Modern talk radio as we know it effectively functions as a conduit for anger and provocation, a way to prod people with sharp sticks to find out what they sound like when they yell. Condoleeza Rice rape jokes and "flied lice" prank calls to Chinese restaurants aren't just goony shock-jock hijinx, they're the signs of an arrogant sense of bad-boy entitlement that values offense as the driving force of humor instead of a potential side effect. Worse still, these ideas of what makes for outrageous humor are depressingly uniform: A 2003 Entertainment Weekly article revealed that, when pressed for accounts of the "craziest thing ever done in their studio," three different DJs from three distinct regions of the country all answered to the effect of a woman spraying some sort of beverage out of an anatomical region invariably referred to using baby-talk euphemisms. Rock and roll!
For roughly 10 years, radio host/comedy writer Tom Scharpling and Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster have built on that uncomfortable dynamic in an escalatingly absurd and elaborate fashion, and there's a pointed jab at the current character of American radio and its listeners beneath the surface of their call-in sketches. Despite the often-irritable undercurrent to his radio program The Best Show on WFMU, Scharpling is the quintessential demoralized straight man: Frequently lamenting the craziness of his callers, snapping "GET OFF MY PHONE" at some of the more problematic cases, and preemptively warning the addled listener on the other end of the line to steer clear of "toilet talk"; many of his conversations with callers end with a rapidly-deflating, high-pitched sigh, as though he considers himself lucky to get out of that exchange alive.
The other half of the The Best Show team is Wurster, who regularly calls in as a character whose belligerence, delusion, ignorance, or just plain sociopathy ricochets madly off Scharpling's uneasy attempts to make sense out of the situation, and that's where The Art of the Slap gets its material. This 3xCD set is the fifth in a series of releases that dates back to the original 1997 bit "Rock, Rot & Rule", and while it skews a bit weirder than previous entries-- Tom has an extended conversation with a carp-- it still sticks with what works. The Scharpling & Wurster formula is airtight: Tom takes a call from a vaguely shady-sounding man who usually has prior business with Tom or, alternately, some sort of response to something said at some previous point during the show. The conversation goes smoothly for a few minutes until Wurster's caller lets some uncomfortable detail slip and everything starts to unravel in a horrific mess: The guys who were supposed to repair Tom's computer are a bunch of roid-raging jocks who opted to smash his PC instead; a tornado survivor who pledged to turn his life around two years ago is calling back to hawk his "Pimp City" video game and a series of celebrity blackmail videos; the carp turns out to be a fratboyish jerk. Things inevitably go sour, and Tom finds himself the brunt of some sort of elaborate impending threat, assuming the caller doesn't have his own to worry about. And it all builds to a peak over the course of twenty-plus minutes. (Unsurprisingly, the duo ply their trade on community radio, where this kind of indulgence gets appropriate breathing room; an episode last December condensed the previous week's bit into a two-minute commercial "morning zoo" pace and it landed with a thud.)
Naturally, it's how the two riff on the structure that makes each bit. Wurster tends to drop several reoccurring catchphrases ("Define…," "Yes, why?", "Wait, whaaaat?") that wryly betray his character's dimbulb obliviousness, and while he doesn't have the most versatile or easily-disguised voice-- listen for three weeks and you'll be able to spot a Wurster call a mile away-- he manages to find a way to make each call unpredictable. Scharpling is largely left to react, which he does with superb comedic timing; often all he needs to do is skeptically repeat one of Wurster's more ridiculous assertions or laugh in incredulous horror to keep the momentum going. Some bits tend to wander thematically, like "Postal Slap Fight", which starts as a tirade against Tom's music snobbery and subsequently covers subjects ranging from the merits of "Vice President Lon Chaney" to the fictional Alan Alda/Brendan Fraser movie President Baseball to the caller's professional slap-fighting league. Others feature an extended scenario, like horror film auteur Trent L. Strauss (director of You're Soaking in Her and Art School Arsonist) laying out the entire plot of his ludicrous upcoming project The Toolbelt Killer: it's a movie about a disfigured Lowe's employee who enacts revenge against the town that shunned him for coming from the wrong side of the tracks-- the rich side.
The undisputed highlight of the set is the "bonus CD" detailing the triumph and tragedy of alt-rock remainder bin fodder Mother 13, who planned to conquer the music world by becoming the first band to play Mt. Everest. Part 1 features the arrogant, preening alt-rock frontman Corey Harris, whose band plies its trade at assorted corporate-sponsored festivals such as the Huggies Fall Into Softness Tour, hyping the all-star bill and detailing his regimen of mountaineer training-- which mostly involves beer and a fake rock-climbing wall at a local shopping mall. Part 2, recorded a week later, is the grisly aftermath, in which a wheezy, whimpering Harris elaborates on a morbid but uncomfortably hilarious series of disasters: Buddy Guy dies during the ascent and is abandoned in a "blues igloo", Clarence Clemons comes down with snow madness and commits unthinkable acts of cannibalism, and a member of the Polyphonic Spree falls off the peak; since the band is roped together, he brings them all down with him. "Wow," Scharpling concludes at the end of the call, "this kinda puts a damper on the show." It also makes The Art of the Slap one of the easiest comedy record recommendations of the year, proof that shock and provocation work best when it's the host who's taking the brunt.
