The Nineties: A Book

by Chuck Klosterman

It did not feel outrageous, for example, that Pauly Shore spent much of the nineties as a bankable movie star, regardless of how baffling that notion strikes anyone who missed it entirely. In 1990, Shore was a strange-looking, five-foot-seven, twenty-two-year-old Jewish jokester. He was the son of Mitzi Shore, the owner of a popular and influential club on the Sunset Strip called the Comedy Store.[*] That upbringing jump-started his career, as did his close relationship with established stand-up star Sam Kinison. But the core of Shore’s success was a product of his own creativity. He was committed to a character of his own design: “the Weasel,” which he pronounced as “the WEEEEZ-allll.” The Weasel persona was a lowbrow combination of traits that did not naturally intersect: A non-surfing surfer who was also a lecherous nerd. A rich kid who was always broke. A charming loser who partied with rock stars but wasn’t dangerous or messianic. He presented himself as much younger than he actually was and invented his own lexicon, a halting synthesis of 1980s Valley Girl slang and sexist West Coast stoner speak (women were “nugs,” breasts were “cones,” food was “grindage”). His national breakthrough was as an MTV on-air personality, first as a spring break correspondent and then as the host of his own MTV show, Totally Pauly. Shore’s 1991 comedy album was called The Future of America, and the title was the hook—this overconfident high school dropout, with his indecipherable vocabul...