However my mother prefers blancmange and my father Angel Delight, so answer me this: which is the superior pudding?
Firstly: you are from a family of pudding retronauts.
Secondly: I discovered that blancmange used to be made with poultry or fish, which sounds even more disgusting than butterscotch-flavoured Angel Delight (which made me puke four times at my friend Olivia McLearon’s house in 1990).
Thirdly: this can only be settled democratically, so please VOTE:
RegardingAMT320‘s discussion about naming babies, Jeremiah writes:
You made a comment referencing the character Six in the beloved 80’s sitcom Blossom, in the context of a discussion of names and their derivation. I happen to remember watching an episode of Blossom in which the origins of the name Six were explained. Blossom and Six are having an intimate conversation in which Blossom asks Six how she got her name. Six replies without missing a beat, “That was how many beers it took my dad to think of it.” Cue laugh-track.
According to Wikipedia, “A later explanation is that she was the sixth child in her family”. But apparently the behind-the-scenes truth is “One of the show’s writers came up with the name ‘Six’ because he knew a girl in school called ‘Seven’.”
Whatever it is, perhaps Susan from Riverside, California will feel some relief about her own situation:
In episode 320, you talk about babies who aren’t named right away. I am one of those babies.
I was born on Easter Sunday in 1962. I made my parents leave Mass early. I always thought I was a special girl, but it wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s when I found out the truth: my parents didn’t know what to call me!
When my mom told me this, she was laughing about it the whole time. She started talking about the hospital I was born in and then she said, “You know they called and asked me, are you ever going to name that child?”
She was still laughing, but she sounded kind of pissed that they would bother her about it. I got the sense that she felt she’d name her kid when she was good and ready to name her kid.
I asked her about it after I heard your podcast. She “thinks” the hospital called when I was about 3 weeks old. But when she said, “We knew your middle name was going to be Alexa” my heart just sank. My middle name is Alexia. She couldn’t get it right, so I don’t trust her on the whole 3 weeks scenario.
I was afraid to ask her if she actually knew my name! I have always wondered what they called me during the alleged 3 weeks that I was __________ Alexa, Alexis (whatever).
The real pisser is that I have an older sister who had a name, no problem, so it isn’t like my parents didn’t know what to do!
But it all turned out alright, didn’t it, Susan?
We also heard from Nick Barker, who gave his son the middle name ‘Chu’. Chu Barker. Say it to yourself. Faster. Chu Barker. Says Nick: “I figure, as it is his middle name, he can choose whether to use it or not. At the moment he likes it.”
Join Leigh in Melbourne, Australia for a journey through TIME and SPACE:
Your discussion in AMT320 about Martian-themed restaurants reminded me of a delightfully ghastly theme restaurant in a touristy region of Sydney earlier this decade. Depending on your perspective, the now sadly-closed Xerts Restaurant was either a tribute to all things Martian or a dissection of crimes against interior design.
Once you’d wandered into the restaurant, you were ushered into a “spaceship” (better described as a clunky lift) which beamed you up into the restaurant, where you were met with space pod tables and Martian-themed food. Don’t recall there being too much red food dye in the ingredients but it was definitely all very weird. I recall one particular highlight being a touchscreen ordering system at each table, which was inevitably smeared with greasy handprints from the kids who’d sat there just before you.
The Sydney Xerts venue is no longer with us and was subsequently converted into another alien experience: a Hooters restaurant.
‘Boobs’ does seem to be a theme that has, er, legs.
Richard Herring, the man with more podcasts than all of the other podcasters combined, has recently added another: The Twelve Shows of Herring, as he performs all of his solo shows in sequence over the next few weekends. ‘Someone Likes Yoghurt’ is coming up this weekend; I remember laughing till my face hurt when I saw it in Edinburgh ten years ago.
Also twelve parts, but not much of a laugh, is the recently completed series about Charles Manson’s Hollywood on You Must Remember This. It’s exhaustively researched and pulls together all sorts of links with different cultural players; so, though the gore is unavoidable given the subject matter, it’s a learned take rather than sensationalistic. Hunker down for an audiobook-length task – I raced through four episodes whilst making a complicated birthday cake.
To soothe yourself afterwards, how about a dose of Jarvis Cocker’s Wireless Nights? I’ve had these stacked up for ages and am only just now catching up. But look how soothed I am!
If you’ve not yet heard AMT320, rectify immediately in order to learn about registering your baby, 80s classic Overboard, and sensible dominatrix-relationship management. Peeking over the hill, ready to leap into your ears by the end of this week: new episodes of Guardian Tech Weekly, and The Allusionist. Martin is covering Ben Folds on the new Sound of the Ladies Podcast; and on the latest episode of Passion Pods, I’m discussing my feckless mess of a career. If any of you are having a bad A Level Results Day, perhaps this will be comfort that, a whole other lifetime hence, it won’t matter a jot.
What’s in your ears, dears?
Recommend shows in the comments.
Plus: Olly remembers his dad’s Martian business plan*, that is still up for grabs if any of you want to do it; Helen has ‘Baby On Board!’ windscreen signs in the crosshairs; and Martin the Sound Man’s parents named him Martin hoping he’d take after one of the nice Martins, rather than Amis or Scorsese.
*If you do decide to give this a whirl – or you have a less doomed idea for a business – build the website using today’s sponsor Squarespace.com. Tinker around during the free two-week trial, then you can have 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘ANSWER‘. You get a URL and loads of storage thrown in. AND Squarespace manages to make your site look nice on desktop, mobile and tablet, which is far more than most site hosts do (ahem ahem this one).
