Happy Independence Day!
I hope everyone had as fantastic a holiday as I did. I spent the weekend at the Jersey shore and enjoyed great beaches, great food, great nightlife, and great friends. The sunburn was minimal so I am back on track for the second half of 2011!
So, we are at the halfway point for 2011 and I did a quick check of my career status. I am in pretty darn good shape. I am ahead of my revenue goals and under budget. I’m auditioning a lot more now than I had at this time last year and have attended quite a few great networking events with more on the horizon. All is well! So, how you doin’?
Funny story. Last week I narrated another sci-fi audio book and this one, like many of them, called for accents, which I am always happy to do. Among them were European Spanish and Chinese, neither of which I have done before professionally. So I did my research at The International Dialects of English Archive like I always do and prepared for the parts.
So I go the studio to record and when I get to the Chinese role I do it and the engineer says it sounds great. I’m really glad she said that because in my head I thought I sounded Amy’s father in Futurama! “When you gonna get married and make babies!”
That’s not the funny part. Then I do the Spanish role and I realize this guy is a rebel/pirate/terrorist guy so I try to make him sound all dark and mysterious. I get halfway through and realize who I sound like. I finish up that part and I ask my engineer who I sounded like just now. She immediately replied, “Antonio Banderas.” “Crap!” I exclaimed, knowing that she was spot-on. The really funny part is that it worked perfectly for the character. So now I’m the Nasonex Busy Bee Zorro pirate dude. I guess everybody needs a niche…
TIP OF THE WEEK: One thing I promised myself was to keep my cell phone off for the entire holiday weekend. Yeah, not so much. I wasn’t checking it all the time, but I did look at it every few hours. Mostly to make sure certain members of my clan were not having an emergency of some kind, which is fine, I don’t mind that. It was more of a knee-jerk reflex habit type thing, which did bug me. I’m not good at relaxing, but I’ll work on it!
Anyway, make sure that when you go away with friends or family that you give both them and yourself the time everybody deserves. Use that vacation to vacate your mind of all that stuff you’re trying to get away from. And turn that damn cell phone off!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. Tom Waits
STUFF!: I saw “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” last night. It was bizarre but very well made and extremely funny!
From Tom Dheere’s apartment, this is Tom Dheere, GKN News…