PORFLE PRESENTS: "THE BIRTHDAY PARTY"

WARNING: GRAPHIC HORROR!!!

One day, my nephew Billy had a birthday party. His mom, Elaine, and a few of her other "mom" friends helped coordinate it. Eight or nine of Billy’s little school and/or neighborhood friends were invited, most of them between the ages of five and seven. A few fun games were planned, like "pin the tail on the donkey" and "toss a beanbag at the empty-can pyramid", followed by a yummy ice-cream-and-cake treat and the opening of Billy’s birthday presents.

It sounded like a potentially fun-filled party for the children, and it most likely would’ve been, too, if only Johnny Cash’s reanimated corpse hadn’t shown up uninvited and disrupted everything.

How he came back to life and why he picked this particular house to show up at remain a mystery. Yet there he was, right between little Sally Feldman and Eddie Green in the line of children filing through the front door for the party. The children should have been giddy with happy anticipation for the coming festivities as they entered the house in their nice party clothes, but instead they were mortally terrified of the shambling, gibbering corpse in their midst.

Needless to say, Johnny Cash looked pretty horrible. Already in a fairly-advanced state of decomposition, the deceased country-music legend was more ghastly-looking than the Frankenstein monster, and his burial clothes were split up the back to clearly reveal his big, warty ass, which somehow just seemed to make things worse.

Billy’s mom and the other moms stood frozen in raw, naked fear as Johnny Cash lurched toward them, his hideous face contorting and convulsing as he attempted to speak. But all that came from his festering mouth were blood-chilling croaks like "bllnnggff" and "guhhh-uhhhh." The children, now well beyond the point of thinking that this might merely be some kind of party entertainment, began to hide behind various items of furniture and cower in whimpering terror.

Johnny Cash looked around in confusion, as though he himself dimly realized that he belonged in the grave and had no business walking around like this. All at once, his bulging eyeballs focused on something familiar. There, leaning against a wall in the corner, was Billy’s guitar. It wasn’t a real guitar, but one of those little plastic toy guitars that plays a tinkly tune when you turn the crank. But Johnny Cash made a horrible croaking sound of recognition and grabbed it up.

"Guh GAHHH, gnog nggghh NAAAHHH!" he croaked obscenely, attempting to entertain his captive audience as he had so often done in life. He banged clumsily at the guitar, stomping his feet as he staggered from one shrinking spectator to the next. "Plink-plonk" went the fragile plastic strings of the toy guitar as Johnny Cash’s dead hands clawed tunelessly at them, ripping them asunder one by one. "Mmmfff, GAAAAHHHH HAAAAAAA!" he gurgled, trying to sing the remnants of "Folsom Prison Blues" that his rotting brain still retained.

And then, he saw the cake. The beautiful, rich, gooey cake. He remembered that he should love the cake, be hungry for the cake. Tossing what was left of Billy’s guitar aside, Johnny Cash lurched toward the gaily-decorated dining table and plunged his hands into the cake, ramming huge gobs of it into his mouth. "RAAAAR! GRAAAAAR! MLAAARFF!" he gibbered, slobbering cake, his face dripping with frosting.

Some of the candy letters that had spelled out "HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILLY" were stuck to Johnny Cash’s face, and they now spelled "YIRPAL DRIB." He vaguely remembered that he should now be thirsty for some of the sweet, refreshing punch that filled the large bowl on the table and made a diving grab for it, losing his balance and crashing through the table as the punchbowl landed upside-down on his head like some horrible space helmet.

Johnny Cash staggered to his feet, covered in frosty cake and dripping with once-festive punch, the huge glass bowl wobbling on his head, and lunged for the gaily-beribboned presents that sat in a pile waiting for the birthday boy to open them. In what was inexplicably left of Johnny Cash’s clouded mind, HE was the birthday boy. Emitting a series of horrendous barks that sounded like a herd of seals being run over by a steamroller, he ripped into the presents and came up triumphantly with a happily-grinning "Danny O’Day" ventriloquist dummy.

