Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 494 of the pocast with less more.
This week: preemptive chick talk; train-activated rooster; listener input; Texas calculator; joke spoiler; math balls; learn up and wait; child mayhem; favourite music pun; autoharpie; grouch medal; stock questions; Top 10 Muppets; count school; Kermit is Jim; bathmat hound; gay science; bit part monster; pig shame; grim puppets; in a jam; pointless remake; valuable critics; it’s creepy; other people’s children; frozen entendres; the secret of blogs; ice cream factories; visual demonstration of a loss of enthusiasm; streamlined comedy; no Fat Albert sequel, “Not a pedophile”; useful sociopathy; don’t give a shit; dismal Cancon sitcom history; give a Schitt; sad and then happy story; don’t believe him; Dork Shadows – Life Force; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; sleepy REM; younger versions; going Dark; even Tony; reverse Cyberman; Army assignment; live and inert; rental giraffe; stuck on quicksand; and, finally, the uninvited.
Question of the week: What is your take-out or delivery food of choice?
Sub-question: Who is your favourite muppet?
Go check out not just Ian, but our friend Nina Matsumoto too on the Simpsons Are Greater Than… podcast here!
You can give a listen to Dave blabbing all about Clint Eastwood and The Dead Pool on The DIrty Harry Minute here.
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To the other listeners who mentioned going to Liverpool on their bucket list, it’s definitely worth it. As a lifelong Beatles obsessive (yes I came here via the gateway drug) living in the UK I have been fortunate enough to visit Liverpool several times, and it’s always felt to me like ‘going home’ even though I have no family connection and grew up over 100 miles away. I think that years of reading about the Beatles’ childhoods and early years made me feel like I already knew the city. Growing up I became a fan of Liverpool Football Club because my dad worked as the local insurance salesman for Royal Liver Insurance (pronounced Lie-ver) who were the original inhabitants of the famous Liver Building which sits on the side of the River Mersey, so visiting has also been an excuse to watch a match at Anfield. My most recent visit was in 2018 to see the excellent John and Yoko ‘Imagine’ exhibition at Liverpool Museum. Before that i attended the International Beatleweek Festival in 2017 – if you are visiting from abroad make sure you time it to coincide with this event as it’s geared towards foreign visitors and is packed full of Beatle related events. The tours of the Lennon and McCartney homes are my ultimate ‘must do’ recommendation – exquisitely restored by the National Trust, I had goosebumps. I’ve also been inside studio two at Abbey Road which was another ‘pinch yourself’ moment, so for my bucket list I’m hoping to visit Hamburg next year for my fortieth birthday to complete the trilogy of European Beatles pilgrimages.
On to takeaways – my go to is either pizza, or a tandoori mixed grill from an Indian restaurant. This is a combination of spiced chicken, lamb and prawn – more than is reasonable for one person to eat but somehow I still manage – served with a naan bread and salad. The pandemic has seen a lot of local cafes, bakery’s etc start to offer delivery. This, combined with home working, has resulted in a worrying trend of mid week breakfast takeaways in our household. After dropping the kids at school I’ll come home and either me or my wife will get the idea in our head that we’d really like a bacon sandwich, then its just a matter of time to see who caves first.
Can’t wait for the big 500, keep up the good work.
Our take-out food of choice is sushi. We usually go out for dinner at our local sushi restaurant on Friday nights to celebrate the end of the week, but now we’ve been picking up our order. Our sushi joint went to take-out only, even when they were allowed to have some in-person dining. We thought that was a smart move for their own safety as well as that of their customers.
My favourite non-Kermit muppet is Cookie Monster. I can relate to his sweet obsession. I also support his more recent decision to endorse healthier food options. I like the googly eyes on the top of his head and his use of “me” as his pronoun of choice for several grammatical cases. His love of classic theatre and film is evident when he hosts Monsterpiece Theatre as Alistair Cookie. I’m also fond of Oscar the Grouch and Rowlf the Dog. Part of the appeal of these three characters is that they are operated by two puppeteers so they have two “live” hands. They can make gestures and manipulate objects which really gives them a lifelike quality.
D’oh!! I was going to mention Cookie Monster as my spirit Muppet!! But then I remembered I’m a diabetic….good play Louise.
Hey fellas, who wants take out?
I have to side with David, I prefer to pick my food up at the restaurant instead of having it driven around and delivered. Delivery costs have gone up and I’d rather save time and money by getting it myself. I arrive early so I’m there when it comes right out of the back and still hot then I drive it straight home before it gets cold or soggy. We had food delivered and I had no idea how long it was in the delivery person’s car getting cold.
