Well, that's a snap right? You're probably making your list right now. Anyways, done and done. I logged on and made a vast, rambling list that included Paul McCartney, Idris Elba, Caravaggio, Pepa, and Brigitte Nielson (I was torn between her and Sandahl Bergman-I was a big fan of 80's movies with sword-wielding bitches.)
I was not expecting to receive this email from the show's producer, Jackson Musker:
Hi Vanessa,
.
Thanks a ton for sharing this amazing guest list (actually TWO lists!)
Werner Herzog and Pepa together...I love it. My hosts and I have had so
much fun reading all of these responses (ranging from Harry Potter to
Dolly Parton to Jesus of Nazareth to RuPaul!) that we started to think
it'd be great if we could include fun little vignettes of these guest
ideas on our radio show...not just on the website. Since your reply was
one of the stand-outs, I'd love to call you sometime tomorrow and chat
for just a couple minutes about your picks, if you're game. I'd tape a
brief part of the conversation - maybe 30 seconds - and then we'd air it
on this Friday's show. (I'll be on the line with you, guiding you
along. And it's taped, not live, so we can tape til we get a good cut.
:-)) We're hoping that 5 or so of the best responses can be part of the
on-air show.
Please let me know if this sounds okay to you...and if so, what time
tomorrow you'd like me to call you for the super quick chat. Maybe
sometime in the morning Pacific Time? (I'm in Los Angeles.)RuPaul and Dolly were indeed on my list. Jesus was.....not. Anyways, sure I said.
I was told to narrow it down to two favorite guests, so I did. The co-host Rico called and interviewed me the next day. Despite trying to mentally prepare, I got all sweaty palmed. First, let me say it's perhaps not apparent from the show but that guy has a future as a phone sex operator if he ever wants to change careers. From his throaty, "Well, hello Vanessa in Ohio!" I was weak kneed. Plus it was weird to talk to the guy when I listen every week. Then I started worrying how to condense what I was going to say into something brief and brilliant and informative and awesome. And my voice-wait, was I talking too high-pitched? Is my Kentucky accent leaking out and coating the audio like Karo syrup? You also can't tell from listening but they do several takes that go like this:
Rico: "Ok, say your name and where you are and how often you listen."
Me: "My name is Vanessa and I'm from Columbus."
Rico: "And when you listen."
Me: "Shit. Oops, can you edit that? 'My name is Vanessa and I'm in Columb-'"
Rico: "Oh, hang on. Let me check the record level again. Ok, go."
And so on. So by the time I finally got comfortable with the whole process, he had to hang up and I wasn't really sure there was anything usable on that tape although we did talk a few minutes about how Liza Minnelli and Werner Herzog would get along and how he was a big Herzog fan and was going to go to a screening in a few weeks of "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" that Werner was hosting (!) whilst "Hey, I Think I Love You" played in my head.
Amazingly, I did make it onto the show for about 30 seconds like Jackson predicted with two other listeners. It's a little over 10 minutes in, should you be inclined to listen. It really is a cool weekly show, regardless of my one-time cameo:
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/dinnerpartydownload/2011/06/episode-100-randy-newman.html
The fears of my sounding too high-pitched and squeaky were unfounded. Instead, I'm speaking in a lovely baritone that would make Tom Waits sound prissy.
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