Villain!

  • by Drew

If you use AOL Instant Messenger, like I often do, you are probably familiar with the AIM Dashboard. It’s a little “portal” page that opens up in your browser of choice whenever you log in. I like it because there are always a few teaser newsbits, often from TMZ, that keep me informed about the happenings in the lives of all my favorite celebs. For example, I just found out that Lindsay Lohan was recently spotted chugging vodka. Surprise surprise. I guess she hasn’t accepted Jesus as her personal savior yet, but it’s only a matter of time, right? Oh yeah, and they tell me that Miley Cyrus keeps slutting it up. This sort of news brings me some solace, hoping that she will soon pose for Playboy and the Hannah Montana empire will begin its slow, inevitable crumble. Today’s featured line of Target handbags will be tomorrow’s Dollar Store crop of poorly made pencil cases and melamine HM kiddie mugs.

I’m sure Disney will bring us an even more insipid tween nightmare in her wake, but maybe, just maybe, they’ll come up with something really cool – like a middle-American high school honor student wrestling with his sexuality. Hilarious politically correct, sexuality-sensitive hijinks and Three’s Company-esque misunderstandings will no doubt ensue. I can’t wait.

Anyway, rambling aside, one of the Dashboard items this morning was a “Where are they now” bit about the cast of the classic movie The Goonies, inspired by rumors of an upcoming sequel. Sean Astin, or Mikey (and alleged source of the sequel rumor), has made a name for himself as both the unlikely football hero, Rudy, and endearingly loyal Hobbit, Sam. Jeff Cohen, the kid who played Chunk, is now a slightly trimmer entertainment lawyer. Ke Huy Quan who played Data also appeared in the second Indiana Jones movie, and is now doing stuff like being a martial arts coordinator on the X-Men movie. And he was in Encino Man, so…he’s got that going for him too.

Martha Plimpton does some TV and is a pretty successful Broadway actress. Joe Pantoliano almost messed everything up for the human race in The Matrix and ended up in a bowling bag – at least partially – on The Sopranos. Josh Brolin, besides having a badass Papa and terrifying stepmom, has done a ton of stuff. And Corey Feldman is…well…I have nothing else to say about that.

Here’s the funny part – and the point of this whole entry. Thank you for reading this far. Both of you.

If you remember the bad guys in The Goonies, there was the older brother, Jake Fratelli, played by actor Robert Davi. The little AIM Dashboard “where are they now” bit noted that Davi has had a long and role-filled career, distinguished by the fact that he usually plays a villain of some stripe. He’s in several movies, and he’s done a lot of TV, and he’s almost always a vicious bad guy. And then for no real reason, the micro essay mentions that Davi is a very vocal supporter of both George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

They say that for some people acting is a real challenge, particularly acting like a villainous ass-munch. I guess for others it just comes naturally.

X-Ray Specs

  • by Drew

I was in the parking lot outside Toys R Us in Kingston with Jake after securing a sweet Lego set: Batman Arkham Asylum. That’s right, they’ve made a great toy based on the crazy house from Batman comics – the place where they stick homicidal crazies like the Joker, the Scarecrow, the Riddler, Poison Ivy, etc. in between crime sprees. Very cool. And it was on clearance. I got it for under $20 (with tax), cut down from $75+. I am the king of clearance toy finds, and now we something nice for Jake’s birthday in August.

As we got back into the Jeep I noticed the plate on the truck facing us. ICTHROOU. Cute. He sees through me (or maybe us). The funny thing is, there was a mini pink bra hanging from the rear view mirror.

Is it just me, or is this somebody who got a set of novelty x-ray specs and took it way too seriously?

Excelsior! (as told by Daring Drew)

  • by Drew

My friend Ted and I were putting together a case of nice wine to lay down for drinking in 5 plus years. We have different experiences and preferences, so we were making selections together so we’d each have some new and unexpected treats to enjoy at some point down the line. We came across an inexpensive bottle of South African Cabernet Sauvignon called Excelsior that I’ve tasted before. It is very different from California Cab. Somewhat dark cherry fruity with a clear dose of that charred thing that so many South African reds have. Definitely worth a try for less than ten bucks I told him.

