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Brad from the Snow Plow Show prank call podcast and King Richard from Another Prank Call Show are two of my favorite podcasters and people. While their shows aren’t Christmas-themed, they do mix Christmas ideas in during the holiday season. Below are some questions I asked each of them about Christmas, prank calls, and Christmas prank calls.
Mike: We love themes, obviously. We have a podcast dedicated to holidays, and we write a ton of songs about Christmas (and other holidays) every year. But is it harder to do themed prank calls? I remember there was a bit of pressure for Brad with episode 666 and then episode 777, for example. Do you enjoy the challenge of a holiday-related prank, or does it just add stress?
Brad: Holiday themes are a little less stressful than the numbered episodes of my show because if I don’t know what to do, I can always repeat the same stuff that I’ve done with previous holidays. I still haven’t done any pranks for Halloween this year, but it’s easy enough to wake somebody up at 3 a.m. and let them know me and my kids are at the door for trick-or-treating because Halloween wasn’t on my weekend. I rarely know where to go with the numbered episodes, but holidays are a little more fun to me.
King Richard: I usually avoid doing holiday related pranks, mostly because I don’t like doing what everyone else is sure to be doing. But in general, the more I try to stick to a theme (or premise), the more likely it is to end in disaster. For example, I had an idea involving tardigrades that I wanted so desperately to work. I kept trying and failing for hours, ended up running out of time and having to release one of the worst shows I’ve done. Although, I have a great theme in mind for episode 80085.
Mike: One of my favorite things about the prank community is Pranksgiving, where hosts take shifts and cover 24+ hours on Black Friday. I can’t really listen to most of it, but it’s fun knowing that it’s there, and I tune in at times throughout the day, especially for Brad’s shift. (Has there ever been an Another Prank Call Show shift?) What does this event mean to you, knowing that the entire community has a “place” to hang out for the holiday?
Brad: Pranksgiving is a lot of fun for everyone, and I’m glad it exists and that Dwight is keeping it going each year. I spend at least half my day listening to all the Pranksgiving shows, and I know a lot of other people do too, so I think it’s awesome that something Carlito brought us years ago will always (hopefully) be a thing.
King Richard: I was invited to do a shift a few years ago, turned it down, and have never been asked again. Thank goodness! Because live shows are way too stressful for me to handle. Events like Pranksgiving prove that there’s something special about prank calls. What other form of comedy brings people together, people who might not have offline friends or family, and gives them a tight knit community to spend the holidays with? Thank goodness for the hosts that do these marathon events and bring such holiday cheer. Just not me, because I’m a regular Scrooge.
Mike: What is your favorite Christmas prank call that you’ve done?
Brad: Probably my absolute favorites are from back in the day where I’d get customer phone numbers from the Sears photo department, and then I’d call the customers with crazy things about their photos. I’d tell a mom that all the pictures of her son have an orb around him, so I think he talks to dead people, or I’d offer the service to make their family less ugly, or I’d say I took their pictures home with me last night and accidentally lost a few of them. Out of all those, my favorite might be when I told a lady that the clothes they wore were too RED, and printing them heated up the printer enough to start a fire at Sears and put hundreds of employees out of a job for the Christmas season. If that’s not hilarious Christmas material, I don’t know what is.
King Richard: The one that comes to mind involves me tracking Santa on radar. It didn’t actually work out, but I still like it because of the silly way I introduced myself: “This is Commander McDichael with NORAD.”
Mike: What makes a good Christmas prank call?
Brad: Having a fun Christmas theme that people can relate to. Like the yearly tradition of flushing your live Christmas tree down the toilet or garbage disposal. Landlords love hearing how weird it is that I can’t get ALL of my tree to flush down the toilet and that there must be something wrong with their plumbing. I used to love calling up K-Marts and getting their list of layaway customers so I could tell the customers we destroyed some of their property during horseplay, or someone tricked us into donating their merchandise to charity. Accusing people of making snow angels in my yard or writing weird holiday messages on my car window in the snow or frost is always fun.
King Richard: Lightheartedness! That applies to any prank call, but especially so here. I don’t care for aggressive, overly vulgar prank calls. And that style is definitely not a good fit for Christmas. Then again, I like doing pranks about missing VCR manuals and driving cats, so I might not be the best judge of what’s funny.
