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___________________
written by B on 8th -
2003
Life is a race and I know I
can win it,
Cause I'm learnin' the rules of the game.
If I can stay on the ball, take it minute by minute,
I just might make the hall of fame.
The JUST THE TEN OF US theme (154kb)
What can I say?
It might be the greatest concept in the storied history of
television: MAN CAN NOT STOP FUCKING HIS WIFE.
Much like "family disagrees" and "black people
quip their way into civil equality," MAN CAN NOT
STOP FUCKING HIS WIFE is one of the cornerstones of
creative though. This applies even to literature. Did you ever
read "The Great Gatsby?" Both Gatsby and Tom Buchanan
have wealth and prestige, but neither is truly happy because they
spend the whole novel being social commentary and symbolism when
all they want to do is fill Daisy up like she stuck her vagina on
a soft serve machine. The green light across Long Island Sound
symbolizes CONSTANT CHILDBIRTH, followed by MORE
FUCKING. Sometimes the protagonist can't even keep his
wiener out of there long enough for the child to be born, so the
kid comes out with a head like a hot dog bun.
JUST THE TEN OF US is nothing more than an extension of the
creative juices that have flowed through the veins of humanity
since the dawn of time. As Pablo Picasso strove deftly to apply
the third eye to the portrait of his lady love, Dick Van Patten
forsook the birth cap of "eight" and simply refused to
stop fucking his television wife. Zora Neale Hurston's eyes
watched God from the dusty bookcase of a college student watching
Meredith Baxter Birney give birth to superfluous fuck-result
Andrew on a late night rerun of "Family Ties." Our
society, our combined destinies, and our entertainment are all
dictated and hurried along by HIGH-OCTANE
SQUIRT-PARTURITION.
Here's the story: Long-running television hit "Growing
Pains" is two steps away from Kirk Cameron religi-volving
into Chris from "Superbook" and turning the show into
an afterschool special about "doing the right thing."
Show writers need a place to utilize their catalogue of unused
TGIF-quality sex storylines. Sadly DJ Tanner from "Full
House" is still in a training bra and several years away
from being a cagey TV-movie rape veteran. Time is running out! If
you look closely you can see the bland right-wing dogma preparing
to break free from between his right butt check and his Left
Behind!
Family disagrees! Black people quip their way into civil
equality! It's only 1989, prototype Steve Urkel is not ready!
Mother Winslow is stuck with Judy! Judy will be fully absorbed
and vanished by this time next year. Uh, foreigners? Augh, no, we
already have Balki in the TGIF lineup... Obsessive Beach Boys
Uncle! Dammit, no!
Wait.
Yes.
My God, it's full of stars!
MAN CAN NOT STOP FUCKING HIS WIFE. Don't think
of it as "a television show starring a character popular in
a secondary role of an earlier show;" think of it as a
spin-off!
Life is hard for a family with a giant basketball stuck
in their house.
JUST THE TEN OF US:
On a very special episode of "Growing Pains," Mike
Seaver (Kirk Cameron) and his friend Boner (an erect penis) find
out that their favorite teacher, Coach Lubbock, has lost his
job...and has nine mouths to feed at home! So the Coach packs up
his shit (trophies, a basketball, big underwear) and moves
himself, his pregnant wife, his five daughters and one son off to
another city so he can work a different job. GREAT CONCEPT GUYS.
"Father must provide for the ALMOST DOZEN CHILDREN
HE HAS CREATED." In fact, I think he's had more
children than we know about. He probably left six other daughters
tied up in the lockers at Dewey High. After all, the show is
called JUST THE TEN OF US, not "MY WIFE AND KIDS." But
even so I hope the cast of "My Wife and Kids" continues
to quip and show me the difference between black people and white
people until we can all achieve equal rights.
