Keeping a Straight Face Was Real Fight

Some days are tougher than others. A press conference is called across town, it’s my assignment as middleman to relay the news to our readers, so I go to the House of Blues on Tuesday to see what Carmen Electra has to reveal.

I’d rather be spending quality time with Eric Karros, of course, reminiscing about some of the great double plays he’s hit into during his career. But I’m a professional, so although the assignment is not all that appealing, I’m at the House of Blues early and right on top of Carmen so our readers won’t miss a thing she has to say.

Immediately someone offers me a drink, but I’ve done my Internet homework, and I know this is what happened to Dennis Rodman, a few drinks, he’s married overnight to Carmen and 10 days later he’s seeking an annulment.

I ask for water, knowing they put bigamists in jail.

A PUBLICIST takes Carmen and me to a private room on the third floor along with some goofy lug wearing a massive ring of gold around his midsection, and I remember reading something about some kind of gold club, and I’m thinking I probably should turn off my cell phone so my wife doesn’t interrupt our interview. Her timing is uncanny.

I try breaking the ice by talking about Doug Flutie, and Carmen gets real short with me and says she has no idea who he is.

Now, I’m here because I’ve been told this affair is going to be sports-related, but I’m not getting the vibe that she knows anything about sports. This doesn’t make her much different from Donald Sterling, and I kept talking to him, so I ask, as only a professional interviewer can, “What’s a girl like you doing at a press conference like this?�

I note right away--because I’m a paid observer--she’s a little annoyed, tugging at the tube top she’s wearing because it keeps creeping down, and in my ear I hear the goofy lug with the gold ring around his midsection yapping like I’m here to write down anything he has to say.

“I got this call from the Ultimate Fighting Championship people and they asked if I’d help them,� Carmen says. “I watched some videos of the fights and it was pretty intense--so cutting-edge and raw.�

I feel her passion, and I’m acting as if I’m interested--good enough acting that I wouldn’t be out of place on “Baywatch,� and the goofy lug starts talking about squeezing the carotid arteries in someone’s neck until the blood no longer gets to the brain. I figure I better pay him some attention.

It seems this guy is a world champion of some sort in Ultimate Fighting, like you can have anything but a world champion and a bunch of people beaten to a pulp in something called Ultimate Fighting.

“I’ve seen Tito [Ortiz] in the cage, and he’s sexy and pretty hot,� Carmen says, and I’m thinking this is a woman who thought a basketball player packing a nose ring and tattoos everywhere on his body was the living end, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s keeping someone in a cage these days.

IT’S DAN White, the president of the UFC, who sets the record straight. Ultimate Fighting is now respectable, which explains why Carmen has been hired, and unlike in the old days, when the only two rules were no eye gouging and no biting, they’ve sissified the sport with 33 rules. The next big fight, which will have Huntington Beach’s Ortiz defending his title, will be Sept. 28 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

They tell me Donald Trump went to the last fight in New Jersey. I’m trying to picture billionaire Eli Broad at cage-side for the next one.

There are a lot of camera crews here, including a few guys off the street with Instamatics--and without Carmen, this is a press conference that would lack only one thing: the press. I’m being polite, tough, and reading my press kit. I notice right away that the first UFC championship--going back to 1993--was decided by a “rear naked choke,� and so I ask Carmen what she can tell me about a rear naked choke, and the goofy

lug steps in and offers to demonstrate on me.

I decide to bring up Rodman, hoping that might rile her and have her demonstrate the rear naked choke on me, but she’s fine with the question. I should have known nothing would be off limits. I’ve seen her in “The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human.�

Tell me, honestly, you haven’t?

“We don’t really speak to each other anymore--I keep my distance,� she says, and while they were both at the last fight in New Jersey, “He was on one side of the room and I was on the other.�

A publicist steps in at that point, and that’s enough about Rodman. She proclaims its time for the formal press conference downstairs. Now standing on stage, it’s quite obvious Carmen has her own ultimate fight to contend with as she battles to keep her pants up--as well as her top.

I’m about to leave the press conference, but another publicist approaches and says Cuba Gooding Jr. is here and that he’s some kind of UFC groupie. I’m sure there are millions. He introduces me to Gooding, and Gooding says right away, “I don’t want to talk.�

This is very good news. If all celebrities were like this, there would be no hoopla, no attraction, no reason to be curious again--thereby resulting in fewer and fewer ridiculous press conferences.

I’m at the point right now, I’m not even sure Salma Hayek could get me to go to one of these things. Well, maybe I exaggerate.

TODAY’S LAST word comes in an e-mail from PacSand:

“I love it when sportswriters reveal just what jealous, whining jackals they really are. T.J., no matter what happens in your life, no matter how much you hope or fantasize, you’ll never play in the NFL or the NBA.�

Thanks for breaking it to me gently.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at [email protected]