He laughed and said his Aunt had a friend Stanley that she’d known many years. Quite a few years ago he met her after lunch with this friend in the city. Turns out the friend in question was none other than Stan Lee of Marvel comics fame. You know, the guy who created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Daredevil, Iron Man, etc. etc. etc. A lifelong comics fan, Ted freaked. Then he calmed down and over time, has built a relationship with Smilin’ Stan.

Marvel comics fans will know that Stan Lee is well known for exclaiming “Excelsior!” somewhat frequently. So Ted bought a bottle and said he’d send it to Stan, giving my name for having made the recommendation. Cool, maybe I’ll get lucky and get a signed photo or something, I thought. Well, I got something even better.

Stan Lee sent me a signed photo, and boy did he sign it. He turned it into a veritable work of art! He also gave me a new nickname that I must insist gets frequent use by all friends, family and acquaintances. Daring Drew. That’s right. Daring Drew. Call me Daring Drew.

Many thanks to Titanic Ted for helping me secure this treasure, and many thanks to Stan Lee for giving me a cool nickname. (According to Titanic, Stan the Man has given others less cool nicknames – I could have been Droopy Drew or something.)

Without further ado, I share a link to a photo of the photo, taken by Captivating Carol (now I’m handing out nicknames) right over here.

By the way, for the winos out there, our cellar selections included Frog’s Leap Cab, BR Cohn Olive Hill Cab, Dry Creek’s Mariner Meritage, and Joseph Phelps Napa Cab.

Excelsior!

Nice 08

  • by Drew

I got cut off twice the other day by the same car. First, he pulled out from a side street on the Taconic and I had to slam on my brakes to avoid rear-ending him. When I had the chance, I passed on the left and got back into the right lane after putting many car lengths between us. I fell back into my consistent 63 miles per hour thanks to good old cruise control. About a minute later, the same car raced passed on the left, cut sharply in front of me – seriously, only allowing a couple of feet – and promptly slammed on the brakes.

Now, I don’t know if he was somehow pissed because I had passed him and wanted to make a point. Or maybe he had to answer a cell phone call – that’s frequently important to asshole drivers. Maybe he was just really clueless and thereby reckless. It happens all the time, so I wouldn’t have noted it except for one detail…his license plate.

It read: NICE 08

Ummm. Yeah. Not really.

Bumper Love

  • by Drew

I saw a great bumper sticker the other night:

Born OK the First Time

Awesome.

Treasure

  • by Drew

Conversation, pretty damn close to verbatim, that I just had with my 5 year old.

Jake: Daddy, so you think treasure is important?
Me: Ummmm. What?
Jake: Do you think treasure is important?
Me: What do you think?
Jake: I think treasure is good because you can use it to help people who need help buying stuff. Like food. And toilet paper.
Me: That’s pretty important.
Jake: Yeah, I think treasure is important.
Me: Me too. 

Man, I do love my son. My little bleeding-heart-liberal-in-training with a healthy respect for capitalism son. He rocks.

Eating on the Run…

  • by Drew

I was just at a busy intersection and saw a surprising sight. There was a guy in a little red sportscar eating something with a spoon. I can’t be sure what it was, but I was getting a very distinct yogurt vibe. Seriously, this guy, something like 50 years old, was hanging out at the red light, having a little snack. He was into it, too. He was really working the spoon. You know what I mean. He wasn’t just shoveling it in. He was sliding the spoon around the outside edge of the container, admiring the spoonful as he brought it up, and kind of rolling it around in his mouth. The dude was into it.

Now, this is a long light, and he had a solid minute and change, so he got like 5 or 6 bites in, but…come on. Dude, you’re DRIVING! There’s no hands-free for YoPlait. If you’re going to eat yogurt in the car, get a tube of GoGurt. At least you can one-hand  the tube.

What did he do when he pulled away? I guess he locked that yogurt between his thighs like a cup of overheated coffee. What if he had to slam on the breaks and inadvertantly squeezed a berry yogurt spooge all over his pants. What if he got into an accident? Forget about clean underwear. Not only would it look like he got a little Cronenberg jizz joy out of the crash, but the little berry spots might make the EMTs think he’s spotting.

Yuck.

As strange as yogurt munching at the stoplight may seem, that’s not the weirdest thing I’ve seen here. A couple months ago, at this same intersection, I saw a woman eating hot soup out of a big tupperware-style container. No kidding. She was blowing on it and everything. That’s going to be a hell of a lawsuit. I can’t wait.

