The Impractical Joke

Every generation has its favorite TV shows and every one of us believes that the shows we grew up watching were the best. But I mean, c'mon...can you really beat the 1960's? "Mission: Impossible", "Laugh-In", "Get Smart", the previously discussed "Man From UNCLE"...and was there ever a more cleverly written, or perfectly performed comedy than "The Dick Van Dyke Show"?

I'll always remember the first time I watched it. It was a Wednesday, Mom's Mah Jongg night (or maybe she was already in her Canasta phase, I can't recall) and my father, never one to closely police my actions when I was at home, was probably upstairs. So of course I used this freedom to stay in the living room and watch TV after 9pm...on a school night!

I immediately landed on CBS, a network I always trusted to have something good on (and to this day, I still believe that the Eye Network historically had the best programming in its heyday, from "I Love Lucy" to "Dallas".) Well, on comes this very 'adult'-looking comedy with an episode entitled 'The Impractical Joke'.

I was never one for goofy pranks. I just don't think it's fair to 'punk' somebody for the sake of a cheap laugh, by either telling them something is true when it's not just to get their reaction, or by perching a bucket of water over a doorway just to see the victim get wet (hello, "America's Funniest Home Videos"...) But a well-thought-out, detailed, and creative ruse that can be appreciated afterwards, even by the victim?

Count me in!

So this Dick Van Dyke episode was just that: Rob Petrie (the main character) had endless pranks played on him by his office mate Buddy Sorrell, so in turn, Rob's revenge scheme was fraught with laughs, suspense, and an ultimately surprise ending. I loved it and never missed another episode of the show. Yes, Mom allowed me to stay up an extra half-hour on Wednesdays from then on...

I have discovered movies since then based along those same lines. (Try David Mamet's "House of Games" some time; I might even put the cult classic "The Usual Suspects" in that category.) So of course I spent my formative years searching for a situation where I could create and execute the Perfect Practical Joke. And when I became a professional disc jockey, I finally found the outlet.

It was the early '80's and I was doing afternoon drive in Hartford. We had recently hired a new evening jock. He was a bit younger than me (who isn't?!) but Paul was a Long Island guy who loved comedy and movies and we got along well enough for me to invite him to move into my condo when I needed a roommate. We'd go out and drink with other friends a few nights a week, ending up at the local Denny's, where we'd talk radio, try to pick up the waitress, and gossip about the other jocks.

Not sure how it began, but It was just about this time of year when Paul and I decided to try and create an April Fool's joke to pull on the morning team. 'Horn and Haskell' were a pretty popular duo in Hartford at the time (after Howard Stern finally left, that is,)

and Paul and I felt they needed to be knocked down a peg or two.

"What if we took them off the air during their show?" one of us offered.

"What would that do? Then we'd just have dead air."

We sipped our Denny's sodas for a while. "What if they didn't know they were off the air, but they kept talking, thinking they were still on?"

"But we'd still have dead air....unless we replaced it with something else..."

"Like what?

"Like us!"

"What?"

The plan began to roll like rain down a gutter as we added more ideas. (And here's where it might get a bit technical; I realize that if you were never in radio this might seem a little complicated, but bear with me. I've never been a technical genius myself.)

First we got together with the station's engineer who loved our idea and offered solutions to some of the problems we thought we'd encounter. The basic scheme was this: About an hour into their show, the engineer would pull the plug on the station's main feed and immediately replace it with the output of the production studio (the studio at the station where commercials were recorded.) Paul and I would be positioned in that room and as soon as our mics were live, we would come on the air and explain to the listening audience what was going on---that for an April Fool's joke we were taking Horn and Haskell off the air and taking their place. We would have all the records we needed, and all the commercial tapes too (so the sponsors wouldn't get cheated out of their paid spots!)

Our main message to the listeners would be to please NOT call the studio and alert the real morning show as to what was going on. Realistically though, what were the chances of all of their listeners abiding by this request? The engineer had a solution: "I'll jam all their phones," he announced. "I'll have them blinking so it looks like they're out of order and I'll tell them I'm working on them and will have them back up as soon as possible."

