He may have abs and cutoffs, but I have a new nickname for underwear... (Sweetie's Hunk of the Week, 57)

Each week, I sit down to do this with but one thought in mind: should this be the week that I write about a Hunk in entirely limerick form?

Then I answer that thought this way: "Mr Bunches, put your pants back on!"

The 57th Hunk of the Week is:
Robby Benson!

You Don't Know Him Without You Have... man, I don't know. For the past two weeks or so, we've had Beauty And The Beast more or less on continuous play; it's Mr Bunches' favorite movie right now, and that's probably why Sweetie had Robby Benson on the brain, but you can't really say you know him from a cartoon, especially a cartoon where he looked like this:

Which, come to think of it, kind of looks like Robby Benson, now:



And even a little bit like Robby Benson then:



But even if he kind of looks like the Beast, if the Beast were to play Michael Landon in a TV biopic, you can't really say you know Robby Benson from Beauty And The Beast. You might know him from Ice Castles,


But, first, who would admit they watched Ice Castles, besides Sweetie, who considers that one of the top movies of all time (ranking it right up there with Miss March and That One Movie Where They Use A Motorcycle In A Ballet), and

Second, why is that picture of Robby Benson in his underwear just about the only picture you find when you search for "Robby Benson Ice Castles?"

Is Ice Castles some sort of slang for underwear and nobody told me? Are "tighty-whities" now called Ice Castles?

Because they totally should be.

When I asked Sweetie where I might know Robby Benson from, other than those two movies, she said "Ode To Billy Joe," which I heard as Ode To Billy Joel, and I immediately thought "Billy Joel had a movie made about him? And nobody has ever made a movie about Piano Man? Or about Scenes From An Italian Restaurant? I mean, I know nothing about Billy Joel's actual life, other than that for a while there I thought he had married Princess Leia, only that was Paul Simon, but aren't either of those songs better source material for a movie than Billy Joel's actual life?"

Then I realized I misheard her and thought "Who's Billy Joe?"

Robby Benson was also in The Godfather Part II, which I never bothered to see. I saw Part III back when it first came out to theaters, and didn't like it or hate it. Then I finally saw The Godfather on DVD a couple years back, and it was bad. Aside from [SPOILER ALERT BUT UNLESS YOU'RE A FILM BUFF OR 75 YEARS OLD YOU WON'T WANT TO SEE THE MOVIE SO IT DOESN'T MATTER] the part where the guy gets shot at the toll booth, it really was slow-moving and boring. And I couldn't understand Marlon Brando at all. That's not acting; that's talking with your mouth full.

So we're back to you don't know about Robby Benson unless you're Sweetie.

Thing That Makes You Go Hmmm About Him: This is an actual fact Sweetie shared with me about Robby Benson yesterday:

His full name is Robin.

To which I said:

"That's kind of weird."

We then had this exchange:

Sweetie: "I know. I thought so."

Me: "It's kind of a girl's name."

Sweetie: "Yes, it is."

Me: "I know about Robin Williams, and Robin Hood, but still... Robin is a girl's name."

Sweetie: "I know."

So you can see that the romance has not left our marriage.

Also, Robby Benson has been married for 27 years and has two kids, Lyric and Zephyr. I thought for a second there that those were names of the muses, which I would then say was okay because Robby Benson is in the arts, but they're not. They're just words he liked.

Celebrities: Just name your kids regular names. People named "Zephyr" start out a couple steps behind the rest of us in achieving things in society, you know. People named Zephyr, and Kal-El, and other weird names.

Addition: Sweetie also reminded me, after she read this, that she'd mentioned that Robby Benson auditioned for the part of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. That would've made for an interesting kind of movie: Luke leaves Tatooine and heads off with Han to deliver Artoo to the Princess, only to get sidetracked by an ice-dancing competition three parsecs from the Kessel Spice Run, and then wins by batting his eyes a soulful manner.

Reason I Thought Sweetie Liked Him:

Because of this:


Which is a picture of Robby Benson taken back in the 1970s or something, when it was totally cool to take what were essentially child-porn pictures, like that one, or like this one:


Which is the picture that comes up when you Google Ice Castles, so what I assumed is this: Sweetie, having watched Beauty and the Beast 100 gazillion times since we bought it, got nostalgic for the time when she was the only person, ever, who watched Ice Castles, and googled it, got Robby Benson in his underwear, and fell in love all over again.

Actual Reason Sweetie Likes Him: "When I was little I liked him, and Randolph Mantooth and Mark Spitz... I've always been a sucker for guys with dark hair and blue eyes. Plus, Robby Benson just has that innocence about him."


Point I'd Like To Make About Sweetie's Actual Reason For Liking Him: I am notably lacking in the departments of (a) blue eyes, (b) dark hair, (c) hair, and (d) being named Mantooth.

But that latter one is actually a plus on my side. Also a plus? I've never worn anything like this:


On the minus side of my scoresheet are that I've also never worn this:



or this:




But I'm thinking of breaking out that outfit for our anniversary next month. Rrrwowr!

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