And speaking of white people, no show had more per square-inch
than JUST THE TEN OF US! The "twist" of the show is
that when the Lubbocks relocate to upstate California (from Long
Island) the Coach gets a job teaching at St. Augestine's Academy,
a Catholic School. This isn't the twist. The twist is that it's
an ALL-BOY SCHOOL. And the Coach has five daughters!! So instead
of just sending them to a school (probably nearby) that he didn't
coach at, Coach figures out a way to get them enrolled, and BOY
OH BOY do the SEX-CAPADES TEEM. If I were a bad writer I would
joke about how the "sexcapades" were all about Catholic
priests barfing on each other because they lost five perfectly
good spots on their meat roster to "girls." If I were a
better writer I would say "what's the deal with
sexcapades" and then surmise that "sexcapades" are
when two people start fucking on ice, and then somebody grabs two
hands-full of ass and pushes them across like a bobsled until
they slide. But I'm an awesome writer and don't care if anybody
gets my horrible jokes, so I will say ST. AUGY-STINE AND STINE
DADDY and be done with it.
Coach Lubbock prepares to feast on the fruit of his
loins.
I don't know why he thinks he can
win the Race of Life when he's just learning the rules at this
point in his Lagomorphic existence, but I guess the point of the
song is that nothing comes easy (nothing comes easy) and he's
doing it the best he possibly can.
As previously stated, Coach Graham Lubbock
(named after the delicious crackers) made his debut on Growing
Pains, but the world of comedy had been mortally wounded by his
grotesquely obese sword many years prior. Okay, I've got to
explain to you where I first saw Coach Lubbock, and if I don't
preface it with an anecdote you're going to stop reading and
think I'm Just the Gay of Us:
PREEMPTIVE ANECDOTE
When I was a small child my mother worked as the manager for
Video U.S.A. This was before Blockbuster spread like Monkey Death
Fonics and destroyed middle America. Each day after school I
would be dropped off at the video store to sit on a stool and
stare up at a television screen playing whatever movie I wanted
while my Mom finished working. This is where I learned to love
movies. So after a year or so of this I'd seen everything I was
allowed to see in the store, so GALLAGHER IT WAS.
Yes, I was briefly obsessed with Gallagher. I thought he was the
most brilliant human being alive when I was five. He had a broom
made of rubber so you could stick the dustpan on the other end.
It's dumb when you're 24 years old but GOD, when you grow up in
Christian Land and the only capacity for abstract thought you're
given is "Jesus died and now he's alive," a guy with a
giant couch trampoline and a desk on motorized wheels is the ten
ton Messiah.
This is AMURICA! In AMURICA a man can DRESS like a MELON!
And what's up with language?
okay here let me smash a shitload of grapes
My favorite was "Melon
Crazy," because it managed to revolve even more so around
sledgehammered fruit than Gallagher's other tapes. On this show
was a comedian named Bill Kirchenbauer. He was big but not as
dangerously hairy as Gallagher, so I gravitated towards him. And
he told the STUPIDEST JOKES EVER. How many paragraphs of this
have you read so far? Something like thirteen? Imagine me when I
was five. Stupid jokes are my life force. If I tried hard enough
I could make a tangible forcefield out of stupid jokes to protect
myself from bullets, hurled portions of smashed buildings, and
the like.
So I followed his comedy. He had a joke where he'd blow bubbles
and then eat them out of the air like a fish. He had a joke where
he introduced the members of a football team, playing each
character, many of them racist and homophobic (one of the players
was gay and from the University of San Francisco). IT BLEW MY
FREAKING MIND. Pee-wee's Playhouse hadn't debuted so I had no
ideas about things like interracial dating, fire safety, or
monarchical control of cartoons. So all Kirchenbauer had to do
was make a comedy routine about how he sweats a lot and I was in
stitches. His comedy reached Foxworthian levels of brilliance,
placing him solidly alongside the ventriloquist with a talking
jalapeno pepper on a stick as my childhood standup respectees.
Especially since all the non-Mexican food-related comedy bits
mentioned in this paragraph are actually bits from Bob Nelson. It
is a testament to how powerful the 10 OF US is in my mind...there
is only room for 10 funny people at a time, and they are THE SO
FUNNY that they have replaced all other comedians in my mind. Bob
Nelson is now Kirchenbauer in my memories. Larry the Cable Guy is
now Actress Brooke Theiss! It's wonderful to live inside of me. Just
ask my boyfriend!
