When I was twenty years old, I made up a couple of outgoing greetings for my answering machine based on an old TV show theme song and a showtune from Bye Bye Birdie. The TV show theme song was from I Love Lucy and the song from Bye Bye Birdie was “Talk to Me” which is originally sung from a telephone booth. Anyway, I created these outgoing greetings and I left them on my answering machine for a little while, and then I felt sort of silly about them and afraid of what people might think, so I took them off. But now here we are in the Age of YouTube, and it’s—gosh—almost twenty-five years later, and I figured, “Why not? Just for fun, share them with the world.” So, here are my silly outgoing greeting songs that I created in 1988. Hope you enjoy! Continue reading →
I was hoping that my colleague A Dreamer (yes, that’s his name) would be televised as he interpreted the National Anthem into ASL at the beginning of the big game. Unfortunately, this year’s coverage of the signing of the Star Spangled Banner was even less satisfying than last year’s. Last year, we at least got to watch Marlee Matlin signing “bombs bursting in air” on the big screen. This year, I was only able to see — by watching very carefully — the interpreter signing “flag was still there” (all in one nicely inflected ASL sign, by the way) on the Jumbo Tron behind Jordin Sparks’ head.
And what about that Deaf Pepsi ad that was supposed to air? I never saw it. Did you?
When I was eight, I went on about 25 commercial auditions with my maternal grandmother in NYC. I once went up for a peanut butter commercial against the boy who played Mikey in the famous Life Cereal commercial– you know, they one where the brother says, “He likes it! Hey, Mikey!” Well, “Mikey” was about 9 or 10 by that time. Of course, he booked the gig and I saw him on TV a few weeks later. There’s nothing like auditioning in NYC as a child to make your life surreal. I would see the competition in the waiting room and then see them on TV a few weeks later. It was strange and disappointing to audition and never get anything. Eventually, I stopped getting calls from my agent.
Apparently, none of the exhuberance I had on the train to the city translated to the studio once I got there. I would be an excited little ham on the train, telling anyone around that I was going to an audition, but I would clam up in the audition itself. Of course, I never had any acting training or preparation for commercial television. Oh well.
Thank God I went to the School of Creative and Performing Arts when I was 11 and got a great performing arts education for 7 years. I’m happy to say that I’ve had many rewarding performance experiences in my life since then. I even finally got to do a local television commercial.
I was excited to hear that Marlee Matlin would be signing the American National Anthem (“The Star-Spangled Banner”) at Super Bowl XLI, but was disappointed to see her on television only during the phrase “the bombs bursting in air.” Whatever happened to the “signer in the bubble”? I would think they could put an Academy Award-winning deaf actress in a picture-in-picture “bubble” so that her performance of our National Anthem could be enjoyed throughout the duration of the song. Apparently, the director of the televised broadcast underestimated ASL and its many users.
I would like to believe that in the year 2007, accessibility for deaf people and the beauty of ASL would be esteemed by American society. Sadly, the Super Bowl XLI broadcast reminds me that American Sign Language and Deaf Culture are still relegated to a momentary side show.
