PORFLE VS. WHIFFLE BALLS

Go to any message board, start a thread called "What movies do you think are overrated?", and watch the blithering idiots descend on it like flies on Beefaroni.  BLADE RUNNER's overrated.  2001's overrated.  RAGING BULL's overrated.  The GODFATHER movies, the ALIENs, the TERMINATORs, all three LORD OF THE RINGS films, anything by that no-talent plagiarizing hack Tarantino, blah blah BLAH.  GONE WITH THE WIND is overrated.  CITIZEN KANE--CITIZEN FRICKIN' KANE--is overrated. 
In other words, anything totally great that has been loved by millions of people for years is overrated.  Oh, excuse me--did I say "people"?  I meant to say "sheeple."  Because the truly discerning movie connoisseur is infinitely more intelligent than the lowly lemming-like "sheeple" who actually, you know, "like" stuff. 

And yes, I'm being sarcastic.  DUHHH.

What isn't overrated to these semi-human pus-spewing warthog-buttock zits?  Boring foreign art films that I either never heard of, or heard of and want to watch about as much as I want to play with whiffle balls.  Unless, of course, those boring foreign art films made a lot of money and were popular.  Then they, too, are overrated.  Which they probably are, but that's beside the point. 

Of course, movies aren't the only things that are overrated in the eyes of these above-it-all snobs who deserve to be eternally drenched with finely-aged wolf urine.  The Beatles are overrated.  Ha ha ha!  Yes, the Beatles just accidentally became regarded by billions of dizzy, irrational sheeple as the greatest rock band ever, ever, ever because some weird combination of ungodly events just happened to occur during a one-time-only alignment of the stars and planets right after a freak interdimensional time-space warp and just before a butterfly landed on Ghandi's ass, and suddenly the Beatles got power-farted out of the sphincter of oblivion and landed in front of Ed Sullivan on live TV one night and everybody went temporarily insane and overrated them.  "A Hard Day's Night"?  Overrated.  "Revolver"?  Overrated.  "Sgt. Pepper"?  OH...VAH...RAY...TED. 

Okay, here's the deal.  Nothing is overrated.  If something is popular or well-regarded enough for a bunch of snivelling doofuses to turn up their noses and snort "that's overrated" at it, then it deserves whatever rating it gets.  EVEN IF I HATE IT.  That's right, I'm a big enough person to say that.  Because I'm so incredibly great.  In fact, I am incredibly F**KING great.  If anything, I am totally UNDER-rated. 
I know I am underrated because there are people who still actually disagree with me on certain things, when they should be diving headlong into prostrate positions before me and worshipping each and every one of my opinions about everything.  Because if my opinions weren't totally, absolutely, overwhelmingly right--why the hell would I even bother to have them?  I'm sure you can see the exquisitely luminous pristine logic of this. 

You know what I think really is "overrated"?  Whiffle balls.  What is a whiffle ball?  A hollow plastic ball with holes in it.  OMFG, that just drives me nuts.  And the sound a whiffle ball makes when you hit it with a bat--sort of a muffled "poonk" sound.  GRRRRR!!!  This goofy kid next door--his name is Brandon, of course--will be in his backyard batting a whiffle ball back and forth into a net, and there's this constant "poonk...poonk...poonk..." in the background while I'm trying to concentrate on something important like writing poetry or whacking off.  Poonk...poonk...poonk... I just can't stand it. 

There should be a law that says anyone who plays with whiffle balls should have to eat them when they're done.  If I told Brandon to rate his whiffle balls, I guarantee you he'd OVER-rate them, even while armed vigilantes were force-feeding them to him.  Forget the Beatles, forget Tarantino, forget CITIZEN farking KANE--the only thing on the face of the earth that is really, truly overrated is whiffle balls.  And Bob Dylan.  But especially whiffle balls.

PORFLE PRESENTS: "SECULAR HORSE"

It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning, and Father O'Mallard strolled along the dusty, wooded lane on his way to the old country church.  He looked out beyond the barbed-wire fence that lined the road until he spotted an old brown horse eating some grass beneath a shady tree.

"Good morning, Secular Horse," he called out.

"Good morning, Father O'Mallard," said the horse between mouthfuls of grass.

