Show 001
Blinded By The Light
Boxing 1
You May Go...Now
Chamber of Horrors
Shiatzu
Boxing 2
Customs
Slept on His Arms
Boxing 3

Show 002
The Time Helmet
Five Bucks! 1
Mr. Wiggles' Clubhouse
Five Bucks! 2
The Head
Five Bucks 3
Pamper Me
Mr. Wiggles' Clubhouse 2

Show 003
Laundry Day Fashions
Steamies
Burglar and Dog 1
Bonnet
Of Mice and Snoopy
Burglar and Dog 2
Burglar and Dog 3
The Silent Ventriloquist
We're Gonna Get Some Tonight song

Show 004
Chocolate Mousse
Nose Clippers
Pants! The Musical
Bus Stop
I'm Bored
Trash Can Fight 1
Pizza Delivery
Trash Can Fight 2

Show 005
Police Line-Up
Emergency Rescue
Jesus in the Classroom 1
Pygmalion
Jesus in the Classroom 2
The Thread
Jesus in the Classroom 3
Knee Slap

Show 006
Party Music
Killing Your Dad
Dance Avant de Tomber
Was the Party Too Loud, Mr. Smithers?
Eggtown Boy 1
My Music Will Live On
(This Song's Gonna Make A) Great Video
Eggtown Boy

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found at: http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_10.06.94/ARTS/co1006.htm
"The CBC has made the right decision by picking up The Vacant Lot for 13 more episodes. The Vacant Lot (Nick McKinney, Vito Viscomi, Paul Greenberg and Rob Gfroerer) had a good first six shows, despite what some gray-hairs have written in our nation's newspapers. Stand-out sketches were "Jesus In The Classroom" (about Jesus as a teen attending a Canadian high school -- "Your father was a carpenter?") and "Steamies" (in which a vendor gets third-degree burns from toxic hot dogs). The show's main weakness was the direction, which featured too many arty angles and not enough straight shots of the group."

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interview taken from: http://www.peteranthonyholder.com/cjad02.htm
Transcript of an interview with
THE VACANT LOT
A four man Canadian sketch comedy troupe featuring
NICK McKINNEY, PAUL GREENBERG, VITO VISCOMI & ROB GFROERER
The interview was aired at 10pm eastern, on Friday, October 14, 1994
It was conducted by Peter Anthony Holder
the evening talk show host on
CJAD 800 AM, Montreal

CJAD: Right now we are going to talk to a comedy troupe. You may have seen them on the CBC. If you have one of those satellite dishes with an illegal chip, you might see them on Comedy Central. And through the wonders of technology, we have the members of the Vacant Lot. The comedy troupe just had a run on the CBC and right now they are in our Toronto studios at our sister station CFRB 1010 Toronto. How are you doing guys?

VACANT: (Myriad of hello from four voices).

CJAD: Introduce yourselves please.

VACANT: I'm Paul Greenberg....I'm Nick McKinney....I'm Rob Gfroerer....and I'm Vito Viscomi.

CJAD: And the four of your make up The Vacant Lot and can be seen on the CBC.....actually not seen right now because you had six episodes of your show on the air on the CBC.

VACANT: That's correct.

CJAD: And you are now currently writing more?

VACANT: 13 more. We're on hiatus.

CJAD: When will we get a chance to see the next set of shows?

VACANT: Well, if you live in the United States, which you don't, probably sometime around April, May, and there'll be back on again on the CBC next September.

CJAD: What about the six that recently ran. Will they be rerun on the CBC?

VACANT: In January, I believe, they're being rerun. I might be wrong.

CJAD: For those who haven't seen your comedy on the air, describe what you do, if you could please

VACANT: Slightly bent. Occasionally surreal. Playfully evil....playfully evil is a good description. Musical and dark. How's that?

CJAD: That's broad enough?

