Top Ten Kickass Custodians
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Hmmm...sinister janitor. This'll end well.
I was disheartened when I started research for this Top Ten, to find that between us, ThatCostumeGirl and I weren’t the first ones to come up with the idea. (Also, between us, neither of us can remember whose idea it was, so I’m keeping things on the level…for now.) There’s a few lists out there about this very thing. Having reviewed those lists, I can safely say that while there is some overlap, I don’t think I’m stepping on anyone’s toes. So, without further need for anyone to get out that strange smelling sawdust that janitors put on puke, here’s the ten most kickass custodial engineers in fiction.
10. Rollo The Janitor (Billy Madison) – A seeming mashup of every creepy school janitor in existence (Honestly, school boards? Do they all have to look so….blech?!) Rollo (Christopher Kelk) nicknamed “Sideburns” by Billy turns out to be a rat bastard. He’s not a child murderer or anything, and he’s quite literal. Enlisted as a spy by rival Eric against Billy’s return to school, he calmly remarks on all of Billy’s weird quirks like drinking soda instead of milk. He is oddly practical. When offered the children’s milk by Billy, Rollo remarks that he’d rather have a beer. Now, that’s honesty, right there! (I couldn’t find a picture of Rollo, so here’s a link to his best scene in Billy Madison…enjoy!)
Voted Most Likely to Mop on a Saturday.
9. Carl Reed (The Breakfast Club) – The mighty have fallen, but they haven’t fallen so far that they aren’t keeping an eye on you. When a group of little bastard kids gets detention for a Saturday, the only other adults in the school are the vice principal Vernon, and Carl the janitor (John Kapelos), who, you find out later, was one of the more successful students at the school (while attending, no doubt). He delivers a truly frightening tirade to the kids, though: “I am the eyes and ears of this institution.” And, he’s right! Consider it a cautionary tale about not biting the hand that feeds you…or cleans up after you!
Whoa! It's M-O!
8. M-O (WallE) – From one of my favorite films of all time comes one of my favorite janitors in popular fiction. While it could be argued that WallE himself is a janitor…not so fast. WallE is clearly a trash bot. M-O (voiced by Ben Burtt) is a cleaner aboard the Axiom, or the last stronghold of the human race. He gets quite frustrated with the filthy WallE for dirtying things up. He also stands as an example as to how humans in the future got so fat and lazy. M-O ends up being, like most of the robot characters in WallE a decent, fun kind of robot. This is spelled out for me, when, in a tender moment between EVE and WallE, it’s M-O who ushers all the other robots away from them. Damn, I love this movie!
Billy Ray Cyrus WISHES his mullet looked this good!
7. Joe Dirt (Joe Dirt) – He’s a janitor and he lives in a boiler room, but unlike ol’ Freddy Krueger (see #2 on this list) Joe Dirt (David Spade) doesn’t get around to murdering any children. He does get abandoned at The Grand Canyon at the age of 8, but goes on to find a better life for himself in Silvertown. He falls in love with Brandy(Brittany Daniel…rowr) and decides that he should seek out his parents. What follows is an oftentimes funny road movie with an excellent supporting cast. While I won’t give anything away here, after seeing this movie, you’ll think twice about leaving your dog outside on a cold day.
"I'm a custodian, dick!"
6. Thurgood Jenkins (Half Baked) – The janitor (If you want to be a dick about it) over at Frankensense and Burr Pharmaceuticals is a pretty cool guy. He loves his weed, but he loves his friends more. When one of Thurgood’s roommates gets arrested for killing a diabetic police horse, Thurgood (Dave Chapelle) rallies his friends into selling medicinal marijuana from his workplace to get his buddy’s bail money. When they get the attention of the local drug dealer (which Thurgood insists he and his friends are not…they’re fundraisers), Thurgood and his pals take on the seedy underworld of potdealing in one of filmdom’s best fight scenes. If you’ve not seen this movie, you’re letting one of the funniest films ever pass you by.
Applesauce, bitch!
