Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 581 of the podcast that means “fudge” in Romanian!
This week: what price Coke; expensive munchables; shrinking food; disappearing chicken; morale building turkeys; paint it blackface; too straight; building to a laugh; obecting to subjectivity; Brit-coms; use the farce; chasing Chevy; hair today; bicycle therapy; collegedly; immature students; curiously safe; heroin and laughter; brain drains; wrecked it; judgementally correct; jumbled; complaints department; ineffectual idiots abroad; politically motivated; ruin it in the editing; sketch mind; stretch it out; vines of the times; oh no, Bono; the devil toupée; Dork Shadows – Light My Fire; that’s a lot of situations; beaver hours; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; boobage daydream; unscary movie; patty time; keep on trine; point counter point; sleepless in Seattle; and, finally, the competitive arts.
Question of the Week: In your opinion, what is the worst TV series?
Sub-question of the Week: What’s your favourite mystery?
Thanks for listening.
We’ve played it before, but let’s play it again – Ian’s Spacehole sketch:
The pickings are thin (i.e., this is the only episode of Complaint Department we could find online), but, just for a yawn, here’s an episode from 1988.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Gents, when you were talking about dated crossword puzzle references, I thought of a dated crossword puzzle answer of mine from a year ago. The clue was “Singer Perry,” and it was four letters. The answer was “KATY”, but I wrote “COMO.”
*sigh*
Matthew, this just made me laugh out loud because I’ve taken up doing crosswords in the past few months, and there’ve been a few of those kind of answers from me, as well!
“sigh” indeed…
Regarding Ian’s question to Dave about the difference between college and university, when we all got out of high school it was quite different than it is now. My understanding back then was that colleges were not degree-granting institutions, you had to go to university for that. A college could offer specialized course work (interior design, farrier, some construction related courses) and in the academic realm, certificates and associate degrees, or you could take your first two years of course work at a college and then transfer to a university to finish your Bachelors and from there go on and do a Masters/PhD if you were so inclined, or become a dr./lawyer/architect etc.
The reason a person would choose to go to college in the past would have been that it was cheaper, or closer to home, or for the smaller class sizes, or because it was easier to get into marks-wise.
Today all of the above are still valid reasons for attending a college but most colleges have been granted the right to offer a limited number of degrees (like BA) while still offering their specialized programs that often cater more to the locals/local interests. As well, colleges are a good option for students whose marks weren’t quite high enough to get into uni.
Having attended both, my take on it was the biggest differences were cost and larger campus with the odd very big (600+) class at university compared to a 20-40 person college course. I know Mary mentioned after transferring from a bigger university to a smaller college/university to pick up some courses that the marking was easier, but that could just be that she already had her degree while she was in classes with undergrads so you might expect her to find the work a bite easier.
I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by singling out a worst TV show. I’ll just say my least favorite genre is rich celebrity reality shows. Another pet peeve of mine used to be multi-camera sit-com pilots with bad laugh tracks. If they didn’t even try taping it in front of “a live studio audience,” they either didn’t have the budget to co-ordinate one, or they knew the material wasn’t funny enough to make anyone laugh. BTW, I liked the 8-episode series Reboot with Rachel Bloom, Paul Reiser and Keegan-Michael Key, a behind-the-scene dark comedy about the rebooting of a popular 80s sit-com. It was probably a little too inside and cynical for the general public, but it got the dysfunctional production dynamics right.
I’m looking forward to listening to Mattea Roach advocate for Kate Beaton’s graphic autobiograhy, Ducks on CBC Radio. The Canada Reads website refers to Mattea as “them” so I will as well. I thought they were really charming during their run on Jeopardy. I’ve noticed a trend in multi-game champions which I’m not sure is a good or bad thing. As their run goes on, the host will ask them about how they got ready to be on the show. Then they talk about practicing their buzzer technique, and going over clues and answers from past shows, and seriously boning up on categories they are weak in. (For me that would be U.S. states and state capitals.) What would be your weakest category?
Correction: the reboot in Reboot is of a sitcom from the 2000’s. I forgot that the turn of the century is already 20 years ago!
Greetings Sneaky Dragon Headquarters!
