From the NY Times' "Fashion and Style" section -
Can This Hookup Survive?:
OPPOSITES attract, yes, but they also bicker like third graders sometimes. When the 5-foot-8 rapper Flavor Flav — whose group, Public Enemy, emerged as the Black Panthers of the hip-hop generation in the late 1980's — met the 6-foot-2 former action-film star Brigitte Nielsen, a battle of bling versus brawn began. He balked when she tried to touch his gold teeth; she towered over him, swiped him with her makeup bag and proclaimed that she would wear the pants in the house.
The house in question was the set of VH1's reality show "The Surreal Life," Season 3. Flavor Flav, Ms. Nielsen and four other C-list celebrities were settling in for what appeared to be a fraught 12-day stay, which was shown last fall.
Not long after their arrival, though, Ms. Nielsen, 41, had a few drinks and began parading in pint-sized skivvies and an apron, and Flav, 45, toned down his irritation. He brought her dinner in bed, where she lay in a drunken haze, then joined her under the covers. The next morning, as he watched her serenely cooking breakfast, he said he just might fall in love.
And if Flav, Ms. Nielsen and VH1 are to be believed, that is essentially what happened. Within two months of the "Surreal Life" September season premiere — the most watched show in VH1's history — the channel announced the new couple would be getting their own reality series: "Strange Love." It begins tonight.
Thanks, but I'll give it a pass.
But VH1's audience could not seem to turn away as Ms. Nielsen flirted with other men and Flav called her "loose"; as Flav promised he would give up his gold teeth if Gitte (Ms. Nielsen's given name) would marry him; as Ms. Nielsen proclaimed her love for "William Drayton" (Flav's real name).
More recently, as Flav and Ms. Nielson have appeared together to build interest in "Strange Love," some fans suspected a setup. The image the two project of an over-the-top caricature of an "it" couple began to seem too deliciously (or horrifically) odd to be true.
Be still, my heart. And "Flav?" I can remember when the Times' style guide required that Meat Loaf be referred to as "Mr. Loaf." Of course, they have a whiny faux-adolescent like Maureen Dowd writing columns now too. But the big question is just exactly
how much they figure on charging to read this bumpf online.
