Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 507 of a what-the-fuck-are-we-doing-cast!
This week: artificially intellectual; banal washing machine; guess the empire; strident film reviews; let’s talk about Snake Eyes; ripped off; here’s your hat; Scarlet Widow; bloodless filmmaking; wack-a-doodle action; unenlightening info dumps; remembering The Matrix; bad cave boners; redundant allies; Shibumi detour; double-O penis; professional admiration; Dave loves trash and so does Ian; blown Head; big money in trivia; superhero analogs redux; travel hi-jinks; record store memories; typing touch; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; butt slap controversy; lonely Spider-man; it only takes one; a Dr. Pepper moment; sneaky Sneakers; Falklands failure; angry passengers; deadliest heckler; and, finally, a zinger.
Question of the Week: What’s the most lost you’ve ever gotten?
Sub-question of the Week: Have you ever stumbled upon a great store?
We see some Canadian kung fu in Snake Eyes, but here is the original:
Ian mentioned this show so here is the opening:
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Dolenz often jokes that they named the movie HEAD, so if they were allowed to make another movie, they could cheekily write “from the producers that gave you HEAD….”
I’ve heard and read Mike Nesmith interviews where he states the same reason for the movie title.
Ian, I didn’t say the butt-smacking thing in beach volleyball doesn’t exist, or that you were lying. I said “I didn’t see it so I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then you helpfully showed me some examples. I think David is correct in that it probably depends on which countries were competing.
I’m re-linking my comment to prove I did not say “this doesn’t exist.”
https://www.sneakydragon.com/podcast/sneaky-dragon-episode-505/#comment-82354
(really wish I could edit my comments so that I don’t have to keep replying)
I’m sorry if it seemed like I was implying that.
I’m going to keep replying so it looks like this post has a LOT of comments.
Last winter, I got lost on my way back home from Christmas shopping at the Walmart in Richmond. I took a wrong turn and ended up on a main street that didn’t know would come to a dead-end rather than pass under Highway 99. My pandemic-stressed brain tricked me into thinking I could intuit my way back to Vancouver, but I got twisted around in one of those labyrinthine residential areas which you can’t see the North Shore mountains from. It spat me out onto a main artery but I didn’t realize I was going south instead of north until the townhouses and condos had given way to bogs and blueberry farms. It would’ve been logical to check for directions much earlier, but often when you’re driving, you don’t know you’re lost until you are really lost.
The Nelson area of BC has a lot of artisans and craftspeople. While vacationing there, I visited a cluster of workshops in the tiny village of Crawford Bay. They included the North Woven Broom Company that makes old-fashioned whisks and witchy-looking brooms, Barefoot Handweaving, the Kootenay Forge, and Fireworks Copper Enameling which makes beautiful jewelry. Even if you can’t afford to buy anything at these places, it’s cool to stop in to see all the traditionally-handcrafted items and maybe catch the artists at work.
One day in high school, when I was 15 or so, our gym class got taken to some hills behind my home town where we were introduced to the skill of orienteering. Every student was provided with a map, a compass and a set of instructions to each find our way to a set destination. In a cold, grey drizzle, this quickly proved less than thrilling to my teen self so I decided to jack it in and head home instead.
Well, friends, not only did I fail to reach the place I was supposed to go to, but when I eventually found my way off the hillside and back into town, I realised I had no idea where the hell I was.
After walking aimlessly for a while, I began to recognise landmarks and realised I’d somehow drifted off course dramatically and was at least two miles from home. And this, I repeat… was in my home town. Where I’d lived all my life. AND I was carrying a map and a compass.
When you asked about a great store, I immediately thought of Groucho’s used record shop in Dundee. Sadly, it closed last year, but for generations of Dundonians, Groucho’s was an institution. In the pre-internet days of the last century, it was one of the few places I knew where you could discover recordings that were offbeat, rare and sometimes not completely legal, along with concert tickets, Freak Brothers comics and possibly some other items I was too naive to know about at the time.
Two memories. One is of browsing through their racks of used CDs and finding an album entitled ‘The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania’. I remember thinking: I have no idea what this will sound like, but I HAVE to hear it. The record turned out to be a collection from the Hungarian band Muzsikas, and was a complete delight that became a soundtrack to many happy times playing with my children, who also loved it. And, naturally, it’s now on YouTube if anyone wants to check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKI5xHLaM_s&list=PLVpceVBKRJ3c1Uk_A2j7IZMTkhhhjJN7K
My second memory is the smell of the store. Much as I enjoyed going into Groucho’s, it had an undeniably pungent locker room aroma that had to be overcome – some combination of warm male bodies, rain-soaked clothes and poor ventilation. Around the early 1990s, the shop moved premises, a change that was literally a breath of fresh air… for about three days. Sure enough, by the end of the first week, the smell had travelled all the way from the old place and, as far as I know, it never left. Ah, memories!
Listening to The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania! The gypsy side of me wants to get up and dance…it’s uncontrollable and burned into my DNA. Thanks for sharing Chris.
Very happy to hear that, Ed!
In my late teens I was one with my bike. If I had no plans on the weekend, I’d take to the rural roads of the then underdeveloped landscape of Mesquite…and purposely get myself lost. I was an extraordinary cyclist then and I could roam all day discovering new places on the outskirts of town. I’d go for an hour without seeing a car, sometimes find myself at a lake, a giant junkyard (with a big sign that said “SAVAGE”…yes, SAVAGE) or on one such journey…a small airport I didn’t even know existed. It was fun to take a break and watch the planes take off and land. I never got truly “lost” as long as I could see the sun and know by it’s place above which way to get back home in time for dinner. If I ever really got lost during those rides, I only had myself to blame.
