PORFLE VS. OCCAM'S RAZOR

Ever find yourself in the middle of a debate about UFOs or Bigfoot or something cool like that, and the idiot who's stupid enough to have an opposing opinion to yours suddenly gets all smug (you know, the furrowed-eyebrows and pursed-lips routine, with a scoffing noise and a weary head-toggle thrown in for extra smugness) and intones, "Well, according to Occam's Razor..." 

Don't you just want to strangle the weaselly little bastard, chop him up into little pieces, and call Winston Wolf to come dispose of him for you?

Wikipedia defines "Occam's Razor" as the principle that "the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory."  It sounds like something the Scarecrow would reel off right after he got his brain.  Which is why, not long after THE WIZARD OF OZ ends, everybody else in Oz strangles the Scarecrow, chops him up into little pieces, and calls Winston Wolf to come dispose of him for them.

A simpler way of putting it is this:  "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."  Well, that's just great, but it doesn't really explain alien anal probes, now does it? 
Of course, Occam's Razor fanatics, whom I will henceforth refer to as "Occheads", think that the simplest solution to stuff like that is that everybody's either lying or they're coo-coo.  So instead of smugly intoning "Well, according to Occam's Razor, blah blah blah" they should simply come right out and say "Lying or coo-coo!  Lying or coo-coo!  BWAAAAK!" and then hop around like parrots while making wing-flapping motions with their hands in their armpits. 

Of course, along with "lying or coo-coo" I should probably also add "mistaken."  Occheads love to pull the smug routine on people and pronounce them "mistaken" in their insistence that they just saw a flying saucer buzz their house or Bigfoot carry their grandmother off into the woods. 

"What you really saw," they'll inform you as though they'd been monitoring your eyeballs through a magic TV screen, "was something totally mundane and ordinary that you stupidly misinterpreted as something else, stupid.  And when I say 'stupid' I don't mean to say you're generally stupid, but simply that you're stupid compared to me" and then they'll titter at you.  And then you have to punch the Winston Wolf speed-dial again.

Now, I've seen UFOs that I know without a doubt weren't airplanes, temperature inversions, weather balloons, or the planet Venus.  I know I'm not lying, and, for the sake of argument, let's assume for the moment that I'm not coo-coo, ha ha, so according to Occam's Razor, I must be mistaken.  Except that I'm not.  So in this case, the simplest solution to the question of whether or not I saw a UFO fly over my house is that I saw a UFO fly over my house.  Case closed, pal!  Try to smug that one off.

The trouble is, though, that Occheads can smug anything off.  The only thing they can't smug off is something that they actually witness themselves, and they never actually witness anything themselves.  It's like on "The X-Files" when an entire fleet of UFOs flies by while Scully's checking her lipstick, and Mulder says, "Scully!  Did you see that?" and she says "See what?" and he says "That entire fleet of UFOs!" and she gives him that smug look.

I wonder if people were invoking Occam's Razor back when they insisted that the world was flat?  It would certainly be a much simpler solution than all that other complicated, scientific crap that finally came out later on about it being round and revolving around the sun and whatnot.  I'm sure some Occhead pulled the old smug routine on some poor astronomer while he was being burned at the stake for heresy, and then hopped around squawking like a parrot.  In those days, "mistaken" was replaced with "heresy" and the Occheads called Winston Wolf on you.

Personally, I never even heard of Occam's Razor until I saw the movie CONTACT with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConna-hey.  And I'll bet at least 90% of Occheads didn't either because nobody ever invoked "Occam's Razor" to smug me off about anything until after that movie came out.  Which makes the whole thing even more infuriating because you just know that most of these Occheads saw the part of the movie where Jodie Foster says "Well, according to Occam's Razor..." to Matthew McConna-hey, and instantly started squawking around like parrots and then running all over the place looking for excuses to smug people off with it.  And after that, "Well, according to Occam's Razor" started popping up on message boards all over the Internet like a plague while people who didn't happen to see the movie were scratching their heads and thinking "WTF?"

