Hola, Sneakers! Welcome back to Sneaky Dragon, the podcast with smiles!
This week: around numbers; cliff hanger; ghost protocol; brush with death; boundary boy; guilt trip; religious differences; discount of Monte Cristo; heart of the shitty; fair saver; en plein air; suck it; the eyes have it; banana to the phone; write stuff; Dave goes to Amsterdam; difficult direction; ghost to ghost; misshapen lumps; Ian sees Black Adam; no story consequences; emotional untruths; big hooter; business scammer; tomato vendetta; sticker shuck; travel whoa’s; and, finally, checked out.
Question of the Week: Have you ever had a job where you didn’t know what you were doing?
Sub-question of the Week: What is the best airport you’ve ever been to?
Thanks for listening.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Re: questions of the week –
1. my current job is one I started back in 1995; I was hired as a teacher in a high school for a mixed bag of classes. I had trained in and my experience was at the elementary level; my most recent class had been a kindergarten class, so transitioning to high school from kindergarten was a big, big leap. However, even worse was that part of my responsibility was to be a business teacher, and the first class I was to teach was keyboarding. I had taken keyboarding myself in high school so figured it was quite doable. What I hadn’t banked on was the fact that time had marched on and left me behind – I had taken keyboarding classes on typewriters, but walked into a class full of computers. I did not really know how to use a computer. I didn’t even know how to turn them on. I had to ask the students how to work them. And I was supposed to be teaching these kids. lol, they knew more than I did. Fortunately Dave would come to school every day after work and teach me how to do something so that I could teach the kids how to do it the next day.
Best airport? I kind of like Calgary. It has lots of mobiles and other weird and interesting things hanging from the ceiling that help one to kill time. I’ve spent a lot of time in that airport killing time, I might add.
Hey youse guys
Here in Britain I’m still reeling from the sad news of the death of the comic book artist I hold dearest – the legendary Kevin O’Neill. I first encountered his stuff in the fast-disintegrating greyed pages of 2000AD – and from the start he was in a league of his own. An extraordinary draftsman, equally capable of minimalist restraint and maximalist fantastical chaos. His mastery of technique was peerless – equally brilliant when working in line alone, in line and spot black, with grey wash, and in fully painted colour. I’m lucky to have a ‘Nemesis’ he doodled for me, together with a painted page from ‘Marshal Law’. Given the now-stagnant nature of superhero ‘product’, we need the Marshal to come and eviscerate a few of these egos now more than ever.
O’Neill went sorely under appreciated in his lifetime: As I’ve said before on these pages, it’s criminal that they ignored his brilliant character, costume, and vehicle designs when they made the cinematic ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’. If he was French he’d have national treasure status and medals to match – here he may not even get a decent obituary in the national press. His work is so rich, so venomous in its satire. As gets pointed out often, he’s the only artist whose entire style was deemed ‘too much for publication’ by the Comics Code Authority. I don’t know how much of his work reached you guys, but would love to hear your thoughts.
Best airport:
Dulles (now Ronald Reagan) Airport, Washington DC. A beautiful building by Eero Saarinen, architect of the St Louis Arch. The most pleasurably simple, user friendly airport I’ve ever departed from. If arriving on the ‘land’ side, you pass through monumental columns supporting an elegant, draping concrete roof. The sweep of the roof invites you through to the ‘air’ side, where you’re picked up by giant buses on stilts and taken to mini satellite terminals – the advantage being you don’t have to factor in a twenty minute sprint down endless corridors to get to your gate.
The concept was beautifully sold by Saarinen’s friends (and legendary designers in their own rights) Charles and Ray Eames in a 1950s promotional cartoon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL-mjc1sgX4
In my job of architecture, every project contains challenges you’ve never encountered before, so you’re constantly placed in a position where you don’t know what I’m doing! Architects are generalists, but we surround ourselves with specialists – from engineers to electricians, everyone knows more than we do. Navigating the unknown is the challenge that makes the job stimulating, and like so many other jobs, robust working processes help us -and our clients- to proceed with confidence.
Best airport:
Dulles (now Ronald Reagan) Airport, Washington DC. A beautiful building by Eero Saarinen, architect of the St Louis Arch. The most pleasurably simple, user friendly airport I’ve ever departed from. If arriving on the ‘land’ side, you pass through monumental columns supporting an elegant, draping concrete roof. The sweep of the roof invites you through to the ‘air’ side, where you’re picked up by giant buses on stilts and taken to mini satellite terminals – the advantage being you don’t have to factor in a twenty minute sprint down endless corridors to get to your gate.
