Wings Over the Pyre

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: YMCA by the Village People

As some of you have heard, I’ve been out of work for — well, Hell, is it over a year and change, now? It has. Pretty sucky to admit, but that’s life. Regardless, it’s so. And this even after going back to school and getting my papers that say, “Hey, this Alexander Williams asshole, he’s certified in radio and TV broadcast technology and methodology; hire his white ass!”

In nearly those words, too. Who else could win both Class Clown and Most Likely to Become an Instructor?

But I digress.

Of late, I’ve taken to hitting RadioDaddy for an hour or so before bed, responding to from five to ten requests for dry VOs (Voice Overs) and the occasional, rare, produced liner. (Why are produced liners rarer? Because once I start tinkering and assembling, those things eat most of an hour for 30sec …) Some of the ones I put out fall into a big black abyss and I never hear back, some folks say thank you with rep, the on-site ranking medium, and a very few send me the final, produced work.

Now, the other morning, I was working on some things that ran from a Country Music station in Nevada to an Internet radio station doing a live show from a bar in Birmingham, UK. I don’t discriminate, I just start at the top of the most recent requests and roll down as I go until my allotted time for recording is up. Boom.

So, of course, this is the one that was received enthusiastically, produced (by someone else) and will be used:

TraxOnline.com does the Gay Pride Parade, Voiced By the Evil SquidLord

I am the voice of gay America on Commonwealth Internet radio.

Disturbingly, I think I’m proud.

Current Mood: accomplished

There’s a brand new promo for the show up on the TalkShoe home right now!

I suggest going to get it, downloading it, and sharing it with every single person you’ve ever met, heard of, chatted with, had sex with, licked, snuggled against, violated, corrupted, interviewed, broke bread with, or otherwise or in any way engaged in the process of human discourse near. No, seriously, go! Now!

You’ll thank me. And I’ll thank you.

Yes, as far as I know, we’re still on course to be interviewing Days of Our Decay this coming Sunday night on BSU. Updates as they’re available.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Billy Joel - Complete Hits Collection, 1973-1997: Limited Edition, The - We Didn't Start the Fire (L

Project 961 meeting downtown in the usual place today. I’m just rolling in for some kind of reference along with all the folk who’ve been Ninjas for the channel.. They expect some hanging out and some brainstorming.

We’ll see if I can actually make a few contacts and maybe another internship. There’s a certain degree of bitterness settling in about it.

Anyway, 6p to 9p, I’ll be on Peachtree. Look for the Kowai.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Various Artists - Wig In A Box: Songs From & Inspired By Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Frank Black - S

I’ve made a few changes to the way Operation BSU’s shows are being put together and presented. It’s actually a pretty heavy-duty structural changes that codifies more than we used to, so go and read it on the BSU community and give me your comments.

Show suggestions are always welcome, and I’m really trying to find a sweeter spot to attract more listeners regularly, both live and via download.

First step is to cut the length of the show back hard. Second is to mix the voices up during the segments up better. I’m hoping I get time to produce new segment bumpers which are topic-related more than Anchor-related before Sunday.

There are times I wonder if I don’t put too much thought into this.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Magnitude 9 - Reality In Focus - Flight Of Icarus (Squid's Redoubt)

There’s a thesis boiling around in the back of my mind, not fully formed yet, but the general outline is fairly clear.

There’s a direct parallel between the role of “horror writer” and that of “shock jock.”

Is that a shocking thought? I’m not sure that it isn’t, in a real sense.

Ultimately, both roles are performers of an artistic act, one with the same ultimate end: societal catharsis. The horror author writes about horrible things, terrible things, things polite society frowns on and certainly wouldn’t relish being put in the place of: serial murderers, rapists, occultists, demons, prisoners, people under duress in the most terrible ways. The shock jock exposes ideas and stances society finds difficult to rectify with the trappings of polite society: political extremism, casual cruelty, sexual perversion, personal disregard. In both cases, the actor puts themselves into the place of an Outsider, one who indulges and pursue those things deemed beyond the ken of the culture.

You didn’t think shock jocks were adopting a role? Absolutely, perhaps shockingly, true. Like the author, they make a character, one designed to resonate with themselves, because if it doesn’t it comes off as fake and weak. Like the author, they pick a story and stick to the narrative, because all good, believable communication is a story, of sorts. It starts here, and proceeds inexorably to there, with twists put in not to confound the reader but to reassure them. The monster isn’t invulnerable; it shrinks from garlic. The shock jock doesn’t kick kittens; they like fudge brownies. The end of the story is in sight from the start, in some sense, but contains new elements accumulated along the way. The vampire is staked with wood from the tree over it’s coffin. The shock jock says reprehensible things but his guests smile and laugh.

