Greatest Fits: The Best of "How Big'A Boy Are Ya?"

If you haven't yet fallen victim to Oklahoma's favorite ass-whuppin' shock jock, go ahead and let Roy D. Mercer beat you like cornbread batter this time around. Album volume 7 is a great place to start, since it compiles some of Brent Douglas and Phil Stone's funniest sketches of outrageous kvetches. The accusations hurled in these prank calls--a homespun alternative to the obscenities of The Jerky Boys--are classic Roy D., terrorizing a range of unsuspecting folk, from a cemetery custodian, bank clerk, and bowling alley owner to a shoe salesman (ordered to pay the psychiatric bills occasioned by selling girls' shoes to little "Joey Mercer"). With minimal sound effects (including some impressively realistic borborygmi suffered from eating "bad apples"), ol' Roy pursues his victims like Ahab after Moby. The only letdowns are in the anticlimactic candid-camera moments explaining how the callees (surprisingly few of whom have managed to cut Roy off entirely by then) have been set up by their friends. After which, you can be sure, the traitors are going to face some intense ass-whuppin' of their own. Not recommended for those recovering from surgery: there's too high a risk for popping your stitches. --Tom May