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BERLIN - I WAS FAMOUS IN SPAIN FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON

My life as a rock star lasted precisely one summer. During this time I was a member of the greatest Toronto based new-comer band of all time, The Hop. We got all the hype and our faces were everywhere. Every girl in Barcelona knew us and we could have fucked them all, at once. There was just one little, tiny, totally irrelevant detail: my band never existed.

It happened while I was visiting Barcelona a few years ago. It was in the middle of summer, and all the heat had produced even more of those little, super-tanned Spanish guys packed with muscles. It felt like an invasion. Everyone, even those fat American tourists, turned into models in two days. Except me. I tried really hard but I was still, and always will be, a tall, skinny, white tourist.

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That was probably the reason why this guy came up to me. He was from some magazine called

Suite

, he said. I was sitting on some steps far away from everyone squeezing down la Rambla and I didn't believe a single word he said in the first place.

This is the classic pickpocket case

, I thought and watched my camera. He asked me if I'd like to do a photo shoot. I said no and watched my camera. For Nike, he said. I said no and watched my camera. I tried to get rid of him. Even though I'd said no to everything, he insisted on giving me his number. I was pretty happy when he left and went back to my friends. They told me that they knew the magazine but they also said, that it couldn't possibly be ture. Apparently

Suite

was the coolest magazine in the city. I may have been somewhat good-looking but not

that

good… I could forget it. The guy must have been kidding. To prove this once and for all, I called him.

A couple days later I found myself dressed up in Nike clothes in an empty factory building in an industrial area, posing in front of a camera.

Suite

really was the coolest mag in Barcelona at that time. With two other models who were also skinny and white (one, a girl from Argentina, another, a guy from Scandinavia) I was emprisoned in a van and driven around for ages. In between panic attacks and visions of a life as a Russian Oligarch's personal bunny rabbit, I lent over to the Scandinavian and whispered something about final rites. He didn't seem to understand. After finally being released we were ushered into a factory building where some hysterical photographer took photos of us in pseudo-cool poses. I was pretty anxious but decided to file it in the well-paid-summer-vacation-job-folder and thought nothing more of it.

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When I got back to Germany I found an envelope with three issues of

Suite

magazine in the mailbox. We were on the cover and there was a two page article about us.

It said that we were a band called The Hop, THE newcomer band of the year, immediately topping the Spanish charts. I was pretty surprised. Especially when I found out that I was the bass player or the keyboarder. They weren't really sure. It didn't exactly matter anyways because I can't play either. Allegedly, we were pro-feminists and the name of our hit single was the ambiguously titled "Girl, You're Not Just a Pussy." Maybe it was for a greater good that we didn't really exist. Anyway, we were pretty famous.

The whole summer, all over Spain, there were huge ads with the fake charts. But I missed most of the exciting part about it: thousands of Spanish groupies who wanted a taste of The Hop. This turned out to be pretty disheartening since there was absolutely no way we could get even close, literally, to satisfying our fan-base. Anyway, since then I've kept on asking myself if Radiohead and Franz Ferdinand really do exist or if they are just some kind of promo-gag. In reality, Morrissey is probably a polish plumber. Which also means, with some luck, Coldplay don't really exist either.

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