Pamela Denise Anderson (born July 1, 1967) is an international television actress, model, and producer known as much for her tumultuous personal life as for her professional accomplishments.
Anderson was born in 1967 in Ladysmith, British Columbia, Canada As the first baby born on Canada's Centennial Day, the newborn Anderson won fame as the nation's "Centennial Baby".
She was subsequently "discovered" in 1989 when she was wearing a Labatt's beer t-shirt at a football game. She was hired by Labatt's to promote their product, and soon after, she appeared in Playboy magazine.
Anderson's first major television role was on the United States hit television sitcom Home Improvement (1991-1993). But her rise to stardom came primarily from her role as C J Parker (1992-1997) on Baywatch. In 1996, she appeared in a feature film, Barb Wire, which failed to achieve commercial success; and in 1998 she appeared in her own television series, V.I.P., which ran for four seasons.
In addition to her fame from modelling and acting, Anderson has gotten a great deal of press attention for her flamboyant personal life. She married rock star Tommy Lee of the band Mötley Crüe after knowing him for only 96 hours. Anderson filed for divorce twice and reconciled twice, before finally breaking her relationship with Lee. During the period of her marriage, she was known professionally as Pamela Anderson Lee. Since her divorce, she has become engaged to model Marcus Schenkenberg, broken up with him, and became engaged to rock musician Kid Rock.
A pornographic home video of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee was stolen from their home, and made a huge stir on the Internet. Anderson sued an Internet company which was distributing the video, and some media sources reported that she settled the case for $10 million. The popularity and profitability of the video sparked a miniature genre within the porn film industry, and since then many homemade porn videos of celebrities have been released to the public through home video and Internet channels (sometimes with, sometimes without the participants' co-operation).
In March 2001, Christine Evelyn Roth pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of trespassing and was deported to her home country, France. The woman had been arrested while sleeping in a guest room of Anderson's home, but she was only charged with trespassing and not the more serious crime of stalking.
In March 2002, Anderson publicly stated that she had contracted the Hepatitis C virus from Lee (supposedly from sharing tattoo needles), and began writing a regular column for Jane magazine. Anderson became the celebrity spokesperson for the American Liver Foundation, and served as the Grand Marshall of the SOS motorcycle ride fundraiser in October. In October 2003, Ms. Anderson jokingly said on Howard Stern's radio show that she does not expect to live more than ten or fifteen years http://www.pamelaanderson.com/news/news.asp?item=2056, but this was misconstrued and taken seriously by many Internet sites and tabloids.
Lee denies having the disease and claims this is part of a ploy to take custody of their children.
Anderson became a naturalized citizen of the United States on May 12, 2004, while retaining her Canadian citizenship. She has lived in California since 1989. She is currently a columnist for the Canadian Elle magazine and voices the title character on the animated series Stripperella.
I watch an awful lot of Food Network. I'm not sure how the obsession developed, exactly.
(Though I suspect the FDA should classify Alton Brown as a 'gateway chef'. A couple of hours a day watching him, and you'll spiral down into the hard stuff.
You think I'm kidding. Just wait until you're sitting on your couch at 2:30 in the morning, watching crap involving some spiky-haired surf punk driving around the country looking for chili dogs to shove down his goateed gob. Then you'll know you're 'on point'. Not so much.)
In spite of my curious epicurean affliction, I'm no good in the kitchen. Couldn't cook my way out of a paper cupcake liner. My notion of 'blanching' food involves taking it to see 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. If the recipe doesn't begin with 'Microwave for...' and end less than four words later, I've got no business reading it. And frankly, I'm okay with that.
(In fact, the very pinnacle of my questionable culinary career to date was managing to make scones a few months back which were neither immediately poisonous nor required a jackhammer to pry open.
Not that I made them from scratch, mind you. From a bag. Even that was touch and go. And met with considerable skepticism, as you might imagine.)
My wife, bless her little whisk, can't reconcile this apparent paradox. How can I enjoy watching shows about food, and the preparation thereof, but display absolutely zero ability, interest or initiative in throwing my own spatula into the ring to learn?
It's simple, I tell her. Cooking shows -- the good ones, anyway -- aren't actually about cooking, per se. They're entertainment. I can watch 24 without wanting to become a ruthless, reckless, occasionally-dead counter-terrorism agent. I can sit through Family Guy and successfully quash the urge to have three kids, gain sixty pounds and move to Rhode Island. I can catch a rerun of Three's Company and still have no desire to live near the beach in sunny California with two young single women and... well, okay, fine. Bad example.