Johnny Cash thrust his hand into the dummy’s back and worked the controls, making its toothy mouth snap open and shut as he screamed "GARRR-GAAAAAAR! MUFFF WUFFF! NNNGGGGFFFFF!" He staggered from child to child, proudly performing the most hellish ventriloquism act imaginable for their entertainment. To this day, my nephew Billy still has nightmares of an insanely-grinning Danny O’Day croaking "BLAAAR GNNARRRRR!" at him, and wakes up in the middle of the night screaming "YIRPAL DRIB!!!"

Anyway, Johnny Cash’s reanimated corpse finally left. I don’t know what happened after that, because the phone rang while Elaine was telling me about it, and it was her husband telling her that there was a guy on his way to their house to fix the garbage disposal, and she had to go let him in. Not long after that, I heard something about Chris Farley’s reanimated corpse showing up at some Jewish kid’s bar mitzvah in Houston, Texas, but I don’t know if this was part of a mysterious pattern of some kind, or just an unrelated event.

PORFLE VS. FATE

Fate can really suck sometimes.  I'm not talking about big, important fate, like that creepy little kid keeps whining about in TERMINATOR 2.  I'm talking about everyday fate, like the fact that it's my fate to get into some kind of colossal time-consuming screw-up every time I try to breeze into EZ-Mart for five bucks worth of gas.  Or how I'm fated to get into the wrong line at Wal-Mart, not just occasionally, but every freaking time.

I always get into the line where the people in front of me have their credit card declined, and after arguing with the clerk for twenty minutes they finally realize that the clerk doesn't actually have all that much influence over the executives at Visa, so one of them decides to drive home to Cincinatti or wherever the hell they live to dig up an alternate form of payment while the other one waits there and guards the shopping cart. 

Meanwhile the other lines that looked so much worse than this one way back in the Stone Age when I was deciding which line to get in each have a procession of giddy customers blithely sailing through them like shit through a goose.

Thanks to fate, every appliance that I've purchased since around 1975 has had something irreparably wrong with it.  You know how about one out of every 500 items that come off an assembly line or whatever will have something wrong with it?  That's the one I get every damn time.  The stereo I bought fifteen years ago doesn't play guitar solos--I hear the bass and drums, but the lead guitarist sounds like his guitar is taking a dump in the building next door.  One of my TV speakers is messed up, too, so I can't make out the dialogue.  And if I turn it up loud enough to hear what people are saying, the explosions and stuff blast me through the back wall of the house.

My computer won't do self-maintenance.  It always tells me that it can't do self-maintenance because there's some other program running that I need to shut off first, even though there isn't any other friggin' program running.  The trouble is, you can't tell your computer there isn't any other program running.  You can't tell your computer anything.  It just tells you things, even when you can see for yourself that they aren't true, and you can't argue with it.  Sometimes I suspect that my computer thinks it's funny to bullshit me just to see how I'll react.

The toaster oven I bought doesn't brown evenly--my toast is always burnt on one end and underdone on the other end.  I just know that across America there are millions of people regularly enjoying perfectly browned toast from their perfect toaster ovens.  I wish they'd choke on it.  And then I feel guilty for wishing such a horrible thing on innocent people that I don't even know.  And then I imagine them choking on their perfect toast, crawling around like dying bugs on the kitchen floor trying to hand-signal their kids to do the Heimlich maneuver on them or something, and I laugh out loud and then feel guilty again.  So the simple act of making an unevenly-toasted cheese sandwich is like stepping onto an emotional rollercoaster.

Traffic lights conspire with fate to make my life a living hell.  Most people sail through roughly half of them or more without a second thought.  Some people actually get green lights from one end of town to the other sometimes, the bastards.  I get red lights every time.  They stay green just long enough to torment me as I'm racing toward them, and then inexorably turn red right before I get there so that I have to either slam on the brakes or zoom through them and hope a cop didn't see me.  Then, when I go back in the other direction on my way home, they get me again.  I can almost hear them laughing at me--a sick, metallic laugh that sends shivers up my spine.  They talk to each other, too, and make fun of me.

I don't know what I did to make traffic lights hate me so much.  I have always been nice to them.  It's gotten to the point where I actually wave and say "thanks" on the rare occasions that a light lets me go through without stopping, so that the light will remember how appreciative I was and not punitively stop me the next time.  I'm not making that up.  I really do that.  I think I'm losing my mind.

