Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 481 of the pocastiest podcast yet!!!
This week: plastics; most neurotic Christmas special; child psychiatrist; lottery town; invisible mom; so-so Sally; professional fan-fic; mind ghosts; let’s praise Shirley Jackson; but not Shirley; Chekhov’s penis; some things belong in the past; maybe read the script; but where’s Madea in Japan?; his bad; what is podcast; our too-typical life; a happy 25th to Happy Gilmore; unhappy Gilmore; residuals; principally for pleasure; master of your own destruction; bent reality; that’s not me; an intolerable person; who was that me?; work with the best; problematic problem; apropos of nothing; gangster friends; Native Americans and comedy; alternative traditional routes; Dork Shadows – stop fumfering; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; grueling school lit; euphemism man; Sparks of wrath; sobby Scots; deep in the freeze of Texas; pineapple Crush love; missing the Gentlemen; backtracking; week effort; a Southern thing; and, finally, a real-life Canadianism!
Thanks for listening.
Question of the week: What’s a book you love that you were forced to read?
Sub-question: Tell us about a time you were present for a friend’s humiliation.
Sub-sub-question (from R.J.): Name your favourite anachronistic drawing room murder mystery film?
Dept. of Clarifications:
Why does Dave get confused with his page turnings during Dork Shadows? Well, the penny pincher likes to write on both sides of the page, but doesn’t like to rest his hands on the coil rings of the notebook so he flips the book around and writes from the bottom up on the reverse page. The problem? Remembering which way to turn the pages!
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I love to read so to describe reading a book as something I was ‘forced’ to do is a bit of a stretch. But two that I love and still refer to years after being sent off to study from them for my Pony Club tests over five or six years are The Horsemaster’s Notebook, and The Manual of Horsemanship. But you were probably talking about fiction books. So, I had to read The Great Gatsby for school, but it was by no means a slog; I still really love it. But a couple of books that I had to really force my way through, and hated every minute of, but really appreciated after the fact, were E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End, and Trussell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
Lezah! I meant to thank you for presenting “The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit” quite a while ago last summer. While I still have not seen it, I grew up riding hunter/jumper (with a little bit of eventing mixed in), and it was great to hear your references to showjumping superstars like William Steinkraus and George Morris.
Now, speaking of books, ‘Hunter Seat Equitation’ by George Morris was a book I would read obsessively. Unfortunately, I had no idea of the allegations and the hot water George Morris is currently in until you briefly referenced it on the show, and let’s just say it absolutely explains the very odd inscription he wrote in that exact book years later when I approached him for an autograph a horse show. OOOOF!
At any rate, as a movie poster collector “The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit” has wonderful poster artwork, and I’ve been meaning to pick up an original on ebay. They can be had cheap for $15-20 USD, so treat yourself and grab one too while you can! 🙂
Thanks for the thanks, and thanks for the movie poster recommendation. I, too, have a personally signed copy of hunter Seat Equitation but all I got written in mine was a scrawl-y name. Sad face. I think you would enjoy ‘The Horse in the Grey Flannel Suit’! Give it a watch!
The novel I had to read in school that I liked the most was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I read all the other Narnia books after that.
A time I was present for a friend’s humiliation? Let’s just say that when clubs open again, if you have a friend who is a stand-up, unless they say it’s okay to catch their act whenever, don’t show up without letting them know you’re coming. It might be a hell gig or they might be breaking in new material and don’t want to worry about impressing you. It’s easier to get over bombing in front of total strangers than in front of friends.
Is a movie still an “anachronistic” drawing room murder mystery film if it’s set in that time period? Then my pick is a meta homage to the genre, Gosford Park (2001) directed by Robert Altman from an Oscan-winning screenplay by Julian Fellowes. It has the same droll upstairs/downstairs byplay that you see in his Downton Abbey series. Two of the characters are an American director who is going to be shooting a Charlie Chan murder mystery and the white British actor who’ll be playing him. I also like the stylish “mom noir” flick A Simple Favor (2018) with Anna Kendrick as widowed vlogger who investigates a murder between giving tips on making cookies and beading friendship bracelets. Blake Lively and Henry Golding also star in the sly R-rated three-hander. Much of it takes place, not in a drawing room, but in the sleek open-plan kitchen and living room of a modern house in Etobicoke. It has a great soundtrack of cheeky French pop songs.
