Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to the podcast that swims the internet!
This week: dueling intros; fobbed off; the key to happiness; sliding doors; creeky jokes; question time; class grad; senior moments; late puberty; podcast-offs; sitcom tutorials; R.I.P. Bob Newhart; botched premise; dangerous bookstore; showing our age; guessing game shows; low Valerie; botched premise part 2; haunting ourselves; shake your cootie; gamesmanship; card sharp; innocent men; vampire badger; healthy fast food; spoonful of sugar; no Coke, Pepsi; shark scale; TV rules; the underrated Robert McKimson; kanga rules; canal hopping; take the plunge; no slime; surprised skeleton; flukey; Messick again; bathtub thumper; voicelifting; Carolina on her mind; a brain divided; penny ante; Love love; and, finally, a disappointing Acolyte.
Question of the Week: Who’s your favourite animated side character?
Sub-question of the Week: What was your favourite boardgame?
Thanks for listening.
We’re just innocent men!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Careers is a game I liked to play as a kid. You go around the board and take side career paths to collect points in the categories of fame, money and happiness. The first player to reach 60 points is the winner, but the twist is you write down your formula for success before the game starts. It could be 60 points in just one category, or you could divvy it up between two or all three categories. You could end up getting more than 60 points, but if they aren’t in the right categories you could still lose – leading to lifelike regrets over your career choices.
An animated side character I like is Skrat from the Ice Age franchise. His single-minded pursuit of acorns shows the danger of letting your obsession overcome your sense of self-preservation. Coincidentally, as I was driving down King Edward Avenue today, I saw a leaf blowing across the rain-slicked road. But as I got closer, I realized it was actually a tiny mouse dashing to the other side of the street. Either it was smart enough to time the gap in traffic, or just lucky that I was driving slowly due to the road conditions.
You touched a nerve with my love for animation, the obscure side characters! Pete Puma, Uncle Pecos (Tom & Jerry), The Crusher (Bugs Bunny wrestler), Slowpoke Rodriguez and who could forget Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch?! Deep dive, John Byrne drew the comic for Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch. I could go on for hours about the obscurity of cartoons and how they permeated my childhood, especially Hanna Barbera, their universe of animation is almost infinite. Just when you think you’ve remembered every character they created, you’re reminded of another one you haven’t thought of in over 40 years. Like Jabberjaw or the Funky Phantom.
In college we watched old reruns of Roger Ramjet all the time, remember him? Voiced by the great Gary Owens. I once read a rumor that when they were making the Roger Ramjet cartoon they needed a bunch of random lines for Noodles Romanoff’s henchmen to say. These henchmen would just murmur a bunch of nonsense lines for dialogue. The rumor is that they went to another studio and got Frank Sinatra and some of the Rat Pack to record the lines…but take that with a grain of salt.
My neighbor and best friend grew up playing board games all the time. His family a little more than mine. At his house we played Yahtzee and Life quite a bit, at my house we played Uno and other card games my Dad taught us how to play…most of the ones like David mentioned. But then something happened in the early 80’s, Dark Tower was invented! I think we played that damned game for years, we never got tired of it playing into the wee hours on weekends. Brigands!! From there we graduated to more involved World War II games but we never made the leap to Dungeons & Dragons! Dark Tower was the greatest and it ruled my youth as a favorite board game.
Orson even endorsed it! https://youtu.be/_3HVCwPp7j0?feature=shared
David, when you mentioned the Evergreen Air and Space Museum from your trip through Oregon, where the Spruce Goose is, the bells went off in my head. Around 2008 or so, the studio I worked for had us design some proprietary items and souvenirs for the museum. We designed some Apollo mission coasters and cups, other branded merchandise for the museum and some really cool kid’s burger baskets that looked like cardboard space shuttles for the food to go in. I’m not sure if any or all of it was used but we did design some stuff for the Evergreen Air and Space Museum.
Life is short Sneakers, hug the ones close to you and remember to tell them how much you love them while you can.
I can’t think of any better advice.