Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Beauty & the Beauty & the Beast

Being and living with a professional entertainment columnist sometimes has its perks...like getting to meet Beth Ostrosky last Thursday night. Beth who, you may ask?

Ostrosky is a model, an advice columnist for FHM magazine, the co-host of Casino Cinema on SpikeTV and she’s also Not-Mrs. Howard Stern, but she may as well be, since they’ve been together now for 6 years.

When Jeanne told me she was going downtown to interview her, about three or fours springs popped out of the back of my hardwired head.

"Please, please, please can I come along!?!?!?"

Pathetic. I’m not generally into models and all that jazz, but you gotta admire the girl who can pin down the King of All Media and keep him pinned down.

Read Jeanne’s professional account of the interview by clicking here.

My reminiscence, as you may expect, is somewhat different.

I first became aware of Ostrosky due to a small role she had in one of the greatest comedies ever made, Flirting with Disaster. If you’ve seen the film, she’s one of the two volleyball twins that Ben Stiller believes are his half-sisters about 30 or so minutes in. Not a big role, but a memorable one, or at least it is if, like me, you’ve seen the movie about 20 times and can mouth the dialogue with the characters as you’re watching it.

"You don’t think it’ll be a problem!? Really!?!? I can go!?!?!?"

So we went and met up with her at the bar in the Emily Morgan hotel. When we arrived, Jeanne wanted to stay in the car to apply a bit of makeup – women do these sorts of things when they’re about to meet someone for the first time. And so do men; my hair looked pretty decent that day and I wanted it to stay looking swank until we got to the hotel, hence my request that we keep the top up on Jeanne's convertible for the drive downtown.

Jeanne rocks. She was insanely indulgent about my mouth frothing over the prospect of meeting a model. But Jeanne is also a sharp lady. She knew that Beth O. wasn’t about to leave Howard Stern just because she happened to meet the second coolest guy in the universe.

Confession: I’d have basked in the glow of telling Beth O., “Alas, I am not only taken, but I am also in love with that woman, right over there. I know Beth - after meeting me, it’ll be tough getting on that plane and going back to Howard, but I’m confident you’ll manage.”

So I went in to get some change for parking and to call up to her room to tell her Jeanne had arrived. I was like some hipster incarnation of Jeeves, but I didn’t mind. So I did both of those things and then I stood there at the elevator waiting for her to come down. 30 seconds go by. Where is Jeanne? The elevator dings to my right at the exact same moment that Jeanne walks in through the door to my left.

I look at Beth O. I look at Jeanne. And I swear to you, I point at both of them, wagging my hands back and forth in some sort of “You...meet...you” ham fisted fashion, saying:

"Uh, uh, um, ahhhhhh..."

And that was it. That was what I said upon meeting Beth O. Frickin’ genius. Luckily I still needed to pay for parking.

"Parking. Gotta…pay for it. I’ll be…back."

Like the Governator, only minus the intensity. I bet when Howard Stern met Beth O. he knew exactly what to say, unlike me, who by this point was failing to even impress the girl I came with.

By the time I got back into the bar, Beth and Jeanne were having a good time and a great interview, though I’m pretty sure my hair didn’t look so swank at this point. I kept having to stifle my uber-gubernocity so Jeanne could get done what she needed to get done.

As things closed up, I asked Beth to sign an FHM I had brought with. She gladly did so and even posed for a photo with yours truly. I look like – I don’t know what I look like, but it isn’t comfortable. You can easily tell who’s the model and who’s, um, not. I loathe posing for pictures, but this one was worth suffering for.



She even “approved” this pic, which was pretty nice for a model who wasn’t “doing a shoot”. I mean, people could see this picture and believe she was somehow involved in Shrek 3.

Truth be told, by the end of the interview, we’d all had a great time. Beth O. was a sweet, smart, straight-up, genuine individual. She looked me in the eye a lot. That’s big. That counts for so much. She had absolutely no problem talking about Howard and how much they meant to each other.

Not only are she and Howard unmarried, but also they’ve been together for about the same amount of time as Jeanne and me, and there’s also the age difference we had in common with them. There were some noteworthy parallels that in the grand scheme of the universe meant nothing, but at the time meant something to me. I got over my flustration, as she’s the kind of person who appears to bring out the best in a person, which in Stern’s case, has gotta be imperative for a girl he dates.

I kid there. I’m a Stern fanatic. Have been for years. One thing I’ve always “known” about the guy is that it’s all an act. I bet he’s the quietest, most gentle, down to earth joe on the planet. And, being a showman of sorts myself, that’s a big part of what I like about him. If I genuinely thought he was his radio persona, I wouldn’t be interested in him.

But I might still be interested in his girl.