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices) is a question from Kate about those metal bars that run around the bottom of bars. Bonus appearance from the town that plays Northern Exposure.
We’ll return on 20th August 2015 with AMT321. Be there. Or our hearts will yearn for you.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT320 Child-Friendly Rating: 34%. It opens with feedback regarding AMT319‘s dominatrix question, which, though heartwarming, may be riper than you feel your children should cope with. Some swears thereafter, but we suspect you’ll already have saved this for post-watershed listening. •••
PS Feast your eyes on LEAVENWORTH! The happiest place on earth (or at the very least, Washington State).
Let there be light upon this question from Lizzie from London:
Regarding the glitter discussion in AMT319, Sarah from Chicago writes:
Helen compared it to a virus at one point, and in the theatre world (my profession) we have to deal with it a lot. So much that when you happen to find glitter all over everything, with no idea where it came from (costume, makeup, set, etc), it’s known as Glerpes. Glitter+herpes.
And now you know the name of the affliction your questioneer has.
Let there be light upon this question from Lizzie from London:
I just got home and went into our bedroom to find my boyfriend sitting in the dark. I opened the blinds. He wasn’t sleeping, ill, watching a film or being Buffalo Bill (thankfully).
He claimed I was imposing my ideas on him. I said it was a universal truth that light is good in this world. We share the room and I was going to be in and out of it.
Help! (me win the argument)
Martin the Sound Man suggests that you illuminate the room for your own use, and make your boyfriend wear a blindfold. I suggest you VOTE:
Go to the comments because I really want to read your answers to this question from Johan:
I work at the Swedish equivalent to UK’s Royal Mail. As a terminal worker at one of the biggest post terminals in the country my job is really boring and sometimes stressful. I sort packages big and small and unload lorries filled to the brim with packages, but it is allowed to have headphones at work and your podcast keeps me from dying of boredom.
So answer me this: what is the most boring job you have had?
That is a GOOD question, Johan. Now, as a freelancer with a very messy career path, I’ve had a LOT of jobs – so many that I can only remember about 30% of them. Which is probably for the best.
I’ve had jobs that plunged me into greater despair and discomfort, but for pure brain-chewing boringness, I nominate the job I once had compiling the index for a book about the Queen’s stamp collection. It was not only dullllllllll, but fiendish – I had to make sure there were different entries for, say, King George V the person and King George V the stamp, subdivided by country…Oh god, sorry; merely typing that sentence reopened the vortex of tedium, and this time YOU’RE ALL COMING DOWN WITH ME.
John from Cambridge writes with a double dad dilemma:
My boyfriend and I are at the stage in our (same-sex) relationship where we can discuss adopting children to raise and provide a loving family for.
However, I find it hard in my own head to think of names that we can call ourselves to our children – using our first names seems both too relaxed and too formal at the same time, but the idea of having both of us called ‘Dad’ is a logistical nightmare when our kids want to get the attention of only one of us. Having one of us called ‘father’ and the other as ‘dad’ seems odd too.
So answer me this: what names can we call ourselves to our kids that allow us both to call ourselves ‘dad’ whilst differentiating ourselves from each other?
Readers, have you found a neat solution to this in your own lives? Summon up your helpfulness and go to the comments to assist John.
Catch Olly on the Guardian’s Tech Weekly and LBC. Martin has a new episode of The Global Lab about knowing what rhinos look like before you could watch a David Attenborough documentary about rhinos. And in the new Allusionist, I find out about why stepmothers are so evil, with the assistance of Aaron Mahnke from Lore (a podcast which will be right up many of your streets, I’ll wager).
Catch up on AMT319, in which questioneers have problems with mustard, flags and a dominatrix.
Plus: Olly is obedient to nobody and nothing, except cookbooks; getting-out-of-doing-the-housework schemes suck Helen right into a sub-dom situation; and we can all hope to see the return of the Martin the Sound Man On Ice show.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices) renowned theatre- and Disney-adorer Olly rejects Disney on Ice for not being theatrical enough; but we may come up with an ice show that does satisfy him.
••• AMT319 Child-Friendly Rating: 28%. Some swears.
Martin refers to Marilyn Manson, whose very name corrupts the youth. If you switch it off half an hour in, you will spare your innocent children the final question about a relationship with a dominatrix, which entails discussion of BDSM, sex and Adult Situations. •••
Costume designer Anie’s proof of Ice Cinderella’s dress colour.
My daughter’s school picked some of the students to sit the Mensa IQ test. The first we heard of this was when she received a letter saying she has a score of 159 and in the top 1% and she’s welcome to join. My daughter, who’s thirteen, is privately very pleased with herself but has no desire to tell anyone, likewise the wife and I have told no one apart from you right now in this email.
She enjoys school, is doing very well and has her path to university set in her sights and beyond. Now the three of us think it’s probably best to keep things low key and it’s just one tiny string to the bow, but answer me this: is there any time the Mensa bomb should be dropped eg gaining a place in 6th form or university? We suspect it could be a negative in the job market in future.
None of us have ever been Mensa members, so I defer to you readers:
i. When can you get the most mileage out of Mensa membership? I’m assuming when picking up people on Tinder.
ii. If you are a member, have you experienced negative side-effects? Eg the Sun describing you as a ‘boffin’ in an article about you?
iii. If you are an employer, would you think, “Ooh, a Mensa member? Top drawer!” or would you point and laugh at the boffin?
Answer Me This! Podcast 