Prank Phone Calls w/ Dave
Aside from pro wrestling, my favorite type of artform is prank phone calls. I've been making prank calls since I've been a kid and it never gets old, albeit it incredibly immature.
My friend Dave loves prank calls as much as I do. He's hosting a radio show/podcast tribute to prank phone calls in a few weeks. For his show, he asked me if I wanted to record some pranks. My answer was a resounding yes and, there is no irony in this statement, it may have been the biggest honor of my career.
We made about 20 calls to various degrees of success. I won't go into the details of our calls (don't want to ruin the surprise of what we did) but it was a lot of fun. We also both noticed a few interesting things.
1) I definitely improved my form as I went on. My timing became better and better -- I started to develop a good instinct as to when to put in a very awkward pause.
2) A lot of noted prank phone callers tend to do pranks that go on for a long time. The ones I liked the best last night were very short. I think my favorite call probably lasted for less than 30 seconds.
3) It really is like stand-up comedy where you have to develop a voice/persona. We repeated the same types of calls a few different times; the more I performed these pranks, the more I had a voice for the character I was portraying.
4) You also have to be quick on your feet and react to what your victim is doing. I think this is pretty similar in knowing how to react to an audience and change it up on the fly. You have to make a decision on your direction very quickly. Knowing how to find that is hard.
Anyways, I'm excited for this project. I think we're going to record some more in a little while.
My friend Dave loves prank calls as much as I do. He's hosting a radio show/podcast tribute to prank phone calls in a few weeks. For his show, he asked me if I wanted to record some pranks. My answer was a resounding yes and, there is no irony in this statement, it may have been the biggest honor of my career.
We made about 20 calls to various degrees of success. I won't go into the details of our calls (don't want to ruin the surprise of what we did) but it was a lot of fun. We also both noticed a few interesting things.
1) I definitely improved my form as I went on. My timing became better and better -- I started to develop a good instinct as to when to put in a very awkward pause.
2) A lot of noted prank phone callers tend to do pranks that go on for a long time. The ones I liked the best last night were very short. I think my favorite call probably lasted for less than 30 seconds.
3) It really is like stand-up comedy where you have to develop a voice/persona. We repeated the same types of calls a few different times; the more I performed these pranks, the more I had a voice for the character I was portraying.
4) You also have to be quick on your feet and react to what your victim is doing. I think this is pretty similar in knowing how to react to an audience and change it up on the fly. You have to make a decision on your direction very quickly. Knowing how to find that is hard.
Anyways, I'm excited for this project. I think we're going to record some more in a little while.
posted by Gregg G. at 10:30 AM
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