I was also a big fan of Growing Pains as a kid. Before it became
a show about adopting children and the love of teaching I thought
it was very entertaining, especially the one where Ben gets to
meet his favorite rock star only to find out that the guy is
cheating on his wife, and it's this big morality play. Or the one
where Ben and Stinky make a movie about alligators killing girls
in bikinis. The show had tertiary characters named Stinky and
Boner. Come on. Then Mike Seaver had to go and find Jesus, and we
know what Jesus can do to a television show. The show "7th
Heaven" is a great example of this. It was so gutwrenchingly
sappy and conservative that Jesus had to give Barry Watson cancer
just to compensate. But the point I'm trying to make is that
Growing Pains used to be a pretty good show, and Kirchenbauer's
role as the high school coach was also pretty good. In retrospect
I think I did a pretty good job of making that point.
fuck my wife fuck my wife fuck my wife fuck my wife
Point point point point point point point
On JUST THE TEN OF US Coach
Lubbock took his game (lol) to the NEXT LEVEL! Which was level
two. After moving his UNSTOPPABLY LARGE FAMILY
to Eureka, California, Lubbock tried to give everyone he loved as
normal of a life as possible, considering the circumstances. The
show was actually motivated by his desire to not have them be
dead and homeless and raped, which is why he was always trying to
control everyone and keep his daughters from being sluts or
killed in their dreams by a faggot in a Christmas sweater. So not
only did Coach have to deal with his wife and kids, but with the
crazy wacky staff of St. Augestine's as well. This included but
was not limited to:
Father Frank Hargis, played by Herb from WKRP in Cincinnati.
Hargis was always getting into Lubbock's shit. What is it with TV
bosses and their desires to manipulate the lives of their
employees? I worked at Applebee's for like two years and they
couldn't even spell my name correctly on the paychecks. What did
I have to do to be placed into an awkward situation where the
boss is invited over for dinner? How else will I balance my
honest home life with my lofty aspirations atop the corporate
ladder? Why do you think my name is MICHAEL B. STROD? Oh, I
remember, because I took the time to go to work instead of
staying home to CONSTANTLY FUCK MY WIFE. Thanks
a lot, work ethic.
Sister Ethel, an absent-minded little old Nun. Neither as sexy as
Alyssa Milano's Nun in "Deadly Sins" nor as airborne as
Sally Field's Nun. Still funnier than the film "Nuns on the
Run," however. How weird is it that I was excited to see
NUNS ON THE RUN as a child? What the fuck, way to parent me, Mom
and Dad.
Another faculty member who was a recurring character on the show
was the head of the athletic department at St. Augestine's. To
tell you how important this character is to my personal
television history, the character's name was "Duane
Johnson" and I'm not going to make a joke about The Rock
having a head shaped like a pineapple. I'm resisting a The Rock
joke, and do you know why? Because I have respect for St.
Augestine's head of the athletic department. Because he was
played by MOTHERFUCKING DENNIS HAYSBERT.
"Permission to heinously murder the reader, Mr.
President."
::glares::
::glare::
Your daddy says
Dennis Haysbert is not an ICE COLD MOTHERFUCKER. Would you give
your daddy a message for me? Tell him I understand where he's
coming from, but he's wrong. And I'm gonna prove it.
Dennis Haysbert =
- President David Palmer on "24," the best TV show in
the history of ever.
- Pedro Cerrano, voodoo baseball master in the "Major
League" film franchise.
- the voice of Killowog on the new Justice League cartoon.
- appearances on every awesome TV show from my childhood,
including "Night Court," "The Facts of Life,"
"The Fall Guy," "The A-Team," "The
Incredible Hulk," "Laverne & Shirley," and
even goddamn "The White Shadow."
Therefore, by the undeniable gravity of logic, Dennis Haysbert is
cooler than being cool.
ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT
ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT
In conclusion, this
is why Coach Lubbock was an important part of JUST THE TEN OF US
and my childhood. Trust me, I should know! I liked Gallagher!
But like every good show about BEING PHYSICALLY UNABLE TO
CEASE THE THRUSTING MOTION OF ONES HIPS DURING EJACULATION,
JUST THE TEN OF US was more than a show about family: It was a
show about tits.
The real Ass and Potatoes of the show were "The
Lubbock Babes," the four teenage sisters. And, in
tried and true television tradition, the sisters were all
completely different and had nothing in common. This goes back to
the dawn of time, when cavemen told stories through pictures on
cave walls. One caveman would chisel a picture of a girl and say
GRUNT GRUNT, and this meant that this woman adores a minuet, the
Ballet Russes and crepe suzette. So the other caveman would
chisel a different girl alongside the first and say OOGA OOGA,
which meant that despite being identical, this girl loses control
via hot dog.
The eldest sister was the chaste Marie Lubbock,
played by Nightmare on Elm Street (1, 3, and New Nightmare)
veteran Heather Langenkamp. Picture her as the poor man's Brooke
Shields. Marie was the "voice of reason" amongst the
sisters, which meant that she was the one who wore ankle-length
skirts and clutched the Bible as her siblings snuck out for
dates. Marie was repressed, so obviously she was the first one to
strip down to 1980's whore clothes to sing at the Pizza Parlor
when the sisters got their big break as a musical act. Yes, Marie
represents that contingent of boys who like their girls to tie
their hair up and wear glasses so that when the seduction is ripe
there are more accessories to have to deal with. But if I were
her, I would've padded myself with as many clothes as possible,
even in the bath, to keep Freddy from giving me the iron claw to
the crotch.
"The 5,000 One and Two-Liners for Any Occasion" caption
selection:
"Did you take a bath?"
"Why? Is there one missing?"
The most
popular/flirtatious Lubbock sister was Wendy.
Wendy was the most popular/flirtatious because she is blonde,
which is how television/the world works. I personally think that
without new episodes of "Married with Children" being
produced television NEEDS more of these stereotypical characters,
if for no other reason than to rid us of the current infestation
of boney 35 year old sexy detectives/morticians who stare
menacingly from behind their bra at the reflected-societal
problem of the week. Wendy was played by Nightmare on Elm Street
(part 4) veteran Brook Theiss. She was always the one trying to
bring home dates and usurp Coach Lubbock's authority. He didn't
get the name COACH by snapping ass in the locker room, he got the
name by WHIPPING ass on that football field! So Wendy, why don't
you just set your blonde ass down in your strange, large upstairs
attic-like room that you illogically share with your three teen
sisters despite living in a huge house illogically inhabited by a
guy who just lost his job and had to move 10 people across the
country and SHUT UP. NOW LET'S GO PLAY SOME FOOTBALL ONE TWO
THREE BREAK
Every singing group needs a Sporty Spice, so look no further than
Constance "Connie" Lubbock. Connie was
the "studious" sister who cared more about doing well
in school than finding a husband to be CONSTANTLY FUCKED
BY. Connie was played by Nightmare on Elm Street (part
2) veteran JoAnn Willette, who was pretty close to if not already
into her thirties when she took the role of a fourteen-year old.
Despite all this, Connie was included when the girls decided to
be a "band," I assume to fill out the role of
realistically attainable girl. Marie was the virgin, Wendy was
the slut. Connie was the feminist fulcrum dyking out the lever.
This is important to maintain proper Feng Shui. After all,
Constance craving has always been.
My favorite of the Lubbock sisters was Cindy,
played by Nightmare on Elm Street absentee Jamie Luner, who went
on to star in the failed WB drama "Savannah,"
documenting the worst, most Vanderbeekian Southern accent in
history. Cindy was the innocent-but-sexy
kinda-chunky-but-still-skinny red-haired-but-blonde idiot sister
who kept on and kept on getting passed through school until she
graduated, despite showing numerous times not even the brain
locomotion to tie her shoes or navigate a doorway.
did u see me miss that bicycle kick???
