In this eavesdrop, the cell phone conversation between a supermodel and an astrophysicist is snatched from the air. Let's listen in…
GISELE: Yeah, well, how old are you?
GEORGE: 28. Is that important?
GISELE: Depends. So, what do you do?
GEORGE: I'm associate director of the SETI project out of Aricebo, Puerto Rico, and interim professor of cosmological evolution at Princeton. What do you do?
GISELE: I'm a supermodel.
GEORGE: Really. You mean, like on the covers of magazines?
GISELE: Yeah. I was in Puerto Rico once for a Sports Illustrated shoot. I like St. Barts better, though. I meet Adriana and Alessandra and Heidi there all the time.
GEORGE: What do you talk about with them?
GISELE: Oh, I dunno. Fashion, jewelry, movies, parties, men, you name it. Mostly we just hang out.
GEORGE: I imagine lots of men ask you to "hang out."
GISELE: Not really. They're afraid. Wimps. Can't handle rejection.
GEORGE: So that's why you put an ad on Match.com? "Professional lady seeks intelligent man for stimulating conversations?"
GISELE: A friend of mine wrote the ad for me. Wasn't my idea. What do you look like, if you don't mind my asking?
GEORGE: Well, I'm not a model, if that's what you mean.
GISELE: Are you ugly?
GEORGE: That's subjective, but thank you for asking. No, I'm not. May I ask your I.Q.?
GISELE: You're funny. Are you fat?
GEORGE: What?
GISELE: And what's I.Q. stand for?
GEORGE: Intelligence quotient. And no, I'm not fat, either.
GISELE: Are you short? And what's quotient mean?
GEORGE: Can't you read, either? And no, I'm six feet tall. You want that in centimeters? I weight 80 kilograms, by the way, if you can figure that out. If you need a hint, it's not quite a quintal. My I.Q. is 173. My job is to search for intelligent life somewhere in the universe, because it is obviously not here on this planet.
GISELE: Don't get huffy with me, freak. Do you know who I am?
GEORGE: Uh, an immature humanoid biped female whose delusions of grandeur are based on a lack of perspective regarding her place in the universe?
GISELE: So you think I'm stuck up or something, too??
GEORGE: Can you hear me now?
GISELE: Well, maybe I have the right to be stuck up. Ever thought of that, smarty pants? More people know me than know you. I'm better looking, got more money, and I go to parties they would never let you in. But the parties you go to, I bet they would let me in!
GEORGE: I don't go to parties. When I'm not volunteering or giving guest lectures, I'm busy chronicling the planetary potential of supermassive variable stars within the M39 globular cluster in the constellation Virgo. If any one of those stars were where our sun is, you would now be inside it, burning at 22,000 degrees Kelvin.
GISELE (after a pause): I know how that feels.
GEORGE: You… what?
GISELE: You don't know what it's like to be me. To have your face and body displayed everywhere you go—on posters, in ads, in commercials? I can't go anywhere without getting gawked at, or groped by some moron rapper thinks I should decorate his next degrading music video. Sometimes I feel like a piece of meat on a hook. Like maybe I should just slash my wrists and get it over with.
GEORGE: That would be a huge hit on YouTube. (A pause as whimpering is heard) You're not kidding…
GISELE: No, I'm not. (A long pause as Gisele gets control of her tears) What were we talking about, anyway?
GEORGE: Parties.
GISELE: Right. Okay, so what do YOU do for fun, then?
GEORGE: Fun? Well, fun for me is… I don't know, finding a new asteroid, like a speck moving against the vast background of galaxies, and maybe saving the Earth in the process. Fun is interpreting the radio signals of a pulsar or newly forming black hole, and imagining the forces at work in the creation of worlds. Or it's—
GISELE: No, no, no. That's not fun. That's funny.
GEORGE: Think so, huh?
GISELE: You wanna borrow my razor?
GEORGE (after a pause): You know, I'm actually starting to like you, Gisele.
GISELE: Really.
GEORGE: Stranger things have happened.
GISELE: Tell me about it. By the way, are you rich?
GEORGE: Not hardly.
*CLICK*