Word To Your Mother

Forget about Schwarzenegger -- that's so Saturday. My latest surreal celeb experience? Tuesday morning at The WB's portion of the Television Critics Association press tour, when friggin' Vanilla Ice made my acquaintance.

The Setting: Hollywood Renaissance Hotel, at Hollywood and Highland
The Time: 10 a.m.
The Players: Me and Rob "Vanilla Ice" Van Winkle
The Scene:: Vanilla Ice has come to press tour to hawk the new WB reality show "The Surreal Life," along with the show's other roster of sublebrities: Erik Estrada, Traci Bingham, Ron Jeremy and "The Real World's" Trishelle.

The session is over, and I need some coffee. So does Vanilla Ice. For me, that's good enough. Just getting coffee while standing next to Vanilla Ice is more than enough for the memory book. After all, "Ice, Ice Baby" was a huge hit my senior year in high school. I hated the song at the time -- yet could still recite all of the lyrics without any visual aid. (And still can. It's always the songs you hate the most that stick with you the longest. But of course, with time, the song now reminds me of good high school times. Go figure.)

But rather than just get his coffee and go, Vanilla... er, Rob... strikes up a conversation with me.

Vanilla Ice: Man, I need some coffee.
Mike: Um. Me too.
Vanilla Ice: That's cool.
Mike: Hey, I enjoyed your show.
Vanilla Ice: Thanks, man.
Mike: Did you enjoy doing it?
Vanilla Ice: Not really.

How can you beat that? Try this on: Later that night, at the WB's press tour party, a karaoke machine had been installed. And Vanilla must've had a few cocktails. Because -- despite, as you'll see in "The Surreal Life," he desperately wants to rid himself of his cheesy past -- when the jokester DJ decided it was time to play the instrumental to "Ice Ice Baby," rather than get angry, Vanilla grabbed the mic and rocked the house. Seriously. For a moment, it was 1991.