Why has Jim Carrey given society so much, and yet has asked for so little in return???

Last week I went to dinner wearing one of those balloon sleeve tops that makes petite girls look like Jean Shrimpton and me look like I’m a pig that has been let loose in a fruit basket wrapping station. I was into it. Within seconds of sitting down, my friend Steve barked “Cuban Pete!” at me. The two other people at the table chimed in. “Oh my god, it’s Cuban Pete.” After a brief moment of confusion, I suddenly remembered what they were talking about. It all came flooding back with perfect clarity. Cuban Pete!

Cuban Pete was one of the characters Jim Carrey played in 1994’s The Mask. Actually, Cuban Pete was a sub-character of the character of “The Mask” that was in itself a character of Stanley Ipkiss, the name of the title character, who was played by Jim Carrey. If you grew up in the nineties (and I’m going to try really hard to keep this from being a “I grew up in the nineties” essay), loving Jim Carrey was on a par with loving Santa Claus. The love was automatic, unquestionable, as natural as breathing. Carrey was a cultural omni-presence: if you weren’t renting The Mask and Ace Ventura on a constant loop from Blockbuster, you were watching the animated series of The Mask and Ace Ventura. In both instances, animated Jim Carrey wasn’t even voiced by Jim Carrey, but was still an acceptable alternative to no Jim Carrey at all. The cartoons were the methadone that kept us sated until the next time we could rent Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (the superior Ace Ventura, in my opinion), and be lulled into the stupor of a man saying “alrighty then!” in different vocal registers.

No one with that many catchphrases should also be that legitimately good. But he was! He really, really was! Children loved him, and parents loved him, and college students loved him, and Renée Zellweger dated him, and all that adoration never seemed to fold in or spoil itself because we all sort of understood that Jim Carrey wasn’t a human being, but a strange rubber treasure, and that it was our shared mission to protect him from harm. This even extended to his dramatic acting, something Will Ferrell only dreams about. You know how every straight man fantasises about a guy harassing his girlfriend in a bar, just so he can curb-stomp him in the street outside and feel perfectly within his moral right to do so? That’s how society felt about Jim Carrey, when he started doing serious movies. We longed for someone to say “I liked him better when he was funny” just so we could pick them up by the collar, rattle them against a chain-link fence, and say “Jim Carrey can do what he wants!”

Name another actor who has introduced so many concepts into the cultural eco-system. Try! You can’t!

If you wished aloud that you wanted to “Eternal Sunshine” someone, everyone would know what you meant.

If you had travel plans that kept going wrong, or coincidences that kept happening, or you kept seeing the same strangers over and over again, you would say you felt like you were in The Truman Show, and everyone would know what you meant.

Once, I was walking my dog, and a girl who didn’t speak English stopped to pet her. We stood for a moment, comfortable in the shared appreciation of my dog and yet awkward in the shared distance of our language barrier. “Milo,” she finally said. “Yes!” I agreed, enthusiastically. “Milo! The Mask!”

If we didn’t have Jim Carrey, we would not have a universal language for describing Jack Russell Terriers. If we didn’t have Jim Carrey, your Dad wouldn’t be able to say “if it isn’t Dumb and Dumber!” whenever you and your sibling entered a room together. We wouldn’t have such specific ideas about powder blue suits. If we didn’t have Jim Carrey, we wouldn’t be able to say our full names and then follow it up with “…pet detective”. If we didn’t have Jim Carrey, we wouldn’t even have the phrase “pet detective”. Think how sad a world that would be!!!

Everyone loves It’s A Wonderful Life because it makes them appreciate what the world might be like if they were never in it. The truth is, the world would be mostly fine if you weren’t in it, but the world would be a hellscape if Jim Carrey wasn’t in it. You could build an entire dictionary out of the lexicon he has given us, and it wouldn’t even be a short book! It would be, like, longer than The Bell Jar, at least.

We have taken so much from Jim Carrey, and what has he got from us? Money? Fame? Any old fucker can have money and fame. Princess Beatrice has money and fame. Does Jim Carrey even have an Oscar?

(checks)

He does not even have an Oscar!

Too long we have been lax in our appreciation of Jim Carrey, and to this end I suggest that February 12th be Jim Carrey Day. We’ve taken so much! Too much! It’s time, guys, it’s time.

Happy Jim Carrey Day.