Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
Beck likes Legos. Trey likes Legos. Gina Gershon may or may not like Legos, but no one's holding it against her.
Jul 21, 2000 | Dear Button,
When I was in sixth grade, "The Dukes of Hazzard" was big. Every Friday night my friend Kirk Ryan would come over, and we'd build a makeshift fort out of the dark brown cushions from the basement sofa, load up heaping bowls of Breyer's chocolate ice cream and then sit rapt for an hour in our pillow fortress watching Bo, Luke and Daisy fight to keep the Duke name untarnished under the watchful gaze of Uncle Jesse.
Now, let me just say from the start, Luke was cool. You couldn't have had the Duke boys without him. But Bo was the shit. Everyone liked him best, and everyone wanted to be him at recess when it came time to reenact scenes from the show. All the girls were gaga for John Schneider, and getting picked to play him was a thrill. (The same was true for the girl who got picked to play Daisy. It meant we all thought she was hot.) So you can imagine the reaction the girls had when I showed up at school one day with John Schneider's address. I had copied it out of a Teen magazine I spotted when my friends and I were stealing candy bars from CVS.
A girl named Kristin Prete came closest to catching me. Her legs were long and powerful, but my little stubby guys took quicker turns. I'd let her get close, then duck a U-turn. She didn't stand a chance. None of the girls did. That is, until the end of the school day when they could go to the drugstore and look up the address themselves. (No one would believe I had it unless I told them where I got it.) But knowing they could get it later the same day made them no less anxious to tear it from me in the meantime. I felt something at recess that day I had never felt before: power. I had something all the girls wanted.
And now, 18 years later, I find myself in the same position, but not in the same way you think. Yeah, I've got the goods on Trey, I have gone to the next level. I was lucky enough to arrive at the "South Park" office to discover in my mailbox a message from none other than Rene Auberjonois.
Kids today might recognize him as Odo on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." Others may remember him from the "Love and the Spaced-Out Chick" episode of "Love, American Style," but I will always remember Rene as Clayton Endicott III on "Benson."
Now, I grant you this phone number might not bring me the same screaming crowd of delirious hotties that Trey's number would (though Rene is a very classy gentleman), but it might bring in some bank on eBay.
Picture it: Filthy rich CEO of a computer company lives secret double life as nerdy Trekker who spends weekends wandering through Renaissance Festivals with a band of like-minded geeks in too-tight Star Trek bodysuits and faux tricorders, never breaking character.
(Apparently this actually happens. Neither the Star Trek people nor the Renaissance people will break character even though everyone knows what's up, so you get a lot of this:
Festival Jester: "Odds bodkins! What a strange manner of costume you wear!"
Trekker: [moving tricorder around in a deliberate way] "Captain, from the nature of the clothing and speech patterns, I believe we have arrived in 17th century England.")
How much do you think said filthy rich CEO would pay for such a phone number?
The eBay idea came to me after Trey got a complete set of "Crossbows & Catapults," a game we played as kids (around the same time we used to watch "Dukes of Hazzard") through the online auction house.
While I love that game (and anything else involving catapults), what I really want to find is an old helicopter flying game I played at a neighbor's house when I was 10. A small plastic helicopter was attached to a central base by an 18-inch metal rod. Also attached was a control console used to fly the helicopter. You'd increase the rotor speed until the copter lifted off, then you'd change the pitch angle to fly it in either a forward or reverse circle. A hook on the bottom could be used for picking up various objects, but only a delicate, practiced touch could master the hover.
Trey has also been getting back into Legos, and now every flat surface in the house has either a Lego Ice Fortress or Lego Ninja Dojo on it. Which is not such a bad thing, so long as he doesn't clear off the Scotch shelf.
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