GK: Our sound-effects man, Fred Newman, was planning to take this week off so he could work the Sands Casino in Atlantic City ---- Fred loves singing in lounges ----
FN (SINGS):
It's six o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
Asking for songs by the Beatles
And some by Led Zeppelin.
And I say, "How about something by Billy Joel?"
And they look at me, like "Who?"
Cause I'm in a joint
In downtown Des Moines.
And last night was Waterloo."
GK: Fred planned to take off but then his sub, Newt Friedman, turned out to be unable to do a horse whinny (BAD WHINNY) or the mating call of the male elk (BAD ELK) and he was terrible at firing a gun (FOUR FAILED ATTEMPTS AT GUNSHOT), so we had to send a chopper to the Casino (SFX) and bring Fred back and he wasn't happy about it but he felt better after lunch in the Town Hall commissary ---- (TR WAITER: For lunch today, we're offering a lobster risotto prepared in a pumpkin broth and lightly seasoned with
minced shallots and liquefied leeks, with fava beans, leeks and fresh lemons flown in from Lima, Peru.)
Fred doesn't care for the city...
GK: ...He has a place up on Montauk (SURF, GULL) where his trawler, the Georgia Brown, is docked (ENGINE) where he likes to go out fishing for grouper (CAST) with his crew, who are all Basque fisherman (SFX) and he's very happy out there. He doesn't care for New York because he has traumatic memories of when he first arrived here, trying to get a start in the sound effects business, and he shared a tiny dim apartment in Hell's Kitchen with three roommates, all of them heavy smokers (COUGH) who all watched TV late into the night (TV AUDIO) as Fred tried to sleep on an old couch with a spring (SPROING) that poked him in the kidneys (CREAK) and the apartment was on the first floor so he heard the car alarms in the night (ALARM) and he'd drift off and then there was another one
(DIFFERENT ALARM) and sirens (SIREN, OFF) and at 5 a.m.
(RATTLE OF JUNK), the garbagemen came around and Fred got up and chased the cockroaches out of the shower (SFX) and turned it on and it was always cold (SHOWER, CRY OF PAIN), but he couldn't wait for warm because he had a 7 a.m. audition, where he had to do elk sounds. (ELK) Fred was excellent with elk, but due to affirmative action, the job often went to a girl (GIRLISH ELK), and so it took Fred years and years to get a foothold in the highly competitive sound effects business, and he's succeeded, but his real dream has always been to sing in casino lounges, and he was going to do that this weekend (FN SINGS:
Make us a sound you're the sound effects man
Make us a sound tonight
Well we're all in the mood for an elephant
Or maybe a seagull in flight.
GK: And that's what he wanted to be doing tonight, but instead he had to come back and be here with us. Sorry, Fred.