A Mickey Mouse Job

A warning of things to come

This post was for subscribers when published last week but has now been made public.

“A Mickey Mouse job” is in Urban Dictionary since 2006, but I heard it when I was a kid. It means to do something poorly. I’m hoping you don’t think my Mickey Mouse impression is done poorly, although it’s certainly not perfect.

I began doing voices when I was young, when my dad was listening to Cheech and Chong albums. I didn’t get all the jokes, but the duo had cool voices that I liked to imitate. I actually interviewed Tommy Chong for the Los Angeles Times a while back when he was on Dancing With the Stars. He was always a fitness nut and actually grew up in my city. The first five minutes of the interview he was asking what things in Calgary were like now.

My ability to do voices served me a little too well when I traveled to Mexico and Guatemala to learn Spanish for my master’s degree, which focused on Latin American history. My Spanish was mediocre, but my accent (that may have been ever-so-slightly Cheech) was pretty good. And locals would hear me talk and assume my Spanish was far better than it actually was and start speaking rapidly with a ton of words I didn’t know, and I always had to tell them yeah my Spanish really isn’t that great please slow down and talk to me like I’m five.

I certainly was no Mel Blanc. Or Dan Castellaneta. But I was okay at doing some voices, and some accents. I was never able to do Donald Duck, but my Goofy is good, and so is my Mickey Mouse. Good, not great.

Good enough for my son.

He was about three years old and we were watching some Mickey Mouse Christmas special. I hadn’t done the voice in ages and suddenly started talking to him in it and he lost his fucking mind. His jaw dropped and he couldn’t believe his own dorky dad was talking to him like Mickey.

Guess what voice I was made to converse with him in for the next several days.

At the time, I was working for a technology company with an open office plan. One day he called me at work, and he said, “Hi, Mickey,” expecting that I would talk to him in that voice. I was like ah fuck this is gonna be awkward. But I’m a good dad and so we had a short conversation with me as Mickey.

After I hung up the phone, my nearby coworkers were looking at me. One woman said, “What. The fuck. What that?”

Seven years later we were at Disneyland and he got me to say to the person in the Mickey suit: “Hi, Mickey! How are you?” using the voice. Their reaction was priceless.

Anyway, I tell you this because very soon I have a Shit Went Down piece coming about Mickey. I know a lot of you enjoy the audio versions of these posts, so for that day I’m going to do two of them. One will be in my regular voice, because I don’t want to punish anyone who can’t bear listening to the other one, which will be done in entirety in my Mickey voice.

Stay tuned. UPDATE: Here it is. You have been warned.