I’m writing to you from sunny 80 degree weather, quite a departure from the events of last week, almost seems like it didn’t happen at all. There are some shortages of food though due to the power outages and the difficulty trucks had delivering across the state. I heard some horrific stories about having to throw out 8 million dollars worth of milk because the lack of power caused it too spoil. Chicken and livestock deaths were also reported due to lack of heat to keep them warm. I’m sure some heads will roll in Austin, the Agriculture Commissioner has already expressed his outrage over being better prepared…which we weren’t.
I has a few really outstanding literature teachers in college, they made their classes very enjoyable. One way was to assign a more diverse genre of books to read, instead of the same old classics everyone droned on about reading, one of my teachers turned his curriculum into learning about genre centered stories, like comedy for example. Funny you mentioned Woody Allen in the last podcast, because my teacher assigned “Side Effects” by Woody Allen for us to read and I loved it! In fact I still have it. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into since I had only seen a few of Allen’s films, but I really enjoyed his essays. He assigned us books we would like and enjoy discussing with one other. I remember looking forward to his class and actually having so much fun it didn’t feel like a college class.
I want to bring up “The Godfather” again and only because of the character of Johnny Fontaine. The discussion you had about Frank Sinatra fascinated me and I, like Ian, have no clue why people idolized him. To be fair, many enjoyed his singing, which is fine…but the man was notorious for so many dark dealings. You may already know this due to the cultural osmosis you have with “The Godfather” but it’s rumored the character of Johnny Fontaine was based on Sinatra. He shows up at the first of the film as a guest of Vito Corleone for his daughter’s wedding and sings for the guests. Fontaine is deeply involved with Corleone and asks for his help. It seems that Fontaine is up for a role in a Hollywood movie and the producer won’t allow Fontaine anywhere near the film, “The role is perfect for him, but I don’t want that Guinea bastard near my film.” says the producer. He doesn’t like Fontaine even though he knows this film will be a huge win for him. Fontaine then goes to Corleone for a “favor”, much like Sinatra probably did with Giancana or even Gambino at this point. Fontaine asks Corleone for some help getting him this role in the movie, so the family counselor, Tom Haden, is sent to Hollywood to convince the producer to put Fontaine in his film. The producer refuses and that’s when he wakes up with the horse’s head in his bed, a very well-known scene and the consequences for not complying with Corleone. In a later scene we see a huge bouquet of flowers arrive at the Corleone office, it’s said they’re from Johnny Fontaine who got the role in the movie he wanted.
In real life, that film was “From Here to Eternity” which earned Sinatra an Oscar for his best supporting role in 1954. So this all lines up and it’s rumored that Sinatra was furious over the similarities between Fontaine and himself…which kind of confirms it just might actually be true all along.
Not so much friends, but I’ve been present for way too many humiliations concerning co-workers to even mention. The one that comes to mind first…and yes, it’s Dr Pepper, was when Sir Dominic Cadbury himself was due to visit our office. This was right after Cadbury bought Dr Pepper and the new owner was making his rounds…early. So we were told, quite sternly, that we had to be in our seats, working when Sir Dominic arrived. One of my co-workers didn’t make it in on time and was ripped up, down and sideways by our director for it. I felt bad for her, she and I were close but it didn’t really phase her all that much even though she actually DID make it in on time to meet Cadbury, just not as early as we were told to be there. We all shook hands with an actual Knight that day, probably the wealthiest man I’ll ever meet.
Correction on a character’s name in “The Godfather”, it’s Tom Hagen not Haden. Played perfectly by the amazing Robert Duvall.
Hey Chaps,
Great questions.
In my first semester at university, I was shell-shocked that I had to read two novels a week. Before that I’d read at best 4 ‘serious’ novels a year for school, supplemented by lots of comic books and Dr Who novelisations.
I quickly slid into an anxious weekly spiral of impenetrable, half-read texts. Worst of all, it seemed like everyone around me had read them all. They hadn’t, but were just better at faking it in tutorials than I was.
In the midst of all this, I hit a low point when faced with reading a novel called SMALL WORLD by David Lodge, an English novelist I’d never heard of. I was pretty much ready to quit University when I started it, only to find it was one of the funniest books I’d ever read. It’s a perfect satire of the university world I was struggling to adapt to and was exactly what I needed. In the many years since, I’ve read all of David Lodge’s novels, many of which are set in universities. I am so grateful in hindsight to have discovered his books.