At the end of it all, the audience comes away with a sense of relief, of release. The threat is destroyed. Things were said that would be awkward to explain in polite society. It’s much easier to listen to Howard Stern ask a porn star to show him her boobies — and not only ask but get away with it and see the boobies — than to go out approach an attractive woman and ask to see her breasts. It’s safer to tune in to a guy saying all those things you wanted to say about those Self-Righteous Other Political Party Fuckers and nod sagely as you drive down the road. It’s faster to identify to others who are in your social phile by saying, “I listen to Operation BSU!” than to overtly espouse the opinions you hear there; there’s a sense of deniability.

I think it’s a necessary social outlet, a valve to allow the audience, the listener, the public, to explore ideas that aren’t “safe” in a controlled environment. For those two hours, they can be there with Jenna Jameson watching her grind against another woman at their say so. For two hours, they can talk about vivisecting Korean hookers with a sly grin and a wink at the non-extant camera.

Horror authors and shock jocks have a common ancestor, after all: the shaman and storyteller, the one who sat in the shadow by the fire and told scary stories about the Time Before Justice, who gathered the news of enemy tribes and described their horrors to a willing audience, who lived as Outcasts and Outsiders themselves, for the most part. They provided an outlet for their people and a time, for a moment, where the audience could be the Great Destroyer as well as the Preserver.

Maybe this is a little high-minded for someone trying to make their way into the fold, but it’s been lurking in my brain for a while.

Religious people tend to respond oddly when you actually respond with what you think:

TJ: So, what is your opinion of abortion?

SquidLord: I love ‘em! I think everybody should have at least one! I keep mine in the closet.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Various Artists - Arena Rock Classics - Who Let the Dogs Out? (Squid's Redoubt)

I’m somewhat considering doing a live version of Squid’s Redoubt: Top Ten Podcast. The thing is, it’s really not worth doing unless there really will be some people tuned in live, ready to talk about stuff and roll with the tracks.

If there’s enough interest, I might actually make it a regular thing, because Hades knows it’s easier to make these things if there’s someone else to talk to. The obvious draw back would be the sound quality will bite compared to the usual SRTTP fare. I can try and record the feed from this side at a better bit-rate, but it’ll be interesting to try and get the two output lines sync’d up (ie. high-bit-rate local, low bit-rate Xlite audio feed).

It’s not insoluable, but I really only want to work on it if there’s interest.

Don’t forget you can tune into Operation BSU this Sunday night at 9p and hear Fire and Ice live … and if you’re particularly gutsy about talking to hotties, call in and talk to them.

No, seriously, call in.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Evanesnence - My Immortal (Squid's Redoubt)

Operation NSU went on last night just a little bit late due to a failure of the weather-control machines that generally over-watch the SquidLair. In fact, the weather was so bad that I, literally, took a lightning bolt to the ear while getting the systems back online after the first power outage. That’s not really an experience I want to repeat anytime soon, truthfully.

That said, it was a great show, despite Dr Fishkisser (tryptophan’s absence, but we understand how hard it is to be a world famous raconteur and doctor on Canada Day.

If you’re not subscribed to Operation BSU via RSS feed to your favourite feedreader … well, why? You’ll get near-instant updates to the posted podcasts, and most of them will even go ahead and download it for you. Add us to iTunes even, if that’s your toxin of choice, or hook up using one of the other options on the Operation BSU page.

I believe Zlango when it says:

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: W.A.S.P. - Heaven's Hung In Black (Squid's Redoubt)

Voot! The latest Operation BSU is up and online.

A pretty solid show this week. Production values are up, the special musical guest was DJ Bnaut, and the conversation this week wallowed around in it's ranty way through emergency rooms, odd anime, the definition of Libertarianism, and Warhammer versus Warcraft.

Next week, Operation BSU moves to Saturday at 9p Eastern for one night.

Current Mood: crazy
Current Music: Various Artists - 39 Clocks / Psychotic Louie Louie (Squid's Redoubt)

You've got about 45min to prepare for the beginning of Operation BSU. We go live with the pre-show at 8:45p Eastern and the show goes hot in the LZ at 9:00p sharp, or as sharp as I can herd these cats together to do.

