Some people have really interesting jobs. In the May 5th 2003 New Yorker Talk of the Town there's an interesting article about a guy named John Caglione, Jr. who won the Oscar for makeup in 1991 for his work in the movie "Dick Tracy," in particular Tracy's nose. He also made the cones for the Coneheads on SNL.

But before you think that this kind of work just comes to you without effort or a learning curve, read this from Caglione's own words:

When I was twelve, I sent my brother to the emergency room. One night, when he was maybe twenty, I tried to make a cast of his face. This is before I knew about alginate. I had this stuff called dental stone. I put it on my brother, but I didn’t know that as it sets it goes up to about 220 degrees Fahrenheit. I nearly baked him! We tried to chisel it off, but the stuff was like granite. I had stuck straws through his nostrils so he could breathe, but it was hot under there. I remember my dad and I dunked his face in water in the bathroom sink, and when the water came out of the nostril holes my brother looked like a fountain. So we took him to the emergency room around midnight. The doctors just ripped the stone straight off. It took his eyebrows and his mustache with it—and it was the early seventies, so he also had these big long sideburns. He still has a chunk of the mold on his bureau; it’s weird to see the eyebrow emerging from the dental stone. It’s a perfect eyebrow, every follicle ripped right out.

Why do I think of my sons when I read this?