Sneaky Dragon Episode 444

Hola, Sneakers. Welcome to Episode 444, which is one hundred and eleven more exciting then Episode 333!

This week: Off-season awards; Dave’s controversial tweets; acceptance; unfunny groove; our Return of the King; Peter Jackson ruined; Hobbit forming; Core values; immersive nostalgia; terrifying old ladies; mean machines; Pixar horror; It’s the pits; viewer as the victim; Top 10 Stephen King films; hobbling minority; the Big Ben of America; throwing money at an invisible wall; 30-year old high school graduate; don’t wait for retirement; past self/future self; joyless excess; future self/past self; socially distant socializing; hair roulette; K-Tel klassics; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; clunkers; On Her Majesty’s Point Counter-Point; impostor syndrome; fantastic forts; overheards; Deck Talk; Chick Talk; and, finally, end on poop.

Thanks for listening.

Question of the Week: What’s something that your pet does that’s weird?
Sub-question: Who was your favourite author as a teenager? (Comics fans, we’ll count a team if necessary!)

DON’T FORGET!!!
Don’t miss out on your chance to WIN WIN WIN

That’s right! Our 450th episode is fast approaching and we will be hosting our traditional Listeners’ Questions Episode! Every question gives you a chance in our GRAND PRIZE DRAW. The more questions you ask, the better your chances to win! So get to asking!

Send your list of questions by email to sneakyd@sneakydragon.com. If you’d like, record your questions, send us an audio file, and we’ll play it during the show. Fun, right???

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Ian mentioned some K-Tel gizmos from our faraway youths. Here is a link to a bunch of ads, but we’ll post a couple of choice ones below:

And for some reason the article missed this gizmo, which seemed so magical when we were kids:

12 thoughts on “Sneaky Dragon Episode 444”

  1. Hey Ian and David,

    Great episode this week! Loved your discussions on Lord Of the Rings and the throwback chat about On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. There is definitely FANSPLAINERS potential in both. (Hint hint!)

    I’ve just finished re-reading Lord Of the Rings, which – like David – I last read just before the Peter Jackson films were released. It was brilliant to revisit them and remember just how much was not in the films, despite the overall 9+ hour running time. I am on the fence about Tom Bombadil’s exclusion from the films. Great character on the page, but ultimately a side-street for the narrative which would have occupied at least half an hour of screen time.

    Onto pets…
    When I was a teen, we owned an enormous siamese cat named Mischa who had a habit of climbing onto your head while you slept. I had a group of friends over one night to watch videos (back when that was a thing) and in the morning one of them told me that, he ‘woke up in the middle of the night with a cat sitting on my face!’ Hilarious.

    Mischa’s favourite place to sit was the middle of our driveway. If a car pulled in, he would glance idly up then at the driver, then spawl out again, refusing to move. We had to get out of the car and lift him out of the way if we wanted to get into the garage. It was like he was trying to assert his authority over us. This went on for years until my brother reversed out of the garage in his 78′ Toyota Corolla without looking and Mischa’s reign came to an end.

    Favourite author as a teenager was Herge, which serendipitously led me many decades later to Sneaky Dragon, for which I am thankful.

    Lastly – a late reply to your call out for favourite jokes:
    A man walks into a bar and says ‘Ouch.’

    Mick

  2. Scott McGinnis

    Hi Ian and Camille,
    I loved 444 especially David’s defence of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Surely there’s a fansplainer episode in there?

    On to your question, when I was a teenager my favourite author was (and still is) Guy N Smith. He’s an English author of dozens of pulp horror books. I loved everything about those books. The stories were fantastical and gory. The covers were proper trashy, colourful 70s style. I generally found them in charity shops so they had that musty smell. His world was full of killer crabs, locusts, snakes and bats. There was demons, occult investigators and vampires. Deadly droughts, horrendous radioactive accidents and ghostly airports full of demonic pilots. Honestly, I have every one of his books and if I ever need a wee break from reality I still turn to them.

    The other books I was obsessed with was the Asterix books. I think my entire knowledge of history comes from Asterix, the Carry On films and Blackadder.