(Oh, who am I kidding? I don't tan well, California's too damned hot, and I don't have the looks to fit in or the wardrobe to convince Mr. Roper I might be gay.
Also, within a week they'd find Suzanne Somers gagged and tied up in the storage locker. That grating blonde shtick of hers made Pamela Anderson look like Niels frickin' Bohr.)
"Is there some contractual obligation that says I can't TiVo Iron Chef, unless I run immediately to the kitchen afterward to try my hand at their sardine smoothie? Lord, I hope not."
So why can't 'food TV' be pure entertainment, too? Can't I just watch Everyday Italian already, and forget about learning to make the Fettucine alla Whatsamattayou? Isn't it enough to simply enjoy Good Eats, without storming off to find a snarky Asian lady to sell me a waffle maker? Is there some contractual obligation that says I can't TiVo Iron Chef, unless I run immediately to the kitchen afterward to try my hand at their sardine smoothie? Lord, I hope not.
My wife sees it differently, of course. She makes the point that these shows are meant to get viewers interested in cooking, to make us more self-sufficient, and to unfold for us the wonders of exotic flavors and aromas made possible with a few culinary skills.
Right. If I want 'exotic flavors and aromas', I'll suck a big strawful of that unholy fishshake up there. No, thanks. I'm just trying to kill an hour or so in front of the tube. And Baywatch isn't on right now.
(Hey, I said Pam Anderson was dumb. I never said I couldn't watch her with the sound turned down. Fair's fair.)
So I decided to prove to my wife that sometimes cooking shows are meant to be emulated, and sometimes they're just pretty pictures and 'Bam!' noises you use to pass the time. To really get the point across, I've tried to think of other examples of cooking-as-just-entertainment. It hasn't gone well.
First, I appealed to her visual sensibilities. I choreographed a little number, worked up a costume and showed her my impression of making pasta. As an interpretive dance. Sadly, just when I got to the crescendo where the water boils, I slipped on the placemats I was using to represent lasagna and went down in a heap. I think I sprained a fusilli.
(My wife did report that she found the show 'highly entertaining'. But probably not in the way she was supposed to.)
Next, I tried to convince her using a more traditional art form. I gathered a few of the vegetables we had in the pantry, set up a camera, and took pictures of myself slicing, peeling and chopping them. Black and white shots, very artistic and classy. Or so I thought. Until I got a call from the local cops, after the guy at the Photo Hut called them about some 'disturbing' images he'd developed.
Finally, I was able to sort everything out.
("No, officer, that's just a carrot. Yes, I'm certain. No, I had no idea a zucchini would look that way in grayscale. Sorry for the trouble. And I hope you catch that 'Mad Grater' sex offender some day, but I'm afraid I can't help you."
If I had it to do over again, I'd probably use less suggestive veggies. And color film. And I'd opt against the 'tasteful nudes'.)
That's when I stopped appealing to my wife's visual sensibilities. This carrot knows when he's julienned.
As a last resort, I turned to cooking as poetry. Surely, a flowery description of food preparation could be seen as pure art, without any need to get the kitchen involved. Just what I needed to prove my point once and for all.
Sadly, the only material I had for inspiration were my past experiences in attempting to cook. Which were rarely successful, often dangerous, and universally regrettable. Also, about the only poetic form I know is the limerick. So the results of my 'artistic' stabs at food prep poetry turned out something like this:
"The secret to pudding, they say,
Is getting lumps out of the way.
So I pressed mine out thin
With my best rolling pin,
But most of it slithered away."
Or worse:
"I once made a tomato soup,
With a cup of salt instead of a scoop.
Dry like the Sahara,
Chunky as marinara,
It pretty much tasted like poop."
Don't even ask about the rhyme involving 'crispy duck'. Just don't.
I give up. I just couldn't back up my claim that cooking shows have nothing to do with cooking. So the next time I sit down to watch a nice Unwrapped or Molto Mario, I'm just going to sigh and silently hand my wife this last attempt at artistry, my concession haiku:
Convinced by your words,
I shall now provide food; hope
You like Papa John's.
A large loaded pizza, with garlic sauce for the crusts? Made by someone else and delivered to our door? Now that's art I can watch all night long. Published: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:58:29 GMT - Source: Wherethehellwasi.Com - Read the article
