I have now attended five of these here voiceover conferences you hear tellabout, and I am really impressed with each one for its own genius and its own vibe. Every conference has its own offerings, speakers, classes, attendees, and surprises. NEVO, the New England Voice Over Conference, did not disappoint!
With my brilliant agent Lau Lapides and my brilliant coach Carole Alpert, two of the coolest ladies you will ever want to meet.
This was the inaugural NEVO, Lau’s first-ever conference. She’s a force of nature. If she had me audition for the role of an aircraft carrier or a dishwasher, I’d do it for Lau. She gathered together a wonderful, eclectic group of people with expertise in everything from audio engineering to standup comedy. I got to finally meet face-to-face some of the folks I’ve been learning from, and with, online for a while now. I also got to meet, and learn from, some other people who were completely new and surprising to me! It was breathtaking.
#GrannyHasACabernet🍷✈️Serious Traveler is Serious.
Not gonna lie; the very best part was singing and generally entertaining on Saturday night. It was a huge pleasure and a real privilege to be invited to do my old-school cabaret thing. More than that, though, it was genuinely flattering to be trusted with Lau’s audience. This is something I would like to do more of in the future at some of these conferences. The folks laughed hard at my parody of Julie London’s hit, “Fever”. It’s fun to be funny on purpose in front of people!😉🤣
Dinner with Sara Susskind and Charles “the Voice” Coats, at the Painted Burro. A very sleek Mexican food restaurant with outstanding service and equally outstanding food. Extra points for killer guac. 🥑And house-made chips to go with that guac.
It was a fast one, and I hope we can do it again next year with an extra day or two thrown in. By then it’s sure to be the conference Where Everybody Knows Your Name. 😉😎🎧🍻💖
On my way to the New England Voice Over conference’s premiere event.
Pre-boarding rituals.
Here I sit, finishing a cabernet and listening to the conversations on either side of me. GAWD, I love an airport bar! We’re delayed by heavy rain and this wine bar has an excellent playlist.
And tomorrow night, I am honored to be able to say, I’m singing for an audience once again. #HattitudeOfGratitude🎩
Ok we’re allegedly boarding in 25 minutes, the sandwich was delicious, and the cabernet won’t last forever. TO BOSTON! 🍷
Maybe I should just say, “Cheers”. 😉
Once she arrived, MamaCat became interested in a hotel wine.🍷
And so to bed. Many thanks to Sara for the ride from Logan! THAT’S a friend. ❤️
It is the perfect burger. And I rarely eat a burger. But as the radio jingle in the ‘70s used to say: “Whataburger is What A Burger should be, what it would be, if you cooked it at home.” I’ve been in Texas since Thursday night, and finally, finally, I am getting my first Whataburger in years. At the airport. I can’t tell you how key it was for me to get to the airport early enough to trek over to the airport Whataburger. Holy Quest. Maybe not your idea of a holy quest, but roll with me here. My first job was at the old Whataburger at 32nd & Thomas in East Phoenix, Arizona. Damn, I was proud! I remember when Clyde the manager called me and told me I’d gotten the job. I hung up and hollered “WHAH-HOOO!” like I was Yukon Cornelius himself. My mother, supportive as ever, became instantly enraged and began screaming at me about how stupid I was to forget that at age 45 she’s an “old lady” and “you could give me a heart attack and kill me!” Such a rock. Such a constant guide. So much undiagnosed trauma-response-based malparenting. Nevertheless, I persisted. I worked for Whataburger for the next two years, off and on, taking more hours in the summers and fewer hours during school (and therefore high school theatre) season. It may have been “just flipping burgers,” but it was also my first exposure to the larger world in general. And when your home life has been chaotic, and school traumatic because of that, finding work is a way out. If only for 12 – 18 hours a week. I learned things about policy and procedures, which in turn taught me that anger, alcoholism, and chaos is not necessarily the only approach to life. That’s a huge lesson. Of course the dark side was that my poor old mom could only see downsides. I was out of her sight and therefore out of her immediate control. I had my own money to spend. If I wore any makeup at all I was a whore; if I went without I was hillbilly trash. There were always plenty of insults, but not one single “I’m proud of you.” She was so tortured within that all she could do was torture. Poor thing. At