I was a bit skeptical about Scharpling and Wurster's The Art of the Slap when I first heard about it.  Tom Scharpling's day job is as a writer/executive producer for Monk while Jon Wurster has involved himself with bands like Superchunk and the Mountain Goats. Together they have contributed voices to Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Squidbillies (good) and have involved themselves heavily with Tom Goes to the Mayor (bad.)  Their pedigrees include a mix of the great and the forgettable.

Nowadays, I often reference Philly Boy Roy routines without knowing.  Scharpling and Wurster have that effect on people.

The type of comedy The Art of the Slap deals in is hard to pull off.  Considering the level of difficulty in trying to make the ridiculous believable, S&W acquit themselves very well.  This won't be everyone's type of comedy - hell, I didn't even think it was that funny on first listen. Still, S&W have taken the Simpsons/South Park tack of building an entire self-contained universe out of a volunteer show on famed free-form station WFMU.

Ten years after Jon Wurster pulled a prank on WFMU listeners by pretending to shill the worst music reference book ever (well, the worst fake music reference book ever), Scharpling and Wurster can make something outlandish easily seem like it's happening right now.  They can mix a realistic, down-to-earth routine with robots and magic powers.  The joke is on the listeners for buying into all this even when they're in on the joke.  It's quite a proactive, dynamic paradigm - with zazz!

Caution: this contains spoilers.  Then again, if you're familiar with Scharpling and Wurster and/or have gone to recidivism.org you would realize that I'm spoiling at most 5% of the routine.  S&W's routines are just that involved - and long.

Disc One
Jock Squad (October 11, 2005) - That isn't much of a premise, frankly.  A parody of Geek Squad but with jocks?  Way to aim high, S&W!  The standard Scharpling & Wurster buildup is established for the neophytes: the Jock Squad turn out to be 'roid balloons, spending most of their time working out (sometimes with the computers they're supposed to be fixing - the Jock Squad even shoot .mpgs of themselves destroying computers) and taking thirty minutes of their time each day to actually learn about computer repair. Well, they don't really learn about computer repair, but they tune up Scharpling's computer by rinsing it out.  Scharpling has bodily harm threatened on him, setting up the denouement that listeners will be familiar with after listening to more than one S&W routine.  Kind of obvious, but "Jock Squad" does have its moments.