Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 482 of Sneaky Dragon – the podcast with wings!
This week: it’s working; real men; turtle bucks; pool solutions; teen labour; alternative fowl; suave janitors; boring explanations; fancy riding; full o’beans; reverse Lent; virtually real; non-competitive exercise; tricky elbow; slow breakdown to death; the immortal Keaton; Jackie Chan medicine; learn to fall; wannabe stuntman; acquired skills; card tricks; compulsion vs. propulsion; Señor Wences; rich inner life; child entertainers; good things come from no work; fucking rainbow overalls; rear chicken coop; more Woody Allen; Kliph Nesteroff’s new book; exclusive comedy exclusive; Dork Shadows – Bad Lieutenant; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; horsing around; comedy is for strangers; mom noir; smell test; pasta on pasta; going down in fire and rain; family computers; mixed signals; America does number one; and, finally, too much honesty.
Thanks for listening.
Question of the week: What’s a skill you recently learned?
Sub-question: What is something harmless you might see in popular media that still really bugs you?
Sub-sub-question (from Jonathan): Were you ever asked a question that was so profound or essential to you that it caused you to change your perspective or attitude to life?
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A skill I recently learned? Lamp repair. This week, the pull chain on my lamp jammed in the off position so I watched some videos on YouTube then I picked up a new socket with a pull chain switch from Home Depot. I wanted to use the original chain so I replaced the new one with the old one on the switch. Then I wired up the new socket and reassembled the lamp and so far it’s working fine. This week I also taught myself how to mix tracks using Audible. Because of the pandemic, my choir is only meeting virtually so we’re doing some home recording and sending our parts to our conductor for mixing. For fun, I recorded all three parts for one song. After watching more YouTube videos, I figured out how to combine them with the piano track and adjust the levels to bury my weak notes. I’m no recording artist/engineer Sarah Walsh (although I did enjoy her Chumbawamba playlist) but it was a really good exercise. Now I have a much greater appreciation for all the work that goes into producing recorded music, even odd novelty songs such as one might hear on the Sneaky Dragon Listening Party.
Sub-question: it bugs me how often ballet dancers are portrayed as troubled and/or insane. (see The Red Shoes, Black Swan, Red Sparrow, Flesh and Bone, Pretty Little Things) That said, ballet does have a history of promoting unhealthy body issues and you have do to be a little nuts to jam your feet into pointe shoes and dance (which I did for a few years.)
Sub-sub-question: it was less a profound question than a comment but it did change how I saw myself. My high school art teacher said of something I said or did, “That shows you’re not as cynical as you pretend to be.” It surprised me that I came across as cynical at the age of 18. I thought that was something you had to be older to become. But I owned it. Better cynical than gullible, I say.
Correction: Audacity is the name of the free audio editing software I used. (Audible is the company that puts out audio versions of books.)
Last year I took on the responsibility of learning WIX so that I could maintain our company’s website. It’s easy to use the free version, kind of a plug and play interface, so that’s what I had to work with because my employers didn’t want to spend money on a website. It’s about a 50/50 shot on whether our website will do something my company owners want it to because the free version is limited in certain ways but we got it looking pretty good…just in time for our Creative Director to change our company logo. Sometimes job security pays off at the sacrifice of my sanity.
Okay David, you were killing me with your Adobe Illustrator talk! I want to help you, let my skills make your life easier! I learned Illustrator first and I’ve been proficient at it for the last 25 years or so. My muscle memory kicks in and I don’t even think about what my hands are doing when pen tooling or clipping using the bezier curves. It take practice to be sure but I have a couple shortcuts that will eliminate you tracing a logo. (I wanted to pull my hair out when you said you were actually tracing a logo!) There are a few places you can go for shortcuts next time. Let’s say you had to recreate the Sneaky Dragon logo but in the Care Bears font, like you mentioned. 1) Find a clean JPEG of the Care Bears logo you want and crop it to just the logo, make it black & white if you can. 2) Go to http://www.whatthefont.com (Or any other font matching site) and upload the logo to their page. 3) Follow the steps and the site will match a font to the letters in the logo, you may have to type below the image a corresponding character to help it match. 4) If it finds a font that matches the Care Bears logo, find it, install it and type out “Sneaky Dragon” and you’re done! You wouldn’t believe the fonts that are available online that are made to recreate famous word marked logos, it’s like the Bubble Gum Pop CD collection you mentioned to Mary on Listening Party that was compiled by a crazy person…it’s endless.
There’s also a plan B. A site that had always helped me is Brands of the World, a site for downloading vector logos for just about anything. It’s been around forever and 9 times out of 10 you’ll find the logo you’re looking for and it’s free. https://www.brandsoftheworld.com
I’m sure you have your own processes and I respect that. I was going to write you personally about this and I’m not trying to shame you in any way but I mean it when I say that if you have any questions about Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop please do not hesitate to reach out. I’m betting you have a few tricks of your own I could learn from. The greatest thing nowadays is that if you use Adobe Creative Cloud, the two work in tandem and better than ever before and it does no good if don’t share what you know with friends.
Just today I recreated a Superman & Lois logo by finding the font so I could create a vector work path in Photoshop for a clean mask. I then use an app that turns these logos into folder icons so I can label the Superman & Lois folder…I know its anal but why quit now?
Popular media is so full of quirky pet peeves and unrealistic responses. It drives me nuts when someone in a movie or show orders a drink for another and they leave the scene without drinking it! The same goes for a meal, in “No Country For Old Men”, Tommy Lee Jones pushes his entire breakfast away without eating a bite. To be fair, I think he’s sick to his stomach over a story in the newspaper but that’s the most important meal of the day Tommy! How about John Wick’s hearing? All those gunshots in confined spaces and he can still hear the next 12 guys around the corner? I guess we’re not supposed to think about those things but I’m sure I’ll think of more. One more, How does James Bond clean up so damn quickly? Nobody takes a fucking beating like Daniel Craig’s 007 and in the next scene he looks like he healed as if he were Wolverine. I guess he’s 007 for a reason and that’s it.
A skill I learned recently? Well, I don’t know if it qualifies as a skill but I just learned how to download stuff on a computer. Gasp!! I know, that’s so 1995. Even better, this time last year I learned how to copy and paste. Unbelievable. Such progress. Before this pandemic is over, I might even master the screen share. But that’s a pretty big ask. I’ll keep you posted.
Hello David and Ian and Sneakers! Have you had a good week? Is everybody doing alright?
My answer to the The Question of the Week: The “skill” I learned this past year is kind of a Grandma thing. Because my manager at work handed down a giant Barbie Dream House to my 3 year old granddaughter, Gracie, and her 8 year old stepsister, I was inspired to first create a couple of matching beds for the 2 scroungy Barbies the girls have. These beds are complete with matching sheets and pillows. Then, because the two scroungy Barbies were naked (why are they always naked!!!), I started sewing clothes for the Barbies. using fabric scraps and old clothes I have saved. These outfits are sometimes kind of odd and rudimentary, but I’m getting better. I’ve added a couple of new Barbies to the girls’ collection and they are all currently clothed last time I asked my daughter.
It’s been good practice on the 1935 Singer sewing machine I have that was my own Grandma’s. It is a wonderful machine! Still purrs like a kitten!
Since starting on doll clothes I’ve also done up some curtains and new cushions for the porch swing. I learned to sew years ago; just haven’t taken the time to do it in ages and it’s very satisfying!
The Sub-questions… both are great questions, but I’m still thinking on thosel’
Blessings all!!!
PS Husband and I are also learning to play the guitar, as we gave each other one for Christmas!