The concept was beautifully sold by Saarinen’s friends (and legendary designers in their own rights) Charles and Ray Eames in a 1950s promotional cartoon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL-mjc1sgX4
In my job of architecture, every project contains challenges you’ve never encountered before, so you’re constantly placed in a position where you don’t know what you’re doing! Architects are generalists, but we surround ourselves with specialists – from engineers to electricians, everyone knows more than we do. Navigating the unknown is the challenge that makes the job stimulating, and like so many other jobs, robust working processes help us -and our clients- to proceed with confidence.
Keep it cool and don’t bruise it,
Peter.
O’Neill was hugely sought after during my days at Lone Star Comics in the 80’s. My store Manager and a good friend who was my co-worker at the store, turned me onto O’Neill’s brilliant work. The pass to O’Neill was more on the grand shoulders of Alan Moore due to his work on Swamp Thing and WATCHMEN but that eventually led to Moore and O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Everything you said above is spot on, O’Neill brought great utility to his work and it worked every way it had to: busy, simplistic, black & white or color. The guy could also draw a fuckin’ skull like nobody’s business. He was master and will be missed.
My dad once got me a summer job in the office where he worked but I was under-qualified for it. Before the fax machine and email, there was the Telex machine which sent messages with holes punched in a ticker tape. You typed your message, phoned the number of the receiving Telex machine, then fed the tape through it when the connection was made. It wasn’t hard to learn how to use it, but I was a really slow typist. The messages were all about tracking down parts. Each part had a complicated string of numbers and letters identifying it. I made lots of mistakes but rather than starting each tape from scratch, it was faster just to list the corrections at the end of the message. All the people I was sending the messages for could see what mistakes I made when I printed up copies for the company’s files. But everyone was nice about it.
Orlando’s airport is pretty slick — almost like a theme park itself. It has monorails that take you from the main terminal out to the departure gates and Disney and Universal gift shops in case you didn’t quite leave enough of your money in Florida already.
Hey !!!
One show late… Yes that was niiiiIIiiiiice to be able to meet THE guys. I can’t stress this enough : everybody must experience this, at least sneakers (not Adidas ! Obviously !).
You just need to win the price of the best question at random (each 100ish episodes) , the trick is just to win the one just before they plan their next trip to your country. Eaaasy peaaasy ! Even I, can do it !
I only regret one thing, other than the negative direct aftermath of our meeting, darn… But, you know, living in a third (and an half) world country…. is that I wanted to ask you to bring me some Saur Patch Kids, which I will have traded to some Croco Pik (Croco for crocodile and Pik for sting, not the singer ! Obvioulsy), they are the best, particularly the yellow ones ! But not the blue…. Cherry ! Erg, Give me a break. The original, were the red, green and yellow (the best, don’t remember if I told you), the bi-color, is kind of okey. The orange is completely forgettable. Well, you don’t know what you your missing, your fauu… oups, no, mine! And by the way, the new colors are « limited edition », since several years, wish it was true. Regular is best (and better in yellow) !
RULES ! I mean about « rules ». Completely on board with Dave, as slightly anxious people, rules are good for us. Edicted rules, not implicite one, man, I hate ambiguities. Social rules ? Errggg…
But not to follow them, they really are crap, It’s just to try stop others doing incomprehensible things, or comprehend the thing they do, and stopping dumdums doing deadly dumb things.
On the subject of insecurity… Community is nice. But…. err I got mixed feelings. I still prefer Brooklyn 99, because it’s more balance as a nearly regular comedy show and Rick and Morty because it really have a philosophical depth, it’s daaaAAAaark and just plain crazy…. And gross too.
Community is kind of torn between those two.
Is it A Groundhog Day if it was a sitcom ? The plot repeat itself, dissension and reconsilliation but explore the many ways to tell this story on each loop.
I really like the madness which pop up then and there, particularly in the 2 first seasons, were there is a lot of wonderful surprises and inventions. I’m at the 4th season and, yes, its is kind of weird weird in regard to itself, a cleaner version less crazy and with pointless subplots plot like Britta with Troy, what ? Why? When and How ?????
Oh And I just watch a NSNBC interview of Dan Harmon, verrry interesting, he answers the question of the fundamental difference between the two shows (at 21:11). C
And I watched the documentary Harmontown, it’s interesting and quite logical (I won’t elaborate on this, you know this darn limits of number of characters of the forum, is It twitter or what? Or maybe should I upgrade my computer memory?). He references Belushi and I watched the documentary too, so, so, so, so sad…
Hey wait ! Sneakers ? Sneaky Dragon… Is is this a forum of adidas worshipper, did I miss something ? This name is kind of confusing, nearly sneaky if you ask me. Who shoes it ?
Byyyee
For references the NSNBC show : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SndbyN4u0j4
Wow, looks like the gang’s all here, with and without the jet lag.
