Many a character has been born and honed in the hallowed halls of Scott Aukerman’s Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast. Among the best are Don DiMello, Mike the Janitor, Cuban crooner Victor Diamond and his manager, Tiny. And of course who can forget the incest-prone music moguls knows as the Bachelor Brothers?
Hell, it’s quite clear that one of the most appealing aspects of the podcast, and to a larger degree, Scott Aukerman’s career, is his ability to nurture the inclinations of his comedian friends. Zach Galifianakis was quoted in The New York Times as saying Scott has been “kind of a den mother to comics for years.†But chief among this cavalcade of characters has to be the student-teacher duo known as Marissa Wompler and Miss Charlotte Listler.
I can still remember the exact East Village street corner I was on when I first heard the dulcet tones of Marissa Wompler. The brain child of the brilliantly demented Jessica St. Clair, Wompler is a Marina del Rey high-schooler turned podcast intern, who, despite having been on various shows since her first appearance in the summer of 2010, seems to have only aged two-or-so years.
And Miss Charlotte Listler is, of course, Wompler’s hermaphrodite mentor and gifted-class teacher, played oh-so-winningly by Lennon Parham. The Wompler-Listler world has come to fruition in thirteen regular episodes of Comedy Bang! Bang!; an appearance on the Don Dimelo episode of The Andy Daly Pilot Podcast Project; one Earwolf Presents special; and two special episodes of Comedy Bang! Bang! both of whichfollow the concept of an ensemble-style podcast actually hosted by Wompler and DJ’d by Listler.
Massive clitorises, prolapsed anuses, punching dogs to death, shanghaiing high-schoolers, and more romantic entanglements than David Duchovny on a swingers cruise – these are just some of the dramatic events and evocative images that pepper the narrative landscape of Wompler and Listler. But what do we really know about them? Join us as we dive head first into their ever-expanding universe and explore their seventeen plus Earwolf podcast appearances in this definitive guide to womping it up! Let’s see if we can maneuver our way through the soap-opera-esque web of relationships explored in this ever-expanding universe and see what we really know about comedy’s favorite bossypants intern.
What Do Our Protagonists Really Look Like?
We know that Marissa has more than a few odd physical characteristics, including “above-shoulder alopecia,†and self-proclaimed “nipple pubes†and “fur shorts.â€Â She also describes her upside-down pyramid physique as being “Grimace-like†– I’m not really even sure how a girl her age knows about this vintage McDonald’s character, but let’s just roll with it. Marissa unabashedly credits her unique physique to her latchkey-child diet of Pop Tarts and the “DiGiorno sandwich,†a hellish concoction made out of two DiGiorno pizzas – sans sauce and cheese – folded into a sandwich and smothered in cream cheese.
While Marissa may have an odd shape and some interesting follicular issues, Miss Charlotte Listler is known for having a wicked mane. “Char-dog†as Marissa calls her, enjoys wearing the Bo Derek style beads given to her by the father of the child she gave up for adoption, August Wilson Listler. She is also known to have rocked a Mohawk at one point, and when aspersions are cast in regards to who the actual mother of Marissa’s newborn sister is, Listler had this to say: “If the baby comes out with pre-frosted tips, it’s mine.†But hair is not her only distinguishing feature: Listler is also known to have a clitoris so large that she was mistaken for a boy when she was born, thus her birth certificate describes her as male. In addition, Listler claims to have “installed†on her body “ankle pockets,†a “Joey pouch†(think kangaroo), and gills for breathing under water. She also reinstalls her hymen after each sexual encounter.
Yes, Marissa and Listler have some of the most remarkable bodily characteristics in the Wompler-verse, but we would be remiss not to mention Eric “Gutterballs†Gutterman, Marissa’s classmate and on-again-off-again beau played by Jason Mantzoukas. He is extremely thin with a pencil-like penis (see discussion of the “man-chanical pencil†below). And let’s not forget Dr. Seth Wompler (Brian Husky), Marissa’s stepfather, with his prolapsed anus, and Danielle Bartiromo (Melissa Rauch), Marissa’s nemesis and Eric’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, who is often noted as having massive breasts and a disproportionately small body along with “the body awareness of a 45-year-old.†When Scott Aukerman is bewitched by Danielle Bartiromo’s appearance, Marissa claims “her tits have magical powers.â€
Let’s Hear Some Catchphrases
Language and its ability to connect is often a complex beast with endless pitfalls, but it is notoriously slow to change. Luckily, there are those brave enough to keep the corporate fat cats of Big Dictionary on their toes. Let’s Rosetta Stone this shit and look at some of Marissa and Co.’s classic catchphrases.
Days of Our Womp
This is it, folks. The reason for the season. The seminal moment of Womplarism and the final stop on our intrepid journey! Anyone who has ever listened to Wompler or Listler for more than five minutes knows that the driving force behind the duo and company has to be a little thing called amore. Let’s try and tackle this jumbled mess of teen angst and raging hormones in a manner befitting its soap opera-esque nature.
There was scissoring on gym mats, possible semen leakage through a pair of jeans, couple’s counseling involving exercises Miss Listler may or may not have learned from the Taliban, and more jealousy than a Shetland pony watching Trump style his hair (that’s still a topical reference, right guys?). But in the end, it seems that just like Icarus, the on-again-off-again couple that was “Gutterwomps†flew to heights no mere mortal has heretofore seen. But nothing great lasts forever, and before we knew it, Eric Gutterballs began seeing the famously promiscuous Danielle Bartiromo, who eventually went on to have short -lived flings with both her temp gym teacher and an STD-plagued college kid with a windowless van and a waterbed. Got that?
And who can forget Marissa’s brief stint with Philippe Meloco (also played by Lennon Parham) with whom she sought solace after the breakup with Eric?  Philippe was a West-African cook working at George Washington University, who had a wispy mustache and just enough English skills to keep the magic aflame until he and Marissa split at the Womptacular, Marissa’s birthday party held, where else?, at Six Flags.
Love and intrigue aren’t only for the young in Marina Del Rey. In fact, Miss Listler’s unreciprocated and deeply sordid affection towards Marissa’s stepfather, Seth Wompler, has long been a point of contention and even led to several birds’ deaths and an incident involving Seth’s possibly erect penis and a tub of Fage yogurt. And let’s not forget that Seth was once caught masturbating to the image of himself in a bathing suit, which I guess you could say involved some sort of twisted romance.
We all know that Seth wasn’t Miss Listler’s first rodeo, but he also wasn’t her last. Miss Listler’s up-and-down relationship with a Middle-Eastern 7-Eleven clerk, Kareem (again, Jason Mantzoukas), truly is one for the history books. There was dipping into pockets filled with hummus, going out for some “flat-bread food,†and love making behind a bulletproof glass.  Miss Listler first came to meet Kareem after breaking the Slurpee machine and being banned from the store. How the hell that led to their eventual engagement, no one can say for sure. Despite breaking off their engagement when he found out that Listler’s birth certificate listed her a man, Kareem reconciled with Miss Listler and the two were reengaged at Marissa’s last birthday party.
Keep on Womping!
So there you have it. An introduction to the basic iconography of a pod-novella of unparalleled insanity. Head to Earwolf if you’ve missed any of it – your ears will be happy that you did. And if you listened to the podcasts and still can’t get enough, check out the treasure trove of awesome things tagged Marissa-Wompler on Tumblr. Womp it up, America! Womp it up!