FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
CLONE ALONE
Exciting scientific breakthru may save cuddly child stars
from becoming adolescent trollsDon't get not cute with me, child star. Macaulay Culkin may have narrowly avoided being homeless (alone) - whews all around for the $17M freed up from Mom&DadBanx (the times they are etc.) - but why is his nick-of-time windfall (or his dad's nick-of-photographer fist) in the news more than a new Mac movie? Why is Home Alone 3 set to roll with that fuggin' One Fine Day moppet and not the original Edvard Munchkin hisself?
The acned truth is, Mac's exchanged cheek-pinching cuteness for hormone-fueled ugliness. It's an age-old prob for the child star: puberty more oft than not means "do you have any younger brothers / sisters?" for those that trade in kewt. Whud's Gary Coleman tokkin' 'bout now, Mr. D? Oh, just a buncha crazy stuff about guns&trains: a form of insanity brought on by the demise of cute. (Rumor has it he now lives in a bus station locker.) Webster? Shut out of North America, he's resigned himself to the foreign markets where irony goes over BIG (and because we're talking foreign markets here, the pun is not only intended, it endorses cigarettes).
Consider the fate of Tina Yothers, the once-cute star of Family Ties who hulked-out seemingly overnight. As soon as Jennifer Keaton began delivering one-liners in a husky rasp worthy of a 70-year-old chain-smoker, Mom Keaton gave birth to a toddler. The dramatic delivery scene (during which Meredith Baxter-Birney repeatedly shrieked "You did this to me! YOU DID THIS TO ME!" at a fumbling Michael Gross) (second only in the public's collective scrapbook to the episode where Alex became a junkie) notwithstanding, the reason for this peculiar (and, from a reproductive standpoint, miraculous) plot development was obvious: the audience's thirst for cute must be quenched! It's rumored that Home Improvement's gigantism poster boy Brad (seen in town at last month's World of Wheels) will be slowly phased out next season, replaced by an immortal "tin boy" whom Tim Allen will build in the garage. From the TV=Real Life Dept: taking a cue from Raven-Symone's successful usurping of Keshia Knight Pulliam's cuteseat, Bill Cosby is currently holding auditions for a new Ennis. The successful applicant will be: (a) cute, and (b) quick with a jack.
The ongoing cute-kid / ugly-teen / new-cute-kid / new-ugly-teen / even-newer-still-cute-kid cycle is cruel, and it's hard to keep all the names straight (and even harder for sitcom writers to come up with new excuses for adding a kid) (three cheers for orphan drifters, the deus ex machina of the cute conundrum!). Let us use the new advances in cloning to keep our kid stars perpetually cute - think of the movie-mag headlines: "Meet the new Macaulay Culkin: Macaulay Culkin!"
Cloning is pie easy. First, scrape some cells (pref. from the feet) offa the child star in question, then store them away from pets. Next, steal five unfertilized eggs from a Scottish Blackface ewe, a rare egg-laying sheep once popular in vaudeville acts. Suck the DNA out of one of the eggs with either a bendy straw or hair-thin pipette; use the other four in a delicious omelette. (You've earned it!) Place the Child Star Cell (ooooh!) and Ewe Cell (ewww!) next to each other on a basement couch. Using sexual attraction (or, in a pinch, animal magnetism), the cells will fuse together like you ain't ever seen. At this point things are a bit hazy, but if you are to believe the stories, strapping lads are trucked in from the neighboring college town and they happily oblige science by sending an electric pulse thru a hole cut in a bedsheet. (I actually know a guy who did this - Factchecking Cuz.) A few other things are done and voila! you have a new cute child star, just like the old cute child star.
This way, when Mac starts growing peach fuzz, we ship him to an island or something, fire up the ewe and start with a clean (and cute) slate. If you thought Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen were fun as TWINS...hot dang!
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