Many years later, my brother and I drove from Dallas to Chicago with a stay over in St. Louis. We took a wrong turn or some exit in the middle of downtown St. Louis and ended up in East St.Louis, Illinois which is across the Mississippi River. It was getting dark and if you’ve never heard about East St. Louis, it’s like going into Gotham City when you meant to go to Metropolis. There were scary types everywhere and we had to get out and make a call on a payphone for directions to the hotel. My brother being the pseudo tough guy he thinks he is, reached into the glove box and pulled out this cheap switchblade knife of his for protection. I laughed at this and made the call as fast as I could before my brother got us both shot to death. “Bonfire of the Vanities” had just been released and all I could think of was that scene where Tom Hanks takes a wrong turn into the bad neighborhood. We carefully went back the way we came in and then found our way back into Missouri and safely reached the hotel, switchblade and all.
There was a flea market called Vikon Village in the neighboring town of Garland my best friend and I used to visit most weekends. Vikon had tons of vendors selling anything from albums to comics to collectibles in a huge old building. You could get a fake I.D. there, bootleg albums and really great comics if you knew the guy in the back where the comics were cataloged…which we did. We never understood how some of these vendors were never busted for selling all these things, the place seemed untouched by any outside enforcement. One time we were there, we realized there was another building that wasn’t connected to Vikon across the parking lot, so we checked it out. We stumbled upon some guy who had a huge room full of bootleg printed movie posters of every size from almost an endless list of films. They were printed on a thick card stock too, so rigid that the posters couldn’t be rolled. They were all flat in huge stacks on pallets, some as big as 3 ft. by 5 ft. and printed as if they were new…which they were. Being that these weren’t originals, they were incredibly cheap, like a buy two get one free cheap, so my friend and I started to look through them, sliding them one at a time over to another pallet. I found a Superman the Movie, Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Re-release and A Hard Day’s Night, all huge 3 x 5 feet in size, big enough to cover a wall. Since we rode our bikes to Vikon, we asked the vendor to hold these so we could come back with a car later and get them. We had so many posters in mind that we were going to get later when we had more money but that came to a standstill. The next time we visited the vendor and his posters were gone as if he had never been there at all. Nobody could tell us where he went or why he left, he had just vanished. I guess it’s possible this place wasn’t as untouchable by the law as we thought, which was our first guess why he had left. I still have these posters pressed between large pieces of cardboard tucked away in a crawlspace under my stairs, maybe someday I’ll spurge to get at least one of them framed with the help of a small crane to hang one on my wall.
Hi guys. I’m more than a little remiss in commenting. It seems there is some other cold or flu spreading through the south as heartily as the Delta variant is. I’ve had two different covid tests come back negative, but ill we all have been and still are. COVID is raging here again, so please be safe everyone!
I was traveling with a colleague to a training seminar once when a wrong turn (on my part) found ourselves off the beaten path. The woman riding with me was extremely calm about the situation and told me: whenever you get lost, delayed, or waylaid you will discover something wonderful or interesting that you otherwise wouldn’t have found. Within five minutes of her saying this, we came across a life-size concrete elephant painted pink with multicolored paisleys that placed along side the road to draw attention to a business. It was a sight to see. Fifteen minutes later we discovered that the road we were on looped right back to where we needed to be. I’ve tried to remember that experience whenever I get lost or turned around when traveling. Like David, I also enjoy driving down roads just to see where they may lead. You learn a lot of shortcuts that way.
I’d like to backtrack to a few episodes ago. We have a pear-apple tree in our backyard. I don’t really know if that is the correct name for it, but it is a hybrid that my husband’s Uncle planted and that is what I’ve heard it called. It looks like pear, but tastes cross between a pear and apple… oh and it doesn’t have the traditional gritty texture that a pear has. It is quite nice to slice up and use in pear salads (lettuce, mayo, shredded cheddar, pears, and maraschino cherries). I had never heard of that type of salad until I married. It looks a little off putting to me, but it actually tastes nice.
I also need to keep my word to Ian and share my recipe for Veggie Meatloaf. Feel free to not have to read the recipe aloud, but it is placed here on the message board if any Sneakers want to try it.
Have a great week!
Veggie Meatloaf:
(It makes a small serving, probably for 4, but I usually get two meals out of it. And my measurements are in Imperial which I know is probably both a pain and mystery for the majority of listeners, but it is all I know):
Ingredients: 1/4 cup vegetable broth, 1 beaten egg, 1/4 cups bread crumbs, 1/8 cup chopped onion, 1/8 cup chopped green bell pepper, 1/2 cup cooked rice, 1/2 cup mixed vegetables, 1/2 tsp sage, 1/8 tsp salt, dash of pepper, 2 TBS salsa, 1 TBS ketchup. (Optional 1/2 cup vegetarian meat-substitute crumbles).
Preparation: Pre-heat oven and spray a loaf pan with cooking oil.
Mix broth with eggs, crumbs, sage, salt, and pepper. Add veggie crumbles, onions, bell pepper, mixed vegetables (and veggie crumbles if you are using them). Mix together until everything is well coated. Place mixture into sprayed loaf pan and use your hands to sorta shape it into a loaf.
In a separate bowl, mix the ketchup and salsa together and set aside.
Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, take out the veggie loaf and spread the salsa-ketchup mixture over the top. Return pan to oven and bake for 10 to 15 minutes more.