I had a bit of a
post-Julie on "Growing Pains" crush on Cindy, which
gave birth to my temporary love of redheads that went supernova
and died with the rise and glorious fiery decent of Ginger Spice
in the late nineties. But Jamie still manages to find work these
days, starring in a few seasons of "Melrose Place" and
"The Profiler" before both were canceled, so I'm sure
we'll see her pop up and fail a few more times before this Luner
Silver Star Story is Complete.
Everyone else on the show was fairly unimportant. The mother,
Elizabeth, was your typical overbearing religious mother. Not the
kind who makes you bad lemonade while you watch her kid play
acoustic guitar so he/she can witness to you. I'm talking more
specifically about the kind of woman who acts sensitive and
caring until you decide you can confide in her, and for whatever
reason she sees this (every time) as an opportunity to tell you
about her faith and how Jesus helped her get groceries or beat
cancer or fight the frizzies or whatever. If anybody has a
problem that can be somehow manipulated into a discussion about
faith, Elizabeth is there. Which is pretty brave, because if I
was her I'd be upstairs in a bathtub full of ice water and
holding my fertile crescent. WHAT WITH ALL THE MERCILESS
FUCKING AND ALL.
The lesser kids were even worse. "Sherry" was your
typical television preteen girl, meaning that she was both
precocious and unnaturally intelligent. Sherry looked like a
cross between horrible shetland person Simon Birch and Vicki from
Small Wonder.
Young son "J.R." was even worse. A horror film fanatic
(with, yes, you guessed it, Nightmare on Elm Street posters in
his room), J.R. was always dressing up like Freddy or trying to
make people shit themselves over a rubber spider on a string.
He's the kind of kid that would put a bucket of water over a
doorway so it fell on someone when they walked through, only to
have it backfire. Someone should've told him it's gay to be named
after your father and pretend that the letters in
"junior" represent an acronym worthy of name
recognition.
Harvey, the baby, and late run child addition Melissa (COACH
LUBBOCK DOES MORE SEED PLANTING THAN GREENPEACE) were
both children and therefore useless to the show. If the show were
still on the air the Lubbocks would have circa sixty children,
and the good Coach would fill his nights hammering away at the
withered, dusty corpse of his now Godless wife.
So where does the show go? How does it end? Nobody knows. That's
the major flaw with a show about teens going to school -- it has
a definite three-to-four year shelf life. Over the course of the
show the family learned from each other, fought with each other,
discussed God and relationships, tried to grow up, became a
singing group, went to the Virgin Islands, did a really bizarre
and unnerving "shimmy dance" in the themesong that
still haunts me, and, ultimately, died a horrible cancellation
death. Somewhere in the darkness, forgotten school goon Gavin
Doosler sits in silence, mourning the loss of his beloved Lubbock
Babes.
In the end, was it worth it? Maybe. Although the series was not
considered critically or financially successful, it seems to be
well remembered and loved by everyone who is myself. A lot of
people remember it because after it got canceled, USA picked up
the rights and aired reruns daily for six years.
But hell, even Growing Pains outlasted the show, marking only the
999,999th time a sitcom has stayed on longer than it's spin-off.
Three seasons and one Leonardo Dicaprio later the Seavers sailed
off gracefully into the Christian sunset, leaving behind only the
vague memory of a group of sisters, a caring mother, and a fat
man with an INSATIABLE NEED FOR PUSSY.
This is true!
So Progressive Boink
salutes you, JUST THE TEN OF US. You did it the best you could.
You were always bringing home second places at the end of every
one of your days. But I liked you a lot, and hope you end up on
DVD for me to cackle at at the Best Buy.
I'm doin' it the best I can,
Leanin' on nobody but me.
Oh, seein' it from where I stand,
Nothin' comes easy.
(Nothin' comes easy.)
brb Mr. Belvedere is on.