I get the emails that say, "Sorry, we screwed up your order, but this only happens, like, once every ten-thousand orders so it's no big deal, ha ha."  If I order something by regular mail instead of online, my letter is the one that gets sucked into an air vent at the airport and ends up lining a parrot cage in Argentina. 

I went to Carlsbad Caverns with my parents when I was in junior high, and we got there at sundown to see the bats fly out, which is supposed to be such a big, awesome deal since there are so many bats that it actually looks like there's black smoke gushing out of the cave entrance, except that on the particular day that I showed up--as fate would have it, ha ha--there just happened to be some kind of mysterious bat disease going around that was killing off thousands of bats or at least making them so sick that they had to stay home until they felt better.  Millions of people throughout the years have gasped in awe at the wondrous site of the billowing cloud of bats flying out of Carlsbad Caverns, and what happens when I get there?  The freakin' bat flu.  Thanks again, fate.

No, on second thought--eat it, fate.  It's your fault that I only got to see a puny couple of dozen crappy little bats fluttering out of that stupid cave, forcing myself to go "ooh, aah" and pretending that it was a big deal.  It's your fault that when I finally got a chance to go to Canada one day and look around for awhile, it was closed. 

It's your fault that I know more than I ever wanted to know about Britney's twisted childhood because I had to read "Celebrity Asshole" magazine from cover to cover just to keep from going nuts in line at Wal-Mart while some hag was arguing with the clerk about how if she'd just zip the card through for the zillionth time it should work and how it must be Wal-Mart's friggin' fault that her worthless piece of crap card was declined in the first place. 

It's your fault that I think traffic lights are sentient beings that hate me and make fun of me.  Even the ones I wave at and say "thanks" to.  And it's your fault that I got the one computer out of 500 that thinks it's funny to screw around with my head and tell me bald-faced lies that I can't argue with.  There aren't any other programs running, DAMN IT.

PORFLE VS. OUTSIDE!!!

One reason I hate being outside is that if something is going to fall on your head, it has a chance of falling from a much greater height outside than it would in your house.  That is, the greatest height from which, say, Oprah Winfrey could fall and hit you on the head inside your house would be from the ceiling.  But if you're outside, Oprah Winfrey could fall out of an airplane without a parachute and hit you on the head and kill you.  

And then you'd be known as "the guy who got killed by a falling Oprah Winfrey", and people would laugh at your demise.  Oh sure, the more conscientious ones would feel bad and try to stifle their laughter, but they'd still laugh.  Some people would even laugh during your funeral, and you wouldn't even be able to tell them to shut up.  That's why I've hired people to attend my funeral and tell anyone who laughs to shut up.  But there's no way I'll ever know if they actually show up or if they just keep the money and stay home.  So I may have to hire people to make sure they do, but there's no way I'll ever know if they will.

Another bad thing about being outside is that this is where most train wrecks, plane crashes, and high-speed vehicular collisions occur.  There just aren't that many headlines about people getting killed while watching TV, even if they're watching a "Full House" marathon on TV Land.  I feel pretty safe when I'm watching TV.  Sometimes I hear scary noises, but they're usually coming from outside.  See?  Outside is where the scariest noises come from, which is another reason that outside is bad.  If there are ever any scary noises that come from inside my house, I just look at my cat.  If she isn't worried about them, then they're okay.  If she runs under a table, then so do I.  Cats are a good scary-noise-importance gauge.

One of the worst things about being outside is that this is when the flying monkeys can get you.  Ever since the first time I watched THE WIZARD OF OZ as a child, I've been terrified that I'll be walking around outside minding my own business one day and the flying monkeys will swoop down and get me.  And you can't arm yourself against them, either, because whenever you walk around in public holding a sawed-off shotgun or a big, spiky ninja sword, the police usually take it upon themselves to butt into your business with a bunch of personal questions, and these questions will eventually require an answer which includes the phrase "flying monkeys."  Well, the police don't believe in flying monkeys.  Not even the ones who have seen CORKY ROMANO. 

Someone once told me that I had agoraphobia.  I thought they said "angoraphobia" and modeled one of my favorite sweaters to disprove them.  I really look lovely in it, too, if I do say so myself--especially with capri pants and a pair of spangled pumps.  When I realized what agoraphobia was, I had to admit that I probably do have it.  I went to my doctor and asked him what I could do about this, and he said "stay inside" and charged me sixty bucks.  I could've just stayed home in the first place and used the sixty bucks to order pizza three times. 