Also from Wikipedia: "The term razor refers to the act of shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get to the simplest explanation."  The trouble with this is that "unnecessary assumptions" sometimes turn out to be true.  I once unnecessarily assumed that 8-track tapes would become obsolete, and guess what?  They did.  I ended up selling about 250 of them to some guy for five bucks, and I don't know what the hell he was going to do with them.  Maybe he was one of those people who just can't stand to hear a song that doesn't drag or have a two-minute gap in the middle of it, or maybe he just likes to feed the tapes into the player and listen to it eat them.

Did Occam use a razor to shave away unnecessary beard hair to get to his simplest facial appearance?  I don't know--I've never seen a picture of him.  I certainly hope he didn't have a beard, because if he did, why?  And what if he somehow stepped into a mysterious time warp that transported him to now, and tried to explain what had just happened to him to some Occhead, and got smugged off?  "Well, according to Occam's Razor..." they would intone, hopping around squawking like parrots, and he'd be thinking, "WTF?"

PORFLE VS. PORFLE

(NOTE: This interview originally appeared online back in Aug. 2008, but everything I said in it still goes.  And that goes double for me, too!)

Okay, I'm usually a pretty patient person and not given to griping and/or complaining a lot, but I've just about had it up to here with this horse's ass who calls himself "porfle."  Who does he think he is, anyway, with all of his "porfle vs. this" and "porfle vs. that"? 

In order to try and find out, I decided to interview him.  Needless to say, it was a visually and emotionally disturbing experience.  And I'm still trying to get the smell out of my clothes. 



porfle: What's that you're doing--pretending to juggle, or milking an imaginary cow?
porfle: I don't know what you're talking about.


porfle: What makes you think you have the right to jabber about your worthless opinions on the Internet?
porfle: What makes you think you have the right to not shut up?  Oh, and that's a rhetorical question.  So instead of answering it, just shut up.


porfle: Are you always this snippy?
porfle: I thought I told you to shut up.


porfle: What do you call these little things that you write?  I really don't think they qualify as "articles."  They're too disorganized and uninformed to be regarded as "essays", and they're too lame to be called "rants."  Really, to me they just seem like random blather.
porfle: I call them "random blather." 
porfle: No, seriously.
porfle: Ha ha, okay, seriously...I call them "diss-kabobs."
porfle: That sounds pretty stupid to me.
porfle: Well, you're a dumbass.


porfle: What's your favorite movie?
porfle: The one where your mom explodes and rabid hyenas devour the chunks.  And you get gang-raped by buffalos.  On VH1.  I also liked the sequel, where the baby alien gets lost on his way to your chest and bursts out of your ass.


porfle: Why do you dislike Billy Crystal so much?  He's obviously pretty talented, or he wouldn't be where he is today.
porfle: Billy Crystal murdered my parents.  I was only eleven.  We had just left the theater after seeing ROCKET MEN FROM MARS, and Billy Crystal accosted us as we were taking a shortcut through a dark alley.  His bloated, unshaven face was a hideous scowl of pure hatred for Mankind and all that is decent.  He had a gun and growled, "Hand over the wallet and the jewelry or I blow the brat's head off."  Well, Dad made a grab for the gun, and--
porfle: This sounds a lot like the origin of Batman.
porfle: No, it doesn't.


porfle: Do you really detest "Star Trek"'s Ensign Chekov as much as you say you do?
porfle: No.  In fact, I have an Ensign Chekov Real Doll.  A custom job, costing over $20,000 to have it designed according to my exact specifications, if you know what I mean. 
porfle: I'm not sure I do.
porfle: Well, it screams like a girl whenever I touch it.  Which turns me on big-time.  And it has really big hair--bigger than Mickey Dolenz, bigger than Herman's Hermits. 
porfle: Is it "anatomically-correct"?
porfle: That depends on how you define the phrase.  Instead of genitalia, it has a built-in player piano that plays "Yankee Doodle" whenever you put in a nickel.  But, according to legend, so did Ensign Chekov. 
porfle: How did you afford to pay $20,000 for it?
porfle: I robbed a bank, disguised as actress Anne Heche.  My getaway vehicle was a cement mixer filled with goose-liver pate'.  I am still at large.


