Comment from Rach
Time: April 27, 2005, 10:03 am

I LOVE that message, and in fact, “Byeeee!” popped into my head earlier this morning when I was typing a goodbye to my hubby on IM. Every so often I also think of “You and the Little Mermaid can go….” and laugh. I sat in my car in the garage for ten minutes last year listening to the TAL episode, it was such a hoot!

Comment from Eli
Time: April 27, 2005, 11:28 am

Uh… anyone got a script for that? I’d like to know what is said in the message, and I can’t exactly click-and-listen along with everyone else, given that I’m deaf.

While I google to no end for a script… satsify my curiousity, someone! Please!

Comment from Ned
Time: April 27, 2005, 11:36 am

Recording starts:
Male voice: “[Unintelligable, possibly 'thought you'd'] get a kick out of this message from my mother.”
Message begins.
Mother: “I think you and the little mermaid can go f*ck yourselves. I told you to stay near the phone, I can’t find those books, you have other books here, it must be in the [unintelligable, possibly 'hallway' or 'long island'], call me back, I’m not gonna stay up all night for you, buhbye.”

Comment from Joe
Time: April 27, 2005, 11:40 am

Hi Eli,

The message: “You and the little mermaid can go f*ck yourselves. I told you to stay near the phone. I can’t find those books…you must have other books here…it must be in La Hoya. Call me back, I’m not going to stay up all night for you. Buhbyee.”

The back story is a rich tapestry, but to paraphrase, the kid’s mom was supposed to find some books for him, and was pissed that he wasn’t in his dorm room when she called back empty-handed. The “little mermaid” is a reference to the student’s girlfriend. His mom didn’t like her.

I hope that’s accurate, I haven’t heard the entire clip for a year or so.

Comment from Disappointed
Time: April 27, 2005, 11:41 am

Lame. Incredibly lame. Some people must have incredibly boring lives if they think this is the “The Greatest Phone Message in the World”

Comment from Not even funny
Time: April 27, 2005, 11:45 am

Agree with Disappointed. That wasn’t even funny….

Comment from Ant
Time: April 27, 2005, 11:50 am

first speaker is a college-age sounding guy, second is his angry mother speaking with a decently thick brooklyn (?) accent, I left out commas to mimic her harried voice:

“thought you’d get a kick outta of this message from my mother heh”
“Hi Fred you AND the little mermaid can go fuck yourselves. I told you to stay near the phonnnne, I can’t find those books you have other books here it must be in the foyer (?) call me back I’m not gonna stay up all night for you GOOD BYEEEE.”
“click”

Comment from Chazel
Time: April 27, 2005, 12:14 pm

I don’t find the message funny at all – just normal.

Comment from David
Time: April 27, 2005, 12:30 pm

Eh, whatever. Even with the back story, I still think it’s pretty lame, like the poster above said. What’s worse is having it featured in an NPR-esque radio program with their oh-so-annoying style.

Maybe after listening to fake callers on Phil Hendrie has desensitized me to the funniness of this message? Anyhow, glad some people get a kick out of it.

Comment from Beez
Time: April 27, 2005, 12:34 pm

This is the greatest phone message in the world? Ok, if you say so. :-(

Comment from Mandy
Time: April 27, 2005, 12:38 pm

I didnt find that much humor in the message either…

Pingback from RobotSkirts » Blog Archive » More TLA Goodness
Time: April 27, 2005, 12:47 pm

[...] hilarious phone messages recently. The latest recalls a This American Life segment about “The Greatest Phone Message in the World”. I suggest you listen to the full story as it is far gre [...]

Comment from Denise
Time: April 27, 2005, 12:50 pm

I thought it was mildly amusing, but the “greatest message in the world”? Not even close….

Comment from Steve
Time: April 27, 2005, 1:06 pm

Well this message just proves the old entertainment and comedy maxim. Prefacing and testimonial always satisfy expecation more than content.

Comment from LD
Time: April 27, 2005, 1:15 pm

you and your funniest message in the world can go fuck yourselves. what a waste of time and bandwidth.

Comment from Michael Ströck
Time: April 27, 2005, 2:23 pm

Sorry, that’s not even remotely funny.

