So, a few weeks back, I get a call from smokey d. fontaine.
Smokey was the Music Editor at The Source when I arrived in the summer of '99. He assigned me my very first feature--on Eve. He was gone from the mag before the issue came out. I've always liked writing for Smokey, especially when he started america.
america magazine was smooth and creamy and glossy and beautiful and wonderful. My Mariah Carey story remains one of my favorite clips. I even have it hanging up in my office. Not so much because I wrote it but because it's just so damn pretty to look at.
Google it, you'll see it. It's hot. I tried to insert a link. But, well shoot y'all. I'm new at this. I know you can buy it on ebay. Ha.
And since I've promised to let myself get all egotastical on this page, I have to admit, my byline was HUGE in that story. Smokey made me feel like a force to be reckoned with. And with the black background under the white text, (which I believe was a play on her interacial status?), it made for a pretty scene. Not easy reading, though.
Anyway. So america is on, (ahem), hiatus. And he's moved on to a magazine called Giant. Before he sent me off to Israel, he sent me to meet the man who refers to himself as the man who used to be the next vice-president of the United States. Ba-dump. Bump.
I met Gore inside the Viacom/MTV Building at 1515 Broadway, where I used to work as an editorial assistant, back when Billboard was located there. I hated going to work on Wednesdays. On matinee day, I could count on being late to work, no matter how early I left. Tourists. Stopping. Looking. Snapping. Laughing. I'm like, dang. Can I just get to work already? Go stand in the island in the middle of the street and load your freaking camera.
I digress.
Gore was screening his film, "An Inconvenient Truth." It's about how we're all going to hell in a handbasket because we are wrecking the planet. You should see it. It won't make you all freaked out about the environment. Gore is way to congenial and calm and well-fed to make you anxious.
But you might start at least turning off the lights and maybe not sleeping with the television on. (As if I could get to sleep without Nick-At-Nite.)
Al Gore has gained a LOT of weight. Like a proper Southern gentleman, he stood when I walked into the room and I was actually flabbergasted. He's very heavy. He does not look presidential. There, I said it. He must lose 50 pounds if he wants to be taken seriously.
Like all politicians, he keeps intense eye contact and it's downright creepy. I remember when I went with my boy Me to see Cory Booker at this synagogue in Maplewood a few years back. I asked Booker something about school vouchers and dude was thisclose to my grill. And every once in a while, he would casually touch my shoulder or my elbow. Me said later that he was kind of freaked out by it. Like, dude are you trying to kick it or win her over to the school voucher program? Or both?
Al Gore didn't touch me. But he did stare at my breasts. Openly. I am not a big bosomed woman. Just average B-cups. And while he kept his eyes locked on mine mostly, whenever he reached for that Diet Coke, and took his eyes off me for a second to take a sip, those eyes went right to my boobs and took the long way back up to my eyes.
I talked to Me about this later. He said, this is the man who served with Clinton. That was his boy. What did you expect?
Didn't really bother me one way or the other. Probably should have. I was too nervous, thinking about covering 25 questions in the 15 minutes they gave me for the interview. I was actually sweating, something I never do. As always, it was a last minute assignment. I was writing out questions and reading research on the train in from Jersey.
I love the last line in the story. It made me laugh when Gore said it. And it makes me laugh now just thinking about it.
Well of course I'm not going to tell you. Then you won't buy the mag yourself! (Or at least go to a bookstore and flip through it!)
Ok, fine. This guy's got it on his blog. Click HERE and read away. Cheaters!!
-A
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