Tom Mabe has created a career out of an unusual kind of improvised comedy. Unlike
the Jerky Boys and
Roy D. Mercer, who also make recordings of prank phone calls,
Mabe doesn't call people, he waits for them to call him. When he gets a telemarketer on the phone, someone trying to get him to change his telephone service or approve a credit card offer, he quickly improvises some lowlife character and sees how long he can string the hapless caller along. This is risky humor, more because of the timing than anything else. "Petey the Prize Pit Ball," for example, goes on for more than seven and a half minutes as a credit card saleswoman listens to
Mabe rave about giving his pit ball Viagra to help it breed. She keeps her cool remarkably, though you can't help wondering why she doesn't get the joke (especially when he tells her he lives on Hump Leg Avenue), but the call goes on and on repetitively. Actually, the very short pieces, such as "Beep!," in which
Mabe pretends not very convincingly to be an answering machine, are better. But the best calls are the ones in which he breaks through the telemarketer's icy politeness, such as "Crystal Ball," in which he claims to be a psychic and gets his caller to admit she hates her job. Still, much as his intentions are honorable, his humor generally isn't very funny. ~ William Ruhlmann