"Excellent!"

"Wait a second." somebody said. "When they walk by to go to the bathroom or something, they'll see us in the production room. How do we explain the station's two night owls being at work at seven in the morning?"

"We'll tell them the truth.."

"Whaaa?"

"We'll tell them we're working on an elaborate April Fool's joke for our shows and we needed all day to finish it...!" That got a laugh.

"Wait, the bathroom...They'll hear us on the air when either of them go to the bathroom!" The rest room at the station always had the radio station piped in so we could hear safely hear our records playing while we were indisposed.

"I'll switch feeds," said the engineer calmly. "I'll feed their studio into the bathroom, so they'll always hear what they have on the air...or at least what they think is on the air!"

We all sat back and smiled. We seemed ready to go.

*******************************

The morning of April 1st, Paul and I got to the studio just before 7am and snuck into the production room. We arranged our music, put our commercials in order, and set up our microphones. At exactly 7 o'clock, when the morning show hit their top of the hour ID, we faded their show off the air, and faded our mics up.

I went on and introduced myself: "Good morning, I'm Irv Goldfarb. As an April Fool's joke, Paul and I are going to pull Horn and Haskell off the air and take over their show...without them knowing it! Listen, they think they're on the air right now..."

I turned up their studio volume so that listeners could hear the morning guys chatting away and laughing as if everything was running along as usual. I turned their volume down.

"Listen to them, Paul. What a couple of dopes!"

We played a few records, ran the scheduled commercials, then came back on the air. We checked into their studio again, where Horn and Haskell were merrily rolling along as if thousands of people were listening.

"They're still going at it!" I laughed.

We had made sure that the real listener lines were forwarded to our room and once in a while, we'd answer one. People were highly entertained.

"This is hilarious," listeners would declare. "Those guys really think they're on the air?"

"Yup. And pul-leassse don't try to find a way to tell them!"

"Don't worry, we won't."

This charade went on for two hours. At one point, Haskell did come by our studio when we had a song playing and popped his head in. "What the hell are you guys doing here so early?"

We gave the rehearsed answer about our BIG April Fool's production. He bought it.

"Well, good luck," he waved, closing the studio door and heading towards the bathroom.

"Close one," I sighed.

Then, sometime around 9am, a listener somehow got through to the main studio. I don't remember if the person had access to a private line, or maybe we just decided to let the engineer give the guys their phones back so they could finally learn what was going on. Either way, they found out what had happened, so we returned them to the air.

We had pulled it off.

Haskell ranted and raved when he found out. We couldn't tell if he was really that mad, until he came by our studio while we were trying to make our silent escape. He pointed to us and narrowed his eyes. "I'll get you back for this," he promised. "I don't know how, but when you least expect it, I'll get you back!" He closed the studio door and Paul and I looked at each other wide-eyed.

"Wow, he's really pissed!"

"Good, then it worked!"

Eddie Haskell (real name: Paul Resnik, and yes, he took his radio name from the old "Leave it to Beaver" character) never earned his payback. He passed away in 2012.

I'm guessing that at some point down the road (waaaayyyy down the road, hopefully,) he'll find me and exact his revenge.

I'll be waiting, Haskell!

***********************************

That April Fool's scheme was interesting, but the next year's was downright brilliant!

I felt the need to follow up on the triumph of the previous April, but my cohort had moved on to another radio station (in NYC no less,) so this time I was on my own.

I needed to come up with an idea to prank my own listeners, but how to do that with no one to help set up the premise? I decided that I would be willing to be the butt of my own joke if it meant a successful outcome...and that gave me the idea:

I had often been accused of spending too much of my time eating, reading the newspaper, or yakking on the phone between records while I was supposed to be working (a charge that I have been hit with many times since---as a lot of you who have worked with me very well know!)

What if my listeners actually knew what I was doing while their favorite songs were playing? That I wasn't standing in front of the microphone playing air guitar, or carefully preparing my next music set, or writing out my next talk break? That in reality, I did what everybody at work often does: waste time on personal interests.

