July 01

 Pamela Denise Anderson's Birthday
 


Pamela Anderson was born on July 1st, 1967 in a small town in British Columbia called Ladysmith. She became one of the nineties’ most recognizable, um, personalities, and has since developed a successful acting and activism career.

In 1989, while attending a football game with her friends, she was caught in a Labatt shirt on the jumbotron and the crowd went wild. Her photographer boyfriend, sensing opportunity, produced a pin-up poster of the 21-year-old Anderson, which launched her model career.

Anderson moved to Los Angeles to pursue said career, and it didn’t take long for her to land herself in that most hallowed of institutions – the Playboy Centerfold, in February 1990.

In 1991, Anderson landed a small recurring role on the new sitcom Home Improvement, as the Vanna White-like set dressing Lisa on “Tool Time,” the show-within-the-show. She was frustrated with how little screen time she got, however, and in 1992 left to look for other opportunities.

Opportunity knocked, or rather jiggled, in the form of a co-starring role in long-running, slow-motion-running cheese-fest Baywatch. Anderson’s starring role of C.J, the busty lifeguard with a heart of gold, marked the first time that most males were allowed to admit to their wives and girlfriends that they knew who Pamela Anderson was. Anderson was on Baywatch for five years, after which she starred in the campy series V.I.P. as an accidental bodyguard. She continued to appear in Playboy throughout the nineties.

Anderson was later married to Kid Rock and briefly Rick Salomon (famous for being the other star of Paris Hilton’s sex tape), but it was her first marriage that most will remember. Anderson was briefly known as Pamela Anderson Lee during her three-year marriage to Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee. Anderson and Lee got hitched after knowing each other for a respectable 96 hours, and somehow despite these strong foundations in mutual understanding, the couple divorced in 1998. They’ve been together on and off since then, but the couple (and the world) will always remember a certain 1995 vacation that led to the infamous Lee sex tape. That’s right, Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson released a sex tape when you were still in middle school. And then she married your boyfriend.

These days, Anderson is highly active as the face (and body) of PETA, and has posed for a number of risqué ads supporting vegetarianism and condemning fur garments. Through everything, Anderson has demonstrated a remarkably down-to-earth personality and surprising intelligence, considering her typecasting as the archetypical dumb blonde. Anderson’s always game for a good laugh at her own expense, as evidenced by her cameo as the object of the ridiculous Borat’s obsession.

To pay homage to the show that brought her out of the furtive boxes hidden under the bed and into our living rooms, enjoy a refreshing Baywatch Cocktail. So raise your glasses to the bubbly beauty, she of the killer curves and predictably poor taste in marriage material, the actress, the activist, the assets – Pamela Anderson.
 

Baywatch Cocktail

 

Ingredients
 
1&1/3 oz Galliano
1&1/3 oz vodka
1/2 oz cream

 
Fill with orange juice
1 TB chocolate shavings


 
Instructions
 
1. Shake Galliano, vodka, and orange juice in a cocktail shaker with ice.
2. Strain into a hurricane glass full of ice and layer the cream on top.
3. Add chocolate shavings on top and serve with a straw.

© 2011 Gordon Nary and Tyler Stokes