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[09 Aug 2008|12:05am] |
Jasper. It was a last name that somehow became an alias for Brian. He decided he had to come up with one the first week out on the job, when people were threatening to kill him for getting the shot they wanted, and he knew he had to make a statement. One name. Something powerful, not simple, not normal. Jasper. Like Prince or Usher.
It caught on like wildfire, and soon enough he was getting calls from every agency in the city, all of them asking for Jasper. The kid who got the good pictures by somehow talking his way into inner circles, becoming one with the focus of the night, snapping what he wanted and taking off. He didn't know how he got sucked into the lifestyle, it started as a dare. He was visiting one of his friends at UCLA and a swarm of paparazzi was waiting outside a clothing shop on Robertson Blvd. Jasper couldn't tell one star from the other, but when the blond with the oversized sunglasses and an entourage of at least 10 came bustling by, he had to laugh at the overweight, obnoxious men following them with cameras.
"Dude, it can't be an easy job, everybody hates you..." one of his friends had said. That was where it started, a gleam in his eyes as he grabbed his friends digital camera. "I think they've got it all wrong, I could get some damn good pictures." Then came those infamous words. "I dare you."
Before he knew it the blond stopped to look at him, camera in hand, her head tilted to the side. He knew she couldn't tell what to think, this lanky, blue eyed kid who had the looks to be a star himself was asking something of her. Something she'd been trying to avoid. "One good shot is all I'm asking for, you look awesome today, and you know how you can look even better? Just smile, that's all anyone wants to see, that you're happy and healthy and enjoying your day in the Beverly Hills sun."
It was over, a few clicks and a couple hundred bucks later he became hooked on a lifestyle he'd never intended to get into. It made sense that the alias he used while trying to make all this money was turning his last name into something semi-positive, since he'd never really been a fan of it before now. Brian Jasper was born October 31. Yeah, his mom gave birth on Halloween, only she was in labor for 16 hours before she even realized it because she was too drunk to tell. That was the life he'd been born into. His mother and father never got married, but they stayed together until shortly after his younger sister was born four years later. His dad took off running, not able to handle the pressure that two kids brought. When he left, sadly, he left the kids with the worse of the two parents.
Their mom was more interested in partying than raising children. Eventually, she took off too. They stayed with their Aunt until Brian turned 18 and then she moved out of the state and didn't have the money to move all of them. He'd thought about trying to go to college, but all the places that gave him a scholarship were out of state, and he wasn't about to uproot his sister just as high school started. He took any job he could get, sometimes working three jobs just to make sure they could pay the rent on the little room they rented in someone's house in Huntington.
It wasn't until he joined the ranks of the slimy paparazzi of Los Angeles and Orange County that he made enough money to just work that one job. He got them a modest one bedroom apartment a couple blocks from the beach. It wasn't much, but it worked for them. After snapping the first picture of some celebrity baby out and about he was even able to get them a car. It paid well, as ridiculous as it was, he was pretty good at it. He could befriend the celebrities and compliment them until they couldn't do anything but smile. Plus, he wasn't pushing people around, he was the type that kept his distance until he saw a window of opportunity. It came from being able to read people, it wasn't that hard when you actually tried, to get a sense of what was going through someone's mind.
Eventually, his talent at getting the best pictures and a personality that was so different from the rest of the paparazzi guys, got him a gig on the show TMZ. It wasn't long until people on the street not only recognized the people he was following, but also him. Being famous was never something that Jasper wanted, growing up he was always a wallflower and fading into the background was sort of his thing. It wasn't until an incident while following Maddie Matthews of Laguna Beach fame, that things really started to get insane. The two realized that as teenagers they'd run in the same circle, and not long after that the two ended up in a relationship.
When Maddie and Jasper started dating was when things got interested. A lot of people accused him of using her, and he quickly withdrew from the TMZ show when they continually pestered him for information on her. Leaving the show opened new doors, he did a couple guest appearances on some comedy shows, and despite his wallflower like demeanor found that he really enjoyed acting, especially comedy, and he seemed to have a natural talent for it. Photographers and PR people started approaching him for small modeling gigs, and even though he never felt like he could model, he figured it couldn't harm anyone to try it out.
The downside to his slowly growing fame was that many people accused him of using Maddie for it. The number of times he'd seen or heard someone say he wouldn't be rising without her, made him question it sometimes himself. He knew he wasn't using her, but he highly doubted people would care so much about him if it wasn't for her.
Choosing to ignore it was his best bet, but having the paparazzi tables turned on him now, was hard to deal with. As his sister graduated high school and as she left for college he moved into a place in Los Angeles, alone without his sister to take care of for the first time, and thrown into a world where privacy is hard to come by. Jasper wasn't your typical celebrity but he was trying to make it work without getting completely lost in all the craziness.
( get to know jasper faster. )
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