dimland radio 3-25-17 show notes

I Don't Believe The Universe Wanted Me To Find The Perfect Line

I believe in randomness and coincidence. There are those who see a significant connection in just about everything. They think the universe has a plan. Or their god has a plan. That may be, but I don't see any strong evidence for it. The evidence there is is based on feelings. Well, that's not good enough.

 

So, when I randomly picked the perfect book to use for a brand new meme going around social media, it was a great coincidence. That's all.

 

The new meme sensation is the "And then the murders began" phenomenon. Author Marc Laidlaw (I mistakenly called him Eric Laidlaw on the show) twittered in early March of this year that "the first line of almost any story can be improved by making sure the second line is, 'And then the murders began.'" I saw that on the Facebook and took up the challenge.

 

I thought a children's chapter book would be funny. The first book to come to my mind was Charlotte's Web. I'd never read the book. I was familiar with the story from seeing the animated film from 1973, but I had no idea what the first line of the book was.

I looked it up and what I found couldn't have worked any better.

 

"'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. And then the murders began."

 

Perfect! Got it in one try!

I Have A Listener!

Well, I have a handful of listeners, but I pretty much know all of them. They're people I have some kind of affiliation with and they listen to the show. The other day, however, someone I don't know sent a message to Dimland Radio. He was suggesting I make a t-shirt design based on one of my show ID sounders. The one in which I pretend to be shaken by an extraordinary EVP (electronic voice phenomena - the audio anomalies ghost hunters think are communications from the dead). The EVP says one thing, but I say it says, "Bread trout."

 

This listener suggested I draw a bread trout and put it on a shirt with the Dimland Radio logo. It's an intriguing idea. And drawing a bread trout would be a good challenge.

 

We'll see.

Hollywood (And Lots Of People Including Me) Likes 'Em Shaved

 

Shaved legs and armpits on women specifically, I mean. I didn't talk about other parts of women that might or might not be shaved.

 

This came up because there was some objection to the fact that Gal Godot, the new Wonder Woman, clearly has shaved armpits in the trailer for the soon to be released DC super-hero movie. Some of the outcry stems from pedantry: Why would an Amazon shave her armpits? Much more of it comes from decrying the patriarchy.

 

Well, I must confess I like the look of a woman with shaved legs and armpits. I guess I'm part of the patriarchy.

 

I noted that having women shaved in otherwise preposterous situations goes way back in Hollywood. Of course, so does the patriarchy. I gave the examples of Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC (1966) and Linda Harrison in The Planet of the Apes (1968). Both were playing essentially cave women and both were way too hairless to be true to life.

 

 

 

I also mentioned women weren't the only ones Hollywood made shave off body hair. William Holden, a man crush of mine, can be seen shirtless throughout much of the David Lean classic The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). He's also very hairless. Legs, armpits, chest, and back are as smooth as can be.

 

So smooth and glistening!

If you watch the Billy Wilder classic Stalag 17 (1953), you won't get to see Holden shirtless (pity), but you will get to see a fair amount of chest hair peeking out from under the collar of his undershirt. Interesting. I've also found images of a shirtless and hairy William Holden on the internets.

 

What that stuff coming up from under his collar?

From what I can tell Holden had to shave his chest for at least two other films he was in: Picnic (1955) and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). For some reason Hollywood wanted him body-hairless for those roles.

 

Patriarchy!

An Example Of How Bad Memory Is And How I Might Have Been The Dick

I told the story of the time the DEA came into the building in which I was working and searched one of the loft apartments. It's quite a tale that I won't get into here. I'll just say that the office manager at the time had nothing to do with witnessing the three DEA agents who did the searching.

 

He saw nothing. He was busy with customers. Dave, one of the fellows in the shop, and I saw those three men. We had no idea they were DEA. Dave and I stayed after work to tell the police what we saw as one of the tenants in the that apartment thought he'd been burgled. We found out the three dudes were DEA days after the event and that they were searching for evidence against the tenant's roommate.

 

Years later, I would hear the office manager recount the tale to customers. He told the story as though he saw the men. And he saw them sneaking up the stairs. He saw their shirts with "DEA" on the back.

 

No, he didn't. He was busy doing other stuff.

 

One day he started to tell me the story. I shot him down. He hadn't seen anything. Dave and I saw the men. And we didn't know about the DEA thing until, at least, a couple days after the event.