Home pizza delivery is great for agoraphobes.  It's the only time that hearing the doorbell doesn't make me run under a table.  "Yay!  My pizza's here!" I scream, throwing the front door wide open and dancing around with animalistic glee.  It's at this point I usually realize that I should've put on some pants or something first.  But the look on the delivery lady's face is worth enduring her irritating screams of horror as she flees to her car and speeds haphazardly away down the street.  And sometimes she just drops the pizza without making me pay for it, which is pretty neat.

PORFLE PRESENTS: "THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS"

One day, I decided to do something that nobody in the history of the world had ever, ever done before. 

But I couldn't think of anything, so I just watched TV for about twelve hours straight and ate fifteen or twenty Mexican and double Salisbury Steak TV dinners washed down with about a gallon of prune juice.  Ha ha, just kidding about the prune juice. 

The next day, I thought it would be a cute idea to strike out into the neigborhood and surrounding environs in search of the true meaning of Christmas.  So I put on my cutest "searching for the true meaning of Christmas" Santa Claus outfit and skipped merrily out the front door.

WHAM!!! I ran smack dab into the mailman!  With a gutteral groan, the old man flew backward over my porch railing into a mass of prickly thorn bushes and landed with a hefty thud.

"WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR MAJOR MALFUNCTION, YOU BRAIN-DEAD OLD MORON!!!" I screamed at the prostrate figure as he struggled to his feet amidst a shower of letters and Christmas cards.  "How dare you obstruct me when I'm on a mission to discover the true meaning of Chris--" 

I caught myself just as my tirade was about launch into high gear.  Realizing how sadly ironic this whole situation was, I controlled my anger and quickly turned it into sympathy and compassion for the poor mailman who, after all,  wasn't entirely at fault.  Helping him to his feet, I offered him a cheery "Merry Christmas, assh***!" and then kicked him squarely in the balls, plucking my mail from his hand as I shoved him down the sidewalk. 

He staggered to his little jeep and presently weaved his way down the street whereupon he then crashed through a wooden fence and into someone's backyard swimming pool. 

Restraining an impulse to chuckle at his screams for help, I demonstrated my empathy for others by wincing at the thought of how freezing cold that pool water must be before setting off down the sidewalk in the other direction.  "True meaning of Christmas, here I come!" I sang at the top of my lungs as I skipped, swinging  my lunch basket to and fro. 

Presently I passed a church and happened upon some children who were setting up a display in the front yard.  It was composed of some mannequins of people from the really old days, with robes and turbans and stuff, and a few farm animals like donkeys and things.  They were set up under a small shed and huddled around a baby doll in a trough lined with hay. 

"What the hell's all this crap?" I greeted them brightly, flashing my nicest smile. 

They must've been an ill-tempered bunch, because they met my friendly greeting with undisguised hostility.  "It's a Nativity scene, stupid!" one of them sneered.  "Don't you know anything?"

With an admirable display of self-control, I replied nicely, "Yes,  I know lots of things.  For example, I know...THIS!" 

With that, I dashed away and rounded the corner of the church, disappearing from their view.  The children looked at each other and shrugged.  When I came back into view, I was holding a super-soaker filled with finely-aged wolf urine. 

The children's screams were like beautiful music to my ears as I drenched them thoroughly, making sure to give the slower ones a double dose as they struggled to escape.  Then I danced around with each mannequin one at a time like a celebrity contestant on "Dancing With the Stars" before hurling it after the retreating figures,  who were soaked to the skin with the wonderfully rancid wolf urine. 

The baby mannequin I passed like a football, and boy oh boy was it ever a beaut of a pass!  One of the kids made an awesome leaping catch which ended with him flying headfirst into a dumpster full of hog entrails behind a butcher shop.  Six points for the home  team!

When all the excitement had started to die down and my senses slowly returned to my fevered brain, I stopped and thought for a moment.  Was this it?  Had I discovered the true meaning of Christmas? 

