"Weird Al" Yankovic was, not surprisingly, a practical joker. "In the days before I began pummeling some of the world's best loved pop tunes, I was a phone freak extraordinaire," he once recalled. "My friend and I would squander inordinate amounts of time devising ways to harass people...
"One afternoon, we discovered, quite accidentally, that rubbing a screwdriver against the bare wires of a disassembled mouthpiece produced an ear-piercing static sound... So we randomly chose a name from the phone book--a Mrs. Johnson--and rang her up.
"'Hello,' answered a feeble voice. This woman was obviously ancient.
"'Ma'am, this is George Bernay with Pacific Bell,' I told her in my newly basso profundo timbre. 'I am calling to let you know we're fusing together all the trunk lines in your area.'
"'I like birds.'
"'Um, maybe you don't understand, Mrs. Johnson,' I continued. 'Our men are working with very high-voltage equipment, so please don't pick up your phone for the next half hour. If you do, it will send a massive surge of current through the lines. And that would be extremely dangerous.'
"'Okay,' she replied, a bit more lucidly than before.
"Ten minutes later, we called her again. The phone rang about a hundred times before she finally picked it up.
"'Hello?' she answered, tentatively.
"'Scrrrrreeeeeeech!' went the screwdriver against the wire, mimicking the sound of coursing electricity. With a horrified gasp, she hung up. But we were relentless. Immediately I redialed. 'Mrs. Johnson, what have you done?! Then, as though I were barking into a walkie-talkie, 'Lineman number seven is down! Repeat: Lineman number seven is down!'
"On the other end, silence. Then, dial tone. Next victim!"
