Crank Yankers
Volume 2
Comedy Central
This second volume of prank calls is better than the first one, mostly because Sarah Silverman is the funniest person currently alive. Her two tracks here as “Hadassah Guberman” are two of my favorite bits from the show ever; the first one is her application to be a nanny (“You know what?” she asks, “I like you. I’m hired”), and the second one is the one where she (under the auspices of “the Municipal Waste Management program”) calls a couple to ask them “to reduce the amount of solid waste being flushed by approximately 18%” is just rotten-spirited fun; I can’t help laughing when I hear “Our motto is, ‘Too many poos, we all lose’.” If this disc was all Silverman, I’d say it was the best thing ever recorded. Okay, I have a crush.
The big star here is Tracy Morgan’s “Spoonie Luv” character. The famous bit where he tries to take out a personal ad in the Village Voice: “Well-endowed player, 31, seeks dirty ho to sip Cristal,” and it just gets worse from there. He has another bit here with sample Hallmark cards he wants to write, but it’s not as good as the other one.
There’s a bunch of good stuff here (David Alan Grier does a typically classy turn as a guy who calls phone sex but just can’t stop projectile vomiting), and some boring stuff (all that Elmer and Helen Higgins stuff) and some stuff that worked better when you could actually see the puppets “acting” out the call, like their fake UPS call where they get a couple all worked up over a lost package and they all start swearing.
And then, of course, there’s some not-very-hilarious racism (why does Jimmy Kimmel hate Karl Malone so much that he has to make fun of his accent? what the hell is that all about? I hate Malone too, but not because he’s a black man from the south) and some really-not-very-funny burns on mentally ill people (who the hell decided that “Special Ed” was funny in the first place?). But you take the bad with the good here.
It’s not very high-brow, but it’s plenty funny. Just don’t play it too often, or it’ll get old quick.
Comedy Central: http://www.comedycentral.com