I lay down in the trough with my feet hanging over the sides and twiddled my thumbs, ruminating happily upon what an enlightening day it had been.  People began to file past, observing me with a strange sort of fascination or repulsion or whatever--I can't really tell the difference sometimes. 

"What the hell are you supposed to be?" one of them asked.

"I'm the true meaning of Christmas!" I answered brightly in a  cute, elfin voice.  "Now SHUT UP!!!"

PORFLE VS. MORE IRRITATING SAYINGS

(This is a sequel to "Porfle Vs. Irritating Sayings", which can be found HERE.)

Here are some more of the widely-used internet sayings that I find extremely irritating.  If you use them around me, I will personally ask Reverend Ike to never pray for you to get a brand new Cadillac.

"Meh."  This is used to denote world-weary indifference or snooty disapproval.  Has anyone ever said "meh" to you in real life?  No, because it's merely a literal approximation of the sound people make when they're world-wearily indifferent or snootily disapproving of something.  Actually, it sounds more like "mmnnyahh", and when people say it they usually have a cranky-baby expression on their faces.  The "mmnnyahh" sound is so whiny and infantile that when people type it on message boards, they shorten and tweak it to "meh", which they think looks better although they're wrong.  It looks stupid.  And it should be punched, kicked, or drenched with wolf urine. 

The only person in history who could ever pull off the actual "mmnnyahh" sound without looking stupid was Edward G. Robinson.  "All right, you mugs--from now on, we're gonna do things MY way, see?  MMNNYAHH!"  And the last time I saw Edward G. Robinson, he wasn't screwing around on some stupid message board.  He was slapping people around, blowing cigar smoke in their faces, and shooting them for saying stuff like "meh" to him.

"M'kay."  This is a word for idiots who want to express not just snooty disapproval, but sarcastically snooty disapproval.  Mere wolf urine isn't enough to quell my burning hatred of this word--"m'kay" calls for more drastic measures, like being forced to watch every episode of "The Simple Life" on a big-screen TV with a theater-quality sound system turned up full blast, CLOCKWORK ORANGE-style. 

If you type a comment on a message board and someone responds with "m'kay", you should consider them your mortal enemy for the rest of your life.  Because even more than "meh", "m'kay" denotes a verbal wrist being limply flopped right in your face along with the full "mmnnyahh" expression, complete with eyeroll.  Especially if it is followed by ellipses, like so:  "M'kay..." (the ellipses are the literal equivalent of the eyeroll) or if the "m" is multiplied by a factor of three or four, as in:  "Mmmm'kay..." 

The final outrage-inducing coup de grace, of course, would be the addition of an actual "eyeroll" emoticon.  Anyone who pulls the full "Mmmm'kay..." with eyeroll emoticon on you deserves a complete wolf-urine body wash, the total "Simple Life" forced-viewing ordeal, and to be interviewed by naked Larry King.

"Kthxbye."  Okay, if this wasn't invented by some bubble-brained teenybopper somewhere, I'll eat my entire collection of Bruce Willis DVDs.  "Kthxbye" is the internet equivalent not of the limp-wrist flop, but of the dismissive "talk to the hand"-style wave-off with a huge, pink bubble-gum bubble popped in your face. 

If you regularly find yourself involved in message board debates in which your adversary subjects you to the infuriating step-by-step process of "meh", "mmmm'kay...", and "kthxbye", then you should hurl your computer monitor through the nearest window and become a lumberjack.  Either that, or you should become a dreaded masked outlaw who rides into towns with six-guns blazing and robs banks and armored trucks while riding a buffalo. 

"True dat."  Now this sounds like a guy one.  It's not as horrible as the preceeding ones, but it still fills me with rage.  If something's true, just say "that's true."  Saying "true dat" doesn't make what you say any cooler or any more valid.  It just makes you look like a dope.  Do you say "true dat" to people in real life?  As in, "What's that you say, Brian?  Oscar Wilde was brilliantly insightful?  True dat."  No, you don't.  Why?  Because you would look like a dope.  If you said it to a girl you were trying to pick up, she would pop a huge, pink bubble-gum bubble in your face and say "kthxbye."  Eventually, people would see you coming and say, "Meh, here comes the 'true dat' guy.  If he says it again, let's kill him."