A place we’ve been enjoying is a restaurant & bar in the neighborhood called Delaney’s Irish Pub & Scratch Kitchen. I seriously don’t think this place has a bad item on the menu, we’ve been eating there for years. They’re prompt and conscious about having the same quality in their takeout as they would if you were eating there so their food is just as good when you take it home. I like their Shamrock Slider Burgers on Pretzel Rolls, The Lost Irishman Burger with Gorgonzola and red onions, The Rigo Patty Melt on Garlic Parmesan Texas Toast with 1000 Island dressing or the Haddock & Chips with Crispy Sidewinder fries…I won’t eat fried fish from anywhere else. Jeez, I may have to get something from Delaney’s tonight, I’m getting hungry. Damn you…
The Muppets were present and happily accounted for during my formative years, I had a wide variety of creative and innovative toys, games and media from the Muppet-verse. I watched Sesame Street avidly, I had a few Muppet puppets too. I had Ernie and my friend across the alley had Bert, so we would put on puppet shows with them. I remember they made an actual cloth Muppet who wasn’t a character at all with a blank purple fabric head. It came with all sorts of velcro backed “features” you could stick to his head and make your own character. It even had the wrist post you could attach so you could work the Muppet’s arms with your other hand. To me, this was like owning an actual Muppet. I had Colorforms sets based on the Muppets, finger puppets and quite a few albums I really enjoyed. One album was meant to be played only when it was raining outside and you had to stay indoors. My friends and I would actually do this and play the album when we couldn’t go outside. It had all sorts of activities and fun dances you could do while the Muppets played along on the album. I have to say whoever created all these Muppet products for kids back in the 70’s did an outstanding job, they were innovative, memorable and fun for the imagination.
So my favorite Muppet? Louise kind of stole my thunder with Cookie Monster above, who I also had a puppet of with googly eyes, but it’s really hard to choose just one isn’t it? I liked Oscar and The Count quite bit from Sesame Street because they were featured in books I had. One page showed a cut-away view of Oscar’s home below the garbage can, kind of like the below ground dwelling Bug Bunny had in cartoons. Except Oscar’s home was full of trash and useless junk which I thought gave more insight into who he was…and fascinated me. Later on with The Muppet Show, which we used to watch as a family, we always joked that Statler & Waldorf were like my two Grandfathers up in that booth. What really lives in my heart as a fondness for The Muppets as an adult has to be Kermit singing “The Rainbow Connection”. It’s really the first thing that comes to mind as an older Muppet fan and it squarely hits me right in the heart. The song has been covered by many, but I still tear up when Kermit performs, it’s pure and perfect.
I love The Muppets, all of them.
Hi Ian, Dave and Sneaker pals – or should that be, ‘Scotland says HELLO!’?
My take-out food of choice has changed over the years. Back in my younger days as a hip and happening omnivore about town, a fish supper was hard to beat. (In case folk don’t know, in a Scottish chip shop, ‘supper’ means ‘and chips’.) Most of the chippies in my home town were run by Italian families and, man, did they know how to deep fry a haddock fillet in batter! This was an occasional treat, and best eaten outdoors with plenty of industrial-strength vinegar, enough salt to de-ice a midwinter patio, and none of your namby-pamby, high falutin cutlery or napkins, thank you very much.
Other chippie delights inevitably included the haggis supper. This was pretty far from being a genuine haggis, more a salty, spicy gungy thing shaped like a large sausage and, of course, battered and deep fried. It had its charms to be sure, but these paled next to its twisted, evil cousin, (drum roll, please)… the black pudding. We’ll have to keep this to ourselves, or they’ll take away my Vegan passport, but I used to love these things. It’s probably best not to think about the ingredients. Let’s just say Barnabas Collins would be more than satisfied.
These days, I’m a clean living, reformed character, honest. We’re lucky here to have a great choice of Indian restaurants, mostly Bangladeshi. And while I love to cook Indian food, the great thing about a take-away is each person can choose the level of spiciness to suit themselves.
Sidenote: there actually is a vegan black pudding, probably the indulgence of choice for Count Duckula. I was a bit snooty about them, as I generally am when vegan food companies feel they have to dress up their products in fake meaty drag. Anyway, my wife bought some – I think she may have been testing my resolve – and they weren’t half bad.
Favourite muppet: I have to go with Fozzy, though Rowlf’s the guy you’d want to hang out with after hours. Diane says ‘Animal’ which explains more about our relationship than I really care to think about.
Scotland says, ‘See youse!’
Take-out – hands down, Chinese food. And f we just ordered chow mein, that’d be fine too, cuz that’s mainly what I like.
Muppets: I do like those two old guys who sit up in the balcony, but I think I always like the Swedish chef the most.
Hi David, Ian, and all the Sneaky listeners. 🙂
I haven’t dropped off the face of the map. I’m just a week behind and am trying to play catch up. My husband got vaccinated (yay!) and then wanted to take the family out of state for a short anniversary trip. Fun, fun for all; but he doesn’t like listening to anything in the car which meant no Sneaky Dragon for me. 🙁
Question of the week: What is your take-out or delivery food of choice?
Usually pizza or Mexican. If I had my taste preference, I would say catfish, but pizza and Mexican hold up well over the car drive home. Sadly, catfish reheated in the oven isn’t as appetizing as when freshly prepared. One of the joys of living in the country is that you have to drive at least 30 miles in any direction to reach a nearby town, so we usually try to do take-out on our way home from work.
Sub-question: Ralph the Dog is my favorite Muppet, but if I can include Sesame Street characters, I would say Grover. Grover was the “it” character when I was growing up. I had a number of Sesame Street books featuring Grover. I feel like he was pushed to the side in popularity when Elmo was introduced.
Have a great week everyone!