| Dangerspouse Rides Again |
Garage - Track
 
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Jan. 06, 2005 - 1:32 p.m. Dog Tits and Wet Pussy Ugh. I lay on my back for close to an hour before finally deciding that I'd grab my silver Gemeinhardt flute. That way, when I was homeless and unemployed after the fire, I could practice until I was good enough to start a Jethro Tull tribute band, get a recording contract, and earn enough to buy a bigger house - with fireproofing - new motorcycles, wines and porn. And replace my BBQ'd wife with a groupie. These things actually make sense in that grey twilight of the mind just before sleep. But sleep I did, eventually, and for at least 15 minutes. Before the cat came in from the storm. Soaking wet. Looking for a warm place to curl up. Imagine yourself in a large, soft bed. It's the middle of the night. Outside your window a mix of snow and sleet is piling up while the ambient tempurature drops into the range that freezes Bacardi 151 solid. But you've got a 5-billion Fill Ultra King Sized Down Comforter pulled up to your chin and an insanely hot blooded redhead blasting PMS heat next to you. You're the most comfortable thing in the world. That was me after four hours of sleep, with two left to go. When suddenly - Plop....WHOOMPH! GAAAAAAA! I can't breath! I opened my eyes. I can't see!! And my mouth tasted like...pussy! Wet, cold, tuna-scented pussy! (I know, that's redundant.) Gloria, our cute little kitty who loves me and rides around on my shoulders and doesn't even mind that I accidentaly peed on her once (I'm too tired to find the link) decided to express her love by leaping off our headboard and curling up on my face, leaving only the tip of my nose poking through the ring of sodden, sleet encrusted feline. I sprang upright from the waist like a medieval catapult, hurtling Gloria into the hutch at the foot of the bed. There was a tinkling of broken porcelain and a muffled yowl as she scrambled to find footing among NewWifey(tm)'s collection of Kill Bill figurines, then leapt to the rug and down the hall to find refuge behind the dishwasher. Well there was no going back to sleep after THAT one, I can tell you. Even a normal person's non-armageddon-scenario-spinning brain would be hard pressed to come down from an adrenaline jolt of that magnetude. You could have hooked my cerebral cortex to a generator and tapped enough electical spikes to fry Scott Peterson next year. In short then, I got up. What else was there to do? My face and pillow were soaked and smelled of 9-Lives. And both were rapidly getting ice cold. I might as well get up, shower, and surf the web for a bit before starting the sleigh ride to work. NewWifey(tm) hadn't budged an inch the entire time. After my shower I padded to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. There, tacked to the fridge, was a note that said, "I fixed the hot water heater. It was a condensation problem shorting out a wire in the control panel. I just had to dry it off, and it turned right back on. I thought you'd like to know that you can take a shower again when you wake up." Now why...why would NewWifey(tm) wake me up to tell me the exact same thing she'd just written down on a note taped to a place she KNEW I looked every 15 minutes when I am home? I'll tell you why: NewWifey(tm) needs applause. It's as simple as that. Yes, NewWifey(tm) is amazing in that she can fix things which would normally require a $75/hour asscrack flasher in other households. And she fashions her own clothing from discarded tires. Which she changes herself. Etc. Etc. Etc. But she has to, HAS TO, have somebody "Oooh!" and "Ahhhh!" over it when she's done. Otherwise she pouts and refuses to do any more because she feels unappreciated. And they wonder why there's a glass ceiling.... Anyway, that's all it was. NewWifey(tm) had to tell me verbally about her triumph over the Evils of Errant Electricity in order to hear at least a grunt of fawning adoration, or she would not have been able to sleep. And by extension, she would have made it so *I* would not sleep either. Which turned out to be a moot point, of course, thanks to the cat. So I was screwed either way. On the plus side I made it to work ok, despite 3 inches of snow sandwiched between an inch of glaze ice above and below. Yeah I left an hour early, but even if I hadn't, I'm here to tell you to believe the commercials: the Beauty Of All Wheel drive means your average $20K Subaru can get to the top of a snow covered peak faster than a $4.5 million Bell helicopter. And I have snow tires. Talk