PHONEHEAD by ERIC BARRY + MIDNITE VULTURES by BECK

 

BY TIM P. WALKER

Eric Barry is a man who’s worn many hats—rapper, actor, producer, telemarketer—and for one outing only, he rocked the writer’s fedora (or whatever the hell it is we’re supposed to wear) and produced the freewheeling comedy Phonehead (self-published, 2013). A charming, if occasionally problematic, ramble billing itself as a novel, Phonehead reads like Barry’s personal diary, albeit slightly (hopefully) embellished. The story is about a burned-out actor named Eric Barry—sorry, make that “West Cooper”—who after racking up a ton of credit card debt takes a job in telemarketing.

Well, it does take a while to get to the telemarketing. We spend the early chapters following Eric—sorry again, that’s “West”—as he takes a break from auditioning for TV roles to take in the peace and quiet in Vermont for a few months while he works on a horror movie script and side gigs as a tour guide at the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory, all while racking up debt on his credit card on rent and the used pickup truck he buys. It’s only when a local girl gets “clingy like a sock in the dryer” that he decides that he’s had enough of Vermont and takes off for Maryland, meeting up with an old college friend and further pushing his debt into the stratosphere. Eventually, he gets back to Los Angeles, moves in with some friends who happen to be big money hustlers in the field of telemarketing. Back to auditioning for TV roles and not landing anything anytime soon, he borrows a pair of his friend’s pants and signs on for a stint at a call center selling investment seminar slots to enterprising rubes.

 

The writing gets better as it goes along, and Barry settles into a groove around the time West settles into his telemarketing gig. Honestly, you too might wish Phonehead would've hooked up an editor for a few dates, someone who might’ve helped tighten this thing. You might also wish that Barry would’ve sent West out on a few more actual dates, or perhaps developed at least one of the female characters a smidge, or even exhibited anything resembling a mature thought regarding the opposite sex. This is kind of a problem with Phonehead. You know you’re in dodgy territory when your main character reflects on an encounter with a young barista like this:

 

She started about how her oldest sister was pregnant. Then she asked, “Do you have any kids?”

“No, do you?” I asked.

She laughed. “I’m too young to have kids. I’m only seventeen.”

I knew what the “seventeen” comment meant. It meant that soon she would be eighteen—and she wanted me to know that.

 

Ew.

 

If you think we can excuse West’s grody tendencies on the fact that he himself is a youngish twenty-something, then ponder this passage:

 

She was a young thing. Much younger than she sounded on the phone. Maybe about 22 or 23.

She descended onto the red chair in the office. I sat down across from her. Her tight black skirt rose up revealing her inner thighs. Right there on the spot, I developed a fetish for peach fuzz.

 

Dude, no…

 

And the fact that this occurs during a job interview that he is conducting… Just, no, forget it. Later on, he hooks up with another interviewee, a Spanish girl named Isabella. From what little we learn about her, we worry for her.

 

In spite of its problems, I did find myself enjoying Phonehead. What can I say? A lot of the freewheeling comedies that I grew up enjoying—Caddyshack, the Cheech & Chong movies, anything with the National Lampoon label—had similarly unenlightened points of view. For this being his only published work, Barry is impressively in command of his comic voice. (Side note: he also cut a comedy rap album in 1998 under the moniker Cheazy-E called CRa.k.a The White Mystery. I’d recommend it as an alternate pairing, but what’s the fun in that?) And I like the loose structure, which gives it the feel of a hangout novel. It allows for some of the more colorful characters from the periphery to do their thing, no rhyme or reason required.

Take the Purple Pastor—one West’s fellow telemarketers, he’s also a Prince lookalike, dresses in garishly colored suits, and apparently preaches in an actual church on the weekends. In any one of the stories I’d normally review on this blog, he’d be a double-crossing rat who’d take a bullet to the back of his head somewhere in the second act. Here, he hypes himself and his fellow salespeople by calling out to the money throughout the call center.

 

If you squint hard enough, you might be able to see the Purple Pastor lingering somewhere in the background in any one of the tracks on Beck’s 1999 album Midnite Vultures. As a matter of fact, you could see any one of the telemarketers cruising through the Day-Glo scenery, West included. The follow-up to his 1996 masterwork Odelay, Midnite Vultures plays like that album’s horn dog b-boy id run amok. Part dance party, part comedy record (Flight of the Conchords are on record citing this album as an influence), and teeming with ribald lyrics that would put it on dodgy ground if they weren’t delivered with a sly grin.

You can see the Purple Pastor getting down to “Mixed Business”, which may be the single greatest Prince put-on ever recorded. It’s the one where the freaks flock together, that mixes fitness with leather, and—quoting directly here—makes “all the lesbians scream.” You can picture West as the protagonist in “Debra,” stepping to the counter girl in J.C. Penney with a fresh pack of gum, propositioning both her and her sister. Elsewhere, milk and honey pours down like money and sex laws—make that S-E-X-X laws—and their logic are defied. My favorite track is the one that maxes out the ridiculousness: “Hollywood Freaks.” Real estate gets sold, Hyundais are tricked out, Christmas comes in July, and the bazooti is automatic.

That’s how I’d like to picture a telemarketing call center in L.A.

 

Both Phonehead and Midnite Vultures are goofy works that vehemently abhor seriousness, and I enjoy them both in spite of the problematic stuff. Midnite Vultures in particular is an album I’ll blindly throw on every now and then. You know what else? Sometimes when I’ve had few on a Saturday night, I’ll turn on Animal House and still chuckle at the sight of John Belushi as Blutarski parking a step ladder next to a coed’s window.

 

I know. One of these days I’ll grow up too.

 

You can find Phonehead here: https://www.amazon.com/Phonehead-Eric-Barry/dp/1492733148