Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poop

Episode of the South Park series
title	Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poop
Original title	Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo
Country of production	United States
original language	English
length	22 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
classification	Season 1, episode 9 9th episode overall ( list )
First broadcast	December 17th, 1997 on Comedy Central
German-language first broadcast	November 6, 1999 on RTL
Rod
Director	Trey Parker , Matt Stone (created by)
script	Trey Parker
production	Anne Garefino (supervisor)
music	Adam Berry
cut	John M. Watson
synchronization
Eric Cartman : Jörg Stuttmann (German) Kenny McCormick : Sabine Bohlmann (German) Kyle Broflovski : Jan Makino (Ger.) Stan Marsh : Benedikt Weber (German)  ►  Main article: Dubbing South Park

Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo ( English original title: Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo ) is the ninth episode of the first season of the American cartoon series South Park . It was first broadcast on December 17, 1997 on the Comedy Central station with the TV-MA rating (not suitable for children under 17 years of age); the German-language first broadcast followed on November 6, 1999 on RTL . As a result, the Jewish Kyle Broflovski feels excluded from the rest of his hometown at Christmas and is comforted by Mr. Hankey , a speaking and singing poop . However, since no one else believes in Mr. Hankey's existence, Kyle is considered mentally ill by his fellow human beings . Meanwhile, the city's citizens are removing all religious aspects from South Park in order not to offend those of other faiths.

John Kricfalusi , creator of the animated series The Ren & Stimpy Show , accused writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone of stealing his idea for the character Mr. Hankey after broadcasting the episode. However, the authors denied this.

action

At the beginning of the episode, Kyle Broflovski plays Joseph of Nazareth in a rehearsal for his school's nativity play , until his mother comes and forces him to quit because her Jewish son shouldn't take part in a Christian custom. She demands from the school that all religious elements are removed from the performance, otherwise it would constitute discrimination against people of different faiths. Kyle suggests playing the non-religious song “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poop " to sing about a supposedly speaking and singing poop that appears at Christmas. Since no one else believes in the existence of a Mr. Hankey , his classmates react with amazement. That day, Kyle leaves school lonely because he is not allowed to celebrate Christmas with his classmates.

As a result of the incident and protests from parents, Mayor McDaniels decides that all religious aspects of the city should be removed, including images of Santa Claus , wreaths, trees, stars, lights, candy canes and mistletoe . Kyle sticks to his claim that Mr. Hankey exists and suggests that he be included in the town's celebrations instead, as he is not affiliated with any religion. Yet nobody believes him; at home he is cursed at by his parents for this. While he was brushing his teeth that evening, Mr. Hankey jumped out of the toilet and made a trail in the bathroom. Since the parents still don't believe Kyle, he is held responsible for it. He then decides to take Mr. Hankey to school as proof of his existence. When Cartman sings "Kyle's mom is a stupid bitch" in class the next day, Mr. Hankey jumps on his face. Again, Kyle is blamed for this as everyone believes he threw the feces. Because of this, Kyle is sent to the school psychologist Mr. Mackey , but there is further trouble there, as Mr. Hankey jumps into Mr. Mackey's coffee. Because Kyle's friends Cartman, Stan and Kenny think he's crazy, they take him to a mental hospital after school .

Like the entire city, the primary school's nativity scene is now free of religious references. Instead of showing the Christmas story, the students move to a minimal music song by the composer Philip Glass . Amazed at how bad the piece is, the parents in the audience begin to blame one another for the bad piece and start beating each other. When Chef Stan and Cartman asks about their boyfriend Kyle, they explain that he allegedly made up Mr. Hankey. Chef, who knows of Mr. Hankey's existence, explains this to the boys, who are persuaded. Then Mr. Hankey appears to them. He tells the audience and children to focus on the good things and not the bad things at Christmas. The townspeople let Kyle out of the mental hospital and join him in singing a Christmas carol about Mr. Hankey; shortly afterwards he flies away in his sled. When the song is over, Stan, Kyle, and Cartman, alluding to the missing running gag that Kenny gets killed in every episode , think they are missing something. The words "THE END" appear above them, whereupon Kenny is happy that, unlike the other previous episodes, he survived. During the end credits of the episode, Jesus sits alone in a television studio and sings the song " Happy Birthday to You ".

