Extra! Extra!

Who knew it would be so difficult to find a job for this clean-cut-honor-student-Eagle-scout-church-going-all-league-football-player?

After all, he's smart, he's disciplined, he presents well. And, bonus, he doesn't look like this:

Or, this:

Or, even...

YIKES! Do you think those are his "business casual" knives?

You know you've seen those guys with jobs!

But, I digress.

Anyway.

When January rolled around, Justin suddenly found himself with time. A lot of time. No football. Out of school at 12:30. A guy can only go to the gym so many hours a day. And, well, let's just say after having a 4.2 gpa the first semester, he pulled nearly straight B's the 2nd semester. The guy needed to be productive. So, he started job hunting.

These days, you can do most of your job hunting from the comfort of your own computer (probably how those guys above all got their jobs). He started with the "yeah, I'd agree to grace them with my presence" list but rapidly learned that he could not afford to be that particular. Magic Mountain (the ever popular employer of Santa Clarita teens) called but he could never get through on the number they gave them.

Now it's May. Plan B. Justin learned (as so many of us before him), "It's all about who you know." Aunt Jan kindly put in a good word with Boys and Girls Club, but no openings. Friend and future dorm-mate Mitchel passed on his leftovers (somehow Mitchel managed to have 3 jobs for a while), but nothing took. He did lots of manual labor in the meantime--dogsitting, yardwork, moving dirt, jack-hammering cement--all for friends and neighbors. (Interesting enough, our own house projects for pay never seemed to make the cut...)

Along came an angel. Friend, home teacher, young men's leader, philanthropist and roommate's father all rolled into one--Steve took pity upon Justin and put him on his roster for extra work for tv and film projects. It was a perfect fit! Flexible week to week AND it gave Justin an excuse to shop whenever he needed the required outfit.

First paycheck!

He's done work on 10 Things I Hate About You (ABC Family series). For this, he really had to reach way down DEEP inside to find the motivation for his character....

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wait for it...

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a high school football player!

He was flipping channels last night and saw that the show was on and it happened to be the ONE episode he was in (season 1/episode 5). HERE it is if you want to take a look. He's in at least 3 times. If you choose to watch, here's what to watch for: the first time happens pretty early on (during opening credits), he's in the quad in the lower right in a letterman jacket sitting on the grass on a blanket (LOL! who brings a blanket for a picnic to high school?). The second time he's again on the quad behind the main characters and 2 cheerleaders bounce up to talk to him. The last time he's in the school hallway chatting it up with Patrick (his roommate to be). He says the toughest part is all the fake talking you have to do.

He's also done an episode of The Closer (TNT I think) and the movie, IronMan 2 where he HAD to be in a scene with supermodels in bikinis.

Tough job but someone has to do it.

(PS, I can't figure out how to clip screenshots out of the video--if anyone knows how, give me holler! Judy? Rober?)