Mike: Home Alone is basically about a kid playing a bunch of pranks on two dummies. We have it somewhere in or near our Top 3 Christmas movies. I imagine you must like it too?
Brad: Home Alone is probably my all-time favorite holiday movie. It never gets old. Maybe I love it for the prank aspect of it all. I’m not really sure, but I’ll always love that movie.
King Richard: The best thing about Home Alone is that Macaulay Culkin’s career imploded to the point that he ended up being a guest on some Red Letter Media videos. But that film definitely broke new ground. It’s about family, and that’s what makes it so powerful. By the way, am I being paid for this interview? (Note: While Brad is actually being paid in U.S. dollars for this interview, King Richard is being paid in Snow in Southtown bucks, which can only be redeemed for Michael Buble Christmas albums, unfortunately.)
Mike: Brad, you had a great episode, I think from early in the Snow Plow Show days, where you pranked the entire Home Alone neighborhood. It’s one of my favorite ideas that a prank caller has ever had. If I remember correctly, I don’t think many of the calls in this episode worked out very well, but it was still an amazing idea.
Brad: Yeah I remember being disappointed that none of my Home Alone pranks worked out very well that night. I wish I’d put more effort into doing daytime pranks to that neighborhood during the following weeks.
King Richard: I don’t remember that, but that’s because I’m older than Father Christmas. I do remember during one of the movie nights in the old Discord days, Brad found the number to the current occupant of the Home Alone house and attempted to prank call them. I can’t remember if it worked out. Because again, senility.
Mike: If you were to do calls based on another Christmas movie or TV special, what might you choose?
Brad: Jingle All The Way! Although I have no idea if that was filmed in real locations or on a set. I think that’s an important part of doing movie-based pranks, is pranking actual neighbors of the houses that were in the movie. I can’t think of any other Christmas movies that might work with. Maybe A Christmas Story? I know all of the houses in Edward Scissorhands are still lived in, so maybe that’d be a good one to do.
King Richard: I’d like to do calls based on The Little Drummer Boy. But that might be breaking the rules of prank calling, on account of the protagonist being kidnapped, his home being burned, and the horrific demise of his parents. What a weird movie.
Mike: I think my favorite Christmas prank call episode might be when King Richard called people at 3:00 a.m. on Christmas morning, telling them to wake up because Santa had come. There was also the time he said the HOA was going to be building a reindeer corral.
King Richard: I tend to think lots of my calls are trash. But getting Archie to fumble his way downstairs while deep in a sleep fog and mumbling something about a coyote I’m pretty sure he was having a fever dream about? Yeah, that was a win. The reindeer corral was Olga’s idea, and I added the stuff about having a mall Santa come to the neighborhood (because covid had the malls shuttered). It’s actually such a fun, cheerful idea. I still don’t understand why people were so rankled by it. Says something about the world, but I’m no philosopher.
Brad: I’m sorry but I don’t actually remember those pranks of his. Don’t tell King Richard! (Note: OK, I won’t!)
Mike: Brad, do you have any plans for Christmas pranks this year? Any ideas you want to preview here?
Brad: Nope, I haven’t even thought about it yet. Hopefully it’ll be something new that I’ve never done. But at the very worst we’ll have yet even more calls of me flushing my Christmas tree down the toilet.
Mike: King Richard, I know you’re not doing calls right now, but do you have any ideas for Christmas pranks?
King Richard: What makes you think I’m not doing pranks? Wink wink.
Mike: What are your top three Christmas movies?
Brad: 1. Home Alone, 2. Gremlins, 3. Tie between Jingle All The Way and the live action Grinch movie.
King Richard: Gremlins! I know, its status as a Christmas movie is a matter for debate. But the commercialization of Christmas is so distasteful to me, and I love the way Gremlins pokes holes in the saccharin fakeness of it all. Or maybe I’m just a contrarian. But I’m also full of baloney, because a childhood favorite of mine was A Garfield Christmas Special, and what a merchandising monstrosity that comic is. And of course my favorite Christmas movie is smash hit holiday classic Jingle All the Way, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Snow in Southtown Christmas Podcast 