Obviously this was radio not television, so my telephones--the request lines--were the only direct tie I had with listeners. What if the phones were reversed on me, and the audience could hear all of my calls, personal and otherwise...without my knowledge of course? My heartbeat quickened as I came up with a bunch of ideas, each one more embarrassing than the last.

All I needed were a couple of confederates, so I enlisted the aid of a two friends, and instructed them on when I needed them to call the studio; I also gave them some quick notes outlining what they needed to say.

At 2 pm I went on the air, but made no mention of the fact that it was the first of April.

Maybe 20 or 30 minutes into the show, while a song was on, I punched up one of the telephones, making sure that it could be heard on the air under the record that was playing. It was the first of my friends, making believe he was requesting a song.

Me: "WHCN, hello..."

Phony listener: "Hi, can you play 'Stairway to Heaven' by Led Zeppelin?"

Me, in an exasperated voice: "Really? Again? Aren't you sick of that tune yet?"

Listener: "No, I really want to hear it."

Me, scornfully: "Well I'm tired of it. Not happening. Find a new song!"

Then I hung up, waited for the record to end, and went back on the air as if nothing untoward had happened. During the next music set I did it again, answering my friends' phony calls with derision and sarcasm, refusing to play their requests and rudely hanging up on each of them.

During the second hour, I stepped up the game.

I had a female friend of mine call in. But this time when she made her request, instead of rudely dismissing her, I blatantly tried to pick her up, shmoozing her with invitations to 'come visit me at the station some time' and asking for her phone number. (This one got sleazy enough where If I did it today, I might actually have gotten fired!)

I continued this circus for the next two hours, inserting more personally embarrassing phone calls every few songs, but always remembering not to answer any of the other lines, which were flashing like mad; these were obviously listeners trying to warn me that my phones were malfunctioning and I needed to stop taking personal calls....

I think at one point our receptionist downstairs came up to tell me that she was getting calls down there from people trying to save me from myself. I just laughed and suggested that she tell them she would pass it along.

Then I continued on this road to self-destruction. I believe l had the first girl call back in a different voice and act like she was my girlfriend, while I rudely broke up with her over the phone and made her cry. I think another call had me making plans to meet my 'drug dealer'.

The last phone call of the day was the capper: my friend John called back in a cliched Mafia voice, pretending he was my bookie and warning me that if I didn't pay off my gambling debts, my legs might soon be broken---or worse. (A situation that was not all that far from the truth at the time--but I have digressed...)

To put a ribbon on this devious plan, I had given the jock that followed me instructions on what to say when he came into the studio a 6pm. And he played it out perfectly: As I was signing off for the day, he burst into the room and said in a terrifying tone:

"Irv, Irv, do you know that your telephones were on the air all day?"

"Uhhhh...what?

"Your phones! All the calls you got today went out over the air. Everybody could hear them!"

I gasped, fell silent, then stammered a weak sign off to the audience and quickly went into the next song. I snapped off the mic with a laugh and thanked my fellow jock afterwards for his stellar performance. But I wasn't done.

Knowing that I had already planned on taking off for a ballgame or something, there was someone else on the air in my place the next day. I had told him (and our program director) to make NO mention of why there was somebody filling in for me, the hope being of course, that the audience would think I had gotten fired for my gaffe of the previous afternoon.

Since this was a Friday, I would now be off the grid for three days. When I got back on the air Monday afternoon, I opened with this:

"Good afternoon everybody, I'm Irv Goldfarb. I've been getting phone calls today from people asking where I was Friday and wondering if I had been let go from the station. To these listeners, and to those of you out there who were also wondering the same thing, I have a suggestion: Check your calendars and ask yourself--what date was last Thursday??"

With that I hit my first record and after a minute, answered my phones for real, where I was regaled with listener reactions ranging from: "I knew it--I knew it was a joke!" to "Dammit Irv, you got us with that one!"

I sat back with a grin. The Impractical Joke had worked to perfection!

I never had a great voice, never was a smooth announcer and, as admitted, hardly did any advance work to prep my show, spending most of my down time reading the paper and yakking on the phone. Nevertheless I stayed in radio for 22 years.

I think people just liked the chaos.

Talk Thursday.

IG