"And what a lovely morning it is.  Why, it's such a perfect morning for going to--"

"I am not going to church," said Secular Horse.  "Every Sunday morning you stop by here on your way to church to try and persuade me to go with you.  But you are wasting your time, because I do not like that church stuff and that Bible stuff."

"But church is fun for horses," said Father O'Mallard.  "Why, there's lots of horses in the Bible--"

"Name one."

"Well, err..."  Father O'Mallard was stumped.  He couldn't for the life of him recall a single instance in the Bible in which a horse was referred to by name, like "Silver" or "Trigger."  There were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, of course, but he was afraid Secular Horse wouldn't regard that as a very positive image for horses.

"There are hymns about horses, too," he said, deftly changing the subject.  "And if you come to church with me, we'll all sing one of them for you."  He was telling a bit of a white lie about this, but since he had written a hymn with horses in it himself a month ago and inserted Xeroxed copies of it into all the hymnals in case Secular Horse ever actually came to church with him, it was technically correct.

"Sing one of them now," said Secular Horse.

Father O'Mallard cleared his throat and began to sing.  "Ooohhhh...de horses lubs to go to church, doo-dah, doo-dah...de horses lubs to go to church, all the doo-dah--"

"That's just 'De Camptown Ladies' with stuff about church stuck in," said Secular Horse.

Father O'Mallard stopped singing and sighed.  He wasn't very good at writing his own hymns.  "Come on, Secular Horse," he pleaded.  "Come to church with me.  It will be very edifying for your soul, which is vitally important for the development and well-being of--"

A dull, droning voice from behind interrupted him.  "Don't listen to him, Secular Horse," said Janene Garafalo.  "He's just a con man trying to sell you a load of crap."

"Janene Garafalo is bad, Secular Horse," said Father O'Mallard.  "Don't listen to her."

"No, you're bad," Janene Garafalo droned, straightening her glasses.  "Your oppressive, patriarchal religion is bad.  Your hollow, ridiculous sham of a medieval ritual that you're trying to subject this poor, innocent horse to is--"

Father O'Mallard whipped out his Thompson sub-machine gun and started blasting.  Janene Garafalo's wire-taut reflexes went into overdrive as she ducked and shoulder-rolled into a ditch, simultaneously bringing her bazooka to bear.  Father O'Mallard dashed behind a tree just as the shell hit and blew the tree in half in a blazing shower of shrapnel and wood splinters.  He pulled the pin from a grenade with his teeth and let it fly.  Janene Garafalo sprang to her feet and dived into an empty feed trough a split-second before the deafening explosion left a smoking crater right where she'd been crouched.

This gave Father O'Mallard precious seconds with which to set up his M-47 DRAGON Guided Missile Launcher.  The first deadly projectile went screaming out of the tube as Janene Garafalo scrambled for cover behind a tractor shed, priming her shoulder-fired, M-72 Light Anti-tank Weapon (LAW) while on the run.  As the ear-splitting missile blast took out the feed trough and everything else within thirty yards, she returned fire with multiple bursts until the vicinity of Father O'Mallard's previous ground cover had been transformed into a raging inferno.

Frantically relaying Janene Garafalo's coordinates into his field radio, Father O'Mallard called in an air strike and then lay down a blanket of heavy machine-gun fire to keep her pinned down until the jets could arrive.  Meanwhile, Janene Garafalo's desperate call for reinforcements had proven fruitful when an armored personnel carrier arrived on the scene.  As it screeched to a halt, the heavy side-door slid open and Martin Sheen came screaming out with a machine gun in each hand and fifty pounds of plastic explosives wired to his torso.  At the wheel was a wryly smirking Bill Maher.  "I'll keep the motor running for you guys," he said, smugly chuckling at his own witticism.  A split-second later the entire vehicle was blown to bits.

"YAH-ha-ha!" Father O'Mallard cried, jumping up and down.  His joy was short-lived, however, when he realized that Janene Garafalo and Martin Sheen had infiltrated his perimeter.  With a heavy heart, he activated his field radio and gave the order for the incoming jets to drop their deadly payload on his own position.  "It's a lovely war," he said bitterly, nestling into his hastily-dug foxhole and waiting for the fiery death from above that was mere seconds away.

