Bloglander

If you are of a certain age, you will remember a period of time in the early 1990s when Pauly Shore was a legitimate movie star. It was only for about three years and change but Pauly Shore took his post-Reagan take on hippiedom to a level of fame that's hard to quite understand in retrospect. Nevertheless...let's get retrospective.

This weekend, Shore is making a two-night stand at the Spokane Comedy Club in which he plays two shows each day. As of now, there are tickets available to three of those shows, including both of tonight's performances.

But before you see him in the flesh, let us revisit a time when Shore was everywhere.

Shore, as you may know, was a stand-up before he landed in movies and then took his stoner goofball persona to MTV in 1989 and was one of the channel's top VJ's, which, if you can cast your memory back, were the people who talked in between music videos. But then, with ample catchphrases up the sleeves of his blouse, Shore arrived in Encino Man.

In the event that you slept through Film History in college, Encino Man was about a pair of high schoolers (Shore and a pre-Rudy Sean Astin) find a frozen cave man (an about to be quite famous Brendan Fraser) while digging a swimming pool in their backyard in the hopes that doing so will make them cool with their much-cooler high school peers. They used to make movies like this back in 1992.

Here, Shore has his stoner (who we never see smoke any weed or even discuss the demon weed) persona in overdrive.

 One year later, Shore turned up in Son in Law in which he was basically just the guy from Encino Man, but this time he went to a farm! You can imagine the hijinks that followed.

In 1994, movie execs were debating where to drop Shore next. How about the Army? We give you, In the Army Now.

In 1995, someone figured it would be hilarious to send a stoner guy to jury duty, thus Jury Duty. Roger Ebert did not like it, or Shore.

In 1996, the Character Played by Pauly Shore, along with a non-Alec Baldwin, went to the Bio-Dome. They actually do some drugs in this one, though.

These days, Shore has a successful podcast and continues to work the stand-up circuits having largely ditched his persona from the '90s. He was also the subject of the 2014 documentary Pauly Shore Stand Alone, which is a great look into his life and mind and he comes off as a pretty cool guy. Go check him out this weekend if you want to learn more.