Old Balls

One of the more audience appeasing ingredients of any half worthy coming of age campus comedy or asinine ‘boob n bong’ flick is the cameo presence from an archetypal frolicsome old dude.

Unexpectedly profane and lascivious, huffing joints and getting drunk, they make light of old age, deliver memorable lines and make us grin with the hope that one day, we too will be equally fun and batshit insane.

Often they are the one saving grace in an otherwise heinous film.

Here's a tip of the hat to the five most memorable.


1) Patrick Crenshaw

“You’re my Boy, Blue!”

Who could forget Crenshaw’s ‘Joseph "Blue" Palasky’ from the Ferrell-Vaughan classic ‘Old School’, an elderly fratboy who suffers a heart attack facing two topless nubiles in a tragic KY wrestling match. Crenshaw lived his final days on earth a cult figure, with fans everywhere yelling out to him ‘You’re my boy Blue’ until his dying day. Crenshaw played an equally deadpan Leslie Ward Cabot, diminutive, silent husband of MILF Jennifer Coolidge’s character in the dog show mockumentary, ‘Best in Show’.

Crenshaw died for real in April 2008. RIP Blue. You're our boy.



2) Carmen Filpi

“Women – they rip your heart out of your ass!”

Known by horror aficionados as the gaunt Reverend Jackson P. Sayer in Halloween 4, Carmen Filpo will probably be best remembered as shady Scooby Doo reprise of ‘Old Man Withers from the amusement park’ in ‘Wayne’s World’, not to mention the old drunk in the bar scene of ‘The Wedding Singer’ who offers irreverent emotional support and worn out fisticuff to Adam Sandler's Robbie.



3) Barnard Hughes

“One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damn vampires”

A seasoned broadway performer, undertaking over 400 theatre roles in his career, Barnard Hughes featured in a plethora of film and television, including Tron, Doc Hollywood the forgettable sitcom ‘Blossom’. Most importantly, Hughes was the lovably eccentric vampire hunting Grandpa in seminal 80’s flick ‘The Lost Boys’, often substituting windex for aftershave, slaying the ladies as well as the undead.




4) Jack Mather II

“He called the shit poop”

Jack Mather II nailed the role of confused geriatric ‘Old Man Clemons’ in 1995’s ‘Billy Madison’, famously stomping on a bag of burning poo (read: shit) wearing only Y-fronts and boots, waving his arm into the night at ‘those damn kids’ with pinnacle archetypal old man style.

Don't be telling him his business.



5) Edmund Lyndeck

“Hey Jack, have that bitch make us some blueberry pancakes. Right now.”

Edmund Lyndeck is yet another vintage mossback, stealing a memorable scene toking a stiff doobie as Tom Green’s grandpa, Jack Manilow in campus film ‘Road Trip’, before hallucinating on a munchie request from his pet dog. Lyndeck was also the loveable, drunken comic relief on the witness stand as the chardonnay swilling old man in the final courtroom scene of Adam Sandler’s ‘Big Daddy’.