Benkharakh.com

By Ben Kharakh

By Ben Kharakh

"Overall I find hubris to be hilarious. The notion of people being so full of themselves, especially when they don't have the clout to back it up, will probably always be my favorite source of comedy."

"I guess the idea of living in past glories would be second to hubris as far as things that make me laugh. People being stuck in certain moments that mean nothing to anyone but themselves is fine, but it gets funny when they hit you over the head with those moments. I think everybody does it to varying degrees. Everybody has their bouts of arrogance. Except me. What would make you think that I would be susceptible to hubris? It's not like my radio show is called The Best Show On WFMU or something."

As host of The Best Show on WFMU, Tom Scharpling lives in Newbridge, New Jersey. "It's a little bit of every town, but exaggerated - it's almost a version of what people think a New Jersey town is like." Tom also works at Consolidated Cardboard. " I work in sales. It's not very exciting, but there are some real characters. They should do a sitcom about OUR office! There's this one guy named Gregg who is always marking his territory in the break room. Always marking his food. Writing 'THIS BELONGS TO GREGG! DO NOT EAT!' across the front of it. Like I want to eat his leftovers from last night." And every Tuesday night from 8 to 11, Tom hosts The Best Show on WFMU. "There's nothing like going on the air and taking calls, not knowing where things are going to end up, trying to find funny moments in talking to callers and running with them."
Amongst those callers is a character portrayed by Tom's writing partner Jon Wurster. He might be a millionaire who chooses to live in poverty so he can technically remain a millionaire or a pothead who was tricked into buying his own toilette because he thought it was Jerry Garcia's. " In those situations, I have to break down the characters to get to the revelations," says Tom, "Otherwise they won't reveal their more base philosophies or reasoning. "

" Jon and I usually pace out the bits so they can breathe - it's not a morning zoo where the bits are done in three minutes. And that actually lets us both spread out and have a real conversation, and build a real character. That's kinda what makes it satisfying when things kick in, because for better or worse I'm talking to a person with real motivations and desires, no matter how disturbing or troubling they may be."

"We talk on the phone all the time about the bits, kicking them around in conversation. The characters and/or the concepts get to a point where they're ready to go, then Jon writes up notes and always adds in a bunch of surprises for me so that things stay fresh."

"Scharpling and Wurster are modern masters of the lost art of radio comedy. I challenge you not to spit Diet Mountain Dew Code Red all over your dashboard."
--Neal Pollack, author of Never Mind the Pollack, The Neal Pollack Anthology of Literature, and Alternadad.

Off the air, Tom is a writer and executive producer on Monk. "I don't talk about Monk on the air because I like to keep the two things separate. Monk is my day job, and the last thing I want to do is show up at the station and talk about Monk. It's not nearly as interesting as people might think - while it is the best job I've ever had, it's still a job."
"I think there's an element to The Best Show where it reaches a pretty broad collection of people, and they all seem to enjoy different things about it. And there are kids who listen who maybe don't feel so confident about their lives, so if they can feel like there's a show with a 'grown up' who can talk to them and joke around with them without humiliating them, that's a good thing. I wish there was a show like that when I was a kid. It's so easy for kids who aren't good at sports or dating to get lost in the shuffle, which is a shame because their skills will come out as they get older, whereas the jocks will slowly rot from the inside."

"I remember what it was like when I was trying to get something going and had no idea what to do. I wished that someone who was a step or two ahead of me would tell me what I should or shouldn't be doing. So when I see those younger than myself in similar situations, I try to help out if I can. Peter Vecsey told me about that. He's a basketball reporter who writes for the New York Post and I used to submit jokes to his column. I was in my early twenties at the time and he was one of the first people to give me a boost of confidence, telling me to keep going. I would fax in the jokes, then I saw them in the paper once in awhile, credited to me."

"A long time ago I met Monk creator Andy Breckman at WFMU - he also has a radio show. I got up the courage to give him a feature film script that I had co-written, asking him to read it. About four months later he called back, saying that he read it while on vacation and thought it was funny. Since we both live in New Jersey, we started hanging out together and got to be great friends. He offered me a job as his assistant while he would write a movie - he basically needed someone to bounce ideas off while he wrote. That job turned out to be an audition of sorts. Andy told me about a pilot that he had sold for a detective show called Monk, and if it ever went to series, he would get me a job on it. The show died and came back to life a couple times over a couple years, but then finally ended up at the USA Network, where it got rolling once and for all. I was the first person hired to be on the show."

"I have become an obsessive Scharpling and Wurster fan. Sadly, I find myself more invested in the trials and tribulations of their characters than those of most people in my real life!"
- Ben Gibbard, Death Cab for Cutie

"Having written for television, I have seen ideas generated in a writers' room get transformed into scripts and filmed three months later. Television is a content eating machine - you need to keep producing pages. If you write it, they will shoot it. Movies seem to be the polar opposite of that."

"I have written a few screenplays at this point, and I learn something different from each one. You try to get better at it every time you undertake another script - learning how to do more with less, how to make things consistently interesting and actually tell a story as opposed to a collection of sketches. Writing for Monk has taught me a lot about economy of dialogue in a scene and how to balance story and comedy in the same scene."

"Jeff the Demon is a feature film that I co-wrote with my friend Joe Ventura. Will Arnett is attached to star, and it's set up over at New Line. We just did another rewrite, and we're hoping it runs the gauntlet and gets filmed."

The Best Show on WFMU airs Tuesday nights from 8 to 11 EST on 91.1 FM NYC but you can also listen to it online at FriendsOfTom.com .