Hola, Sneakers. Welcome to the Episode 461 of the podcast also know as the un-podcast!
This week: bad self-promotion; wrong Nina; teacher’s pets; Pages and Panels; open phone plan; animated Karate Kid; fathers & daughters; white bread music; synchronous; generations gap; not the Bad Bee; Death, the Devil, the Angel and Amy Smart; stunt food; proud meat eaters; busted; gooey butter cake; a big NO to baking; pie secrets; the one bad cookie; treats request; slow cooked sake; Canadian Thanksgiving; speaking of triplicates; school funding; dream comics shop; hot take comics talk; ghost school; Tarzan, king of the operas; the ultimate comics authority; Merrill Markoe’s graphic novel; the not-great American novel; and, finally, surprise endings.
Thaks for listening.
Question of the week: Have you ever been in an awkward or potentially dangerous situation on public transit? What did you do? What did you think should be done?
Sub-question of the week: Tell us about a book that opened up a new world of reading for you.
The podcast so nice we linked to it twice! Make sure you head on over to Pages and Panels in your most favouritest podcast player and check out Ian, Nina (Matsumoto), and David’s wide-ranging discussion of writing, drawing and colouring Sparks! Follow this link!
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Regarding the bus incident: the driver was definitely the authority at the time, as the only employee of the company providing the service. They’re literally at the wheel. I’m not sure if they’re allowed to kick a rider off the bus, but they could certainly tell a disruptive rider to knock it off. It’s not against the law to go on a rant in a bus, but it’s against basic etiquette, and I’ve seen bus drivers enforce that often (like saying “I’m not moving until everyone moves to the back” or “don’t smoke in here”). The concept of “free speech” is often misused, as it was in this case (it means the government can’t censor you — businesses can still shut you up if you’re actively making people uncomfortable), and by siding with the ranter, the driver essentially went “the comfort of this harasser is more important than the comfort of the people being harassed,” which sucks especially since the people being harassed in this case were a marginalized group — a group that I belong to!
When you’re in any position of power, whether you’re a bus driver at the wheel or someone in a more privileged group, as a decent human being you should help make marginalized groups feel more comfortable. How far you should go with that depends on the case, but in this specific case: globally there’s been a significant increase in verbal and physical attacks against asians (and especially asian women) since the start of the pandemic, even in Vancouver, so it’s nerve-wracking being out in public anywhere. If I were on that bus, I would’ve been afraid to say or do anything in case it would escalate things to possible violence. It hurts to think someone who has the most power on the bus to stop this would do nothing, and not only do nothing but tell others to leave if they don’t like it. It makes me think if I were being attacked in public, no one would protect me.
And that’s why I haven’t taken public transit since March and I don’t know when I’ll ever feel comfortable doing so again.
(DISCLAIMER: Please don’t drag me over the definition of “free speech” — I know it’s more complicated than that. I’m just describing it in the most broadest, simplest terms and the discussion over what is or isn’t free speech isn’t something I mean to get into. It’s not the point of my message)
I really appreciate your thoughts on this, Nina. It’s true that in these stressful times people have given themselves license to behave terribly, and verbal and physical assaults on Asian women – usually young – have been the most terrible. I don’t blame you for feeling uncomfortable!
While I was editing the show I felt like I was a little mild in my condemnation of the bus driver. I must admit that I was so baffled and fascinated by his strange response that I did not side against him strongly enough. Let’s just put the record straight: he was an asshole.
I also forgot that we now have transit police, which were introduced about the time I stopped regularly using public transit. I was thinking the bus driver would have to call the actual police, but, no, transit police would have done the job just fine.
(Don’t forget, Nina, if you ever need a ride anywhere, you have some friends who would be happy to help!)
Now, let’s get into your thoughts on freedom of speech…… 😛
I admit I also thought you were a little soft on the driver, so thank you for the clarification! It is pretty baffling, and I agree that maybe he was sick of the pandemic to the point of having bigoted thoughts, if he didn’t have them to begin with. I think if you’re driving a public mode of transportation, it’s your duty to make sure people reach their destination safely and undisturbed and if someone is making other riders unsafe, you need to give them the boot.
There is a way to discreetly text transit police, but I don’t think everyone knows that’s an option, or they’re skeptical of how effective that system is (I know I would be).
Since I’ve been avoiding public transit, asides from getting rides from friends to the orthodontist and dentist, my life since March has been limited to however far I’m willing to walk. I’m glad I live in an area with many nice places to walk to, but winter is going to make things harder and I’m hoping it doesn’t snow much.
I feel like transit drivers would have a direct line to their “Peace Officers” who would meet them at their next stop for safe removal of a belligerent passenger. I’ve seen it plenty of times on trains, I imagine buses would have a similar system.
However, and I wouldn’t be game enough to do this myself – I see it more as something that would happen on TV or in a movie – but if the bus driver says he supports free speech so have at it, well immediately turn around and start yelling terrible things about bus drivers! “You know who make up 90 percent of registered sex offender lists right? That’s right! Bus drivers. You know who single-handedly keep porn sites in business right? That’s right! Bus drivers! You know who sleep on pillows stuffed with the shavings off their own —“ … anyway, you get my point.
Thanks for offering to do a wellness check but I’m okay. I was just recovering from virtual jetlag after attending two days of six-hour Skype meetings that started at 8am so as to be convenient for the Eastern Time Zone attendees. To catch up, Axis Theatre produced Number 14. Ian was right to let Translink know that their driver sounded like he was condoning hate speech and contributing to a toxic environment on his bus. I ordered a copy of Kathleen’s graphic novel Jo from my neighbourhood bookstore and am looking forward to reading it.
