of mice and brens

Good morrow, turdlets. Welcome to another week of mindless drudgery. It’s days like this when we should all take the time to reflect on…no. I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I’ve got a heavy heart. You’ll have to forgive me. I mean, you all know why, right? You know what I’m referring to, don’t you? I mean, it was devastating…well, to all of us frankly. What do you mean you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about? Okay, fine. Fine.
Ahem.
Last week was a pretty rough week for Brendans everywhere. Now, there are a lot of us, mostly in Ireland, sure, but there are sprinkles and pockets of Brendans everywhere, and granted, we don’t have a lot of celebrity Brendans out there, but there’s a few. I mean, there’s Brendan Canty, drummer of Fugazi, there’s me, and I mean, I’m not really famous, (but I’m more famous than that prick kid Brendan Houser who punched me in the stomach and stole my toy semi truck when I was five), and of course there’s the actor Brendan Kelly, who, presumably knows who I am, as we share a wikipedia signpost.
So, well, you get the idea. There’s a few mildly notorious Brendans. Not a lot. Not like Seans or Charlies or Brads. Nah. There’s just a few of us and we don’t really clock in very high on the celeb meter. For that matter, I can only think of a couple of other Brendans I’ve ever met. I have an in-law cousin once removed named Brendan (what’s up, lil B!). He’s probably the best Brendan I know, and he’s followed by Brendan Kelly the guy who’s an actor but not me, and also not the actor Brendan Kelly that we were just talking about. He’s just a guy from Chicago who acted in my movie and made all the email threads confusing as shit.
There’s Brendan Houser, who I knew as a kid, and who, as I mentioned before, stole my truck, and there’s a guy named (I’m not shitting you here) Brendan Dickout (that’s how it’s pronounced, at least. DICK-out) who played guitar in some crappy band that we toured with once. That’s pretty much it, Brendan wise. I mean, once I got called to the gate at the Milan airport only to realize that it was the flight to Dublin calling another Brendan Kelly. That was pretty funny, but you get the point. There’s not a lot of us.
When someone yells “Chris!” around my friends named chris, half the time they don’t even turn around. If someone yells “Brendan!” it’s about ninety percent that they’re talking to me (though lately there’s a lot of moms yelling at about 8 yr old Brendans all around me and my kid when we’re at the zoo and shit like that, but anyway, that’s neither here nor there.)
Okay, so, in this tiny little club, the Brendans, we have one big, grand puba of a leader, and I’m sure you all know who he is. That’s right, the Encino Man himself, B Fray, the biggest Brendan out there, Brendan Fraiser. Generally, I’d say he’s led us with dignity and aplomb by keeping our shared name classy as the marquee star of such kick ass cinema as Airheads, School Ties, Monkeybone, Bedazzled, George of the Jungle, In the Army Now, the Mummy franchise and of course Blast from the Past.
His blank, oafish affability helped me define my own idea of Brendandom when I was a mere pubeless, personality challenged weakling out there on the soccer field trying in vain to not look like a sissy as people hurled variously shaped balls in my direction. Yes, the Fray really piloted his ship of Brendans calmly through the nineties and aughts, and we all went to see all his wonderful movies in exchange. But then, last week something terrible happened.
I mean, what was he even DOING at the fucking Golden Globes? Was he nominated for his role in GI JOE:The Rise of Cobra? Because, well, he was great in it, sure, but we brendans are kind of used to the Hollywood foreign press turning up their noses at BeeF’s work at this point. Anyway, I digress. Point being, right there, on camera, when Deniro and Scorsese were having a moment, as Marty (as I like to call him) was being presented with the Cecil B Demille award by Bobby (as he’s colloquially known) suddenly, the camera shot to BeeF as he’s pulling this retard clap and slap, mongo guffaw combo that seemed so classless and gauche coming from the thespian that had absolutely vanished into the role of Dudley Do Right and melted us when he reprised his famous “Link” character from Encino Man in Pauly Shore’s Son In Law.
Gone was that gravitas. All that was left was a tubby shell of a once great actor who had obviously snuck into the Golden Globes, clapping, chuckling and vibrating like an inbred Georgia orphan watching a dog fuck a goose down by the crick out back.
It was rough.
THEN, Joel Mchale picked up the footage and played it over and over and over and over again on the Soup. It seems like it’s going to become some sort of recurring joke. Our dignity is gone. Thanks B Fray. Thanks for the humiliation, but you know what else? Thanks for everything. Really. You’ve been a great most famous guy with my same first name. BUT, times are changing, and you’ve gotten soft, and, well, it seems like we need a new “most famous Brendan in the world” now. I better leak that sex tape.
Sigh.