My Magnum Opus of Prank Calls
Photo by Luis Quintero from Pexels
Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov wrote that in the USSR bureaucrats would feel secure as long as their phone was constantly ringing.[1] When the calls stopped they would get nervous. Maybe they had fallen out of favor? Had they offended the higher ups? Was their career coming to an end? Why wasn’t anyone CALLING!!?? I imagine the head of some obscure department sitting in his cold, empty office, wearing a fur cap and waiting for his big red rotary phone to ring while he chain smokes cigarettes. I’ll admit that this image probably has very little basis in reality and is more likely based on the opening scenes of The Hunt for the Red October.
Those old phones were great. It was simpler times back then. Long before our phones were also our TVs, newspapers, credit cards, global positioning systems, flashlights, and life recorders. Before phones morphed into the Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace prophetically warned us would be the downfall of our society.[2] Long before our persona became a curated online event and our deepest held beliefs laid flapping in the wind like an old faded flag, exposed and torn. They were just a microphone and speaker, not the pillbox from which your friend from high school wages her cyber-World War I against life.
Phones didn’t generally go missing back then, but if yours did, it wasn’t like losing a portion of your left frontal cortex. It was a time before Eddie Snowden showed us the government was keeping all those photos of your ding ding you sent to your fiancé. (And we all gave a collective ‘meh.’) Back then, the phone would just ring.
Remember the thrill of that ring? We would sprint to pick up the receiver because it could literally be anybody in the whole world calling!
***
My early career took place during the pre-caller ID era, which was the golden age of prank calling. When I was a teenager there was a video store near my house called Maple Video and we would call and ask for obscure movies from the 1990s. Apparently Maple Video had no computer catalogue of which movies were in stock, so they had to search by hand. Normally it played out something like this:
A: (sounding slightly drowsy): “Good afternoon, Maple Video”
B: “Hi, do you guys have Suburban Commando?”
A: “Let me check”
(muffled laughter in the background)
B: …..shhhh!! (more muffled laughter)
(6 minutes later)
A: “yeah. We have a copy of Suburban Commando in.”
B: “Oh really? Thanks.” (hangs up)
(15 minutes later)
A: “Maple Video.”
B: (using a thick southern accent): “Howdy! Any chance ya’ll have a copy of Spice World in?”
A: “…..(exhales heavily)…..yeah. let me check…..”
B: “…..(choking back tears of laughter)….thanks….I appreciate ya young man!”
(9 minutes later)
A: “No, we don’t have any copies of Spice World in.”
B: “(can barely speak due to laughter, southern accent begins to wear off)….oh really? That’s a shame.” (hangs up)
(3 minutes later)
A: (a nearly imperceptible tone of annoyance in his voice): “Maple Video…”
B: (ridiculous Italian accent): “Hello Ah! I wanted to renta a copy ofa BackDraft, can you checka ifa”
(‘A’ hangs up the phone)
***
I will never laugh harder than I did during those virginal early days of making crank calls. All the world class comics I’ve seen live, all the children’s choir performances I’ve sat through, all the funerals I’ve attended – none can compare to how funny it was to call that poor man at Maple Video.
Things got trickier when caller ID came on the scene, but my technique was evolving as well. Complicated plots lines and patterns were developing as my friends and I would troll local businesses over multiple calls and longer periods of time. Characters started to form from these calls, like The Pirate (“arrrrrrrgh you guys open til 9!?”) and Brown Bag the Bear – a wino bear that people knew wasn’t real, but still enjoyed talking to. A secretary at the local envelope factory:
“Hi Brown Bag! I haven’t heard from you in so long! How are you?”
I don’t know if she was humoring me or really wanted to someone to talk to (and didn’t care if it was a teenager acting like a fake bear).
***
As time went on the calls became more masterful, but the joy was dwindling. Technologically, the ground was shifting beneath our feet. People no longer assumed the best about the person on the other line and more folks were “letting it go to voicemail”.
There were still instances of greatness, like one night when I got on Detroit sports talk radio pretending to be Piston’s Bad Boy Bill Laimbeer. The hosts were discussing the upcoming NBA draft and were so blindingly flattered by the idea that Bill would be listening to their show and call in, that they let me on air. I was on a anti-Pistons-draft-pick-rant for about a minute before they realized they’d been duped and hung up on me. They were quite sour about that for the rest of the program.
All in all though, there was increasingly less of a place in this new digital world for an old dinosaur like me. Texting and messaging were eroding our capacity for improvisation. We were no longer caught off guard by our communications. Surprise and uncertainty were going down the drain as we always knew who we were talking to and knew everything about them that we needed to know.