about overkill. Work was a nightmare of slurred speach and errant pronunciations. Some guys can come into a studio looking like they'd just been released from an Abu Graib "information gathering session", flip open the mic with a shaking finger, and immediately pull themselves together so that they sound like James Earl Jones - only smoother - on the air. I can't. Every mic break was an effort of sheer will, fighting to stay alert long enough to give my outcue before slipping into a stream of Exhaustion Obscenities. And then...the spot. Or "commercial" for you non-industry insiders. Lucky bastards. We have, in each studio, a thick 3-ring binder that holds all the commercial copy ("spots") we have to read. The spots are alphabetised in the binder according to a 3-letter code, and a daily log tells us which copy we are supposed to read during any given commercial break. In a perfect, well rest world, each of us announcers would have ample time to pre-read each commercial before going on the air with it, rather than using those spare seconds to lay our heads on our consoles and start dry heaving. I'll give you two guesses which option I chose last night. Actually, that normally wouldn't be that much of a problem. I've been doing this for almost 11 years now, and a lot - LOT - of commercial copy is just previous copy with the sentences in a different order. Seriously, ad copy writers must be some of the most un-original, laziest bastards on the planet. Other than announcers, of course. But fortunately I didn't mangle any of the copy so badly that the client could use an air check in a court of law against me. And since that's the definition of a "successful air shift" in these parts, I ended up having a successful air shift. There was one very close scare however. The computer that generates the 3-letter code that we file our copy by is blissfully ignorant of English slang. So last week when it assigned the letters "D-O-G" to the copy for "Days Of Grace, now in paperback" we all (well, I did) gave a brief chuckle. Then this morning, sitting on my console, was an addendum copy. It was for the same product, but the client wanted us to rotate this one with the original. The new copy was revised to read "Look for the title 'Days of Glory' at a bookstore...etc". Rather than assign a whole new 3-letter code, the old code was just appended to indicate "Title", distinguishing it from the original. So in my slightly more than semi-delerious state, at 4:48 in the morning, on a 50,000 watt FM station that can be heard from Connecticut to Virginia, I finished my schtick, said "This report sponsored by - ", opened my eyes and looked for the first time at the sheet of paper in front of me that said in huge block letters: DOG TIT Uh.... Uh........ My brain couldn't comprehend what I was reading. "Dog tit"? My report was sponsored by a dog tit?? Had I bothered to pre-read the copy of course, I would have had a hearty laugh - off air - and been prepared to skip over the computer code and sail right into the actual commercial. But as it was, my brain locked on what seemed like an impossiblility. I knew the jock at the other end was checking all his dials and blinking lights trying to find out why there was suddenly dead air. It NEVER would have occured to him that a Westwood One staff announcer was stumped by a 10 second copy read. At least I hope he wouldn't assume that. Fortunately the coffee IV drip I had inserted the minute I walked through the door jolted me from my Shaken Baby Syndrome victim impersonation, and before my PD could come rushing in to find out why I was transmitting nothing but gagging sounds on one of our biggest stations I found my voice AND the actual copy. But it was close. So now I'm home, ready to crawl into bed again (after I kill the cat) and determined to be awake enough on air tomorrow that I'm not suprised by copy that's headed "CUM-GRL" or "POO-POO" or something. Although both may be appropriate sponsors for radio shows - god, if you only knew - I don't want to risk more dead air just because I've gotten suddenly turned on again. Ciao! I'm off to dream of, well, the title of this thing. Obviously. ********************************************************************************** Head's Up Alert: My birthday is at the end of this month. I know that many of you have been torturing yourself, wondering what in the world to get The Greatest Diarist On His Block. Fear not - any one of these will buy my love and maybe even a Thank You card. Extra Large. Hold the onions.
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