Summary

  • by Drew

February. Didn’t really write in February. Kind of got bogged down in things, so I figure I’ll give a nice long summary post for the month, touch on the high points. Enjoy.

Went to Woodloch in the Poconos. Had a juggler knock a little straw out of my mouth with a juggling club while I made a sort of bear pooping in the woods squat. This followed my statement that one of my favorite parts of Woodloch was the bacon (I wanted to give the guy some material to work with making fun of me – that’s the point, right?) Noah screamed through the entire routine (Note – no more audience participation until Noah is in Kindergarten). When I returned to my seat, Noah wouldn’t stop moaning “My turn” while trying to run for the stage so we had to leave. I was a celebrity the next day with all the seniors who’d attended. “Hey, you were the guy with the juggler. That bacon guy.” They may have laughed, but they all had to admit that Woodloch has some mighty tasty bacon.

Also got Noah and Carol on the snow tubes. Jake was a master already. Noah was instantly in love with experience – he cried when we left after four runs. He wanted more. I made Carol go once and she still hasn’t forgiven me. Spent a good deal of time on their Woodloch Forest indoor playground too. It was seriously cool. Good trip all around.

Lots of snow this month. We’ve had about an inch of persistent ice on the driveway for a couple weeks. It’s been a thaw/freeze/snow – thaw/freeze/snow cycle. Kind of yuck. The worst part is, as always, the schmucks on the road. Stupid driving in winter weather aside, I have a HUGE issue to bring up. You MUST clean off your car. That means front and back windows and your roof. If you do not clean off your entire car you are an asshole. There is NO excuse. You are an asshole. I say this with confidence. You know that time you didn’t clean off your roof  – come on, we’ve all done it at least once – you know how that big 4 foot by 4 foot slice of ice and snow went flying off when you were doing 60 on the highway? Well, after that sort of righteous sound of slide and release, you forgot about it. But there was some schmuck behind you who saw the massive boomerang of nastiness come flying at his windshield, swerved to avoid it and almost went off the road. There is an 87% chance that the swerving schmuck in your rear view was me.

Look, it’s dangerous. Last year there was a young kid in New Jersey who got his window smashed in and his face all cut up. Clean off your roof. If you’re driving around with 8 inches of snow on your roof, you’re a dick. If you’re driving around with 8 inches of snow on your roof and that little gopher hole of snow remove from the windshield so you can barely peek out at the highway, you’re a cocksucker. Seriously.

If you have a big SUV and you’re 5 feet tall and you just can’t reach the roof, get a tall friend, get a stepladder, get a long brush, or get a car that you can properly clean. For years I’ve bitched and moaned that it should be a law. You must be at least this tall to buy this car. If you don’t measure up, it’s time to look at a subcompact. There’s no excuse. You’re just being lazy. Clean off your freaking car before you kill somebody…like me.

Forget about this winds of change crap – the candidate who has a clear anti-roof snow platform has a good chance at getting my vote in 2008.

Hmmmm…. what else can I bitch about. Oh, yeah. Disney. I’ve been catching a lot of Disney in the morning when I get up with Noah. Slim pickings on the kid networks before 5 am. On the mornings when I get up with Noah we’ve been watching Lilo and Stitch on one of the Disney channels. Not a bad show. In fact, I really like Disney. Overall. I like Disney World. I love the Pixar stuff. Most of the animation that goes into theaters is good. Most of the animated TV shows are good. They tend to say “stupid” or “idiot” a lot, words I don’t like hearing reopeated by the kids, but overall it’s not that bad.

But I HATE Disney tween programming. High School Musical or High School Musicrap? You decide.

Around 5 am there aren’t too many commercials, but the Disney channel shows all these music videos from their various teen sensations. I’ve seen a lot of videos from High School Musicrap II lately. A lot of Hannah Montana too. Absolutely atrocious. The music is terrible, the plot lines from the shows are bad 70’s sitcom style. Just really really bad. And they do these fake newsbreak things with kids pretending to be entertainment news media types, interviewing the cast and crew of various Disney projects (mostly made for TV movies or direct to DVD features). Self-serving, but not nearly as bad as Fox News turning last night’s American Idol episode into a 15 minute human interest story/shameless promotion of their awful programming.