VACANT: Boy do we give good interview or what! (laughter)

CJAD: Whenever people describe comedy, they always try to pinpoint or pigeon-hole people based on what has gone by in the past. The most current example would be The Kids In The Hall....

VACANT: Kids In The Hall.....jinx!

CJAD: And one of you actually is from the same genetic tree.

VACANT: That would be Rob Gfroerer.....yeah he's Mark's dad!....(laughter)....we're very proud of Mark and we wish him all the best. (laughter)

CJAD: Nick, your brother is in Kids In The Hall, right?

VACANT: HE IS!!!!! Holy smokes, wow! Go figure, two guys in one family...geez.

CJAD: Mom must be proud.

VACANT: Yes, she is. I think they both are. They're wondering what my mother was drinking, I think, when she was pregnant with the two of us, but beyond that, yes, very proud, for lack of anything better to be.

CJAD: Do you mind the comparisons?

VACANT: No, it's weird, because I think the comparisons between Mark and myself are much like the comparisons between us and the Kids. I mean, it's flattering. I think Mark's talented. We all think the Kids are very talented. We'd like to maybe some day be the troupe that other up-and-coming troupes are compared to.

CJAD: Would you say the comparison is accurate? Would you say that what you do is very similar or kind of similar to either The Kids In The Hall, or for that matter Saturday Night Live?

VACANT: No, it's really nothing like it. I think once the show...once people have seen enough shows and gotten used to the kind of stuff we do they're going to see there's really no comparison. We're pretty well completely apolitical. We don't do drag. We don't really do topic stuff so much. It's more sort of social weird Warner Brothers kind of humour.......I think the one thing we all have in common is that we are all doing sketch comedy and that's basically it. The different styles are evident.

CJAD: Now that you are on in the United States on Comedy Central, do you have to think about the different audiences in Canada and the United States or do you just do your comedy and it goes on the air in Canada and it goes on the air in the States and you don't worry about it?

VACANT: Well, our comedy is pretty generic in itself. I mean we do whatever it takes to get a laugh and it's kind of borderless......Yeah, it's more universal....I mean a Canadian slipping on a banana peel and an American slipping on a banana peel are both funny. There's nothing really specific about our comedy geographically speaking......Plus it's such a common pool culturally speaking now, that really we're all making fun of the same things. The only advantage is, Canadians aren't ultimately responsible for a lot of the stuff that we see in movie theatres and on TV, so it's a little easier for us to make fun of it.

CJAD: But there are a lot of Canadians involved in the American media, primarily in comedy. Why do you think that is?

VACANT: There's no jobs up here, (laughter). I think there is a grain of truth in that. Canada is a really limited market compared to the United States, unfortunately. The audience is huge down there. You should see them, (laughter), they're all 300 pounds......Big genes....it's all that pork and potatoes and stuff.

CJAD: Based on that theory do you think once you guys become major stars......

VACANT: We're going to invest in pork and potatoes

CJAD: ...that we'll lose you below the 49th parallel?

VACANT: I don't know. Toronto is home and Canada is home for us. We like the distance that it gives us from the American culture. Yes, actually, we're going to move to the States as quickly as possible, (laughter).....We're all from Toronto, we're all Canadian. I think we like it up here......We've got the best of both worlds happening right now. I mean, we get to stay home and make our show and everybody.....get paid in American dollars, (laughter).....yeah, and everybody......do you know American money is gold bars? They call it bullion.....we get to make the show here and it gets aired in the States. It's a very comfortable situation.

CJAD: So you're going to stick it out like Wayne and Shuster. Oh, there's a comparison you want, right?

VACANT: Actually yes. (laughter). We actually met Frank Shuster. A really sweet guy.....so we feel awful saying anything bad about him.

CJAD: Where does the name Vacant Lot or The Vacant Lot come from?

VACANT: I stole it from a guy. I hope he's not listening. We were looking. The troupe formed and we didn't have a name and I had some stupid job and I was working with some guy who didn't have a band but had a good name for a band and I said well I have troupe with no name and you have a name with no troupe, can I have it. And the phone rang, or something and I just took it.

