Where's Griswold?

Dark Territory may be the most commented upon of my posts to date. By "most commented" I mean that one person made a single reference to the post while I was talking to them. But that comment was not lost on me, and in the content business we've got to give people what they want or they may just visit a different blog for their daily dose of blog inanity.

So, WTF is up with all the different Audrey Griswolds they tried to foist upon us in the Nation Lampoon's vacation movies? There are four movies that I can recall (Vacation, European Vacation, Christmas Vacation and Vegas Vacation), and at least four different actresses. Were the original actresses too busy? No longer age appropriate? Did they refuse to appear in the next film on the advice of their agents, because the scripts were bad? If so, hopefully these women fired their agents long ago since none of these actresses are household names, and some are so obscure that they might not even have households. But let's stop dancing around the issue, which is this: how "doable" are these chicks now? Following the prior format, we'll present a "then" and "now" picture for comparison purposes. Note that although a girl's "Doability rating" is measured on the 10 scale, it is not a measure of the girl's attractiveness. Think of it this way: in college you may have met a girl at a party that you thought was a 6, but there was a 100% chance you were going to try and take her back to your dorm room and have sex with her. In that case, she'd get a 10 on the "doability" scale. Now, on with the show:

Here's Audrey from "Vacation", also known as Dana Barron. Dana is currently 41 years old, but I have no idea when that picture was taken. You see, when people fall out of the public eye, apparently there are very few current pictures of them on the internet. Of course, if you were to compare the number of pictures of Dana Barron with the number of unique page views I get in a day, you'd end up with infinitely more Dana pictures. But I digress. Let's give her a Doability Rating of 5/10.

Here's Audrey from "European Vacation", also known as Dana Hill. Apparently they figured audiences would assume a marginally attractive brunette actress with the same first name is, in fact, the same actress from the original Vacation. I mean, maybe she just got married and changed her name. And I understand that lots of married people kind of let themselves go and get less attractive after they are married, so it would be understandable if she wasn't hot at all and looked nothing like herself. However, it turns out that this is not the same Dana. It also turns out that this Dana is dead. She died in 1996, at age 32. Poor bastard. She gets a Doability Rating of 0/10 (or 4/10 if you are into that sort of thing).

Audrey from "Christmas Vacation", also known as Juliette Lewis. Who knew? She looked like she was going to grow up to be hot in Cape Fear, and don't get me wrong, there are hot pictures of her out there. I've even included one above. However, I am pretty repulsed by her now. Juliette is currently 34 years old. Maybe it was her role in Natural Born Killers, or her performance in Old School, or her wrist tat, or the fact that she is age appropriate for me and I hate that, but this chick disturbs me. Ostensibly she has a lot of doability potential but I am just not seeing it. Your mileage may vary, but I'll give her a Doability Rating of 5/10.

Finally, its Audrey from "Vegas Vacation", also known as Marisol Nichols. (Sidenote: What the hell is Tiki Barber doing in that movie?) Marisol is currently 33 years old. Now, she's by no means the hottest thing on the planet, but in my mind she is far and away the hottest Audrey in the group. That's kind of like being the best player on the Kansas City Royals, or the king of the dipsh!ts, but it is better than nothing. I guess she's still working some, so she's got some incentive not to let herself go and hasn't. For my money, I'll give her a Doability Rating of 9/10.

The name Griswold sounded familiar to me, so I did some additional checking. Turns out Griswold is the name of a blacksmith/merchant in Diablo, which was a wildly popular computer game. Personally, I am not into anime and didn't sport any wood during the Final Fantasy movie, but I am including him here because a burly computer-generated dude with a Scottish accent (no, not Sean Connery) might be someone else's cup of tea. In Diablo 2, Griswold becomes some sort of undead creature you have to fight. In that case Dana #2 might give him a higher score, but for now he gets a Doability Rating of 0/10 (2/10 if he's selling any cool weapons).

There's one last Griswold I can think of off the top of my head: Dr. Molly Griswold, played by Rene Russo in Tin Cup. I think of her as a poor man's Michelle Pfeiffer, but only if the poor man in question is actually hotter than Michelle Pfeiffer. She's currently 53(!) years old, but I'd still say she's pretty doable. I think she nudes up in Thomas Crown Affair, but this is a family blog so I will leave you to your own Googling on that one (tip: make sure SafeSearch is off and search for Rene Russo, or just click here, and check out the first three hits. Incidentally, I've always thought of Julianne Moore as a poor man's Rene Russo, and Julianne nudes up in quite a few films, including The Big Lebowski. But let's give the good Dr. a Doability Rating of 7/10, shall we?