"Oh, all right, I'll go to church with you," said Secular Horse.

"Aww..." said a disappointed Janene Garafalo, who had Father O'Mallard in her crosshairs and was about to blow his head off.

"Praise the Lord!" Father O'Mallard rejoiced.  Then he remembered to call off the air strike. 

"Well, I'm coming, too," said Janene Garafalo.  "Someone should be there to counsel Secular Horse and deprogram him when it's over."

It was a lovely church service.  Father O'Mallard gave a wonderful sermon about proactive non-violence, and the congregation performed a stirring rendition of "De Horses Lubs To Go To Church" which had even Janene Garafalo dabbing her eyes with a hanky.  When it was all over, they stood outside the church as everyone filed out.  Martin Sheen had already organized a protest with dozens of naked people sprawled out on the ground surrounding the church, their bodies spelling out the words "SAV TEH HORES." 

"Well, Secular Horse," said Father O'Mallard, "now that you see how wonderful church is, I guess you'll be attending it with me every Sunday from now on."

In answer to this, Secular Horse turned around and took a big, steaming dump right on top of Father O'Mallard's shoes.  Everyone threw their heads back and laughed heartily, until there was a freeze-frame and the end credits rolled.

PORFLE GOES TO THE CARNIVAL

One day, I noticed a big hustle and bustle going on somewhere at the other end of town, so I asked my friend Dave what was going on.

"The carnival's in town!" said Dave.

"Wow!  The carnival's in town!  The carnival's in town!" I marveled.  "What's a 'carnival'?"

"What's a carnival?" Dave echoed.  "It's a thing with all sorts of stuff to do, like riding rides."

"Wow!" I said, even more enthused.  "What are 'rides'?"

"What are rides?" Dave shot back incredulously.  "Why, they're fun things that you get on and they do all sorts of the darndest things you ever saw."

"Wow!  What's 'fun'?" I gushed, barely able to contain my growing excitement.

Dave just looked at me kind of funny after that.  "What the hell's the matter with you?" he said nervously, inching away from me like I had B.O. or something.  "And furthermore, who the hell are you?"

Well, it turned out that I didn't really know Dave after all.  In fact,  I'm not even sure his name was Dave.  After getting kicked off the bus, I decided to head on over to this "carnival" that he'd been blabbing about non-stop and see what the big hubbub was. 

Boy, was it ever crowded!  There must've been two or three billion people there.  The first thing I noticed was this big round wheel made out of cages with people standing in them, and it was whirling round and round.  A flashing sign read "Tilt-A-Whirl" as jolly music crackled and blared from a speaker. There was a man working some levers which seemed to be controlling the whole shebang, so I strolled up and engaged him in conversation.

"Hey mister, what the hell's this damn thing?" I asked, using some "cuss words" so that I'd sound more sophisticated. 

He spat something brown and chewed on his toothpick, eyeing me with either contempt or sheer admiration--I have trouble telling the two apart sometimes.  "It's a Tilt-A-Whirl, dumbass," the man offered helpfully.

I nodded and smiled to indicate my comprehension.  "What does this lever do?"

"DON'T TOUCH THAT!" the man shrieked, but it was too late because I'd already pulled the lever all the way down.  There was a deafening roar and a terrific rending of metal, and suddenly that big old wheel snapped loose from its moorings and started rolling off down the midway.  The people inside it screamed like there was no tomorrow as the giant wheel smashed and flattened a whole line of booths and tents, demolished several cars in the parking lot, and then turned the corner onto Main Street, where it picked up speed down Trolley Car Hill and rumbled like a bat out of hell into rush hour traffic.

I thought it best at that point to avoid any possible misunderstandings regarding the incident, so I ducked into the nearest tent.  People were standing in front of a small, darkened stage where a fat guy in a straw hat drew aside a curtain and pointed to a cage with a wild-looking woman standing in it.  "WATCH!" he bellowed into his microphone.  "GAMORA THE WILD WOMAN WILL NOW TURN INTO...A GORILLA!" 