Tonight's topics include:

• Health, community, and all the terrifying ER stories you can take from Dr. Fishkisser.
• The Big Leneski covering Mr Wizard, beer, and anime.
• A cool, secret, live musical guest and their vote-worthy song!
• The Half-a-Bee defining Libertarianism, talking about Genarlow Wilson and being generally politically cranky, and
• The SquidLord going on about Warhammer Online, Ghost Rider, and Facebook.
• Plus the usual insane free-for-all until 11p!

Tune in, turn on, and drop out -- of your mind, as the madness accumulates.

Remember, you can call in and be a live guest on the show as well as anyone! See the website for details, but if you can't call in, at least pop into the chatroom and keep us amused with perverse and off-colour comments in text. And tell your friends!

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: My Chemical Romance - Dead! (Squid's Redoubt)

On a rare whim -- granted, not that rare -- I decided to change the way the queue on the Squid's Redoubt works.

Firstly, I upped the default queue size from two songs to five. Why? Because I've figured out how to do remote voice tracking on the system, which means I can actually do live DJ'd shows at a few minutes' time-delay. And that means I can play with some folks listening and be a hardcore jock when the mood strikes me if anyone's around. Good practice for playing a real show between Sunday Operation BSU episodes.

Unrelated, but noteworthy, not this coming Sunday but the next will actually be on Saturday. If you want automatic email updates on the status and schedule of Operation BSU, drop me a line and I'll put you on the list.

Secondly, because of the change in the queue length, making requests doesn't get you immediate feedback (or at least, within 6min feedback) of the fact requests are in the queue. Not the case anymore! I've just cut four rotating request intros that go at the top of the queue when the request-check script runs. Now, you get immediate feedback on whether your song is going into the queue, or at least feedback that runs every 6min for the check ...

If anyone has any suggestions for new bits or wants to submit some, for any of the promos that run on the Redoubt, let me know. I'm happy to take all comers. :)

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: W.A.S.P. - L.O.V.E. Machine (Squid's Redoubt)

Episode 1 is in the can, with Doctor Fishkisser, The Big Leneski, Eric the Half-a-Bee and the one and only SquidLord putting in a solid two hours of talk, and a musical guest in nothing like real-time.

There's a good deal of production in this show, but we're still hammering out the rough edges. OK, I'm hammering out the rough edges; overall, I'm decently happy with it, but I definitely can't use bed music given some of the stream limitations, and I really need to record from my Virtual Audio Cable to a split, so that I can capture a higher-quality audio output. Still, a damn fine show, all considered.

If you were to want to download the audio straight from here, well, I couldn't object.

I'm tired. Time to drug up and crash out.

Current Mood: pleased

I did a bit of a turn on the talk show circuit this morning, mainly as an excuse to turn on the new audio rig setup for the production and media management, and plug it into the digital phone ...

And, dayum, I sound friggin' great with a little bit of audio volume compression and EQ. I might need just a hint more high-end or to drop the base a bit, but other than that, it's sweet, sweet wonderment.

EPISODE40 - Spontaneous Speaking - AM Chat

Hey, Spontaneous Speaking was the only thing on that wasn't overtly Christian cheerleading at that time of the morning.

It's kind of a weird feeling to end up resonating the feeling that, compared to the bulk of the Net, I'm the worst kind of racist Conservative, and I don't mind it at all. Which is groovy in all kinds of ways. :)

If you tune in, I come in about 56min in, and ride out to the end. It's good times, kids. I want Rush Limbaugh's job. It's way more fun than playing music.

And on that note, remember, this coming Sunday is the first episode of Squid's Redoubt: Operation BSU. We'll be talking video games, the big Livejournal kerfluffle, and possibly some Hit and Run libertarian politics if I can get my hardcore H&R correspondent to be there. (I'm looking at you, Eric the .5b ... you know you've got responsibilities.)

Listening only requires you hit the Squid's Redoubt: Operation BSU website, then tap the Listen button. I suggest popping the Join In button if only so you can make sniping little text comments to the hosts, even if you don't want to chime in with your dulcet tones. If you desire sharing your point of view with the world at large, you can hook up with us via SIP softphone (Xlite or SJphone) or by calling straight in with your cell or land-line! Dial in, hit the airwaves, and mock and be mocked by some of the best folks in the business.

Or ... something.

Current Mood: geeky

Last night was more than a little strange, in the sense of getting really tied up in something and being up way, way later than I intended to be. In this case, I popped onto Talkshoe and looked for something to listen to. Perhaps reasonably, I tuned in to a show called Mantalk With Bill And Brent.

