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12/13/2006: "Tales from the Booth"

Tuesday night we toiled in the acoustically deceased confines of a recording studio, hammering out the audiobook version of Hello Future Me... ...Hi There. Along to add to the recorded glory was Tumble's sister Imogene, who would play the parts of Officer Daniels' Daughter, Woman #1, Woman #2, and Old Lady Passerby.


I summoned my sturdiest narrator voice and read all the non-dialogue. After a couple marathon readthroughs, I realized my writing was so flowery and overly descriptive it made a Tom Robbins book read like a caveman telegram. I promised myself to lay off the thesaurus after I realized I'd used four different words for "corn".


While Chestnut and Tumble were setting up for their parts, I excused myself and went in the hall to check a voicemail. It was Carly, who had just gotten back from the Meadowlands racetrack where her ex-boyfriend J.C. had taken her for lunch to try and win her back. Carly had to spring for her own ride home after J.C. parlayed a $2-to-place bet into a $10,000 pick-6 and spent the rest of the afternoon at the Responsible Gaming booth crying to the counselor on call.

I made a mental note to phone her back after we wrapped and returned to the studio, where Tumble was reading dialogue for R.A.S.P.U.T.I.N. (Remote-Access Space Probe Utility Transponder Interface Nexus) the on-board computer in 2023.


A few minutes later, the audio engineers left on lunch and never came back.