I blinked my eyes in disbelief as, sure enough, Gamora the Wild Woman turned into a gorilla!  Well, I had to find out what that was all about, so I hung around for a while and then snuck through the curtain and went backstage.  It was dark, but I could just make out that big, hairy gorilla standing there in front of some funny mirrors or something.  I'd never seen a gorilla close up before so I was pretty scared when it turned around and caught sight of me. 

"Hey!" said the gorilla.  Why, it could talk!  "What the hell are you doing back here?"

Boy, was I scared!  Thinking fast, I stomped on the gorilla's foot as hard as I could. 
"YEEE-OWWW!" it screamed in an almost human-like way, jumping up and down on the other foot and hopping off into the darkness.  Before I could even contemplate my narrow escape, I heard the fat guy again.  "WATCH!" came his muffled voice as the curtain opened.  "GAMORA THE WILD WOMAN WILL NOW TURN INTO...A GORILLA!"

I couldn't see what was going on, but from what I heard later it turned out that this time, instead of turning into a gorilla, Gamora the Wild Woman turned into me.  I don't really know the scientific explanation for it, but it sure seemed to frighten the dickens out of the people watching and there was a big stampede as they all shoved their way out of the tent as fast as they could.  I got out of there myself before the fat guy and the gorilla and Gamora the Wild Woman could come after me.

While I was looking around for something else to do, I saw a sight which shocked, saddened, and horrified me.  It appeared to be a public execution, right out of some old medieval photograph.  There, sitting in a makeshift wooden booth over a tank of water, was the condemned man awaiting his fate.  People crowded around like vultures, laughing and jeering, and were even paying for the privilege of throwing baseballs at him! 

I walked up to a man who was selling three balls for a dollar and tugged his sleeve.  "What'd he do?" I asked, pointing at the guy in the booth.

"Huh?"

"What'd he do to end up in there?"

"Oh.  He sold the least amount of tickets for the big Jaycees turkey raffle."

"Good lord!" I gasped.  Boy, these Jaycees sure took their turkey raffles seriously!  "But how is anybody supposed to knock him off the little board with all that chicken wire in the way?"

"Huh?" the man repeated, distracted.  "No, no...you don't knock him off.  You hit the little target there, and he falls in."

"And then he drowns?"

"Huh?  No!  Of course not!"

"So, is the water electrified or something?"

Well, the man must've been hard of hearing, because he didn't answer my question.  Since I didn't have anything else to do, I figured I might as well have a go at hitting the target myself and ending that poor slob's misery.  I'd never actually executed anybody before, but this set-up appeared to be legal since there was a cop just standing there eating a corn dog and watching along with everyone else. 

Stepping on deck, I solemnly saluted the poor, anguished soul in the booth, gave him a hearty "thumbs up", and rared back.  With a mighty heave, I let loose with the most powerful "Major League" fastball I could muster.  I may have put a little too much "pepper" on the pitch, because the ball sailed right over the booth, crashed through the windshield of a passing semi, and knocked the driver out cold. 

The massive tractor-trailer rig veered crazily out of control and thundered straight for us, bashing through everything in its path like an enraged dinosaur as people scattered in all directions and ran for their lives.  Then it jack-knifed and managed to wipe out almost the entire carnival in one enormous, catastrophic swipe before finally shuddering to a stop right in front of a kid with a balloon who was picking his nose.

Since the carnival seemed to be pretty much over by that point, I decided to go home--or, as the TV newspeople mistakenly put it later, "fled the scene"--so I walked down the street to the bus stop.  And who do you think just happened to be the only other guy standing there?  My friend Dave! "Hi, Dave!" I shouted, grabbing his shoulders.  "I took your advice and went to the carnival!"

"Uh, I think you may have me confused with someone else," he said warily.  "My name's not--"

"Here's the bus, Dave!" I said brightly, shoving him through the door and into the very first seat.  I squeezed in beside him and talked and talked about the carnival all the way home, and all the fun adventures I'd had there, and how I'd helped the nice man run the Tilt-A-Whirl and how a wild gorilla woman had turned into me and how I'd helped execute a guy.  Dave was a terrific listener, too, because he just sat there staring straight ahead with kind of an intense glassy-eyed gaze the whole time and didn't interrupt me once!