I really didn't expect anything more interesting than The Man Show without the bouncing boobies to distract me from the unappetizing dialog, but was pointedly not what I got. Instead, I ended up hearing the Radio Outlaw, Bill Bege, who's an old-school long-experienced radio guy start telling stories from getting into the business. This is where things start spinning out in a more strange direction.

Episode125 - Mantalk With Bill and Brent

About 4min in, you can hear the influence of my texting in the listening-room to the Outlaw. I inject bits about Air America.

At 18:30 -- you get the fun of my initial foray into the zone. And there I stay for the next 2h:40m or so.

Kind of cool to get on a fairly listened to old-school jock to talk to you for a while running. Almost enough to make me think about jumping over to WGST 640, just to check out opportunities for the geekdom production.

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: Talking Heads - Crosseyed And Painless (WOXY.com [32k aacPlus])

In an effort to try and put together the kind of call-in radio show that folks seem to believe I should be hosting, I've been tinkering about with various bits and forms of technology, and believe I've found at least a partial solution.

Talkshoe.

Yes, it's an old TV reference. I didn't create it, don't blame me.

Amusingly, the first show I actually listened to live, I kind of got dragged in to talking on, rather unexpectedly. Military and the Media turned out to be an interesting bit. Yes, I'm the SquidLord guy yapping away about 20 minutes in. I suppose that would be obvious to anyone that regularly caught my podcasts.

Interesting technology, but my softphone disconnected a bit into it, and Talkshoe wouldn't let me re-establish connection. Most annoying.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Various Artists - Wet 'n' Wild (Squid's Redoubt)

Over to the right is the location I spent a good five hours this afternoon in.

No, that's not a far messier version of the SquidLair, it's Project961's editing studio, right on the other side of a clear glass partition from the live broadcast booth, where Lita (Amy Dumas) was in the studio chatting up Chris Williams.

But that wasn't why I was there in the middle of the afternoon.

Around 3.30p, Knox gave me a call on the red line, and asked if I had anything going on. Now, given that I was lounging around in pyjamas and watching the Janice Dickerson Modeling Agency marathon, I couldn't exactly say I was swamped in work, but he wanted me to actually physically manifest down at the studio, which was complicated given there wasn't anyone handy at hand to dress me. But a little problem like being a horrifying physical and psychological mutant wasn't going to stop me, so I summoned up resources, called in favours, and got out the door in about 30min.

(Incidentally, shaving myself ... a no-go. If I could reach the right side of my neck, though, I'd be golden. Life, thou taunt me.)

So, down to the studio the Kowai hurtled, at no point breaking either the sound or light barriers.

Once I got there, it was revealed that the audio tech had gone on vacation before creating the CDs for this weekend's Steeplechase tent. So, I needed to pull the tracks off the NexGen system, realtime, normalize them, grab sliders, normalize them, take Aly's announcement bit for the tent (which I ran over with a couple filters because the volume was inconsistent and it needed a little ambiance), and put the whole thing together into a 2 CD set that was good to go and sounded right.

I think they were mildly surprised when I broke out my own wireless mouse from my omnipresent backpack, threw it on the floor for my toes, and set to without asking much in the way of HowTo. I mean, this is me, how complicated can a distributed ap running several radio stations and Adobe Audition be? After some initial technical issues (not my fault, I promise), I settled on basically just mixing two long single-track CDs just as if I were putting together a podcast. I settled in the fades, appropriate overlaps, etc.

I also lurked around in the broadcast booth a little bit while CDs burned or large groups of things normalized. If you were listening to the Project tonight and heard a random twisted and glutinous snicker, that was probably me, peering at the editing suite live in production.

I'm such a geek.

On the up-side, looks like I'm pretty much likely to be a solid, responsible Project Ninja mostly apprenticed to the guy that does their editing and station imaging for multiple stations. When, y'know, he gets back from vacation.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Blue yster Cult - ( Don't Fear ) The Reaper (Squid's Redoubt)

It's far, far easier to write about things you care about. When they dropped the bomb that I'd need a 60sec commercial for my rolling radio show, I first thought I'd do a Google ad, with the repeated cry, "Ask Google!" but, having awakened with only slightly bleary eyes and only a hint of rattle in my chest, I saw a pollen count reading on TV (5,347) and thought to myself:

Man, I'm glad I have Zyrtec.

Therein spun inspiration.