production

Conception

The figure Mr. Hankey is based on an idea that is Trey Parker devised father while Trey as a child toilet training taught. Parker had refused to flush his feces as a child; because of this, his father told him his feces that Trey “Mr. Hankey “would come to life and kill him if he continued to refuse. Parker stayed that way throughout his childhood; from elementary school he often drew the character of Mr. Hankey in his class, who at that time still wore a sailor's hat and later a pointed hat in South Park . Parker showed Mr. Hankey's concept to his friend Matt Stone when they met at the University of Colorado Boulder and after a short time decided to want to produce a film or a production with Mr. Hankey. The two planned to produce a three-minute short film with a boy who befriends Mr. Hankey, but who does not come to life for anyone else, causing people to believe the boy is crazy. However, such a film was never produced by Parker and Stone.

Although there was never a short film starring Mr. Hankey, Parker and Stone made two Christmas-related animated shorts as a precursor to South Park , called The Spirit of Christmas . When the short films began to arouse interest in a possible television series, Parker and Stone first came up with the idea of ​​a cartoon series with four children - as in South Park - but with a speaking feces named Mr. Hankey as the protagonist; they planned to name the series The Mr. Hankey Show . They told this idea to their friend Brian Graden , a television producer at the time for the Fox Broadcasting Company , who refused and, according to Matt Stone, said, “ I'm not putting poo on my network. ”(German:“ I don't put shit in my network . ”) Parker and Stone adapted their original idea to a series with four children as the main characters without Mr. Hankey, but planned to show him in an episode. Later, after Comedy Central expressed interest in the series, Parker and Stone brought up the idea of ​​an episode with Mr. Hankey during a negotiation with the station's executives. Parker said to them according to his own statements: “ One thing we have to know before we really go any further: how do you feel about talking poo? ”(German:“ One thing we need to know before we really go any further: what do you think about talking shit? ”) The management was open to the idea, which Parker said was one of the main reasons for him and Stone to be with to enter into a contract with the broadcaster.

The episode's scenes of Kyle's loneliness as a Jew during the Christmas season were inspired by Parker's and Stone's impressions of adolescent Jews growing up in Colorado . Although they went to different schools, both saw Jewish children beaten and bullied. Although Stone himself is an ethnic Jew , he was not a practicing Jew and therefore did not experience much bullying. The South Parks Elementary School's unsuccessful efforts in this episode to involve children of non-Christian denominations were inspired by similar failed attempts in Parker and Stone's childhood. As an example, Parker cited a choir concert in which the only Jewish student was asked to sing her own Hanukkah song while everyone else sang Christmas carols. Although the idea was to make the student feel special, Parker said she felt lonely and isolated.

Production of the episode

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote the script for Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poop .

The screenplay for Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poop , like most of the other South Park episodes, was written by Parker and Stone. The two originally created the episode Damien , which shows a boxing match between Jesus and Satan , as the first South Park episode over Christmas. Although they had long planned for Mr. Hankey to appear on the show, they didn't want to turn him into a Christmas figure until the middle of the shooting of Damien . After making the decision, they decided on Mr. Hankey to produce the Christmas poop instead of taking a vacation; although they did not produce these until after Damien , Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poop was aired for the first time before her.

While Parker and Stone were writing the episode, they saw many media reports of public buildings that refused to display depictions of the Nativity and other Christian symbols in an effort not to offend those of different faiths. Parker and Stone, two agnostics who cherish the Christmas holidays, described the idea as " ridiculous " (German: "ridiculous") . The two wanted to produce the episode like a traditional Christmas special - but in the style of South Park - and watched the 1965 Die Peanuts special A Charlie Brown Christmas several times during the production of the episode.

Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poop should start with songs like “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo, "" A Lonely Jew on Christmas "and" Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat Bitch " contain more songs than any standard South Park episode. Parker and Stone were initially concerned with creating some kind of musical ; Parker justified this as follows: “ The general rule was people hated musicals. "(German:" The general rule was that people hated musicals. ") For the character Mr. Hankey, Parker and Stone took most of the ideas from the short film about the character that they planned at college, with the exception that Mr. Hankey in the episode is real and not made up. Parker explained that this was decided because of his disappointment with the character Aloysius Snuffleupagus from the children's series Sesame Street ; In the first 14 years of the show, Aloysius Snuffleupagus was an imaginary character that could only be seen by the character Bibo , which Parker “ really bummed […] out ” (German: “really pulled down”) . Parker and Stone believed Mr. Hankey was supposed to embody the health and morals of cartoons from the 1930s, so they designed him to be similar to the version of Mickey Mouse from the animated film Steamboat Willie , such as with a likeness of the eyes. For the scenes where Mr. Hankey smeared feces while running, the animators scanned images of smeared chocolate and fondant and added them to the sequence.

While Comedy Central didn't object to most aspects of the episode, the broadcaster requested several changes to scenes that they thought could potentially be offensive. During the rehearsal of the nativity play in the episode, Wendy Testaburger, who plays the Virgin Mary , gives birth to a baby Jesus that looks like a fetus and is picked up by Kyle, who plays Joseph of Nazareth . Although this scene was subsequently left out, Comedy Central officials initially had problems with it; Parker noted that they should handle the animation of the episode “ very carefully ” . Shortly before the end of the episode, a real film sequence from a commercial about Mr. Hankey is shown; During the filming, the baby in it was originally supposed to be holding feces (actually chocolate) in his hand and biting into it. Comedy Central didn't allow such a representation, however, and changed it to the idea that the baby had already eaten the poop, which Parker later found funnier too.

Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poop is the first episode in the series that Kenny McCormick doesn't die. Parker and Stone purposely added several scenes that look like they would end with Kenny's death. It was also the first episode to portray Mr. Garrison as an anti-Semite and a racist schoolteacher , particularly when he asked Mayor McDaniels if all Mexicans could be eliminated from town. Parker commented on this decision: “ Garrison at that point had already shown himself to be the most messed up person in the entire town, and there's obviously so much wrong with him mentally. A person that disturbed being a racist is funny to us. "(German:" Garrison had already shown himself to be the messed-up person in the whole city at this point, and mentally so much is obviously wrong with him. That such a disturbed person is a racist is fun for us. ")

Subject

While most Christmas specials focus on religious, spiritual, and moral values, Hankey, the Christmas poop is a parody of these as well as political correctness ; this suggests the message that viewers should enjoy vacation days without taking religion too seriously. Alison Halsall, professor at York University , said of this aspect of the episode: "Again, Parker and Stone tarnish the holy and blasphemous, in this case for happy holidays according to their traditional meanings."

The episode was also described as simultaneously capturing and parodying animated Christmas specials such as A Charlie Brown Christmas , Frosty the Snowman and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown . It has also been characterized as a statement that Jewish children are overlooked during Christmas holidays; this topic is obviously mentioned by Stan, who at the end of the episode says that Hanukkah can "also be strong". Literary critic Mark Caldwell said that the fact that Kenny survived the episode shows the " strong, albeit dutifully ironic, undercurrent of conventional holiday decency " (German: "strong, if well ironic, undertone of conventional holiday decency ") .

Alison Halsall subsequently wrote that she was the strongest example of a story in fecal language and went on to say that the use of feces as a character, and especially its tendency to smear parts of himself, directly confronts the viewer with "the pollution that goes with it. " of the human body, no matter how we try to aestheticize it. Mr. Hankey's soiling consistently messes up the cleanliness of the social order. "

Cultural influence and references

Some critics have named Mr. Hankey the most easily recognizable and popular irregular character in South Park . His shrill " Howdy -ho" greeting was just as recognizable and became one of the most cited quotes from the show's first season. Within months of the episode first aired, several fan websites were created about the character. In January 1998, Entertainment Weekly magazine reported that Comedy Central was planning to produce a Mr. Hankey chocolate bar. Larry Lieberman, the station's vice president of strategic planning and new business development, said a sketch of a Mr. Hankey candy bar was drawn and circulated, mostly as a joke; he said that no serious discussion had been held about the manufacture of such an item. At Christmas time in 1998, a stuffed Mr. Hankey figurine became one of the most popular merchandising products of the time.

