FIRST

A Hollywood actor lives among us. Do you know where? Plus, Wilmington: the place to be (an angry) somebody, rockers tackle the state song, CBS news anchor and former Delawarean draws Playboy’s interest, and sex at UD makes headlines.

Skuby Dude

A Hollywood actor trades the glitz of southern California for the solitude of southern Delaware.

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So why would a 34-year-old Hollywood type choose to settle in Milford, population 7,201?

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Milford is a chill place,” says actor Alex Skuby. “And we like the parental help.”

Skuby has appeared on episodes of “ER,” “24,” and “House, M.D.” His most notable role so far was a five-season turn as lawyer Doug Pruzan on the popular sitcom “King of Queens.”

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Skuby (pronounced sku-bee, as in Scooby Doo) has also starred in “Finding Preet,” an independent film released on video earlier this year, and is part of an ensemble cast in “Pandemic,” a Hallmark Channel movie due to air this spring.

Skuby and his wife, Kristy, moved to Milford in May, deciding it would be a nice place to raise their three children, ages 11, 7 and 4. They’ve enjoyed the babysitting support of Skuby’s mother and sister, transplants from New Jersey.

The quiet lifestyle of southern Delaware—the antiLos Angeles—suits thae Skubys just fine. “I’m a homebody,” says Skuby. “I wish I could tell you we go skydiving—nude—but we don’t. My son likes to go to Chuck E. Cheese. We ride bikes and eat pizza and Buffalo wings.”

In Los Angeles, a young lady asked him to autograph her receipt from The Gap when he was out  to buy diapers. In Delaware, he gets the you-look-familiar routine, but is rarely identified.

Skuby has enjoyed the best of both worlds. Last year he attended the premiere party for “Finding Preet” at Hollywood’s famed Mann Chinese Theatre. About a year later, Skuby visited Milford’s not-so-famous Riverfront Theater to see his daughter Bret crowned 2007 Miss Pre-Teen Milford.

The only drawback of First State living, he says in a disc jockey-like voice, is “you guys don’t have an airport out here.” When Skuby needs to fly, Kristy drives him to and from Philadelphia International. He’s able to do most voiceover work in New York.

Skuby has been filling his downtime as one half of SixEightyEight (six strings on a guitar, 88 keys on a piano), his two-man, guitar-piano band. Skuby writes, handles lead vocals and plays rhythm guitar while Steve Peretiatko of Magnolia tickles the ivories. They make frequent appearances at Aspirations and Smith & Co., both in Milford, and are starting to land regular gigs in Los Angeles.

“We want to add a drummer,” says Skuby, “but we don’t know how that would affect the band’s name.”

Skuby’s sister, Lisa, who owns Just Skin salon in Milford, is perhaps his biggest fan. But that didn’t stop her from dishing a little gossip about her big brother. “He’s a man’s man,” she says. “He’ll get scruffy, grow a beard. But he’ll come in to the salon and have me wax his eyebrows [just between them to prevent the dreaded unibrow] and his back. It’s a little strange, because he has, like, all of five hairs on his back.”

Hey Skuby, welcome to little old Delaware.                         Drew Ostroski

 

 

A New State Song?

Stop cranking the phonograph. Lift the needle off “Our Delaware.” The official state song has gotten a little dusty over the past 80 years.

So Gary Allegretto penned “Dela-where?” during flights between L.A. and his native First State. Now the song is available to you, dear listening public.

The tongue-in-cheek rockabilly-blues tune was recorded in Centreville by Allegretto and a few of his closest musician friends—the Delawhere Allstars.

“It’s a loving satire of Delaware,” says Allegretto, who grew up in Heritage Park near Newark and still returns a few times a year to visit family. “It’s my protective song about Delaware. You hear people—even on ‘The Simpsons’—they take potshots at Delaware. There’s a country song about Texas that took a potshot at Delaware. This is my answer.”

 “Dela-where?” is right on, with such references as watching the Blue Rocks and the Fightin’ Blue Hens, partying in Dewey—even poking fun at the bouquet of northern Delaware’s mushroom piles: “…there’s nothin’ quite like that sweet Hockessin air.”

The boys take a few swipes at New Jersey for good measure, bringing all the required braggadocio: “…any Delaware beach beats any old Jersey shore.”

The band is comprised of Allegretto, an accomplished harmonica player, and local blues guys Roger Girke, Joe LaSorte, Brad Fish and Jimmy Pritchard. “It’s a band that doesn’t exist, other than for that particular song,” LaSorte says.

The band debuted “Dela-where?” at the Riverfront Blues Festival in Wilmington last August. The performance struck a chord with locals—all 50 copies of the CD single sold in less than 10 minutes.

Not everyone was holding up lighters and cellphones, though. Allegretto was greeted by a number of Jersey-ites who told him they didn’t care for the song.

“I think allegiance can be pledged in a fun way,” says Allegretto. “I hope people don’t take it too seriously and they just have fun with it.”

The CD is available for purchase at garyallegretto.com and at harmonikids.org. Sales benefit Allegretto’s Harmonikids program.

Now, if we could just do something with that “It’s Good Being First” slogan…

Drew Ostroski

 

Happy Terquasquicentennial, Wilmington

 

Though age is just a number, it’s interesting to see exactly when Wilmington started counting its birthdays.

Not from 1638, when pioneering Swedes colonized the area, nor from 1739, when Britain’s King George II deemed Willingtown borough-worthy. Instead, Wilmington truly became Wilmington when city council approved the city charter in 1832.

So to celebrate its 175th birthday on March 7, Mayor James M. Baker will propose a city-wide toast, but not before professional actors hold a 19th-century meeting at Old Town Hall.

