Page 78 of You Spin Me

“Jones told us you were coming today,” Rocket says, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair. “But he didn’t tell us what to do with you.”

“Oh.” Today is really turning out to be a disaster. First, the front office dude assumes I’m a receptionist because I’m a girl, and now I’m here only because Jones wants to make Cal happy.

“That’s not true,” Porky drawls. “He said we need to expand our appeal to the fairer sex. So he got us a representative.”

Rocket huffs. “What voices do you do?”

“Voices?”

“You know, characters. Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera, TV shows…”

“Well, I’m an actress, so I—”

“Oh, for crying out loud. Not an actress.”

“Don’t be an asshole, Rocket. Let’s get in there, and we’ll figure it out as we go.”

Looking around the room like someone else might emerge from behind a speaker or the electric piano, I have to ask, “Is it really only the two of you?”

Rocket frowns. “What, we aren’t enough for you?”

“No, I… I thought it was a whole troupe recording the routines.” WBAR is known for its comedy bits, especially the hilarious song takeoffs. They’ve turned “Electric Avenue” into “Electric Barbecue” and “Beast of Burden” into “I Can Smell Your Pizza Burning.” They also play fake commercials, kind of like the ones onSaturday Night Live.

Porky dips his head at me. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Uh-huh.” Rocket purses his lips, then juts his chin at mic stands crowded into the corner like a flock of flamingos. “Before we record, we write. And before we write, we research.”

My gut clenches, and it’s not because I was so behind schedule that I skipped breakfast. I’ve never written anything in my life. And research usually involves reading.

This day just gets better and better.

“When Jones said he was bringing you in, I recorded a bunch of TV—prime time and daytime. Let’s see what we can find.” Rocket shoves a cassette into a VCR/TV combo and presses play. Instead of skipping the commercials like you normally would, he skips the show and plays the commercials—the ones with women in them, that is.

“It’s like a whole new world of things to make fun of,” Porky says, rubbing his hands together as Rocket fast-forwards through ads for Dunkin’ Donuts and Jordan’s Furniture muttering, “Did that, did that.”

When he plays the L’eggs ad for Sheer Energy where a stewardess walks off the plane and then dances around the tarmac, both guys giggle like boys on the first days of ballet classes. Before they figure out how hard it is.

Rocket plays the section where she caresses her legs and talks about how the pantyhose “stimulate” her legs over and over, until he can imitate her perfectly.

Shaking my head in wonder, I say, “I don’t think you guys need me.”

“Nah,” Porky says. “Rocket can only do a falsetto for so long before his voice gives out.”

“This is a possibility, but let’s keep at it.” Rocket makes a note of the time stamp of the L’eggs ad, singing the tag line, “Nothing beats a great pair of L’eggs” to himself before continuing the hunt.

Next up: an Arrid Extra Dry ad.

“This has potential,” Rocket says as he sharpens a pencil. “First things first, we have to come up with another name for the product, unless we want to get sued.”

“So we want something that sounds like Arrid but isn’t?”

“Exactly,” Porky nods.

“Huh.” A laugh puffs out of me. “You know, I never thought about it, but ‘arid’ with one ‘r’ means dry, so it’s like the deodorant is called ‘Dry Extra Dry.’”

“Arid means dry?” Porky stares off into the distance like this has blown his mind.

“Yeah,” I say. “So we need another word that means dry?”

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