 This is the SF Productions podcast network Sixth Wednesday the 10th Thursday the third edition of vast wasteland. It's another popery edition and Well, I'm over at Neil. I'm MJ Wiley and today we're going to talk about Gee, what are we going to talk about? We'll think of something. You'd never know by all the stuff out here We're gonna talk about Theodore Geisel better known than most of you as Dr. Seuss Well, there were two doctors when we were growing up, right? Dr. Spock and Dr. Seuss Well, yes, and Dr. Spock was the pediatrician. I think I on Star Trek is that's mr. Spock Well, this is another thing and we're just getting totally off the subject So before we get too far away Let's let's talk about the important stuff here the fact that we are on at least Wednesday and 10 and Thursday at 3 and then Somewhere on Saturday if your cable isn't messed up and you have That's if you can actually see it That's when it'll be on if you can't actually see it. You've got a number You can call you can complain I did vote early and often And if you want to write us that ask us what the heck we're talking about It write box 15 1411 Columbus, Ohio four three two one five And put vast wasteland at the top of there. So know what you're talking about And let's see otherwise. What else is there? Um Okay, so I guess we'll just get right into the show here and we'll talk about dr. Seuss dr. Seuss Okay, Seuss was actually his middle name. Did you know that? Oh, wow, that's interesting. You know that now This is trivia take a look more class take notes Seuss was his middle name and it was his mother's maiden name And even though I think that we may be think that we're special because we like Like we were like the generation that grew up with these actually actually the man started writing and drawing in the 1920s and some of his first stuff was for Dartmouth college's Little humor magazine called the jack-o-lantern And from there he went to write they used to have these little humor magazines and there was one called judge and He was his work was spotted and he did like cartoons and did essays and And all of that stuff and there was this stuff This bug stuff like before we knew like pesticides were like bad or something And there was this bug stuff called flit and the flit people Hired him to do their ads And he did them for like 17 years And he gave them there What do you want to say the little tag line which was quick Henry the flit? Okay, first children's book. Which one was it? Which one was it? Come on. Come on. Come on. Which one was it? I have no idea Cat in the hat wrong. That's when everybody thinks was the first one The first one was actually to think that I saw it on mulberry street This was meaning the first the first children's book that that but he wasn't really writing children's books he was actually writing A book for whatever audience he did he never targeted that as kids book and and For for whoever wants to know this information. They may come up on jeopardy. So, you know He conceived it as a nonsense verse while listening to the engine of a steamship. He was on during a transatlantic trip Now figure it He was just passing the time it was 1937. Okay. Well the the rhythm of the engine gave him the idea and I wasn't there. I don't know. Okay. Well, I don't know. I don't know move along move along move along Anyway, this is a book that some guy wrote And it's you know, if you want to read more about it and all that kind of thing Um, it's called if you can read this you're real good the tough coughs as he plows the dough It's a collection of early essays And it's got some of the flit Some of the flit adds in it How's that mark? Okay And maybe you'll want to read what that says Well, they're all just different flit ads And they just basically all say quick Henry the flit. Okay. Um a couple of cartoons and They were done for a humor magazine Oh, that's dark. Oh, yeah, I can't see it on the monitor thing that I got glasses on And that's the just just to make things more confusing All right, he was kind of also um a contemporary of that guy That made those neat machines and things you mean Rube Goldberg that guy that guy So so so the doctor kind of had some of his own little inventions like that this one is uh A foolproof system for cheating at solitaire Which it's you know just overly elaborate. I don't know if you can see it. I can't see it, but It's just overly elaborate and real crazy and you can kind of see What why doesn't that somewhat look like horton the elephant? My he certainly had his style down, didn't he? Anyway, well a lot of these these early things Like, you know, they were the ancestors of the cat and the hat and horton and and everybody like that and he just He wrote little essays. He was like a real Into the language. He was like a real amateur linguist. He studied language One of my favorite little essays that he wrote is from the title of this book. It's um The tough coughs as he plows the dough and the subtitle is or why I believe in simplified spelling And just I mean if you ever get a chance to go to the library and get this book This is like a good book. It was like background in history. He also did anti-fascist cartoons Here's here's something you didn't know he wrote scripts for frank capra's signal core unit in world war two Wow Oh go home And he was awarded the legion of merit for that He had three three oscar winning films I can think of one. No, you can't okay. I can't think of one. What is it? 5,000 figures of dr. Two No, he did not get anything for that and if no one's ever seen that the 5,000 figures of dr. twilliger or dr. T or dr. T Is like he wrote it and He designed the sets, but he was designing sets in hollywood and And he did toy designs and he wrote he wrote uh the three oscar winning films He he uh was involved with uh two of them were wartime documentaries hitler lives And designed for death this doesn't really sound like dr. Seuss, but And plus he did a script for one of the jerald