Via Sully, this amazing voice:
That is an amazing pair of pipes- I could listen to him read the dictionary. And the heartbreaking thing is how many people like him are out there, homeless, or incarcerated, just dying for another chance…
by John Cole| 65 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
Via Sully, this amazing voice:
That is an amazing pair of pipes- I could listen to him read the dictionary. And the heartbreaking thing is how many people like him are out there, homeless, or incarcerated, just dying for another chance…
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Violet
Saw about five minutes of the Today Show this morning. They showed this clip and said they were flying him to NYC and he would be on the show tomorrow and they’d see if someone could help him get a job.
NJSteven
Keith did a Countdown segment on this guy last night which I think really increased his visibility; ESPN is reporting Cavs are trying to offer him a job.
NobodySpecial
Well, it looks like he’s got a choice of jobs.
Link
Good to see.
Liberal Sandlapper
From Yahoo! News:
“As evidenced by Williams’ new haircut, what a difference a day makes. A mere 24 hours after the video went viral, Williams says he’s already been offered a bunch of employment opportunities, including one that’s a Ohio citizen’s dream job. “The Cleveland Cavaliers just offered me a full-time job and a house,” Williams revealed. The Cavs will reportedly have to compete against MTV, the NFL and likely countless more suitors for Williams’ services. .
While Williams’ sudden and lucky twist of fate could bring any man to tears, he gets most choked up when discussing how an invitation to do the gamut of TV shows in New York has opened the door for him to visit his 92-year-old mother in Brooklyn for the first time in years. “One of my biggest prayers that I sent out was that she would live long enough to see me rebound,” Williams said. “There’s so many words. I’ve already been compared to Susan Boyle… I’m just so happy.”.”
Art
Ted Williams on WNCI 97.9 Radio this morning
http://www.youtube.com/user/Bunomous
Bill ORLY
Well, Geico fired their voiceover guy for leaving an angry message at Dick Armey’s astroturf organization, so maybe they could hire him. Of course, R. Lee Ermy advocated overthrowing Obama at a Toys for Tots fundraiser, but he still appears throwing tissues on their ads.
Villago Delenda Est
I am so happy that the exposure worked out for Ted…he does have a golden voice, rich, expressive, and it’s very obvious he’s got more talent yet to be tapped. Three cheers for the Cavs, MTV, and the NFL for recognizing his talent and acting on it.
Violet
@Liberal Sandlapper:
That’s so great that he’s going to get to visit his mother. He probably thought he’d never see her again. Aww…makes me tear up.
I really love his voice. It really is a fantastic radio voice.
Alwhite
If only he could throw a football (or really perform any athletic feat at an elevated level) he could have endless chances.
licensed to kill time
He’s gotten a lot of job offers already, just from that YouTube plus media coverage. Some radio station said he could have his own show and that they’d pay him ‘at least minimum wage’ haha.
I knew a ‘radio voice’ guy once and it was kind of weird. He could go into and out of his radio voice at will and it was kind of like being around an annoying commercial. He was a really nice guy though, when he wasn’t doing his fake commercials and intros. That got old.
Chat Noir
@NobodySpecial: Thanks for posting. I needed to see something positive today.
Southern Beale
I saw Good Morning America do a piece on this today. As I told a new friend, thank God Al Gore invented the internet so folks like this could get the attention via YouTube they deserve. Heard he’s getting job offers to do voice-overs, hopefully he won’t be homeless much longer.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
One of the best send ups of the whole “radio voice” was Ted Baxter on the Mary Tyler Moore show.
LyleEvans
wow, check him out now:
cleek
are there no workhouses?
BGinCHI
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Really Mare, Really!
mr. whipple
Ah, Cleveland. The Cavs lose LeBron, but gain a homeless guy.
BGinCHI
Seriously, give this guy Gibbs’ job.
Yutsano
@mr. whipple: Am I wrong for thinking they might just be getting the better end of that deal?
fasteddie9318
See? This is why we need to stop shoveling the hardly-earned money of our Captains of Industry into unconstitutional government programs that try to improve the lot of the peasant. What the peasant must understand is that all it needs to do is make a YouTube video that goes viral and results in it being offered employment. Taxes could become a thing of the past, except of course for those taxes paid by the peasant so that it can compensate the poor plutocrats for the air that the peasant dares to steal from them and selfishly breathe into its own undeserving lungs.
Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey))))
I often wonder about this. As a country, as a society, we’re happy enough to dump on the poor: “Get your act together!” “Get a job, loser!” “Why should some good-for-nothing deadbeat get any help? I work for everything I have! If these assholes won’t work, I don’t want my hard-earned money going to pay them to buy $18.00 a pound swordfish steaks and organic soy milk with food stamps!”
But the thing is, when we let ourselves think this way, we all lose. I often wonder who the best scientist alive today is in this country. Wouldn’t shock me to learn that it’s some guy living under a bridge or a single mother barely scraping by on 2 jobs, but that’s no help to us as a society, since they can’t live up to their potential.
We all have gifts. All of us. Some of us can write, some can sing, some can do calculus in their heads, some can hit a baseball 500 feet, some can teach, some can–well, you see what I’m saying here. If we were smart, we’d be more eager to help all American children to find what they’re good at, what they really love doing, what they were born to do, and help them hone their crafts. We’d all be better off. We’d do the same for grownups who never had the chance to go to school as children, or never had the chance to go to good schools.
It wouldn’t shock me to learn that the person most likely to find a cure for cancer or diabetes or something–at least measured by raw ability in the field–is somebody who never had the chance to go to college.
Instead, too many of us can’t bring ourselves to think anything but, “Why is he getting a free ride? I never got a handout, and I’ll be damned if he gets one if I have anything to say about it!”
The saddest thing is that a frightful number of our fellow countrymen feel this way even when it isn’t a government program we’re dealing with. They don’t want anybody they think is unworthy to get any help, even if it’s from a church or some private charity.
I’ve read stories in magazines and newspapers about non-profit work where some organization–some private organization, spending money given by private donors–has found a way to help poor people go to school or eat better food or something, and when I get into the readers’ comments, it always makes me sad because so many of them chime in about how disgusted they are that suchandsuch.org is handing out money to deadbeats or some such bullshit.
It’s like these people lie awwake at night, just seething at the thought that some guy, somewhere might be getting a break he didn’t earn, even when it costs them nothing. It’s like the principle of caring aboout other people offends them or something. Sad…
mr. whipple
@Yutsano:
Nope. He just won’t win many games. :)
God bless him.
NobodySpecial
@Chat Noir: Yeah, so did I. My mother got diagnosed with ‘moderate’ Alzheimer’s today.
BGinCHI
Cole needs to get these on his car.
http://www.jamminproducts.com/Productimages/jp-80009-brickpin-big.jpg
Paul W.
Good lord that breaks my heart, you can’t do that to me at work.
Arclite
Wow, when he first opened his mouth, I thought it was a prank, that someone voiced over the guy speaking. But he is the real deal, holy crap.
I’m so glad I read up page that he got a job. Fantastic. That’s just great.
Chat Noir
@NobodySpecial: So sorry to hear that. My grandma had Alzheimer’s so I know first hand what it does to people. Very, very cruel disease.
freelancer
@fasteddie9318:
We will see this argument made, sincerely made, before the month is out.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey)))):
I give you a guy who never actually earned any advantage he ever had: George W. Bush.
But since he comes from a family with lots of money, he gets multiple breaks even though he fucks up everything he touches.
Scott
@NobodySpecial: Sorry to hear that. Good luck to y’all…
Scott
As a former radio guy, I absolutely love Williams’ voice — he’s got brilliant chops, and it’s great to see that he’ll be able to earn a living that way again…
…But man, I got to where I hated the radio biz. Maybe if I’d worked in larger markets, it would’ve been better. But I think I’d have to think real hard if my choice was between homelessness and going back to radio… I had too many bosses who thought on-air talent wasn’t worth shelling out minimum wage for…
BGinCHI
@Scott: The song clearly states that video killed the radio star.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey)))):
My right-wing older brother is like this. I have a co-worker like this. They’re always so quick to tear down something/someone based on the exception to the rule.
If either had had a difficult childhood, it’d almost be understandable but both were blessed with wonderfully bland middle-class upbringings. It blows my mind.
MikeJ
@Scott: With a great voice the best job in radio is production. Cut bumpers in your home studio and you don’t have to deal with the same asshole pd everyday. Of course you have to deal with a bunch of different asshole pds and salesdroids, but you don’t work directly for them.
gene108
I’m personally jealous as hell about people who make a living because they have “radio voices” and do voice overs and stuff.
I can read copy too, but my voice just isn’t good enough to a make living off it.
