Hola, Sneakers. Welcome to Episode 470 of the numerically sequential podcast Sneaky Dragon!
This week: benevolent illness; name check; trivia time; foreign tongues-tied; Esperanto for everyone; generic Italian; cultural exchange; drinks are on you; technically right; web developer; living stereotypes; zombie rules; beard and nut; Covid cool-aid; woeful ignorance; governmental ineptitude; sexy cult; off the board; the not-so-new Mutants; the X-Blechhh; resolute theatre goer; unhelpful arbitrariness; heartfelt mockery; festering national wounds; family secrets; disappear the gay; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; neighbourly judgement; and, finally, rom-com-rom.
Thanks for listening.
Question of the week: What was the first video game you played as a kid?
Sub-question of the week: What’s your favourite rom-com?
Sub-sub-question: Did your family have a “dark” family secret? And should it have been a secret?
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I’m just relaying this as second hand information from friends and family in Oz, likely your listeners who still actually live there might chime in with more accurate information, but Australia, and Victoria in particular where my family lives, are approaching about one month with no new cases of COVID because they had a serious lockdown after an outbreak of about a dozen cases came from an airport hotel (because a security guard didn’t do his job properly and let people who were quarantining out of their room, allegedly).
The state went into immediate lockdown (just the state) they closed the borders, everything extraneous was closed, people were only allowed within 5km of their home – or further but only if their supermarket was outside that radius – and only to exercise for a maximum of, I think, an hour at a time, away from people. The lockdown lasted four to six weeks, I think (possibly more – what is time right now?), tensions got high, there were anti-mask protests but they were small and very frowned upon. The cases got to about 300 but dropped to 0 super quick and here they are today, free to move about like life is normal. Though still wearing masks indoors. SA and NSW still have cases, though only a few and contact tracing is TIGHT.
The state premier, Daniel Andrews, is hailed as a hero by many, but will not be re-elected despite squashing this thing immediately, saving potentially/hundreds or thousands of lives (he is commonly referred to as Dictator Dan).
The reason Australia was better at complying with the rules is that they have a culture of prevention, not band-aid cures. The government spends TONS of money on ads to get people to avoid problems rather than fix them (QUIT campaigns, anti-gambling, anti-drunk-driving, anti-STIs, domestic abuse hotlines, etc – SO much) and so when this thing happened, of course they accepted it, and of course the government was ready for it. Also, being so closely tied to China, the government saw this thing developing in November (?) 2019 and jumped on preparations immediately, having such a huge Chinese population.
The problem as I see it, as an outsider to Canada, is that Australia handles a lot of things at a federal level but in Canada the provinces are all in competition with each other to be the best, they all handle their own stuff differently, and it makes for a pretty incoherent country. (Come live here! We’re number 1! … Pipe down, Toronto, you’re not a province.) Nowhere is that more apparent than this stupid province we currently find ourselves living in, Alberta. Big BOOS from us. ZERO stars. Actually, two. For the mountains. š
My mother is convinced that my father’s side of the family has some dark family secret, based on scattered remarks my father has made over the years. Personally I think it’s just her imagination and she’s taking things out of context, but I do sometimes wonder if one day my dad will pull me aside and reveal that I’ve actually got a monstrously deformed crazy uncle chained up in the ancestral castle back in Scotland, or some such thing. I’ll keep you guys posted.
I didnāt mind the level of idealism in the ending of Uncle Frank. Not everyone is okay with his orientation. His old aunt still condemns his lifestyle. His brother-in-law didnāt look too happy about it either. Frankās Saudi Arabian partner would still face a death sentence back home ā which sadly is still the case in many places in the world. Heās a great supporting character. I enjoyed how enthusiastically he adopts Frankās family as his own. One the messages I got is that you donāt have to wait for all the bigots and unsupportive parents in the world to die before you can accept who you are. Another theme is that you need to forgive yourself for the wrongs you may have done while trying to survive in an oppressive society.
How can one have just one favourite rom-com? Iāve mentioned Groundhog Day and Room With a View here before, but I also like Sabrina, Working Girl, Dave, Sense and Sensibility, The American President, Emma, Notting Hill and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I like Youāve Got Mail too but itās like one of Shakespeareās āproblem comediesā where a couple gets together in the end, but not without elaborate trickery and someone suffering humiliation. I guess screenwriter Nora Ephron is saying that Meg Ryanās character is better off working in the publishing side rather than the selling side of the book business. Spoken like a true writer!