porfle: Why does it smell like cat whizz in here?
porfle: Because I'm sitting in the chair that my cat doesn't like to whizz in.


porfle: "Brady Bunch" or "Partridge Family"?
porfle: Partridge Family, of course.
porfle: Really?  Because I notice you have all three seasons of "The Brady Bunch" on videotape.
porfle: Oh, you mean to watch?  I thought you meant to hang on rotating meat hooks and feed to alligators and grizzly bears on live television.


porfle: Have you ever been psychoanalyzed?
porfle: Yes.  But I couldn't afford an actual psychoanalyst, so I went to a plumber instead.
porfle: What were his findings?
porfle: I had a stuck valve.  That's why my water bill has been so high for the last six months.


porfle: Where do you see yourself in, say, five years?
porfle: In a mirror.  Ha ha, pulled the old "dipsy-doodle" on you.


porfle: What do you hope your legacy will be?
porfle: I just want to be remembered as a humble man who tried, in his own small way, to entertain and enlighten people.  And also as the "Fifth Beatle."


porfle: Who's your favorite Spice Girl, and why?
porfle: Sporty, because, unlike the other Spice Girls, she has never crapped on my front porch at six in the morning and stuck a cocktail umbrella in it.

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!

PORFLE ASKS: "WOULD YOU BUY GIRL SCOUT COOKIES FROM VIN DIESEL?"

One day the front doorbell rang, and I skipped merrily to answer it, singing "La-la-laaaa."  I opened the door, and, to my surprise, Vin Diesel was standing there on the porch, wearing a Girl Scout uniform.

"Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?" he asked in that familiar low, droning voice.

"Uh...no, thanks," I said hesitantly.  "Aren't you Vin Diesel?"

"Yeah," he grudgingly admitted, holding the box closer to me.  "Sure you don't wanna buy some nice cookies?"

"I really don't want any cookies, Vin," I insisted.  "Tell you the truth, I hate Girl Scout cookies." 

"Rats," he said dejectedly.  He turned and gazed down the street, first one way and then the other, as though this were the last stop in a long series of unsuccessful attempts.  For a moment there, I almost thought I heard a slight whimper, like at the end of XXX when he adds depth to his character by crying. 

"Well, okay," he said with a catch in his voice.  "Guess I'll just go home and listen to saaaad music on the phonograph."  He turned and trudged down the steps.

I couldn't restrain my curiosity any longer.  "Vin!" I called after him.  "Why?  Why are you trying to sell Girl Scout cookies?"

He stopped and gave me a wistful look.  "Because...I want to play the lead role in a new epic film about Girl Scouts.  A role that will astound the critics and silence my detractors once and for all.  I want to play Pinky Frankenstein."  He motioned with his hands, trying to summon the right words.  "She's the...the...the most, like, f**kin' awesome Girl Scout of all time." 

He reached into his skirt pocket and pulled out a picture.  It was a petite little girl in a Girl Scout uniform, about eleven years old, with red pigtails, freckles, buck teeth, and glasses.  "That's her," he said reverently.  "That's Pinky Frankenstein.  She sold so many cookies, they had to keep the cookie factory running 24 hours a day, seven days a week just to keep up with her.  And when they finally ran out of cookie dough--"

"Look, Vin," I said, trying to be honest, "for one thing, you don't look a thing like her."

He held up a finger.  "Ah, but that's where acting comes in.  The best performances come from people you wouldn't normally think of in--" 

He was momentarily distracted as Phil Collins suddenly ran past us in his underwear, screaming "ZOOM!!!  I'M A ROCKETSHIP!!!" before disappearing around the corner of the house. 

"--in that particular role," Vin concluded. 

"Well, you sure as hell can't sell cookies," I said. 

