Interviews With The Best Show’s Tom Scharpling, Jon Wurster, and Andrew Earles 2003

This page collects three interviews I conducted about The Best Show on WFMU in March of 2003. I talked to Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster, the mainstays of the show to this day, and also Andrew Earles who was a contributor at the time. I mention a few times that I was doing this for “an article” but I don’t have any memory of that; I’m pretty sure I only ever really intended to publish this stuff on Fluxblog and I maybe was bullshitting a bit? These interviews were published in chunks across various Fluxblog posts in early April 2003, and are apparently the first time any of them were interviewed about The Best Show. Each of the conversations go into great detail and include a lot of interesting bits about indie and zine culture in the 90s.

TOM SCHARPLING INTERVIEW

Matthew Perpetua: How did the show start?

Tom Scharpling: I got involved with WFMU back in ’94 when I first started doing a show, and it was a straight music show at that point.

MP Late at night?

TS Yeah, everyone at the station kinda does the overnight first, so I did an overnight, and then I worked my way up to 11-2 AM, then I got to an 8-11 PM show, but it was still music. Then I starting talking a little more, and got comfortable with that. I was always kinda comfortable talking, but I started spreading the music out a little bit and talking about stuff and not feeling like I had to be chained to the music as much.

MP At that point, what were you talking about?

TS Oh, just kinda taking calls and random stuff, sorta like the more unstructured parts of the show now.

MP Open call Tuesday?

TS Yeah, stuff like that. I guess it would all dovetail at “Rock, Rot, and Rule.” I was friends with Jon Wurster of Superchunk. I was always friends with the band, I was friends with them before he was in the band. I remember meeting him at the first show they did in this area and we kinda hit it off. We were interested in similar things. And then we just decided to do something on the radio which would be this kinda fake show, a fake guest that was kinda based on something Oprah Winfrey said when she was getting sued by the cattle industry in 1997. When she won her case, she said “freedom doesn’t only rule, freedom rocks.” And it became this thing, rule and rock, and we started going back and forth on the phone, just goofing around. It’s the weirdest friendship in a way, because he’s got to be my best friend, and I’m here and he’s in North Carolina. I don’t think I ever really call him anymore, the conversations just start. We almost just go through twenty minutes of just running stuff when either one calls the other one. I’ll call him as a character, and that’ll often turn into something.

MP I’m curious what your characters are like, because you always play the straight man on the show.

TS That’s a funny thing because a lot of the time, with Jon Wurster, it’s a 50/50 thing. The characters half the time start with me starting them and doing them for him, and then he’ll become the character when it is time for the show. And we’ll take turns on who is the character on the calls. You’ve just got to keep it open for the ideas, the ideas are the most important part of it. You can tell when something’s building towards something that’s going to work.

So, with “Rock, Rot, and Rule,” we were just kicking this guy around, this rock critic. And we thought, “let’s just do it on the show,” and we did it on the show. Before I did it on the show, a couple people who I told what we were doing to do were just like “that’s not gonna work, that’s funny for two minutes, that’s going to be a disaster.” But then we started getting real calls, which we never could have counted on in a million years, getting really angry. We never could have counted on getting that kind of anger out of the audience. It was just like the biggest high ever, I just remember calling Jon as soon as the show was over, and it was like being on crack or something. It’s like a dream come true to just trick people. I don’t know about you, but all the stuff I like, that seems to be a component of it. Whether it’s like Andy Kaufman or Bob & Ray, you know, anything that plays with reality like that. Being able to fool a lot of people in one fell swoop, it was just the greatest feeling ever.

We did it one more time, we did another one, this conventions thing. It was called “Conventions Inc.”, about this guy who puts together conventions. We’re going to put it out soon, we’re going to do these limited edition cd-r things on the website. We’re doing a new Stereolaffs website, it’s going to be completely retooled. It’ll be new and improved and will actually make sense to people as opposed to the last site which made sense to about 14 people who were hooked on it and terrifying obsessed with this world we created.

Then I had a bunch of stuff going on in my life when I quit the station, and I wanted to get my career going a little bit. I had a retail job, and I was writing as a second job at night. I would go home from running this music store to writing at night knowing that I was trying to pave a way for the future. I was writing screenplays, I’ve written screenplays with a couple of other people, but nothing’s been made yet. We had one thing optioned a few times, it was just optioned again a few weeks ago. We got hired to write a studio job, and that crashed and burned.

