Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 505 of the podcast that never stops. Ever.
This week: boning up; knock-off podcasts; old thoughts; ignorance desserts; good bad bad good movies; bad to the future; metaphysically metaphorical; bucket of shit; he’s the blue smurf; too ethical; not a duck; Count Milkula; legion of super-weirdos; bad statue; heroic analogs; jock talk; card catalogues; over-extended honeymoon periods; Muppet orphans; travelling show; game night; symbolic horror; Dork Shadows – The Big Sleep; have a cold one; mixed-up twins; laserdisc liberation; famously smelly; going apiarist; and, finally, stab immunity.
Question of the Week: Have you been watching the Olympics? What’s your favourite event?
Sub-question of the Week: What sort of apples are popular in your region?
Sub-sub-question of the Week: What do you do with your apples? Pies? Turnovers? We want to know!
Thanks for listening.
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Bananagrams is a fun game, and is something that I have found to be very playable over video conference during the pandemic.
https://bananagrams.com/blogs/news/how-to-play-bananagrams-remotely-over-a-video-call
I have done this with friends and family, as well as work colleagues (my office is all working remotely these days).
As a bonus, there are “big letter” versions of the game which use larger tiles with larger printed letters, much easier for my elderly mother to see and handle.
We have a good chuckle at the end as we share any “interesting” words we made: long words, uncommon words, that’s-not-a-word words. It’s good exercise for the brain.
I watched some of the Olympics but only whatever random sport they happened to be covering when we turned on the TV. I enjoyed acrobatic events like diving, trampoline and gymnastics. The new skateboarding and sport climbing events were fun too. But it was sad to see the empty seating areas knowing all the effort and expense that went into building the venues.
By coincidence today, a video ad for “Back to the Future: the Musical” came up on my sister’s YouTube feed. The show opened out-of-town in Manchester in 2020, a few weeks before the pandemic shut it down, but it’s re-opening in London’s West End next week. The slogan? “Book your tickets yesterday.” It appears that no one has succeeding in cancelling this musical for making light of the very serious issue of parents becoming unknowingly infatuated with their time-travelling offspring.
I just visited the “Back to the Future” Musical website! Watching the promo video I started guessing who was hiding behind that newspaper handing out keys to the Marty and Dr. Brown actors. Being a musical my first guess was it would be Huey Lewis, only to learn it was Christopher Lloyd! Great Scott!
I’ve got to wonder how the hell this thing works as a musical? Is there a Delorean onstage? There’s hardly enough room for it to go 88 miles per hour!
I’m unable to watch any Olympic coverage since I no longer have network television, if I see or hear anything about the Olympics, it’s usually online. You were discussing the horse competition in Tokyo and my wife mentioned something about having to remove a sumo wrestler statue that was scaring the horses. Did you hear anything about that? Imagine traveling all that way just to get spooked by a statue on the other side of the world of a giant wrestler!
Texas is a bit off the radar when it comes to a large variety of the more flavorful apples, the red apples are successfully grown here from July through November. We’re also known for pecans, melons, ruby red grapefruit and tomatoes when it comes to the best Texas fruit. We can find good apples at the local produce store, Sprouts, but we don’t have the year round variety you guys have north of us. Our family does enjoy apples and as a diabetic they’re a great alternative to most other fruits that have a high percentage of glucose. I personally enjoy the yellow golden delicious apples or gala variety when we can find them, usually in the Fall.
My Grandmother Draganski, who lived outside Chicago, had a secret about the apples she used in her baking and cooking. During one of my visits my Grandmother asked me never to tell anyone her secret as long as she was alive. My Grandmother was deaf, so she walked everywhere in my home town of Palatine. There was a bank nearby with apple trees on the property so when there was a really windy night my Grandmother would go to bed early and wake up before dawn. Taking her cart, she’d rush towards the bank and find all these apples on the ground that had been blown off the trees by the wind. After filling her cart with as many apples as she could find, my Grandmother returned home before sunrise ready to spend the day baking. My Grandmother named these “Snow Apples” and in her opinion were the best apples for making applesauce and apple slices…and they were free. I think she was worried she’d get caught or something and at the time I wrote it off as an embellished tale, the kind your Grandparents might make up out of half-truths. When my Grandmother died I told this story at her funeral and as I found out afterwards it was indeed our secret because nobody else knew about this maneuver of hers. Afterwards, one of my cousins from the other side of the family approached me. He was a firefighter and his station was near the bank with the apple trees. He told me that on several occasions when his early shift was over he could remember seeing an elderly woman in the dark rushing through the neighborhood streets with a cart full of apples, only to realize after my story that it was my Grandmother he had seen. I demystified this for my cousin as well as share my Grandmother’s story, one we still tell with great memories of her.
