Tag Archives: Darren

Scrappers Mail: Letters from people who love Scrappers and hate me.

23 Sep

September 23, 2010

I get mail all the time from people who disagree with me about Scrappers, and if you look in the comments section you can see that they are usually well thought out and in the end I even tend to agree with most of what they have to say. So for the record: 

  • Yes, I do think the show is entertaining.
  • I do agree that all the scrappers are hardworking, even Darren, in his own slug-like way.
  • Noots, Sal, and the rest, are not bad people. (Though I confess, I get a laugh out of calling him “Noots.” What is his real last name? Nootsbaum?)
  • I take the show a bit differently than others because it is shot in my neighborhood.

Where we disagree is that I think that the producers at Spike TV do their best to make them look like wannabe mafia members, with stereotypical music and descriptions. I think the producers at Spike TV generally only show jobs where the scrappers look silly or make no money. How many times have we seen Dino and Mimmo lose money after a whole day of work? I think the producers at Spike TV intentionally create situations that have no basis in reality. Remember the episode where Dino and Mimmo picked up the old lady and took her to the hospital? That van is in no way safe for an old woman and, if during the course of filming a television show for Spike TV, she got injured, Dino, Mimmo, and the producers at Spike TV would be on the hook for a big lawsuit. In reality that would never be allowed. And at what point on screen did you see the woman sign a release for her image to be used on television? I think the producers at Spike TV do their best to make these guys look stupid (two episodes (!) ended with someone complaining about how much his genitals hurt) and in the process make the whole area look bad.

Or do you think that the video of Darren singing was made to get him a shot on American Idol? That was on the official Spike TV website! Of course they are making fun of him!

So I wasn’t too surprised when I received this unusually cogent and insightful email from a Mr. John G., whose last name I will only identify by an initial:

First of all I don’t think these guys look like jerks at all in fact to me they look like guys with their own reality show and a great one at that, so let me guess you will watch everyone of the episodes and hate on all of them and that is because you are just another hater.

Thanks John. Let me take this run-on sentence point by point.

I don’t think these guys look like jerks at all in fact to me they look like guys with their own reality show

If they don’t look like jerks to you, that’s fine. The ratings are good so obviously there are many people who agree with you. As for your cogent rebuttal that “they look like guys with their own reality show,” well, I take off my hat to you sir. I have no reply. You really got me there.

let me guess you will watch everyone of the episodes and hate on all of them

As you frequently read my blog, you know that I commented, either in general or specifically, on about 90% of the episodes. Did I “hate on” all of them? I think that I pointed out what I thought were the worst parts of each episode. You never saw me take a cheap shot at the scrapper’s girlfriends or call anyone a “hater,” for example, or point out that if a paragraph begins with “first of all” there should also be a “secondly.”

because you are just another hater.

No, it is because Scrappers blogs bring traffic to my website.

While I was still recovering my dignity from Mr. G. forcing me to concede that “ they look like guys with their own reality show,” Mr. G. wrote in again with another attack worthy of H. L. Mencken:

where is your show you clown your blog sucks

Again, Mr, G., you’ve bested me. You force me to concede that, sadly, I have no show.

At any rate, Scrappers is done for the season, and it ended on a high note. Darren got married (in a church I pass almost everyday), Noots got his scrap yard in Coney Island, Sal is still working hard.

So Mr. G., relax, put down your remote and attend some English classes, because this will be my last Scrappers blog.

Until next season.

Probably.

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Mr. Blog Meets The Scrappers (part one)

1 Sep

September 1, 2010

If you live in the southern part of Brooklyn you probably know the 18th Avenue Feast. Every year the neighborhood gathers together to celebrate Santa Rosalia and buy bootleg CD’s.

I’ve been there too many times to mention and it has gotten a bit boring. Same dunk the clown booth year after year, same bad music by “local artists” who never heard of Bensonhurst, same 14 year old girls trying to look like Snooki. But this year was different.

This year, some true “local artists” had set up a booth to meet their fans.

I’m not referring to The Hong Kong Master Tailor or The ROTNAC, I mean the true local artists, the hard-working heroes, those Spike Television sensations, yes! The Scrappers.

The Scrappers had set up a tent right in the middle of the feast. And like you would expect, it looked like crap. It was a double-wide dirty white tent with the sides rolled up. I’m sure they salvaged it from some carnival they were scrapping. The only sign to tell you what was in it was a small, loose-leaf paper-sized  sign spray painted with “Scrappers at the 18th Avenue Feast!”

In front of the tent was a long folding table filled with piles of cheap t-shirts. Cheap as in quality, not price. I don’t know how much they were because they had no signs anywhere and I was not about to ask.

So why didn’t I ask? You’d expect me to have something to say to these guys, right? Well wrong, not these guys. Despite a small portable DVD on the corner of the table showing the last episode of Scrappers, these guys were not the Scrappers. Oh, I’m sure they were some scrappers, little “s,” but not the Scrappers, big “S.” They must have sold some old gas pipes or something at one time, but these guys never had a TV show. They looked a whole lot more like the guys the Rolling Stones hired for security at Altamont. They were milling around, scowling, and punching each other.  If these guys decided to call themselves Scrappers and sell some shirts, I sure as hell wasn’t going to stop them. But I was sure that if I asked how much the shirts cost A- I would be forced to buy one and B- my wallet would be a whole lot lighter. (“Hey, what do you mean $20 is too expensive? Now you’re buying two for $50.”)

For all the world, it looked like some random goombas decided to throw together a tent and sell rip-off t-shirts.

To be fair, despite there being seven guys who were totally not Scrappers, there was actually one real Scrapper there. While everyone else was walking around and swearing, eating slices of pizza, showing off bad tattoos, and generally being obnoxious, Frank Noots himself was sitting in the center of the tent drinking one beer while a guy handed him another. Staring off into space, he looked almost, but not quite, totally wasted.  Too bad that wasn’t really a Picasso he found on the show this week.

One would almost swear that the roadie-looking thugs had kidnapped and drugged him just so they could claim they were a real Scrapper booth. (“One” would, but not me, because those guys looked dangerous.)

Nowhere was the Spike TV logo anywhere present, nor a single Spike camera, not even a Dino or Mimmo, lucky for them. I hope that means there won’t be a season two. That way Dino and Mimmo can go back to kidnapping old women. (Missed this week’s show? Shame on you.)

A little perspective:

On the next block, WCBS had set up a tent half the size of the Scrappers and people were lined up six deep to get “Brooklyn’s Own” Joe Causi’s autograph. (And yes, one of them was me.) Not far the other way, Lucy’s Sausage had customers lined up six deep for a sweet sausage and peppers. (And yes, one of them was me.) By contrast, the Scrappers booth had no one in front of it. A few people stood a good twelve feet away and wondered if the scrappers were going to attack them if they crossed the neutral zone. (And yes, one of them was me.)

They had what looked like hundreds of t-shirts on the table and I’d be willing to bet they didn’t sell more than a dozen. Even the people in the booth weren’t wearing them.

They’d have done much better with a bootleg CD.

And I have great ideas for T-shirts.

 

Other products too.

 

As Maury Povitch says,

TUNE IN SOON FOR THE INCREDIBLE UPDATE!!!!

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