More from Jason Rayles
Such a Donkey (for sensitive ears)
(00:07:34)
From: Jason Rayles
this is an FCC-friendlier version of Such a Donkey
The Fair
(00:10:29)
From: Jason Rayles
The fair is bright and nice and happy, and then the sun goes down....
Jimmy & Jewel: A Love (?) Story [long version]
(00:15:58)
From: Jason Rayles
A woman I had never met before handed me a rose at my grandfather's funeral.
Fair Read-Along, OUTRO
(00:03:48)
From: Jason Rayles
This collage of ambient sounds (mostly of a carousel) from a county fair was originally made as a read-along component of a book.
Fair Read-Along, NIGHT
(00:14:17)
From: Jason Rayles
This collage of nighttime sounds from a county fair was originally made as a read-along component of a book.
Fair Read-Along, DAY
(00:18:54)
From: Jason Rayles
This collage of daytime sounds from a county fair was originally made as a read-along component of a book.
Jimmy & Jewel: A Love (?) Story [short version]
(00:10:52)
From: Jason Rayles
A woman I had never met before handed me a rose at my grandfather's funeral.
Lili Day at the Farm
(00:11:47)
From: Jason Rayles
This is an audio collage of a little girl's day on a farm.
Related Pieces
Piece Description
I recently moved to New York and started hanging out with my old friend Ben, whom I hadn't seen in about 5 years. In a half-hearted attempt to be cute, I end up making an ass of myself at his birthday party. This story is told entirely in the robot voice. I used an online text-to-voice tool that let me type in my script (about 2 sentences at a time), and it would output an audio file. I then stitched the files together in pro tools. Originally, I intended to score this thing or to add concrete sounds and foley effects, but the file has been sitting on my computer for months, and still haven't gotten around to that. I think it works fine as just straight narration, but if you license the piece from prx, feel free to add your own music/effects. A version of this piece with the naughty bits bleeped out can be found at http://prx.org/pieces/6141
2 Comments
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Review of Such a DonkeyI liked this piece a lot . I think it will resonate well with a 20-something crowd, especially. I laughed out loud at least twice. I don't think the robot voice is necessary to make this funny, but it added an extra intriguing dimension of weirdness. |
Transcript
I recently moved to New York, and reconnected with Ben, whom I had not seen in about five years, and I was happy when his girlfriend, Sara, invited me to his birthday party. It would be a good chance to meet some new people. Plus, Ben is like the easiest person on the planet to shop for. I could get him anything related to bikes, trains, boats, high performance sports cars -- photography -- and he'd love it. In fact, just a few days earlier, he had told me about a crazy model train store near times square, so I thought it would be easy to get him something from there. But then I thought, well, maybe a model train is too obvious.
A few days passed, and I thought, man, I really gotta get Ben something. A few more days pass. a few more. all of a sudden it's ben's birthday, and time for the party.
I have been renovating my apartment, so I am covered in gypsum dust and paint. with no p...
Read the full transcript
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Geo Beach
Posted on September 17, 2005 at 08:34 PM | Permalink
Review of Such a Donkey
Jason Rayles brings us "I am such a donkey", a tale from the bad joke gone bad tradition, a premise with promise. But humor is a hard master, and demands a writing and rewriting absent here.
The twist in "Donkey" is that Jason delivers a birthday card with a gratuitous line about surviving life without getting shot, only to find the recipient had a dear friend who died after an accidental shotgunning. But this vector is intersected with such dead-end alleys as "Plus, Ben is like the easiest person on the planet to shop for", and "he's got this really styling beard and he's got this skipper-slash-professor-slash-indie rocker thing happening".
Plus.
Plus, Jason inserts like this really non sequitorious slash out-in-left-field slash "schlemiel with a sexy female" thing that, endeared as I am to languorous associative wanderings, just doesn't wrap back right.
Rayles' production concept is to have his trax read by a voice synthesizer. Problem is, the synthesized voice is remarkable good, or not nearly bad enough. It certainly isn't the astonishingly articulate instrument of homo sapiens' larynx and associated vocal architecture.
Think of the purest form of humor – the stand-up comic. It's writing and voice.
All art is choices, and "Donkey" (an odd choice for "ass" in a piece that features "shit" and "motherfucker" as locutions) chooses to skip the hard work of writing and voicing. So the plastic words play out on the computer speakers, alone.