CJAD: How did you four guys meet?

VACANT: Three of us went to Ryerson here in Toronto and we realized we had the same sick sense of humour and then we sort of meet Nick at a party and he was in the corner drunk. We woke him up and he was funny, and we just sort of took it from there.

CJAD: In writing the material you all collaborate, I assume in the material together?

VACANT: Yeah.

CJAD: Is there a sort of lead writer? How does the process work?

VACANT: Well there's all sorts of different combinations and permutations. I mean sometimes one person will write a scene, but basically by the time it gets to air it's been through all of us a couple of times.

CJAD: And the music involved. You also do parodies.

VACANT: Yup, that's all of us as well.

CJAD: Obviously you have musical backgrounds.

VACANT: No obviously you haven't heard the music (laughter)....We have non-musical backgrounds....collectively we're kind of average musicians.

CJAD: Where does your inspiration come from for the parodies that you do? What do you see when you watch television or movies or listen to music that the rest of us don't because obviously you take that and twist it.

VACANT: I think we look at trends that are happening and things like that and whenever something is too big it's very easy to make fun of. Then again there are also subtle things in our parodies. We're writing something right now which is a Pet Shop Boys take off. I think people are sort of sick and tired of the Pet Shop Boys and it's time that they got their comeuppance....Also on that we also have Ace Of Base and Aha. We just think they're very wrong, those bands and we thought we'd do a parody of that. So we did kind of a Swedish style band and that was called Knee Slap, and that's in one of the shows.

CJAD: Have you ever heard from anyone you have parodied in the past?

VACANT: Well indirectly we heard from Jesus, (laughter). We've been getting a lot of letters from Jesus' friends actually.....that's true....I think they call themselves friends of Jesus.....Solar Temple....no it wasn't the Solar Temple.....oh that's good, it's Montreal. It's kind of close.

CJAD: Careful, careful.

VACANT: Are you asking like specific artists...

CJAD: Yeah, artists or people who are fans of these artists.

VACANT: Well, we never got a chance. We used to do a Paul Simon. We don't really do anybody specifically. That's the problem. We do general parodies.....yeah we kind of boil down styles. One half of it is parodying the style and the other is we try to build up sort of believable characters in these bands who are just as funny as the parody itself.....We did a Paul Simon one. .....that's the only really specific one......That's not in one of the shows. That was on stage. That's as close as we ever got....And we saw Paul Simon once....and he told us to stop doing it. (laughter).

CJAD: You guys have been on television a little while and you're getting a lot of good press. It sounds like you're an overnight sensation, but you weren't doing this just before the CBC show. You been together for awhile, haven't you?

VACANT: Six days, (laughter).....seven years actually.

CJAD: Seven years!

VACANT: And I'm getting real itchy, (laughter)

CJAD: Does it change, doing the television show then what you were doing because I guess before you where doing stage, live shows. How does that differ either in the performing process or the writing process in what you're doing for television as opposed to doing it in front of a live audience on stage.

VACANT: Well I guess the biggest difference is just the scope of the whole thing. I mean, when we did the show at the Rivoli, we'd show up with paper boxes and make hats and sail boats and stuff out of them to use as props and now you can write a scene where you say an elephant steps on Nipsey Russell. And they'll get Nipsey Russell and they'll get an elephant and they'll teach it to step on him.....We still have to make the hats.

CJAD: Do you enjoy performing on stage more than doing....because with the television show you don't have an audience, correct?

VACANT: No, actually, it's not in front of an audience. It's just shot in studio and then we show the final sketches in front of an audience and record their reactions.....They each have their pluses and their minuses. We like doing stage work a lot because you get the immediate reaction of the audience and we like doing the television work because we have complete, kind of, control over what the audience is going to see. And so they're both very nice, thank you.

CJAD: As far as the television show is concerned, what about the censors? Any problems there?

