Bulgarian Idol.
It’s all in the subtitles.
a little story
April 16, 2008So I have to admit that my little trip home to Chicago a week and a half ago, super quick though it was, made me a little home sick. Chicago was warm and sunny and full of familiar things and good friends and I was very much all, “Hey Chicago! I miss you! I’m here! Maine ain’t all that, it’s you I love!” Even the crazy wacked out scary man at the bus stop who looked like he might want to kill me dead didn’t deter me from my little moment of urban adoration.
But then I got back here, and I was all, “ok Portland, you’re cute too, even though you are totally kicking my ass right now and I’m totally exhausted, but you have sea gulls and a big bay and brick paved streets and drivers who stop for pedestrians and people who smile, so maybe you’re not so bad.”
Anyway, this is all just sort of a lumpy little intro into telling y’all about the trash here. Portland is very SERIOUS about their trash and recycling. It all had to be explained to me when I got here. All recyclables go in one big blue plastic bin – all of it – paper, cardboard, cans, bottles, and no separating. You don’t even have to clean out your cans and bottles. The city comes around once a week and empties out your bin and takes it away.
On the same day they come and get your trash, and all trash has to be in official blue “City of Portland” trash bags. No Hefty Bags for the Portlanders. These bags have to be bought specially. They’re not cheap either, a parcel of 30 bags costs about $8.00. I think the cost of the bags underwrites the cost of trash removal…
Anyway, I bought more bags this week and the new lot were gray bags – all the old bags were blue bags. No big deal, I’m thinking, they’ve changed the color. Well, last night I put out my trash, along with all my neighbors, and this morning all their trash was gone, and my little gray trash bag was still there. Rejected by the trash men.
Evidence, below. One lone trash bag sitting atop my empty recycling bin.
I call the city (the number is nicely printed on the outside of the bag) and a nice woman says, “you have the wrong color, you need to call Rite Aid and tell them they sold you the wrong bags.” So I call Rite Aid. Rite Aid calls the Person in Charge of City Trash, and it turns out they changed the color and their trash men were supposed to know this and take the gray bags, but their trash men weren’t paying attention, and now I have a bag of trash on my curb.
So – and here is why I’m telling you this story – I go into Rite Aid and the manager says, “here is the cell phone number for the man in charge of Portland trash, he told me to tell you to call him and he’s going to help you.” So I call this man, very nice man, name of Ernie – (love that) – and I say Ernie, what can I do?
And Ernie says, “don’t you worry, we messed up, I’M GOING TO COME GET YOUR TRASH PERSONALLY.”
And then…wait for it…ERNIE CAME AND GOT MY TRASH PERSONALLY. And he shook my hand and told me how sorry he was that his trash guys didn’t pick up my trash and that it wouldn’t happen again.
Ohhhh Maine, I’m sorry that I cheated on you with Chicago last week. Chicago wouldn’t have come to get my trash, Chicago would have told me to shove it. MAINE: You have been redeemed by your trash man.
6 Comments | 
Daily, Maine, Portland | 
Permalink
Posted by anne
rough edit done and played
April 15, 2008We played the rough edits of our finished pieces for the class today and overall, hey, good job us. We all have some fixes to make. Mostly the general problems were with ambient sound – increasing it, extending it, decreasing it, when to bring it up, when to bring it down. I don’t have any problems with ambi but some of my editing is too tight – my voice comes up right as the voice of my subject ends. It was intentional when I mixed it because I wanted to keep the piece moving, and in a couple of instances it was because the cut was really sharp and I wanted the quickness of my narration coming in to cover that. The whole thing is just really speedy now, though, and I need to adjust some moments to let the piece breathe a bit more.
There is also one bit of narration that is just hokey. Hey, new radio student: when you don’t know what to say, throw in a cliche and tell people what they already know, and while you’re at it, why don’t you go ahead and say what the subject is about to say. Here’s an example:
ME: Huge Generalization, and now you’re going to hear my subject say she’s really lucky.
SUBJECT: I’m really lucky.
Yeah. I knew I needed to rewrite and re-record it last night but I just didn’t have it in me. So tired. I figured I’d play it in the bright light of day and see if it still made me squirm and YES, it did.
The entire school has a come-to-Jesus session scheduled for the end of the week. There are 28 students total, spread over Radio, Writing and Photography and we all have to present our work and then there is Group Discussion. This is our opportunity to show everyone what we’ve been doing and it’s going to take two full days, Thursday and Friday, 8am to 5pm.
