Manolith Interviews: Mandy Blank

By Ned Hepburn on July 2nd, 2009

• Tweet
• Link to StumbleUpon
• 1 Comment

You know it’s going to be a long day at work when the only thing on your itinerary for the day is to do an interview with a beautiful woman. I don’t mean that in the clinical sense of the phrase “beautiful woman”. “Beauty” in Los Angeles is sort of like how other cities treat their local cuisine: it’s an export, sure, but every guy who can operate a commercial pizza oven has their own idea of what a Brooklyn Pizza tastes like. Add that pizza analogy to the fact that while there are many “beautiful” people in Los Angeles, there’s only a few that are doing it right and with such aplomb that others sit up and take notice. Mandy Blank is beautiful. Like, mind numbingly gorgeous. Let’s just get that out of the way. She’s dressed – imagine – if you will – like a slightly older Natalie Portman in what could best be described as “Gladiator chic” meets the second half of the 1995 movie Clueless. I arrived about as unprepared as an interviewer can be: my questions written childishly on a yellow notepad and I had still retained some cobwebs from the Jameson drinking / Bob Seger listening session from the night before. Yes, your correspondent was slightly hungover. The only body sculpting I’d been doing had been the steady application of fatty layers via pork tacos and beer as to prepare for the next ice age. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I was totally underprepared to report anything let alone the goings on of a highly successful fitness model.

Now: here’s a funny thing. Did you know there is a difference between the term “body builder” and “fitness model”? You did? Well, I sure as fuck didn’t. Half of my questions involved the phrase ‘body building’. Such as “So. Body building. What’s that all about”.

So there went my little yellow notepad. And it was just me and her, in a small room, with pictures of her butt on the walls. Do you know how hard it is to carry on a conversation with someone when you can see a picture of their butt – neigh – four or five pictures of her butt – within ten feet of you? Did you know there is a magazine called “Glute Magazine”? Do you think they have meetings and an office? I digress, but seriously – can you imagine being the editor of Glute Magazine?

Mandy clocks in at roughly 5 foot 6, her hair pulled back not unlike a  brunette Tinkerbell, wearing a short skirt and not much make up. This highlights her rather stunning appearance: she has a strong jawline, high cheekbones, and some serious movie star quality eyes. She looks not unlike a comic book super woman come to life; at least the kind of super hero that really likes Marilyn Monroe movies and super healthy breakfasts while checking her Blackberry; and she holds the air around her like all beautiful women do: she lets the guy make a total ass out of himself.

Mandy was born and raised in Florida, the penile shaped state with a reputation for its inhabitants being nothing short of legendary when it comes to the kind of backwoods insanity that only Floridians can breed. Mandy was and still is a very talented dancer, and showed early promise. At 16, as was the style in the area, she took a job at the Orlando outpost of the Disney theme parts: Disney World. Should you have been lucky to have met Miss Blank during her stint as either Chip or Dale of the titular cartoon “Chip And Dale: Rescue Rangers” you would have been amazed at the sheer physical dexterity used to dance around like a fucking chipmunk in a) the Florida sun and b) with 50 lbs of fake chipmunk on you. This served her well, as at 18 she blew the competition away with a routine to the Van Halen song “Hot For Teacher”, where Mandy dressed up like a teacher. Soon after she told me this my recording device exploded out of sheer sexual frustration. Angry at itself for not being a human and not allowed to have a chance with Miss Mandy Blank, it decided to kill itself in some sort of iPhone hari kari way and thusly I had to conduct the rest of the interview from memory and crudely scrawled upon Post It notes.

Her PR team were but 10 feet away, listening to our conversation with ears open. It was highly unnerving, and despite them taking pictures of the interview, they were somehow ‘unavailable’ when pressed for further questions and the pictures. I’ll be blunt; the interview was pretty cool, but it carried the air of a blind date with someone’s parents sitting fifteen feet away.

She explained the difference between body building and fitness modeling. “Body building and fitness are completely different”. You learn something new every day, folks.