mcboying boyings, which I can kind of remember But maybe you remember better. Well, no, actually I don't but I've heard a lot about him Yeah, basically about this kid who talked in sounds Yeah, he didn't really said words. He just talked he was kind of an onomatopoeia little guy Excuse me. Anyway, he talked in sounds And and he did toy designs and He went emmy's and he won a peabody and he even won a Pulitzer prize A peabody, you say Is a dog. Yeah, no, it's a dog. Hello out there sure Anyway, um, perhaps we should clarify the fact that Even though he is known as dr. Seuss. He's not really a doctor Well, he did get honorary degrees in like 56 and stuff But this was long after he had started using the term dr. Seuss and he used that to Kind of put it forth that he was um a professional when he was trying to teach people things Yeah, and then it just People um simplified the thing down. It's like it's like when when I use this now It's like when comics were first and they weren't done just for kids They were done for everybody but people just um over the years said oh, this is just Kids stuff and it got relegated down to being children's things the dr. Seuss books weren't necessarily done for kids originally. They were done for everybody But then people look oh, this is just little simple things So they just relegated them down to kids things and it's like um, nobody that's older than 10 or so wants to read anything and learn anything from something that looks like it's um That's done in a comic style and it's done with cartoons. So yeah It got to be just kids books, but they're really quite informative. Well, you know, I don't know maybe it's I know these were some of the first books that I got because they still have the offer but you know, it's like You know, you open the magazine and it was like, uh, you know get 300 books for a dollar That kind of thing and it kind of got you into a book club And then they sent the dr. Seuss books to your home and your parents sold out the money so that you had a nice little set of of books and uh Maybe that's why I read so many of them because I was involved in that and they still do that And I don't know me. You know, I don't know if that was done before the 60s or not is that kind of A marketing thing was done. Well, it probably was because before then there wasn't really um Well tv wasn't as prevalent as it is now of course and magazines were really um The way a lot of people um got information magazines and newspapers So I'm sure they had lots of ads and things in there for more things to read or something so Maybe maybe but I know I had an awful lot of these books to still have them somewhere and uh Then of course these were a lot of the books that you would find when you went to the library and went to the children's department the Dr. Seuss books always seem to be prominently displayed or um, they were just always there you could always find a Dr. Seuss book you felt good to go to the library and find a Dr. Seuss book and in fact Kids still feel good to go to the library and find a Dr. Seuss book I think for us though it was like the the vogue reading I mean, I've heard stories About how the cat in the hat came about and it was like basically he read what was being offered to kids To to learn to read the the beginning readers books and he thought These are boring give me the same vocabulary And I can make an interesting story and it kind of just like shot off from there And cat in the hat became like his logo and stuff But I think these were some of the first books that the stories like They had that message not obviously but like We probably didn't realize it, but when you read the sneaches you're learning about prejudice and racism But it doesn't hit you until you actually learn what those words are and like uh Oh, oh Horton hears a who Not the first time I heard it But like when I heard it And for anybody who hasn't like read it or they even did a card who did the cartoon? Oh, well, there were just a bunch of cartoons that were done based on the dr. Seuss things. Um, but the horton ones are real old ones Were as the um, oh, okay before then there was a it was an older one. Um I think that was a warner brothers. Oh, okay. Yeah, but that wasn't horton hears a who that was horton hatches the egg Okay, with the silly bird and everything. Yeah, and then horton hears the who was later done well chuck jones Kind of got the thing to do a bunch of those and he was still with Warner brothers, I guess at the time so they Everything kind of looked the same there for a long time. Um, because chuck jones was pretty much Kind of in charge of drawing them all so or directing them all or something and everybody just Kind of looked the same the grinch had this certain look about him The cat in the hat had a certain look about him Then and then it went tom and jerry kind of had that same look about him Bugs bunny even after a while got that same look because they were all being done by pretty much the same people Yeah But if you haven't ever heard horton hears a who Horton is this elephant here and he like finds A clover and he hears it talking and everyone thinks he's crazy, but actually On the clover on a speck of dust is an entire Well, it's the who's actually yeah, and He can hear them and everyone of course thinks poor horton is crazy and In nuts and all that and they try to destroy it And so all the who's unite on the dustbeck and they scream so that they get heard That story messed with my head when I was about nine years old because it made me start thinking like maybe I'm living on a dustbeck somewhere What's that too deep or what? Well, see it's just kind of a thing of perspective because at the end of the story the doc hoovey A little dustbeck falls and and hits something that he hears it fall again It's calling for help, but it's just He's already living on a dustbeck Well, what we would consider a dustbeck that here's a dustbeck that he considers a dustbeck Which would just be