Most of my memories of humiliation are purely my own doing and too many to list here.
Keep sneaking.
Books I had to read, but enjoyed, include Animal Farm, Death of a Salesman, and Lord of the Flies. All downers, yes, but pretty dazzling in their different ways. I also was lucky to have one teacher who was a huge James Thurber fan, thus opening the doors to the Algonquin Round Table and all those great New Yorker writers and cartoonists.
It’s not exactly a drawing room murder mystery, but I loved the first film version of Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth – the one with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. I haven’t seen it in years, but my memory is that the two leads have loads of fun with a witty, clever script that subverts many of the cliches of the cosy English detective genre.
This isn’t hugely embarrassing, just one of those moments that stays in the mind…
I was in the audience at an open mic a few years ago when a musician friend began playing James Taylor’s Fire and Rain. He started off okay, but quickly hit a blank spot with the lyrics at the end of the first verse.
Looking pleadingly to the audience, he asked us, ‘What’s the next line?’
Meaning to be helpful, I called back, ‘I just can’t remember!’
Him: ‘Come on, what’s the line?’
Me, now joined by several others: ‘I just can’t remember!’
He totally thought we were taking the piss. But that’s the line, dammit!
Wie gehts, mienen Sneakerin?
I am ashamed to say I was a dreadful student between grades 6 and 8. Sixth grade coincided with the glorious science fiction year of 2001; an age when America became a police-state, and every living room – even our own in rural Massachusetts – was outfitted with the much-vaunted “Family Computer.” Ahhhhhh, yes….the glorious “family computer.” My generation is probably the first and last to enjoy this strange, feng shui phenomenon. When my friends and I weren’t busy exploring the pornographic recesses of the Google Image Search function, Al Gore’s information superhighway also provided a very useful little tool known as sparknotes-dot-com.
For those who may not have been familiar, Sparknotes was – and is – a convenient way for students to BS their way through whatever academic course of their choosing. Why read the book, when one could read a sixteen-paragraph summary of said book, and subsequently reap the rewards of just barely passing the following week’s exam? If memory serves me correctly, even these barely-conclusive Sparknotes summaries became too much for me to read, so much of these three-years of middle school was a total crapshoot. In hindsight, it is astonishing that I completely BS-ed my way through works like ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and ‘The Odyssey,’ without even troubling myself to AT LEAST read a barely-legal summary of each chapter posted online beforehand. After all, I was too busy chilling in my room snacking on lindt truffles and watching Peter O’toole movies.
…I was a weird kid…
Thankfully, it picked up for me in high school. Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises’ really resonated with me; the mildly homo-erotic tale of people bumbling around pre-war Europe. It has been a cool decade-and-a-half since I read this, so it is on my 2021 re-reading list. Incidentally, I did a pre-birthday splurge last weekend and almost picked up a copy, but when I saw it was $26 I told myself I could buy it used, and then grabbed my first Phillip K. Dick novel instead. (BTW: Happy?….Birthday? Dave? I seem to remember your birthday being a day after mine on Feb/24, but I could have mixed you up with another podcaster….meaning it’s either Andy Kindler or Greg Proops’ birthday).
At last, Albert Camus’ ‘The Stranger’ also intrigued me, so much so that I subsequently used it as my thesis project when applying for architecture school a year later. The project involved Camus and Sartre as disagreeable next-door-neighbors, and the design of each of their houses – in plan, section and elevation – reflected their contrasting philosophies. When my bumbling 18-year-old self nervously presented this to the assistant architectural dean one stormy evening in Chicago, he found it extremely odd, but also impressive, and I was able to con that school out of five-years of tuition-free education for my undergrad. Not an easy feat in America!
The moral of this bloated post? Let your kids be weird and F up. I may have hated Hester Prynne and that damn letter emblazoned across her chest in seventh-grade, but the literary and film references I discovered on my own throughout this time influenced my appreciation for figures like Camus and Sartre, which somehow got me into architecture school years later.
PS: Philip K. Dick was an amazing writer. Please keep dropping as many literary references throughout the show per usual, as I saw his name on the rack and remembered you guys discussing him a few weeks back. A “Dick Talk” segment is probably asking too much, but I’ll be listening for any other mid-20th century fiction recommendations you guys rattle off in the future.
tschüss!