The reenactors will mill about the area performing bits of humor and music. Historical figures with key ties to the city—Peter Minuit, Harriet Tubman and Clifford Brown—will make the rounds here too, talking about themselves and their connection to Wilmington. Then they’ll all gather for a special council meeting at the Old Town Hall. The highlight? Mayor Jim Baker will propose a special toast at 8:30 p.m.

And since you can’t have a party without the proper libations, the folks at Twin Lakes Brewery in Greenville have created the 175th Golden Ale, and Absolut Vodka—a sponsor for the event, thanks to mutual Swedish roots—has concocted a special drink just for the evening.

Sample them both during a wingding at the Delaware History Center.  —Matt Amis

 

Newscaster. Mother. Playmate?

Susan McGinnis proves that big brains are sexy.

TV news: the land of double standards. Men get to look like men. Women still have to look like babes. Feminism, it seems, has not made great strides at the networks.

Case in point: “CBS Morning News” anchor Susan McGinnis. A force on Wall Street, she’s also gorgeous—which proved irresistible to Playboy. The magazine’s readers recently named her one of its Bear Market Babes.  

What is this? 1967?

“I considered the Playboy contest fun and lighthearted,” says McGinnis, a 1986 graduate of the University of Delaware. “I don’t know that anyone who put together that contest or voted were real viewers who have seen my work.”

Viewers know that while anchoring “CBS MarketWatch Weekend,” McGinnis single-handedly sent shares of Ivanhoe Energy soaring 27 percent by disclosing that she owned stock. Yet Web surfers nominated her for honors such as the Best Bangs Award, part of Super-Hair.net’s national Crown Awards, and Wanderlist’s Sexiest Female News Anchors Worldwide.

McGinnis could prove that in the end, brains and heart beat out Botox and breast implants. She did, after all, help turn once-tiny Wall Street Journal Television into CNBC’s Pulitzer Prize-winning giant.

“I hope that once viewers hear the content of my reports and the quality work and research that went behind it, they will be most impressed with that,” McGinnis says. “Of course, if anyone out there likes the way I look, I’m not complaining. I hope it has to do with more than that, especially as I approach 43.”

                                             —Maria Hess

 

 

Pillow Talk for the Street

You can’t stop college students from gabbing about sex, so UD’s student editors have started publishing it. Parents, it’s not what you might think…

What’s the first thing your co-ed turns to in the University of Delaware’s student newspaper these days? Most likely, it’s the sex column, Delaware Undressed.

Shocker?

“We knew going in that reviews would be mixed, and they are,” says editor-in-chief Dan Mesure. “But most kids tell us that Undressed is the first thing they read.”

Delaware Undressed columns serve as entertainment for students gone wild and those who are considering it, largely because writer Laura Beth Dlugatch, 21, speaks their language. Reeling from a bad one-night stand? Embarrassed by bed-head and morning beer breath? Guilty of faking orgasms? She can help.

Delaware Undressed comes from students who are willing to be interviewed about their sexual experiences. Some have proven a bit too willing, and editors have judiciously omitted a few stories that would have made Larry Flynt blush. “I really just put ideas out there,” Dlugatch says.

Yet the column also provides frank discussion about important issues of sexuality, sometimes with advice or input from professors. “Once, a student wrote a letter to the editor and said that if college students knew more about sexually transmitted diseases, maybe we wouldn’t have as many of them,” Dlugatch says. “That made me realize that kids are reading it, enjoying it and most were taking something positive away from it.”

Though it may seem like a hormone tsunami has washed over campus, professional sex educators Marshall Miller and Dorian Solot say parents needn’t fret.

“Teens and young adults are less sexually active now than 10 to 15 years ago,” Solot says. “They tend to wait a bit longer to have intercourse, have fewer sex partners and are more likely to use condoms. College students today have grown up surrounded by sex in advertising and in the media, but they’re receiving less and less sexuality education in schools. As a result, they are hungry for honest, accurate information.”

Dlugatch hopes to parlay the experience to the broadcasting world, where she figures she’ll need a tougher skin. For now she can take shelter behind her keyboard and travel unscathed. “Parties are occasionally embarrassing,” she says, “but I don’t get weird come-ons or anything.”   

—Maria Hess

Anger Management

Hey, Men’s Health, quit picking on us. We’re not as ticked as you think we are—unless we’re talking about you.

 

Wilmington: home to the biggest financial companies in the country, tax-free shopping and, apparently, enough anger to make the Incredible Hulk blush, at least according to the September issue of Men’s Health.

The magazine says Wilmo residents are the sixth angriest in the United States, trailing cranky pants in Detroit and Baltimore. But what gets us really steamed is that Wilmingtonians are ranked ahead of notoriously bitter New Yorkers and Philadelphians. What gives?

Men’s Health used government data on blood pressure, assault rates, traffic congestion and speeding citations to measure our ire, but it didn’t stop there. In its effort to push us to most ticked-off city in the land, the magazine highlighted a couple of other problems.

According to its October issue, Wilmingtonians gamble more per capita than any other city (Vegas and AC excluded) and in July it said the city’s air is sixth-worst in the country.  

What happened to make Wilmington angrier than a blue hen in a Chick-fil-A? Careful research revealed these reasons:

 

Why Wilmington really should be angry:

 

It can’t decide on an official smell.

 

Every city above it has a cool claim to fame. Wilmo’s? No. 1 in North America for importing bananas and other fresh fruits.

 

Construction on I-95 has now spanned two centuries. (Keep your fingers crossed so it doesn’t make three.)

 

Apparently, we lost all of our cash at the slots.

 

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