Name: Tino Tonitini
Age: 12
Occupation: student
Voice: Jason Marsden
What’s cute as a button, has impossibly wide-set eyes, and squeaks when you poke it? No, not a dog toy. Or a hamster. Although those were very good guesses. No, the answer the judges are looking for is...“Tino Tonitini.”
I love all four of the Weekenders, but Tino is far and away my favourite. I can see some of myself in each of them – Tish’s academic record and mature taste, Lor’s aversion to female stereotypes, Carver’s...well, his elitism and drama-queen tendencies, I suppose. But oh. My gosh. Tino is me in junior high. Only with an extra friend.
Tino is neurotic to the point of ridiculousness (and this coming from someone who slept with the comforter over her head in the summer in Hawaii so the vampires couldn’t get her). He’s also our host and narrator, which is a great change of pace – the neurotic one is generally relegated to the sidekick role. He is still very much a kid and recognizes (generally after much inner-conflict) that it’s okay that he is. And he loves Halloween, which is uber-nifty.
While he occasionally does something fantastically stupid, he’s generally the one to see things as they really are, albeit often through a pessimist’s lens. Another rarity! A childish cynic who loves videogames and is terrified of clowns! Deep characters! Imagine! Now, he’s not cynical as in Philip Larkin cynical, but he does have a healthy view of what’s probably going to happen. Maybe a Thomas Hardy cynic?
And his relationship with his mother is great. I love seeing kids, especially pre-teens and teenagers, recognize that their parents ARE intelligent, DO love them, and ARE worth listening to. Tino comes to his mom with his problems most episodes, and she gives him very sage advice over...whatever stomach-churning concoction she has whipped up for dinner (no wonder the boy’s growth seems to have been stunted...)
Now, considering he was 12 in 2000, that’d put him at...sixteen. Which is only a couple of years younger than me. In a few more years, that kind of an age difference won’t even be questionable.
What...?
Thanks to http://www.kaonforever.com/miscfiles/weekendersshots/ for the screenshots.
Later days!
Created May 26, 2004.