infinitesimally tiny to us and it's just it just kind of gives you the whole feeling that But good cosmos is just huge and we're just Insignificant, but it's not just huge huge. It's huge in a tiny way too Well, it's everything for everything that's huge Or that you think is huge or did you think it's normal size? There's always something bigger and there's always something smaller and so we're not alone But didn't it like make you think no, maybe it didn't make you think Well, that's that's where is my thought That we're just not alone. There's more out there than we know about That's either bigger than us or smaller than us, but really we're just not alone Yeah, I think I made me think Which one did you read or which one did you like? Which one do you remember best? Fox and socks Why give us a selection because it's a lot of it's a lot of tongue twisters and boy were they fun This is a hard boy I always enjoyed fox and size of course some one fish two fish red fish blue fish That's like one of the first ones that I really remember reading I didn't really read the cat in the hats until much later I'd always see him on there, but I never really read the cat in the hat books And first I read the cat in the hat comes back before I read the cat in the hat, but Good for doing things backwards. I guess because I got them in order So I got follow, you know, I got the cat in the hat and then I got the cat in the hat came back And all those beginning easy readers These are the books that I learned to read on These I can read it all by myself. I can read it all by myself. Yeah in books. Well through three cheese trees Three free fleas While these three Through three cheese trees Three free fleas flew While these please flew Freezy breeze bloom Freezy breeze made these three cheese trees freeze Freezy trees made these trees cheese freeze. That's what made these three free fleas sneeze Yes, that's a fun one. I Whether I can really do it or not And it's just pull a little tongue twisters about different things in here and it's this fox and he just comes There's always seems to be some Creature some person some entity that comes into Another one's life Or another one's existence that just totally messes up everything that they've ever thought about before And they end up either liking or disliking whatever it is that the Interloping entity does it's like locally. I think we're having a revival of green eggs and ham Well, this is true with the creole funk man I've heard uh does a little kind of a rap version of green eggs and ham And so perhaps maybe we can even go back to dr. Seuss and blame him for some of this rap stuff that's going on Well, I don't know if it's so much that or that the idea that they are so easy They're so prevalent and they already rhyme that it's just easy to do songs or things with them But I mean, you know, we already we probably got the rhythm here from this, you know And you know, I see a nose on every I see a nose on every face. I see noses every place A nose between each pair of eyes noses noses every size I think he taught us to talk like that I am Sam Sam. I am do you like green eggs and ham? I learned how to cook those Actually, they're not bad. They're not bad Would you eat them in a house? Would you eat them with a mouse? Would you eat them here or there? Would you eat them anywhere? Yeah Would you could you with a fox? Well, there we go As long as they're foxing wearing socks in a box with knocks and chicks and clocks And chicks and tops and it just goes on and on and sometimes these stories seem to Overlap on each other or characters seem to reappear things like that. It's just It's just fun and wacky. It's just done on me for a long time that the Grinch was Looking down on Whoville and that Horton hears a Who and those people were Who's And it was I mean, I was grown before I made the connection that they were all Who's And it was like ooh and that made that made the Horton thing even deeper Yeah, I just wonder how that Grinch felt getting rocked around when the dust stick fell off of wherever it was I wonder if it was before or after his Wraculous growing of the heart Who knows and there's a there's even a cartoon where the cat in the hat meets the Grinch and They go through this whole thing and there's one about the Grinch and um This little boy because Halloween is a Grinch night and this little boy tries to keep the Grinch from Getting to town and it's just a fun little story But the thing about those cartoons when they did them that it's kind of got to me after a while was that Every time they needed a girl's voice on those cartoons Oh, she's that darn Pamela Ferdin that darn Pamela Ferdin every time I heard her voice was that That's just another thing Darn Pamela Ferdinand Okay, baby. It's okay. It's okay Pamela Ferdin Oh Ferdy Ferdin Pamela Ferdin She loves you too, baby Have a few out there writing a letter. He's so frustrated All right, darn it. All right, so let's talk about here to you too. We mentioned the um That 5,000 fingers a doctor to willaker. There's a little kid in there named Burt He seems to like these kids named Burt because there's Bartholomew Cubbins and the 50 hats 500 hats and then there's Bartholomew and the o-black and I he just likes this kid Burt The kid always seems to reappear after a while is Bartholomew is rather a A melodious name. It comes off the tongue nice. I guess you think there's a connection with the Bartholomew J. Simpson Ah More possible Seuss influence in our daily life today That's that name Burt It's like you're you're barking, but you're saying a name Like an animal sound that that makes a statement Never thought about that never thought of no and I probably won't anymore And and another thing that dr. Seuss just loved to do it seemed like was he would make um Well, he'd always had these just odd names for things or he'd make up odd animals and make them do odd things And it was it was just he played with the language He played with the language he played with