Hola, Sneakers. Welcome to Episode 441 – only 59 more shows and we’ll really be getting somewhere!
This week: selected starts; a little on the red nose; musical accomplishment; microwave chefs; our audience; microwave magic; this is a flavacol; self-referential; saccarine trust; racist taste buds; bad eaters; existence vs. reality; Gloria hallelujah; Living with the Chickens; treat drop; kneading the dough; DIY celebration; daily drawers; mystery art; it’s an honour to be OTTER-nated; nailed it; cartoon moves; even Norway; Wile. E. Coyote fanfic; funny beheadings; Dogman star; self-judgement; too much honesty; Chick Talk™ – The Case of the Disappearing Hen; Patreon fox; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; prog recommndation; bonding; novel recommendation; monomanias; better horror; American hot wax; and, finally, superior cheesiness.
Thanks for listening.
Question of the Week: What is the specialty food in your region?
Sub-question: Tell us your favourite joke.
Longtime listener to the show Sarah Walsh has released a new EP of music and it’s really good! Please check out her page on Bandcamp where you can listen to the songs and confirm that we are right. Feel free to go to her Facebook page and give her a like as well!
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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Let me get the “thank you” out of the way first: thank you for playing my song! ????
Would you believe, I just happen to be experiencing an Early Genesis revival right now! I went through a Peter Gabriel phase (speaking of monomaniacisms – let’s just pretend that’s a word) several years ago and eventually found myself in Genesis, but I didn’t truly get a feel for it until I started relistening about a month ago, thanks to outside forces and an excess of spare time. I am now deep into the rabbit hole and have decided that Foxtrot is my favorite Genesis album. Watcher Of The Skies, Get ‘Em Out By Friday, Horizons, and the epic Supper’s Ready… but all of their PG-era albums are worth hearing for anyone investigating Prog Rock. To me, they’re the perfect mix of melodic and intricate, so you can be intellectually stimulated while still feeling something.
Hey guys, another cracking episode. I can’t wait for the first episode of Cooped Up! So I’ve got a favourite joke. It’s my favourite firstly because I can remember it, and secondly because it’s family friendly. Family friendly, but not necessarily funny. But anyway…… What’s large, grey, and doesn’t matter?
An irrelephant.
I’ll get my coat ????
Dave is correct! The last time I wrote in was the question show, don’t worry I’ll get in my questions for this upcoming show.
Also, I thoroughly enjoyed Trespass, especially the second half. I think stagnation was also my favorite, though The Knife is a close second. Now I’m listening to Foxtrot after Sarah’s recommendation.
The obvious food from my area is a Philly cheesesteak, which is very delicious and deserves mentioning. I think a food the Pennsylvania/ New Jersey area does quite well is hoagies (or sub sandwiches). A very simple food, but whenever I have one around here it’s just so satisfying, I think we get the right ratio of filling. (I usually go for an Italian hoagie)
I don’t have a favourite joke, but this classic one really impressed me as a youth:
Two peanuts were walking down the street. One was [əˈsɑl tɪd.]
I typed that last word in the International Phonetics Alphabet to preserve the necessary ambiguity. For the joke to work, the state of the peanut must remain unknown. It’s like the Schrodinger’s Cat of legumes. Has the peanut been soaked in a saline solution or has it been the victim of a violent crime? The listener can offer an opinion, but we can never truly know.
It is simultaneously a ten-word and an eleven-word joke. Despite its brevity, it is complex. To completely appreciate it, the listener must be familiar with a vintage set-up and punchline form. They must recognize the absurdity of a surreal anthropomorphic image. And they must discern the meaning of two homophones and realize their effect upon the peanut if applied as a verb or as an adjective.
The joke raises many questions for me. Are we transgressing if we laugh at the idea of a life form (albeit plant-based) being struck violently? Or it is socially acceptable to find the peanut’s possible plight funny because it is not sentient? How do peanuts walk down a street anyway? Do they bounce upright on their ends, do they toddle from side to side in a horizontal position, or for the purpose of this narrative, do they have little cartoon feet? Are they shelled? If so, was the peanut’s shell broken in the attack if, indeed, an attack took place? Can these count as my questions for your 450th podcast?
BTW, I did a search to see if the joke was attributed to anyone but could only find out that it started appearing in print in 1958. I was happy to learn that Stephen Colbert called it “a perfect joke” in a 2016 interview. And I was reminded that it appeaed in Monty Python’s “Funniest Joke in the World” sketch as a weapon of joke warfare that proved ineffective when translated into German.
A specialty food where we live in North Carolina is barbeque. Generally it’s shredded pork and the sauce is more vinegar based than sweet. I guess that’s what makes it different than other places. The thing I thought was odd when first choosing it from a menu when first moving here 20 years ago is that unless specified, it does not come on a bun. What you get is a mound of the barbequed meat on your plate, apparently dolloped out using a large ice cream scoop, with the “sides” like cole slaw and baked beans. I assumed it would be a sandwich. Another interesting local fave is “liver mush”. I’m not sure what is in this pressed meat product (other than some poor animal’s liver) but it is sliced and fried. Full disclosure: I’ve not yet tried this stuff.
A favorite joke is one my Dad likes to tell: A mushroom walks into a bar. Bartender: “Hey! We don’t serve your kind.” Mushroom: “Why not? I’m a fun-guy?” 🙂
Thanks for the Trollope recommendations! I’ll probably start on Doctor Thorne this weekend. Your mention of J.B. Priestley also inspired me to check out the BBC Radio 4 production of An Inspector Calls (available on Audible), and that was pretty good too.
Regional specialty: cashew chicken. A staple of Chinese restaurants in the US that oddly enough originated in the American Midwest.
Favorite joke: Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender asks “would you like a drink?” Descartes says “I think not”, and poof! He vanishes.
Regional Texas food? I think depending on who you talk to, it’s a three way draw between Chili, Tex-Mex and Barbecue. I’ve had good and bad situations involving all three but once you find that one great place that prepares it the way you like it, you’ll go out of your way to get it. There are a huge number of these restaurants that serve this kind of food and they’re usually small, family-owned places. So Susan and I have gone out of our way to buy/order from these places during the lockdown if we decide we want something besides home cooking. We do not want these places to disappear!
From high-school:
Person 1: “Ask me if I’m a truck?”
Person 2: “Are you a truck?”
Person 1: “No.”
I also drew a cartoon years ago that I think is still funny, I think it was original. It’s a 6 ft. fly standing at a grill, cooking barbecue. He has a chef’s hat on and an apron with the printed phrase, “MR. BARBECUE” on the front. There’s a man, who is also standing at the grill and he’s saying to the huge fly, “Oh hey! Not “THE” Mister Barbecue?”
A favorite cartoon of mine is maybe the same guy, now sitting at a table with the 6 ft. fly and they’re ordering a meal. He’s saying to the waiter, “I’ll have the filet mignon, medium rare, and my friend will have a plate of your finest shit.”
Now all I can think of are jokes too filthy and inappropriate to share here….