Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Sneaky Dragon – the internet’s favourite whipping cream!
This week: welcome back; holidaze; medal of nerd-dom; almost five; Emmy envy; Tomine cooks; scam comics; don’t stop motion believin’; it stinks; fowl call; Aardmania; whack job; juke joint; Skelton crew; little orphan Ian; cold comfort; the name game; Jersey boys; cookaine cowboys; raisin children; sausage sauce; stage fright; card tricks; risky business; cheat sheets; comedy squared; team engine; tee-hee flies; ego monster; star passenger; Carvey on gang; Dave enjoys Becky; Eggers banquet; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; bathtub thumping; for the I sing; the man in the Iron-Man mask; deep in the hoar of Texas; no fun at Christmas; the gift of Bemidji; and, finally, hosting issues.
Question of the Week: Who is your favourite talk show host?
Sub-question of the Week: What is a memory you believe happened only to discover that it didn’t?
Thanks for listening.
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Ian, when you hinted that your birth name was the same as one the Avengers, I was concerned that it might be Bruce. Not that there’s anything wrong Bruce. There have been many great Bruces such as Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Lee and Robert The. I wonder if you were named after Saint Anthony who is mostly famously the patron saint of lost items. If so, could you intercede for me and ask him where my favourite baseball cap went? He knows the one.
I like different talk show hosts for different things. I like Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers for their intelligent commentary and genuine interest in their guests. I like Jimmy Kimmel when he ruthlessly rakes over hypocritical and criminal politicians. I like some of Jimmy Fallon’s running segments like Thank You Notes, and Connections, and when he includes his band in his comedy bits and games. The nice thing about the digital recording era is that you can skip past commercials, lame guests and musical acts that don’t interest you and fast-forward to the most entertaining parts. And it’s great that the hosts all get along as evidenced by their participation on the Strike Force Five podcast during the Writers Guild of America strike.
I was a child of the Johnny Carson and David Letterman era, I watched both of them all the time and it was how I received my entertainment information. If a new movie was soon to be released and I was interested, I’d tune into Johnny or Dave to watch the clips and interviews. I can remember asking to stay up late to see certain guests on The Tonight Show because my bedtime was 10:30 on school nights, I also was allowed to stay up Sunday nights if the ABC Sunday Night Movie showed an extended movie or a 007 film. Dad allowed me to stay up for those. Then I got a little older and my bedtime was “after Letterman” so I got to end my day with all his antics and comedy. If I watched it with my Dad, he’d remind me endlessly that Steve Allen did all the Letterman stuff years ago and it wasn’t new…but it was new to me and I loved it so much I taped segments of Letterman every night. I still have those VHS tapes recorded on the fast speed so I could get six hours per tape. I watched Conan O’Brien more recently when he was on and enjoyed his show a lot too but nobody after that, I don’t keep up with the new generation of hosts that are on now, I’d rather listen to Sneaky Dragon.
I still swear on a stack of bibles that I saw that clip from “You Bet Your Life” where Groucho quizzed the contestant with a dozen kids. A woman with 10 (or 12 or 14 or whatever) children makes a guest appearance as a contestant on the show and the following dialogue takes place.
Groucho: (To the contestant) “How many kids do you have?”
Woman: “I have 14 children, Groucho.”
Groucho: “You have 14 children? Why do you have so many kids?”
Woman: “Because I love my husband.”
Groucho: “I love my cigar, too, but I take it out every once in a while.”
I can still see the clip played out in my mind, I can even see George Fenneman’s shocked face when Groucho says the line, I still swear that I saw this once. The exchange has become a Marx Brothers urban myth and the circumstances are still debated whether it was on television, the radio or even happened at all. Groucho once said it never even happened then an author wrote that it did in one of Groucho’s biographies, so nobody really knows. One thing for sure is that it does sound like Groucho and something funny he’d say.
Now if we could just figure out the manicurist’s name in “A Night at the Opera”, another pesky Marx conundrum.
Speaking of urban myths or in this case “An editorial misunderstanding”, the history of Iron Man’s brief period with a nose on his faceplate is all over the internet. The top Google hit is from none other than John Byrne himself, who is no stranger to telling urban myths about the comics industry and can be found in his forum, “Byrne Robotics”:
https://m.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=54967
Of course the story centers around the enigmatic Stan Lee and whether he even liked or disliked Iron Man’s nose in the first place. Not as funny as Groucho but still interesting. I like that my MEGO Iron Man figure had a nose on him, so there. What’s not cool is that I sold him, Thor and Conan for less than $100.00 so I could buy my first lightsaber prop at a con in 1996. I loved those damned figures.
Best to all and never lacking for context…