Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Sneaky Dragon, the podcast with the mod cast!
This week: precipitous fall; meta-looneys; sincere flattery; Witcher-poo; just here to listen; press gang; open secrets; the league of evil; the five stages of Simpsons; dude toons; Reacher feature; obtrusive facts; unbearably grisly; rodent’s fair; unwanted thoughts; small places; adventures in parking; little shopping of horrors; actresses and mattresses; Bacallalia; one hit wonderers; bonks and konks; coulda woulda shoulda; validated feelings; exploited for yuks; lonely Leno; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; shout to the top; getting an Eyre-ful; Goonies bashing; bunny dips; babies and bathwater; symphonic siege; el podcasto; Patches pals; eyeful terror; and, finally, everything’s magnolia.
Question of the Week: What is something where you live that we should know about?
Sub-question of the Week: Do you wear eye glasses? When did you start wearing them and how did you feel about it?
Thanks for listening.
You should check out Ian and Pia as guests on The New Yorker Cartoon Contest Podcast. They were really good and it’s a fun interview.
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David: you’ve seen my old place, which I spent 3 years in, most of it during pandemic lockdowns. This place feels like twice the size. I finally have room for a couch! I finally have closets — TWO of them!! No, it certainly doesn’t feel cramped. This place is bigger than many of my apartment-dwelling friends’ homes, and some of them live with their partners. And like Ian said, I spend most of my time in front of a computer anyway, so it’s not as though I need that much space anyway asides for storage (which I also have plenty of here thanks to being able to rent a storage locker in the basement).
Anyway, thank you again for your help with the bed!
P.S. I once lived in a “bedroom” with no windows and no closets. There was only enough space for my computer chair & desk and one book case. For bedtime, I had to shove my chair aside in front of my door to make room for my single-sized foam mattress that I’d unfold and place on the floor, half of it under my work desk, because there’d be no space otherwise. I’m certain I would have died if there was a fire. Anything is better than that experience.
Question of the week:
What is something about where I live that we should know about? Well, if you’re talking about my actual dwelling, then three things that are a little different that most – A) our main floor is pretty much devoid of anything except for one room where a few things are being stored (this emptiness is due to the flood; usually the unusual thing is the zillion books, records and CDs that inhabit this area); B) we have two chickens hanging out in our suburban backyard; C) I have a 1969 Mustang convertible under wraps in one of those pop up sheds (sadly both are a little worse for wear).
If you are talking about my fair town of Aldergrove, it was known as ‘The Place in Between’ as it was a village situated equidistant between two larger centres (Langley and Abbotsford) that had more amenities, which has resulted in a lack of stores that can stay viable as its too easy for people to drive out to go shopping. Also in Aldergrove is the Greater Vancouver Zoo, the only zoo in the Vancouver metropolitan area. As well, we have the world famous BC Telephone Museum, which I’m sure you’ve heard of. Finally, a lot of movies and TV shows are filmed out in Aldergrove – Smallville, the Psycho TV show (right across from the dump!), and countless Hallmark shows.
Do I wear glasses? Sadly, yes. I had to start in my 20s. I would rather not, thank you very much.
Dave!
The book you were talking about, ASTRAL WEEKS, by Ryan H. Walsh, about the crazy scene in Boston in the late 1960s is phenomenal. The Velvet Underground/Lou Reed stuff I found most humorous. I read the book last summer, and it was a fantastic reading experience.
You are a man of great taste.
PS. I don’t wear eyeglasses.
Love ya guys.
I first got glasses when I was 20. I only needed them for driving and movies, so I felt lucky I didn’t have to wear them all the time. In my 40s, I started needing glasses for computer work and reading. I recently got a stronger prescription and now I get a slight keystone effect when I look at my monitor which is annoying. I have to be careful when I’m doing graphics to do a non-glasses check to see if I’m distorting any lines.
“Key Largo” was a pretty soft hit even by easy listening standards so I’m not surprised a hardcore music snob, er, aficionado like Dave didn’t remember it. It was one of those sensitive early 80s “where did our love go wrong” guy songs like “Just Once,” “If Ever I’m In Your Arms Again” and “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?” This was before people were told to face it, they’re just not that into you.
Speaking of hot dogs, which you were (again) there was a BeaverTails® food truck in our area last weekend, so my sister and I headed over to grab some of that sweet tail. We discovered they also have a menu item called a Beaverdog™ which is a wiener wrapped in a BeaverTail then deep-fried. And then there’s poutine on a BeaverTail which they call Poutail™. And that’s something people should know about where I live: Canadians don’t want snacks with tasteful names, they want snacks that taste good.
Wow, those are some interesting names for a food truck. I bet they get a lot of purchases just because of the menu item names. That reminds me of the time I bought a can of spotted dick at a Nashville grocery store. The title made me giggle, but the raisin loaded cake inside the can was quite delicious.
