BO DEREK

Century Plaza Hotel

Century City, CA

November 16, 2000

Photo credit: Bo Derek

Living my dream, I was at a fundraising event and celebrity roast honoring Muhammad Ali and his non-profit organization The Ali Center. Before I made my way into the party, I was strolling through the VIP area and spotted my next celebrity photographer. This was going to be my tenth entry and what a coincidence, it was Bo Derek. She was as beautiful as advertised—a 10 for sure.

She was quietly chatting with someone and as I waited for their conversation to end, my friend called attention to her unusual shoes. They were extremely pointy. That said, she was still a knockout and these exotic shoes weren’t doing anything to detract from that.

When their conversation ended I touched her arm. She turned her head and almost glanced at me but seemed to be playing possum. That’s okay. I spoke to her striking profile and supermodel cheekbones. “Hi, excuse me,” I said. With a blank stare, she finally turned her piercing blue eyes to fully look at me. I continued, “I have this Celebrity Photo Album. It’s just a bunch of pictures of me taken by celebrities. Will you take my picture?” 

She had a stronger physical presence than would normally be expected from someone in her weight class and she didn’t care at all about what I was saying. However, she seemed relieved I didn’t want a picture with her and slightly let down her guard.

“Sure,” she said. She took the camera, backed up, and quickly snapped a photo. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to pose, but it didn’t matter. I was happy to have made contact with the human living inside the ravishing statue.

Without a smile or any conversation, she handed my camera back and turned away as I was thanking her. She was not dismissive necessarily, but it's fair to say she gave me the cold shoulder which was clearly a manners violation. A definite foul.

So, as the lone judge of our one-round bout, I am deducting a point from her pristine record for engaging in unsportsmanlike conduct. This brings her final tally on my scorecard to a nine—which is still very good.

With one more celebrity photo and a win under my belt, I returned back into the group of party people and headed down the hall for the night's main event.

Thank you for the experience and for the candid photo, Ms. Derek. I do appreciate your effort. And, I noticed a few months later that extremely pointy, uncomfortably restricting shoes were all the rage. Turns out you were ahead of the curve.