    Stay safe over there in Canada,

    Scott

    https://www.guynsmith.com/

  3. “Hoi polloi” means the common people (not rich elites), so in that sense I suppose librarians really are the hoi polloi, more or less.

    My favorite author as a teenager: hard to pick just one, but when I was in high school I got hooked on Stephen Jay Gould’s books on paleontology and natural history. Besides the science, Gould touched on all sorts of side topics throughout his essays, so reading him also got me interested in Gilbert and Sullivan and other random stuff like that. At one point, my school library even gave me one of Gould’s books because I was the only one who had ever checked it out. It was kind of falling apart and they were just going to throw it out anyway if I didn’t want it, but still, I chose to see this as an honor.

  4. Hey, guys. It’s back to Middle Earth again, because Tolkien was my favourite author as a teenager. I had the Brothers Hildebrant wall calendars and the “Hobbit’s Journey” art journal. I drew pictures of Galadriel and hobbits and dragons in my sketchbooks. Due to the dearth of female characters in The Lord of the Rings, I read the Eowyn of Rohan subplot over and over again. Fortunately she is a kick-ass warrior on a heroic epic journey of her own. Dave, you didn’t mention her ending. Is there one in Sparks 3 where someone gets healed from the brink of death and gets together with someone who’s honorable and available?

    Ian, you quipped that superpowers in The Incredibles must’ve been the result of some “Tuscany Airmen” experimentation. I guess you meant “Tuskegee” but I like what you said better. It conjures up an image of toons being force-fed radioactive pasta in a villa being renovated by Diane Lane.

    1. Edward Draganski

      The Hildebrandt Brothers art was amazing all those years ago, it’s how I envisioned the characters way before the Jackson films were released. At some point, around 1985 or so, the original Hildebrandt paintings were on display at a nearby gallery. They were so huge! The largest was probably at least seven feet wide on one wall. Unbelievable work.

  5. Hello Dave and Ian,
    I had a whirlwind of a week last week, with the protests in America and then losing my power for three days straight! But last episode you asked if were saying my name right, and don’t worry you are (Jade-duh). I don’t think a lot of people would relate to me on this one, but as a teen girl growing up in the 21st century, I loved reading YA novels. I really enjoyed John Green’s books. He often makes commentary about typical YA structure and it subverts you’re expectation, which is very exciting for a teen.

    Also I must say I got a kick out of those k-tel commercials, especially the record one. The fact they called it a “space age design” really made me laugh! When you were discussing it on the podcast I imagined a jukebox type design, not a glorified file folder. And the fact that it’s so slow, doesn’t really seem useful to me.

    1. Please read this one (hit submit before I read it over)
      Hello Dave and Ian,
      I had a whirlwind of a week, last week. With the protests in America and then losing my power for three days straight! But last episode you asked if you were saying my name right, and don’t worry you are (Jade-duh).
      I don’t think a lot of people here would relate to me on this one, but as a teen girl growing up in the 21st century, I loved reading YA novels. I really enjoyed John Green’s books. He often makes commentary about typical YA structure and it subverts your expectation, which is very exciting to read as a teen.
      Also I must say I got a kick out of those k-tel commercials, especially the record one. The fact they called it a “space age design” really made me laugh! When you were discussing it on the podcast I imagined a jukebox type design, not a glorified file folder. And the fact that it’s so slow, doesn’t really seem useful to me.

      1. Sorry, Jada, I didn’t notice that you had sent your second version of your comments as a reply to your first. I actually “trashed” your first version so that only your second attempt would be visible, not realizing that they were linked as a comment and reply and thus made invisible!

        All fixed now.

        1. I’m sorry to send you on a chase for my comment! I submitted it early and realized I had some spelling and grammar errors I couldn’t let go.

  6. Edward Draganski

    I guess my two dogs and two cats are pretty much normal and nothing too weird comes of them. My older male cat, Mr. Jinx does yowl extremely loud when he wants something but that’s normal. I suppose if my four pets ever decided to unionize and rebel against me, it’s sixteen furry feet vs. my two, so I just give in to whatever they want. They rule the place.