It’s not fair to call it a series because it was so short lived, but I remember “The Chevy Chase Show” being so unfunny I could barely watch it. I think this was years before I knew anything about Chase’s soured reputation so I thought it was just all around bad writing, performance and production. As for sitcoms, I remember as a young teen watching “The San Pedro Beach Bums”, a real stinker from 1977. I don’t know why I thought of this one but I remember looking forward to seeing during the ABC Fall Lineup, thinking it looked funny. I think one episode had Charlie’s Angels guest star so maybe the same producers were in charge of the show. If you don’t remember how cringy late 70’s this show was, here’s the intro from the pilot, formerly known simply as “The San Pedro Bums”: https://youtu.be/B0SgXjF3G6g
I remember in college being really drawn to the 1988 mystery “D.O.A.” with Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan and Daniel Stern, I saw it several times and bought the poster for my dorm room. I thought was a pretty clever film not knowing at the time there was a 1950 film noir original. It was also cool because it was filmed locally in Austin and San Marcos, Texas even though they really never say in the film where this campus is located. I guess we were to assume it was in Los Angeles because it’s Christmastime and everyone is sweating.
My Grandma Draganski used to work those super hard New York Times crossword puzzles with no black squares, in pen! Nobody could beat her at Scrabble either. You mentioned your Grandfather did the crosswords too? My folks now start every day with the daily Dallas Morning News crossword and complete it together before attacking the Wordle for the day.
I returned safely from Seattle on Saturday, getting my fill of corporate spirit but the downtown area was really great to see. Seagulls in a big city, wow!! We didn’t have time to see a lot with meetings and so much “togetherness” but I’d like to see Seattle again one day. Unfortunately, many returned testing positive for COVID, so more than a few of my colleagues are dealing with that.
We’re right in the middle of a nasty ice storm down here and we’ve been working from home all week. We knew this was coming so I stocked up beforehand and now we’re just waiting it out. Ian, I channeled my spirit comedian Oliver Hardy today and took a nice spill on the ice. I thought you’d like to know you’re in good company. I went right backwards and landed on my ass with the back of my head bouncing off the driveway, glasses flew off and everything. I was hoping our back security camera caught it but it had already shut off, it was spectacular. Up until today the ice was that white granular, crunchy type you could walk on but this morning brought more rain and sleet making everything super slick.
Maybe next time I can bribe a pilot to fly me over the border and drop in on you guys, I’d love to try some White Spot! Until then, I’ll just bore you here on the website….
Good Evening Blessed Sneakers everywhere!!!
Hey fellas!
A quick thank you for all the various permutations of the show you’ve been floating on the wifi waves lately, particularly the lost Sneaky Dragon we never heard, in which you aired grievances, made shocking confessions, and finally settled the ‘whose vintage chocolate bar was it’ debacle.
To the questions. I can’t think of a ‘worst’ TV series, but I certainly hate the idea of ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’. I imagine it to be the ne-plus-ultra of people with nothing better to do doing nothing better than getting ready to do nothing, doing the nothing, then talking about the nothing they’ve done. More broadly, their impact on popular culture has only – to my mind – been negative, with the fixation of the quasi-pornographic image over everything.
Moving swiftly to favourite mysteries – In fiction, I love the twists and turns of GK Chesterton’s mysteries. The Father Brown stories are delightfully playful, turning Golden Age Mystery tropes on their head before the Golden Age began. I have a special affection for ‘The Club of Queer Trades’ and its constant surprises such as a man happening on a field planted with pansies spelling out his death sentence in giant letters. The Man who was Thursday is perhaps his slipperiest mystery, with a plot which turns inside out so many times that it finally dissolves into metaphysics – the ‘Great Mystery’ of mankind.
In Film, David Mamet’s ‘House of Games’ has some pleasing inversions, and The Spanish Prisoner was a lot of fun in the cinema. Both films feature the great Ricky Jay, whose radio essays for KCRW I found on Spotify this week. Anyone with an interest in ephemeral culture should definitely take a listen – and I would encourage you, dear presenters and listeners, to do so too.
Signing off with a flourish of the pen,
Peter.