• Zyrtec Ad

Plus, I get to make a circuitous, indirect reference to tree bukkake while playing the Circle Jerks. Does it get any better?

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: Children of Science - Burn Victims (Squid's Redoubt)

I'm well aware I haven't posted much of late. I just haven't had the time or energy; the most I hope for most days is a few Twitter updates.

Today was -- a day. The before-lunch class was interesting. We had Stuart Culpepper teach a voice class. Yes, that's an IMDB link. You've heard the voice before; if you've heard the national ads for QT that mention "cap-u-chino" and any of several thousand other national commercials.

Yes, he's one of those voices. I made him say "in a world ..." for me.

He was teaching our voice acting class.

Then there was lunch and Lisa Love shambled in for the latter half of the day. Of course, no one, including her, had any idea what we were doing and 1.5hr of my 2hr class day pretty much was eaten up by fiddling about with an utterly unreasonable in-class critique which finally got shaken down into something humanly comprehensible, which I then hammered hard because I didn't have to be my own board op.

I despise board ops. If anything, board ops have convinced me I simply do not want to go into radio jocking. I despise the mixing board with the raging fire of a thousand Kryptonian red suns. I can talk on the mic all day. I can do traffic and weather and sound utterly comfortable. I managed to hit the doughnut ad (an ad which has music/vocals pre-recorded with a hole in the middle for the jock to read copy into) dead on with only one brief, half-heard run-through of the underlying bit the first time, with perfect timing.

I'm good at reading things. I'm excellent at energy and clarity. I'm kind of half-suck at adlibs, of all things. And wretchedly, horrifically, Terrible [-2] at board ops.

I was happy to have Chris do it for me.

Lately, I've been feeling the rather loosely held mask of humanity slip a bit at class as irritations and frustrations start piling up like corpses or dead-wood. I've been mostly-human so far pretty successfully; only a few odd, random comments about eating babies or the like, hardly worth mentioning. As we get down to the wire, though, I can feeling little bits of crystalline rage building up and lodging in my gullet, just waiting for the right moment to poke out through my skin and revel the depth of my distaste for the bulk of those around me at just the wrong moment.

It doesn't help that I have a 60minute rolling radio show that I'm Co-Producer, Segment Director, and Traffic / Weather for. Thank Hades the rest of my team for that little project is folk I can pretty much count on. I can only imagine the obsessive nightmare I'd be suffering were I to feel I had to cover someone else's work on. With John doing News Director, Chris on the Music Direction / Main Talent, Latoria as Board Op, and Nadia as the logging Producer, I at least know I can count on them to do their jobs.

(You'll note how cleverly I arranged to only have 4min of live air out of 60min; this is called "wisdom.")

At this point, I just don't know where things are going with this madness. I have to figure out where I want to intern, very soon, and I'm torn between Total Traffic / Metro Traffic, and going big and trying to get on at CNN / Turner as a video editor or teleprompter operator. If I go radio, there's a really good chance I'll be able to jump up to some kind of on-air talent eventually, especially given my love for big tech and the proliferation of satellite radio and HD. If I go TV, I'd be aiming to get into back-end post-production. Hell, I already have experience with Adobe After Effects, and that's on my own time.

So, yeah. Not sure where I want to go with things, which probably explains the scattered nature of this post. Heather would probably diagnose me as being in the down-phase of my latent mild personality disorder, leading to irritability and frustration. I would be hard-pressed to argue.

Ah, life. How thou art complex to me.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Denis Leary - Downtrodden Song, The (Squid's Redoubt)

They made the mistake of giving us our Traffic Report assignment today ... for the final.

Write and produce two 60sec traffic segments for WABI radio, including your choice of bed music and a billboarded sponsor. The end should be a weather segment of about 20sec in length and appropriately targeted for the AM or PM cycle.

And that's it.

As a hint, you should never give me an assignment that open-ended, because I can and will do bad things. Like go home and do the whole thing in under an hour.

Here are the bits. A Geek No-Prize to the first one not Starchild to pick-up the horrid WWII in-joke in there and explain it.

• AM Traffic Report
• PM Traffic Report

Could you trust a voice that takes so much relish in death and destruction?

(It's a measure of personal pride that both of them come to a few hundredths of a second of 60sec.)

In semi-related radio training news, I was assigned by the most arrogant and self-involved person I've ever met (Jon Lewis, strangely, I like him) to be one of the two sports news guys on our 9min radio production today. Somewhat cruelly, he also picked the only other person in the room who had no interest in sports to be my co-host.

