Our apologies, but for the first twelve minutes of this week’s episode, we didn’t notice that Ian’s microphone had been turned off. We did our best to equalize his voice, but please note there are some issues with audio quality.
Hola, Sneakers! It’s Episode 609 of the podcast that doesn’t know when to leave.
This week: a respectful silence; spectral analysis; Houdini goes there; ghostel; we’ve got the Bates; resettings; apes go ape; limited anime; to the Imax; unclarity; use your illusionist; Nolaniana; context clues, Penn pals; oui oui to Pee Wee; Tim bits; mighty Mira; triple double standards; in a Barbie world; boss level; fortune hunters; when life gives you Leno; audience connection; sweet charity; weaponized comedy; franchise accumulation; acceptable hobo; HO-tties; on The Beachcombers; watch party; alphabetical movies; a Pearl of a film; no commentary; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; valley boy; national smell; eye the jury; eventful; the “Ooo”s have it; the dragon who came to dinner; Ian’s career quest; and, finally, tattoo ew.
Question of the Week: Have you ever written a song?
Sub-question of the Week: What’s your favourite card game?
Thanks for listening.
Here is Episode 1 of Epic Career Quest – written by Ian with character designs by Pia!
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I’m pretty fond of cribbage which I learned from my French Grandmother and my parents. It left me very good at knowing what adds up to 15.
With all due respect to last week’s Star Trek: Strange New World singing episode, as Ian knows we did it first in 1991 with Star Trek: The Musical. So yes, I have written or co-written songs. There was Spork’s “Half-Galvan Blues” and Guts’ patter song, “I’m a Doctor, Damn It.” We had a sexy alien Queen who sang the cabaret song “(Take Me) Where No Man’s Gone Before” with lyrics such as “Every Tom, Dick and Wookie/would like a little nookie” and “I have wasted quite a fling on/a Romulan and Klingon.” There was the Captain’s song: “Once more I have to fight to save my ship. I’ve got to do it right to save my ship. I’m taking off my shirt, my image could get hurt, I should’ve skipped dessert to save my ship!” But my favourite song to write was the Scottish ballad “I Canna Take the Pressure” which I now dare Ian to recite for the Sneaky listeners. I’ll start you off: ”The helm is not responding, the circuits have gone dead…”
Jesus Christ Ian, you have to take Louise up on her dare. Come on man, all the Trekkies are listening…especially after that episode of Strange New Worlds. How nuts was that? I’ve been listening to it over and over again on Spotify, now it’s time to hear your Star Trek Musical. The helm and circuits man, come on…..
Wow guys, I have never written a song…maybe a haiku or a dirty limerick but that’s as close as I come to writing anything that might be adapted into a song. I think once, very long ago, I took the song “Sweethaven” from “Popeye” and re-wrote the lyrics to the music for my own private school spirit song. It’s as horrible as it sounds.
If I’m playing cards, it’s usually not competitive, so Solitaire or maybe a little Blackjack will do. I’ve never been a card player where a group gets together for play, like Poker. My Dad and Brother are like that, they love to play Poker and other competitive card games. Mom and I never joined in. My son recently offered to teach me how to play Magic The Gathering with the release of the new Lord of the Rings card sets. I bought a commander deck, so we’re just waiting for the right time to play so he can show his dear old dad how it’s done. I’m looking forward to spending time with my son and daughter-in-law for that.
David, some day you should watch the original Planet of the Apes films. The production value is kind of lacking but the collective story how all five films create their own cycle is mind boggling. I haven’t a clue if the films were written in this way ahead of time or not but it quite a bit of head scratching sci-fi. Without spoiling exactly what I mean I’ll leave it at that. I hope I’m not overselling it but it’s an easy watch and in a mad retro sort of way.
I have a bit of a story in reference to seeing celebrities in person and how shockingly short a few of them can be. Back in the 90’s a new Planet Hollywood opened in downtown Dallas, so my brother and I stood in line all day to see the celebs on the red carpet that evening. Bruce Willis, Charlie Sheen and Chuck Norris (a local celebrity) were all in great shape but I was taken aback by how short these guys were! Then there were the celebs that were shockingly tall too, like Danny Glover and Anna Nicole Smith! (She squeezed my hand). This was all fun to experience but the greatest moment was watching Arnold Schwarzenegger on the red carpet. You’d think he’s a biggest guy, right? He’s over 6 feet tall, so that’s an average tall height but the problem was that he was hanging around next to Troy Aikmen who was the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys at the time. Aikmen is maybe 6 foot 5 or so and he was enormous when he was quarterback. It made Schwarzenegger look small by comparison. I kept thinking that Schwarzenegger’s publicist should get over there and tell Arnold to get the hell away from the quarterback…it’s bad for your image! That was a really fun night, later on Bruce Willis came out to sing onstage with Patti LaBelle and Anna Nicole Smith. It’s as horrible as it sounds.
I don’t sing and I don’t write songs but I’ll write myself off of this week’s letters section!
Have a stellar week all my dear Sneakers!
One of the things Paul Reubens said about Pee-Wee’s Playhouse in an interview a few years ago I’ll never forget: “We were making a show for kids, to try to touch kids’ minds in some way, to sort of—encourage young people to be creative and non-conformist.”
I’ve written about an album’s worth of songs, 10 or 12 complete (some were instrumentals). A few of them were on MySpace before the Great Migration and were wiped in some update along the way. I’ve written *partial* bits of songs (musical themes, chorus lyrics, melody snippets, chord progressions) for a couple dozen more but haven’t gotten serious about completing another until last year as I started to get serious about practicing music again. I’ll put up a Bandcamp page if I manage to keep going, I suppose.
Hhhh! Hhhhh!
I’m trying to be little more lateless latly…. Can you slow down a bit….
Epic Carreer Quest, niiiice. Pia is in the credits and there’s a Ian but I didn’t quite remember him as asiatic…. That’s sneaky for sure.
Like the Scoubidou (Yeah in my youth he was french) vibe.
Speaking of scoubidou, that’s a french invention (1958, take that Anna Barbarrella, who’s that women anyway) where you knit colored plastic spaggetti to do things, mostly as a the mother or father day gift, I think. To change from the pasta painting (made with real pasta this one). And it’s also a Sacha Distel song. That’s confusing not to say sneaky.. I didn’t say it ! I wrote it.
And that was “à la mode” in the 80’s, not Sacha, he litterally crashed in 85….
Ok one more to go….
Stay…. alive ? Ho, I see that you ARE staying alive ! hooo, hoooo, hooo! That’s a good thing.