James Brown - the Hardest Working Man in Show Business

While James Brown may have been the hardest working man in show business (correctly pronounced by those of us in the industry as “bid-nez”), I am going to canonize myself as the hardest working man in voice over (correctly pronounced by those of us in the industry as “voice talking”).

Picture if you will (channeling Rod Serling) a vigorous lake effect snow storm with 30 m.p.h. gusts and blinding snow falls and an even earlier than usual darkness that falls over the city from the ginormous (that’s a meteorological term…maybe) snow cloud that had covered the area. The snow drifts alone had to be 25 miles high! And those were the small ones.

These tsu-nado-zzard conditions made travel unfit for neither man nor beast. But being a beast of a man and having a commercial recording session in a downtown studio scheduled in the midst of this blizz-tor-nami, I grabbed my dogs and my sled (and my light spring jacket…I’m a native Buffalonian after all) and sprang into action.

Buffalo, NY on December 28, 2009 at the corner of Delaware and Chippewa - about two miles from the recording studio

I dodged stalled cars and busses, ran over old ladies on the sidewalks (when I could find them) and flew around turns like an Olympic luge driver who’d failed his drug tests multiple times all to make it to my appointed recording session where, of course, I performed spectacularly for the people in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware.

They won’t know how hard I worked for them when they hear my spots or what a bombastic, egotistical, self-aggrandizing bone-head I am….but now you do.

Tags: buffalo, commentary, peter o'connell, silliness, voice talent, voiceover // 6 Comments »