Yes, we do have a family secret and not everyone in our family knows it. Itās an historic one, but we still speak of it in hushed tones.
Thinking you guys recorded last week’s podcast on Thursday, I was busy changing a battery in my stepson’s car…BUT I was listening to Sneaky Dragon Listening Party at the time, by the time I finished it was too late to write. I heard you mention you recorded episode 470 on Friday, so is that the night you record? I have to know so I can write at the last minute.
From Episode 469, which is a Dallas/Ft.Worth area code here in Texas but mine happens to be 972, so I’ll hang around until you get to that episode.
Never been near a cult or even asked to join anything remotely cultish. I have had friends ask me to come hear someone speak at a nice hotel so they can tell me how to make $10,000 a month. It was last minute and this friend, who isn’t a close friend, called me at work one day out of the blue. He was so into this guy who was speaking that night and wanted me to come join him at a hotel after work. “How should I dress?” I asked him. “Oh, you know, suit and tie would be good or if you’re just in a dress shirt and tie is fine.” I replied, “Dude, I don’t even own a suit and I’m not wearing one now, I’m in cargo shorts and flip flops” He didn’t know where to go next and assumed I wore a suit to work. I looked the speaker up, who was selling some new kind of internet service, and he and his brother had already done jail time for this pyramid scheme stuff. Obviously I didn’t go but I think my friend is still up to his neck in this stuff.
My folks taught me plenty of valuable lessons over the years but my Dad was always mindful of the respect and proper treatment of his elders. I watched how my Dad treated his peers that were older than him and how he learned from them. It wasn’t the “mind your parents” thing but how to learn from those who were more experienced and accept mentoring from them and not shove them aside. I have more than a few older colleagues who have given me some very valuable advice and mentored me over the years, I cherish my relationship with each of them. Dad’s advice has paid off over the last 30 years.
We had the PONG Game from Sears first then for Christmas, maybe in ’77, received the Atari 2600 (?). I remember rolling Circus Atari where the counter returned to zero I played it so much. The game we played the most was Adventure, where you had to fight the dragons and find the chalice, we even did that trick where you stuck the sword in the wall or something and saw the developer’s name in a hidden room. Wasn’t that the big reveal in “Ready Player One” at the end? I don’t think I got another game system for many years after that, probably Super Nintendo.
I like some of the older Rom-Coms and not many of the newer films. I remember really enjoying “When Harry Met Sally”, my first wife resembled Meg Ryan quite a bit and acted like Sally in the film. Another few of my favorites are “I Love You Man” with Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones and “The Devil Wears Prada” with Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. I’ve got thing too for Stanley Tucci in films and I love his acting, so it kills me when he gets screwed over in the end of “Prada”, I watch that one whenever I see it’s on and I’m sad for Stanley all over again.
More Later!
You guys mentioned how itās hard to imagine the world without internet, which I of course agree with. I remember my family having a home PC when I was 5. But Iāll do you one better, because I can not fathom a world without cellphones. The thought of leaving your home and having no way to contact another person is bone chilling!! I remember watching the Woodstock documentary and at one point it cut to all these kids waiting for a pay phone and one person said āI lost my friendsā. That concept is totally bizarre to me, like what would you do? If you lose someone theyāre gone forever. I canāt get over it.
Now to answer your ādark family secretā question, my family has not one but two big secrets. I guess weāre over achievers. One secret I havenāt been told at all, but I know it anyway. Thatās the thing about secrets, they are hard to keep. The other I wasnāt told until I was 19, and it was something I definitely should have know sooner, since it directly effects me. Actually both secrets effect me. And yes, Iād say my life would have been better if my family could actually just talk about our issues, I think keeping secrets from each other has hurt every person in the process. Iāll end this on a lesson, your children are smarter than you think and can always tell when something is wrong, so better they find out from you then from someone else.
I promise to make a more positive comment next time.
My family has sort of a dark secret, but itās not so much an actual secret as a thing thatās not much fun to talk about, so we donāt… but I will, because itās a pretty good one, as dark secrets go.
Itās a murder-suicide.
Itās made only slightly less horrible by the fact that weāre pretty sure it was a pact theyād both agreed upon for some time. My great-grandmother shot her husband, then herself. They were pretty old and not in good health, and based on the note(s) (which I have read, and are eerily straightforward, mostly instructions on how to access bank accounts and whatnot), it does seem to have been planned by both parties. However, the death certificate of the husband still says āhomicideā, which is pretty creepy.
