A Story from CLC
The fact that I knew the “Revenge of the Nerds” song word for word endeared me to Scott Gramling and the FHM crowd. On the 7 Train to a Mets game for my first meeting with the group (and eating a different food against a different FHMer every inning) we bonded by our love for the 1984 cinematic classic. It is not too highfalutin to suggest that each man has both Stan Gable and Louis Skolnick inside him. In the seventh inning, I lost in Knish to Scott Gramling and I didn’t even know he was the editor-in-chief. Since he was paying for the most expensive FHM story at the time, it was a good loss. I rebounded over digestive beers and sang the Nerds song again. It never gets old.
I think only Phil was capable of seeing beyond our love for “Nerds” even beyond the 4th direct-to-cable installment and making its folklore come to life. For the 25th anniversary of the film, Phil formed his own blue ribbon fact finding committee and reunited the cast for a feature in FHM’s pages. From that story, Andrew Cassese (“Wormser” and one of the Bertolli Chefs on the side of bus stops ads) would become a wonderful addition to the gang and a lifelong buddy. Also, Phil would photograph my girlfriend topless.
To commemorate Betty Childs’ boobs, somehow my girlfriend volunteered to pose with pocket protectors covering her nipples. Phil, perhaps to save production dollars was to photograph her himself. Trusting another man with your topless girlfriend is akin to giving an ice cream cone to a fat kid and telling him, “Hold this for second.”
As it turned out at the photo shoot, Phil was the more embarrassed of the two. Beet faced and fumbling he couldn’t get out any photographic instructions. My girlfriend, seeing Phil’s discomfort, playfully skewered him with nip slips and peek-a-boos. Phil was a mess; a man whose own unabashed nudity at inopportune times, couldn’t adjust to someone else’s girlfriend revealing herself to him.
Instead of filling his head and libido with mental images of my girlfriends breasts, Phil, ever a faithful friend, averted his gaze and snapped the photos blind. He found my girlfriend’s nudity nerve wracking. Which amused both her and I greatly. The photo ran in the next issue – my girlfriend, normally press shy, pleased with the outcome and I, with a modern day Betty Childs, showing her photo to random strangers.
Phil probably looked at the photo and thought, “If I could do it again, I should have gotten a photo of Curtis Armstrong picking my nose. Now that would have been exciting!”
—Crazy Legs Conti
