Oh my goodness, has it been a week since I last told you what I’ve been up to? Well let me catch you up…

You see, last week was another crazy one – in a very good way! After doing five performances with the children’s theatre company in only two days (!) I was called in to do voice work in five different recording studios!! This is what my voice was doing last week:

1) Have you heard of Gran Hermano (Big Brother)? Or Operación Triunfo? Well, the production company that handles these shows here in Spain is called Gestmusic. They were preparing for a conference with Endemol, had thrown together a nifty industrial video, were looking for an American actor to narrate the video, and stumbled across me (don’t ask me how). They called me out of the blue and asked me to stop by the studio to record some narration. It was mostly “amusing” video clips of their shows mixed with statistical audience data. Three hours later and my voice was ready to woo and entertain an international audience composed of high profile television executives.

2) I would love to tell you about the two “romantic” films I dubbed Wednesday morning, but I honestly can’t remember a single thing about them. My ADMB (automatic disturbing memory blocker) is doing its job nicely.

3) I was called in to narrate an AMAZINGLY boring four minute industrial video about some Basque software developer. I was all like, “In certain situations, a usable 80% solution can be produced in 20% of the time that would have been required to produce a total solution. Our new platform for analysis of large-scale unstructured data sources is bomb-diggity whack, yo!” Well, maybe not that last part.

4) With Big Brother under my belt, I decided to step things up a notch. I got a call to record the narration for episodes 3, 4, 5, and 6 of Private Stars, a television show for which I serve as the off camera announcer, whose job it is to tell the viewing audience all sorts of blatantly obvious things that they would have to be blind to not already know. And if they are blind, I don’t know why they would be watching this type of TV program in the first place.

5) To ensure that no one could accuse me of being “predictable”, I finished off the week by providing my voice to a friendly little pigeon in an animated film depicting the life and times of Pope John Paul II. Again I played the part of the narrator (I see a pattern evolving) and I told all the God-fearing children at home about young Karol Józef Wojtyła’s zany childhood adventures. Did you know that little Karol liked to play goalie when his friends played soccer (it didn’t say if he was any good, though) and that he was part of an amateur dramatics group at college and wanted to be an actor before he decided to become a priest? This pigeon seemed to know.

And then on Friday I rested. A long wine-filled lunch out on a sunny terrace in Plaza Rius i Taulet with AmJan was just what the doctor ordered.

A few of my friends are contemplating leaving Barcelona for greener pastures and I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind as well. But then a week like last week happens and I realize how much of a niche I’ve carved out for myself here and how good I’ve really got it. Upon careful inspection, I’d say that there’s an 88% chance that we won’t be leaving sunny, beautiful Barcelona anytime soon. Maybe even 89%.