Vanilla Ice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my career, I’ve interviewed countless loonies—but none quite as loony as the Ice Man, Vanilla Ice.

But, alas, this is not meant to be an insult. I actually loved my time with Rob Van Winkle (his real name). It was five or six years ago, in a profile for Sports Illustrated (he was a bike racer in a past life—but, really, I just desperately wanted to profile the guy, and sold it to SI with everything I had), and Vanilla and I sat in his white Mercedes for several hours outside a race track. The topics of conversation ranged from rap (He seems to think he’s good) to aliens (Believes they placed humans on earth) to politics (pro-Bush) to MC Hammer (My all-time favorite interview quote: “You know the problem with Hammer? He invested in horses. The Ice Man was all about real estate, baby. Real estate.”)

Anyhow, from that day on I’ve regularly visited http://www.vanillaice.com, because, well, it’s like shopping at Jacks 99-Cent Store. One never knows what he’ll find. Above are two of the latest photos—one of him with the Jackson brothers, one with Vince Neil. The site offers context for neither, which makes the Ice Man that much cooler.

Word to your mother. *

* A quick lesson: As you might remember, Ice finished sayings/raps with “Word to your mother.” We whities ate it up; even started saying it, with no idea of the origin. Actually comes from “Word to the mother”—as in The Motherland, Africa. Yet another thing Ice stole from black culture. Oy.