 

The office manager wasn't happy that I shut him down so bluntly. But I thought he was being a self-aggrandizing dick by making the event about him. What a dick! So, when I got the chance I took it and told him he wasn't there. Ha!

That was several years ago. Since then I have learned that human memory is not good. It's very unreliable. Memories change over time and it's very human to incorporate someone else's memories as your own. I learned that it was very possible, even likely, that the office manager wasn't being a dick by putting himself in the story. He probably really did remember the event that way.

I might have been the one being a dick the way I shot him down. I could have handled that situation much better.

Movie Recommendation: None

  

I didn't specifically talk about a movie recommendation, but you could watch The Bridge on the River Kwai or Stalag 17 or both. They are excellent.

 

 

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Warm Leatherette' by The Normal & 'Rattlesnake' by The Replacements

Second ad break bumpers: 'Only You' by Yaz & 'North Country Girl' by Pete Townshend

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

dimland radio 3-18-17 show notes

And Back To The ER I Go

Monday evening, Mom was hit by a pretty severe dizzy spell and then she hit the floor. She landed awfully hard and ended up in the emergency room. Dad got a hold of me at work and I hurried through what I needed to do to get to the hospital.

Mom was pretty shook up and in pain, but as the evening progressed and she was able to get that uncomfortable neck brace removed, she was able to calm down and relax.

In fact, Dad was able to get Mom to have quite the laughing jag after hearing the tales of the false teeth and the wet pants.

She went home that night. And she's feeling better.

Playboy: The Return Of Naked Ladies, Fake Boobs, And Comic Book Art

I had planned to talk about this last week, but time constraints wouldn't allow for it. Which is probably a good thing, because going from talking about sexual assaults and a sexual predatory atmosphere at the fraternity for which I had done illustrations over the past 20 years, to talking about Plaboy magazine, might not have gone over very well.

But, with a week behind us, I went on to talk about how Playboy magazine has brought back the nude photos after a year-long absence. Cooper Hefner, Hugh's son and the magazine's chief creative officer, had said the nudity wasn't the problem with the lackluster sales of the iconic men's magazine. (My suspicion is that there were too many articles.) He also said that the way the naked ladies were presented was dated.

This got me to talking about the idea that the Playboy Playmate was the "girl next door." Well, the exceptionally hot girl next door, but the women did have a quality about them that made them appear real. As time went on, the women lost the girl next door look. Part of that loss, I think was due to breast implants. The images were always touched up. Air-brushed and later Photoshopped, but the breast implants brought another level of unreality. The boobs just didn't look right.

Breast implant technology has improved though. So, I'm told! Ahem! 

That led me to talk about comic book art and one cover in particular. I showed it to my wife and said, "This is what happens when comic book artists are raised in the age of breast implants."

 

The cover was drawn by Joe Madureira, who is an excellent artist. It's a variant cover for Battle Chasers #1 (1998). The woman on the cover obviously has breast implants. Real breasts wouldn't do what they do on that cover. Maybe Madureira wanted that look. Maybe that character does have implants.

However, she's also either very bowlegged or her hips have been dislocated.

Dimland Radio Science Hero: Dan Piraro

 

OK. There are no breast implants or hip displacement here. But there is a positive and correct message presented by cartoonist Dan Piraro. His March 8, 2017 edition of his daily strip Bizarro shows a group meeting of mythical beings. The newest member of the group is the vaccine that causes autism. Truly a mythical thing.

 

For this strip, Dan Piraro has been named a Dimland Radio Science Hero.

Ark Encounter Not Drawing 'Em In

Speaking of myths, the creationist's favorite fairy tale inspired Ark Encounter has not pulled in the numbers of visitors nor the amount of dollars as had been projected. It seems God was far more successful at inspiring two of every species to head to the original ark, but He can't direct enough paying customers to Ken Ham's folly in Kentucky.

I'm shocked! Shoc... No, I'm not.

Truth be told, I probably wouldn't be shocked if it was a roaring success.

Movie Recommendation: The Chase (1966)

 

 

A bit melodramatic. A bit Peyton Place. But watching Marlin Brando as the sheriff of a small Texas town deal with the pettiness, racism, and sniping cruelty of the townsfolk as he attempts to bring in the town's ne'er do well escaped convict unharmed is very entertaining.

There are plenty of familiar faces in this one including EG Marshall, Angie Dickinson, Robert Duvall, Jane Fonda, and Robert Redford. And keep an eye open for a young Paul Williams as one of the town's teenagers.