Then he handed me 9 pages of articles to cull 1min 30sec out of.

Broke out the scissors to cut the things up, then pasted useful paras together, and built a two-man sports show from the fragment.

The sad thing is ... it was fun. Sports copy is just fun to read because it's so bombastic and over the top. I got to break out my bouncy, energetic voice for it. You'd almost believe I knew what I was talking about.

No recording of this broadcast, sorry. I'm sure I'll have to record a sports show for a final at some pont. You'll hear it here, first.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Cruxshadows, The - Return (Coming Home) (Squid's Redoubt)

There's a certain pleasure in creation. I have the twisted pleasure in creating ... well, items and experiences that never actually occurred. I suppose it's the pseudo-creator in me, though I definitely don't consider myself an artist, I'm a craftsman. That's why folks look to me to be the Program Director, even if I can't run a sound board for anything. It's a tech-geek thing.

So, I created the Morning Show That Never Was.

"What's that?" I hear you asking.

The Morning Show That Never Was is ... well, just that, a fictional morning show staffed by four of us who just seem to sync up and get along well in class, constantly playing off one another's odd quirks. Staff (with links to their personal audio sliders) are:

• Chris Swan, Secret Asian Man, indy-rock enthusiast, and all-around music expert.
• Nadia the Madonna, oral diarrhea expert, irreverent Commie-hunting morning-show chick.
• John Spier, aka Lord Billy Fayetteville, British redneck punk, and straight-man of almost every joke not barbed toward the Madonna, and ...
• The Squid, ringleader, Program Director, geek-jock and manifestation of obscene perversity-made-flesh.

Together they put on the WABI SSS&M Hardcore Morning Show, an eclectic mix of hardcore, underground, punk, and surrealist country music along with enough madness to force 2d20 SAN rolls during your AM drive time (show slider 1, show slider 2). The kind of thing you just can't hear on normal broadcast radio, these cultists of crooning are restricted by FCC regulation to Satellite or HD radio, and preferably to very small rooms with padded walls.

There have been rumors that the Hardcore Morning Show has been the target of violent jihad declarations, but Lord Billy Fayetteville denies these charges, saying, "What?"

When both the FCC and FDA were contacted for comments, they responded much the same way.

Why do I suddenly have the urge to stat myself up?)

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: I Am Ghost - Ship of Pills and Needful Things, The (Squid's Redoubt)

Man, ABI's been keeping me busy. Not just because I'm keeping up with my homework, but because I'm obsessively pushing forward and doing things like completing the whole production of commercials and such two weeks before they're due. When we're supposed to be turning in the copy for them, I'm able to hand in polished audio-edited pieces.

I blame my obsessive nature.

It's cool. And techy. And all sorts of fun.

Besides, it's such a cock-size compensation thing to slap it down on the table and say, "Mine's bigger than yours."

However, that said, if you're interested in the kind of things I'm producing these days:

• Taco Mac 60sec Radio Ad
  The first one we had assigned and the one I had the most complicated inspiration for. I couldn't find anyone else willing to voice the characters so I had to do all three myself. Not exactly what I wanted, but pretty cool.
• Coke 60sec Radio Ad
  The one I'm rather fond of. The idea was to target a demo we're not part of, and "young yuppie parents" pretty much hit the bill. I managed to integrate children, babies, thunder (my fave thunder effect, heard in the Taco Mac ad too; Castle Thunder), rain, and Coca-Cola history in one spot. The retro feel makes me think of the stuff in the World of Coca-Cola.
• Coke 30sec Radio Ad
  Take the above ad, then cut it out in the middle and tighten it up just a hair. I think it works just as well and can play in a few more rotations, which pleases me to no end. Not really required by the assignment, I'm just obsessive.
• Traffic
  Today's assignment was just to write a traffic report. Me? I needed to write it them read it in my local mic, just to test it for length. It comes out to 58sec, which is easily tweakable to an exact 60sec. I feel all accomplished.

I'm feeling pretty accomplished overall. Things keep going well, and I'll feel secure going into production work, at least.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Various Artists - Macho Man (Squid's Redoubt)

Damnit, Heather has infected me with her need to constantly make lists. I sat down and put together a list of things I need to do in the studio this morning, with notes ...

I never make notes for my podcast. It's just not done. Little bits about the performers, a good line that comes to me? What kind of madness is this? You'd think I was producing some kind of cracked-out morning show ... Oh, wait, you might be listening to it in the morning.

Awkward.