VACANT: Nothing really major......They let us do the Jesus thing....yeah that wasn't any problem....Just language, which is fine. It's something we can live with. In terms of concepts, no. We've been very fortunate. We haven't had any problems with that.

CJAD: And what about over in the United States. Do they differ? Do you have any different problems with censors in the United States as opposed to Canada, or is it exactly the same?

VACANT: Well there was one sketch actually, that didn't run in the States on MTV, which is lovely father and son sketch about the son killing his father.....On demand though.....exactly, the father asks to be killed.....But the CBC ran it and we didn't get any mail. We did get a lot of mail about our Jesus sketch surprisingly.....we got letters about me and Rob dancing together.....yeah because of it's reenactment of anal sex, which just shows where people's minds will go if you give them long enough.....obviously they got the unrated version....the director's cut (laughter).

CJAD: So you're not concerned with the censors on the next thirteen based on maybe the CBC was saying, "well gee, we're not worried about what these guys are doing, but now that we've received mail we'll think twice."

VACANT: I think when they receive mail it means people are watching and reacting to it. No matter what you do I think you're going to receive a certain amount of mail on things. I think people look for things to be angry about sometimes and if it's not going to be that it's going to be something else. So I don't think we can avoid it.

CJAD: Any plans to have more writers on the show, because I would assume with the four of you doing the bulk of the writing, it's one thing doing the stage show but you've got to churn this stuff out now and then it's gone, right?

VACANT: Yeah we've hired a writer and we're looking at hiring other writers, not that that's an open audition for writers. We already have other people in mind, but Gary Campbell, who used to write for the Kids In The Hall is now writing for us and his style meshes really nicely with ours.

CJAD: Is that difficult, bringing somebody else into the group? Even though they're not a performer, they're just a writer, to mesh with what you guys have already done for so many years?

VACANT: I think it depends on the person.....We knew Gary before. We knew what his style was like and personality is also a big thing too, because we all spend the day together looking at each other.....locked in a room.

CJAD: When you guys met did you think this would be something you guys would be doing now in 1994 with your own television show on both sides of the Canadian-American border? What were you guys doing in school, for instance? Where were your careers or lives headed before The Vacant Lot became The Vacant Lot?

VACANT: I guess stalking was a big thing, (laughter). I was stalking Rob too, so that's how we met....That's actually how we all met. We were all stalking each other. It just turned out to be kind of weird happenstance.....Personally, I was always a fan of sketch comedy. I always wanted to get into it. I never thought it would happen, but it was always sort of a dream. And luckily I met the right people and then we broke up and I met these guys (laughter)......I found more and more things I couldn't do. That's what happened to me. And then I met these guys and we ended up doing this.....More than likely it was out of necessity that we're together, I think.

CJAD: What about other jobs that you've had. Have you guys done anything else besides this?

VACANT: Oh yeah, I used to do taxidermy?

CJAD: Excuse me!

VACANT: Taxidermy. Mounting animals.

CJAD: Didn't Norman Bates do that?

VACANT: Yes......you mean stuffing animals.....yes, stuffing animals, not mounting animals. I don't want to give the wrong impression. Yes actually Norman and I were good friends. That was fun for awhile. I used to do it out of my basement. Rob, what have you done?.......I used to be a busboy in a revolving restaurant. I got lost a lot.

CJAD: Boy, a lot of Dramamine.

VACANT: That true, and Nick what did you do.....I was a waiter, I worked as a researcher....I think you were a waiter too, weren't you Nick.....then I was a waiter again, then I was a researcher for awhile, then I was a waiter again.....and Paul?......Let's say I dressed as a pig and played basketball and I carried a big.......

CJAD: WHOA! WHOA, back up, back up! Paul, dressed as a pig and played basketball!?!

VACANT: Yeah, it was for this rich guy, I don't know (laughter) I'd really rather not talk about it.

CJAD: Oh I really rather would.

