Tracy Jamal Morgan (born November 10, 1968) is an American actor and comedian who is best known for his eight seasons as a cast member on Saturday Night Live as well as the role of Tracy Jordan on the NBC series 30 Rock.
Morgan was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, the second of five children of Alicia (née Warden), a homemaker, and James Morgan, Jr., a musician. Morgan says his father returned after multiple tours of duty in Vietnam addicted to heroin, causing him to leave the family when Morgan was six. He was the target of bullies as a child. His older brother had cerebral palsy and could not protect him so he used comedy to make bullies laugh rather than being beat up. Before Morgan began his career, he worked in New York City as a painter, for L&L Painting and Rose Company.
Morgan began his career on Martin, where he played Hustle Man. The character sold various items he had from the "hood," always greeting people with his trademark "What's happ'n, chief?" and had a pet dog that he dressed as a rapper. In the 2003 Chris Rock film Head of State, Morgan appeared as a man watching television, often questioning why they are not watching Martin.
Kevin Nealon (pronounced /ˈniːlən/; born November 18, 1953) is an American actor and comedian, best known as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1995, acting in several of the Happy Madison films, for playing Doug Wilson on the Showtime series Weeds, and providing the voice of the title character, Glenn Martin on Glenn Martin, DDS.
Nealon was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Kathleen and Emmett Nealon, an aircraft company executive. A few months after he was born, the family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut. He graduated from St. Joseph High School (Trumbull, Connecticut) in 1971 and then graduated with a bachelor's degree in marketing from Sacred Heart University (and worked in a variety of part-time jobs while doing stand-up comedy).
Nealon debuted on network television doing a stand-up routine for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1984. In 1986, Saturday Night Live recruited his friend Dana Carvey, and Carvey in turn recommended Nealon. Both joined the cast that year, and Nealon became a full-time performer in the 1987-1988 season, and remained for nine seasons.
Crank Yankers is an American television show produced by Adam Carolla, Jimmy Kimmel and Daniel Kellison that featured actual crank calls made by show regulars and celebrity guests, and re-enacted onscreen by puppets for a visual aid to show the viewer what is happening in the call. The show premiered in 2002 on Comedy Central and returned to MTV2 on February 9, 2007, running again until March 30, 2007. The show screened in Australia on SBS Television and The Comedy Channel between 2003 and 2008.
The performers are given a basic outline of a premise by the writers, and call telephone numbers from a list of selected targets (known as "marks"). Using the basic premises, the performers improvise most of their lines, playing off of the responses of their marks, with the intention to keep them on the phone as long as possible.
With the exception of a few outside sources (including previous material from Jim Florentine and the Touch-Tone Terrorists), all the calls are made from Nevada. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 makes it illegal in most states to record telephone calls without both parties' consent. Under Nevada law, only one of the parties has to give consent (i.e., the caller), so prank calls can be recorded without the consent of the prank victims. One result of this was the series' schedule of creating and airing new episodes was fairly sporadic due to most of the celebrities living in Los Angeles, having Los Angeles-based jobs, and so were only periodically able to go to Las Vegas to make calls. Adam Carolla, for example, took his radio program to Las Vegas once or twice a year, and while there would record new calls for the program.
Anthony J. ("Tony") Barbieri (born August 26, 1963, Framingham, Massachusetts) is an American comedy writer and performer. He has appeared on television programs such as Crank Yankers and Jimmy Kimmel Live. He is most famous for his prankish appearances as the character "Jake Byrd."
Barbieri's long-running Monroe series has appeared in more than 100 issues of Mad Magazine. The pieces were originally illustrated by cartoonist Bill Wray.
Barbieri is perhaps best known for his character Jake Byrd on the show Jimmy Kimmel Live! Byrd is good-natured and obsessed with celebrities. Comedy routines involving Byrd usually satirize excessive media attention to celebrity spectacles such as the Michael Jackson trial or the arrest of Paris Hilton. Byrd usually interacts with the fans while they are being interviewed by the media or inserts himself into the press conference. He has successfully fooled major media outlets, including The New York Times, Fox News and Court TV.
Barbieri posed as obsessed fan Jake Byrd at the 2005 trial of Michael Jackson. During the arraignment of Michael Jackson, The New York Times mistook him for a real fan in their reports. During jury deliberations, he similarly fooled Court TV.
James "Jim" Florentine (born August 18, 1964) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, comedian, voice artist, and performer. He is best known for hosting the That Metal Show on Vh1 Classic as well as performing Special Ed and Bobby Fletcher on Crank Yankers.
Currently, he is touring the country performing solo and with Don Jamieson and is part of The Killers of Comedy tour.
Florentine was born James Florentine on August 18, 1964. In 1993, he began his career in comedy clubs in New York City.
In July 2001, Florentine released Terrorizing Telemarketers Volume 1. After numerous plays on the Howard Stern Radio Show, his CD ranking on Amazon.com went from 282,363 to number 2. The only artist ahead of him was the Backstreet Boys. Later that week, Florentine's CD came in at #17 on the Internet Billboard charts.
After the release of Terrorizing Telemarketers Volume 2 in late 2001, Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla took a liking to Florentine's prank calls and hired him for a show to debut in June 2002 on Comedy Central called Crank Yankers. Florentine played Special Ed, a mentally retarded teenager, and Bobby Fletcher, a despicable, alcoholic slob who is the older cousin of Ed.