When I was a little kid, I saw a guy with one of those cancer clarinets, and I flipped out. I totally flipped out. I said to my mom, "Mom, what is that thing?" And she happened to know, too, which was the oddest thing. She said, "That's a Bell Telephone artificial larynx, for men that had their voice boxes removed because of cancer." I was like, "Wow." And I couldn't wait to get one. I didn't get one 'til I was all grown up and everything.

Somebody's real voice is probably the hardest one that somebody could attempt. The characters are all, believe it or not, rooted in a reality of some sort. I've met and talked to people, and they're also fusions of showbiz periphery. But the best thing was, if you did your own voice and you were the star of the show - if it came to blows and they had you on the ropes and you had to leave, then they could just get someone to sound exactly like you.

John Kricfalusi wanted me to quit the job when he got fired in 1992. But the problem there is that I wasn't his partner. I was a hired gun. And then people badmouth me for 10 years, like a rock in my shoe in that camp. It's a very small but active group of posters, as I've come to find out. But the thing is that I finally got to the point where, "Okay, I get you, I get it you don't like that I did what I did." But the thing was, the whole story was cockeyed. They said I put everybody out of work. No, I didn't. Everybody was going to be out of work if I didn't continue the Ren & Stimpy show.

I had people that were coming on my own website and attacking me. You know, they were like Hillary Clinton supporters? It was very ugly.

I'm not angry. Everybody thinks I'm so angry because I have a point of view. They're expecting me to just be all Smucker's Jam.

If everyone else is doing something, I have little or no interest in it. If you're known as this guy who can do any kind of sound or voice or whatever, somebody will go, "Do you do Christopher Walken?" "No." "Well, why not?" "Because everybody else in the world does it." My carpenter does Christopher Walken.

Even when I was coming through school I was a loner and I used to study music and listen to it and play it and play it, and I was in bands.