To make matters worse, all of this followed only a few weeks after my uncle was killed by a drunk driver at age 19, so… wow. Rough times. I was an infant so I donāt remember any of it, but I sure did grow up in the shadow of it all. My mom kind of fell apart for a while, so I ended up being raised by my grandmother, who had just lost both her son and mother-in-law. Let me tell you, that is a weird home to grow up in. Lots of love, certainly, but maybe a little too much security.
Oh, I should probably say… itās okay to read this on the show if you want (also okay not to if itās too dark!), but maybe leave out the part at the end about my mom. I dunno, maybe thatās too much to share. Everything else is fine.
There are no secrets in my family. We’re loud, gossipy and everyone knows everything about everyone else. Grudges…yes, but only temporary and no secrets about the grudges. The only thing I can recall and it’s a funny story, was that my Dad’s Uncle Teddy was gay and everyone in the family knew it…except my Grandmother. I never met my Great Uncle Teddy but according to the family, he was well loved as was his partner George and their relationship was embraced for it being so long ago. My Uncle decided to record my Grandmother sometime in the late 1970’s using a reel to reel recorder and asked her to start telling stories about the family. At one point in the interview, Teddy came up in conversation.
My Uncle: “I was talking about Teddy, Ma.”
My Grandmother: “Oh yeah, your Father’s Brother Teddy, he was so nice. It’s a shame he never settled down with a nice woman, too bad.”
My Uncle: “He was with George Ma, remember George? Teddy said George kept his bald head warm when he was sleeping.”
My Grandmother: “George? Wait……………You mean Teddy was…..”
My Uncle: “Yeah Ma.”
My Grandmother: “A FAIRY?!” (Quite loud)
My Uncle: “No Ma, a homosexual, Teddy was a homosexual.”
My Grandmother: (stunned but somehow relieved) “Well I guess he was happy, he did have George.”
So right then and there, (and I have this on CD since my Uncle made the family copies of this interview with my Grandmother) my Grandmother learned and accepted the not-so-dark secret of Uncle Teddy’s sexuality.
My Grandmother was from Trentino which is in very Northern Italy, at the base of the Alps, so when you mentioned the dialects in Europe being geometrically different, this was the case with my Grandmother. Being from Northern Italy, the social structure designated that she was of a higher “standing” from anyone South of her. So when my Grandmother, who was my Dad’s Mother met my Mom’s Father, who was from Tuscany, Italy, the two clashed a bit as In-Laws. My Tuscan Grandfather on my Mom’s side immediately said to my Dad’s Mom in Italian, “Huh! I guess you think you’re better than me!” but she couldn’t really pick up on his dialect right away. Whenever they attempted to speak Italian to one another, it was hit or miss because of the different dialects, but they hit it off nonetheless and were good In-Laws until the end.
Happy ninth birthday, fellas!
First video game I really got into was The Secret of Monkey Island, which came pre-loaded on our first PC. This would have been 1991 and I was captivated by the game’s wonderfully cinematic qualities, including plot, drama, characters and, most of all, humour. For the time, the graphics were also lovely.
I also loved Kirby’s Dream Course on the SNES – a quirky little thing where the object was to fire a bouncy blob past various obstacles on a floating platform until you eventually fell through a hole. At some level, I guess it was a bit like golf, except it was fun.
Favourite romcom is a tough one. Would Keaton’s The General, or Chaplin’s City Lights and Modern Times count? These are classic movies that include a strong romantic theme, but I don’t know if they quite fit into the genre. I’m a huge fan of The Awful Truth and My Favourite Wife, both starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. Push comes to shove, though, I think I’ll go with Billy Wilder and The Apartment. At one level, it’s a bitter and cynical satire of mid-20th century US society and consumerism. But the characters played by Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine somehow maintain their essential purity in a corrupt world and, of course, true love wins the day. What more could you want?
Hey chaps,
First video game I ever had was an off-brand version of ‘Pong’ with non-responsive paddles connected by tangled cables to our ancient TV. Good times.
When Nintendo brought out the ‘Game and Watch’ in the 80’s, my brothers and I had Parachute, Manhole and Octopus. Despite the simple LED graphics, these handheld games provided years of entertainment.
Dave’s mention of the big cast of YOU’VE GOT MAIL reminded me that Michael Palin (my favourite Python) filmed a role for the film which was cut during editing. He describes in his published biographies how the director called to apologise, saying ‘At least it was fun having you on set.’ Would love to see those missing scenes. Apparently, Palin played an annoying children’s book author who is always hanging around Meg Ryan’s bookstore.