I also have a script due for my second project next week and I’ve barely begun the interviews. It’s going to be a 6 minute radio piece about the Maine accent and I want it to be fun and informative, but I’d also like me not to be exhausted and spent, which is currently where my head is…so I am taking tonight off and watching several episodes from the second season of The Wire. Have you seen this show? Holy crap it’s good.
Leave a Comment » | 
Daily | Tagged: Radio | 
Permalink
Posted by anne
done (sort of)
April 14, 2008First radio project (sort of) done!
I came in at 6 minutes and 10 seconds, and overall, it’s basically ok. My radio doth not sucketh. It is not suck free, but it is as suck free as I can make it right now, and I’ll tweak it more after people listen to it. There is one track – from a writing standpoint – that is totally weak, and in a couple of weeks I’ll cave in and re-record and re-mix. But not right now.
There is another moment that – from a production standpoint – is also weak. It’s one small section, maybe 15 seconds, where I’m using a quote (act) to illustrate a point, and it would be smooth sailing except that I’m using one sentence from one interview and another sentence from another interview and the quality of the tape doesn’t match. Maybe my recording levels were higher on one day than another, I don’t know, but you can audibly hear the difference AND I CAN’T FIX IT. I know this, because I spent over an hour today trying to fix it and I CAN’T FIX IT.
There is a new gray hair on my head this evening and it’s so cute I gave it a name: BAD TAPE THAT I CAN’T FIX.
For five minutes I shot the puppy and took out the second part of the act, and then I spent the next ten minutes giving the puppy the breath of life and begging it to forgive me, and stuck it back in.
My sister called me today and I told her all about my bad tape and she said that she didn’t want to hear the phrase “shoot the puppy” anymore. She is a very sensitive soul and it upsets her, way down deep in her dog-owning heart. I am sorry, sister, but it’s too late. The phrase is out there. I also know what I’m getting you for Christmas.
Leave a Comment » | 
Daily | Tagged: Radio | 
Permalink
Posted by anne
coming together
April 11, 2008Tough week. Hell, tough month. I’ve been struggling with my first real radio script – it’s been a long process. The scope of this first main project (huge, huge project) is to put together a narrated radio documentary. Go out and find a person, place, thing in Maine and tell a story about it. The specified length is 6 minutes, though we can run a bit under or a bit over. Doesn’t that seem like that shouldn’t be so hard?
6 minutes feels like a long time, but it’s not….it would be easier to tell a 10 minute story, or a 12 minute story. 6 minutes means you’d better tighten things up and keep things moving and come to a point. To put this in perspective, we have all now spent weeks with our subjects. I can’t speak for others, but I have about 12 hours of interview tape, total. So 6 minutes is hard.
In class we’ve all been struggling with the same essential questions – why are we telling this story? Why should people listen to our piece and why should they care? The pressure has been huge. Finding the story wasn’t hard – but crafting the narrative was super tough. I shot a lot of puppies in the last two weeks.
BUT I had a breakthrough in the last few days. I finally feel like it has all come together, and I just feel really….relieved. And happy. And kind of excited about it. It’s like a little baby being born.
This morning in class we did a final line edit – this week we’ve isolated all of our Acts (short for actualities – this is the actual sound clip that is going to be used in a given moment) and put them into Pro Tools. Today we read our scripts (our narration, technically called Tracks) to the class and played the various acts as they came up, and also played the various bits of ambient sound that we are going use. Ambient sound is like background noise, and it sets a stage, tells the listener where they are.
My story right now clocks out at 7:06, so I still have some editing to do…that will be done this weekend.
I also have an hour or so to spend in the voiceover booth, laying down the tracks. Then I will mix the tracks with the acts. Slide in the ambient sound….and keep my fingers crossed. All of this will mean about 12 or so more hours of work I’m guessing.
The finished product is due on Tuesday. Deep breaths.
Then I move on to story number 2. The semester is speeding along…..
6 Comments | Daily | Tagged: Radio | Permalink
Posted by anne
the proof is in the moxie
April 8, 2008I didn’t want to post this recording until after it had debuted on the Katie Mac Show, but in case you missed the announcement from an earlier entry, I’d like you all to know that the MOXIE HAS BEEN CONSUMED. I think it’s the Maine equivalent of drinking the kool-aid. Without, you know, the mass suicide and stuff.
The voices you’ll hear are the new friends who originally told me about moxie – the same ones who wanted to witness the consumption when I said I was actually intending to go buy some.
