Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to the podcast that haunts itself!
This week: here on the eerie; over the covers; that shit is bananas; this blood’s for you; plugged in; Rocky Horror Picture Show time; midnight runs; digging El Topo; scaredy cartoons; name that cat; Porky’s plod; monkeying around; super animation studios; how-to win the war; rotoscope it out; bugging out on Mr. Bug Goes to Town; the giant cheque is in the mail; it’s a bug’s life; Honey trap; preying mantis; insects change; a decisive nope; breaking out all over; nun of it; those nutsy Nazis; Cabaret; Reveille-tion; dancing school; eyes of the world; gay parries; lip service; elusive butterfly; Dave goes to Sleepaway Camp; cookin’ hawk; short shorts; boiling mad; oh, bee hive; penis reveal; sequel bites; what in Avatar nation!; sentimental journey; sufferin’ suffragettes; foyer of fear; love for Love; Yes and…; unrelenting horror; blank check; hot for …Heat…; double talk; mall talk; and, finally, in praise of older women.
Question of the Week: What is a cartoon that scared you as a kid?
Sub-question of the Week: Who’s your favourite sibling?
Deportment of Corrections:
The Wiki plot description was a little unclear, but it turns out the songwriter in Mr. Bug Goes to Town was a human character. We still stand by all our other criticisms of a film we haven’t seen!
Thanks for listening.
You can watch Mr. Bug Goes to Town right here:
This is all the Sleepaway Camp you’ll ever need to see:
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I’d have to say that I’m much closer to my sister than to my two brothers…since they presently reside in America. Our three-woman household is like something out of a Jane Austen novel, if Mrs. Bates in “Emma” had two spinster daughters instead of just the one Miss Bates. My sister does a lot of the grocery shopping and cooking and I handle the DYI home maintenance. Today I replaced a faulty toilet fill valve and am now filled with the glow of achievement.
As a kid, a scary scene in a cartoon for me was in “Horton Hears a Who” (1970). It’s the part where the Wickersham Brothers tie up Horton and put him in a cage. Then they chant “Boil that dust speck!” as they are about to drop the clover with the speck that the Whos live on into a cauldron of boiling beezlenut oil. I re-watched the cartoon this week to see if it was as scary as I remembered. Nope, it wasn’t. It was WORSE! Because now I know it was an allegory for real world ignorance and intolerance. There’s a song the Wickersham Brothers sing to Horton – here are some of the lyrics which sound eerily familiar to current right-wing rhetoric.
We’re the Wickersham brothers. We’re onto your plot,
Pretending you’re talking to Whos who are not.
It’s a deep, dire, evil political plot,
Pretending you’re talking to Whos who are not.
We’re the Wickersham brothers. We’re vigilant spotters.
Hot shot spotters of rotters and plotters.
And we’re going to save our sons and our daughters from you.
You’re a dastardly, ghastardly, shnastardly schnook,
Trying to brainwash our brains with this gobbledygook.
We know what you’re up to, pal.
You’re trying to shatter our morale.
You’re trying to stir up discontent
And seize the reins of government.
You’re trying to throw sand in our eyes.
You’re trying to kill free enterprise
And raise the cost of figs and dates
And wreck our compound interest rates.
And shut our schools, and steal our jewels,
And even change our football rules;
I thought that last line was a little silly. Then two days ago, I read that a certain president-elect posted that the NFL should get rid of its new kick-off rule. Wow, Dr. Seuss called it. But re-watching the cartoon was worth it. His story ends with a hopeful message about banding together and making your voices be heard even if you’re little. After all, “A person’s a person no matter how small.”