"No," said Vin, the tears flowing for real now.  "No, I can't."  He raised his tortured countenance to the heavens, arms outstretched, and cried out in anguish.  "WHY, GOD?  WHY CAN'T I BE PINKY FRANKENSTEIN?"  With that, he ran away bawling his head off until he disappeared through a hedge on the other side of Mrs. Wilson's backyard.

Some time later, I came across some news on IMDb of an upcoming film entitled "The Pinky Frankenstein Story."  Tom Cruise had snagged the lead role.  There was a picture of him in a Girl Scout uniform, with his usual smug, snarky Tom Cruise grin clearly recognizable even under the fake freckles, pigtails, and buck teeth.  Actually, the resemblance to the real Pinky Frankenstein was amazing.  In the background, playing one of the lesser Girl Scout characters, was Vin Diesel.  And even in his festive uniform, bravely trying to smile like a happy little girl, Vin couldn't help but look as though his world had come to a shattering end. 

While reading the accompanying article, I found that Vin's character was known as "Smelly Edna, the stupid little girl who totally sucked at selling Girl Scout cookies."  He was already receiving withering reviews for his performance, particularly from Roger Ebert, who acidly remarked: "Vin Diesel totally sucks at playing a little girl.  Two thumbs way down--his throat, that is."  And Rex Reed cattily opined:  "Vin Diesel's performance is worse than being sucked into a jet engine and ground into cat food.  I wish he'd get hit by a train." 

As for me, I almost wish that I'd bought some cookies from Vin that day.  But like I said, I hate Girl Scout cookies.  I guess I even hate them enough to destroy Vin Diesel's acting career.

PORFLE MEETS THE WOLF MAN

In FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, Larry Talbot, alias The Wolf Man, finds the Frankenstein Monster in an ice cavern, frozen in a block of ice.  At the end of that movie, the two monsters get swept away by a flood, and in the next film, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, they're both found frozen in blocks of ice.  The last we see of The Wolf Man is at the end of ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, when he and Dracula plunge to their supposed deaths off a high cliff into the sea. 

Well, I didn't think for one minute that this could kill The Wolf Man, so I undertook an extensive search for him all over the world, concentrating mainly on a one-mile radius around my house.  Where did I eventually find him?  In a block of ice.

I built a fire in the dark, creepy ice cavern right next to the block of ice where The Wolf Man lay dormant in order to thaw him out.  Carefully timing my actions to the millisecond, I knew that he would awaken and revert back to his human form just as the full moon went down, which meant that not only would I be safe, but I'd also be able to talk the perpetually-suicidal Talbot out of trying to kill himself again. Here, then, is the result of my fascinating interview with Larry "The Wolf Man" Talbot...


PORFLE: Greetings, Mr. Talbot.  I'd like to ask you a few--

WOLF MAN: RAAARRRRR!!!

PORFLE: YAAAAAAAA!!!

WOLF MAN: GRRRRROOWWLLL!!

PORFLE:  NO!!!  NO!!! HEEELLLP!!!

WOLF MAN:  OWWW-WOOOOOO!!!

PORFLE: (gurgling) Talbot!  TALBOT!

WOLF MAN: (reverting to human form) Wha...where am I?

PORFLE:  Whew!  That was close.

WOLF MAN: Porfle!  Why, I might've killed you.

PORFLE:  I don't understand it!  I had this thing timed perfectly!  Oh, wait--daylight saving time.

WOLF MAN: Why?  Why have you freed me from the ice that imprisoned the beast that lives within me?  Why?  WHY?

PORFLE:  I wanted to interview you.  Heh.

WOLF MAN: Aww gee, why can't ya just leave me alone?

PORFLE: Well, "leaving people alone" isn't exactly something they teach you in interviewer school. 

WOLF MAN:  You went to interviewer school?

PORFLE: (resentful) No...my brother Pablo got to go off to interviewer school.  I had to stay behind and care for my aging parents, and help out on the farm.  Oh, I've done what I had to do in order to get by--I don't apologize to anyone.  But now he looks down on me for the kind of life I had to lead.  Him, the big holier-than-thou interviewer, and me, the geriatric-porn-movie fluffer.  We both chose our own seperate paths...MINE was harder!