VACANT: I got to keep the costume. I also dressed up as a little kid and spent all day looking through a fence......yeah, I think you dressed as a reporter and you dressed as a baseball player.

CJAD: Oh, no, no, no this needs explanation here Paul.

VACANT: Oh, you're back on the pig thing.

CJAD: Of course, of course!

VACANT: It was a commercial. I would do anything for money and I got a call saying they need someone under three foot one to fit the costume and it turned out that it was me and three other midgets. (laughter). You couldn't see through the costume and it was for some chocolate bar commercial. And we were supposed to be pigs playing basketball. The director just kept hitting me in the nose. My little snout with the basketball......And what was your joke about it was very hot in the suit, so you were dressed as a pig and what was your joke?......I said I'm bacon in here! (laughter)

CJAD: Where do you see you guys going in the future, would you like to perhaps do movies or.....

VACANT: Sure, okay, you got one? (laughter)......I think eventually. Right now our hands are full with the sketch show. We want to go as far with it as we can, until we decide, hopefully that's it enough. But right now we still have a lot of ideas that we want to get across on television. But after that......we still want to work together, I think well into the future, no matter what happens just because it's fun......I'll need somebody to work with me in taxidermy so......I mean, I'll hold the animals down, (laughter)

CJAD: Is there ever a time when you guys are working together where you're just really sick of each other?

VACANT: Occasionally......yeah, every once in awhile, but nothing major. I think it's like any marriage. It needs tolerance and love and alcohol, (laughter).

CJAD: Well guys, continued success and thank you for talking with us.

VACANT: Thank you for talking with us.

CJAD: Now let's see if I get the names right.

VACANT: Yeah

CJAD: Paul Greenberg.

VACANT: Yup

CJAD: Vito Viscomi

VACANT: Yeah........and I dare you!

CJAD: and Rob Gfroerer.

VACANT: WHOA, you've been coached.

CJAD: These guys are The Vacant Lot. If you missed them on the CBC, they'll be back on in September, correct?

VACANT: Yes.

CJAD: And for those who have illegal satellite dishes, you can see them on Comedy Central. When is it on Comedy Central for those who have illegal dishes out there

VACANT: Friday nights, 9:30.

CJAD: Not that we would want people to have illegal dishes out there, but just in case. We have some American friends who are just on the other side of the border who listen to us, so we'll let them know.

VACANT: Thank you guys for being with us.

CJAD: Thank you Peter.

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interview found at: http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_07.16.92/arts/co0716.htm

RIVOLI FILLS THE HUMOR GAP AND BIG CITY IMPROV KEEPS ON TREKIN'
Comedic colleagues Vacant Lot and Dan Redican are cutting up Queen St.
by
ANDREW CLARK
Interviewing sketch comedy foursome the Vacant Lot is like being trapped in a burst of punchline crossfire. The best thing to do is keep your head down.

This group of twentysomething sketchmeisters -- Rob Gfroerer, Vito Viscomi, Nick McKinney, (brother of Kid in the Hall Mark McKinney) and Paul Greenberg -- has had four years to build an arsenal of around 300 scenes, monologues and songs. It's impossible to have a conversation with a single Lot-ician; they act and speak as one.

So how'd you guys first meet?

"A lack of ability to do anything else."

"We all went to Ryerson together for Radio and Television Arts and they do an annual comedy show and we all met during that and then we met Nick at a party. He was drunk so we had second thoughts even before meeting him."

"[Mark McKinney] said, 'Hey, why don't you guys meet up with Nick?' "

"So we did."

"We all like jokes about narcolepsy."

The Vacant Lot are drawn to humor with a dark edge. Greenberg says they've done shows with eight or nine guns and plenty of death. As far as he's concerned, "The sadder, the funnier."

The Vacant Lot do not confine themselves to the club circuit. They've done two shows at the Theatre Centre: Eat My Jung, directed by ex-Frantic and Kids in the Hall head write, Dan Redican, and We're All Going to Die, directed by Kid Kevin McDonald. They say they're outsiders in both the theatre and comedy communities.

