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Punctum
By George Chen
Yanks
AFTER ONLY A
few precious hours of sleep, I was awoken at 10 a.m. by the telephone.
It was a phone company wanting me to switch over. In my dazed state,
with the voice on the other end calling me "dude" and
offering to cut my bill in half, I just went for it. Midway through
the call, my sleep-deprived paranoia kicked in. Chatter buzzed in
the background, and I intently listened to one voice back there,
louder than the rest. I was convinced that there was a loop running
in the background, and if I listened closely enough I could hear
her repeat a phrase. I asked if my telemarketer was in a real office,
and he tried to convince me that this was so, but I was so far gone
that I kept bringing it up: "But you guys could afford to be
calling from soundproof booths, couldn't you? How many people do
you have working there on a Saturday? It sounds like a small army!"
I thought I'd found my way out of the Matrix. He said they were
in Iowa and asked if I'd been out late drinking. The call abruptly
ended, and as of today, I have no idea who my service provider is.
I am not intentionally
mean to telemarketers. It's a crappy job, and we have all been in
crappy jobs, so why pile on more misery? At least telemarketing
involves personal attention, unlike spam e-mail.
Yet I think paranoia
is sometimes justified. My housemates were convinced that the FBI
had tapped their previous phone line, so why shouldn't I at least
proceed with caution? I let Nielsen Media Research mail me $10 to
be a reporting family for its ratings, but that seemed like just
too good an opportunity to pass up. I've been spending an inordinate
amount of time on the phone, screening roommates found through Craigslist.
I wonder who is on the other end – if any of them could be
a joke. They all could be.
I only think this way
because I was the victim of a phone prank last week, though maybe
"victim" is an exaggeration. In the scheme of things,
it's not a big deal. After all, I've laughed at my share of crank
recordings.
It just highlighted my
ambivalence toward crank calls. In the '90s I thought the Jerky
Boys were just mean and politically suspect. Using lots of
adopted accents and relying on racist assumptions, those crank
callers are definitely classist, berating people who are stuck in
menial jobs, like my telemarketing friend. Now they seem quaint
and innocuous compared to the pranks perpetuated in skate videos
and brought into the mainstream via Jackass. Now there's
Ashton Kutcher's Punk'd, which does pranks with an MTV budget
and springs them on other celebrities. It takes away that weird
anonymity of some of my favorite pranks – that unsettling
feeling of anonymity. There are lots of horrible, unfunny shock-jock-type
crank recordings out there, but I have a few crank-call records
that have brought me at least partially around, to the point where
the extreme discomfort is mixed with laughter.
Crank Yankers, The
Best Uncensored Crank Calls, Volume 1 (Comedy Central) The
Comedy Central show puts puppets to work, acting out crank calls.
Some of the callers are inherently funny, like Tracy Morgan, Stephen
Colbert, and the otherwise useless Jimmy Kimmel. I only have the
first volume, but the CD series is up to volume three. There are
a few total bummers, like Dennis Leary being attacked by a monkey,
which might make a funny visual but here means undiluted Leary,
and Billy West's horrible Mickey Rooney-esque Chinese rap fan, which
is total bullshit because most Chinese people I know listen to Wu-Tang.
Still, if you skip those two tracks, there are plenty of choice
moments that aren't bleeped, as they must be for basic cable.
Kathy McGinty, Kathy
McGinty (Hamburger) Released as a CD-R, this collection
tweaks the crank-call dynamic in a way that makes it seem less intrusive
and adds voyeuristic complicity. The label announces that "Kathy"
is a Yamaha Su10 sampler and that "she" entrapped a few
callers on Yahoo!'s adult chat rooms. The 21 tracks are the result
of lonely people's calls and Kathy's repetitive samples.
The people on the other end want to believe she's real, although
it's glaringly obvious it's a canned voice. Some ideal quotes from
her are "I've got a pickle in my ass" and "I think
you might be racist," and you wait through awkward silences
for the victims to catch on. It looks like an L.A. label has reissued
it with the review from Aquarius Records on the cover.
The National Hardwood
Floor Association Presents Savage Vigilance for a Rug Free America
(Electro Motive) A 1992 release on Berkeley's Electro Motive
Records, which is affiliated with prank-centric Mono Pause and Negativland,
The National Hardwood Floor Association Presents Savage Vigilance
for a Rug Free America documents crank calls to a Christian
radio show. While this requires more patience than some of the other
records for the final payoff, there are plenty of choice moments,
like the time a prankster asks for a recommendation of a Christian
abortionist. There are riffs on the Church of the Subgenius and
lots of callers named "Bob," gays in the military, gluttony,
and Michael Jackson being a Jehovah's Witness. Lots of background
music and sounds are thrown in – ragtime, '80s pop, chorales,
dogs barking – and tape manipulations make the whole thing
more of an audio collage than a collection of straight-up prankery.
Zartan, Sidekick:
Collected Works of Zartan, 1991-2001 (Fever Pitch/Little Mafia/SunShip/
Freedom From/Breathmint) This is the least well known of the
records listed, and it's pretty unique. Naming himself after GI
Joe's Cobra master of disguise, Zartan oversees a Midwestern domain
that includes the Greenbay, Wis., FBI office; Lawrence, Kan., radio
DJs; and a massage parlor. My favorites are a harassing job interview
with Barnes and Noble, "Bosefus" singing the football
song, an A&R rep talking up a deluded musician, and Loki calling
Thor to get his hammer back. Zartan's accent is funny enough in
itself, but when he cracks himself up, the joke gets self-referential
and the facade falls apart like Jenga when a victim tries to exact
revenge. How do you top a man who calls a Hardee's in Oklahoma to
see if they found his gun? You don't. Order me a low-fat pizza;
e-mail punctum@sfbg.com.
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