5. Will Hunting (Good Will Hunting) – It would be remiss of me, I think, to both run a nerd blog, and write a post about janitors without mentioning our man Will Hunting (Matt Damon). He’s the janitor at a college, who reveals himself by solving an impossible math problem left on the board by a professor. Will also has hoodlum issues, it seems, since as soon as he’s discovered, he finds someone and beats the shit out of them! He doesn’t even clean it up, either…Not much of a janitor, huh? I’ll be honest with you…I’m not a huge fan of this film. It’s worth a watch, but I couldn’t understand all the hype. I mean, Minnie Driver doesn’t even get nekkid in it! For all that, though, Will Hunting ends up being a decent person and this movie is worth seeing at least once.
Before Kramer, before the racism, there was only...Stanley!
4. Stanley Spadowski (UHF) – Some janitors are made…but, the best, it seems, are born. Here we have Stanley (Michael Richards), a simple man, who, despite having a huge hit children’s show to his name still wants to clean the toliets in a small TV station. He also, it appears, seems to have a love affair with his mop. So much so, that when he’s kidnapped by a rival station, he merely bears it until he discovers that his kidnappers have his “MOOOOPPPP!!!”, at which time, he goes completely batshit, kicking the shit out of everyone, and reclaiming his birthright…his favorite mop. (Which makes cool lightsaber noises…seriously, if I had a mop that did that, I’d probably be a custodian too.)
He was fighting wolves before you were at your mother's teat.
3. Groundskeeper Willie (The Simpsons) – He wasn’t going to make the list, what with the term “Groundskeeper” being in his name and all, until ThatCostumeGirl pointed out that almost every scene we see Willie (Dan Castellaneta) in, he’s got a mop in his hand. Surly, muscular, and embarassingly Scottish, Willie would seem to be Principal Skinner’s whipping boy, until you listen closely to almost everything he has to say about his job(which he’s good at, by the way). He doesn’t take much abuse from the school system without handing more than a bit back himself. Then again, how many fictional janitors have you seen throw down with a wolf and then have a drink with him later? Willie, that’s who!
Is it wrong to call a child murderer kickass? I think not, in this case.
2. Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street Series) – In life, Frederick Krueger might not have been the best individual. Indeed, we don’t even know how good he was at his job, if, at all. What he wasn’t good at, it would seem, was murdering children and getting away with it. After his death at the hands of a mob, Freddy comes back to haunt the dreams of the children of his killers. Now, that, it turns out, he’s good at! Merely having a dream about Freddy is enough to get you whacked, that’s how badass he is. As played with sardonic humor by Robert Englund (one of my favorites), he’s a charismatic villain, making it almost possible to forget that he’s actually murdered a large number of children. He’s still funny, though.
A truly frightening image. If I saw this coming for me, I'd faint!
1. Janitor (Scrubs) – It’s not often that you’ll see me put anything at number one on a top ten list for sheer amount of meaness, but this Janitor (Neil Flynn) takes the cake. He’s easily one of the meanest, nastiest people to ever grace prime time, and it’s a joy to watch him work. At pissing people off, not at cleaning shit up. He’s so badass that we don’t even know his real name! Not even in the episode where he gets married! His daily terrorization of young doctor JD is a wonder to behold as he comes up with new and inventive ways to screw with all the doctors at Sacred Heart Hospital. The great thing about him, though, is that no matter how awful his pranks are, everyone in the hospital has learned that you don’t screw with the people that clean for you.
Ten janitors, all of whom are badass in their own way. I don’t mind telling you that this has been my favorite top ten to research for so far. I’m certain there are other, better answers out there, but these are the ten I’ve chosen. So, remember, just because someone cleans up after other people doesn’t mean that they aren’t kickass in their own right. In several of these instances, it just goes to show that you should take a cautionary stance against the people who mop all day. At the very least, be nice to them, or they’ll terrorize you, spy on you, confuse a huge frozen turd for a meteor…okay, they might not do that last one. Offer them milk that doesn’t belong to you…that’ll help.
Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Great list, I like the choices. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any better janitors. Maybe the janitor from Glee? Nahhh.