"We've made a really consistent effort to stay away from 90 per cent of the comedy that's out there," says Greenberg, "because we don't even want to get lumped into it."

"We don't want to be four stand-ups sitting in a hotel room in Banff watching porn and doing coke."

"Speak for yourself."

"There's something to be said for it."

The Lot finance their shows with capital raised from "Rob's Mom."

"Rob's mom is rich. She invented Liquid Paper."

"Yep."

"No, that was Mike Nesmith."

"Was it?"

In October, they'll be opening at the Rivoli for friend Sandra Shamas, of My Boyfriend's Back and There's Going To Be Laundry fame. Shamas will be workshopping the show's third instalment.

Meanwhile, the Lot are content to work patiently at honing their craft. They rehearse in Gfroerer's basement and play bridge at Viscomi's place.

Their first album is due out in August. They've just finished a script for Joe Flaherty's Maniac Mansion and have a manager in L.A. pitching their pilot series, Be There with Belzon, a surreal journey through the mind of a cat-owning couch potato.

The Vacant Lot are popular in Toronto -- so much so that they even have their own fan club in St. Catharines. "There are three people who run the fan club. I don't know how many people are in it."

"They come to every show and they do the door."

"We've had nine-foot mock-ups of Rob up in the Rivoli."

"It was above my bed for a long time until a friend of mine ripped it down in a drunken rage."

The Vacant Lot perform as part of the Rivoli's new Monday night comedy series (July 27) organized by the Left Hand of Frank (featuring Frank and Dan Redican) which runs through July.

LEFT HAND OF FRANK GIVES RELIEF FOR JUST FIVE BUCKS.

Thirty-year-old Frank Meschuleit is a puppeteer with an impressive list of credits. He's worked on Fraggle Rock, Follow That Bird and The Christmas Toy. Frank is the brains behind the Rivoli's Monday Night Summer comedy show.

His show is an adult puppet show. "It's like watching the puppet TV show that, as a puppeteer, I always knew existed," says Frank, "but would never make it to television."

The show features Gill's Brain. "It's about a brain that gets out of his body and it's a real break for him, you know, he's not getting messages from the spleen to make a few more lymphocytes. It's his struggle to recognize his own consciousness. It's a great excuse to see a realistic-looking brain puppet wobble around stage.

"At the end he does that old commercial: 'This is drugs, this is your brain on drugs.' And he gets burned and that's the end of it."

THE REDICAN MAN

"Character-based monologity, comedy, bullshit -- I don't know, crap, goddamn funny stuff."

According to comedy guru Dan Redican, that's what audiences can expect from his sets at The Rivoli. Redican has just returned from Vancouver where he previewed his latest show, The Devil's Progress Report. Torontonians will remember him for his work in the Frantics and his involvement with CBC's The Kids in the Hall where he acted as supervising producer and "close personal friend" to the troupe.

Redican, 36, is currently working on a CBC pilot called the Sammy the Elephant Show. It features Sammy, "a decrepit old bastard. He introduces the show and then falls asleep each week. There's a rumor that he's severely cross-addicted, but they can't pin anything on him."

Redican is doing the Rivoli gigs "for fun" and to enjoy the risk factor of performing in a club environment. He's going to mix old material with new. "I think for live theatre to be any good or interesting, it has to have an air of danger about it."

BIG CITY IMPROV: LAUGH LONG AND PROSPER

For parody to hit the mark it has to be spot-on imitation and at the same time expose the absurdities of the genre it's spoofing. Big City Improv's latest Star Trek episode, Amok Time, succeeds on all counts.

