I Was A Teenaged Heart-Throb (re: Girl Talk Date Line) - a podcast by Matt Sommer
from 2007-02-06T19:31
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Racine, WI-- the place I grew up and where I am currently living-- used to be a pretty amazing center of industry. CASE tractors, In-Sink-Erator, Johnson's Wax, Horlick's Malted Milk, and Western Publishing (to name a few) all made their start here.
During my senior year in High School, a representative from Western contacted our theater teacher and said they were looking for a group of kids to try out and be voices for a new board game they were putting together. Being a drama dork (among other things), I tried out and got accepted as part of the crew.
We had to drive up to Milwaukee to a professional recording studio, and spent the afternoon reading goofy situations from a script-- situations dealing with a guy calling a girl on the phone, and either getting lucky or striking out.
The game? A little thing called GIRL TALK DATE LINE. In the game, you had to move around the board and take two character tiles (a guy and a girl), match them together and jam them into a tiny portable speaker box thingy you'd have hooked up to your cassette deck. The tape would then play one of the conversations mentioned above. If you got a "good" one, you were successful. If you got shot down... well, better luck next time.
I got paid a few hundred dollars for my efforts, I remember... all of which went towards paying my bills for the senior prom. I never really knew what kind of impact this game had, or whether it was popular or whatever, but apparently it won 6th place in the 1991 Deutscher Spiele
Preis. After doing the game, I briefly considered trying to work in the voice acting arena, but like a lot of things when you're 18, it got swept under the rug.
During my senior year in High School, a representative from Western contacted our theater teacher and said they were looking for a group of kids to try out and be voices for a new board game they were putting together. Being a drama dork (among other things), I tried out and got accepted as part of the crew.
We had to drive up to Milwaukee to a professional recording studio, and spent the afternoon reading goofy situations from a script-- situations dealing with a guy calling a girl on the phone, and either getting lucky or striking out.
The game? A little thing called GIRL TALK DATE LINE. In the game, you had to move around the board and take two character tiles (a guy and a girl), match them together and jam them into a tiny portable speaker box thingy you'd have hooked up to your cassette deck. The tape would then play one of the conversations mentioned above. If you got a "good" one, you were successful. If you got shot down... well, better luck next time.
I got paid a few hundred dollars for my efforts, I remember... all of which went towards paying my bills for the senior prom. I never really knew what kind of impact this game had, or whether it was popular or whatever, but apparently it won 6th place in the 1991 Deutscher Spiele
Preis. After doing the game, I briefly considered trying to work in the voice acting arena, but like a lot of things when you're 18, it got swept under the rug.
Ah... what MIGHT have been.
EDIT:
You can download an MP3 of the "loser" calls here. That's me, on the first call... And also on the "call me when you decide to go Italian!" one.
Further episodes of That's What She Said -- The Office
Further podcasts by Matt Sommer
Website of Matt Sommer