MP How did you get into comedy writing?

TS It was just kinda like something that, I felt it was something I was meant to do. It’s like, I found this stuff I did when I was six, and it was just insane how the only difference is now, my penmanship is better. It’s the same path, it’s the path I was always on. I didn’t realize, but it’s the path I’m on. It’s kinda nice to be on the path that I guess you were kinda meant to be on.

I never thought I’d come back to WFMU, you know, I thought “I’m not gonna come back and do records,” it just wasn’t the most interesting thing to me, to come back and play records and talk a little bit. It was the fall of 2000 when the show started. One of the DJs said to me, “when are you gonna come back, when come back”, and I said that I didn’t know, and he said “you should just do the show you wanna do.” And that made sense all of a sudden. I was at the UCB Theatre, and just seeing them do their thing the way they want, their theatre was the way they wanted it to be. And I just thought, why can’t I just do a radio show that’s on my terms, and it’s the show that I want to show up and do every week? And then I ran it by Brian Turner, who is a great guy, the program director, and he got what it was going to be. It was like, we’re going to do “Rock, Rot And Rule” every night, that was the goal. That cd is the show now, with music there to give a breather for 15 minutes. We started the show, and Jon was completely on board, and by that point the cd had been released and it made the rounds, and a lot of people liked it.

MP: Who else besides yourself, Jon, and Andy contribute to the Best Show?

TS: There’s Jon Benjamin, who is a cartoon voice guy. He does a cartoon on the Adult Swim block of programming on the Cartoon Network called “Home Movies” that he does some voices on.

MP: Wait, is Benjamin “Petey?”

TS: No, no, Petey is a real child.

MP: Wow.

TS: Petey exists. I met Petey with my own eyes. Petey’s dad brought Petey to the studio.

MP: I was convinced that Petey was a character.

TS: That’s the beauty of it, though. Petey’s real. Petey is an actual child.

Anyway, the Rock, Rot And Rule cd was out at the time, and people knew what the show was supposed to be based on the cd, and Jon Benjamin knew the cd. Jon Benjamin does a lot of comedy in the city, he does Tinkle now, he used to do a lot of stuff at the Monday night comedy thing at the Luna Lounge called “Eating It”. He also does another show called Midnight Pajama Jam now, which is funny.

So, he heard the cd and I kinda got to know him and a bunch of people in the city’s comedy scene, and he said that he’d come on and do some stuff. He was on the third show that we did, he did Yankees Vs. Mets, it was insane. We realized what didn’t work on the show almost from doing this thing. It was just two hours of me moderating, this was when the Yankees and the Mets were in the World Series together, and Jon Benjamin was a Mets fan and Matt Walsh from the Upright Citizens Brigade was in as a Yankees fan, and the two of them were just doing their thing, going back and forth. That’s back when the show was just two hours long, because that’s all I wanted at that point, just two hours. The bit was about an hour too long.

That was the first appearance of Philly Boy Roy, that’s a character that we had. Jon Wurster’s from outside of Philadelphia. I think that character’s based on the outskirts of the suburbs there, the Philly people. “Aw yeah, nem nere Flyers, goin’ all the way…” So he’d be doing that on the phone, and we said, what if it’s Philly Boy Roy, and he’s just very pro-Philly, because Philadelphia’s a funny city. It’s so angry and tense. The people are so mad at everything. They’re mad that they’re not New York. They’re mad at New Jersey, they’re mad at New York, they’re mad at Baltimore, they’re mad at DC, they’re just mad at the entire eastern seaboard. They’re mad at Boston. If you look at the sports rivalries, it’s like “76ers Vs. Celtics”, “76ers Vs. Knicks”, “76ers Vs. Wizards”, and everyone else. Philly’s just a funny city.

We were just getting a feel for what we wanted the show to be, just kinda feeling our way through it, and people kinda gravitated toward it. Then Andy Earles came on board.

MP: How did you get Andy on the show?