Along with the title role of the episode, it also included the first appearances of the characters Pastor Maxi and the school psychologist Mr. Mackey. Both characters also appear in the episode Damien , which was produced earlier but aired later. Mr. Mackey was inspired by Parker's school psychologists in his childhood. According to Parker speaking Mackey's voice, this one was similarly thin; Parker's dubbing for Mr. Mackey is, according to him, an exact, not exaggerated version of the voice of his former school psychologist.

Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poop has several references to the A Charlie Brown Christmas special from the animated series The Peanuts . During the rehearsal for the nativity play in the episode, the same biblical quotation can be heard that was spoken by the character Linus van Pelt in The Peanuts ; moreover, the music in the drama resembles the score in The Peanuts ; In addition, in one scene, the primary school students from South Parks walk into the schoolyard, similar to the aforementioned special.

As a result, Kyle's mother tells his teacher, Mr. Garrison, that her son should n't play Joseph of Arimathea in the nativity play. In reality, Kyle played Joseph of Nazareth , as according to Christian teaching he was the father of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea is associated with his death.

reception

Audience ratings and reviews

The first broadcast of Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poop, achieved a Nielsen rating of 5.4 in the USA , which corresponds to about 4.5 million television households. It thus achieved the highest rating of the series to date and a market share of 51% of male viewers between 18 and 24 years of age. Although Parker and Stone credited the episode A Home for Animals Down for highlighting the series, they believed, Mr. Hankey, that the Christmas poop had taken South Park to new levels of popularity and importance. Parker said: “ This was the episode that just vaulted everything. ”(German:“ That was the episode that just catapulted everything. ”) After the success of Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poop, a lot more celebrities contacted Comedy Central in the hope of being able to guest star in South Park . This allowed Parker and Stone a choice, e.g. B. on performances by Natasha Henstridge in Geil auf Miss Ellen! and Robert Smith led in Robo-Streisand . Stone claimed viewers were shocked and appalled by the idea of ​​living feces when the episode first aired, although the episode became less offensive over time.

Chris Vognar from the newspaper The Dallas Morning News described Mr. Hankey as the " most outrageous character yet on TV's most outrageous show " (German: " most outrageous character on the most outrageous show on television") . Charlie Patton, editor of the newspaper The Florida Times-Union , described the episode as “ crude, nasty, irreverent and generally offensive ” (German: “raw, mean, disrespectful and usually repulsive”) , but also “ extremely funny ” (German : “Extremely funny”) . On Mr. Hankey, he wrote: “If you're the kind of person who doesn't care about the scene in Trainspotting where the Ewan McGregor character goes to the toilet in search of his lost suppository If you dove down the sewer, the entire Mr. Hankey subplot is going to be deeply disturbing. " Doug Pratt, a DVD reviewer and Rolling Stone contributor, wrote: " Technically, the Christmas episode could well be the show's best endeavor , artistic, because it tackles the politically correct dressing up of Christmas head-on and also has an interesting psychological undertone: does the hero actually see Mr. Hankey or does he have some serious psychological problems? " Diane Werts of Newsday wrote in a review: " She's vulgar. She is gross. She's probably offensive. It's also possibly the funniest vacation episode anyone aired this year. " Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, author of Taking South Park Seriously , commented: " This episode undoubtedly pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable for both Christmas Specials as well as television in general, further than any previous one. "

Before the episode was released, Debbie Liebling, Comedy Central's then vice-president of development and production, described the episode as " adorably offensive " (German: "ravishingly offensive") . Alan Sepinwall, editor of the newspaper The Star-Ledger called the episode “ a brilliant skewering ” (German: “a brilliant skewering”) of political correctness and oversensitivity and called it a “ hilariously satiric and extraordinarily foul ” (German: “comical satire and at the same time exceptional foul ") . Sepinwall also listed Mr. Hankey in his list of the most memorable TV moments of 1997, describing him as the “ most disturbing cartoon image” of the year and “ a mythical holiday creature so bizarre and offensive it literally cannot be described in a family newspaper ”(German:“ a fantastic holiday creature that is so bizarre and offensive that it cannot be described in a family newspaper ”) . In January 1998, AJ Jacobs, editor of Entertainment Weekly magazine , wrote that the episode was " already infamous " and that the character Mr. Hankey was so popular that he jokingly suggested Matt Parker and Trey Stone Spin-off with to produce the figure.