WOLF MAN: Uh-huh, well...

PORFLE:  But now, I'm going to be the greatest interviewer the world has ever seen!  I'll interview ALL the world's most horrible monsters!  Even Paris Hilton!

WOLF MAN: Yeah, well, I think I hear my mom calling--

PORFLE: My brother Pablo even refuses me a bowl of soup when I go to visit him!  What do I get?  SPAGHETTI-OS!!!  Out of a can!  He doesn't even heat them up!

WOLF MAN: Please, all I ask is that you--

PORFLE: Which reminds me, I have a few questions I'd like to "ask" you, heh heh.  Now, when did you--

WOLF MAN: Aww, go away!  All of ya!

PORFLE: Is that a fat joke?

WOLF MAN: (defensive) You think you've got it tough?  I can't even hold a job at Kwik-Kopy.  Somebody brings in a stack of important business papers to be duplicated, I smile and give them my best "Yes, sir, can I help you, sir" and then whammo! I turn into The Wolf Man and rip out their jugular vein! 

PORFLE:  Have you tried McDonald's?

WOLF MAN: I've tried everything.  I even got a summer job at Disneyland.  Those poor little kids still have nightmares about a 6'3" Mickey Mouse coming after them, foaming at the mouth.  Goofy shot me with a silver bullet, but that never works.  My pink slip came with a personal note that said "I hate you.  Signed, Uncle Walt."  And then there was that Swedish massage parlor--

PORFLE: You worked at a Swedish massage parlor?

WOLF MAN: No, I didn't get past the audition.  I was giving the owner a massage...it was wonderful, I was using all my finest oils and creams, everything...aww, he looked so happy and serene as I gently kneaded the tension from his buttocks.  Then I turned into The Wolf Man, bit him in the ass, and threw him through a wall.  No, I didn't get the job.

PORFLE: What did you do then?

WOLF MAN: Well, I went after Dracula and Frankenstein for a while.  I don't know why.  Just something to do.  Me and Frankenstein got into this senseless brawl in Visaria once and then the villagers blew up the dam and the flood washed us away, and we got frozen into blocks of ice.  Later I went at it with Dracula and he threw a flowerpot at me, and I fell into the ocean and ended up in this cave in a block of ice. 

PORFLE: What about your old girlfriend from Llanwelly village?  Gwen Conliffe?  Did you ever look her up again?

WOLF MAN: Yeah, I found her a few years ago.  In a block of ice.

PORFLE:  That sucks.

WOLF MAN: (agitated) Everything sucks! 

PORFLE:  So, what do you want to do now?

WOLF MAN:  I only wanna die.  Only in death will I find the peace that has been denied me in life.

PORFLE:  Let me guess--you're a big hit at parties.

WOLF MAN:  I don't get invited to parties anymore.  The last one I went to--a bachelor party--I turned into The Wolf Man and ate the groom.  Then this girl popped out of a cake and I ate her, too.  With ice cream.

PORFLE:  Well, thanks for the interview. Hope you don't get frozen into any more blocks of ice or anything, ha ha.  Best wishes, and may you live eternally.

WOLF MAN:  I don't WANNA live eternally!

PORFLE:  Right, right.  Sorry.

WOLF MAN:  Wait, what time is it?

PORFLE:  It's...goodness, we've been talking for much longer than I thought.  It's already nighttime again.  The moon should be rising any minute now, and--

WOLF MAN:  GRRAAAARRRR!!!

PORFLE:  YAAAAAAAAAA!!!


Well, The Wolf Man chased me around the cave for awhile, but I managed to get away by the seat of my pants, which he ate.  Later I heard that Talbot had traveled to the Sahara desert to get away from it all, and had somehow managed to get frozen into a block of ice.  As for me, I found the whole experience terrifying and emotionally distressing, and am under strict doctor's orders to avoid monsters and pursue only non-disturbing interview subjects, like clowns and record producers.