TS: How did I start to know Andy….it was through this fanzine that he did called the Cimmaron Weekend, and he sent me a copy of it, and I thought it was really funny and hilarious and just smart. The music writing in it was just great, and it was actually on top of being funny was really just on the money. I think I emailed him. You know, he did a record called Just Farr A Laugh and I liked that, and I just wanted to say hi and tell him that I liked his fanzine. People try to get their own stupid industries going on in different pockets of the country, and it’s like, I think those people should find each other. And then he ended up on the show. The first thing he did was this guy who was like a record collector and was in the studio. He didn’t even have a chance to ease into the stuff over the phone first, and being in the studio that was so rough, when you’re trying to do the stuff in front of a live mic. And you know what, it wasn’t even him, I was so sick on that show we did. I could barely speak, my voice was shot. We had a WFMU record fair the weekend before, and I think I got violently ill the Wednesday morning after the show, I was sick for a week. But we got some really great stuff going with him as it has gone along. He really just delivers these sad, bitter guys.

MP: There’s a lot of difference between the characters that Jon Wurster and Andy do. Jon’s characters tend to be kind of sleazey and evil…

TS: Yeah, that’s the thing, they’re evil and they’re also very larger than life, and that’s what makes us laugh. There’s always an insane quality.

MP: And with Andy, his guys are very, very real and pathetic…

TS: He really grounds them in the mundane horror of life. They are so normal, and I don’t know, it’s like a John Cassavetes movie, how sad they are. Wurster’s end up being more from me also, I think I do the most hands-on collaboration with Wurster, we really kinda hash the stuff out. He’s the one I have the longest relationship with, that’s my partner.

MP: You work for the Onion, right?

TS: I do some freelance stuff for them.

MP: How does that work?

TS: I just hand in headlines. I’m so far behind, I haven’t done it in about four months. I just hand in headline ideas. I’ve had them made into the main article, I’ve had them just be sidebars, just whatever they think is funny they use however they want.

MP: How did you get involved with The Onion?

TS: It’s been going on for about a year and a half. Since when they got here in New York from Madison. What happened is, I know some guys who work up at Conan, and one of the guys went to school with the head writer over at The Onion and he knew I was interested in doing headlines. The guy knew the Rock Rot And Rule cd, so that got me in the door, and I sent some sample headlines and made the cut. They let me send them in every week if I want.

MP: It sounds like Rock Rot And Rule circulated quite a bit.

TS: Yeah, it got around. I guess we sold about a 1,000 copies, which is very good for an indie comedy release. That’s over a while. But still, we don’t really do that for money, we’re not going to get rich off of that stuff. We just want them to pay for the next one.

JON WURSTER INTERVIEW

Matthew Perpetua: How did you and Tom first meet?

Jon Wurster: I met Tom in Trenton, NJ one night when Superchunk played at City Gardens. Must have been ’94. We hit it off because we both were/are Chris Elliott fans. Tom used to call me from work a lot, h used to work in a music shop back in the mid-90s. He would do silly voices (“Jon, I represent Jon Moss, former drummer of Culture Club. He loves your playing and wants to start a band with you and one of the guys from the TV show Taxi…”) and we’d come up with stuff. The first thing we ever did for his show was the Rock, Rot and Rule call.

MP: Tom had mentioned that it came from something that Oprah Winfrey had said. How did it evolve into the Ronald Thomas Clontle character?

JW: Yeah, we were watching TV at the same time – this actually happens a lot, I’m sorry to report – and she was on. It was just after the verdict was read in her anti-Beef Council case. She was victorious and one of the first things she said was, “Freedom not only rules — it rocks!” That touched off a whole debate on what rocks, rules and sucks.

MP: How much of the character was planned out before you put it on the air?

JW: I just knew I had to be clueless yet set in my ways and views. The voice is somewhat inspired by a bit Sam Kinison did with Harry Shearer back in the early ’90s called “The Last Remaining Female Prisoner in Kuwait,” or something like that.

MP: So a lot of the judgements and comments are totally off the cuff, even before the callers start sparring with you?

JW: Yeah, most of those were. I did make a list of some artists who would fit into each category. The rest I made up.

MP: Do you use a similar method with the other characters?

JW: It depends. I’m not a good voice person. Sometimes I’ll get lucky, but for the most part I use something close to my own. I like to be fairly prepared when we do the stuff. I think Tom trusts me to not blow it. Lots of times now I don’t even send him too many notes. I think we both get a kick out of the other not knowing what’s coming next. I almost lost it the other night when I was reciting the lyrics to “Freedom Bombs.” I think that was the closest I’ve ever come to really dropping the ball.

