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After a day of sledding…

After a day of sledding (the kids went down twice then spent the rest of the time playing Fortress in a clump of tall spindly weeds while the mums went down again and again - and let me tell you, my Animal Brain stood at the top of the hill, looked down and realized it couldn’t see the bottom of the hill because it got suddenly steep and it took me ten minutes to convince Animal Brain that just because I couldn’t see the bottom of the hill didn’t mean it wasn’t there) we hauled the sled home during rush hour and collapsed on the couch for a couple of hours.

As Todd walked in the door I walked out to attend a meeting of Toronto podcasters. I was very nervous. Shy doesn’t really begin to describe my feelings about going into a room full of strangers, and the only thing I could really be thankful for was that there would be no dancing. (Sometimes when “I Wanna Know What Love Is” by Foreigner comes on the radio I enter a fugue state in which I’m thirteen again, wearing a long black and blue plaid skirt, crying outside the gym in the dark.)

Hands shaking, I sat down next to a man who reminded me of my nicest cousin, and he immediately asked what kind of podcast I create. “This is going really well,” I thought, hiding my hands under the table, and blathered on while they looked on with interested faces. As I talked I took stock of the people immediately surrounding me and realized that they were all dressed like they’d come directly from a high level corporate meeting about create a new paradigm and align their core competency to create incremental synergy to increase customer centric metrics. And you know, I’m the last person to worry about clothes, but even I was beginning to feel a little self-conscious in my cat-hair covered sweatshirt.

Then I found out why there’d been a hard to find empty seat next to these two perky people: they were marketers, with the sparkling eyes and crazed demeanor of cult members in the airport. Small talk is not exactly my forte, so I was really having to scrape the barrel to respond to sallies like:

Man …so my company is in the process of creating Flash presentations for people to view on their mobile viewers. Really what we’re trying to create - and I know this word is so overused - but we’re trying to create a community.

I nodded dumbly, wondering how soon I could go home without hurting his feelings.

Woman I guess it’s my turn! Well. I’m involved with a company that scouts voices for commercials, voice-overs, that sort of thing. People send us their demos, and we send them in turn to the radio and television companies that need voice talents.

I tried desperately to think of something to say, and went with -

Sage Wow. Uh, can you hear in someone’s voice if they’re going to have what it takes?

Woman, hedging Not…really. No. What I’d really need is a sample of your voice doing several different types of readings a story, a character, and just some regular dialogue.

I realized in horror that she thought my terrible small talk was actually an angling for a job disguesed as terrible small talk. I tried again.

Sage I can see how that would be helpful. Are there any demos that you’ve listened to that you immediately say, ‘Oh, terrible voice.’

Woman No, actually. Every voice has its merits, and when you futufde a particular wionit, wia miraho: teras ppacin rehqopi ges-dloo, horposltyh bo gelondtosan talarhe nod ketela ednqo. We also do some work with Verizon, and if I wonder if you’d be interested in signing this four-year contract for a phone with a CAMERA AND FLASH AND IT CAN ALSO CUT YOUR HAIR AND MAKES DINNER AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BUY SOMETHING FROM ME -

Actually, before it got that far a very jolly non-marketing man came over and said in a jolly way:

Jolly Man Hi there! Are you two here together?

She looked like Barbie. I looked like a homeless person who’d missed the homeless clothing drive and had to make do with dumpster diving. This is how I look every day, and I like it that way, but at that particular moment it seemed absurd to pretend that wasn’t the case. So, and I can’t quite believe I actually did this, but I said the first thing that came to my mind, which was -

Sage HA! Come here together? Look at how different we are!

She smiled a sort of pained, watery smile and turned to talk to some guy whose name was undoubtably Chip on her left. I felt really bad.

The Jolly Man nicely led me over to the next table, filled with actual podcasters who were wearing regular clothes, if not cat-hair covered sweatshirts they haven’t washed in a year because they stupidly put their son’s Silly Putty in their pocket and it stuck to the pocket and they’re kind of afraid it will break the apartment building washer, and I passed a thoroughly enjoyable evening talking to lots of people who didn’t want to create any incremental synergy at all. Tod Maffin - the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet - even interviewed me, gave me valuable sound equipment advice, invited me to participate in the Story Project, and told me he and his wife are big fans.

I felt a little bit like Cinderella and I had a big goofy grin on my face all the way home.