***
My time in China offered a chance to turn back the clock on this situation. I could now see that those late nights huddled around the receiver, choking back laughter, and thinking what to say next had prepared me for the big stage. I was ready to deliver my greatest work, a phone call of immense craftsmanship and profundity that would be heard by hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of listeners.
Luo Ma is the like the Dr. Laura of the Shanghai Metropolitan Area.[3] She offers relationship advice and direction to callers in her typical no-nonsense, call-it-like-she-sees-it style. Blunt and abrasive, witty and charismatic, her radio show is a breath of fresh air on the sometimes over sterilized Chinese air waves. Like an Asian version of “That’s A Deal Breaker Ladies!”
We were on our way back from a gig in the northern suburbs of Shanghai. I won’t tell you which English speaking Shanghainese standup comedian I with, but his name rhymes with Florm Fu. For whatever reason he was driving a nice Buick van that evening (normally we rode public transit) and we were listening to Luo Ma’s talk radio show. I could feel the conceptualization for my magnum opus beginning to form. We called in.
When the call screener heard my fluent, but clearly American accented Chinese his head about exploded. I told him the story I’d made up: I was dating and Chinese girl and we were having fights almost everyday. (Believable). Rather than use my own name, I pretended to be one of the other comics in Shanghai. He told me to stay on the line, they were going to end the show with my call.
Everybody knows that Luo Ma has a slight bias against men, especially dead-beat boyfriends and husbands. When I called in she must have really been licking her chops.
(THE FOLLOWING CONVERSATION WAS IN MANDARIN CHINESE)
LM: “We have on the line one of our listeners from America, Joe Schaefer joins the show. Joe, how are you?”
Me: “Hi Luo Ma, thanks for taking my call”
LM: “Now what’s the issue here Joe?”
Me: “Well Luo Ma, my girlfriend is always yelling at me, she says she works all the time, cleans the house, and all I do is sit around and play video games and barely work.”
LM: “Do you have a job too?”
Me: “Yes.”
LM: “And what is it that you do?”
Me: “I’m an English teacher.”
LM: “Aha, yes, a pretty cushy job. Are you busy doing that?”
Me: “Yeah, Luo Ma, SUPER busy! I work like 5, sometimes even 7 hours a week!”
LM: “Wha..!?”
Me: “Yeah and you know, I need to relax after work, so I play some video games, but my girlfriend says it too much!”
LM: “How much do you play?”
Me: “Not that much Luo Ma, from like 5pm to midnight, something like that.”
From this point on she began to lose her cool. She worked herself into a fine lather and began screaming about how lazy I was and how I needed to get off my duff and go do some work. How no self-respecting Chinese woman in her right mind would be with such a low life American scum bag like me.
The trap had been set for Luo Ma, and now I reeled her in. The more she screamed at me, the more I pretended to misunderstand her Mandarin. I said things to make it seem like I thought she agreed with my point of view. This only further enraged the bull.
LM: “YOU NEED TO GO GET A REAL JOB AND DO SOME WORK!”
Me: “I knew you’d agree with me Luo Ma, she DOES need to get a better job and work more.”
LM: “No…. YOU! Not her!....YOU! !
Me: “Exactly Luo Ma, exactly!”
LM: “Oh my GOD!!!... what kind of LOSERS ARE WE LETTING INTO THIS COUNTRY!!?”
The whole thing ended with her muting me and going on an epic rant, one for the ages. I’m confident it was one of the best and highest rated episodes of Luo Ma ever. Even Bill Laimbeer would have proud – if he spoke Chinese.
***
Now back in America, all vestiges of the old phone life have faded and disappeared. Maple Video was demolished and turned into a Taco Bell. People are too busy to talk to a wino bear. And even Russian bureaucrats don’t give a damn if their phone is ringing off the hook, just as long as their Instagram page is getting some heat.
Nothing remains but a vague nostalgia. The only people who call me now are people I don’t know and don’t care to know: hucksters, cheats, scammers and Democrats. People trying to trick me into telling them my social security number. “Sure, I’d be glad to tell you – it’s 123-45-6789!” I don’t hear my phone ring and sprint to pick it up. I no longer feel that thrill. Now I just look down at it and groan…
“Ugh…who’s this calling!?”
“Let it go to voicemail….”
REFERENCES
1. Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. Vintage. (1967)
2. Foster Wallace, David. Infinite Jest. Little, Brown and Company. (1996)
3. “罗妈” website: https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/2055245929193914467.html (in Chinese)