Beyond the bad storylines and hackneyed pop hooks in the songs, I find the tween actors absolutely unbearable. They are so ridiculously melodramatic. Every one of the kids on these shows is liek hyped up on meth, with facial expressions and enthusiasm reminiscent of early Fritz Lang stuff. Check out Metropolis. Get a look at Peter Lorre in “M” and you’ll see what I mean. Aaargh! They’re so fucking sassy and cream puff melodramatic it make my gums bleed.

I challenge you to watch 5 minutes of Hannah Montana. If you get through the bad wigs, egregious and inferior rewrites of classic Saved by the Bell plots, god-awful music performances, Billy Ray Cyrus Achy-Breaky Heart jokes (and that stupid fucking Shaggy chin he’s got now), and the over-the-top scenery chewing acting without putting a fork in your eye, you win. Congratulations. You’ve now lost 5 minutes of your life and about 5% of your working left brain to permanent damage.

If I could just get Noah to watch the Tick at 5am it would be much more palatable.

OK, I guess that’s enough kvetching for February. Overall not a bad month. Busy. Short. Over. Here comes March… 

4 Square 4 Real

  • by Drew

Noah got up at 3:30 this morning, and since Carol did the last two ridiculously early mornings, I felt somewhat obligated to drag my sorry butt out of bed. So we ended up watching Boomerang this morning. I know that not everybody gets Boomerang, but we do – gotta love DirecTV. It’s chock full of old 60s, 70s and 80s cartoon shows. If you get lucky you can catch classics like Banana Splits, The Jetsons, Mr. T, Pac-Man, The Snorks…Excellent stuff. And with very few exceptions, it is commercial free.

Anyway, I noticed something interesting during the opening of The Jetsons. First, in the upper left corner there was a big TV-G rating box. Then, there was a Closed Captioning logo in the upper right. Of course, the persistent little Boomerang logo dingbat was down in the right. These three spots reminded me how many stations now run promos during programming in the lower left corner, often eating up a third or more of the screen.

All we need now is something to pop up in the center of the screen and those writers can be on strike forever.

But anything would be better than reality TV.

Seriously, what has reality TV given us? Adultery, criminal behavior, greed, consumption of animal sex organs. Oh yeah, and fat, ugly, untalented people singing, dancing, acting or trying to seduce surgically enhanced potential sex partner(s).

Hey, I have an idea for a show. We’ll call it Diagnosis: America. It’s a simple premise. Set up cameras in the offices of Doctors sharing a particularly nasty diagnosis. In comes the patient with a spouse, children, parents, or whatever. You see the lips quivering, the eyes swollen with anxious tears. You can cut the tension with a spoon. Is it good news or bad? Does she have colon cancer or does she just need more fiber in her diet? We’ll find out after this word from our sponsors – Metamucil and Outback Steakhouse.

You think it sounds tasteless? Sure it does. But if some cocksucker Fox intern who only needs 8 more credits to finish that Communications degree at Pace reads this in the next few weeks I guarantee it’ll be a Summer replacement. Trust me. It’ll be like House with crappier office furniture, doctor’s with bald spots, and little to no sexual tension. But plenty of drama. You could even place bets on it. Or use the show as a drinking game. Pick your own cues, but I suggest anytime a doctor says something like, “this is the hardest part of my job” it’s a social.

And if that doesn’t work for you, here’s an alternative for you lovers of the funny home video shows: America’s Funniest Funerals. I tell you, no matter how many times you watch that sobbing senior stumble into the open casket…well, it never stops being funny to me.

Solve my riddle!

  • by Drew

I was scanning the CNN site earlier to catch up on recent headlines. I noticed in the lower right portion of my screen there was a list of recommended articles based on my browsing history. Now you might expect my top pick to be something about jerkoff drivers, Oprah’s sex toys, conservative hypocrisy…you know, the standards. But instead, article number one, the thing CNN thought I would be most interested in reading…

Dad denies throwing kids off bridge

I couldn’t help but wonder why CNN thought I would be interested in this very specific piece. What in my browsing profile led them to this bit of detection? Do I look like the kind of guy who’d even consider bridge chucking? I will be the first to admit that I’ve raised my voice with my children. Once in a while. But I never even considered throwing them off a bridge. I never even mentioned it. Okay, maybe once I threatened to leave them under the bridge with the grumpy old troll, but hasn’t everyone?

(I hope that somebody gets the Dora reference – or do I watch too much Nick Jr?)

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.