I've found new love! It came through UPS today. It's plastic, it's cool, and lights up green when it's turned on. No, it's not the Star Trek Green Goddess love doll. That's on back order till October. Still, this device rocks my world.
Think first set of Romper Stompers times 3, cool!
Aw, yeah! That's what I'm talkin' bout!
Still don't get it? Shesh! You really need to talk to your inner child more. Here's something that might help you understand. Let's climb in the Robby way-back machine, shall we? Set the year for that time when Robby first graduated high school: nineteen-blahty-blah.
See that Mini-Magoo character careening off career goals like a human pinball? Yeah, that's me, tilting at windmills. I had no idea what/who I wanted to be. I had only just decided it was time to finish high school. Well that and that I didn't want to work with computers. Yeah, we all see how well that last one went, but let's see you go a day without touching your PC. Go Ahead, I dare you. IM me when you can pull it off.
Anyway, working with computers in the stone age was a different thing. Back then, the only people who had PCs were programming geeks and people who wanted to look like they kept trash bags of money. I wasn't either one. I'd have to settle for being "just Rob." Anything else, I'd need to figure out.
Just Rob loved all music. He could play a little guitar, but somebody had already written "Stairway to Heaven," "Smoke on the Water," and "Dust in the Wind." Pity, those were the only three songs Rob knew. Rob couldn't sing either. Ask his parents, they'll attest to that.
"I can't fight this feeling anymore…"
"Fight it quietly Rob! Fight it!"
Sigh...
What could Rob do? Well, he'd been told by many a Jack in the Box Drive-thru burger-groupies that he had a nice speaking voice. Maybe he could use that.
"Hi, you've reached 1-900-LoveRob…" Ok, I'm jumping ahead.
Rob thought that if he couldn't play music, maybe he could play music--you know, on the radio. Rob decided he wanted to be a DJ.
I think I went to more school than any other DJ around. I did The Academy of Radio Broadcasting, and I did the 5yr-4yr Bachelor's Degree. I did a production internship at WKLH/WLZR in Milwaukee, and I was the student manager at my College station. I rocked!
In the meantime, I met two other loves: MyWife and writhing. One of those is still with me. MyWife had a good job in SoCal, where I'd escaped from to return to college. I didn't really want to return back, but she had a job, I was unemployed. The decision really was a no brainer. I'm good at those.
There was one small problem with moving back to the LA area. LA's workforce is kind of skewed. If you throw 3 rocks, the first two downed bodies will be waiter/actors. The other guy bleeding from a cranial fracture--he's a wannabe-DJ. Yeah, LA is full of shy quiet folk just yearning to blur into obscurity. And what do out of work actors and DJs have in common? They both vie for voice over spots in ads, cartoons, 900 lines, you name it.
"My name is Gump, Forrest Gump. I'm here to talk dirty to you. My Mama said…"
Yeah, it's a Gump eat Gump world out here, and nobody wants to touch you unless you've had 5 years plus paying experience. No matter how many stones I threw, I couldn't knock out the competition. By moving towards LA, I boarded the Titanic and kissed my radio career goodbye. I made a choice, and I never regretted it.
Ok, let's stop there for a moment. Don't roll your eyes. It's true. It's not quite as altruistic as it sounds, but it is true. The radio business I wanted to be part of was romanticized in the movies of the late 70s early 80s. DJs were philosophers with lyrical apologies. The market now is micro-niched and pre packaged. Nobody plays what they want unless they're the music director pulling a weekend shift. I wanted to be Socrates, not Seacrest. And no, that's not just sour grapes being fed out by a servant Boyd.
So I hung up my microphone--I thought--for good. But things have a way of coming full circle. As most of you know, I do the occasional D360 video blog. For those of you who continually beg me to quit: you need to increase the bribe.
I wanted to change the video blog up a bit. I wanted to add narration and stuff. To do that , I needed to pull out my microphone again. I'd thought about pulling it out before, but I needed a few hundred bucks worth of components to make it work. That was until last week. Last week I saw the coolest toy.
You know you can hook anything into a USB these days? Memory chips, ceiling fans, soul stealing fembots. It doesn't matter, if you can plug it in, chances are, somebody's found a way to hook it to your computer. SoundTech's Lightsnake does just that. It takes a studio mic and allows you to run it to your USB port. At less that $50, I bought one.
Today my Lightsnake came in the mail, I plugged it in and began to play. I never realized how much I missed being a DJ. Oh, I doubt I'll ever be one, but voice over work is fun, and as a hobby, it's great. It's an escape and that's something that the Wayback Robby had that the NewNow Rob needs. Wayback Robby knew how to have fun. Wayback Rob had Romper Stompers.
Oh sure, it looks like it's made of plastic,but it's all woody!
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