We talk a lot in school about the importance of “active tape” – i.e. tape where someone is actually doing something rather than just talking about it. This is active tape. My teachers would be appalled by the editing, AS AM I, but it was a quick and dirty job, done in Audacity, and…well…here you have it:
5 Comments | Daily, Maine | Tagged: editing, moxie, Radio | Permalink
Posted by anne
the hand cream
April 8, 2008Tim from Urbana inquired as to the hand cream from the last post, so here’s the scoop.
It is the Herbalind Glycerin Hand Cream, and here is the link to the Merz website where they tell you all about it. I tried to find it in Maine, but Maine insists on being all “Hand Cream Made in Maine” and I am all “Hand Cream with Glycerin Made in Germany and Only Sold in Chicago at Great Expense.” Because once you go Hand Cream with Glycerin Made in Germany you really don’t go back.
The link provided is to the 6.8 ounce size, but that size might blow up a plane, so I settled for the smaller size that meets FAA requirements, ’cause I didn’t want to have to pull a Naomi Campbell on the x-ray people who would try to take it away in the security line.
Though wouldn’t that have made quite the cocktail party story for years to come.
2 Comments | Daily | Permalink
Posted by anne
chicagoing
April 7, 2008So my father wanted to know if I was ever going to update this again, and who am I to deny him the opportunity to know I’m still alive? I am nothing if not a giver, so here is a quick rundown of my even quicker weekend in the Big City:
1. Got onto a plane where the pilot kept predicting severe turbulence ahead, an announcement that turned out to be the pilot version of PSYCH! cause it was very smooth sailing, but goddamnit if I’m going to work myself into a claustrophobic buckled-into-my-seat panic then you’d better produce some turbulence, or is the palpable fear of the girl in seat 12F just one big joke to you, Pilot Man?
Suspicions. Confirmed.
2. Ate bagels at the Dagel & Beli. Onion bagels with chive cream cheese, and it’s a testament to my friends that they allowed me to breathe next to them for the rest of the day and didn’t complain once.
3. Paid a fast visit to the mothership, where much money was spent.
4. Paid a fast visit to Merz Apothecary in Lincoln Square, where I bought my favorite hand cream and put my money down on a burial plot, because when I go I want to spend eternity in the french soap aisle.
5. Went to see Barb’s play, where there was much swashbuckling and great success, and all those belly laughs weren’t just from friends, most were actually from strangers, who laughed because it was genuinely funny. AND LISA WAS GREAT TOO. So proud.
6. Might have had just a wee bit too much punch and rum, because nothing goes with exhaustion and stress like a great big glass of rum.
7. The Katie Mac Show! Anne on the Street may not be down the street right now, but she was in the house. As I write this Katie and Freddy are (hopefully) on their way to Hawaii, and I only hate them a little bit as I head back to the frozen tundra.
8. A wonderful trip out to see Kristen and Gina, who live somewhere in the region of Iowa, but that is ok because true love sometimes means going to Iowa. Besides, you cannot ask the Iowans to come into the city when one of them is 3 days away from giving birth, and how exciting is that???? Oh, and there were cupcakes and…did I mention there were cupcakes? Cupcakes so good I thought I’d found God.
9. A nice little late-night wrap up to the weekend with Dan, Lisa, Barb and ranch dip.
10. Today I go back to the airport where I once again will board a winged beast of death. Keep it to yourself this time, Pilot Man.
3 Comments | Daily | Permalink
Posted by anne
officially mooseless
April 2, 2008Spent a great afternoon researching the Maine Accent at the Maine Folklife Center today, but 3 hours up and 3 hours back make for a tired me.
Just north of Waterville, about 70 miles from Portland, saw a sign on the side of the road:
MOOSE CROSSING
USE CAUTION
There was also just the cutest little Moose picture on that sign. While I’m not entirely stupid, and well aware that the last place you want to see a moose is coming through your windshield, I should admit that there was a definite moment of YES!!!! Combined with a requisite degree of much excitement. But, sadly, though I kept my eyes peeled for the mooses, there were none to be seen. What about trying a little truth in advertising there, Maine? A better sign would be:
YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE AN ACCIDENT LOOKING FOR A MOOSE THAN HITTING ONE
Another good sign would be, “Olympia Snow is a Senator, not a Mountain Range, so don’t embarrass yourself.”
5 Comments | Daily, Maine | Permalink
Posted by anne
Moxie Makes Mainers Mighty
April 1, 2008Did you know that used to be the advertising slogan? OH YES!
Feeling very mighty, I am pleased to tell you that THE MOXIE HAS BEEN CONSUMED.
I even ate another Red Hot Dog, to complete the experience.
