Hola, Sneakers! Welcome back to Sneaky Dragon, the podcast that talks it out.
This week: ration cards; chess movements; celebrating the second rate; non-competitive sports; in a lurch; Hollywood squires; shoe business; it’s in the bag; health scare; bored fighter; mystery parents; ICU aren’t well; speak therapy; health cares; Surrey we missed you; nostalgia glasses; ice to drink ratio; unhealthy foods; technical difficulties; promo department; secret fires; join the clubhouse; the end is in progress; corporate punishment; script sure; upstanding; riot squad; tamed city; tough love; the touchables; the rebel kind; valuable time; thrill seeker; high-class garbage; widescreen pan and scan; Dork Shadows – Gypsy Woman; giraffe balls; in the long run; novelty not comedy; the fantastic fab four; wizard parts; Oliver’s army; face value; rhubarb rhubarb; the outsiders; total calypso; Gute check; Band stand; and, finally, Dave stumped.
Question of the Week (from Brent Tannehill): What movie have you seen more than any other movie? How many times have you seen it?
Sub-question of the Week: What movie have you only seen part of? Why?
Thanks for listening.
Fire prevention and shoes go together:
Seriously, it’s real garbage:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Hello, Gents,
I’m only an hour and seven minutes into the episode as I write this, so I don’t know if there’s a revelation about the computers at Dave’s job later in the show. I’m not an IT guy, but I do sometimes work with our IT guys at my job. It sounds like the thing that’s missing in the chain between the computer and the data is the right software. Your average employee can’t just plug in a computer and pull up the company’s data, even if they have the okay to do so. There has to be software designed to do that, an interface, if you will. Will you? So the original software was probably designed many years ago, maybe by some sharp cookie in-house, or, more likely, it was purchased from a company that sold solutions to small-ish operations. There’s a good chance that company doesn’t exist anymore.
Back when it was new, the software was probably installed and the customer data was entered by using that software. So now it may be a case where somebody has to reverse engineer a new program to fit the way the old one worked with that data. Not a simple fix for a non-tech company.
I’ve never walked out of a movie so I’m going to amend your sub-question to “What movie do you WISH you’d only seen part of?” Here are my Top 3. In order of excruciatingly long running time, they are: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Soviet wasteland sci-fi odyssey, Stalker (1979, 161 minutes), Terrence Malick’s existential WW 2 film The Thin Red Line (1998, 170 minutes) and David Lynch’s meta movie nightmare Inland Empire (2006, 180 minutes). Bonus film: Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass a.k.a. Les Herbes Folles (2009, 104 minutes). It was normal length, but even that was trop long pour moi! Top 6 Reasons for not leaving a movie that was turning out to be awful: I kept hoping it would get better. It was supposed to be an art house classic. It was getting Oscar buzz. I felt I could only judge it harshly if I saw the whole thing. I was seeing the movie with a friend and it would be awkward to leave. I paid for it and didn’t want to admit I made a bad entertainment investment, dammit!
Oh such brave Sneakers to ask such a question of me! Or should I say Brent Tannehill for asking…
It’s a close race for the number one position between “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back” but I’m pushing Empire to the top only because my brother and I had unlimited access to seeing it throughout the Summer of 1980. I was 15, my brother 8 and we could safely walk to our local theater from home which we did sometimes twice a week to watch Empire. This wasn’t the case with Star Wars three years earlier which wasn’t being shown locally. Nor were my brother and I old enough to walk anywhere as we did by 1980. The other factor was that in 1980, Texas was suffering the worst heatwave in history, yet to be broken, so sitting inside an air conditioned theater was easy and cheap entertainment.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen Empire but it may be well into the 100’s. For some reason that goes unexplained, I still feel as if I’m watching it as if it just came out, it stands transfixed in time for me. It still works on every level for me too, the choreography, vast settings, the direness of the plot, the mysticism and the music. I was also in a state of deep astonishment when Darth Vader revealed to Luke he was his Father, I still remember that moment. I could put it on right now and never tire of it.
I also have a story slightly tied to Star Wars that resulted in me leaving the theater from November 2001. The rumor was that the second trailer for “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones” was going to be shown ahead of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, so I took the day off to see it on opening day. The first trailer for Clones was shown months earlier before “Monsters, Inc.” so I figured it was much the same for the second trailer with Harry Potter. I went in knowing nothing about Harry Potter, so I figured after seeing the Clones trailer, I’d kick back and see what this Harry Potter guy was all about. I go in to the theater as the trailers run and nothing for “Attack of the Clones” was shown so I figured I’d switch theaters to the next showing and they’d preview it…maybe it wasn’t ahead of this showing. I think I spent the afternoon switching theaters four or five times and never saw the Clones trailer which meant I’d seen the start of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” about four or five times too. So I gave up and just fucking left. I was so mad and nobody working at that theater had any idea about a connection between “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and an “Attack of the Clones” trailer.
