no one can track skype
I beg them but they won't let other people see my number

'AL COHOLIC' CALLING

Monday, December 10, 2007
By N. CLARK JUDD
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Jersey City native giant among prank callers

You may not know the name of Jersey City native Jim Davidson. But perhaps you've heard of "Al Coholic," "Stan Dup" or "Joe Mama."

Those are some of the names Davidson and his co-conspirators used in more than 100 prank calls they made to "Red," a hulking bartender of a long-gone Journal Square pub called Tube Bar.

The calls were reportedly the inspiration for Bart's phony phone calls to Moe the Bartender on the popular animated television show "The Simpsons," as well as fodder for countless radio personalities.

Davidson, John Elmo, their friend Keith Travers - who Davidson credits with coming up with the idea of making prank calls in the first place - and friends would call bars like Red's and ask for patrons with easily misappropriated names.

Davidson counted on Red's distinct accent and gravelly voice to mangle the name, which the gruff publican would usually shout across the room. And even after Red figured out he was being pranked, it would only add to the comic effect as the bar proprietor heaped mountains of abuse at Davidson - and occasionally his mother.

Red's voice was like "somebody who was gargling with Drano," Davidson said, or "I guess sort of what the missing link might sound like."

There are few printable examples of the fake names Davidson and his friends would say to Red, but perhaps the tamest came on a rainy day in Jersey City. One of Davidson's friends called Red and asked for "Rufus Lincoln."

True to form, Davidson said, Red yelled out the requested name - but it sounded like "Roof is leaking! Roof is leaking!"

Davidson and co-conspirator Elmo recently released calls made to Red, as well as previously unheard pranks from elsewhere in the county, for sale via their Web site, www.bumbarbastards.com. These recordings join others already up for sale.

But long before the pair released the tapes, copies given to friends had circulated so widely that they had become a cult hit by the 1980s. And if their pranks' pattern sounds familiar, Davidson says, it's because "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening used them as the inspiration for Bart Simpson's tomfoolery at the expense of Moe, the owner of Moe's Tavern in fictional Springfield.

"We're the main idea behind Moe's bar," Davidson boasted.

The similarity has often been drawn, but Groening appears never to have admitted that the Tube Bar tapes were his inspiration.

Davidson says that like Bart, he and his friends were just kids out for a laugh - and finding it at the expense of their elders.

"We knew about this place because we'd go in there when we were underage to get beer and things like that. It was always funny to walk by there and see people in suits standing next to derelicts, and people getting thrown out into the alley," Davidson said.

Those pre-cell phone days were a glorious time for prank callers.

"We had the mother lode in those days because every 20 feet there was a bar, and in every bar were people just dying for you to call them," said Davidson, now 54.

And the tough guys who answered the phone weren't simply going to hang up. "They were all like World War II, Korean War veterans, and they weren't going to back down for anybody," Davidson said.

Davidson is writing a screenplay based on the stories surrounding the prank calls he made with his friends, but he says phony phone calls are becoming a lost art.

"It's so easy to trace phone calls now. I mean everybody's got caller ID," he said. "You need something to counter that."