TS: There’s Jon Benjamin, who is a cartoon voice guy. He does a cartoon on the Adult Swim block of programming on the Cartoon Network called “Home Movies” that he does some voices on.

MP: Wait, is Benjamin “Petey?”

TS: No, no, Petey is a real child.

MP: Wow.

TS: Petey exists. I met Petey with my own eyes. Petey’s dad brought Petey to the studio.

MP: I was convinced that Petey was a character.

TS: That’s the beauty of it, though. Petey’s real. Petey is an actual child.

Anyway, the Rock, Rot And Rule cd was out at the time, and people knew what the show was supposed to be based on the cd, and Jon Benjamin knew the cd. Jon Benjamin does a lot of comedy in the city, he does Tinkle now, he used to do a lot of stuff at the Monday night comedy thing at the Luna Lounge called “Eating It”. He also does another show called Midnight Pajama Jam now, which is funny.

So, he heard the cd and I kinda got to know him and a bunch of people in the city’s comedy scene, and he said that he’d come on and do some stuff. He was on the third show that we did, he did Yankees Vs. Mets, it was insane. We realized what didn’t work on the show almost from doing this thing. It was just two hours of me moderating, this was when the Yankees and the Mets were in the World Series together, and Jon Benjamin was a Mets fan and Matt Walsh from the Upright Citizens Brigade was in as a Yankees fan, and the two of them were just doing their thing, going back and forth. That’s back when the show was just two hours long, because that’s all I wanted at that point, just two hours. The bit was about an hour too long.

That was the first appearance of Philly Boy Roy, that’s a character that we had. Jon Wurster’s from outside of Philadelphia. I think that character’s based on the outskirts of the suburbs there, the Philly people. “Aw yeah, nem nere Flyers, goin’ all the way…” So he’d be doing that on the phone, and we said, what if it’s Philly Boy Roy, and he’s just very pro-Philly, because Philadelphia’s a funny city. It’s so angry and tense. The people are so mad at everything. They’re mad that they’re not New York. They’re mad at New Jersey, they’re mad at New York, they’re mad at Baltimore, they’re mad at DC, they’re just mad at the entire eastern seaboard. They’re mad at Boston. If you look at the sports rivalries, it’s like “76ers Vs. Celtics”, “76ers Vs. Knicks”, “76ers Vs. Wizards”, and everyone else. Philly’s just a funny city.

We were just getting a feel for what we wanted the show to be, just kinda feeling our way through it, and people kinda gravitated toward it. Then Andy Earles came on board.

MP: How did you get Andy on the show?

TS: How did I start to know Andy….it was through this fanzine that he did called the Cimmaron Weekend, and he sent me a copy of it, and I thought it was really funny and hilarious and just smart. The music writing in it was just great, and it was actually on top of being funny was really just on the money. I think I emailed him. You know, he did a record called Just Farr A Laugh and I liked that, and I just wanted to say hi and tell him that I liked his fanzine. People try to get their own stupid industries going on in different pockets of the country, and it’s like, I think those people should find each other. And then he ended up on the show. The first thing he did was this guy who was like a record collector and was in the studio. He didn’t even have a chance to ease into the stuff over the phone first, and being in the studio that was so rough, when you’re trying to do the stuff in front of a live mic. And you know what, it wasn’t even him, I was so sick on that show we did. I could barely speak, my voice was shot. We had a WFMU record fair the weekend before, and I think I got violently ill the Wednesday morning after the show, I was sick for a week. But we got some really great stuff going with him as it has gone along. He really just delivers these sad, bitter guys.

MP: There’s a lot of difference between the characters that Jon Wurster and Andy do. Jon’s characters tend to be kind of sleazey and evil…

TS: Yeah, that’s the thing, they’re evil and they’re also very larger than life, and that’s what makes us laugh. There’s always an insane quality.

MP: And with Andy, his guys are very, very real and pathetic…

TS: He really grounds them in the mundane horror of life. They are so normal, and I don’t know, it’s like a John Cassavetes movie, how sad they are. Wurster’s end up being more from me also, I think I do the most hands-on collaboration with Wurster, we really kinda hash the stuff out. He’s the one I have the longest relationship with, that’s my partner.

MP: You work for the Onion, right?

TS: I do some freelance stuff for them.

MP: How does that work?