As I write this, I’ve only ever seen the first half hour or so of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and nothing of the entire series that followed, so I still really know absolutely nothing about Harry Potter and I really don’t care to.
To sum it up, I finally saw the Clones trailer on a laptop at one of those computer coffee bars that were so popular back in 2001, the kind with the shitty dialup and really unstable video connection. It was the following weekend after the Harry Potter incident and even though the trailer had to restart about half a dozen times with a flimsy connection, I finally saw it.
David, excellent touch playing “Tin Soldier” at the end of last week’s episode, Small Faces really did have a great sound especially with Steve Marriott’s underrated vocals. Thanks for the wonderful intel about their history. I’ve said it before Dave, if you ever get to where you’re tired of throwing garage doors around in a place with no working computers, you could easily focus on what you know about music for a living. Whether it’s writing or some sort of chronicled archiving job, I think you’re more that qualified.
Good night to all my fellow Sneakers around the world and in outer space!
Hey Ian and David,
Loved the future-past Top 5, especially hearing the Wings classic ‘1985’ which is one of my favourite solo Beatle tracks.
The movies I have seen the most come from that unique time in home video history when the cost of blank VHS tapes was quite high – circa 1985 – so most households usually only had a couple tapes to record movies from TV. We had two tapes on which we had recorded Caddyshack and Meatballs. My brothers and I must have watched those two films between 30 and 50 times each until eventually the cost of tapes came down.
Apart from those two, for me it is probably the original Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Raiders, Dead Poets Society, The Untouchables and Local Hero.
Gotta go.
Mick–
Our two well-worn VHS tapes around that time were Meatballs and Rocky, both recorded off broadcast TV with the commercials clumsily edited out (hitting the pause button at every commercial break).
Question 1 – probably Pee Wee’s Big Adventure because it is pretty much a perfect movie imho – not sure how many times I’ve seen it, but when the kids were little (both my nephews and our own daughters) it was on pretty much constantly when we were visiting my parents’ farm. I saw it in the theatre when it first came out, and then brought my little cousins to see it shortly after that – during the Large Marge scene my one little cousin experienced such a big jolt, all of his Milk Duds took a trip toward the ceiling and then rained down on the theatre. He grew up to be all right though so no lasting damage there.
Question 2 – too many to mention. The most recent that I can remember was Top Gun (the original) – tried to watch it this summer for the first time, but there ain’t enough extra minutes in life that I can devote to that kind of thing anymore. Enjoyed the sequel this summer, though!
Greetings from the country with the least need for any more cowbell: Switzerland!
Ian – Sorry to hear you’ve been through the wringer; sending virtual strength, warmth and general ‘good vibes’. The stuff life throws at us can be draining, and your talk of feeling a sudden chill as the adrenalin dropped rang true. Thank you for being so open.
On to the questions: I don’t rewatch movies that much, but a few stand out – Little Shop of Horrors is one I’ve shared with many friends, and it just keeps getting better with age. A film with a similarly gigantic set is ‘Rear Window’, a film I could just wallow in. I love spending time in that place with its colourful cast – and of course Grace Kelly.
I think the only film I’ve walked out of is ‘Meet the Feebles’, Peter Jackson’s ill advised and mean spirited journey into puke inducing puppetry. I only wish I’d walked out sooner. ‘Audition’ was a near thing; the way the pace slows down as things turn unpleasant makes it an exercise in staying power. These days I’ve started-but-not-finished a ton of movies thanks to the quantity of crap on Netflix and lack of time due to parenthood. Currently to-be-finished include Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s so-far disappointing ‘BigBug’ and ‘Santa Sangre’ – which gets switched off when another family member comes into the room.
Looking forward to hearing what treats lie within this week’s top 5 – I bet it was a belter.
Thanks David for providing your thoughts on all those bands – I would of course urge you to give Ween another try, and agree completely with you on the Shaggs and similar outsider bands – I’m glad they’re out there, but don’t mind them staying out there if it means I don’t have to listen to them more than once. I feel much the same way about Zappa and similar avant-rockers.
Yodel-ee-ii-oo
Peter
I’ve probably seen It’s a Wonderful Life more times than any other movie.
Never walked out on a movie in the theater, but almost did during Bill Cosby’s Leonard Part 6 in the mid-80s. I tried re-watching it again maybe twenty years later–it had not improved.
I’ve only seen parts of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, on TV. One weekend I’ll find the time to watch them all, but that’s quite a commitment.