Most of my jobs started out as contract or freelance, so there was never really any breakdown in communication once the job started. Usually starting with one project at a time, freelancing was fairly easy with most employers who later hired me once they saw I could keep up with more volume. That said, I had a few freelance gigs between my permanent employment that were like pissing in the wind on a dark and windy night. I’m not sure if it was the style and rhythm of these places that didn’t sink in or just poor communication. Sometimes it was like I was speaking an entirely different language than the client or Creative Director. These were guys who thought to inspire everyone around them with their creative thinking but it just came off as a bunch of brain farts. Best I could do was react to it and hope I nailed it or at least design something to provoke a reaction leading to better communication. As frustrating as it gets, it also gets better when you know, listen and learn from the same clients or creatives over time and develop a rhythm over years with the same employer.
Hey gents,
Loved your European safari episode.
Talking belatedly of travel scams, many years ago I was in New York for business. I had a couple of hours free before my flight so I took a stroll around Times Square.
My son was massively into Spiderman at the time and I saw one of those (unlicensed) costume performers posing for photos with tourists. I knew that my son would be amazed to see a photo of me with a realistic looking Spiderman in New York and I figured it might be a couple of bucks tip at most to get a photo with him.
No sooner had a courteously got ‘Spiderman’s’ attention than I was suddenly surrounded by about six various superhero characters all crowding around me. The speed in which I was surrounded on both sides was breathtaking. Then, an enormous guy in a ‘Bane’ costume appeared out of nowhere. He towered over me and held out his massive hand, waiting for me to give him my phone to take the photo.
I already felt like I was walking blindly into ‘I’m-the-biggest-chump-in-New-York-territory’ but everything was moving so fast. Less than 10 seconds had passed between my impromptu decision to get a photo with ‘Spiderman’ and suddenly handing over my phone to ‘Bane’ while surrounded by various cos-play versions of DC and Marvel characters.
They all squeezed in next me for the photo, while Bane took a couple of steps back and framed the photo. I smiled like an idiot and then to my surprise, Bane handed the phone back. I took out my wallet and pulled out a $5 note – the last of two US notes I had left in my wallet.
“NO!” growled Bane, moving closer so his chest was almost against mine and swiping away the $5 note. He reached into my wallet and took the $20. “THIS.”
Before I could do or say anything, he folded the $20 into his pocket and walked away, while I stood there with my mouth open, not about to take on Bane or his dodgy unlicensed super-cronies who were now dispersing to find their next gormless target.
All I had wanted was to be able to show my son that I had met Spiderman in New York. Instead I scored the title of dumbest doofus tourist in North America.
At least I had the photo though. That was something.
I looked down at my phone. The photo was almost completely blurry. The only thing in focus was the glow of shame radiating from my face.
And that is the story of how I went into the Stupid-verse.
re jobs, I have certainly worked at many places where the people in senior positions had no idea what they were doing. I discovered the hard way that they don’t like it being pointed out to them however.
Can’t wait for your Totally Tintin episode to drop soon!
I’ve been to Chicago’s O’Hare airport many times, I think it was once listed as the nation’s busiest airport but I have a story about another one….now listed as a busier airport than O’Hare.
In fact, no joke, it was eleven years ago TODAY that I was in Los Angeles LAX Airport all day long. We were in L.A. for two days meeting over promotional presentations for “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “MIB 3” at the SONY/Columbia Studios. Then we were off to a meeting for the Star Trek video game, that was at Paramount Studios’ Gene Roddenberry Building of all places. The next morning I was at the mercy of my Creative Director’s schedule, who had an early flight out, mine wasn’t until late afternoon. After he attempted to get me on his flight, I was stranded in the LAX terminal all day long with my luggage and an iPad. The terminal looked like something out of “Trains, Planes & Automobiles” and it wasn’t even near the holidays yet, there were passengers everywhere! On seats, the floor, the carpet, hogging the outlets for phone charging, sleeping and eating. I had to walk outside, I had all day here so I could afford to wander.
I found a nearby terminal walking distance from the busy LAX one…upon entering this terminal was something like the entrance to Shangri-La. I’d found the Korean Air terminal, it was uncluttered, clean, comfortable seating, plenty of room near charging stations and crowds of beautiful Korean flight attendants in flowing scarves walking about. I think it even smelled nice in there if I remember correctly. I stayed there all day and relaxed all day until it was close to my flight time back at LAX. The Korean Air terminal was my heaven for a day eleven years ago, I could have easily been persuaded to board a flight to Korea it was so nice.
I’ll let go now since this message board is looking kind of like LAX right now.
Glad you guys are back even though it’s good to be front too.
All Good Things to my fellow Sneakers!