Whataburger, I experienced growth. That alone may have been the biggest problem she had with my job. I was somewhat autonomous, somewhat individuated. I think that was threatening. But what it did for me was save my life. Literally. It pulled me back from the edge, showed me that I am capable. And I also learned so much about Whataburger Inc., that I probably could have had a pretty good career as a regional manager if I had wanted to go that route. Subsequently, the Whataburger Junior with cheese, small fries, and sweet tea, has always tasted like freedom and empowerment to me. And if you are a burger consumer, you won’t find a yummier cooked-to-order fast food version anywhere. I’d put Whataburger alongside the legendary In-And-Out any day. It’s What A Burger should be. And it was DELICIOUS. Okie dokie, we board in about 90 minutes. I’m so far away from my gate that 90 minutes is just about right for the walk back to my part of the Concourse, a visit to the loo, and that just-right pre-flight Bloody Mary. Meow, darlings. (burp)
Here I sit, in the very nice Cocina del Barrio at MSP, bloody mary in progress and bagel with salmon on the way. We begin boarding in 34 minutes. I am so excited and I just can’t hide it, me little Pointer Sisters. I’m off to One Voice USA, where there will be friends and colleagues and intense learning sessions that make me go lie down for a good nap after.
It was one of those miraculously wonky mornings getting ready for the flight. Long story short, after I missed the 5:00am alarm and slept till a wanton and luxurious 6:00 or so, I made it to the airport with pretty much everything. The fact that my big heavy suitcase didn’t get nailed for overweight fees is just one of life’s little miracles. As cited. Op cit? 🤣
Anyway… of the many old white ladies at the airport today, I am apparently the only one not too embarrassed by the fear of public ridicule to bop along to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna tunes on the overhead. And this, of course, aligns with my general philosophy that it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have a comfort zone… you just have to be prepared to step out of it once in a while. Rock and roll while you still can, cats and kittens.
I’m pretty sure I remembered bamboo utensils, which are in my checked baggage and of no use to me here, but then again it’s a nice bar with actual forks and knives. I’m almost certain that I forgot to grab a reusable water bottle, though. Poop. That means I have to purchase at least one thing on this trip. So my mind is on both the rapidly approaching boarding time, but also on whether any of the sponsors are offering water bottles in the big room at the conference.
Anyway, MamaCat’s on the Loose again. Talk to y’all from Texas. Yeehaw.
Or, Why Wouldn’t You Buy the Old Girl A Coffee? She’s Always Been Nice And Snarky And That Deserves Reward, Doesn’t It? ☕
Last Friday was the 54th anniversary of Neil Armstrong taking his “one small step,” that is, humankind’s first steps onto the lunar surface. Last Thursday was the anniversary of the lunar landing. And last Wednesday was a REAL cultural and historical milestone: the very exciting first anniversary of “Granny Has A Podcast,” which is obviously the real triumph of intellect here.
source: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.htmlThe coffee cup from the Beacon Restaurant in Wichita was a real treasure. It lasted for ten years and went to many theatrical gigs.Coffee at the Golden Nugget, while in Chicagoland for auditions. Shoulda grabbed the cup for the collection.
According to buzzsprout.com, 46% of the U.S. population listens to spoken-word audio on the daily. And this from podcastpage.io, “There are currently around 3 to 4 million podcasts out there, according to ListenNotes. According to Amplifi and Podnews, 44% of the podcasts have less than 3 episodes! Only 720k podcasts have more than 10 episodes.” Today, “Granny Has A Podcast,” sporting a whimsically misnumbered actual 12 audio episodes & 2 YouTube videos, is celebrating the old girl’s first anniversary. I’m one of the 720k. Some of the 46% is listening to me. Are you? Might make you smile.
So now I’ve launched me a wishlist, and a BuyMeACoffee, because like every other journeyman content creator online, I have arrived at the place where it’s time to ask for your support. I am currently in month 15 of a three-year plan to re-launch myself back into the wacky world of voiceover. The delightfully quirky little podcast portion of that exists as three things in one:
Mr. Snowman mug looks back at you while you’re drinking your Christmassy coffee. It’s like having company for the holidays.