MP: I’m surprised that you’re not happy with your voices. I think that you do a pretty good job, even though you have some characters which sound similar. The voices always suit the characters very well.

JW: Thanks. I guess it seems like most of the ones I’ve done lately have not been too out there like The Gorch or Maurice Kern.

MP: How did you come up with voices like the ones that you use for The Gorch, Philly Boy Roy, or Zachary Brimstead? Those are extremely odd.

JW: The Gorch was just something that came to me, I don’t know how really. Zachary Brimstead was the same thing. Someone brought up on that show that I sounded like Snaggelpuss, which I fully agree with. Philly Boy Roy is an amalgam of a lot of people I grew up with, believe it or not!

MP: Were you involved in comedy before the Best Show?

JW: Hmmm…not really. I was always a fan of comedy (SCTV, Get A Life, etc) but didn’t really create anything until I hooked up with Tom.

MP: Tom had mentioned that you’ve done a few things on Conan O’Brien’s show recently.

JW: Yeah, I’ve been on maybe four times over the last few years. The bits are usually drum-related. I got to sit in for Max once and he ended up shooting me. Actually, he shot me twice!

MP: Do you have any interest in doing other kinds of comedy outside of the Best Show?

JW: Yeah. I’m emceeing a night of this 10 year Chunklet Magazine spectacular next week. I’ve written a few funny commercials here and there. Did Tom tell you about the movie we got hired to write a few years ago? I’m in the middle of writing up a TV show idea he and I have been talking about for a few years. So, stuff like that.

MP: So you’d prefer to be a writer like Tom rather than a performer? Tom expressed deep reticence about being a performer outside of the radio.

JW: I don’t know. I like doing that stuff too. It’s funny in that we have, in a way, the best possible platform for doing comedy. For us, anyway. Neither of us has to be seen by anybody – I think we’re both a little shy- and we get to do exactly what we want with no guidelines. And people seem to find out about it.

MP: What inspired you to start the Stereolaffs label and release Rock Rot And Rule? That seemed to open a lot of doors for you.

JW: We just made tapes of Rock Rot and Rule for bands to listen to in their vans. People started to find out about it and we just thought we should put it out before somebody else did. It did open a lot of doors. It’s crazy.

MP: A lot of the comedy that you do is about music, and music culture, in a way that’s a lot more specific than what is common in pop culture.

JW: Yeah, I don’t really know about much else!

MP: How long have you been involved in music?

JW: I started playing drums at age ten, so about twenty-some years. Man, that’s too long.

MP: So you’ve been in and out of bands since a teen, I guess?

JW: Yeah, my first band was called Hair Club For Men in the very early ’80s. I just saw the bass player last week for the first time since high school.

MP: A lot of your characters tend to follow similar arcs, a lot of them starting off relatively weird but benign…

JW: Yeah, they all want to kill Tom at the end.

MP: You’ve sort of mastered that switch – that moment when it all goes haywire.

JW: Yeah, that to me is funny. Tom and I have vague outline for a movie called “Unhinged” about a guy who is that to a tee. I don’t think it comes from me really. I mean, I have moments where I want to go nutzo but I never do. Maybe this is a way for me to do that.

MP: A lot of the best bits usually have a good vs. evil thing happening in them.

JW: Yeah, I’m usually the evil one, huh?

MP: The theory that I had about it is that you and Tom are both pretty decent guys, and the comedy seems to be about examining bad ethics and finding humor in absurdly bad people.

JW: That’s exactly what it is – if you ask me. Can we use that?

MP: Sure. I was going to say something to that effect in the article.

JW: Just don’t put that I hate kids, ok?

MP: No, I won’t put that in the article. Anyway, not all of the characters are violent and crazy – some of them are just scam artists and creeps.

JW: Like the President?

MP: Yes, like the President. Oh man, I’ve got to ask – was that Bush song that Zachary sings written by you or Tom? That thing is genius. “H is for forgotten memories.”

JW: Man, I’m trying to rememeber. I think that was collaborative. I will say 60/40 in my favor.

MP: That song is so creepy now, a few years after the 2000 election debacle. It’s too prescient for its own good.

JW: We gotta get NRBQ to record it.