You have no idea what I would give to have some of her apple slices right now, they’ve been lost in time.
You left out a few Marvel “Hall of Shame” films when you were discussing “The Punisher” with Thomas Jane. Please don’t forget David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury or how about Nicolas Cage in not one, but TWO Ghost Rider movies?! This was obviously before the “Dawn of The Infinity Saga”, when Marvel was having some cinematic growing pains. I’ll admit I’ve never seen Jane’s Punisher but he’s been to several Dallas ComicCons, usually sitting with illustrator Tim Bradstreet who is famous for his Punisher comics. If there was ever a “Mob Revenge” comic movie that I enjoyed, I’ll have to go with Raimi’s “Darkman.” There were also the Blade films which I remember getting better with the sequel and the Reb Brown Captain America…who can forget those rubber ears? I look forward to your review of “Suicide Squad”, we reviewed it on our podcast earlier this week and I think the other two guys liked it much more than I did…and I’m a huge fan of all the DC films, but I did enjoy it on HBO Max.
You discussed the Marvel stinker films so for a question, what is your favorite Marvel film? Or even better, what is your favorite Marvel duo? Who had the best onscreen chemistry? This includes not only the Disney owned Marvel films but all the Marvel films, like the Fox and Sony releases.
Family loyalty compels me to state that the outstanding event of the 2021 Olympics – beyond all doubt – was the women’s 1500 metres. This is because Laura Muir, who ran the race of her life in Tokyo to win silver for Great Britain, is my wife’s second cousin. While that was great, what I like even more was the respect she showed to Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan runner who took the gold medal. In a fine display of true Olympic spirit, Laura described Faith as the greatest 1500m runner of all time, and said she was ‘proud to be behind her’.
Overall, though, the way sports at that level get wrapped up in nationalism really bugs me. I don’t know what it’s like in other countries, but UK media coverage focuses relentlessly on the performance of ‘our’ team – to the extent that actual winners from other countries sometimes get dropped from the narrative altogether. For instance, when GB’s Bryony Page won bronze in the women’s trampoline, the BBC said she’d been beaten by ‘two Chinese athletes’. (For the record, their names were Zhu Xueying – gold – and Liu Lingling – silver. And I’m sure Ian will do a better job at pronouncing them than I would!)
So… hooray for sport (or sports)! But boo to xenophobia!
Braeburn, cox and gala apples are the main ones we get round here. And Granny Smith for cooking. Diane loves red apples raw and will scoff a couple a day no problem. I prefer them in juice or a waldorf salad, and the green ones go well (and this may sound weird but it’s good) blended in a soup with cashews. This being Scotland, of course, we also deep fry them in slices and serve with syrup as a pudding. See also bananas. Mmmm…
Late reply as I’m catching up with all my podcasts but: during Bob’s visit, we saw some Olympics here at various bars, including a LOT of beach volleyball, and I didn’t see a single butt-smack in there so I have no idea what Ian is talking about.
I was watching with Vicky and it was every point scored. Hug, slap, repeat.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2012/08/03/strange-olympic-rituals-from-butt-slapping-to-medal-biting/ had this to say about it the ritual… “Beach volleyball is all about partner bonding, and most pairs slap butts — or at least hands — after every point. he slapping is such a seemingly important part of the game that, although player Kerri Walsh Jennings has a nasty case of pinkeye, she and her partner Misty May-Treanor would rather risk mutual contamination than play a match without post-point touching. In response to her highly contagious pinkeye, Walsh Jennings and partner Misty May-Treanor discussed a change in the routine, but that lasted only a few points before they decided it was silly,” according to ESPN.”
And Slate had this to say… https://slate.com/culture/2008/08/why-are-beach-volleyball-players-always-patting-each-other-on-the-butt.html
“Though there should be no need to demonstrate the frivolity of the “sport” any further, its real proof is in the way that beach-volleyball players touch each other, almost without exception, after every point. In general, a point won, no matter how mundane, necessitates either a double high-five accompanied by a celebratory hoot or a congratulatory ass slap of the type that George W. Bush demurred from planting on May-Treanor. A point lost might call for a consoling ass slap and a murmur of encouragement, perhaps after pulling one’s partner up out of the sand. You’d think that these people, being Olympic athletes, might have learned how to stand up all by themselves, but that’s teamwork in action.”
I don’t have a strong opinion about the ritual but trying to tell me it doesn’t exist, that feels like asslighting.
Is that how you get pinkeye? I’ve always wondered.