A proof-of-concept of the show I would like to create on the regular;
An online resume where I can showcase my writing, recording, voicing, and audio editing skills;
Something for older women to listen to, to fill the place where Erma Bombeck lived for our moms and grandmothers.
One and three aren’t the same thing exactly.
As a proof-of-concept suite, #1, the existing collection is there so that I can demonstrate that such a thing as a humor-based, slice-of-life, entertainment-purposes-only, fully produced podcast by an older woman for older women, could be a viable product.
As for #3 there, something for older women to listen to, PLEASE! I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: there are many fine podcasts for our demographic, and while they can be very entertaining, they usually have a more fact-based, serious agenda. But if you just want to unplug for 9 to 22 minutes and listen to someone like you… someone who’s reflecting back to you that you’re not the only one going through the fabulous traumas and fabulous rewards unique to life as a woman of a certain age, but with a few laughs… someone who’s a combination of meandering old-school long phone calls and your mom’s old Erma Bombeck column she loved… it’s fewer and further between.
So who is this Erma Bombeck? If you follow that link there to the Wikipedia page, you’ll learn, among other things, that she was:
Lovely Erma Bombeck, at her typewriter and At Wit’s End. 💖
“an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper humor column describing suburban home life, syndicated from 1965 to 1996… Bombeck wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns, using broad and sometimes eloquent humor, chronicling the ordinary life of a Midwestern suburban housewife… read semi-weekly by 30 million readers of the 900 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Her work stands as a humorous chronicle of middle-class life in America after World War II, among the generation of parents who produced the Baby Boomers.”
If her existence and her body of work is news to you, due perhaps to not having been born back in the day, sit down comfortably, MamaCat’s got another flash for ya. We used to read our moms’ and grandmothers’ newspapers growing up too. We were the girls who thought Bombeck’s “At Wit’s End” column was the funniest thing in the paper besides Doonesbury. (And if you got those references, you may be ready for #GrannyHasAPodcast.)
And lo it came to pass that as I was developing the idea of, and creating the first season of, Granny Has A Podcast, I was reminded of dearest Erma. I have, in spite of my best efforts not to do so over the course of a Wilde lifetime Wildely lived, become a suburbanite. It really does drive you to your wit’s end. And then once you get there, there’s no place to park the car you absolutely have to own whether you like it or not.
So that’s where the laughs come from, kids. I was a cul-de-sac resident in the Very Brady 1970s, and apparently karma has seen fit to return me to the streams from whence I was spawned. The punk rocker early 80s rad chick in me is astonished, as is my inner New Yorker, still shopping for that very sexy pre-war Classic Six on the Upper West. But the adolescent Erma Bombeck reader in me has collaborated with the comedy-record fan in me to create a super fun podcast about real life ups and downs. Relatable, y’all.
Yeah, that’s right. It’s the actual Brady Bunch house. I was there. No, you may not disturb the actual humans who actually live there IRL.
So that’s why MamaCat has a Wish List, and that’s why Granny Has A Podcast has a Buy Me A Coffee. It’s important that we build a tiny little media empire for groovy chicks and grown-ass women, and I mean all of us. If inclusion is to matter, then include us, MamaCat! We’re awesome and hilarious and we deal with things! So if you can dig that, and you’re in the mood and the position to offer, your support will be as welcome as the flowers in Springtime and as low as $5.
In case you’d like to hear it from John Laroquette, click into that link (his name). My idea makes good business sense even years after this epic scene from Boston Legal. SOMEBODY has to step up and create the programming we’d like to enjoy. So I am. Thanks for your interest and your help. You rock.
😎😽 #HattitudeOfGratitude🎩💖
(Granny Has A Podcast is a SAG-AFTRA microbudget podcast. This contract is NOT struck work and therefore may be promoted. I will not cross a picket line and I urge you likewise.)
The famous Blues Brothers line, also Captain Pike’s “take us out,” “engage,” etc., on Strange New Worlds, my new favorite Star Trek ever. Hit it! 😎🖖
Anson Mount, you stud, you. 🖖
Anyway, it’s glorious summertime, and even with the climate changing all around us and the media playing ostrich, I remain grateful for the miracle of growing plants.