MP: You should get NRBQ to do a 7″ “The Bush Song” b/w “Freedom Bombs”

JW: I like it!

MP: Actually, “Freedom Bombs” is probably a better a-side.

JW: Yeah, it’s what America wants to hear.

MP: What characters are you most proud of?

JW: Um…I think Clontle is up there. Brimstead was good but I lost interest in it. I’m not sure if it’s funny anymore. I think Corey Harris from Mother 13 is good. Barry Dworkin. One of my favorites is one we can’t find. I called in as a guy leaving the most mundane message about ball bearings on a guy’s machine. I thought that was a top 10. I think Philly Boy Roy and Hot Rockin’ Ronny might be my best.

MP I don’t think I’ve heard the ball bearings thing. Are there any that you don’t think turned out very well, or could’ve been better?

JW: Yeah, I thought the Batter Butler was better than it was when I listened to it last week to see if it was worth putting on the next cd. We had a guy saying he was Peter Tork call in the middle of something (can’t remember what it was) and it just ruined it. It might have been the second Barry Dworkin call. Mike Jackyl was one that didn’t sound as funny as I recall it being. Augie Richards, that’s a perfect example of why I should listen to the first call before reprising a role. The voices aren’t at all similar.

MP: What calls are you considering for the next cd set?

JW: It’s still up in the air. I’ve been editing potential things down these last few weeks. One I think we both like is the Clash call. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to have that on there now -even if it was recorded 9 or so months before Joe Strummer’s death. I am a massive Clash fan and I really think he would have found that funny. I think Mother 13 will be on there and maybe Jarrett the weight-loss kid. It’ll be another double cd.

MP: I like that Clash call a lot too. I’m not sure about how appropriate it is. It’s not exactly inappropriate.

JW: Yeah, if only there was a way of letting people know when it was done and in what spirit.

MP: It seems kinda tricky, and it might get in the way of some people’s enjoyment of it. It might just bum some people out.

JW: I think my goal would be to put out the Hot Rockin’ Ronny and Philly Boy Roy box sets too. It’s always a plus for the calls to be shorter. It’s hard getting these things down below 25 minutes. I’ve got Barry Dworkin down to about 22 minutes and The Clash down to about 25.

MP: Wow. You edited a lot out of Dworkin. How much did you edit out of the Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service With A Grin calls?

JW: A fair amount. I took several calls out of the Gorch. They were funny at first but then they meandered. Radio Hut probably had about 10 minutes trimmed.

MP: Radio Hut is another big favorite of mine. It’s a slow burner. Very scary.

JW: Radio Hut is maybe my favorite too. But that’s the one nobody ever comments on.

MP: Radio Hut didn’t hit me right away. That one holds up to repeated listenings so well.

JW: “You matured.” That’s a line Jim from Chunk always says.

MP: There are jokes in that one that I didn’t even notice til the 5th or 6th listening. There’s that one part where you quietly mutter “…it’s got something called Fudge. I don’t know what that is.” I didn’t even notice it til my friend pointed it out to me. It has become an in-joke reference for me and a couple of my friends.

JW: That to me is what it’s all about. That is the ultimate compliment. That’s why I don’t really go for stand-up. I love things that you can listen to over and over and find new things with each listen.

MP: What is it that appeals to you about the Radio Hut skit?

JW: Just how low-key the guy is. He’s an asshole but he’s not yelling.

MP: I think that’s exactly it. He’s the scariest psycho you’ve done exactly because of how quiet and intense he is.

JW: Let me say that I hope I’m not coming off right now as one of those “..and wasn’t it great when I did this?” kind of guys.

MP: Oh, no.

JW: Cool.

MP: I was hoping that I wasn’t coming off like that old Chris Farley character, “Remember when you did The Gorch? That was cooooool!”

ANDREW EARLES INTERVIEW

Matthew Perpetua: How did you start off with comedy and writing? Tom told me he had found you through your Cimmaron Weekend zines.

Andy Earles: Yes, that’s how Tom found me. He wrote me an e-mail about the Cimarron Weekend, I happened to be planning a trip to New York, so we just agreed to do something in person on the show. That was the first bit that I did for the show, the Giles Palermo character, back in May of 2001. I was really unhappy with how it went, and thought it would be a one-shot, but Tom e-mailed me a few months later about calling up and messing with the producer for “Bands On The Run” and Beastie from Soulcracker. That was summer of 2001, and it just became regular from then on.

