Why don’t people like Charlie Chaplin? Maybe they just forget how innovative and amazing he was. People do have a short cultural memory. “Macarena” is the biggest dance craze one second, and then you try it in a nightclub and a group of skanky girls laughs at you for nearly thirty minutes straight. Go figure. Or maybe people nowadays actually prefer the humor of such hacks as Dane Cook. Or maybe you people are just ignorant, cultureless scum buckets -- no offense.

I, for one, am a huge fan of Mr. Chaplin’s work. That thing he did with the dancing potatoes? Classic. I do it all the time when I’m eating lunch. And the way he swung that cane? Wow, so freaking hilarious. I’d like to see Adam Sandler try that one.

Swollen with appreciation, I decided to honor the great comedian. Last week Friday I wore a black, bowler hat like he always did and shaved my mustache down to a fine, dark square under my nose. I thought I’d get some old people patting me on the back saying things like, “Sonny, I’m glad you remember when comedy was funny. I’m proud of you.” I thought maybe some cute girls would be impressed, remembering “The Tramp” in his glory days and laugh and laugh and then make out with me. Sort of the opposite of the aforementioned nightclub incident. But Christ, I couldn’t believe that none of that was happening and instead I was persecuted the whole time.

A businessman with a graying beard started yelling at me, spitting his chicken salad sandwich all over me.

“Are you kidding me? Don’t you have any respect?” he said.

For Charlie the great, all I have is respect.

I went into a deli, and the old woman behind the counter feinted. Her husband had to revive her with smelling salts. He cussed at me and told me to never come back in there.

“We have tried so hard to forget,” he explained.

Forget The Gold Rush, The Circus, and The Kid? Are you nuts? Those where the good old days when all movies had “The” in front of the title. It just made it easier. Instead nowadays we got clunkers like Wild Hogs and Click. Yeah, let’s remember them instead of Chaplin’s masterworks, great idea!

The whole day I was pushed around. I got into a fistfight with an old man with ugly ass tattoos. I got middle finger salutes, horns honked at me, batteries thrown at my head, death threats, and, unbelievably, I got thrown out of nearly every place I went. And can you digest the irony? They even tossed me out of a movie theater. I told those mindless drones that they were being idiotic.

“You know who built this theater? This thing wouldn’t even be here if you know who hadn’t been around.”

And now Alvin and the goddamned Chipmunks are disgracing the screen that Chaplin built. What a mixed up world. This is a place where Jim Belushi gets his own show, where Charlie Sheen is given awards (and not as a joke), where Jerry Seinfeld is allowed to tour and speak into working microphones -- but it is also the place where a man tries to mimic Mr. Chaplin’s facial hair in honor of him, so that we don’t just keep on forgetting his wondrousness, and he gets shafted.

People hate Charlie Chaplin, and I just don’t understand it.

But I’m not backing down -- no surprise to my readers. I will keep on honoring the great talents of the past. I will continue to honor the greats collecting dusts in the abscesses of our memories. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to paint my face black and salute the great Redd Foxx, whether people like it or not. We’ll see if that goes any better.