…
Everybody comes from somewhere. If a
someone becomes “somebody” and their somewhere
is “where you are from” it gets exciting. …
A young lady, multi-decades removed from me, has
leap frogged from “local pretty girl” to
Internet cheesecake to a bona-fide TV screen
siren. Jaime Pressley grew up
in MY HOME TOWN. Both
of us born and bred among the hushpuppies and
tobacco fields of the same “Downeast” town.
If you think that’s a hot topic for
beauty parlors and back fences … YOU’RE
RIGHT!
Jaime Pressley busted out in primetime this
Fall. Up til then, our hometown’s
most famous femme fatale was the girl
that married Lee Iacocca about 20
years ago. With his first wife hardly
cold in the grave, Lee, in his late 60s at the
time, got himself hitched to our 30-ish “former
flight attendant”. The
May-December nuptials didn’t thrill Lee’s
grown children.
Around town. all this gal’s old beaus
expected “the tabloids” to come acalling ready
to pay for
juicy background. Apparently Lee’s
blushing bride had not been “saving herself”
for Mr. Right, Mr. Old or Mr. Rich. If
she had been, THAT would have been news-worthy.
As it was …. Yawn. No
windfall profits for the local bon vivants hanging
around the putting green at the country club … DRAT!
Alas, before you could say “iron-clad pre-nup”
it was splitsville. Ol’ Lee did
have a goofy grin on his face for 6-8 months after
he changed the locks on his Detroit-area
mega-mogul mansion.
The local community hucksters never got around
to posting that city limits sign “The
former Mrs Lee Iacocca was from Here.”
But it’s a possibility this time around
with Jaime Pressley.
It’s not a unique story but still special
when it’s local. Young girl grows
up in sleepy Southern town dripping with middle
class values and all sorts of Mayberry
similarities. (NOTE: Refer to
BobLee’s all-time classic 2003 column “Pretty
DownEast Wimmen”). Her
first magazine cover at 13 revealed that “she
had IT”. “IT” was
oozing out all over her, bustin’ her buttons and
straining the denim seams of her poured-in jeans.
… and the kinfolks said … Jaime you
need to move away from there. Said
Californee is the place you oughta be. So
she loaded up the mini-van and moved to Beverlee.
Hills, that is … swimming pools, movie
stars, cheesy agents, casting couches and video
cameras.
First thing ya know …
Jaime’s a B-movie vixen of international repute.
Her au natural ima
ges
appeared on dorm room ceilings and in those
cinderblock XXX porno-palaces next to used car
lots Not to mention in the erotic
daydreams of the Howard Spragues of the world …
and even admired in lesbian love dens where
“they do” whatever it is that “they do”
with each other.
Get your picture taken striding a Harley Hawg wearing
stilettos, a g-string, and a smile.
People are going to take
notice. They will have opinions about
you doing it, especially in a small
town.
As you would expect, our small Southern town
has a rasher of busybodies and nabobs. I
am related to some doozies. Jaime did
not seek my approval to do what she does. Nor
did I consult her about my lurid occupation.
The Tobacco buy-out is old news. Jim
Hunt’s Global TransPark scam made Jim Hunt's
cronies rich but left the community poor. The
beauty parlours and backfences were hungry for
fodder. The Pressleys went back 3+
generations so everybody claimed to know them
and/or her. Jaime was a mere nymphet
when she separated from her parents at 15 and
headed west. LA eats up nymphets like
Orca feeding on a school of herring. Most
disappear. Some, like Jaime
Pressly, emerge a few years later as
“screen sirens”.
A not dissimilar career path was followed by a
pretty girl from North Myrtle Beach back in the
80s. She has done OK wearing evening
gowns and turning letters with Pat Sajak.
Jaime’s career percolated for a few years
thru B-movies and “pictorials” in Maxim, FHM,
Playboy
and a few of those calendars you see hanging in
auto repair shops. She began doing TV
including a “car crash and shoot’em up”
series with Tiffany Amber-Thiessen in
which she played a drug gang skank. Their
obligatory “lesbian kiss” ratcheted ratings 8
points with her target demographics.
She is now riding a rocket playing
“Joy”. Earl’s ex-wife on “My
Name Is Earl” – the break-out
comedy hit in NBC’s fall line-up. “Joy”
is a “trailer park skank with a heart of
polyester”. Jaime 
plays
her in a hilarious over-the-top fashion. Guess
how she developed the character of “Joy”?
Her recent appearance on Fox &
Friends created quite a local stir.
As millions gawked and leered she revealed
that “Joy” was modeled after “the people
I knew growing up back in North
Carolina” … especially their odd customs
like “driveway tanning with baby oil
and iodine”. The hommies were
divided over whether she should be more specific
about her “home town” and ID the specific
trailer park skanks incorporated into “Joy”.
Be Warned … the show is a tad
“raw”. Not for the
genteel or easily offended (kinda like this
website!)
Carmen Ele
ctra
was once Dennis Rodman’s arm candy.
Now she is co-starring in a new movie 
with
Steve Martin. In interviews Carmen
and Jaime both project a street-savy and
the rare capability of not taking themselves too
seriously (Tar Heel fans take note!)
despite the hubba hubba they generate by simply
entering a room. Sleek Ferraris
chased by dirty old men and pimply-faced punks
neither of whom would know what to do with’em if
they ever caught’em.
Jaime and BobLee might one day be co-Grand
Marshals of the local Christmas Parade …
side-by-side on a flatbed truck surrounded by
runny-nosed elves and dodging incoming
pea-shooters from the local miscreants. I’ll
be the one with the beard. Jaime will
be one with the 38-D cups.
Small Southern towns
They are SPECIAL!
© BobLee Swagger
