Undercooked to a Crisp

Hey ChatGPT,

Can you make an image for me? It should depict Ray, a Foley Artist. In this scene, Ray is preparing the studio for the sounds of “feet crunching in snow” by laying 6 inches of cornstarch mixed with salt on a floor surrounded by acoustic-tiled walls. The post-production cut he’s watching while soundscaping the echolocus of a Connecticut town called Fuck-all-bury should be engaging. 

But Ray is not here to be entertained. Ray is here to win. 

It took awhile for him to break into the theatrical sound effects business. He spent one beat too long at the bottom of the bag and almost gave up completely. Moving back to Idaho and helping out on the family farm was always an option. Someone had to feed the pigs. It probably would have been better for his career if he didn’t have a backup plan.

It would have been okay with Ray, really, but as all sad stories begin, eventually his big break came. It was the mid-1990s and Ray was interning at a mid-tier LA sound studio when a sex scandal broke out. Everyone had signed an NDA upon hire but these things always become public. The rumor is that the key grip, best boy, and gaffers got a little too grippy with a thin but juicy slice of heaven make-believing as an HR temp. They didn’t know her daddy was a bigwig lawyer before that night at the W. All of a sudden there were numerous job openings and Ray snuck in there like a shoestring.

That was 30 years ago. Jesus. Seems like 3 minutes. 30 seasons of movies he’s worked on. Still no award.

He’s never won but he’s been close. The movie that took home Best Sound last year was actually produced in the same studio. The secondary soundtrack featured the sound of “walking in sand,” mimicking it by replacing the grains of sand with actual grains, chia and sesame seeds. He had to admit it was pretty innovative but he knew his idea was better. 

To show there were no hard feelings, he took Mason, the younger Foley Artist that was hired for the seedy movie, to a nearby cafe. The conversation was civil for a while but soon, the grass-fed butter in Ray’s bulletproof coffee started to congeal at the top of the purposefully imperfect ceramic mug. When Mason bragged that the chia seeds he used had been locally sourced from a farm in Los Osos, Ray lost his mind. As he ranted, spittle formed at the corners of Ray’s mouth until a tiny bubble flew into Mason’s Chai Latte.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! Do you know what sounds like sand, Mason? Do you?! Uhh, hmm. Let’s think about it. Ever hear of SAND????? Do you have to try to be this dumb or are you just lucky? Were you dropped on your head as a baby?!”

Ever since that day, the office energy had been off. Sterile. Or as if an invisible mold was infiltrating everyone and telling them not to talk to Ray. His mom would have said that one bad potato ruins the whole sack. When Mason won that award it had smacked Ray right in the middle of his soft light-yellow underbelly. He quipped to himself that craft services probably served those seeds to the below-the-line crew for lunch the next day. You know Zendaya and Tom don’t eat phalange’ed fiber. 

Ray is still bitter about it, if you can’t tell. He sure as hell can’t. He can’t smell the cyanic almond scent of contempt seeping out of his pores. Ray doesn’t realize that the reason he hasn’t been recognized yet isn’t because he would have used actual sand instead of stupid seeds. It isn’t because he’s greasy and leaves a vegetable oil slug trail everywhere he goes. It isn’t even because he has too many eyes that won’t stop visually groping the asses of the female crew members in the studio. People can usually look past those indiscretions and in his defense, the studio director knew he was a French Fry when he got hired.

No. The reason that Ray can’t catch a break or be in the “right room” at the “right time” or finally get put on a movie that his ex-wife and her bitch-ass fiance might actually go see is simple. Ray is an unlikeable prick. 

He may be Master of the Fried Foley Arts. The Spudular Sound Stage Swami. The Supreme Crunchy-leaf Revealer. 

But when you’ve gone sour, no one wants to take on that stink.

If only he could internalize the final words from that escaping ex, expanding into space with a little help from the doppler effect, “You’re not wrong, you’re an aaaaaasssshhhhhooooolllllle!” 

Then maybe he could change. 

But no, Ray is eternally intense and brooding. Think Magnum P.I. seconds before the eyebrow raise that broke a thousand hearts and caused every 4 year-old girl across the state of Texas to cover their faces out of second-hand embarrassment which caused their parents collectively never to let them hear the end of it. Actually, we can’t do that to Tom Selleck. There’s nothing redeeming about Ray. 

Ray is burnt on both ends. That’s not a metaphor. Literally, he’s burnt on either end. Head burnt. “Feet” burnt. Middle, raw as the horse your lard-ass momma rode in on.

Ray is the WORST. You can have him.

P.S. If your big sister lets you take the last burnt raw cold french fry out of the bottom of the bag, she did that on purpose.

“Worst” is still a superlative and Ray is the Best at it.