MP: When I was talking to Tom, we were both trying to find a way to describe your comedy, and I think the best thing either of us could come up with was that you highlight this horror of mundane modern life. It’s all in the depressing details.

AE: My surviving family is very mundane. My mother, bless her heart, is the picture of mediocrity. My rent-paying job is in an office setting, that is where I am sitting right now.

MP: What sort of office job?

AE: IT. It’s glorified desk help, what I do. But its days are numbered. Writing has become, at least time wise, the equivalent of a part time job.

MP: Did the Very Depressed Office Worker come out of that experience?

AE: That comes from a prank call idea that Jeff Jensen and I had. Jeff came to Memphis to record much of Just Farr A Laugh in the late summer of 2001, and we found this business card for a motivational speaker/stand-up comedian on a bulletin board at the hipster coffee shop/bakery around the corner. It turned out that this guy was some kind of lower level Def Jam/Kings Of Comedy style comedian that had actually appeared on BET in the past.

I had this idea of trying to hire this guy to come to my office and speak to my employees while weaving that fucked-up work situation out of the whole thing. I couldn’t get him on the phone though, only his wife. Shortly after that, I decided to move the whole idea into the context of Tom’s show. I don’t remember what happened with that call, to the wife, but while Jeff and I were recording new material for the next CD a couple of months ago, I made the same call to a Job Harrassment Hotline, and it is pretty crazy. I can say things in these calls that I can’t on Tom’s show, like “I went out to my Hyundai Sante Fe because I had to go pick my daughter up from school, and one of my employee’s had taken black shoe polish and wrote ‘Butt Fuck’ across my windshield.”

MP: That’s pretty horrific. How did the person react?

AE: The guy just kept going, “Wow, you have a really bad situation there. You need to get professional help, it’s not going to get better, it’s just going to get worse.”

MP: So it was genuine sympathy, they didn’t question it.

AE: I added that the building maintenance super, or head janitor, keeps coming into the office trying to sell drugs to my employees. He walks into our work space saying, “Doses and weed, who wants doses and weed?” Creekwood Banks is his name. Here’s the kicker – Jeff calls this guy RIGHT back as one of my employees in a totally scary redneck voice. “I jus’ hit redial on my boss’ phone, this some kind of a help line er somthin’? Don’t believe a word that pussy says, he’s always up in our shit tellin’ us to get back to work. Like ‘get to work, bitch.’ Sure, I buy some shit from Creekwood Banks, but I don’t dose in the office er nuthin’, gotta get that shit somewhere.”

MP: So is this going to be on the next cd?

AE: Yeah. We also do these completely fucked up pranks to businesses, then call back as a mystery shopper explaining that “that call” was a mystery call to test the employee’s reaction. We have also, for better or worse, invited some religious humor into the game.

MP: Really? I thought that was one of your taboos.

AE: Well, it is, but the I loved the idea behind these calls so much that they have to go on. Jeff’s character is this suburban party yuppie who only takes his family to church on Easter and Christmas.

MP: So, how closely do you work with Jeff Jensen? How did you two meet up?

AE: He contacted me years ago through The Cimarron Weekend. I used to work at a record store here in town for five or so years. It is one of the “hip” stores in Memphis, one out of three. You get the idea. Anyway, our relationship started by way of the magazine and him coming into the store on one of his jaunts. Jeff does a lot of travelling. Jeff is from Lawrence, KS, he moved to NY about ten years ago.

MP: What does Jeff do?

AE: Jeff is independently wealthy, he does not have to work. I am the exact opposite of the spectrum. I am independently unstable and I have what amounts to three jobs. This place, writing, and hustling records on eBay.

MP: So what does Jeff do with his time?

AE: Jeff was the bass player in a band called Smack Dab, a sleeper Homestead Records band in the early ’90s. He is the lead singer of a current band called Closet Case. Jeff organized a citywide, 500 person scavenger hunt once.

MP: Which city?

AE: NYC. Maybe it was closer to 300-400 people.

MP: Actually, you know, I think I remember hearing about this. When did he do that?

AE: ’98 or ’99.

MP: Yeah, I think that’s probably what I remember. I was in school in the city then, and I remember hearing people talk about it. When did you start the Cimmaron Weekend?