"FTW."  Another guy one, definitely.  Message board clowns who are arguing about what's totally the best example of whatever bullshit they're blabbing about will invariably resort to naming their own number one choice and then following it with a decisive "FTW", as though this somehow actually signified that their choice was the indisputable winner, which it most definitely doesn't you big fat twerp.

Best videogame?  "Super Mario Ultimate Sloppy Whack-off FTW."  Best new pop group?  "Dippity Doofussy Douchebags FTW."  Best TV show?  "Family Guy FTW."  That's right--they all love "Family Guy", even though it is the 100 percent biggest pile of steaming dog doo-doo ever.  I'd like to gather everyone responsible for "Family Guy" in one place and do something horrendously punitive to them.  I'm not sure what, but I am pretty sure it would involve copious amounts of wolf urine.

"Orly?"  I'm adding this one at the last minute because I just thought of it.  It can be inserted at any time during the above-mentioned process, as in:

"Meh."
"Mmmm'kay..." (eyeroll)
"Orly?"
"True dat."
"Wolf urine FTW."
"Kthxbye."

I don't want to talk about those words anymore, because I'm down to my last Xanax and I don't want to lay awake all night fantasizing about orbital death-ray satellites.

PORFLE VS. BILLY CRYSTAL

(NOTE: This is one of the first blog posts I ever wrote several years ago, and I would rarely get this negative about a specific person again.  So just in case Billy Crystal happens to see this for some strange, highly unlikely reason, I hope he realizes that it's all in fun even though I mean all of it.)

Someone once asked me who my least favorite comedian was.  That is, they were about to ask me, but before they even opened their mouth, I said: "Billy Crystal." 

My answer to that question is so emphatic and so definite that I answer it before it's even asked, which often amazes people, especially if what they were really going to ask me is why I wasn't wearing any pants. 

Billy Crystal is the horrifying mutant hybrid of the old-style Catskills lounge comic and the hip young "funny dude."  He's like what would happen if Shecky Greene got into telepod A and Mario Cantone got into telepod B and they were fused together in telepod C. 

Billy Crystal should answer his home phone by saying, "Hello, telepod C.  Genetically-fused A-B combination of Shecky Greene and Mario Cantone speaking."  But then it would just become another one of his catchphrases, and he would say it all the time.

The first time many people saw Billy Crystal was in the sitcom "Soap."  I had already seen his stand-up act on TV, so I already didn't like him, but "Soap" sealed the deal.  You see,  Norman Lear's "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" was the first series to spoof soap operas, and it did so by actually being a soap opera--five episodes per week, no laugh track, and everyone more or less playing it straight.  It was a brilliant show.  But it was in syndication, and hardly anyone watched it. 

Then "Soap" came along, landed a network time slot, and became a big hit.  "Soap" was nothing more than a standard stupid sitcom with a laugh track and goofy characters mugging it up all over the place, but with just enough superficial soap opera trappings tacked on so that they could advertise it as a "comedy soap opera." 

Instead of imitation soap-opera music, it had a jaunty little "aren't we cute" theme that made me sick.  Instead of a title that cleverly spoofed soap opera titles, it was called "Soap."  I began to hear the words "Soap" and "funny!" so many times in my everyday life that I wanted to start attacking people.  Waves of pure, burning hatred eminated from the very pores of my skin.  And one of the major elements that made the show so horrible was Billy Crystal.  He played a character named "Jodie."  GRRRRRRRR!!!

Later, of course, there was the phase in which Billy Crystal became "Mr. Catchphrase."  It all started when, for some ungodly reason, he was hired to be a regular on "Saturday Night Live", and he came up with his "Fernando Lamas" character.  "Fernando" hosted a schmoozy celebrity talk show, and would repeatedly tell all of his guests, in that heavy Latin-lothario accent:  "You look mahvelous."  Billy discovered that people laughed whenever he said "You look mahvelous", so he started saying "You look mahvelous" all the time. 

Some talk show host would say "Welcome to the show, Billy," and Billy would say "Thanks, and may I just say...you look mahvelous", pausing dramatically right before the "you look mahvelous" to build up audience anticipation for his hilarious catchphrase.  And the audience, damn them, would laugh. 

