Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to the podcast that always chews thirty-two times!
This week: Hallow Ian; the Avatar baby; the dancing wolves bit; out of Last House on the Left field; Hess honour; Texas Chainsaw Massacre of the truth; no Gein, no pain; serial casualties; guess list; Leatherface the facts; natural unnatural deaths; chainsaw of events; hockey mask of the dead death; Crystal clear; Halloween costumes; go away, Jimmy Dean; Gen why?; Ian and Dave go back to Saturday Night; never funny; here he comes to save the day; eclectic mayhem; Chevy chastened; Dan the man; Morris the cat; go-to local actors; oh, well; along came Jones; martyr, he wrote; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; saved by the Ball; whispers of the art; horror mongering; no inspirations; daddy duties; there is Here; ham nation; I’ll Tumblr for you; and, finally, right Zack atcha!
Question of the Week: What is the best holiday?
Task of the Week: Halloween is coming, recommend scary story to us!
Thanks for listening.
Yes, Ian, Strange Brew is based on Hamlet!
Have you ever seen Last House on the Left?
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Hey, Dave. You forgot the actual show part of the post.
People want a podcast too?????
A podcast would be nice.
Halloween is the best holiday! No housecleaning required! I haven’t read much in the way of pure horror fiction. It’s okay if some horror elements creep into a fantasy or sci-fi novel or a murder mystery — as long as it’s not main course. But since you asked for a scary short story for the Halloween season, I’ll recommend Ray Bradbury’s “Skeleton.” It’s about a man who becomes increasingly disturbed by thought of having a skeleton inside his body and the strange bone specialist who has a cure for him. It has a classic closing sentence. Our elementary school science teacher read it to us in his science classroom full of bird and bat skeletons and jars of deceased animals floating in formaldehyde. I don’t think a teacher could get away with reading a weird existential tale of body dysmorphia to a bunch of 11- and 12-year-olds these days. Besides, the kids would be too busy streaming equally-horrifying stuff on their phones.
Christmas is the best holiday because it lasts the longest when you include the holiday corridor and New Year’s as part of it. It also has the most potential days off from work. And tons of new movies come out the weekend before Christmas, with more releasing on Christmas Day itself. Speaking of Christmas movies, Ian, when you mentioned Avatar’s lack of cultural impact—I get it. I loved The Way of Water and even saw it twice in IMAX 3D, which was worthwhile since it’s one of the few movies actually shot in 3D. The experience was incredible, but I haven’t even considered watching it at home on a TV. Yes, I did have a Way of Water poster hanging in my dorm room, but other than that, I don’t really display my fandom in a way that a diehard fan of any other sci-fi franchise would. I appreciate Avatar more as an achievement in spectacle filmmaking than really caring about the characters or lore whenever I’m not currently sitting down and watching it. It’s simply a great film that I enjoy. I implore you guys to please watch any Avatar film in IMAX 3D if you get the chance, if you haven’t already. Anyone can see The Way of Water in IMAX 3D and understand how it made $2 billion dollars. Its outlier status in nerd culture is a result of its outlier status as a Hollywood production. Name another original movie with a $460 million budget where all the money goes toward developing new technologies to deliver the most impressive special effects, not inflated cast salaries.
The World Series Game 5 and the final episodes of “Agatha All Along” can wait, I’m writing Sneaky Dragon tonight!
I think I’ve gone on record before with the American Thanksgiving being the best and maybe most relaxing holiday. I usually take the entire week off and my birthday is always in the same week somewhere, sometimes on Thanksgiving itself. We’re having as many as 17 people over this year so the planning has already begun! Some guests will be coming for the first time so we’re trying to be as accurate with everything from how much food to prepare to having enough places to sit and eat the food without stepping on the dog or one another. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite time of the year too, kind of like the last moments of relaxation before the big year finale.
Still 100% with Ian on Avatar, it’s a filmmaking trophy piece by James Cameron, pure spectacle. It has a place in the pantheon of film technology but it has very little impact as a cultural phenomenon the way Star Wars and Star Trek did. Then watch “Dances with Wolves”, that was great to see in the theater with an intermission and all.
I think I’ve sold more scary stories to Lone Star Comics customers than actually reading them. Back in the day Stephen King was our best-selling horror author, we had tons of readers who wanted the first editions which we ordered through our distributor, which I think is still Diamond. Anne Rice was big too at the time and I can remember many store conversations about both of them. I also remember my late best friend and Lone Star co-worker Sean, who thought King was overrated, pushing what the shop was calling “The New Face of Horror Fiction” at the time. That author was Clive Barker, who was the new guy on the shelf, and Sean tried to get as many King readers to switch to Barker as he could. I had to remind Sean that as long as they were buying anyone’s work, we were doing our jobs but Sean had a real stick up his ass when it came to Stephen King.
I do remember and will 100% refer anyone to the EC Classics and DC’s Witching Hour comics as a great source of horror reading. I had quite a few of them growing up and all were in terrible shape because I did “read them” repeatedly. I’m sure they’re all available in trade or omnibus published collections, they just don’t smell as good as the original versions.
This year is shaping up to be quite the odyssey in what I feel is like organic time travel. With my Mom’s passing, her memorial and my high school reunions, the last few months have been spent looking backwards in time. Friends and family from an entire lifetime have been engaging with me and one another and it’s been quite an experience so far. Time moves forward as well, right? And so does my organic time machine because I found out this week I’ll be a grandfather in June of 2025! The baby is only 12 weeks along and my daughter sees her doctor for the first time tomorrow (Halloween), so my fingers are crossed! Maybe I’ll be changing Halloween to my favorite holiday for this year… I’m so excited!!!
Get out there and be Scary Sneakers everyone!!!
And don’t eat too much candy…
Hello there Ian and David. I have been listening to and enjoying the Sneaky Dragon podcasts for some time now. You are my constant driving companions and tootle around with me everywhere I go making the otherwise dire North Vancouver traffic situation downright enjoyable. We also spend time sitting in my driveway together if I get home and can’t tear myself away from the conversation. I am a huge fan of you both and also of Louise Moon who writes in every week. Imagine my surprise and delight when my name cropped up last week during a MacGyver reference. I have become Sneak worthy! Or at least Sneak mentionable. This has given me the confidence to come out of the shadows and respond for the first time to the weekly questions. Which holiday? I don’t like being obligated to hand out gifts to everybody I know on a specific, designated, mandated, overly heavily marketed sales event . One of my very first jobs out of high school was putting up Christmas decorations for the Park Royal mall in West Vancouver the day after Halloween. It kind of ruined the holiday for me. I think Christmas should be an all year round thing where you see something you know someone would love and you just get it and give it to them whenever. Merry July 11th! I hope you like it. I saw it and thought of you. Halloween on the other hand has scary stuff to give you thrills and chills, kids having fun using their imaginations, and with any luck, left over chocolate which I have always enjoyed more than turkey. Recommended scary book? It is actually a story called Interlopers by H.H. Munro who wrote under the pen-name Saki. I read it when I was very young and It’s last sentence is a single word that has haunted me ever since. Thanks for all the lovely conversation. It is much appreciated. Robin. ❤️
Hi Robin! Sorry we missed your comment on our most recent show. I’m sure you’ve heard me complain about WordPress no longer informing me of pending comments. I promise we will read this on our next episode! I hope this won’t dissuade you from writing in again! (Now that you’ve been “approved”, your comments will not go into limbo.)