need exotic inspirations. Is there anywhere in the US you would like to travel to in the near future?
AL: Portland, Maine. I’d go to, the above mentioned, Sparks the Rescue’s concert in their hometown, catch my own lobster, cook it, and grab a couple Whoopie Pies for the road.

MM: If you weren’t an interior designer you would be …
AL: On top of Maxim’s Hot 100? Kidding. I would be a hockey correspondent with the Minnesota Wild.

MM: Minnesota? That kind of random.
AL: I kind of miss winter here in LA I want to be somewhere where people care about hockey but aren’t brutal about it. If I were to work in Montreal I’d have to develop a really thick skin and also learn French.

MM: Spoken like a real Canadian. Would you ever date a hockey player?
AL (laughs): If I did I guess I wouldn’t have to pay for my tickets anymore would I? That sounds like a plan.

MM: Tell us a little about your new project with us.
AL: It’s basically going to three pages of me rambling on about interior design. I chose Maxim because 95% of my clientele are women and the other 5% are gay men who lack “the touch”. The heterosexual men market is unsaturated and I don’t think straight men understand how important it is. Like I wouldn’t sleep with someone who had mismatched sheets on their bed.

MM: Maybe that’s just you.
AL (laughs): Yeah probably.

_______

Once again I was sitting in the makeup chair wearing a silky black robe. I had no idea that this was in the agreement I signed but whatever. Greg always said I needed to take more pictures to document my “roaring twenties” as he liked to refer it as. I just wasn’t sure if this was exactly going to be a picture I’d show my kids in the future. I should hire a lawyer to read over my contracts and such. Where was the fun in that? If I did that the lawyer would probably make sure that I didn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. If I had spent all of my life being comfortable I wouldn’t be here right now would I? I needed to take risks or else my life would be boring. Underneath this robe I wasn’t wearing much more than what I’d wear to sleep.

When I walked into the studio where they were doing the photo-shoot, I knew I was in for trouble. First of all I hate pictures. I assumed it was going to be all right considering that they had at least a hundred pictures to choose from and wouldn’t deliberately make me look bad. I should’ve realized that they were Maxim Magazine, famous for objectifying women; obviously they had a hidden agenda for offering me my own article. On the rack used for the clothes there was nothing more than lingerie. It was fancy French lingerie not the Victoria’s Secret stuff I had in my closet. It felt different too; it fit like a glove and almost made me feel at ease knowing that at least the lingerie fit me properly. The makeup and hair people had finished their jobs and I was just basically just waiting for the people to set up the set.
“Amber we’re ready for you,” said the photographer gesturing me to where they had a platform bed and plain white sheets. I took a deep breath before dropping the robe and climbing onto the bed in nothing more than a lacy pale orange bra and matching boy shorts.