In 2003, RedEye newspaper listed the episode as the best in the series' history. In 2004, Comedy Central ran a poll to determine the top 27 episodes of South Park for a television marathon; Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poop came in third place behind the episodes J-Lo: The Double Slut (Season 7) and Games and Fun with Guns (Season 8).

controversy

John Kricfalusi , creator of the animated series The Ren & Stimpy Show , claimed the concept of the character Mr. Hankey was stolen from his animated short film Nutty the Friendly Dump , which was part of a comic book series available on the Internet. Kricfalusi found that other parts of South Park had also been stolen from his work and told media representatives that he and his company Spümcø were considering legal action against Parker and Stone. Tony Fox, spokesman for Comedy Central , then told the public that Stone and Parker were not familiar with the film Nutty the Friendly Dump and described Kricfalusi's claims as " ludicrous " (German: "ridiculous") . Parker said he had never seen more than half an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show that he didn't like because the characters were too exaggerated and the dubbing was too annoying. Parker also said he and Stone were later contacted by Kricfalusi. He wrote a letter back saying, "Oh, OK, I can see how it might be a coincidence, but you should just tell the press that you're a huge fan of Ren and Stimpy." Parker added: "I'm not a fan of Ren and Stimpy."

Web links

Commons : Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo  - Quotes

• Mr. Hankey in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poop in the stream on SouthPark.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Alan Sepinwall: Comedy Central doesn't think it funny as Craig Kilborn trips over his tongue . In: The Star-Ledger , December 17, 1997, p. 41. 
2. ^ "South Park" Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo (1997) - Release dates. In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved August 4, 2012 . 
3. ^ South Park: Episode Guide of the TV Series. In: fernsehserien.de. Retrieved August 4, 2012 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} David Houston: South Park . In: City News Service , December 22, 1997. “I got nine or 10 messages from friends screaming, 'I can't believe this! They totally stole your story! … This idea of ​​[poop] singing or dancing and being friends, well, that is my idea. " 
5. ↑ Big and Big . In: Time , March 23, 1998, p. 74. 
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Trey Parker, Matt Stone. (2003). South Park: The Complete First Season: "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo ”  (audio commentary) [CD]. Comedy Central.
7. ↑ Kinney Littlefield: Comedy Central scores with poop and circumstance; Television: Trey Parker and Matt Stone subvert prime-time comedy with the animated satire "South Park" . In: The Orange County Register , Jan. 28, 1998, p. F04. 
8. ↑ ^{a b} Chris Vognar: Brats entertainment; "South Park" creators potty hardy on Comedy Central show . In: The Dallas Morning News , Feb. 1, 1998, p. 1C. 
9. ↑ Trey Parker, Matt Stone. (2003). South Park: The Complete First Season: "Damien"  (audio commentary) [CD]. Comedy Central.
10. ^ ^{A b c} Alison Halsall: "Bigger, Longer & Uncut": South Park and the Carnivalesque . In: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Ed.): Taking South Park Seriously . State University of New York Press, Albany, New York 2008, ISBN 0-7914-7566-2 , pp. 32-36: “Again, Parker and Stone blur the sacred and the profane, in this instance, to good holidays of theirs traditional meanings. [...] the inherent dirtiness of the human body, no matter how much we try to aestheticize it. Mr. Hankey's stains systematically mess up the cleanliness of the social order. "
