I am a huge Pauly Shore fan from way back when, and have historically been in his corner. I saw Biodome in the theater. I call people stony crusty dudes. I weezed the juice (or not—more on that later). I was really excited for this interview! But Pauly Shore, it turns out, was not. Once I got him on the phone, he immediately asked if I was from the radio or a paper. I told him I was from a paper. He then put me on speakerphone, and never totally committed to our talk.

But here is some stuff we said. I am going to start with the most important thing that happened:

Elinor: I would like your help to settle a really old debate. So, I’ve been a huge Encino Man fan since forever. When I was in high school a friend of mine worked at a sandwich shop with a soft-serve frozen yogurt machine. I once ate directly out of that dispenser. Does that count as having weezed the juice?

Pauly: No, I don’t think so. That’s mostly dairy.

Elinor: Dammit! So all these years I have been saying that I’ve weezed the juice, and now you’re telling me I haven’t?

Pauly: No, I don’t think you have.

Elinor: Man. I guess I’d better find a slurpee machine.

Pauly: Yeah. You weezed the dairy. It’s not juice.

Elinor: [soul crushed, softly weeping] Well, now I know, I guess.

More of this weird chat below the cut.

I conducted this interview by phone at my day job. I told our 21-year-old office assistant that I would be busy for a while because I would be talking to Pauly Shore. Her eyes glossed over. “Oh. Is that... that guy... from... movies?” Aww. I am old. I asked Pauly if most of the people at shows were nostalgic idiots in their 30s, like me. “Some,” he said. Oookay.

I told him that I saw him do stand-up when I was in LA over Thanksgiving last year. “You seemed a little nervous,” I mentioned, as delicately as possible. “Do you get nervous doing stand-up now, or was it just that crowd?” “It was probably the crowd,” said the Weasel. (I didn’t mention to him that I also found his set a little racist; it didn’t seem like the right direction to take something that was already going nowhere.)

Let’s connect about Portland! He was on Marc Maron’s podcast not that long ago and mentioned that his brother lived here.

Elinor: Are you in Portland a lot?

Pauly: Not too much. I was up there a couple of months ago. We went to the Adidas store and ate some cool food.

Elinor: That sounds nice. Do you ever pick up a Mercury when you’re in town?

Pauly: ...uh... yeah, totally.

Elinor: Are you excited for your show up here?

Pauly: Yeah. My dad is gonna be there. He’s 87 years old so it will be fun. It will be different. And I’m working on a documentary so we’ll be filming it when I’m up there.

Elinor: All right! Anything you’d like to say to the people of Portland ahead of your show?

Pauly: Tell them to come out! I haven’t done a show up there in 15 years.

Pauly Shore, ladies and gentlemen. He’ll be at Harvey’s on June 21st. I hope he has more to say to that crowd than he had to say to me.

In closing:

Elinor: Did you ever get to touch Brendan Frasier’s butt?

Pauly: Yeah, maybe when we were putting caveman dirt on him.

“Yeah, maybe.” You know what, I’m going to count this interview as a success. Sign me up for another 20 years as a Pauly Shore fan.

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