Unreal: How did you hook up with Maxim?
Katina: All on my own, and I'm really proud of that. I love St. Louis, but the industry is really hard here. So one night I just started e-mailing shots of myself all over. Maxim contacted me a month later. They wanted me out there in two days.
Did they pay you?
They paid for the hotel, plane ticket and everything, but not to be in the magazine. Some celebrities get paid, I was told, but even then it's maybe $200. It's a total exposure magazine.
Are you a feminist?
[Laughs] Ye...no. I've got tomboy in me. I side with men usually. I've had so many men tell me I need to write a book on how to treat a man.
So, you told Maxim you were from St. Louis rather than Belleville. Why?
A lot of people gave me problems for representing St. Louis. I mean, I love Illinois because it's quieter and cheaper. I like to come to St. Louis to go out and go shopping.
What's next for your career?
I got a call from a guy in California. He wants me to send in a tape and pictures for the Discovery Channel. He's trying to get me put on a show as a Home Improvement-type girl.
Would you call yourself a Democrat or Republican?
Democrat.
So, then, you must be feeling the Joe-mentum?
Um, no. I'm not feeling it. Joe-mentum sounds really corny to me.
Small Town
That the John Edwards campaign played John Cougar, John Mellencamp and John Cougar Mellencamp on a continuous loop while a sweaty mass of supporters and press waited for him to arrive in Blueberry Hill's Duck Room last Wednesday night was fine. But numbers like "Authority Song" ("When I fight authority, authority always wins") seemed counterintuitive to the Democratic presidential candidate's effort. Then again, "I Need a Lover Who Won't Drive Me Crazy" ("Someone who'll thrill me, and then go away") summed up the night perfectly.
"Once you meet a presidential candidate, it's impossible not to like them," warned a concerned citizen eyeing Unreal's press pass. That's fine, we replied. After all, we didn't come here to hate. The six beers made sure of that. No, we wanted someone to love, and we thought old Johnny E. might be our man. That soft hair, that slightly put-on southern accent. We couldn't wait to see him.
It was strictly out of boredom, then, and not out of disrespect for the North Carolina senator that Unreal couldn't resist yelling out, "When I say 'Joe,' you say 'Mentum!'"
"Joe!"
The room was silent. Evidently Lieberman fever had yet to touch down in the Show-Me State.
And then, in a flash, Edwards was there, bursting in through the room where alt-country bands from Indiana get post-show blowjobs from middle-aged female fans. Smiling, waving his hands, he strode to the stage and Unreal gasped, not having realized he was so...
...short. Call it the Jason Priestley phenomenon, but males' diminutive stature is never captured on television. Why? Does the camera add ten pounds and six inches?
Call us heightist, but for the time being Unreal's remaining neutral in the race for a non-Dick Democratic presidential candidate. Like Joe Edwards himself, who's not making an endorsement says even though he went to college in Edwards-ville (at Duke), we're gonna invite all the candidates into our basement for beers.
Especially the tall ones.
Joe-Mentum Unbound!
Monica Marketto was feeling the Joe-mentum.
"Just watching the TV, I feel it," she said.
Of course, Marketto answers phones for Senator Joseph Lieberman, who coined the phrase "Joe-mentum" shortly before sputtering to a fifth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary -- or, in the rosy lexicon of Lieberspin, a "three-way split decision for third place."
Unreal had been looking forward to seeing the Connecticut senator in the flesh and maybe seizing the opportunity to ask him about his Joe-mentum, but we were robbed of the opportunity when the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the state Democratic Party canceled a last-minute February 2 debate that doubtless would have given Lieberman a bullet train's worth of Joe-mentum in the Mighty MO(-Joe).
"We were told that Dean, Edwards and Sharpton had confirmed," debate organizer R. Scott Brigham of UMSL informed us. "Then we were told, no, Edwards never confirmed. Then we were told Edwards had, in fact, confirmed, but Dean hadn't. Then we were told -- well, you get the general idea. We don't know now if anyone actually confirmed or not. We are obviously all disappointed, but that's politics."
Next Unreal called Missouri Democratic Party chair May Scheve and asked whether she could sense any Joe-mentum sweeping the state. "There might be some MO-Joes out there, but I haven't met them," Scheve said.
That might be because Lieberman has no organization in Missouri. In fact, Sameera Ali, his Show-Me State organizer, works out of Arlington, Virginia, and conceded that the senator "is not scheduled to go to Missouri right now, and we don't have any staff down there. That's Gephardt land."
Fair enough, Unreal replied, but Gephardt's out of the picture now.
"I understand that, but we've just targeted a few states," countered Ali. Then she perked up: "You can always throw a Joe party!"
One state the Lieberman campaign has purportedly targeted is Illinois. But when Unreal dialed up Lieberman's Chicago office late last week, an answering machine informed us that "today is Sunday, January 11, and we'll be out of the office all day."
Still on a high from last week's endorsements of homies Dick Gephardt and Blake "Don't Call Me Millionaire" Ashby, Unreal has resolved to keep the Joe-mentum alive as best we can. So we're endorsing Lieberman in primaries held in three U.S. territories.
As Howard Dean would say, "Joe-mentum's going to Guam! Joe-mentum's going to American Samoa! Joe-mentum's going to the Virgin Islands!"
A Season on the Brink
Coach John Campbell's Sanford-Brown squad split a pair en route to finishing third in this past weekend's Concordia Seminary tournament. Next up for the 7-10 Indians: a tilt against Concordia this Saturday, February 7, at 7 p.m. at the seminary's Eldon E. Pederson Fieldhouse. Campbell, who was the opposing coach in the first game ever played in that edifice in 1949, will be honored during a ceremony at the game.