“I’m known for my routines,” Mandy said, “They’re always off the chain”. And off the chain they are, dear readers. With more a staggering collection of over 2000 awards, magazine covers, and various other accolades, Miss Blank has in deed gone off the chain and onto an entirely different chain. The Hollywood food chain. She is the personal trainer of various unnamed “Listers” (that is: people on “the list”, be it the “A List”, “B List”, or super rad list for clubs you nor I will ever see the inside of). She has her own clothing line cunningly entitled “Blank 69″; an innuendo capturing not only her sense of humor but also – yes – you guessed it coming into this sentence – her sexuality. She has an upcoming as yet untitled show coming up on an as yet unnamed network. She has a ‘dream board’ that lists off accomplishments for the month and lo and behold she actually gets them DONE. “Incredibly driven” is how she describes herself, and it shows. From the stripper pole in the front room to the boxing gloves next to the pair of stiletto heels – a fair analogy for Miss Blank herself – Mandy has made the most out of everything life has given her. That and she looks like a superhero; with the kind of body that wouldn’t be out of place drawn on the back of a 9th graders Trapper Keeper.

And as me and you are sitting here, staring at Mandy (and her butt, which might I remind you SELLS MAGAZINES), I have to ask, what must one do to obtain someone like Mandy as their own? What can a mere mortal do to obtain such an Amazonian beauty as her? To be blunt: what would my stoner ass have to do or say to make her mine? I asked her.

“M-m-m-m-mandy,” I asked with the collectedness of Michael J Fox at an Etch-A-Sketch meeting, “What would a guy have to be like to date you?”

“Well,” she said calmly in total juxtaposition to my stuttering ass “He’d have to be as driven as I am”.

“Could he, uh, y’know, eat tacos all day? Would he have to like – uh – work out and stuff?”

She laughed in the way that only beautiful women who have their shit together laugh. “Well, I wouldn’t rule it out”.

One thing struck me a few hours later. Something she’d said towards the end of the interview off the cuff – “My biggest passion is being on stage”, she said – and you had to wonder if that was what she ultimately wanted to do. For when one of her ilk – an extremely driven and talented woman, yet some might say overtly so – sees an open door, they are want to rush through it without forethought. What came first, the desire to be on stage or the desire to be a professional fitness model? I understand the desire behind the clothing line and the cottage industry Mandy has build around herself – with a degree of success, I might add. However, to borrow an antiquated analogy, your correspondent wonders which leg of the chair is actually holding the whole thing up, so to speak, and why one’s personal brand would include the need for a pay-per-month website subscription and a clothing line. Mandy is very, very good at what she does and her accolades show for it. Which, in your correspondents opinion, go far enough to speak of her without bringing a clothing line and a reality TV show into the equation at all.

And with that, my interview came to a close. I was on my 8th glass of water and was sweating either due to the heat in the room or “just me”. Mandy had gotten the better of me. I thanked her and her kind PR people and then exited swiftly and drove to the nearest fast food restaurant, ate a hamburger, and cried a river of real tears. And not those big-girl “we’re out of ice cream” tears. Like, real Man tears. The kind of tears one cries when they realize they just met someone so clearly out of the stratosphere that they as mere humans will never, ever get the chance to meet again. Los Angeles is a strange, strange town with stranger still people inhabiting it. Meeting Mandy was an experience and a predominantly fun one at that. And while it’s incredibly intimidating to interview someone when pictures of their ass on the cover of ‘Glute Magazine’ are on full display, Mandy was a total sweetheart about the whole thing. She’s a girl on a mission, calm, cool, and collected; making her way in the shark infested waters of Hollywood not by coweing in fear of said sharks but by punching them in the face. Mandy Blank: Shark Puncher. Perhaps that would look good on a t-shirt, I thought, as I took another bite of my cheeseburger.

___

Ned Hepburn is the 25 year old Editor of Manolith.com and a freelance writer living in Los Angeles, CA.