HELLO, CLEVELAND! (psst - that's Schenectady) HELLO, SCHENECTADY! ARE YOU READY TO RRROCK?

The kids, they have this annoying habit of growing all the time. And since they can't work in the mines any more...(homer) stupid child labor laws (/homer)...it falls to Her Awesomeness and I to keep them clothed, and fed, and even housed. Until they're, like, eighteen. Can you believe it? I thought it was going to be okay to turn Noodle out of the house when she turned four and let her forage for grubs or whatever, but apparently that's also frowned upon. Sigh.

Me, I'm the one genius in my family who decided to forgo the teacher's life in favor of the thrilling world of small-town radio. Tenure? summers off? benefits? Regular raises? No dumb phone calls at 2 in the morning? Feh.

The usual radio nomad's life of pulling up roots every two years to move hither and yon, that was not for me when I was younger, and it sure as heck isn't for me now. So the chance of Stern-level money landing in my lap is about the same as that for the Reds winning the World Series this year and every year until 2023. And yet the children insist on having pants when they leave for school in the morning, the little ingrates. Something's gotta give.

Bottom line: I'm beating the bushes for additional giggery and I'm turning first to voice-over work since I've come this far running my yap for a living, and voice work is something I can do sitting on my tuches here in the kitchen. I started on this new path earlier today by spending the entire day in beautiful downtown Schenectady, hobnobbing with people whose mighty pipes could shatter granite from 20 miles off. Repeatedly I opened my mouth to introduce myself and out came this feeble mewl that make the guy from Scritti Politti sound like Barry White.

Y'know, this guy:



More to come soon on this thrilling leap forward mildly exciting venture probable catastrophe...

NIGHT NUMBER TEN

This is it. Noodle attempts to go for the big prize by falling asleep by herself for the tenth night.

I missed the success of night nine due to a voice-over seminar at my old high school in Rhinebeck - a place I completely don't recognize since its expansion a few years ago, even though I attended school there for five years and even ran the summertime paint crew for a couple years. The paint jobs are holding up nicely after 22 years, too. I wandered around disoriented like one of the grouchy alte kackers who only sets foot in the school once a year to vote "no" on the school budget. ("I don't have kids in the schools, why should I pay?" To which on the AM station's old talk show I would respond "My dad's dead and never collected a dime from Social Security - where's my 50% payroll tax cut?" Just to rile them and listen to them splutter.)

And then a couple of the friendly students? teachers? pointed me in the right direction.

Bottom line from the seminar: voiceover work is a pretty sweet gig if you can get it, but it takes a lot of hustle to get over that first big hump and my area of expertise doesn't necessarily give me that much of an edge.

(Welcome to my Wall Street Journal forum readers! There are more than one of you, yes?)