Hey Dave, something went wrong in the moderation process of my comment above. I submitted the comment under my name, but when approved, it switched to Louise’s name. It’s obvious that Louise isn’t shopping for naughty sounding groceries in the British foods aisle at a Nashville supermarket, but I felt compelled to point the name change out so everyone wouldn’t think that I was posting as her.
Another great episode, guys! Ian has really been in top form lately with his amusing accents.
I’ve worn glasses since middle school. It’s a love – hate relationship. I love being able to see things at a distance. I hate falling asleep in the couch with them on (and warping the frames). My up-close vision is fine so I pull them off when reading. Sometimes I take them off for photos and videos, and sometimes I don’t.
I would like to tell you about three fun things that are located in my community. One location is something that a lot of people have heard about, but mainly only locals are aware that it is located in our community. And the other two are cool things to see that many locals are unaware that are here.
First: there are several elephants that have loaded up their trunks and moved to Tennessee. We have an elephant sanctuary on over 3,000 acres in our community that has provided refuge for nearly 30 elephants who are retired from zoos and circuses. As a true sanctuary, the facility is closed to the public, but you can visit their website to watch the ele-cams or stop by the welcome center in town to learn more about the elephants, their personalities, or the sanctuary’s mission.
Second: Half a block from the elephant welcome center is the local and natural history museum which has the third largest mounted animal collection in North America. A couple who owned vacation property here donated the collection which they gathered? dispatched? collected? (not sure what the politically correct term is) while on a number of safaris taken between 1949 and the 1990s. There are many taxidermied animals in the collection that are now on the endangered species list, but were not at the time of their harvest; and the couple practiced selective hunting by intentionally choosing to dispatch older, weaker, sicker, animals instead of those in their prime to help with herd health. It is amazing the volume of traffic that passes by the huge animal mural on the side of the museum, and yet are unaware that there is a museum in town.
And lastly, but certainly not least in my book… our local library has a very special room in it. It’s were we lock up and torture people who don’t return their… no, actually, we don’t do that. That wouldn’t be nice at all. What we do have is a room installed in our building that was originally part of a house. It was the front parlor of a home built by an Austrian immigrant who had incredible woodworking skills. The house had fallen into disrepair and was scheduled to be burned down by the fire department for practice. Our historical society stepped in, found funding, and relocated this room into our library. They numbered every piece of wood so that it could be carefully and correctly reassembled. I’ve been told that when they removed the wall boards, they found newspapers written in German that dated back to the 1890s. It is a beautiful, ornate room which we use to house our local history and genealogy collection.
Take care my friends!
Oh wow. I know about your elephant sanctuary, Crystal, because our local elephant Tina (from the aforementioned zoo) ended up there. She had lived here most of her life but the wet footing was not ideal for her and she ended up with foot issues. I remember taking the girls down to see them loading her in the trailer for her trip south. I understand it took them 2-3 days to convince her to get in the trailer.
Sneaky Dragon letter for the week:
Hello, gentlemen. What a great show this week! I enjoyed your discussion of the fear of heights—which I share, and which has gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. Sartre would say that what makes us afraid is that we have the freedom to jump, and that freedom is terrifying. A friend recently told me that as a young adult, she hiked a trail with an infamous, vertigo-inducing drop. There was a sign at the trailhead: “Do not hike this trail if you have a mild fear of heights.” Her youthful logic ran this way: “I don’t have a mild fear of heights. I have a major fear of heights, so I will be fine.” She was not fine.
I also very much enjoyed Ian’s improvising on “My Favorite Things,” and I would vote for that as a regular feature of the show. Ian’s pointing out of my inconsistency in the fact that I wrote a long letter last week after saying that I would be too busy to do so was a point well taken. But you may take it as a compliment: I used my one stretch of free time on Sunday to listen and to write, and the show was so good that I couldn’t resist.
Question of the week #1: something where I live that you should know about: the Clotilda. Just before the beginning of the Civil War, the last slave ship in America arrived in Mobile Bay, even though participation in the international slave trade was illegal by that time. (It’s pronounced “mobeel,” in case my Canadian friends aren’t sure.) The ship bore 110 kidnapped African children. Afterwards, it was intentionally sunk in Mobile Bay to destroy the evidence. After the war, former slaves founded Africatown in north Mobile, near the site of the ship’s arrival, and there they revived and practiced West African traditions and languages for decades. In 2019 the wreck of the ship was discovered, and that inspired a lot of press coverage. My colleague in the English department, Kern Jackson, a scholar of folklore and oral narrative, has been researching the descendants of the survivors of the Clotilda for thirty years, and much of his research was used in the recent documentary film, /Descendant/, which just won a prize at the Sundance festival. He is credited as a producer and co-writer on the film. It’s brilliant, and I recommend it to everyone. Here is a writeup in the Hollywood Reporter, which gives my colleague a nice mention: [‘Descendant’ Review: Sundance Doc on Last Slave Ship – The Hollywood Reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/descendant-film-clotilda-sundance-2022-1235079825/)
Question of the week #2: I have worn corrective eyewear for most of my life, and I completely gave up on contact lenses in my mid-thirties as the last vestiges of my vanity dissolved. I now consider glasses simply a part of my face, and I’m fine with that, especially now that I need progressive lenses. I did have a glasses-related adventure lately: on the way to Miami to visit my wife’s family at Christmas, I was wearing my prescription sunglasses to drive and realized (too late) that I had left my regular glasses at home. So I spent some time cruising around Miami at night wearing sunglasses, like Don Johnson, circa 1985, though I was in a Subaru rather than a Porsche.
