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Do you remember the very first prank call you ever made?You know, this is going to make some people perplexed and maybe even disappointed but I really never had any interest in making prank calls back then. My father was a building superintendent in Manhattan and all these wealthy people used to throw out really interesting shit. So one day my father comes up to me and gives me a reel-to-reel player that someone had thrown out. This is in 1973. I used to stuff these matchbook covers in there and then I could overlay all kinds of crap on there. I could do double, triple, quadruple voices, and mix the sounds. So I would have fun creating these skits and sketches on the reel-to-reel. Then I could pick up the phone that went to the lobby where the doorman was and fuck with him. But I never did any crap like making a prank call to some random schmo; none of that “Is your refrigerator running?” shit.Ever since I was a kid I was always doing tons of characters. I always lived in tons of neighborhoods; you name it, I lived there. And I remember being five or six years old and just soaking in what I could hear. I heard Spanish voices, Indian voices, Greek voices, Middle Eastern voices, and I remember wanting to copy them immediately. My ear was good for picking shit up so I was doing characters since I was a little boy. When I got older, I loved doing shit for my brothers and family and they loved the characters I would do and then, boom, it hit me. I had the characters who I could use to fuck with with people, I had a boom box to record with and then we were off to the races. I think the reason why my shit was so successful is because I had no intention of prank phone calling. That sounds odd, but my intent was to bring forth these incredible characters that I’d grown up with, because my house was a fucking nuthouse. I love my mother to death but if you spent five minutes with her, you’d be like “Holy Jesus! Get me the fuck out of here!” Sol Rosenberg is based on my mom. Every normal little kid in America has a mom who comes in their room in the morning and says “Good morning, honey! Wake up! What would you like for breakfast?” You know what I heard every morning? My mom would come in and go (in Sol Rosenberg voice) “Oh God! Oh my back! Oh my fucking feet!” And she was a young woman! But I remember saying to myself even as a little kid—“That is some funny shit.” And my dad is Frank Rizzo. When my dad would get pissed off, he was Frank Rizzo. (In Rizzo voice) “C’mere, you little son of a bitch! I’ll rap your fuckin’ head in with a ratchet!” You can imagine growing up in a house like that. It was wonderful and I love my parents but they were the real deal. All of the characters are based on real people and I had no intention of doing prank phone calls to get famous. It’s just one of those happy miracles. I did a few calls on tapes just to make my brothers laugh. That was it. And then it exploded like a powder keg.
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