    I was a John Byrne fanatic as a teen! By way of Jack Kirby and The Fantastic Four, Byrne’s art had a similar style that drew me closely to both. Earlier, I was a George Perez Avengers fan when I saw that The Beast was crossing over into X-Men, so I picked that issue up. I knew of the older X-Men from the sixties but these guys looked amazing! I guess I was instantly taken by the Claremont/Byrne/Austin X-Men books from that point on…mostly because of Byrne’s art. X-Men led to whatever else Byrne did; Fantastic Four, Iron Fist, The Champions, Hulk, She-Hulk, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner. Then my best friend and I discovered Frank Miller’s Daredevil and I went through the same thing all over again, scrambling to buy all the back issues so I had the complete stories. That was real comic collecting back then, to buy that one issue that linked a bunch of newer issues to a bunch of older issues so you could finally sit down and real the entire story!

    This was all before I worked at Lone Star Comics. Shortly after I started there we got a new store manager who was an Alan Moore fan. He described reading X-Men and Spider-Man was like sitting at the kid’s table during Thanksgiving, reading Moore was like an invite to sit at the grown-up table. Thanks to him, my taste changed to some of the more independent comic creators like Dave Sim and Paul Chadwick but at this point I was reading literally everything anyway because it was my job and I had hours to burn in a comic book store. Best. Job. Ever.

  7. Edward Draganski

    On Stargirl: I WANT to like this show and I hope it leads to more about the Injustice Society. Even though I don’t have the bandwidth or attention span to watch all of the CW DC Universe stuff, I would MAKE the time to watch a damned Justice Society show. It’s right under your noses guys!! But I’m afraid she’s just going to turn her young friends into the next generation of JSA heroes. Wake me when it’s over.

    You talked about how we Americans talk and yell at the movie screen when we’re engaged in a good film. My buddy Sean, who lived in Lafayette, Louisiana said this was all too true there. For example, I remember him telling me that when he went to see WATCHMEN in 2009 and Dr. Manhattan was introduced, some guy in the row in front of him cried, “That blue guy’s nekkid!!!” and the whole theater rolled with laughter!

    And lastly, OHMSS is really a great 007 film but it took me years to see it on television. I remember my Dad, who read the earlier Ian Fleming books books and was extremely disappointed in the 1967 Casino Royale (except for the soundtrack) was so happy to see OHMSS when it premiered in 1969. Dad really wasn’t tied to one Bond and welcomed Lazenby’s role only because it was more in line with the books than Casino Royale was, he just wanted a good story. Fast forward to many years later when Daniel Craig did his version of Casino Royale, which as my Dad said, “Was good enough to erase that 1967 version out of mind.”

    I remember the only thing on television my Dad would allow me to stay up late and watch was when ABC ran 007 movies on late Sunday nights. When OHMSS finally was finally broadcast, I think it was one of the two 007 films I still hadn’t seen, but I liked it a lot…it’s just different in a way that doesn’t feel like it relies on sex appeal or star power to present itself. I wonder what it would have been like had Lazenby stayed with his Bond role into the 70’s? Let’s also not forget the theme song by the great Louis Armstrong, “We Have All the Time in the World.” So great when mixed with Barry’s score.

  8. Chris Roberts

    We used to have a pet labrador, Rosie, who was a fantastic diver. Whether at the beach, a river, or, yes, a loch, if I threw a stick or ball in, she would take a good run and launch herself through the air like Krypto, entering the water smoothly. It was a sight that often caused passers-by to stop and take pictures and film her. She was really strong and would often swim 50 or 60 metres across the fast-flowing River Ness while I crossed a footbridge above her and met her on the other side.

    Favourite author as a teen is a tough one. I mean, when I was 12, I loved Charles Schulz and Goscinny and Uderzo. But by the time I was 19, my taste had expanded to Hemingway, Chandler and Thurber… and Charles Schulz and Goscinny and Uderzo. I had a science fiction phase, a fantasy phase, and read all the James Jones and William Goldman I could find, including the Princess Bride, years before the movie.

    if i have to pick one, though, it would be Kurt Vonnegut. I started with Breakfast of Champions, which was then newly published, and eagerly worked through his backlist, marvelling at the humour, the inventiveness and the humanity. From then on, I snapped up each new book as soon as it came out, just like you would with a favourite band.

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