Me and Mr. Bond

I’m not one for bumper stickers. Oh, I occasionally succumb to the urge to let my freak flag fly and slap on a pithy saying, but it’s rare.

There is, however, one bumper sticker that I would gladly paste to my rear bumper — I mean the bumper of my car. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist.

If it did exist, the bumper sticker would simply have five letters: WWJBD.

Its meaning? What Would James Bond Do?

I mentioned this the other day to Robin Mexico, who runs the Star Theater in Stayton. I was there to watch the best Bond movie ever, “Quantum of Solace.” The coolest part about this movie is I have no idea what the title means.

I was raised on Bond movies. When I was a kid, my dad took me to see “Goldfinger.” This was a sort rite of passage, since it was a bit racy for those days, what with women wearing bikinis and all.

I was hooked forever. “From Russia with Love” and “Dr. No” had already come out, so I made it a mission to find theaters showing them as part of double features.
When “Thunderball” came out, a bunch of us high school kids skipped school and took the train into Philadelphia and watched it three times in row — oh, yeah!

The Roger Moore era was almost as good as the Sean Connery era, although the plots got goofier and goofier. I think they were written by comic book authors.

Timothy Dalton was a pretty good Bond, as was George Lazenby. The only Bond I just couldn’t bring myself to watch was what’s-his name, Pierce Brosnan, who looks more like a hairdresser than a beefcake, licensed-to-kill superspy.

As far as I could tell, the only thing he was licensed to do is cut, color and perm.

Then along came Daniel Craig and the last two Bond movies. When he’s not wrecking cars, he’s pounding the you-know-what out of some poor slob and chasing beautiful women around the planet.

Kinda sounds like a typical day for me. In fact, you’ll note a distinct similarity between Craig and me. We could be brothers. OK, maybe not brothers. How about distant cousins? Would you believe friends. …

Anyway, the main ingredient of the last two Bond movies is mayhem. As the father of four boys, I can identify with that.

The other ingredient that I like is the villains. They remind me a lot of a certain multinational investment company I once worked for. My manager was a dead ringer for Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The only thing missing was the cat.

And, of course, Mr. Blofeld met his ultimate fate at the hands of Mr. Bond.

There is one problem about going to Bond movies with me. I make too much noise — not during the movie but standing in line at the snack bar. As I order popcorn and a soda, I keep singing the Bond theme song, the words to which are “Da-da-DA-DA-da-da-da, daaa-da-da-da-da.”

At which point everyone in line begins to slowly back away.