Hola, Sneakers. Welcome to Episode 438 – continuing the countdown to Episode 469! Aw yeah!
This week Ian and Dave talk: ineptitude; cable TV; laserdiscomania; uncomfortable movies; big TV; differences; ban it; the Cluedo question; dumb thing of the day; lazy TV; fixed endings; happy endings; creepy crawlers; monster booster; the honeymoon team question; fantasy theory; SCTV; Frito time; creepy charactere; bad TV: the Fantasy Island deep dive; feeling sorry for your past self; it gets worse; hard to shop these days; back to the old normal; phrases to avoid; pitch resistant; talking with strangers; small town girl; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; shout out to mustard pickles; stinky sanitizer; hot aliens; pulled a Dave; and, finally, shave and a haircut – no luck!
Thanks for listening.
Question of the Week: Have you ever invented something or fixed something up and improved it? In Ian’s words, pulled a Dave.
Sub-question: Is there a movie or show that you loved as a kid, but were disappointed by it when you saw it later in life?
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???
Interested in some Sparks merch? Check out Nina’s fabulous design here.
Dave says: Here are some sweet pics of the things I purpose-built at work – a cardboard cutter and a spring wrapper. Basically, I only have OSB sheathing and two by fours to work with so I have to get creative (or bring things from home):
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Sweet pickles are the devil. Pickles should not be sweet.
I have no time for sweet pickles except…
I love them in tuna salad so I have to keep them in my fridge!
A hotdog without sweet relish is hot garbage.
Good day sir.
I said good day sir!
My first time commenting here after listening since episode 204!
Cluedo = Clue + Ludo
Also, I worked in an electronics store in the UK in 1999 and DVD players were still rarely sold and were a ‘big ticket item’. Within 18 months everyone had one.
Welcome aboard the comment train, Matt! Just…mind the gap!
Am I right about wide-screen TV’s in the UK? I may have conflated my two trips there in the 90s because we were also there in ’96.
Hi sorry I forgot to check back here! There were some widescreen TVs in the 90s yeah although I’m not sure how common they were, we had an old fashioned wooden surround TV until the early 2000s!
Matt, I had no Cluedo what “Ludo” means so I Googled it. Aha! In North America, it’s the board game we know as Parcheesi.
I believe THAT name derives from an old French-Anglo word meaning “by way of the Cheezies” as in, “How did your fingers get all orange?” “Parcheesi.” Okay, I made that part up. But I’m hoping it will force you to Google “Cheezies.” Two can play at this game!
I “pulled a Dave” when my mom’s arthritis in her hand started to make it impossible for her to open her car’s gas cap. She doesn’t have enough grip-and-turn strength anymore. So I went online to see if there were any gas cap turning tools out there. There were a couple that shipped from the U.S. but they were all in the $50 dollar range. So I improvised one from a 3-dollar plastic potato masher from Canadian Tire and two pieces of wood from the butt I sawed off the bottom of that year’s Christmas tree. I snuck it into her stocking and made her guess what it was. She figured it out pretty quick. She was happy that it worked for her and she wouldn’t have to depend on other people to open her gas cap for her.
A show that disappointed me upon rewatch: Well, “disappoint” is too strong a word, but I used to watch Twilight Zone reruns pretty often as a kid. Since then I’ve sometimes tuned in to the various holiday marathons, until finally last year I decided to watch through the entire run of the original series. I think the more famous episodes still stand up pretty well, but there were plenty of stinkers too. First off, I was surprised at how many episodes were set in the old west, and how many episodes were meant as comedies (pretty much none of these “funny” episodes hold up well). Then there were two separate episodes both meant as back-door pilots for spin-off shows about incompetent guardian angels trying to help people out. Apparently Rod Serling liked this idea so much that he tried it a second time even after the first one didn’t pan out; both episodes are pretty bad in my opinion, but the second one does at least star Carol Burnett. There’s also the fourth season, where the format was switched from half hour to full hour episodes at the last minute, with the result that most of those episodes are ridiculously padded (the Jordan Peele reboot at least did much better with longer episodes).
All that aside though, I was impressed by how diverse the episodes were. There are maybe about ten Twilight Zone stories that have really stuck in the public consciousness, and the remaining 140 or so episodes often don’t stay within the narrow “sci-fi parable with ironic twist ending” image that people have of the series. Even among the well-known episodes, the William Shatner/gremlin one doesn’t exactly have a twist ending, or any “don’t fear the other” allegory (in fact, Shatner saves the day by shooting the damn thing). The Billy Mumy/evil psychic child episode likewise has a crazy starting premise, but no real twist at the end. And like the gremlin, the evil psychic child is an other you ought to fear.
I grew up absolutely loving the British comedy series, THE GOODIES. Amongst Australian kids in the 70s and 80s there was literally nothing funnier. I purchased a DVD of the show in the mid 2000’s and it just does not stand up. Though I still absolutely adore the series and was saddened to hear of the recent death of Tim Brooke-Taylor (to Corona Virus of all stupid things), the series is best left as a happy memory of a different time.
The same can be said for another British comedy series, THE YOUNG ONES which I loved in my teen years. Today though, it has not stood the test of time.
None of which diminishes their quality or appeal. They are both iconic and groundbreaking shows that are best remembered but not replayed.
Mick
I always thought that Fantasy Island was essentially the same thing as Gilligan’s Island, but apparently not. If I got the gist correctly, it’s about some sort of tropical island where rich people go to live out their fantasies, and there are supernatural things, and probably each episode has a different cast of characters, except for the rich man who runs things and his companion, who apparently handles the money. Is that right?
It was really confusing…
Cheers!
For what it’s worth, and I was promised a plaque and never received one, my name is on at least one patent for a 20 oz. 7UP bottle design. While I was at Dr Pepper, 7UP was one of the larger Legacy brands…and their bottle designs sucked. For some reason they were falling over in the coolers when someone would take the front bottle and the rest would fall over. On top of that, we had to also include a basketball and net design into the bottle that would be molded into the plastic. So three of us art directors created the improved 7UP Basketball bottle for the company. The bottle also had what was called a P.E.T. bottom that was kind of grooved and slid instead of fall over. I did the initial sketches for this as well as some of the line art showing the bottle turnarounds. The reason that it was Basketball was because each brand at Dr Pepper/7UP had their proprietary sport to tie-in their promotions to and 7UP had Basketball covered.
https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Edward+C.+Draganski
I was REALLY into animation as a kid, I used to have my entire Saturday morning mapped out for what I was going to watch. For some reason, and I know not why, cartoons just kind of put me out these days. Unless they’re some of the really great ones, like classic Looney Tunes or Tex Avery, they just make me drowsy and bored. I know guys older than me who still can watch old Hanna Barbera stuff or Scooby Doo but those just knock me out. It’s not that I don’t like them, I still love the characters but watching them for just a little while makes me ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ….
I think I heard this once (on Howard Stern) if you want to sound exactly like Hervé Villechaize, do this:
Say: Forbie Ten Zone
It should sound like Hervé Villechaize saying: Forbidden Zone
Then tell Mr. Roarke the plane is here.
I grew up on the Disney afternoon stuff – Ducktales, Talespin, Darkwing Duck, etc. And while I still get a kick out of watching the title sequences, I can’t last a minute into the shows. (The new Ducktales, however, is solid.)