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Erica's Word' by Game Theory & 'And Through The Wire' by Peter Gabriel

Second ad break bumpers: 'Scarecrow People' by XTC & 'Eliminator Jr' by Sonic Youth

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

dimland 3-11-17 show notes

Show Number 311 On 3/11

 
Relax numerologists and conspiracy theorists. There's nothing mystical and there was no secret plan going on to make it so that the 311th show of Dimland Radio would fall on 3/11. Honestly, it's just a coincidence. I mean it.

 

Oh, and iTunes (or wherever you get podcasts) subscribers, don't forget Dimland Radio was a show on the Z Talk Radio Network since March 13, 2010. That's why there have been 311 episodes. You can listen to most of those first 300 (iTunes' first show was technically 301) from the Show Archives page at ztalkradio.com.

A Most Unpleasant Sunday Morning

For a sizable chunk of the last 20 years, I have done the t-shirt design for the yearly Pub Crawl event for Delta Upsilon, a fraternity at the University of Minnesota. Its humble beginnings of a drunken bar scene evolved into a Where's Waldo-ish illustration depicting inside jokes relating to each of the members of the fraternity.

 

Over the years, I've drawn plenty of drunkenness, some pot-smoking, animal antics, vomiting, defecation, crashed cars, various other strange behaviors, and sex. Yep, sex. I did what I could to keep the sex PG-13 or, at most, rated R. In fact,until the last two years, I had managed to hide the naughtier parts of the naked co-eds. However, the nipple was freed in the last two designs.

 

Well, I shouldn't be too flippant, because in mid-February I saw a brief news item on the local TV nightly news. The item was about a fraternity at the U of M being suspended. The fraternity was Delta Upsilon. The news report had no details, so last Sunday morning, after a couple of weeks with no news, I looked for what I could find out about it online.

 

I got into more detail on the show, but suffice it to say the suspension stems from the alleged sexual predatory atmosphere in the house. There were sexual assaults a couple of years ago, that led to investigations and, at least, one member expelled from the fraternity and the university. But a current member raised concerns that the fraternity hadn't changed its ways.

 

Thus the suspension. And thus my very uneasy feeling about the work I had been doing for those guys all these years. I can't be certain I never drew depictions of rape. And that makes me feel so gross. I naively thought the sex was consensual or just made up as a joke. But I doubt if I had asked if all the sex was consensual they would have admitted any of it was rape. Still.

You can read more about it here and here.

What Makes A Meh Beer Better Than Meh?

When that meh beer is free. But not much better.

 

Over the years, my boss would occasionally give me a 12 pack of beer. Since I don't drink as often as I used to, I decided that when I drink beer I'll drink one of better quality. I had settled on Summit Extra Pale Ale as that beer and my boss would get that kind for me when his generous mood struck him. Until, that is, last week.

 

Last week, he brought in Rolling Rock. Meh.

 

I was gracious and thanked him.

 

So, now I have to try to consume that meh beer. Oh, well. It was free.

Pedantic Moment: A Twofer From 12 Angry Men

I had two Pedantic Moments from the classic jury room drama from 1957, 12 Angry Men. It really is a good movie. Still, it is not immune to pedantry.

 

Also, this was the first ever listener contributed moment of pedantry. If you should have a good candidate for a Pedantic Moment, send it to me at drdim@dimland.com. I might share it on the show.

 

One moment dealt with a re-enactment being timed to see if the witness could get from his bed to the front door of his apartment was a quickly as he claimed. The experiment showed he couldn't. The move from the bed to the front door took longer than testified to in court. However, the amount of time the experiment took according to the story was about 10 seconds longer than the actual run time in the film.

 

Watch the clip. You can time it yourself.

 

My listener's Pedantic Moment was even better because it would result in a mistrial. In this scene (see below), Juror 8 did some of his own investigation and found a knife identical to the murder weapon. That's a no-no. Jurors are to weigh the evidence presented in court. They are not to investigate. The duplicate knife was left in the jury room and the bailiff certainly would have found it. Mistrial!

Movie Recommendation: None

I didn't get to one this week. You are on your own.

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Another Nail In My Heart' by Squeeze & 'No Reply At All' by Genesis

Second ad break bumpers: 'Pretty Girls Make Graves' by The Smiths & 'Lover Is For Lovers' by The dBs

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.