Honey, can I see you in the kitchen? Excuse us, everyone.
You know I appreciate your Foley artist friends and their ability to create realistic sound effects but did you have to invite them to our dinner party?
I’ve really tried tonight, Janice. When I gave them a tour of the house earlier, they imitated and added to the sounds I was making because, apparently, my sounds “lack originality” and “have no soul,” and I “don’t push enough buttons.”
Now every time I walk, they thump a loafer on a piece of linoleum. I mean dammit, their timing is perfect but you know I’m sensitive about my gait.
And do you remember what we asked them to bring tonight? A bottle of wine. What did they show up with? A rack of hinges, Janice. A rack of hinges, thimbles, clamps, nuts, and bolts—as if our home’s soundscape isn’t complex enough.
Bringing props to a dinner party was one thing, it was another to dump our entire silverware drawer onto the floor to “scout for sounds” so they can hit their big deadline. I’m just saying: it was edgy and creative but now the kitchen is covered with packets of soy sauce.
Why do we have so much soy sauce, Janice?
The sounds of punching come from the other room.
Son of a bitch. They’re hammering cabbages. It's a classic choice for mimicking the sound of punches but that means those sound jockeys dug up my cabbage patch. And I just know our dining room table is getting covered in raw cabbage right now.
I don’t care about their big deadline, Janice. What I care about is where we’re going to puzzle after dessert. Because if you think I’m going to do a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle at a table covered in cabbage then you don’t know my puzzling preferences at all.
Look, I’m sorry for getting so upset. I just wanted to have my parents and a few people over to celebrate my promotion. Instead, tonight has been all about your friends and their frustrating but undeniable talent for using sound effects to create a consistent, coherent reality in the increasingly hyperbolic world of cinema.
Also, nobody noticed my haircut.
The thing is, I really respect Foley artists. Don’t you think I know that George Lucas has said that fifty percent of the cinematic experience is sound? Don’t you think I appreciate that there are more astronauts in the world than working Foley artists? But that doesn’t mean your friends can spend all of dinner squirting every condiment bottle we own to try to find the one that’s most sonically accurate.
And you didn’t do anything when they described the sounds of my mom eating as “splattery and girthy.”
From the other room: the sounds of a writhing mass of enormous tentacled sentient vines.
Do you hear that? I thought you told them no high-octane scenes for animated movies, especially any with self-aware vegetation. You know that’s the dystopian scenario I most fear.
They must be using some clever combination of foam padding, suction cups from the bottom of a bathtub mat, and a mophead. Wow. They are good. True craftspeople. And they’re going to nail their big deadline—but come on, Janice.
Just once, I want to have a normal dinner party, with regular people who do things like speak shitty Spanish to each other throughout the evening to “prepare for a trip to Costa Rica” instead of guests who say, “The beauty of Foley is its creative potential,” before shooting yogurt through a hollowed-out tennis-ball can.
Yes, I was grateful when they offered to help clean it up. You heard me thank them. Still, this has officially been my least favorite dinner party.
The only thing I have to look forward to tonight is a slice of celebratory tiramisu.
From the other room: the sounds of a writhing mass of enormous tentacled sentient vines eating tiramisu.
I hate tonight. I do. I’m going out for air.
Also, I don’t want to talk about it but someone definitely recorded me peeing earlier and I know that because there was a boom mic sticking out from behind the shower curtain.
He storms out the door with perfectly timed loafer thumps coming from the other room.