“Why did God create herpes? So Robin Williams could give something to his female fans that they couldn’t just turn around and sell on eBay.”
Last Friday, Xeni Jardin, Tara and I went to Rich Fulcher’s comedy benefit in Los Angeles for victims of the Tennessee flood and on the (stellar) bill was anti-comic Neil Hamburger. I have a few Neil Hamburger CDs and quite enjoy the warped wit and “anti-comedy” of America’s funnyman, but I had never seen the Neil Hamburger experience live and let me tell you, he’s very, very funny “in concert.” His frequent appearances on the Jimmy Kimmel show are the closet thing we have these days to Brother Theodore or Harvey Pekar turning up on Letterman in the 1980s. The next time Neil turns up in your town—and he will—make sure you go see him.
“Why did God give Smashmouth three top ten singles? Well, it was a clerical error—he meant to give them all AIDS.”
Hungry for some more Hamburger?
What I did not realize until this weekend is that “Neil” (or rather his alter ego Gregg Turkington) was responsible for one of my all time favorite collections of prank phone calls, the side-splitting, Great Phone Calls. Here’s the classic cut I’m in Your Band:
And here are a couple of pizza related prank calls: