I think I might do some cross-promotional stuff with the Shrimp Shack, like an experimental podcast thingie. If I did so, what would you like to hear? I scratched my first idea, since most of what I BS about (and what most people I know consider funny) uses rough language of a sort that makes Deadwood look like the Donnie & Marie Family Hour.
So tell me what you’d like to hear, if anything. I could just say every cuss word I know and leave it at that, but if I’m going to sit down and talk by myself into a microphone, I’m going to make the strangeness of that worth my while. I’m going to start going off on stuff, like astronauts and this sorry excuse for a space program. Free from the constraint of typing, I could probably fill-up 20 minutes just riffing on that, but I would like ideas about what you would like to hear. I’ve got some audio editing hotness, so it’s going to at least sound cool.
If I don’t get any ideas, I will not only say every curse I know, I will perform them in the melodramatic stylings of Lawrence Fishburne’s speech in Matrix 2.
“…I will perform them in the melodramatic stylings of Lawrence Fishburne’s speech in Matrix 2.”
Whimper…no please.
Listen to albums and talk about them while they’re playing? That could be good for one or two.
Same for well-known movies.
Maybe do a “day on the flightline” thing.
Audio editing hotness? Is that a line from “Napolean Dynamite?”
Comment by Timmer — 20050309 @ 0535
Just riff on whatever’s bugging you at the moment. It leads to classics like your post on the The Sims video game, or your assault on the semi-colon.
Comment by RPD — 20050309 @ 1001
The assault on the Semicolon was greatness!
Comment by obershyster — 20050309 @ 1125
You’re talking voice acting, of sorts, and that’s not the same as words on the page. There’s a different rhythm, a beat of a different drum, and there can be as much in the spaces between words as in the words themselves.
I can’t tell you what to talk about. I can’t tell you what feels right for you. But the best voice actors, they rehearse. They work out what sounds real, which is not quite the same as what is real. They think about when they breathe.
For myself, I think my efforts in such things have been influenced by Shakespeare and Churchill, both of them writers of the ear. Whether in politics or on the stage, they practised the craft of speaking toi an audience, and using their voices as expressive tools. The iambic pentameter (don’t worry about what that means) is a natural rhythm of English. Whatever they might have told you at school, whatever drearyness may have been beaten into you by the teachers, you should brush up your Shakespeare. They are words to be spoken, shouted, even bellowed defiantly.
Get it right, and nobody will care whether you used a script. Don’t be afraid of artifice. Seduce the microphone with your lips.
Comment by Dave Bell — 20050309 @ 1442
I always used to tell people that wanted to work on their speaking voice, to listen to recordings of good, classically trained actors doing Shakespeare!
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20050309 @ 1514
Timmer, that would be audio editing skills, but my refleaxes are awesome.
Also, if I do this, it’s definitely not going to be some generic Radio Man or AFRTS-type thing. I hate talk radio, so I doubt I’ll be following most of its conventions; however I am the Voice of Tow Awareness, so I guess some people find my dulcet tones aggreable.
The day on the flightline thing is a good idea. I don’t even remember the semicolon thing, but I do hate that half-assed piece of punctuation.
Comment by Stryker — 20050309 @ 1843