Interview: Binky the Troll

PV: Thank you for sitting down with me, Binky. I've always admired your work, going back to your days as a pencil topper. Talk about a rough start to your career.

B: It's a tough job, man. Erasers aren't as comfortable as you might think, especially without lube.

PV: Gross. It must help a little bit that pencil topper trolls are designed with huge holes in their rear ends to accommodate pencils, no?

B: Son, your hole is probably bigger than anything I ever had. Don't tell me you'd be cool with sticking a pencil up there.

PV: Ugh, no. That had to have been brutal for you, spending years like that.

B: It wasn't no picnic, that's for sure. But it was showbiz. You take what you can get when you're starting out.

PV: True. And it led to big things for you. Soon after you had a whole doll line, plush toys, shirts, even a cartoon, right? There wasn't a little girl alive in 1991 that didn't have four or five trolls in her possession. You have got to be a millionaire.

B: Correction - WAS a millionaire, then a little thing came along called the dot com boom. My financial guy lost all my dough on yahoooo.com.

PV: Yahoo? I thought that made a lot of money.

B: Yahoo with only two o's did, but the kind with four o's went belly up after like a month, taking my life savings, future and, to be frank with you, my will to live along with it.

PV: Geez, no wonder your purple hair stands on end.

B: Oh, a frizzy hair joke. How original.

PV: I thought it was funny.

B: You know who else thinks jokes about hair are funny? Don Imus. I don't think he's laughing anymore. And it's all because of me.

PV: It's not like you had anything to do with that, though. It was all Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

B: Dude, Al Sharpton IS a troll. We went to third grade together.

PV: You know, that does make a lot of sense. Please don't have me fired from my job and ostracized by the fickle media.

B: No promises, but if you buy some of my T-shirts, dolls and videos, I may cut you a break.

PV: Dude, I'm not buying any of that crap. Never have and never will.

B: Sigh. That's exactly what today's third-grade girls are telling me. I may as well end it all.

PV: Aw, cheer up. You can always go back to pencil topping?

B: I'll pencil-top you.