I only worked on Big Sound for one month but it was the last month, so I got to go to closing parties and be in a photo shoot for Reel West Magazine and look like I’d been there all along. Yes, I believe Ian is right that the Stewart Copeland episode was originally written with Melissa Etheridge in mind. It involved Greg Evigan’s manager character trying to woo her as a client by promising to mass-market her family’s jam recipe. I think there was a “jam night” joke. Of all the celebrity appearances, I liked Jann Arden’s the best. In response to a record label wanting her to look sexier, she puts on a Britney Spears schoolgirl uniform and performs an “Oops I Did It Again” type music video.
A book that opened up a new world of reading for me was a young adult novel set in Ancient Egypt called “Mara, Daughter of the Nile.” After that I became an avid reader of historical novels set in Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Judea, Celtic Britain and Medieval Europe.
Ian had me at Ooey Gooey so I will take him up on his Ooey Gooey Butter Cake challenge. But none of this “box of yellow cake mix” nonsense. I’ll find a scratch recipe and 4 cups of icing sugar. You order the insulin.
Correction: I think it was k.d. lang that the Big Sound jam script was written for. Melissa’s episode was about bees and ultraviolet light album covers. MC Hammer’s story was about him having a stalker who was played by Richard Side, another a writer on the show.
I hope Hammer didn’t hurt him.
A book that opened up a new world of reading for me: I think I’ve mentioned before that I read a lot of Stephen Jay Gould as a kid, and got into a lot of things through that thanks to the diverse references he made in his essays. But even before that, I started reading Gould thanks to an interest in natural history that was kicked off by Douglas Adams’ The Salmon of Doubt, a posthumous collection of mostly nonfiction essays. The book includes Adams’ glowing review of The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins (this was shortly before Dawkins became more well known for various other things, but that’s a topic for another day…). Adams’ review led me to read The Blind Watchmaker, which led me to read any book on evolution I could get my hands on, which led me to Gould, which in turn led me to many other things.
Speaking of reading, I did recently finish Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? Overall I enjoyed it, but not as much as Doctor Thorne, mainly because it centered more on Victorian views on women, which can be a little off-putting. Still, I was again impressed by the rather modern-seeming jokes in the narration, such as Trollope saying he’s skipping over a scene because he assumes the reader doesn’t care about it. Or when a minor character reappears towards the end of the book, he says “the reader has no doubt forgotten all he knew about this character”. I also enjoyed his description of the jaunting car as “perhaps the most uncomfortable vehicle yet invented”. So it was well worth reading, and thanks again Dave for the recommendation.
I rode the DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) for about two years for my last job, I rode it from the Dallas suburbs into downtown for work and back again in the evening. I saw the same passengers every day and honestly, we were just boring suburbanites who were happy not to be bumper to bumper in traffic. I think this de-stressing alternative of transportation made us a content bunch and there were never really any altercations I can remember.
I do remember two strange occurrences from passengers closer to downtown though. One gentleman we would see daily was always sitting on the station platforms with a huge Bible that he read from quite loudly. The Bible was highlighted and had hundreds of colored sticky noted bookmarks protruding from it. I always wondered what it would be like had he boarded the DART, but he just stayed in one place as we stopped for more riders. Then one day he got on my DART and as luck would have it, sat beside me. He was quite ripe from being outside all day so I did my best to turn my nose away. I half expected him to start a conversation about the Bible with me but he turned to me and asked me about Dallas Cowboys football instead. I politely told him I didn’t follow football so he just moved onto the next passenger.
Another time a guy still dressed in his hospital gown and patient I.D. bracelet saw me reading comics, so he leaned across the aisle and started talking comics with me. He reeked of booze which he was drinking from a huge glass Gatorade bottle and if I recall correctly, thought he could be Green Lantern if he wanted to be.
As for the bus driver giving the “OK” for one passenger to act “rudely” to the rest of the riders, his endorsement to do so also gives me the right to defend those who cannot. I hate bullies, so according to my right to free speech which is equal to his, I’d give that bastard a dose of his own medicine and see how he liked that. But nothing like that ever happened on my boring DART commute.
You guys know about my early fascination with L. Frank Baum’s OZ books. Those books immediately came to mind because I was a young reader and they helped me appreciate reading at a higher level. I think if I had to take it further than the OZ books I’d have to say I also took a liking to biographies as a young reader. I read all the Marx Brothers biographies I could find which led me to others. I think I liked that framework of writing because it was me learning about their stories they believed were worth telling. I must have gotten that from my Dad, who also likes reading biographies…we both still read them to this day.
I really enjoyed the discussion about Sparks! on Pages and Panels and Pages, or whatever. I’d wondered about the absence of chapters in Double Dog Dare – I liked them in the first book and would have liked them in the second, but I don’t think their absence spoiled my enjoyment. Editors, what do they know? It was also great to learn how the sound effects are created – they’re one of the subtle spices that make the Sparks! recipe work so well.
Book that opened up a new world of reading? Well, I guess someone has to stick up for Hemingway around here and it might as well be me. My introduction to his writing was a volume that collected most of the short stories and his second novel The Sun Also Rises, which remains a favourite. He undoubtedly declined sharply and often fell into self-parody later on, but he was a real master of simplicity in his early years and had a style that was unlike any other I’d encountered.