Sneaky Dragon Episode 314

Ciao, Sneakers! Welcome to the fantastic 314th episode of the fantastic podcast Sneaky Dragon. We’re sure you’ll agree that it’s fantastic!

This week on the show, some big happenings; Ian has a recommendation for you: local comedian Ivan Decker’s album I Wanted to Be a Dinosaur; more disaster; the mystery of Bitcoin; other busted booms; the foosball omen; Ian is too honest; pinball machine money; the mystery of Leif Garrett; in praise of Nancy Drew; let’s rate attractive guys; it’s hard to be creative; the DC Universe swings to the right; the rundown on Runaways; the Punisher versus Iron Fist; Ian’s Hawaiian punch: duct tape, cockroaches, bed negotiations, swimming season, kinging the bed, and scary oceans; Ian is this week’s Chick Talk special correspondent; up with fluffy waffles; and, finally, a bonus Beatles episode.

Thanks for listening.

Can we say our own Ivan Decker? Knocking it out of the park on Conan:

9 thoughts on “Sneaky Dragon Episode 314”

  1. My personal top 3 Beatles albums:

    Abbey Road
    Revolver
    A Hard Day’s Night

    But of course those are ranked by about a single percentage point of difference. If you put on any Beatles album, British, American, bootleg, compilation, personal mix-tape, or any other variety, I’ll be happy.

    I think Abbey Road being made intentionally as a swan song has a lot to do with my love for it, because the idea that four guys who love each other but have grown apart and don’t really get along so well anymore could come together (ha!) and make something (ha again! I swear those weren’t intentional) so amazing is inspiring. What could we all be capable of if we could set aside personal differences and work together toward a bigger goal, in any context? I also feel like they used everything they’d learned over the years to make the best songs and recordings they could, not necessarily just for the sake of doing it (though they always did it well), but truly for the sake of the art. The medleys on side 2 are epicness defined. George contributed possibly his two best songs ever. It’s their masterpiece, IMO.

    On a personal note, I still struggle to some degree with the loss of my high-school-and-briefly-after band, 15+ years later. We tried to get together 5 years after the breakup and re-record our best songs with new digital equipment, but we had fallings out all over again and it never got finished. I’m still piecing it together here and there from what we did record, but I didn’t want to do it alone. So I guess Abbey Road sets a bittersweet example for me in what we tried and failed to do, in our own completely insignificant and unworthy-of-comparison-to-the-Beatles way.

  2. Richard Goldstein was the New York Times critic who panned Sgt Pepper on release. Some said this was because he played the inferior stereo version on a malfunctioning system, and only heard the output from one speaker. D’oh!

    Goldstein has confirmed that the equipment was faulty, but says the more significant factor was that he allowed a personal agenda to over-ride his critical judgment. He now loves the album, as he told the Washington Post:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3zahlWzDmM

    Personally, my estimation of Pepper has soared following this year’s Giles Martin remaster. It’s a complete revelation, and one I wasn’t expecting.

  3. Sure, Tiger Beat Magazine is still being published. A subscription could help you two stay on top of the cutest guys. Wait, that came out wrong.

    You think Bobby Sherman looked old? Hey, he was the youngest of a set of three brothers on one of my fav TV series at the time, “Here Come the Bridges!” (But I liked the middle brother, David Soul, the best!)

    I think there are two categories of teen idols: idols who are teenagers themselves like their fans are — like Leif Garrett or Donny Osmond when they were first gracing Tiger Beat covers. Then there are the idols like David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman who were already in their 20s when they got their big breaks on TV shows. The first group’s appeal is that it would be cool if they were your boyfriend and they’d be dreamy as your prom date. The second group’s appeal is that they are already experienced young men of the world who could teach you a thing or two.

  4. Sorry, there’s a typo in my post. That series was called “Here Come the Brides” not “Here Come the Bridges” which sounds like a reality show about Lloyd, Beau and Jeff.

  5. Tauntauns are what they rode in Empire Strikes Back!
    A wampa is what captured Luke and got its arm chopped off.
    Ian was right. ????

  6. Hey Dragons! On mobile, plz forgive typos and grammar.

    I mined bitcoin for about a year, a couple of years ago when it was worth about 300 CAD for 1 BTC.

    Bitcoin is a type currency. It has value worth what someone else is willing to trade for it. It’s smallest unit is a Satoshi, or one hundred millionth of one bitcoin. Feel free to use any metric suffix you like – a common one right now is mbtc for millibitcoin (0.001 BTC).

    Mining bitcoin used to also confuse me. Digital pickaxe picking away at a lode of something to unearth a shiny new coin? I couldnt figure it out. Well, the mining part has to do with what is backing bitcoin. Canadian dollars are backed by government fiat, and have value because everyone who uses it as a currenxy trusts the caretakers of that currency that they will not abuse their monetary policy powers. Bitcoin is backed by blockchain technology (which is a whole other concept involving a public transaction ledger and proof of work that cannot be easily falsified) . Mining consists of contributing to this work and being rewarded by the system itself with newly created coins that can then be traded. The work itself is brute-forcing a solution to an incredibly diffixult one-way cryptographic function, kind of like cracking a password through sheer guesswork. But guesses are made a million trillion times per second right now and find a “password” about every ten minutes. This requires banks of specialized hardware.

    Oh my beer is getting warm. Yes, it is more of an investment than a functional currency right now, thanks to tbe creation of a bitcoin futures market by investment firms in the states, but it was created to be a currenxy and I believe it will be in the future. Right now we are seeing a huge demand shock for something with an inelastic supply which will always bubble the price. Yes i believe it will come down back to an equilibrium price but will not crash like tulips – bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme.

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