(continued)

Details of Pam's show, which is tentatively titled Pam—Girl on the Loose and is scheduled for an eight-episode run this summer on E!, remain scarce, but there may be a few clues scattered amid the seemingly arbitrary gossip items about Anderson that have been popping up all spring. Like the one about her holding a charity yard sale in Malibu (and personally manning the lemonade stand), or the blurb that had her writhing on the back of a Harley Davidson onstage at a nude cabaret in Paris, or the report of her doffing her clothes to deliver a slice of birthday cake to Hef in Vegas on his 80th birthday.

What makes Anderson different, her manager observes, is that "she's in on the joke. She knows exactly what the Pamela Anderson deal is. She 100 percent gets it"Which brings us, finally, to the star of the show herself, seated right next to me. In my experience, what passes for sexy in Hollywood tends to disappoint in person. Not so with Pamela Anderson. She's extraordinary—so precision-engineered she seems more like a product of a body shop than the Body Shop. Her breasts—my, they are large—heave from underneath her little khaki dress. Tight as a sausage casing, the outfit gives the impression that if it were hit at just the right angle by a spitball, the whole ensemble would explode. "It's the bigness of it all," says Randy Barbato, cofounder of World of Wonder Productions, the company behind the show, explaining what it is about Pam's aesthetic that so appeals to gay men. "She's like a 50-foot woman with breasts the size of Manhattan." Of course, this explains the obsession straight men have with her as well.

It's tempting to be reductive about exactly why Pam Anderson's famous; just watch her 2005 Comedy Central roast, which begins with Jimmy Kimmel announcing they're honoring someone "who showed us just how far a woman can go when she believes in herself and gets a pair of volleyball-size breast implants." That said, Gena Lee Nolin got implants, was on Baywatch, and even had a sex tape, but if she swiped your wallet, could you pick her out of a lineup? What makes Anderson different, Asher observes, is that "she's in on the joke. She knows exactly what the Pamela Anderson deal is. She 100 percent gets it."

I don't know if she chugged a barrel of Mountain Dew before the road trip began, but the second she hops into the van, she starts chattering like a dot-matrix printer laboring to spit out the OED in under a minute. As executive producer of the show, which she refers to variously as an "art project" and a "self-portrait," Anderson is involved in directing as well as editing, in which capacity she wants Nigel to know that it might be a good idea to go out and spend a day shooting her younger brother, Gerry, who has started a small T-shirt concern that could use a publicity boost. "So Gerry's thrilled about doing this T-shirt company," she says. "Gerry's going to be bleaching his T-shirts out in the sun. You guys can film him on Saturday. He'll have them hanging from the trees. You should get him in his trailer, too. He lives in a trailer. I bought it for him, but you should get him there. He lives in Point Dume. It would be cute to have a clothesline with all his T-shirts over it, like he's actually working on it, 'cause then they'll show up in the show. I love clotheslines. I want a clothesline. My interior designer's like, you want a clothesline? I'm like, 'I love clotheslines.' I'll do your laundry, too. I'm obsessed with laundry. I'm obsessed with laundry. No one believes me. Nigel, you believe me."

Asher tries to sneak into the conversation. "Some people love laundry," he opines. "They love doing it. They find it therapeutic. James Taylor used to like doing laundry." He begins to elaborate but is quickly hushed by Pam. In true unscripted-show fashion, she's making a speakerphone call on her BlackBerry, excitedly talking to somebody named Tony about a trip to San Francisco to have her portrait painted by Pop artist Mel Ramos, who specializes in images of nude women straddling oversize products like Toblerone bars. The whole van hushes for the big call; perhaps Pam hasn't noticed Nigel's camera isn't running but is resting on the seat next to him.

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment when things begin to go south between Pam and me. But I think it happens early in the ride, when I make a comment she seems to take as evidence that either I dislike black people or think they don't belong at USO events. (For the record, I dig patriots of all colors.) She's just mentioned her son Brandon, one of her two children with Tommy Lee, a 12-year-old who's obsessed with World War II. She talks about her sons incessantly, and nothing about her high regard for them seems even remotely contrived.

Pam: You know, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote a book called Brothers in Arms. He's a historian and he's written textbooks for schools. And he's a friend of mine. So Brandon's reading the book and is going to interview Kareem, and I'm going to film it and make a little movie, and that will be his report for school.
Me: Does Kareem Abdul-Jabbar live here in Malibu?
Pam: No, he doesn't. He comes to Malibu. And he loves the kids, especially Brandon, who's interested in the war. He really wanted to come to Camp Pendleton, but because of all of the press, I didn't want to take him along.
Me: You wanted to bring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?
Pam: No, I'm talking about my son.
Me: Oh! I guess it would be pretty weird if you brought Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That wouldn't really make any sense.
Pam: [Huffily.] Why wouldn't it? Snoop Dogg's going to be there. And Janet Jackson.

It gets worse.