I was scheduled the Sunday after I bought it shoot with nude model Valerie Whitaker, so I asked if I could bring the rifle. She said she’s shoot with anything I brought.

The problem with posting the images her is she’s naked. That is a problem right? I’ve avoided posting nude images on Reactuate because not everyone who reads it wants to see naked women. But here are two that have all the naughty bits covered.

If you don’t mind tasteful, artistic nudity and want to see the whole rifle – oh and all of Valerie – you can got to my other blog/website GlamourApprentice.com

Beauty & Brains: Shawna from Ron Davis on Vimeo.

Second episode of the Beauty and Brains series with marketing manager and dancer Ruth Clay. We talk about art, philosophy, science and culture. Learn her thoughts on God, children today, art, and razor blade belly rings.

B&B: Denise Williamson from Ron Davis on Vimeo.

Beauty And Brains Trailer from Ron Davis on Vimeo.

Beauty and Brains interviews women asking them questions about herself, Art & Culture and Science and Philosophy. In each section they are wearing a different outfit, casual, dressed up and a swimsuit.

Trailer for upcoming series of interviews.

Go Vote Andre Rene

Here is my video comment from Seesemic. I used CamTwist and SoundFlower to get the shot video into the comment.

Seesemic is interesting. It isn’t so much a video sharing site, as a video forum if you will. The whole idea is to start threads of comments and follow-up video comments.

I’ve been following the search for a new Mahalo Daily host for awhile now and already had a favorite before today’s episode. Lucky for me the gun toting babe was the cute redhead Andrea Rene I was already rooting for.

She chose as her audition episode topic “How to shoot a gun”. While we didn’t learn much about how to shoot, it was fun watching a totally new shooter doing it for the first time. Her “Mahalo” in the final credits is worth watching the whole video.

The guy from the LA Gun club was a little too street for me, but he did teach her the four rules. Well he taught her rule 1. I assume they just didn’t show the rest.

But he didn’t teach her a proper grip, that was painful to watch.

A 9mm Berretta is the easiest gun to shoot? Huh? What about a 22? Then he recommends a revolver for the 70 year old grandma. What a young woman like Andrea would find that harder to shoot?

Ok, the point of this post isn’t to critique the gun guy, but to get you to vote for Andrea Rene.

They had various challenges for 20+ contestants and narrowed it down to 6. Those six each get to produce one show. The contestants get to pick what topic they cover. Then they write and produce the sample show.

Andrea chose how to shoot a gun, which seems a brave choice to me. My take is Mahalo Daily’s audience is very much high tech, silicon valley, northern California people. I.E. very liberal. Talking about shooting wouldn’t be very politically correct for that crowd.

Andrea Rene has the skills for to be the new host. She’s a red head which would get me to vote for her on its own. Then she chose shooting a gun for her topic. Which made me so happy I wrote a whole post to get people to vote for her.

Her fate isn’t completely in the voters hands, but it will be influenced by it. So go to Mahalo Daily and comment on how great she is.

UPDATE: For my pro-gun readers, if this comment doesn’t make you comment for her nothing will. “Sorry, absolutely nothing against Andrea, but I wouldn’t continue to watch Mahalo if this was the kind of featured subject matter.”

It’s all Mahalo’s fault.

See I thought I’d try out creating some search pages on Mahalo.com. I looked at the most wanted list sorted by money. Near the top was “How to Flirt Videos”. Well I spend too much time on video sharing sites, so I figured I could do any video page.

I kind of got the philosophy of Mahalo to be “do the search for the person and give them the 10 or so results they would have found if they’d waded through the crap.” So I started wading through flirting videos.

I found some good stuff and completed my page, How To Flirt Videos.

But in the process I ran across a related interview video of Neil Strauss – the world’s greatest pickup artist – on The View. Can you imagine a tougher audience than the women of The View on someone calling himself the worlds greatest pickup artist?

Any way he came off well and it turned out the book wasn’t really about how to pick up women, but how this community of men – who totally dedicate themselves to learning how to pick up woman – live. Sounded like a great book about an online community.

But you don’t buy that book with out consulting the Mrs first. She finds that one and you are in serious trouble.

Luckily for me, my wife is the best wife in the whole world and she encouraged me to buy it after I started reading it in the bookstore and realized it was good. Even thought it retails for $35.

Once I started reading the book I searched online for the people in it and found one of the main characters, Mystery, had hosted a VH1 Reality show called the Pick Up Artist. Turns out the whole show was on VH1 video, so I watched it. Set in Austin which was a plus for me as a Texan.

So What Did I Learn

The Principles Work For Everyone

At a fundamental level, the methods Mystery teaches work for any social situation where you want to meet and have fun with people. Sure they are all taught in the context of night clubs, but that doesn’t have to be where they are used. They are taught for the purposes of meeting girls and “closing” on a variety of level. Kissing/making out, getting phone numbers to continue the relationship the next day, or getting laid. But that doesn’t have to be the outcome you are going for. For instance as a photographer I often meet pretty women I’d love to shoot. These principles easily apply to a “photoshoot close”.

Knowing What To Say

If I were a single guy, I’d be just like the guys on the show. Awkward. Shy. Afraid to even approach a pretty woman or group of strangers. But having a little knowledge of social dynamics changes everything. One of the big things is having something to say.

PUAs learn “Openings”. An opening is generally a question that opens a discussion. It isn’t about specifics of the persons you are opening to. It is an opinion. For instance you might say to a group of girls. “Hey my buddy’s were arguing about something and we need your opinion. Who lies more men or women?” That’s a conversation starter.

Generally what happens when a guy tries to pick up a girl is he gives her a quiz. People hate this. “What is your name? What do you do?” Those are boring. You don’t want to be boring.

Having an opener, or many openers, approaching groups of strangers gets easier. You know what to say. You aren’t fumbling for what happens next and this gives you confidence.

There is a structure

A pick up conversation has a basic structure.

Approach & Open – come up to a group and start a conversation.
Build Rapport - you keep the conversation going by starting, or stacking, new threads. Use more of your conversation starters to get other conversations started.
Isolate Your Target – If you are after one member of the conversation, say a pretty girl, at some point you need to get her by herself so you can have a more intimate discussion.
Close – ask for what you want. A phone number, a kiss, to go back to your hotel room, a photoshoot, to go to church.

Integrity is Required

PUAs call it congruence. It means what you are saying and doing is what you actually mean. Girls can tell if you are trying to con them. If you are at a night club striking up conversations, they figure you are on the prowl. That’s OK. What isn’t OK is to act like you care, when you don’t.

If you ask a girl about who lies more, you need to legitimately want to know her opinion. And don’t tell her her answer is the greatest if you don’t think it is. They can smell a liar a mile away. As soon as they do, you might as well “roll off” – ie. leave.

Confidence is Key

Being afraid makes people uncomfortable. Confidence attracts them. You can let them think you have to have them. Rather you need to honestly be trying to find out what kind of person they are and if that is the kind of person you are interested in. You aren’t qualifying yourself to them, they are qualifying themselves to you.

Become interesting and she’ll come to you. Chase her and she’ll own you.

People Want to Hang Out With Interesting People, So Be Interesting

Learning magic tricks, conversation starters and quiz games makes you interesting. You can keep a conversation going. You can entertain people. That makes their evening more fun and they want to keep you around.

See how those apply to many social situation?

As a recap, here are all the images I retouched from the Tabitha shoot.