The film never quite clicked for me as I could never buy that Meg Ryan ends up with the guy who ultimately puts her beloved bookshop out of business.
My favourite romcom is probably Four Weddings And A Funeral. I was working as a cinema usher when it was released and ended up seeing it so many times that I learnt every comedy beat. I love its mixture of comedy and gentle drama and it established the Richard Curtis template for ensemble casts playing quirky friends of the lead character.
Too many dark family secrets to list here unless you want a 9 hour episode.
Back to your discussion on cults, I have emailed you separately. Probably should have used the dark web.
That is all.
Mick
David and Ian, hello!
Thank you for sending a book plate for one of the Sparks! Double Dog Dare books I have gifted to a grandson. He is thrilled to have it in his book! I’ve told him to keep it a secret from the other grandson and from the nephew to whom I’ve given the books…
which may be the only biggish family secret we have! ( Great segue, huh?)
We have some weird dark and strange stuff in the family, but I think we all know it. My Mom, bless her, was NOT into secret keeping…
I have no attachment to video games other than through my son, who when he was 5 years old I gave a Nintendo system and a Mario game at our neighbor’s insistence. My kid kept sneaking into their house and playing their son’s Nintendo games when no one was looking. He is now 35 and, although he is married and a successful, happy business man, still loves all things Mario, and a lot of other games, a journey on which he is bringing along his 13 year old nephew.
I do not watch a lot of rom-coms. but one I do like so much is About a Boy with Hugh Grant and Rachel Weisz. Toni Collette is in this one, too. All are just wonderful in it! A favorite line that we still often use in my family, issued by Hugh Grant to Ms Collette’s new-agey character: “You’re wounding MY soul!” I can’t recommend this movie enough!
Thanks again for the book plate, gentlemen, and to Nina, as well!
PS Did I take Ed D’s place this week as the last one in to comment??? If so, sorry Ed!!!
Two replies this week! Wow! But I just remembered my epic Metroid redemption story. Must have been about 10 or 11, I guess, and I did a permanent, no-trade-backs deal with my friend Pam for Metroid on NES. I got completely wrapped up in it for about two weeks. Iād found a map in a gamer magazine and bought it to help my quest, since this was the early 90s. I even put the Samus poster on my wall. The game had password saves to keep your progress. This wasnāt just any old platformer. It was an investment.
So Iād beaten Ridley, one of the two mini-bosses, and Iād gotten to Kraid, the other one, but I just couldnāt beat him. I was stuck at Kraid for days. I was actually playing one Saturday morning when a knock came at the door, and it was Pam… and her dad. They wanted Metroid back. I have NO idea why she went step-one-nuclear, bringing parents into it, but I obviously couldnāt say no.
I didnāt really buy my own games back then. They were expensive, and I was bad at saving. I put it on Christmas and birthday lists, but no luck. I just never played Metroid again. Eventually I got rid of the NES and got an SNES, and I got Super Metroid, which quickly became one of my all-time favorites (and I beat it many times). But I never really forgot about the original Metroid, and I always felt like I had unfinished business.
Until… eBay!
I donāt remember exactly when, but I found an old NES at a thrift store in the mid 00s, and it occurred to me that I could probably get the original Metroid on eBay. And thatās exactly what I did. And with the determination of over ten years of grudge, I threw myself into the game, looking up maps online but otherwise doing it all myself, no guides or anything. I beat Ridley, I got to Kraid, and on only my second or third attempt, I beat Kraid! I think that may have been more satisfying than when I ultimately beat the final boss. Just that feeling of being denied the opportunity to do something, then coming back over a decade later and doing it – as silly as it sounds, it changed my outlook a little, made me realize that maybe itās never too late to accomplish something if youāre determined enough.
Anyway, thatās probably enough from me for one week. I have to make up for the months at a time of not commenting somehow… back in my cave now, maybe?
Dammit, now I canāt stop. But I actually have a favorite RomCom, which is odd, since I usually canāt stand them, but… Girl From Rio, with Hugh Laurie. Itās completely ridiculous and totally implausible, and I thought maybe it was just because I love Hugh Laurie, but no, I canāt even watch a few of his other movies. I think Girl From Rio might actually be a good bad movie. Itās charming and fun, and it has a bit of a Christmassy theme, so I think Iāll watch it again my next night off!
Really done now. *waves and departs*