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Music

The Jerky Boys Could Never Exist Today

The prank call terrorists could never get away with it in today's society, Sizzle Chest.

If you’re anything like me, you listened to The Jerky Boys in your friend Adam’s basement a lot when you were 16 and were about to walk through the woods to this guy Paul’s house to smoke some weed and then go to Wendy’s, but then Adam kept looking at pictures of cars he wanted to buy and you’re like, come on dude, you don’t even have any money, we gotta go smoke this weed. And much like some kids walking around in the woods by themselves, The Jerky Boys probably wouldn’t be so cool today. Or at least, society would view them very differently.

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In case you’re unfamiliar there, slappy, The Jerky Boys were a distinct product of the 90s—a foul-mouthed comedy duo from Queens, NY consisting of Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed who created a cast of characters and voices to master the fine art of the prank phone call. From 1993 to 2001, they released six albums—on major labels no less, of nothing but calls. Their first album went double platinum and hit number one on the Billboard chart. They were even nominated for a Grammy for Best Comedy Album. An amazing feat considering they required nothing more than a phone and a recorder. They even made a movie based on—get this—two guys from Queens whose prank calls get them in trouble.

But over the decade, their popularity seemed to dwindle with each release before tapering off entirely. Now, revisiting a Jerky Boys album is like studying some strange, antiquated artifact from another time. A lot of things just plain don’t hold up by modern standards.

First of all, there’s the obvious thing: caller ID. When caller ID came around, it ruined the prank phone call industry like grape phylloxera ruined the French wine industry in the 1890s. Caller ID not only never left, it became universal. Can’t make any more Jerky Boys albums (although they tried last year but it’s just not the same), so we have to just savor the batch we have.

Sure, there are ways around caller ID. But the mere concept of using the phone to prank strangers is also more dangerous now, legally speaking. Radio stations have been way more gun shy about prank phone calls after a number of lawsuits and the high-profile case of Jacintha Saldanha, a British nurse who committed suicide after taking a prank phone call from an Australian radio show. Sure, shock jocks still pretend they’re calling unsuspecting store clerks or receptionists, but they use actors and tell them what the joke is beforehand. I’m not kidding, that’s why radio prank phone calls are terrible now.

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But caller ID is no longer even the main threat to the sanctity of the prank call given that, thanks to the majesty of smartphones, nobody talks on the phone anymore. Talking on the phone sucks. Why would you ever do it? Just text. It’s an odd thing to get a phone call, so people are automatically more suspicious if they don’t recognize a caller.

Logistical stuff aside—do you remember how offensive the Jerky Boys’ characters were? Granted, that was sort of their shtick and it was certainly a different time, so much so that that didn’t even register as weird. I mean, Andrew Dice Clay was saying he wanted to push women’s faces in the toilet, there was a whole movie built on wearing blackface, and the Burger King Kids Club even named the paraplegic kid “Wheels.” It’s no big newsflash that offensive humor was way more passable 20 years ago.

The Jerky Boys’ offensiveness seems relatively cartoony and harmless in comparison, but they do have a track called “Terrorist Pizza.” And the whole call is Ahmed going, “Shut the fuck up! I’m going to fucking kill you!” That’s the whole call, threatening to bomb the pizza place. Jesus Christ. Yes, we’re living in a post-9/11 America, but in hindsight, it still seems pretty fucked up (and also lazy) to call someone and threaten to kill them. People are getting investigated in the UK now for just tweeting about cops. Imagine if you called someone and said you were going to kill them and their family with a bomb. You’d be in federal prison or shipped directly off to Guantanamo Bay. If they came along today, the Jerky Boys’ career would be about three days long.

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Also, let’s admit it: the lispy “gay voice” character hasn’t aged well. As the mainstream becomes more and more comfortable with the LGBT community—comfortable enough, at least, to make Modern Family a huge family hit—more and more of those jokes seem genuinely insensitive. Even the Seinfeld “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” bit seems pretty cringeworthy now. And the flipside of that is, now that people are more aware of LGBT issues and as advocacy groups’ influence has strengthened, there are huge mainstream repercussions when you run afoul of those groups. Just ask Tracy Morgan, who just barely managed to keep his 30 Rock job with NBC Universal behind him after he joked on stage that he’d stab his son to death if he were gay. I doubt he’d have as much luck if he was employed by the record company mostly known for Kid ‘n Play albums.