When the next guest came out, Billy would say to them, "You look mahvelous."  If somebody had told him his whole family just got wiped out in a gas explosion, he probably would've said, "OH, MY GOD! You look mahvelous."

Another one of his catchphrases was "Can you dig it?  I knew that you could."  Billy was imitating an old, black blues musician or something when he did that one.  It wasn't a funny character, and he never said anything funny, but every once in awhile after he'd said enough unfunny stuff to justify saying the catchphrase again, he'd say "Can you dig it?  I knew that you could."  And that alone was supposed to be funny.  And sure enough, people laughed, DAMMIT!

Billy Crystal thinks that he is a master impressionist because he does a good Muhammad Ali, even though almost everyone in the world has one good impression of somebody in them.  I do a pretty good Casey Kasem.  My brother can imitate the Werewolf of London. 

But Billy Crystal has fashioned entire segments of his stand-up act around his Muhammad Ali impression, turning them into "performance pieces."  I hate it when he does those.  People like Whoopi Goldberg, John Leguizamo, Danny Hoch, and Lily Tomlin do that kind of stuff too, which is why I can't stand to watch them, either. 

Performance pieces are supposed to impress the audience more than regular "jokes", because they're longer and they have a "story", and when they're over, you're supposed to applaud instead of laugh.  I hate it when people applaud comedians instead of laughing.  It kills the joke and messes up the comedian's rhythm and timing.  But since Billy Crystal doesn't have any rhythm or timing, he simply basks in the applause. 

When Billy Crystal poses for publicity photos, his telepod A Borscht-belt side takes over.  He does the "serious" pose with his arms crossed and a fake smile, and then he does the "funny" one with his hands splayed out and his eyes wide open in mock surprise, like something funny just happened.  Or he does the Jack Benny thing with a pained expression and one hand lightly brushing his cheek. 

I'm sure Billy thinks he's the new Jack Benny.  He probably has thought to himself on more than one occasion while eating breakfast cereal or pulling on clean underwear:  "I am the new Jack Benny."  I'm surprised he never created a character called "The New Jack Benny" just so he could use "I am the new Jack Benny" as his catchphrase and be able to go around in public saying "I am the new Jack Benny" as many times as he wanted to.

Billy Crystal was in THIS IS SPINAL TAP, but his part got cut out.  HA-HAAAAAA!!!  He was in the sequence where the record company executives were having a party to celebrate the release of Spinal Tap's new album, and the waiters were all mimes.  Billy played the head mime, and in one deleted scene he's dressing down the other mimes.  One of his lines in this scene is something like,  "Okay, let's go...mime is money." 

Think about it: Billy Crystal thinks "mime is money" is funny.  In a movie that features some of the most hilarious improvised dialogue in film history, Billy Crystal uses his big moment to say "mime is money."  He probably lay awake in bed all night before they shot that scene, thinking, "Mime is money.  Mime is money.  Can they dig it?  I know that they can.  I'll...look...mahvelous."

Actually, I was intending to write today about "pet peeves", in a general sort of way, and Billy Crystal was just going to be one of them.   But I should've written about my other pet peeves first and saved Billy Crystal for last. 

Anyway, some of my other pet peeves are people standing over me while I'm eating and dipping their tortilla chips into my hot sauce, and being able to hear some idiot's car stereo blasting away down the street when I'm sitting in my house with the TV on.  Oh yeah, and Billy Crystal movies.

PORFLE VS. MYSPACE SNOBS

(NOTE: I wrote this way, way back in those quaint old days when people actually used to go to MySpace.)


If you belong to MySpace, you know who Tom is.  He's the guy who created MySpace, and whenever you make a new account there, he's always your very first "friend." 

Right there in your "My Friend Space", there will be a single picture of Tom grinning at you over his shoulder like he's really happy to see you, or like you just caught him whacking off or something.  As you accumulate more friends, it's always a good idea to remove this picture from your "My Friend Space" because it looks uncool if you have to beef up your apparent amount of friends with the default "Tom" picture. 

Don't worry, it won't hurt Tom's feelings or anything.  He's never going to see your profile page and think, "Gee...I wonder why he doesn't consider me to be one of his 'top friends'...(sniff)."
 
