Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to the podcast that will never embarrass you in front of your friends!
This week: paws that refreshes; middling strips; the family penis; what’s happening?!?; all-inclusive; silence is golden; filthy handles; trauma dept.; joke hold; contrarian brotherhood; woke up; culture club; boo’s music; big bands; splish splash; the power and the furry; Malcolm in the middle; dream scenario; CosMc’s debris; the brewed; take a flyer; in the city; walkabout; an innocent man; puppet love; Dave is cuckoo for Cuckoo; Shudder to think; Paramount bust; babbling about Brooks; foiled again; free-style in Paris; disappointed ghost; heaven sent; he interviewed well; love dissection; props for Proops; up for debates; dirty picture; pocket calculator; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; welcome to the Jumble; dear Aggie; whistle while you work; fan-tastic tip; context talk; brain sharpeners; the fitter truth; and, finally, a shrug a day.
Question of the Week: How is your life harder?
Sub-question of the Week: How is your life easier?
Sub-sub-question of the Week: What is your favourite Muppet thing?
Thanks for listening.
We mentioned it twice so that means we have to show the clip. Here is the trailer for the new Saturday Night Live movie:
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I find that life is both harder and easier due to technology. I love having a wealth of knowledge and entertainment and ways of communicating with people all over the world at the touch of my fingers. But I worry about how vulnerable our information is now that governments, businesses and financial institutions depend so much on computer networks to function. It’s alarming to hear reports of hospitals or 911 systems getting shut down due to cyber attacks, or the way criminals use the internet to scam money out of people. It’s always been true that “a fool and his money are soon parted” but it seems to me the ways of fooling people have gotten more hi-tech and sophisticated. I admire people who come forward on TV and social media to warn others of scams they fell for and to explain the techniques the scammers used. I also admire store clerks and bank tellers who care enough to ask someone buying a huge amount of gift cards or withdrawing a big amount of cash if they are doing it under pressure from someone else.
My favorite Muppet thing is Sesame Street’s parodies of grown-up film, television, and songs which they use to teach various concepts. For instance, in “Les Mousserables,” Cookie Monster plays Jean Bon-Bon who learns to recognize the emotions of sadness in Flantine, jealousy in Epienine, and anger in his friends when he has cookies, but they have none. In “Upside Downton Abbey” the dowager countess and the butler are in an upside down mansion. That illustrates the difference between upside down and right side up and how it affects pouring tea and serving a steak and kidney pie.
Just last week I spent an hour of my time trying to sync three doctor appointments across my home computer, my work computer and my iPhone. With zero success I Googled how to sync these appointments across all my calendars, surely there’s an easier way! I sought my wife’s help and even she with all her tech knowledge couldn’t help me, we tried everything and technology beat me down…again. As I started to manually input the appointments into my devices, I stopped, took out a card and wrote them all down on the card. That’s it, done, and put the card in my briefcase. Technology as it is can make life easier but it changes across platforms and loses me in a spider web of confusion. It must work somehow but the more they design technology to make my life easier, the more tangled I get in the process…
The easier side of life has come with experience and knowledge from what I do professionally, I can literally do my job with very little effort. I used to worry and toil over projects and wonder if I were doing them right or to my own satisfaction. This is coming from a place that trandcends technology and skill sets, but from a confidence level that’s taken me a lifetime to achieve.
I make my design decisions based on love and not fear, it’s about as easy as that.
I’ve worked on a handful of Muppet projects over the years and it’s always special to revisit them, they never grow old. I guess you could say that my Muppet thing is the opportunity to design something with them and to immerse myself in their world. I have a designer at work who’s quite a bit younger than me, my son’s age in fact, and this guy LOVES the Muppets more than anything. I really hope we get something in the future for he and I to work on that involves the Muppets. I’ve told him stories about how they were around on Sesame Street alone and how I learned from them through television, books, records, even Color-forms®! The Muppets have been instrumental in teaching me a great many things and it’s how I was introduced to them back in the late 60’s.
If I have one guilty pleasure involving the Muppets, it was seeing the original poster art by Drew Struzan who illustrated most of their film’s poster art. Look these posters up and realize that Struzan went above and beyond to make puppets look as spectacular as real people to showcase their films, and that’s not easy to breathe life like that.
I also still cry when I hear “The Rainbow Connection”, that song is magic.
Love to all my fellow Sneakers worldwide, make a wish and make it count…