Comment from kevin
Time: April 27, 2005, 2:45 pm

its the greatest phone message in the world, not the funniest.

what makes it so great is that it was forwarded all over the kid’s campus and became a legend to everyone that heard it.

greatest, not funniest.

Comment from Pete
Time: April 27, 2005, 3:48 pm

It’s most likely La Jolla, a rich suburb of San Diego.
And I think her sign-off should be spelled “b’bye”.

Comment from Alec
Time: April 27, 2005, 4:22 pm

My brother was at Columbia in the late 80’s and he told me about this when it happened.

Great find.

Comment from GmanUK
Time: April 27, 2005, 5:01 pm

Probably the best lager in the world is a claim made by the brewers at Carlsberg, however it is not th best beer, same for this message really. It is however one of the funniest i’ve heard in a log time, sorry that;s long time, i don’t listen to phone messages on the can, just read funny pages.

A script would be good wouldn’t it?…

Not the funniest message in the world but perhaps one of the funniest……..

Peace to all….GmanUK

Comment from Magicmike
Time: April 27, 2005, 6:17 pm

I don’t think the answering machine message is intended to be the crux of the story. Clearly, it was mostly funny to those there at time. I did find the story as a whole very funny and good listening.

Comment from jp
Time: April 27, 2005, 7:39 pm

i agree with robot skirts you need to hear the whole ‘this american life’ episode to understand why this is the greatest phone message ever.

http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/02/203.html

ciao,

jp

Comment from angus from australia
Time: April 27, 2005, 8:11 pm

my mum left me much the same message 3 days ago. its funny, but nowhere nowhere near the Top 40 let alone Greatest Phone Message Ever… I mean, don’t you people party?

sorry if you don’t but thats just run of the mill, not greatest material

Comment from Jacob
Time: April 28, 2005, 12:54 am

Just listening to the message on its own would be a major disappointment; the pleasure is the whole shaggy dog aspect of the broadcast as a whole. Great find!

Comment from Graham
Time: April 28, 2005, 1:43 am

What University was this again? I guess students will always find ‘fuck’ hilarious.

Comment from Cheng-Jih Chen
Time: April 28, 2005, 4:09 am

The University is Columbia, around 1990. We had just gotten this fancy new phone system: voice messages that could be forwarded! And you could put a little annotation in front of the message you were forwarding! (What would they think of next?) Thus was the chain voice mail being introduced to Morningside Heights, with all the characteristics we see in email with top-posting, forwards and so on.

I recall there being a few messages that were passed, around, but the Little Mermaid one was the biggest up to that time. People typically received it with many minutes of friends-of-friends “You have to hear this!” annotation before actually getting to the original message.

Who knows why these things get passed around? It’s just one of those bizarre popular fads that spreads like wildfire for no apparent reason. Mention “Little Mermaid voice mail” to anyone at Columbia in 1990 or so and you’ll get a reaction: it’s in our year’s collective subconscious. To some degree, you had to be there.

Comment from kevin
Time: April 28, 2005, 5:22 am

define meme for me Cheng-Jih.

“It’s just one of those bizarre popular fads that spreads like wildfire for no apparent reason.”

Comment from Donkaroo
Time: April 28, 2005, 7:37 am

This is silly, why is this considered the greatest phone message of all times. Pathetic.

Comment from Benjamin
Time: April 28, 2005, 1:44 pm

There’s so much love in here…

Comment from scotty
Time: April 29, 2005, 12:40 am

I can’t believe so much hostility in people…. chill out folks.. like Chen says, you had to be there…

Comment from Cheng-Jih Chen
Time: April 29, 2005, 6:11 am

Note that these were innocent times: we were oohing-and-aahing at being able to pass around voice mail from one phone to the other: almost no one had email addresses outside the CS/Engineering folks and a few of us still had typewriters in our dorm rooms, and the Great Worm of 1988 shut down the Internet by knocking out only a few thousand machines. Now-ordinary concepts like memes had yet to enter our consciousness.

Thinking about it a bit more, I suppose we’re lucky that no one had invented voice spam by the time I left, though an acquaintance of mine did try to send the same student club announcement to a long list of people. This involved punching in five-digit extensions by the dozens. I don’t recall what came of that.