I haven’t made much Backward Dragon progress recently, but I have made it back to April of 2021, so I’m back to believing that the pandemic is almost over.
I have a lot more to say about Mozart and about Dave’s interesting comments about his taste in classical music, but perhaps I’ll send that in a private letter so that I don’t bore the pants off of my fellow Sneakers with my music nerdishness.
Stay well, everyone.
John
PS The above letter was cut and pasted from my journal, so the heading “Sneaky Dragon Letter of the Week” was a heading that I inadvertently pasted. I’m explaining in case it seemed awkward. But it now seems that the explanation is even MORE awkward. I’ll stop now.
I live in a rather quiet and uneventful part of the Dallas “Metroplex”, which is what the Dallas/Fort Worth area is called down here. West of me, Fort Worth is know as Cowtown and has the famous stockyards for country music, rodeo and other venues of that kind. Fort Worth does have a spectacular cultural scene as well with four different museums within walking distance of one another, all of them wonderful. I know there’s a large amount of film shot in and around your location and in Vancouver but we’ve had some films shot here too! 1975’s “Logan’s Run” was shot throughout Dallas and Fort Worth, primarily the Water Gardens near downtown Fort Worth. Dallas was the backdrop for Detroit in the original 1987 “RoboCop” with our City Hall replacing the OCP Headquarters, two friends of mine even made it into the film for about three seconds.
If I had to say which was the largest and most sustained event in Dallas of the entire year, it would be our State Fair in September & October. It’s taken place since 1886 and I’ve gone almost every year since we’ve moved here in 1969. It’s pretty much the same each time, Fletcher’s Corny Dogs, Roasted Corn, Belgian Waffles and sausage on a stick just to name a few of the hundreds of foods available there, most are fried. When I was a kid, there was a “Freak Show” part of the Fair that spooked me a bit but it’s obviously gone now. There’s the Midway where you can play games and ride some really wild rides that don’t look all that safe. There’s a car show in one of the buildings that is really great, if you go the last week of the Fair most of the parts inside the cars have been stolen. Livestock is brought from every part of the state to compete each year and if you stay until dark you can catch a live band almost every night. The Fairgrounds are enormous and much of the architecture was built in the early 20th century with huge murals and statues all over the grounds. But the most iconic feature of the State Fair has to be Big Tex, a 55 foot cowboy statue at the entrance to the Midway. Big Tex talks and says “Howdy Folks!” then tells you what the day’s activities are. In 2012 poor Big Tex burned to death until he was just a smoldering metal frame but was replaced with the current one a year later. Here are a few photos of Big Tex’s fiery demise and his replacement. It wouldn’t be the State Fair without him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Fair_of_Texas#/media/File:Big_Tex_fire.2_retouched.jpg
https://s.hdnux.com/photos/52/01/00/11014204/5/1200×0.jpg
https://res.cloudinary.com/culturemap-com/image/upload/c_limit,w_980/v1473359654/photos/129504_original_wide.png
I was born with myopic -11.75 vision but my folks didn’t realize it until I was about five. I wore really thick glasses up until I was a Junior in high school then switched to contact lenses. My doctor told be the semi-rigid gas permeable lenses were better for me if I could stand wearing them since they would stabilize my vision better than glasses. In May 2000, I was left $4000 in my Grandmother’s will, so I spend every penny of it on Lasik Eye Surgery…so you can say my Grandmother paid for me to finally see with my own eyes. This was pretty much a miracle and the best $4000 I’ve ever spent. Before the surgery, I had to solely wear my glasses for an entire month since my eyes were actually re-shaped by the contacts over the years. My doctor mapped my eyes the day before surgery and called me later that night, “Maybe we should wait another week and let your eyes relax a little more so I have a better surface for surgery.” So I went another week with my thick birth control goggles on because what’s another week after waiting this long?
Ian mentioned the process on last week’s episode and he was dead on, you do smell your eyes burning as they lathe off the eye and you are paranoid as hell that something is going to poke you in the eye afterwards. I rub my eyes in my sleep, so I had to wear those damned goggles to bed. The thought of finding my cornea on my pillow in the morning scared the shit out of me. Even so, the results were amazing and I’m still glasses free except when driving or reading small print because you know….aging sucks.
Sneak well and Sneak healthy all!