[In August of 2008, Billy Green was interviewed by the blog TELEVISION MADDNESS. It was assumed the interview was lost forever when the blog shut down in September of 2008. But recently, I went through some old boxes in the office and found a 32MB flash drive that I hoped stored some lost pornography. Sadly, it did not. But it did contain a copy of the webpage. I have uploaded the interview for historical purposes.]
Billy Green runs Boycott The Caf, a website that parodies Degrassi The Next Generation.
Television Maddness: You must have been a fan of the Degrassi for a long time.
Billy Green: No, actually, I never saw original Degrassi from the 80s, not Junior High, not Degrassi High. I had never even heard of them before watching The Next Generation. TNG was my first exposure to the franchise.
TVM: That is surprising you never knew about Degrassi Junior High.
BG: Yeah, like, people younger than me will tell me that watched original Degrassi. I don’t know how they saw it if they didn’t grow up in Canada.
TVM: It aired on a lot of PBS stations.
BG: See, and I would have seen it then because my parents didn’t have cable for a long time when I was a kid because we were poor and got evicted a lot.
TVM: That’s so sad. I’m sorry.
BG: Shut up I don’t need your pity. Like I was saying, I lived in a real small town and the local PBS station must not have had enough money to buy the rights. They mostly filled airtime with British crap or programs about white-tailed deer. They at least had Ghostwriter, which was f***ing sweet.
TVM: How did you find Degrassi then?
BG: Oh God I remember that day so vividly. I was at a sleepover at J-Money’s [Boycott the Caf writer Johnny Dangerous] house with another person who doesn’t want me to use his real name because he doesn’t want to be associated with our website. We’ll just call him Willingham Proboat. We were playing Mario Kart 64. We were going to play it for 64 hours straight. That was a thing back then. It was called Nintendo 64 Hour Challenge. You stayed awake for 2 and a half days to play a Nintendo 64 game. You could go to the bathroom, but you had to subtract those minutes from the playtime, because pauses don’t count. You really did not want to poop. Rumor was, if you made it the whole 64 hours, Nintendo would fly you to Japan and let you see the zoo where they keep all the Pokemon.
We only got to hour 27 before J-Money’s Nintendo 64 caught fire.
J-Money’s parents put out the fire and told us to go play outside. We didn’t want to because it was too bright out, so we watched TV instead.
Flipping through the channels, we saw this homely blonde girl, but she was wearing the most awesome pair of jeans. It had a design of a dolphin leaping out of the water up along the leg to her lady bits. It was beautiful.
TVM: That must have been the very first episode. [Mother and Child Reunion]
BG: Shutup I’m still talking.
We went on J-Money’s parents’ computer to see if we could find where to buy jeans like that but would fit an adult. It took hours of searching before we found a site that was mostly in Russian. We put in his parents’ credit card but somehow a virus got downloaded. It was so bad that you couldn’t clean it out with McAfee. J-Money’s parents had to throw out the computer. And they couldn’t buy a new computer because their identities were stolen somehow.
Anyway, we went back to watching more of that show. The-N hardly airs Degrassi anymore, because I guess they’re ashamed of it. But it was on almost all the time back in the early 2000s, the Oh-Ohs.
TVM: That’s the name for this decade?
BG: They should be called the Uh-Ohs because of George W. Bu$h, am I right?
TVM: Yes. LOL.
BG: By the way, put a dollar sign in place of the S on Bu$h’s name, because he is so greedy for oil. In fact, put a dollar sign in place of every letter! That will show him!
TVM: Can do. The Next Generation must have been so shocking to three young kids.
BG: Kids? No, we were high school seniors at the time. But Degrassi did teach us what sex is.
TVM: Oh… [long pause]
BG: Hello?
TVM: I’m still here. How did this all lead to Boycott The Caf?
BG: We make fun of it, because it’s a terribly written show. So I told J-Money we should put all the things we say while watching into a website, so others can laugh like we do. It was a few years before I got the website rolling, because I spent a lot of time comparing Geocities versus Tripod as hosts. I do all the web coding because J-Money’s parents don’t let him on a computer very much, but he writes the character biographies. I write the episodes and have been doing it season after season.