AE: ’97. It was a staple job at first, no cover price. I brought on my close friend Dave Dunlap and we become co-editors/owners and the CW became a real publication with a cover price and such in early ’99. We folded it a few months ago, officially. Dave now lives in DC, writing for the City Paper and it is tough to do a publication long distance. It’s easier to do comedy that way.

Each of the issues were equally broken out into six sections. Meaning, Dave and I both had our own editorial, feature, and review section. We were writing about music and whatever pop-cultural nonsense we were into at the time.

MP: Did a lot of the success of the zine came from word of mouth? What was your distribution like?

AE: We had pretty good distro through Revolver and Tower, we never sold over 1,000 of any issue but we might have made our money back, maybe. I’m going to start my own journal, a perfect bound 6″ by 9″ or something.

MP: You mean, like a literary journal sort of thing?

AE: It might look like that, but it will be whatever I feel like writing about, and there will be reviews.

MP: Okay, so it will be like an ‘upscale’ zine, I guess?

AE: Yeah, exactly.

MP: Where did the Samson bit come from? That one is so great, this whole man’s depressing life compressed into six minutes on an answering machine.

AE: Another one from a ditched prank call. We called a restaurant trying to get the waitress to act like she knew the character, because he was on a first date and had lied to the girl, saying that this place was his favorite eatery. The only thing that carried over to Tom’s show was what Samson was wearing.

MP: There are tons of folks like Samson out there. I wish I could be as happy as them. I love that bit where he says that one of his interests are giant pretzels, especially the honey-mustard kind.

AE: Yeah, you make fun, but…..you are the one that thinks too much, you are the unhappy one.

MP: Do you intend for that sort of subtext to be in your comedy?

AE: No, it’s just the things that I think are good fertile ground for comedy.

MP: It’s all over your comedy, too.

AE: Right, well, it’s a style that came from my upbringing, I guess.

MP: What was your upbringing like?

AE: Boring and lower-middle class. We were ok until I was 15, then my father had a stroke and couldn’t work. My parents split, I lived with my Mom and we were pretty poor. I mean, we didn’t starve. We ate well.

MP: Right. But definitely lower-middle class.

AE: Yeah. Two-bedroom, post-war architecture apartment, sliding windows. I took a lot of drugs, I drank a lot, I hoarded a lot of music, I watched a lot of cable, I read a lot.

MP: What kind of music were you into?

AE: Before 14? Classic rock. I was a huge Led Zep fan. 14-16, I was into college rock bordering on loud indie rock. I was really into R.E.M., Dinosaur Jr., and Sonic Youth. 16 – 19, I was into much more indie and obscure stuff. Touch and Go, AmRep stuff, and noise and free jazz. I’m into pop music more than any other type of music.

MP: By pop, you mean?

AE: Any type of pop. I’m a big pop person, and 60’s folk rock.

MP: I was just wondering if you were talking like an ILM born-again Top 40 type of person. “Indie Sux now, Justin Timberlake is the real art now” kind of stuff.

AE: No, I am not like that. That is simply reactionary. I hate that fake-ass outlook.

MP: I enjoy a lot of popular Top 40 pop stuff, but I agree that is a completely reactionary attitude. It’s all over the place now. It’s insidious.

AE: Yeah. So, I went through about every phase you can imagine. Every record geek phase, that is.

MP: Have you done much live-on-stage comedy before?

AE: Actually, very very little. I have introduced some bands in a funny fashion. I was Nick Nolte for Halloween back in 1998. I put a pillow in my shirt, poured beer all over myself, wore a chopped up nasty blonde wig, put flour all over my face, aviator shades, and sung Black Sabbath songs in front of a (at the time) popular garage band. I stumbled over everything, I would just keep falling down.

MP: Would you like to do more performance in the future?

AE: Sure, but I’m a little squeamish with big crowds and cameras though.

MP: As far as movies go, who are you into?

AE: Directors? Sam Fuller. The 60’s weird noir stuff. Fuller is just a really interesting person, he had a crazy life. The Big Red One and White Dog are very interesting, those are the early 80’s ones that he did. I think that John Cassavetes is one of the most overrated directors in history, and Fuller should have gotten a lot of the “godfather of indie” credit that Cassavetes got.