The event was recorded and my virgin encounter with the official soft drink of Maine will be the next Anne on the Street piece for The Katie Mac Show.
I’ll be there too! Barring any flaming fuselage, I will be in Chicago this weekend, and if I didn’t have to get on a plane to get there, I would be even more excited than I am now. Thank god xanax and I are such close friends.
3 Comments | Daily, Maine | Tagged: chicago, Maine, moxie | Permalink
Posted by anne
not featured in Food and Wine Magazine
March 29, 2008Awhile back Linda from Milwaukee wrote to ask if I had had the chance to sample any of Maine’s local cuisine. I think that was the question. It was something like that. Anyway, it got me thinking. Other than lobster, chowder, blueberries, maple syrup – you know, the standards – was there any other food that is special to Maine that tourists don’t already know about?
Every Thursday I’ve been going to a local potluck dinner, and I took my question to my new local friends and the resounding answer was Red Hot Dogs and Moxie. They implied that this is what the true tourists should eat if the trip they are taking is a tour of Maine’s, ah, lower-brow attractions. So excited were they by my intention to delve into the goodness of local cuisine that these same friends – dyed in the wool Mainers, all – went out the very next week and bought some red hot dogs, just for me.
I had originally asked, “when you say red hot dog…do you mean RED? like the color red? like the hot dog is actually red?” Yes, Einstein, it turns out that is exactly what they mean. As to whether the red hot dogs are actually any good, a debate popped up between the Red Hot Dog Haters and the “Red Hot Dogs Taste Like Regular Hot Dogs” contingent. They couldn’t seem to agree if red hot dogs taste any different than regular hot dogs. And before you start thinking that this alone may preclude consumption of the RHD, let me assure you that I do love me a good hot dog from time to time.
Anyway. So the RHD gets grilled up and presented to me and I have to say, that was a darn good dog. The only noticeable difference was that it had a peculiar snapping consistency – it’s the casing that’s red and it’s crispier than usual. But overall, on the grand scheme of encased meat on a bun, thumbs up. My new friends were quite proud, with the exception of the contingent that still maintained that red hot dogs taste like butt.
What we didn’t have at this table of goodness, however, was Moxie. Moxie is a soft drink, and it was invented way back before Pepsi and Coke. Made here in Maine, it was originally some sort of medicinal tonic. The makers advertised it as a great cure-all for dementia and impotence, and if that doesn’t make you want to run right out and buy a case, well, more fool you. I looked it up online, and Moxie is the official soft drink of the state of Maine. (like, Maine, seriously?)
How have I not heard of this?
Anyway, no Moxie was provided on the night of the RHD, so I made it my mission to find some. I won’t bore you with the story of how I tried to find it in several local stores, but I will tell you about the local grocery store where I had to ask at the counter if maybe they sell Moxie? Even though I don’t see it? Like, maybe in the back, do you have any Moxie?
There was a man buying beer at the counter on the day I asked, and this wasn’t just any beer. This was one single malt liquor tall boy kind of beer, the 40 ounce variety, cheapest on the market, and he was buying just one. At 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. Which is kind of all I need to tell you about the way he smelled. When this man – a man who will clearly drink anything – heard me asking about Moxie he leaned over and warned, “you don’t want to drink that. That stuff is bad.”
WELL. I am not easily frightened. (Ok, maybe I am, but I am not easily deterred.)
I have found Moxie. I have bought one single bottle of it, and it is sitting on my kitchen counter looking at me. And here’s the thing – when I saw my Thursday night friends this week I mentioned that I had found Moxie and that I was going to drink it, and they laughed. And said they want to be there when I drink it. So I think I’m going to bring the Moxie to the next potluck dinner, and maybe I’ll even record the whole event in case I ever need to use it to prove that I, too, can be a Mainer. I have been eyeing the bottle of Moxie on the counter now for a couple of days, and I swear if that thing could talk it would be saying, I dare you.
12 Comments | Daily, Maine | Tagged: Maine, moxie, red hot dogs | Permalink
Posted by anne
signs I may be trying to do too much
March 27, 2008Ran a bubble bath.
Took a business call.
Read an email.
Forgot about said bubble bath.
Opened up a radio script.
Answered a different email.
Went into bathroom at the exact minute that it was about to overflow.
Turned off tap. Thought, Holy Shit.
Took its picture.
Took the bath. Struggled to keep my head above the bubbles. Kind of enjoyed that. But also kind of thinking that’s a good analogy for how I’m feeling these days. Yeah. Trying not to drown in a bath I poured myself.
4 Comments | Daily | Permalink
Posted by anne