Since then my old friends from high school have gone on to have full-time jobs and met girls and we’ve lost touch, but I am still here watching Degrassi and writing about it every week. I have a lot of free time thanks to my English degree. J-Money still works on the site with me, but he recently got a girlfriend, so I don’t know how long he’ll be around.
His girlfriend is still in high school so she still likes Degrassi. Lucky man. He watches Degrassi with her friends and then they go out and steal people’s mail and then find an alley to smoke in.
TVM: What has been the reaction from Degrassi fans to BTC? Has anyone from the show seen it, and, if so, what did they say?
BG: That’s a big question. We get a lot of emails, and the reactions have been all over the room for miles, as they say. Many people appreciate our humor. Others are offended. Some people even thought we were an official Degrassi website and would want to correct “errors” quote-unquote we had. That was amusing.
As far as word from anyone who works on the show, early on, we got an email from the writers, using an official Epitome Pictures email address. They thought we were funny and agreed with our take. They must hate their jobs. Then a talent agent for some of the actors sent us a picture of Jake Epstein [Craig] where he is standing under the Degrassi Street sign and the sun is in his eyes and he is scratching his foot with his other foot. I don’t know what to make of that.
I have also been informed that on the season 3 DVD commentary tracks, they use the term Candy Bandits to refer Jay and his merry band of thieves, which we originated. That is an honor, I suppose.
TVM: What are your plans for the future?
BG: Well, I figure Degrassi will end soon. They’re on season 7 now, right? How much longer can this go on? I don’t know what to do after Degrassi ends, maybe work on my erotic fiction.
TVM: How about in your personal life?
BG: Boy it’s been tough in this economy. The only jobs I can get interviews for don’t have benefits and involve cleaning up someone’s poop. I’m so looking forward to voting for Obama.
TVM: Me too. It’s real exciting. You can feel it in the air with people how much they know Obama’ll fix things.
BG: I don’t even like black people, but I’m going to vote for Obama. You can just tell it when he talks he’s not like a typical politician. He’s going to get things done. He’ll give us healthcare and fix the economy and get us out of all Bu$h’$ wars in the Middle East.
TVM: I know! I can’t wait!
BG: Plus if we vote for a black guy we should be allowed to say the n-word. Right? That’s what I’m hoping for the most.
TVM: Ha ha. On my. I wouldn’t go that far. But I bet a President Obama will be as amazing as you say. All my friends think the same.
BG: They should totally give him the next Nobel Peace Price, before he even does anything. That’s how great Obama will be.
TVM: Billy thanks for talking with us at TV Maddness. Be sure to check out Boycott The Caf, the best website for Degrassi.
[Editor’s Note: Sadly, Billy Green passed away in 2018 very tragically. Billy was at a crowded bar outside of Detroit late at night and yelling, “So what I’m white? I can say n***er whenever I want. It’s a free country and we had a n***er president even. N***er! N***er! N***er! N***er! N***er! N***er! N***er! Big thick n***er dick! N***er! N***er! N***er!”
You can imagine what happened next. A police officer overheard Billy shouting the n-word, panicked, and fired his gun, mistaking our writer for an African-American. Billy’s parents sued, but a jury sided with the state, partly due to Billy’s criminal record. At the time of the shooting, Billy was on probation for of manufacturing and selling counterfeit Hanes Her Way underwear. Black Lives Matter did not take up the cause of Billy Green’s killing…bunch of jerks.
My name is P.O. Poppenheimer. I was hired as an intern in 2016, and stayed on after Billy’s death because the office remained open, due to office space in the Upper Peninsula being very cheap (due to there being no economy up here) and I could continue to earn college credit by forging Billy’s signature. As of March of 2020, I was named executor of the assets of Billy Green, including warmfuzzyglow.com, by the State of Michigan (the actual assets are owned by a trust compromising Billy’s many cats). Thus, I have appointed myself editor and publisher of the new Warm Fuzzy Glow. It’s a step up from my previous position, answering emails and sewing knockoff underwear.
The archives for Boycott the Caf can be found at dumbbaby.net
Finally, I do not know what happened to Johnny Dangerous. Keep an eye out for him. I have been informed that the Maryland State Police is offering a substantial reward for any information that leads to his arrest.]