In this, the third Star Trek instalment -- it was preceded by Mirror Mirror and The Khan Saga -- Spock (Garry Campbell) must return to Vulcan to mate or face certain death. Along the way the crew goes through all the turmoils and heart- burnings that are the stock-in-trade of any Trek episode. The cast is very strong, getting plenty of laughs for its exact impressions of the Enterprise crew. Campbell, Gary Pearson (Kirk) and Lisa Merchant (Uhura, T'Pau) stand out.

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found at: http://www.unoriginal.com/tvl/jam.html

Career's made of Sterner stuff
By JIM SLOTEK -- Comedy

It's a marriage made in bad taste heaven.

When the oxymoronically-named Howard Stern Radio Show debuts on WUTV this Saturday, the guy listed as producer/writer will be Vito Viscomi -- ex of Toronto's Vacant Lot comedy troupe, who had their own short-lived CBC show. The Vacant Lot leaned heavily toward shock, inspiring a CBC exec to say, "If they could make it through a skit, let alone a whole show, without killing or maiming somebody, maybe they'd still be on."

For all that, Viscomi feels, "Howard Stern says things The Vacant Lot may have said around the card table and we wished we could say on the air. For some people, it's very freeing."

How Viscomi got there speaks to the pinball career he's had since the Vacant Lot days. After CBC, Viscomi and colleague Nick McKinney (brother of Kid In The Hall Mark) went to New York to develop an "Internet sitcom" for Lorne Michaels and Microsoft.

"We did 13 episodes and now, of course, the Microsoft Network no longer has an Entertainment division, 'cause they found out pretty quickly that the ideas are bigger than the actual technology. The Internet is much more feasible as a service provider, buying tickets and things like that."

Then he was story editor of Apartment 2F -- the U.S. vid channel MTV's first attempt at a sitcom. "It was about a couple of brothers who live in an apartment with a wacky neighbor and other sitcom elements. But on top of that, you had to have a musical guest and a sketch troupe." It lasted 13 episodes, too.

When Howard Stern signed his deal for a Saturday night CBS/syndicated series based on his radio show, the exec producer was Jim Bederman, the ex-exec producer of that aforementioned online sitcom. (In hiring Bederman, Stern -- who aims to nuke Saturday Night Live -- hired away one of the top execs of SNL boss Lorne Michaels).

For his part, Bederman took along his favorite writer -- Viscomi.

"It's pretty ironic that I'm working for Howard now," Viscomi says. "I've been a fan for years. When I was in Toronto, my wife's brother, who lived in New York, used to dub these tapes of his show and send them to me. And I'd think they were disgusting but funny as hell. Then, when I came to New York, I listened to him all the time."

So what's the Stern experience like? "I'm working with a lot of strippers and freaks -- and those are just the CBS executives (pauses for imaginary laughs). Thank you, I'll be here all week."

The Howard Stern Radio Show is largely just that -- on-camera/in-studio stuff from Howard's radio show. "We actually leave the morning crew (Stern, Robin Quivers, Fred Norris and Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling) to do what they do. We oversee the show and see what we can cull from them."

The other 20% or so, "bumpers, animated segments, stuff like that," is a bit of a state secret. As we talked, however, Viscomi was in the midst of editing short films involving some of the freakish Stern "Whack Pack" -- Crackhead Bob and Fred The Elephant Boy. "We're introducing the regulars on the show and letting people know who they are. This is going to 70% of the country, and a lot of people haven't actually heard Howard's show.

"This is what my life's become. I don't know Howard all that well, but me and Fred The Elephant Boy, we're best friends."

And despite his CBC experience, Viscomi has no intention of ending up on-camera with Howard, "because I know the first thing he'll want to do is shave my back."

Unlike some of his old Vacant Lot pals -- including Paul Greenberg, who's auditioning in L.A., and Rob Gfroerer, who's back in Toronto -- Viscomi finds New York a perfect fit.

"Anthony LaPaglia said it best, 'I like the fact I can walk out the front door and be faced with humanity.'

"And it's no coincidence that this is where Howard broke big. It's a human circus -- the perfect place to find people on the street and make them stars because of their speech impediment."