And ultimately, the weird thing with calls like “Gay Model” is, if Brennan just used a different voice, those calls wouldn’t be nearly as offensive. Maybe juvenile, but not offensive, or maybe I’m being charitable. In any case, the voice ruins it. Same with Sol Rosenberg, the nebbishy Jewish stereotype—who was eventually adopted by Family Guy and their Mort Goldman character, voiced by Brennan.

Speaking of Sol, here’s one of their most famous bits, the “He hurt me with his words!” call.

I’m sure they’d say they weren’t deliberately trying to make a point about “political correctness,” but they clearly were, or at least people took it that way. I’m not saying this call isn’t funny, or that it’s not a legitimate point they’re making about people being overly sensitive. But in 1993, that was kind of where the conversation ended. Now it goes a little further—sometimes much further, and rightfully so. With everyone having a voice on the internet, celebrities and comedians who aren’t mindful of small but vocal groups are quick to feel the immediate, bloggy wrath of the offended. It becomes more obvious that sometimes people have a good, legitimate point when they complain that, well, “words hurt.” Simply put, it’s a lot easier to publicly call someone out for being an asshole.

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Which brings us, of course, to Frank Rizzo. Aside from Rizzo’s (I like to refer to the character even though it’s voiced by Brennan) insanely inflammatory and confrontational real New Yawkah language, one of his prank call staples was to call up auto mechanics and demand a job.

Imagine doing that. Forget demanding. Imagine just calling a place, telling them your qualifications, and asking for a job. Here’s how that would go down today:

Rizzo: Hey there, buddy, I’m a mechanic, I’m lookin’ for a job.
Mechanic: What’s that? I’m real busy.
Rizzo: Alright there, Sizzle Chest, I’m gonna bring my tools on down there…
Mechanic: Oh sorry, a job. Go to our website, just Google us, it should come up.
*click*

Prank phone call over.

But really, on a deeper level, this speaks to how good we didn’t even know we had it under the Clinton administration. The economy was in such good shape that people were just calling each other asking for jobs, it wasn’t even weird. You couldn’t use that as a comedy premise if it wasn’t at least a little bit relatable.

Hell, even the auto mechanic position has all but been phased out by technology. Have you been to get your car repaired recently? Computer technology in auto manufacturing has revolutionized the industry. The Frank Rizzo-esque grease monkey has been replaced with a generation of guys who just hook your car up to a computer.

And more than that, those independent auto mechanic shops have been replaced with chains like Midas, Jiffy Lube, Meineke, or Just Brakes. In the same way that mom and pop businesses in every industry have been replaced with corporate chains. “Terrorist Pizza” is way less fun if you’re calling some 19-year-old kid at Papa John’s who puts you on hold and then hangs up when you tell him you’re going to kill his whole family. It’s like, play along, buddy! I’m threatening to blow up your store with a bomb! Have a little fun!

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A scene from The Jerky Boys movie. The 90s were weird.

A real cynic would say that pranks on the whole are played out. Everyone has seen Borat and Boiling Points and Punk’d and Jackass. The first reaction to anything that seems fishy is, “Alright, alright, where’s the camera?” So if you want to do comedy with strangers, you have to run straight at them on the street and yell in their face like Billy Eichner, which actually doesn’t seem too far from the Jerky Boys’ wheelhouse, but is definitely not the same thing.

No, The Jerky Boys were their own thing that will never happen again. Every album is like a case of wine from that other era, where you have to open each bottle and sometimes there’s something really fucked up in there like a dead rat or a gay stereotype going, “I’m gonna pull a large piece of furniture out of my ass, honey!!!” But you also can’t discount that there’s some sweet, sick-ass wine in some of those bottles too, like two unemployed painters talking shit to each other or a guy getting called “liver lips.”

Ultimately, there’s really no point in judging something from 20 years ago against today’s cultural standards other than to see how much we’re willing to look past truly mean stuff for the funny stuff. Because Brennan and Ahmed were definitely mean. And they were kind of jerks. But then again, they did call themselves The Jerky Boys.

Eddie Brawley is on Twitter there, tough guy. - @ebrawley