english. Well that I'm beyond zebra though It's yeah full of odd things Bizarre things. Yeah, because I'm beyond zebra. It's like taking the alphabet and giving it 26 extra letters and for each letter. There's a there's an animal that describes it or something or Just it's just wild things like it's just just wild. It was wild. It was something. It was wild And then I don't know The laurax the lawyers know we couldn't find the laurax book, but there is a cartoon of the laurax The laurax was done and uh, I think that was like one of the first uh Sort of aimed it was aimed at everybody But of course being because it was dr. Seuss it kind of got aimed at kids But to make you environmentally aware And I mean that came out in like what the 70s Well, the cartoon possibly get the book was out. I'm sure in the 60s, but I mean, you know, it's really like There weren't that that kind of information now You know kids get all these little golden books now and stuff that is like, you know How to take care of your planet and and things like this that are really aimed at kids But back then, you know, it wasn't kids literature didn't really have to make Kids think about anything. It was just there to you know to to entertain. It wasn't really It was he was like doing this this make kids think kind of thing before we knew we were allowed to think And you thought you were just reading to read or reading to learn the language He was actually throwing a little message in there Which a lot of his stories actually did which is a good thing about them too It was good. It's still good and um I mean he's he's even recently well Just recently meeting within the past 10 years came out with a couple other books There's one all the places you'll go and then there's another one called the butter battle book Which is really a good one. Um denouncing war or talking against fighting and everything That's just a really good book, but unfortunately. Well, the doctor sues died like last year Couple years ago or so early last year. Yeah Either 90 or 90 92 91 or 92 he just passed away. So I was very sad then but um because you don't think it's like it's like You don't think that that's going to ever happen. It's like when Jim Henson died. It's like Oh, no, these are immortals these these are Immortal people. They're not people. They're immortals that kind of thing. Yeah, I was like stunned and amazed But uh, he wrote a book he wrote a book in the 80s about aging And he actually aimed it. What was it called? What was it called? Come on You're the one that knows the library. No, I can't remember the name of it right now But anyway, he's gonna make me look it up. He wrote this book and it was about um aging and you know, you can go to the hospital You're only old once 1986 okay I've not read that because I'm like not old yet. So I'm saving now It's like I had all these when I was a kid when I was a kid and when I was young I had all these and then it's like This one came along and this is like grown up this is like all his early stuff which he was when he was writing for adults and writing for for uh Human magazines and stuff. So that one I have to save for when I decide I'm like ancient and old and stuff There's another one too that he's got that's uh some of his older things and Gosh, I can't think of the name of it right now But it's a lot of his earlier Cartoon work also much like this one, but it goes into a bit more history about his early stuff. I mentioned some things, but anyway Yeah That got you guys It's cool. So um So We gotta wrap this up. I guess so eventually at least um sort of kind of Sort of kind of which one are you grabbing there? This is all the things you can think Because he just enjoyed doing things that I made you think and that's And there are quite a few books that are in these um these bright and early readers or beginning readers that I can read by Myself that weren't necessarily just Dr. Seuss because the uh the barren stains who do have the whole thing with the bears and all they were linked into this series and um There were things like oh Put me in the zoo which wasn't really done by Dr. Seuss, but yet it was linked into this into this group and There's the the riddles the foot book the nose book the tooth book They aren't really done by uh the foot book. He was thinking of everybody wasn't he? The nose book Yeah, they were like they're like got they've got the cat in the hat on them But they were actually written by someone else But the foot book was actually dr. Seuss well the nose book and the the tooth book They just tried to do other ones on there that weren't really written by dr. Seuss yet. They um Were illustrated by were illustrated and put into the same the same grouping the same categories like once he got established He'd get invited in other authors and other people that had ideas to go ahead and do their books And he'd put them in with his so that people would read them and and be exposed to these different people Which is which is kind of like when school a lot of other people do but it was it was cool. It was a good idea. So um Boy, we'll miss him But we don't have to because we still got all the books We still got the book so we can live on he can live on in our memories and on and on and on forever And hopefully his messages will will go on too and people won't forget the things that he tried to teach us Which were really good. Gee we had such a resource and we didn't even know it. That's right. What's next time mark Turner next time when we turn on your tv Fast wasteland thing. It'll be all three of us again. And we'll be talking about that ted turner universe All the things that he's done Then after that, it'll be another comic book show and then the next time Two of us are here. It's gonna be something else all together, but we forget because we're gonna be talking about breakfast cereal Boy, will that be fun? See you when we're talking about that one We're getting all these signals. We'll see you next time Hi