Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to episode 387 of the podcast that doesn’t know its place!
This week on the show: back to discomfort; unsuitable kids books; Dave’s DC pitch; Gomer Pyle trivial trivia; seeing things; Sysiphean tasks; “Abe Lincoln – Unfair to Wood”; bad railroad unions; Ian is mildly annoyed; Dave has a recommendation; character v. plot; old man continuity issues; on the runs; Supernaturally overdone; avatars of excellence; self-reference and deeper meaning; background TV; Sabrina’d out; church management; chruch responsibilities; owned by the Queen; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; worst memory of college; brain maturity; kid talk; our own Twilight Zone; and, finally, no more likes.
Thanks for listening.
Question of the Week: Should churches divest themselves of their treasures and give the money to the poor?
Sub-question: What is your best and/or worst memory of college?
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Should churches have large prophets? Probably.
Interesting discussion – usually Dave is happy to be iconoclastic, but apparently not an actual iconoclast. I certainly come down on the side of using funds to do good works, but my feeling is that most organised religions tend to disregard the inconvenient teachings of their founder anyway. “For ye have the poor always with you” is a good excuse for never doing anything. But having the art available to the public is good too. Maybe we could, I don’t know, get churches to pay taxes as a work-around?
Sorry for the dad-joke.
Hi Gents,
First off- I want to say I still think you both are great, and I know Dave often says he appreciates opposing views.
But- Dave. I have to say, in my opinion, you cherry picked around the exact points Ian was trying to make- Re: Church V. Money (2019). In the simplest of terms, Ian was laying out a very low-level hypothetical, which was: If a person(s) was in need of aid, given the option, should the church divest itself of it’s wealth (Money, Art, etc). The humanitarian answer was “yes”. I was, frankly, surprised to hear “I don’t think art should be destroyed”.
I have no qualms with a good debate, but at the end of the day… What’s right? Church has money, it’s members (potentially) starving?
And now to regain myself in Dave’s books- Thank you so much for introducing me to Marmalade’s “I See the Rain”. As a classic rock fan, I can’t believe I’ve never heard this!
Cheers,
Chris
Also- I have to apologize for the disastrous use of “it’s” vs. “its”. I blame society, and my excessive trust of my fat fingers trusting autocorrect. Mostly autocorrect.
Best memory of college?
Meeting Dave.
Worst memory of college?
At our particular college, they conducted all History classes in just one way: no tests, no assignments, you just wrote one paper, and did an oral presentation on it, and did an oral rebuttal of someone else’s paper.
As an extremely shy person, I avoided this class for as long as I could, but needed it in order to get to the next step, which was a degree-granting university.
The class was Canadian history; knowing that I would be extremely nervous, and would fret all semester, I decided to bite the bullet and sign up to do my ‘big’ essay first in the class.
Unfortunately, others had taken similar classes in this department and knew the drill. As the first-to-go newbie, I did not.
So, although I had researched and written my essay well, when I stood up to present, I didn’t realize that the prof wanted it paraphrased. I was not prepared for that, and ended up stumbling and stammering through the whole thing. My topic was the CPR, which I had always been taught was the thing that united Canada as a nation; it turns out there were a lot of people from the prairies in my class, and many of them HATE the CPR, so not only did I do a poor presentation, I was attacked for the viewpoint I had offered (which I thought was the only viewpoint).
I think I’m still traumatized by the entire experience.
Obviously, I didn’t get a great mark on my presentation, and I got a lower mark than I usually received on my essay, in the C range.
The person whose paper I was to do the rebuttal on signed up for near the end of the semester, and while I sweated and fretted, she delayed and postponed until the last possible day; she had chosen to write on the Asbestos Strike, which was the first public action taken by Pierre Trudeau prior to him later becoming our Prime Minister.
As we walked into the classroom, about to do this presentation, the girl turns to me and asks, “What were they mining at this place?”
I looked at her in disbelief. “Asbestos!”
It was right in the title. Obviously she hadn’t researched this too well. Another low mark was the result.
And, to add insult to injury, a friend I was taking the class with a friend who was falling off the school wagon, and had pretty much quit doing all his assignments, so silly me, I wrote his essay which he then put his name on and handed in. The teacher handed it back later with an ‘A’, and the comment that it was extremely well written with a unique viewpoint, then the teacher went on to ask him on a date. LOL
Me? I barely passed.
I went to a Junior College for three years before I left for my University and one of the classes I took was logic. The professor, Harvey Solganic, was a likable old hippie kind of guy who still wore nehru jackets with running shoes and a faded T-Shirt from a local marathon. Harvey’s assistant was a math teacher named Mike Wynn who was heavily beaded and built like those old He-Man figures, he could probably break you like a toothpick.
Sometime during the semester, I drew a sketch of these two guys in my sketchbook I always had on me. We were learning truth tables and I had drawn Harvey and Mike speaking in truth tables to one another with Harvey saying, “Hey Mike, you’re just so profound!” My friend who worked for the college paper saw the cartoon, her suggestion was to print it in the paper. I asked her to get their permission first, what I didn’t know was that she only got Harvey’s permission and not Mike’s. I guess she didn’t think it mattered since he was just assisting with the class. The day the paper was published there was one on every desk in the logic class…and Mike was furious. The class was devoted to whether it was unethical of me to draw that cartoon or was it a form of flattery. Mike wanted to sue me and pointed out that even the truth table in the cartoon was incorrect, he kept saying that I was mocking “The World of Ideas” and feared that if the paper found it’s way off campus, it would make a mockery of the Logic Department.
This was all a bit dramatic since there really wasn’t a Logic Department. It also didn’t help matters when my friend spoke up and said, “Logic Department?! This isn’t even a real college! Get over it!” Even though half the class defended me as the other side condemned me. One class mate, named Collin Cringle, didn’t even know what was going on anyway, he looked like Tommy Chong and spent all his time writing a book about mushrooms.
It really wasn’t my finest hour but it only lasted an hour nonetheless. A week later Mike handed out his own cartoon, drawn by a student he had employed himself, depicting me and my friend drawing my original cartoon…so basically a cartoon within a cartoon. Mike hoped this would elicit some sort of angered response in me, but I just laughed it off saying, “Jeez Mike, I hope you didn’t PAY someone to draw this.” I think I got a C in the class, so illogical.
Growing up Catholic, I did see a tremendous amount of good come out of our church. Whether it was monetary or any other form of outpouring support, I believe that my church successfully did it’s best to help the community. When it comes to the church at large, I think it would be in it’s best interest to unselfishly give to those less fortunate. If it means selling works of priceless art, then by all means do that. I do not believe it should go to private collectors though since I am an avid museum patron, I think that all art should find it’s way to inspire others and be shared for all.
If you want your mind blown about today’s world of the high-priced art market, then I suggest you watch the HBO documentary, “The Price of Everything.” You won’t believe the amount of cutthroat greed that goes on between art collectors. What’s even worse id how unbalanced the market is to the working artist. This documentary will astonish you and anger you.
https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/the-price-of-everything