Lay Back and Think of England

Big and I got together to record yesterday, and we accomplished a great deal. We did lines for another podcast (and after that, we recorded our dialogue, LOL), re-recorded an addendum to an upcoming show, went through a Valentine's Day sketch, ate some sandwiches Big made, put down vocals for an audio drama written by some hack named Outfield, watched a couple of Monty Python sketches on YouTube, did another lengthy That Gets My Goat, went for a walk, answered some emails, drove to the store to buy toys, recorded some sound effects we made ourselves for a never-to-air show, grabbed a couple of burgers, looked up a list of famous dwarfs, woke up his wife with our screaming, and went downstairs to clean up his flooded basement.

Big had hurt his foot, and had to be up the next morning for work, so we were going to call it a night, but . . .

We still had a story that we had intended to read, for one of our contributing editors, who had kindly volunteered to produce another episode for us. But it was late, and we were tired, and we'd been planning on watching an episode of "Castle" together all night.*

It would have been so easy to just say, "Forget it," and enjoy the remainder of the evening, but there's that pesky "but" showing itself again. How could we rest, knowing there was somebody out there, willing to sacrifice their time and sweat for us, on their own time (and on their own dime)?

We had an obligation, the way I see it. We had to grit our teeth and, as they used to say (and maybe still say, for all I know), lay back and think of England.

So, we pulled up a chair and tried to record the story. I say "tried" because due to tiredness (I think the word is fatigue, but I'm not smart) and a couple ill-chosen words of the text, we spent a long time stumbling and laughing. A looooong time.

At one point, Big's wife's alarm went off, she got up, showered, dressed, had breakfast, and left for work, while we were still recording this story. When we finally got to "The End" (though a lot of stories people submit to us have "END" in caps when it's over, which I never get and never will), it was past three-thirty in the morning.

We'll probably talk on the eventual episode about what cracked us up so much, which is something I imagine would've happened at any point in our schedule, but I still pity the dude producing the show, because he has to wade through a lot of punchiness for the pair of us. Still, Big saved the file and sent it to him before we went to bed.

Ahh, the sacrifices necessary for Parsec-nominated audio fiction. And England.

Rish "Vibraphone" Outfield

*I like "Castle." And I haven't seen a single episode this season.