So began a conference not much different from the one during the Letterman show three weeks ago, only this time there was some grumbling in the audience.  “That’s terrible,” I heard a woman four or five rows behind me say.  Someone in the same vicinity added, “The worst thing is that somewhere out there, they have to have mothers.  Can you imagine – if the girls are like that, think what the families are like.”

     And “Well, they’re supposedly from Los Angeles.”

     And “Oh, yes, Los Angeles.”

     Then a woman in the front row got ambitious: “Why you cuttin’ that out, Rosie?  It’s all they know – let ‘em keep on embarrassing themselves.  Hell, we’re enjoying it!”

     The director turned from Rosie and the girls to see where the voice had come from.

     “They play with themselves all over MTV,” the woman droned on, “what’s the problem with talking about it here?”

     Krystal jumped out of her seat.  “Hey, we don’t play with ourselves on MTV!  We do it in restaurants and public libraries.  Bitch.”

     The audience reacted to that.  Not good.

     “There you go,” the woman said, putting up her hands.  “I rest my case.”

     “Just rest your fucking mouth,” Krystal said.  “Everybody can see your string.”

     Rosie walked off the set.  The director followed, talking to the back of her head, but Rosie wasn’t listening.

     “Somebody needs to slap your mouth!” the woman shouted at Krystal.  She stood up, in stages, and I saw that she was hangingly obese and wearing one of those dresses that look like a bed sheet.

     The director returned to center stage.  I think he had only wanted to re-take the segment where Lilly talks about the meaning of the song, but now things were getting complicated.  Heather and Krystal stomped over wires and between floor cameras to the edge of the stage area and started yelling at the woman.  The audience was making a lot of noise, but I couldn’t tell whose side it was on.  Two of the woman’s friends, likewise enormous, worked their ways out of their seats, screaming obscenities as they gyrated and fought for balance.  This took at least five seconds.  Once free, they shoved their middle fingers toward Heather and Krystal.

     Lilly stayed put on the couch, observing.  Celeste went to join the other two as the audience laughed and jeered.  A few guys out there whistled at Celeste, par for the course.  It was starting to feel like something from Geraldo.  The director had been conferring with a production assistant; now he turned and waved toward the sound booth beyond the last row of seats.

     Krystal spit at the women, Heather called them something I couldn’t make out (probably “rhino” or “hippo,” her current favorite fat terms), Krystal spun around and slapped her ass three times, and that’s when two security-types in yellow Rosie O’Donnell Show T-shirts hauled onto the stage.  And that’s when dangerous Moe, in his usual dark overstuffed turtleneck, burst from the other side of the stage and planted himself between the men in yellow and three of the four girls he was paid to protect, even when they were the ones screwing up.

     With his typical grace, Moe convinced the other two men that it was in their best interests to let him deal with his girls.  Just as the men backed off, a metal chair came flying through the air and ricocheted off Krystal’s leg, making her scream.  Rosie reappeared with the house mike and said, “You guys, we really need to calm down, okay?”

     Then it went from Geraldo to Jerry Springer.

     Krystal charged the seating area and lunged for the fat woman, who had managed to get off the steps and onto solid ground.  Most of the audience was on its feet, blocking my view, so I ran down the aisle to where Krystal had the woman’s head in a death-lock.  The woman was yelling with what little breath she had available.  Heather and Celeste raced over started trying to get Krystal off the woman, which was no easy task because the woman’s friends had joined the action.  Heather slipped and fell.  I grabbed Krystal around the waist just as Celeste let go of her – one of the friends had gotten a handful of her wild black hair and, for Celeste, that was a much bigger concern than saving a whale.  Moe got right to work saving Celeste’s hair.

     “Let her go!” I yelled at Krystal.  I put all my weight into a mighty backwards pull, and thankfully she did let go, otherwise she would have pulled the fat woman down on top of us when we hit the ground.

     Heather scrambled back to her feet; Moe got Celeste untangled and away from cosmetic danger; I struggled to contain Krystal, who was on top of me, kicking her feet in the air and screaming out progressively more inventive words and phrases with each thrust of her legs.  From my angle I couldn’t see, so I just prayed she had on underwear.

     Then four club-wielding New York City cops put an end to it.  Moe, wisely, let them.

     Krystal would not go back to the dressing room, so we all left the studio the way we’d come in – only this time with a police escort – and stood in the parking lot in a misty rain, explaining to the cop that one of the women had thrown a chair at Krystal.  Another cop joined us a few minutes later and said the woman who’d started the incident said she was sorry and didn’t want to press charges.

     “Her press charges?” Krystal said.  “I should sue her fat ass for everything she doesn’t have!”

     “That’s your prerogative,” the second cop told her.

     “And I could do it, too.”

     “I realize that, but for now, maybe the best thing is for you to go on to wherever you were planning to go.  The producers said they don’t want you back in there.”

     “In other words,” the first cop said, “show’s over.”

     “Fine, who gives a shit?” Krystal said.  “If Rosie’s going to side with those fat bitches, who needs her?  I’m gone.  Thank you, officers, for handling this in a manner worthy of your uniforms and the fine City of New York.”  She spit on the ground and stormed off toward our car.  Moe went with her.

     The cops went back inside the studio.

     “Well, that was interesting,” Heather said.  She put her face up to the rain.

     “None of what we did before the fight will be on TV, huh,” Lilly said.

     I put my arm over her shoulder and started walking.