Plenty of stuff from my childhood, like friends’ phone numbers … Judson’s was BLuemound 8- 8808 (by the way, that took forever on a rotary phone as you waited for those 8s and 0s to click back around, but when TouchTone™ came, it was easy (258-8808, all the middle buttons).
And a lot of long form lyrics and literature, usually inadvertently. But what actually came in handy once is that I listened to so much Firesign Theatre in high school that it’s pretty much all seared into my brain.
Well, fast forward thirty years and the ad agency I’m at is prepping for a conference call with many branches of our corporate client, and their VP of Marketing wasn’t sure that their new untested multi-city audio software was going to work. So half an hour before the call, he asks if one of us could speak at a normal volume until they got it all figured out. “It could conceivably take the whole half hour…” Well, our top brass are all looking like deer in the headlights… but not me: “I’d be glad to, sir. Starting now…”
Los Angeles… he walks again by night.
Out of the fog, into the smog…(cough, cough)
Relentlessly… ruthlessly… “I wonder where Ruth is?”
Doggedly… (bark, bark)
Towards his weekly meeting with… the unknown.
At 4th and Drucker he turns left, at Drucker and 4th he turns right, he crosses MacArthur Park and walks into a great sandstone building. (smack) “Oh, my nose!”
I was kind of proud of myself for doing all the voices, and, since they did indeed have troubles, I made it all the way to the end:
The makers of Loosener’s Castor Oil Flakes and Fantastic Cigarettes; Loosner’s for the smile of beauty, Fantastics for the smile of success (cough, cough), brought you the transcribed adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye. Tune in again next week - same time, same station… when Nick Danger meets… The Arab!
By the way, our conference room was full of chuckling executives, many of whom grew up with noir detective radio shows. We found out later that only their Marketing guy was amused. Everyone else in the corporate conference rooms just sat there stonily.