MP: When Tom was talking about your comedy, he mentioned that he thinks you have a Cassavetes quality.

AE: Really?

MP: For real.

AE: I wonder what that means.

MP: I’m not so sure myself.

AE: Like, the grassroots, cheap angle?

MP: I’m not really up on Cassavetes. I’ve just seen bits and pieces here and there.

AE: Hmmmm…..Now, I do like some of his movies.

MP: I think he was trying to articulate something about the depressing nature of your characters.

AE: Okay. I really like The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie.

MP: Do you see a lot of films?

AE: Yes. I watch, rent, and pay to see a lot of movies. Too much, maybe. I don’t really have the time.

MP: How did you manage to get obsessed with Roadhouse, of all films? [Earles did a comedy bit based on the movie Roadhouse in which he visited the Best Show studios as Tanner Wildgrass, a person who was apparently the real-life basis for Patrick Swayze’s character in the film.]
A
E: Have you seen it?

MP: I’ve seen some parts of it on cable.

AE: Watch it, alone, start to finish, and think about that question. You’ll be thinking….”I don’t know why this is mindblowing, but it is.” Mindblowing in it’s absurdity.

MP: Mindblowing is probably the best word for it. It is creative and absurd in ways I don’t think were intended to be that way.

AE: Right. I’ve seen it about 80 times.

MP: Jesus. 80 times! There’s a lot of shitty stuff from the late 80s that have a similar kind of “what the fuck?” thing happening.

AE: Check out “Malone” with Burt Reynolds.

MP: What’s the premise of Malone?

AE: It’s similar to Roadhouse. An evil landowner, an ex-cop with a history blows into town. The tagline for Malone was “Ex-cop, Ex-con, Explosive!”

MP: Before you did that Tanner Wildgrass thing, I think I was always confusing Roadhouse with that movie Stallone did with arm wrestling, Over The Top.

AE: Yeah, that movie is worth seeing, it is totally fucking ridiculous. I know that Arnold is a slow-moving target, but you should revisit “Commando” some time, it’s hilarious.

MP: You have a big thing for Charles Bronson too, right?

AE: Yeah, I wrote a thing on him. All of this boils down to me watching too much stupid shit.

MP: Were you familiar with the Best Show before Tom recruited you?

AE: Yeah. Have you ever heard Rock Rot and Rule?

MP: Yes, that’s how I found the show myself.

AE: I knew of Tom through Rock Rot and Rule and the label he ran before I
knew him, 18 Wheeler. He did 20 or so releases and a zine.

MP: Tom said that the first time you were on, it was live in studio and he was sick, and it didn’t go over too well. How was it for you?

AE: I didn’t like the outcome. I had never done anything like that before.

MP: Were you nervous?

AE: I was a mess. I think Tom felt bad, cos you didn’t have the practice that he and Jon had.

MP: What was the first thing you did on the Best Show that you were happy with?

AE: I got a lot more comfortable with it as the bits went along, through the following months.

MP: What came next after that first Giles Palermo bit?

AE: The first thing after Giles Palermo was when Jeff Jensen and I bumrushed the producer of Bands On The Run and Beastie from Soulcracker. As far as the first ones that I was happy with, it was either The Very Depressed Office worker or The Angry Mr. Bungle Fan.

MP: Was that the only time Jeff has been on the show?

AE: He did one or two other short calls. He called in as WIll Oldham announcing an auction in Williamsburg, and the items would be Don Cabellero’s wallet chains and the racing jacket that Lee Renaldo wore in the Kool Thing video.

MP: So, from I gather, Tom doesn’t always know what to expect from you when you call, am I right?

AE: Exactly. It’s fun to try and make Tom lose it. He told me that he almost lost it with one of the Kevin calls.

MP: Which one?

AE: The one where he confessed everything to Tom, the REALLY depressing one.

MP: That’s my favorite Kevin call. Tom is very convincing in that one – he seems genuinely concerned and upset by Kevin.

AE: I laid on the floor, on my stomach during the whole call, to sound extra tired and depressed. Usually I pace the apartment during the calls, much to my roommate’s chagrin.

MP: That Kevin call with the breakdown sounds very convincing. I think most people wouldn’t be so sure if it was comedy if they just tuned in at the tail end.

AE: Good! That’s perfect.