11. ↑ ^{a b} Keith Marder: Welcome to South Park: Crude Cartoonists: A pair of American slackers have become the toast of Hollywood by creating the rudest animated series ever shown on television. Despite the toilet humor, their show is the surprise hit of the TV season . In: The Globe and Mail , February 21, 1998, p. C1. 
12. ^ Neal Gabler, Frank Rich, Joyce Antler: Television's Changing Image of American Jews . American Jewish Committee , 2000, p. 72.
13. ^ Mark Caldwell: A Short History of Rudeness . Macmillan Publishers, 2000, ISBN 0-312-26389-9 , p. 239.
14. ↑ ^{a b} Rob Owen: "South Park" surge Howdy-ho! The hippest show on TV has become a cult phenomenon . In: Times Union , January 31, 1998, p. D1. 
15. ↑ Jon Casimir: Kidnapped . In: The Sydney Morning Herald , July 25, 1998, p. 4. 
16. ↑ ^{a b} A.J. Jacobs: Gross, Point Blank; Comedy Central has struck crude oil with its cult hit South Park, a cartoon dedicated to glorifying bodily functions, celebrating sacrilege - and selling a butt load of T-shirts . In: Entertainment Weekly , January 23, 1998, p. 32. 
17. ^ South Park: The Complete First Season [DVD]. Paramount Home Entertainment , 2007.
18. ^ David Bianculli: "Park" rings with Christmas jeer . In: Daily News , December 17, 1997, p. 79. 
19. ↑ cf. Joseph of Arimathea - Who was he? at archive.org, accessed November 16, 2018.
20. ^ ^{A b} Ray Richmond: "Park" ploy poohed-poohed . In: Daily Variety , December 22, 1997, p. 31. 
21. ↑ Trey Parker, Matt Stone. (2003). South Park: The Complete First Season: "Tom's Rhinoplasty"  (audio commentary) [CD]. Comedy Central.
22. ^ ^{A b} Charlie Patton: "South Park" puts own spin on Christmas . In: The Florida Times-Union , Dec. 17, 1997, pp. C-5. "If you're the sort of person who didn't care for that scene in Trainspotting where the Ewan McGregor character dove down the toilet and into the sewer in pursuit of his lost suppository, the whole Mr. Hankey subplot is going to be deeply." disturbing. " 
23. ↑ Doug Pratt: Doug Pratt's DVD: Movies, Television, Music, Art, Adult, and More! . UNET 2 Corporation, 2005, ISBN 1-932916-01-6 , p. 1126: "Technically, the Christmas episode might well be the show's best effort, artistically, because it tackles the PC-ification of Christmas head-on, and also has an interesting psychological subtext: does the hero actually see Mr. Hankey, or does he have some serious psychological problems? "
24. ↑ Diane Werts: Flash! The latest entertainment news and more ... . In: Newsday , December 17, 1997, p. A12. "It's big. It's yucky. It's probably offensive. It's also possibly the funniest holiday episode anybody's airing this year. " 
25. ↑ Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock: "Simpsons Did It": South Park as Differential Signifier . In: Taking South Park Seriously . State University of New York Press, Albany, New York 2008, ISBN 0-7914-7566-2 , p. 71: “This episode arguably pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable, both for Christmas specials and television in general, farther than any previous one. "
26. ^ What to Watch; A day-to-day guide to notable programs . In: USA Today , December 19, 1997, p. 65. 
27. ↑ ^{a b} Moments to remember . In: The Star-Ledger , December 29, 1997, p. 49. 
28. ↑ Celebrate with cheesy poofs . In: Chicago Tribune , April 9, 2003, p. 64. 
29. ↑ Have we really experienced eight seasons of "South Park"? . In: The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead , October 22, 2004. 
30. ↑ Parker & Stone: A candid conversation with the outrageous duo behind South Park about corrupt studios, evil celebrities and why we should all see Tom Cruise's weenie . In: Playboy , June 1, 2000, p. 65. 
31. ↑ Tom Feran: "South Park" a runaway cult hit . In: The Plain Dealer , February 3, 1998, p. 5E. "He wrote a letter back saying, 'Oh, OK, I see how it could just be a coincidence, but you should just admit to the press that you're a big Ren and Stimpy fan.' I'm not a Ren and Stimpy fan. "