JUST SAY "NO"

I know all too well that young stars of TV and movies usually end up with their faces plastered across posters to be hung on the walls of their tween admirers or on the cover of mags like TIGER BEAT (what the fuck does that title mean, anyway?), but there has to be a time when the image-makers in charge of these young celebs' careers have to just say "no." A good case in point would be this one:

Yep, that's a young David Faustino, best known as Bud Bundy from MARRIED...WITH CHILDREN. I guess this is supposed to be sexy to an eleven-year-old, but he looks to me like he's cruising some random picnic site for some middle-aged pedo trade.

I came across this shot while looking for info on Faustino's career and I'm amazed to discover that this just may eclipse his completely ridiculous "rapper" phase. Yes, you read that right: David Faustino actually recorded a rap record back in the days under the nom de hip-hop D L'il', the 1992 album "Ballistyx," and when I first saw the video for its single, "I Told Ya", I wasn't sure if it was intended as a gag. Around that time on MARRIED...WITH CHILDREN, Faustino's character, Bud, concocted a gangsta alter ego for himself that was meant to attract chicks in droves, but as with the great majority of Bud's would-be gash-hound schemes, "Grandmaster B" was a resounding failure and gave his family endless fodder for mockery. To give credit where credit is due, I have nothing but love and respect for Faustino's work as Bud Bundy and frankly find him fucking hilarious in the part from season 3 onward, and when his real-life interest in the whole hip-hop thing became known to the show's writers, Grandmaster B was created as a means to bust Faustino's balls. And to his credit, Faustino took the abuse ball and ran with it; the Grandmaster B arc yielded some great laughs, and the sheer absurdity of a loser Chicago white boy like Bud even thinking for two seconds that anyone would buy him as a gangsta was a stroke of inspired genius. But then the record came along and, well, let's just say that Faustino and his rap persona soon thereafter parted ways.

Which is a roundabout way of saying the junior beefcake poster (or whatever it was) was by far the more ludicrous and embarrassing of Faustino's career moves. But who cares? We'll always have MARRIED...WITH CHILDREN.