Tom's way too busy running around spending all the money he makes off of MySpace and grinning over his shoulder at his actual real-life friends to give a rat's ass about you and your dumb profile page.  Just try dropping him a PM sometime and see if you get a response.  You might as well put in a job application for Pope while you're at it.

Anyway, Tom occasionally makes announcements that show up on my home page, and recently, he told me how to eliminate friend requests from people I don't know.  Why the hell would I want to do that?  I thought MySpace was supposed to be a place to meet new people, not to participate in a circle jerk of people you already know. 

I don't know that many people in real life I'd be interested in being MySpace friends with anyway.  If that's the only people I had in my "My Friend Space", Tom's picture would still be in it. 

So, I just added my 100th friend to my My Friend Space.  This milestone pales in comparison to other MySpacers who have thousands of people on their friends list.  A lot of them are gorgeous babes whose profile pages feature pictures that guys can "whack off" to.  Or, they are famous people that everyone wants to add as friends so they can put their pictures in their My Friend Space to show off to everyone who looks at their profile.  I have a few of those in my profile, so this is an acceptable practice. 

But since I am neither a famous person nor a gorgeous babe, and I doubt if I get "whacked off" to very often, I can't afford to be all that choosy about whose friend requests I accept.  Which means that my friends list is filled with wannabe musicians who want me to listen to their mp3s and go to their shows, or other people who just want as many people as possible to read their bulletins and stuff. 

I've tried emailing some of them but I usually never get an answer, and if I get one, it's often something like "Yeah, ha ha, whatever.  You're who, now?"  Some of them aren't even people--they're movie titles or events.  So, for some reason, I seem to be friends with Texas Frightmare Weekend.  I really don't think Texas Frightmare Weekend is ever going to drop by my house whenever it's in town so we can go out for a beer or anything. 

But yeah, in addition to people who only accept friend requests from people they already know, there are also the people who won't accept my friend requests because they're MySpace Snobs.  Somehow, MySpace Snobs are able to tell that I'm not cool or important enough to be their MySpace friend, so I never hear from them after sending a friend request.

So, instead of being a new and fun way to interact with people, MySpace is sometimes just high school all over again.  If you were popular in high school, you might read that and think "Cool!"  If you weren't, you know what I mean. 

Some of the people who won't accept my friend requests already have, like, 6,000 friends, and some of these are characters with names like "Fuggle, The Wonder Octopus" or "The Decrepit Corpse Tickler."  The fact that I don't rate inclusion on such a list can be somewhat disheartening. 

Perhaps someday, if I'm lucky, I'll be in a position to turn away friends--even fake ones--but in the meantime, just about the only friend requests I deny are the ones from cute young girls who have the word "webcam" anywhere on their profile pages.  I don't do webcams.  If I'm going to pay for sex, I want to be touching something besides my own wing-ding. 

I just got one of those last night, as a matter of fact.  It was from "Tina."  That is, her profile name was "Tina", but in her "About Me" space she calls herself "Linda."  Oops!  Somebody franked up on her own name! 

Anyway, Tina/Linda tells us how she doesn't have many friends in the "real" world (awwwwww...) but she LOVES to meet new people online.  (Yaaay!)  Then she goes on to describe how she often absent-mindedly leaves her webcam on, even when she's just gotten out of the shower!  Woo-hoo! 

As she puts it, "I'm quiet the exhibitionist!  CLICK HERE to get a link for my webcam and chat room.  I'm so bored..."  Wow, Tina/Linda--that sounds quiet exciting!  My wallet is practically flying out of my pants right now, along with other things.  Bet that'll help relieve your boredom, huh?

So far, I have only three subscribers to my blog, and two of them are the same person.  Which is a shame, because I have a very nice blog with lots of funny and interesting stuff like this on it.  Drop by my profile page and read my blog sometime, and if you like it, subscribe to it.  It will make me feel less like a total loser, and anything that can do that is well worth the effort, because I'm so nice. 

And shoot me a friend request too, if you'd like.  Chances are, I will accept it, unless you have a webcam or are simply just too incredibly yucky for even me to handle.  But the way things look at this point, it will still be quiet some time before I turn into a MySpace Snob.

And to everyone who has already put me on their friends list:  "Thanks for the add!"  Woo-hoo!