Prank caller Tom Mabe was working in his Louisville, KY office when he began his personal crusade against telemarketers, fabricating elaborate stories to exasperate the phone solicitors to the point where they hung up on him. In time he began recording the calls on his answering machine and playing the tapes for friends; soon Mabe started appearing on radio morning shows as well, ultimately financing a CD collection of his best pranks titled “Revenge on the Telemarketers.” After a copy of the disc made its way to the offices of Virgin Records Nashville, the label signed Mabe and issued “Revenge on the Telemarketers, Round One” in early 2000, which featured several bits from Mabe's first CD and plenty of new material. A second volume followed before year's end, and a third and fourth after that.
Rather than settle into some fat and happy times at the Mabe household -- in addition to Tom, there's wife Melanie and 18-month-old Joshua -- he's hungrily eyeing the world of television, where the real money is.
Mabe and longtime buddy and co-conspirator Jim Clark are pitching "Mabe in America," their contribution to the "reality-TV" circus, to the major cable networks. Picking up where "Candid Camera" left off, but tossing in a healthy dollop of loopiness, "Mabe in America" is basically Mabe wandering around the city and luring innocent bystanders into bizarre situations concocted by him and Clark.
There's Mabe, dressed as a minister, taking a car for a test drive and unleashing a stream of un-Godly expletives at fellow motorists as the mortified salesman looks on. Or Mabe, dressed as an airline pilot, getting noticeably drunk at an airport bar, hidden cameras recording the reactions of stunned patrons. It's all pretty inane, but these days, inane sells.

SHOWTIMES: 8:00 & 10:30pm

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