TS: I just hand in headlines. I’m so far behind, I haven’t done it in about four months. I just hand in headline ideas. I’ve had them made into the main article, I’ve had them just be sidebars, just whatever they think is funny they use however they want.

MP: How did you get involved with The Onion?

TS: It’s been going on for about a year and a half. Since when they got here in New York from Madison. What happened is, I know some guys who work up at Conan, and one of the guys went to school with the head writer over at The Onion and he knew I was interested in doing headlines. The guy knew the Rock Rot And Rule cd, so that got me in the door, and I sent some sample headlines and made the cut. They let me send them in every week if I want.

MP: It sounds like Rock Rot And Rule circulated quite a bit.

TS: Yeah, it got around. I guess we sold about a 1,000 copies, which is very good for an indie comedy release. That’s over a while. But still, we don’t really do that for money, we’re not going to get rich off of that stuff. We just want them to pay for the next one.

Jon Wurster: I met Tom in Trenton, NJ one night when Superchunk played at City Gardens. Must have been ’94. We hit it off because we both were/are Chris Elliott fans. Tom used to call me from work a lot, h used to work in a music shop back in the mid-90s. He would do silly voices (“Jon, I represent Jon Moss, former drummer of Culture Club. He loves your playing and wants to start a band with you and one of the guys from the TV show Taxi…”) and we’d come up with stuff. The first thing we ever did for his show was the Rock, Rot and Rule call.

MP: Tom had mentioned that it came from something that Oprah Winfrey had said. How did it evolve into the Ronald Thomas Clontle character?

JW: Yeah, we were watching TV at the same time – this actually happens a lot, I’m sorry to report – and she was on. It was just after the verdict was read in her anti-Beef Council case. She was victorious and one of the first things she said was, “Freedom not only rules — it rocks!” That touched off a whole debate on what rocks, rules and sucks.

MP: How much of the character was planned out before you put it on the air?

JW: I just knew I had to be clueless yet set in my ways and views. The voice is somewhat inspired by a bit Sam Kinison did with Harry Shearer back in the early ’90s called “The Last Remaining Female Prisoner in Kuwait,” or something like that.

MP: So a lot of the judgements and comments are totally off the cuff, even before the callers start sparring with you?

JW: Yeah, most of those were. I did make a list of some artists who would fit into each category. The rest I made up.

MP: Do you use a similar method with the other characters?

JW: It depends. I’m not a good voice person. Sometimes I’ll get lucky, but for the most part I use something close to my own. I like to be fairly prepared when we do the stuff. I think Tom trusts me to not blow it. Lots of times now I don’t even send him too many notes. I think we both get a kick out of the other not knowing what’s coming next. I almost lost it the other night when I was reciting the lyrics to “Freedom Bombs.” I think that was the closest I’ve ever come to really dropping the ball.

MP: I’m surprised that you’re not happy with your voices. I think that you do a pretty good job, even though you have some characters which sound similar. The voices always suit the characters very well.

JW: Thanks. I guess it seems like most of the ones I’ve done lately have not been too out there like The Gorch or Maurice Kern.

MP: How did you come up with voices like the ones that you use for The Gorch, Philly Boy Roy, or Zachary Brimstead? Those are extremely odd.

JW: The Gorch was just something that came to me, I don’t know how really. Zachary Brimstead was the same thing. Someone brought up on that show that I sounded like Snaggelpuss, which I fully agree with. Philly Boy Roy is an amalgam of a lot of people I grew up with, believe it or not!

MP: Were you involved in comedy before the Best Show?

JW: Hmmm…not really. I was always a fan of comedy (SCTV, Get A Life, etc) but didn’t really create anything until I hooked up with Tom.

MP: Tom had mentioned that you’ve done a few things on Conan O’Brien’s show recently.

JW: Yeah, I’ve been on maybe four times over the last few years. The bits are usually drum-related. I got to sit in for Max once and he ended up shooting me. Actually, he shot me twice!

MP: Do you have any interest in doing other kinds of comedy outside of the Best Show?

JW: Yeah. I’m emceeing a night of this 10 year Chunklet Magazine spectacular next week. I’ve written a few funny commercials here and there. Did Tom tell you about the movie we got hired to write a few years ago? I’m in the middle of writing up a TV show idea he and I have been talking about for a few years. So, stuff like that.

MP: So you’d prefer to be a writer like Tom rather than a performer? Tom expressed deep reticence about being a performer outside of the radio.