C.J.: 'Lawyerboy' argues his case as 'Mr. Personality'

"Mr. Personality's" funny bone was showing when he tried to drum up legal business at Tiffany's Bar & Grille Monday in St. Paul.

Attorney Brian Karalus, a k a "No. 1" and "Blue Mask," was at the night spot taking in the debut of FOX's new reality show in which Hayley Arp tries to select a man sight unseen.

He wouldn't tell me how it turns out -- there's a confidentiality agreement -- but he did try to buy me a drink. When I declined based on my strictly enforced I-don't-drink-and-drive rule, he quipped: "We'll take care of you. I'm a criminal defense lawyer."

He's just full of the law -- and other things.

Karalus laid it on thick when he met Arp on the show. He kissed her hand and as a gift painted a "Kahlil Gibran work." He told her that if "you want to find a way to a man's heart you have to read this book. His whole theory and philosophy really is about the deepest impulses of a man's soul, mind, heart."

Hey, wait a minute? Isn't this show about him winning her heart, mind and soul?

Karalus, which is pronounced Co-ral-us, although there is a temptation to say Careless, clearly redefined the show's premise to being about him, not her. But Arp didn't notice. "He was just exuding confidence, which is something I just have to gauge in this race," she said. "Number 1 certainly intrigues me."

Karalus survived the cut that eliminated 10 contestants, which entitled him to a colored mask instead of a number. (In my twisted mind, I really enjoyed seeing these men known only by numbers instead of names).

"I wasn't nervous at all," he said on TV, after meeting Arp. "I'm a trial lawyer. This was nothing."

The former No. 1 apparently thought Arp was something close to a zero, based on what he was saying to his friends at the bar Monday. If Arp's a zero on the Karalus Scale, the show's host, Monica Lewinsky, is in the negative numbers.

"I almost didn't do the show because she's so embarrassingly stupid," he told me. "She might have been one of the dumbest people I've ever been around. She's not a very bright girl. She is very loud and very obnoxious."

Kind of like a 30ish man -- or should that be lawyerboy? -- who thinks of a woman in her mid-20s as a girl, huh? "That's funny," he said, showing he can take as well as he gives.

Karalus had qualms about doing the show. "My reputation is very important to me. I was concerned if I do this show am I going to wreck that. Am I going to look stupid?"

Stupid, no, but he looked a little randy in a preview of this coming Monday's show that suggested Blue Mask was spending private time with a woman who was not Arp. "This is my lovely bedroom," Blue Mask was heard saying to the woman, who was perhaps a dancer or stripper?

In the end, he said, "The challenge was a big part of [why he did the show]. I went back and forth because even though it doesn't look like it -- because I look young and I've got the hair and everything -- I'm actually a pretty good lawyer and I work really hard."

Thanks for bringing up THE HAIR.

It's long and just wrong.

Granted, the masks the contestants wore on TV smushed down their hair, so when the guys who were dismissed un-masked, the first thing many did was fluff that hair.

But Karalus couldn't blame a mask for the way his hair looked Monday night and certainly not for that would-be goatee on his face.

"Lawyerboy," -- as he called himself after I remarked that he looked about 15 -- needs a haircut.

"Some people love it. Professional lawyers give me a hard time and say, 'Cut your hair,' " he said. "The more people give me a hard time about the hair the less I want to cut it. Seriously. It doesn't affect the way I practice law."

Although the surfer dude hair would seem to be a "don't," Karalus' mane problem is more complicated than length.

On Page 75 of the St. Paul 2003 Dex yellow pages, there's an ad for Karalus' law firm featuring a photo. He's got short hair, but it looks like there's an ant hill on his head.

Still, you can tell there is a cute guy near that hair.

-- C.J. is at 612-332-TIPS or at cj@startribune.com, where she never opens attachments. So don't even try.