Family News - kind of a long one

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This Thursday my business had our annual city inspection.

In recent years this has been a disaster - nothing worthy of a 20/20 report mind you, but pages of nicks and scratches against us. Traditionally we put it off as long as possible, until the city said 'time's up'.

Nothing against the previous administration, mind you, both of whom I respect, but it just wasn't made a priority.

This year, on the heels of some recent improvements and a stronger diligence in upkeep, I asked the city to schedule it for last week. Kind of caught them off guard, I'd imagine.

The results? Half an hour into the exhausting five hour inspection the inspector started using phrases like " this is the best its ever been" and "nice, nice".

After completing one building he had a half page of notes. According to him, he'd usually be up to a few pages by that point.

If there is such a thing as 'aceing' an inspection, this was it. The inspector wrote us up for tiny things that have been in place for years.

"Frankly, I don't know how I missed them before," he told us. "Except there were just so many big things in the past."

I was so damn happy I took the family to Ponderosa to celebrate.

In other, much more memorable news in the scheme of things . . .

Today, as I’d briefly mentioned awhile back, my wife and YaYa taped a radio commercial for the company.

I hadn’t told anyone the details because if my daughter had freaked out we’d have backed out with no harm done.

It was my wife’s idea to tape us doing the commercial, so that we could play it to and from school each day. It was the best way for YaYa to learn her lines, since she’s still too young to read.

Tommorow, we'll burn the thing. No one should hear a 300# man say "Mommy, can I ever be a real Princess?" on a loop tape.

We pulled her out of school a wee bit (okay, okay, a few hours) early to make sure she had a nap.

So was she eager, or were we just being typical stage parents?

Well, she’d been nervous one day, excited the next. Today she was both, depending on the hour.

(She’d told my sister yesterday that she was ‘scared of the radio’. My sister, in the dark all along, thought she was bonkers)

So we got to the radio station. It was an otherwise inconspicuous building tucked into a wooded area in a southwestern suburb. From the vesitbule you could look into the working DJ booths of two local stations.

That got YaYa’s excitement up.

The sales rep, a really nice guy, came and took us to a recording booth where we all chatted for a bit. I started to get worried that YaYa was going to go stir crazy, and as it turns out it was the wrong booth – the right one was down the hall.

Then it was showtime.

It was a much smaller room than I imagined. Just a chair, a table of mixing equipment, and a producer’s station with a computer in front of it. A single microphone was mounted to the table.

[The sales rep asked if I brought my camera and bemoaned the fact that I didn't. I had left it behind because I thought it was a no-no, but if I'm being honest with myself I can't be too upset. It was rather dim in the studio and in all likelihood my camera wouldn't have been up to the task.

Can't seem to get the hang of low light shots, dangit. That's the only time I miss my old Olympus Stylus.]

Wouldn't ya know it, YaYa started to cry.

Here’s where it got dicey; should the crying have gone aminute longer she’d be in a full blown fit, and the commercial would have to be scrapped.

I don’t remember what we did to shut it down, but she sucked it up and we got down to business.

It wasn’t flawless, but it was much better than I think anyone could reasonably have expected from a four year old. The girl had five lines and 38 words to speak on cue for Pete’s sake!

In the end there were several takes, and the producer had YaYa ‘practice without the microphone’ (wink wink) to get her to relax as they redid some individual lines. She had just the most adorable expression everytime she goofed up a line – her eyes bugged out and she brought both hands to her mouth ‘speak no evil’ style.

I haven’t heard the completed commercial yet, as they still have to add the ‘announcer’s’ voice, but they played some of it back.

And heck, I’m not embarrassed – their equipment blew the heck out of the $19 K-Mart recorder we’d used to practice.

It was like listening to the Voice of God, it was that crisp and clear.

Only, you know, audible.

As far as my wife’s part? The sales rep seemed genuinely impressed by her performance and called her a natural. I don’t think it was b.s. – she really is good, and I think he was wondering if she’d done it before in a past life.

After ten years of poverty, I’m finally making her a star :)

So the commercial went well, if not spectacular, and soon I’ll have a copy on CD, and be able to listen to it on the radio.

And YaYa?

I stopped at a custard stand and bought her a strawberry dipped cone that promptly dripped all over my tie.

Such is the price I pay for being married to one star and father to another.

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