In some ways, it’s a very lucky profession to be in. I’m not sure you can train for it, you either have the pipes to do it or not.
Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey))))
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, but it isn’t the same, somehow. These people, they don’t care about some rich callow asshole like Bush who never lifted a finger to do anything in his life. They only resent poor people who get some kind of unearned break. That’s what I don’t get.
As I said, you see it in the comments after stories: people ranting that “It isn’t fair that some poor unwed mother gets some help going back to school or something, because, hey, nobody ever gave me any money to go to school!” It means nothing that in all likelihood, they never had any worries when they were young–or at least had a lot fewer than the hypothetical woman in question–and got through without needing any help. The point is, that lazy, stupid unwed mother made her bad choices and now she’s being rewarded for it, and that’s unfair!
You can try to point out that the commenter came from a stable home and went to decent schools, and on and on, and the unwed mother came from a broken home and had shitty schools and all kinds of other hardships, and so on, but it never gets through. All they see is that there’s somebody getting “something for nothing”, and that person, in their eyes, is unworthy of such help. And they get livid. Bush, and people like him, somehow, they never strike these people as “unworthy” of all the breaks they have had in their lives, or else they’ll wave away the breaks and claim that people like Bush are really hard workers–against all eveidence, or come up with some other bullshit justification for not resenting Bush and those like him.
I know a lot of it is racism, but there’s something else, too, which is, I think, contempt for the poor. Our society has an almost inborn contempt for the poor. We–I’m speaking for society as a whole, not for me or you or the people who show up here as a rule–hate poor people. We resent them. We resent the fact of them. Being poor is seen as a shameful thing, whethre you’re poor because you’ve had a lot of advantages and pissed them all away, which is what a lot of people seem to implicitly believe about most poor people, or whether you’ve never had one thing go your way in your life.
If there’s one thing I think we need to do before we can make any headway in doing away with poverty America, it’s to change the idea that being poor is something to be ashamed of. We need to do that because we all kind of buy into it, even the poor themselves, which might be one reason they aren’t more pissed off about their lot in life than they have every right to be: the idea that being poor is a character flaw is so ingrained in our society, and so pervasive, that poor people themselves are ashamed for being poor. And that works to the advantage of the plutocrats: as long as poor people are kept feeling ashamed of their plight, they’re more likely to be too cowed and embarassed to make much trouble.
catclub
@BGinCHI:
I want Lewis Black ranting about Adolf Hitler Tourette’s
to replace Gibbs.
Marmot
Dang! I used to live right off that exit, on Hudson St. It’s a depressing place — one side of the freeway there, in the 90s, was predominantly Black and poor, while the other was just fat and ugly. I’m glad to see this guy get the hell out and up.
BGinCHI
@catclub: I’d go for Stephen Wright of they couldn’t get Black.
Or subject the press corps to Gilbert Gottfried.
That’ll learn ’em.
PeakVT
That guy’s voice is almost a caricature of a radio voice it’s so… radio friendly. (Which reminds of one of my favorite song names ever.)
The Moar You Know
@Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey)))): 21st century America in one sentence. My congratulations, and some quiet weeping for what we as a nation have allowed ourselves to become.
slag
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
In my nicer moments I actually feel sorry for these kinds of people. Their self-identity depends so firmly on the bootstrap myth that letting go of it and just appreciating what they have and what they have to give scares the hell out of them.
When I take the time to think about them, I remember that they really are a pathetic bunch that deserves more pity than scorn. But since I rarely want to waste my time thinking about them, I generally prefer scorn.
catclub
@The Moar You Know:
The seething is usually related to the undeserving being poor and dark skinned.
No seething about George Bush being born on third base and awarded a homerun just for how great he was.
If these people understood even a taste of a smidgin of the Christianity they claim to practice, they would recognize that all are undeserving in some way.
MattR
@BGinCHI:
The inspiration behind the whole “Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a girl in 1990” meme
BGinCHI
@MattR: Wow, even GG is smarter than a Republican.
Bobcat Goldthwaite would look normal in the GOP incoming class.
recusancy
@NJSteven: Don’t turn Keith into a hero. His youtube video went viral. Keith just jumped on the bandwagon. Reddit was all over it.
Sanka
Laughing. Out. Loud.
Yeah. Visibility to all 100 viewers.
Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey))))
@catclub:
Yes. I’m a Christian. To me, the one thing I need to try to live up to as a Christian is “Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me.” That’s pretty much it. All the stuff about sodomy and not working on the sabbath and not eating pork, well, that’s pretty much extraneous. If I can live up to that, I’m doing all right. If I can’t, then I have some work to do. And I know I don’t live up to it, but I try. Too many people who call themselves Christians seem to go through life without so much as a thought for “least of these my brethren”.
J sub D
I wonder where he will be in five years?
asiangrrlMN
I’m really glad things seem to be looking up for him. It’s a crying shame that there are so many homeless people. That said, I don’t like his voice. It’s too smooth and radio-y for my taste. I feel better now.
aliasofwestgate
Wow, the dude’s got a voice worthy to replace the older gentleman that died last year.(He voiceover damned near EVERYTHING on movie previews and half a dozen other stuff) I can never remember his name, but i always knew his voice.
He had a very distinct timbre, much like Mr Williams’. I hope he decides on something like that. He can do radio in addition to voice overs for previews and whatever. The good thing about a decent voice? If your not heavily contracted to just ONE entity, you can work several at once. Limiting it to just radio? Not so good, since 90% of it is pretty much minimum wage.
I hope he takes his time and picks right. He can do well on several areas if he plays it right. I speak as a former college radio student who studied her prospects before leaving the program in disgust. Because i saw how the traditonal DJ who picked music was being replaced by computer dictated sets on the bigger networks (IE: clear channel).
But this guy? Can go much, much further than even THAT if he’s smart. I definitely want to see if he shows up in areas more than just radio in a few years. :D
Just Some Fuckhead
He has an amazing voice. I can imagine it as the “voice of God” doing NFL replays.
Sasha
@Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey)))):
QFT. It never fails to amuse and depress me that it is those political leaders who most insist that America is a Christian nation are invariably about as unChristian as they come.
Colbert had a great bit on this on his last show of 2010, arguing that Christ needed to be taken out of Christmas, lest his message of helping the least fortunate be taken seriously.
fucen tarmal
as another humble guy with a big dick, i concur.
WereBear
@NobodySpecial: I’m so sorry about that. I lost my Grandmother that way.
Google “coconut oil and Alzheimer’s” and poke around. If I had it to do over again, I’d have insisted we try this.
Ryan
What ever happened to personal accountability, huh? If he wanted to be given a hand-out, he should have gone into finance.
Elizabelle
Mr. Williams is a handsome guy. Beautiful bone structure. Lots to say. Humility from his experiences and from staying sober for two years.
I hope he has a bright future.
Yutsano
@aliasofwestgate:
Don LaFontaine, the voice of the movies. Almost no one knew what he looked like, but almost everyone had heard him.
AxelFoley
@Liberal Sandlapper:
See, another job created under the Obama administration.
/snark
Being serious here, but that got me choked up when I saw him say this in his interview this morning. God bless him and his mom.
Just Some Fuckhead
@AxelFoley:
It was very touching.
mediumTEX
I agree completely that it’s awesome that this dude is getting a second chance and that there are all too many homeless, ex-cons, down and out who deserve a second chance. But please for the love of Jeebus can’t we all agree that all DJ’s should be killed; if not, then surely the terrorists have won.
Lesley
If Sarah effing Palin, a criminal grifter can nearly become VP of the country, surely this talented intelligent man deserves a break.
It’s heartbreaking that so many lives are being ruined by a) the drug trade, b) a profound lack of options to get better and get help, a condition created by c) the greed of the wealthy class.
blogreeder
@Lesley:
Where do you get the notion that there is a profound lack of options for this guy? He’s been sober for two years and don’t you think he probably needed help to do it? And what does the greed of the so called “wealthy class” have anything to do with this situation?
josephdietrich
I hope he can stay clean.
Don
Good for this guy, but I despair that this is going to reinforce a belief for a lot of people that the homeless are by and large just slackers or folks who need a single opportunity. A sizable portion (I suspect a majority but I’m not going to make that assertion w/o a fact to back it up) of the people on the street are there because they’re mentally ill and our system no longer has an effective way to deal with them.
It’s complicated and it’s not like the old system of forced institutionalism was a winner, but these lather-rinse-repeat experiences so many homeless go through is heartbreaking. Someone gets brought into the system, cleaned up and medicated, then since they’ve ceased being an immediate threat they’re jettisoned out into the world without a support system… and they fall off their meds again.