Wonderful! - Rachel's Special Loud Pretzels

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Griffin's favorite scary game series for big brave boys! Rachel's favorite flavor-enhancing mineral!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaTransgender Law Center: https://transgenderlawcenter.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. It's a show. It's a show. It's a show, period. It's a show. It's a show. It's a show, period. It's a show. The greatest show on earth.

It's a podcast show. And we talk about things we like that are good and that we are into. And this week we're coming at you fresh and revitalized off the back of a pretty fucking wild spring break, man. Yeah, we took last week off because we were in Disney World with our two children. Yes. Goofy says hi. Took in a lot of Disney characters. Yes.

A lot of rides, a lot of foods, a lot of swimming. Had a great time. They know what they're doing. Mid-April, apparently perfect time to go to Disney World. Weather, gorgeous. Not a drop of rain in the sky. Cool in the mornings, temperate in the afternoons. Goofy was there.

Goofy was there. We saw a lot of Pluto. Saw like Pluto three or four different times. I think he may have been following us. But I did keep feeding him corn chips. Which of course, as everyone knows, is what Pluto loves. Pluto's favorite food is corn chips.

And every time I did it, it sounded like there was a man inside of him saying, stop, stop it. Stop it. Stop putting corn chips in the mouth cavity, which I thought was like weird, but Disney magic. I don't know how Disney characters work that when when they sign something they put it on their nose yes uh and i've spent

a lot of time thinking about that and what that means and how that works yeah yeah it's a mystery uh-huh um do you have small wonders um i am going to say the kind of unselfconscious pride that our son had after um riding several star wars rides at hollywood studios yes uh he is a little bit fearful when it comes to rides it's not unusual for a six-year-old i certainly was uh and he took on two new rides three new rides three yeah he took on all oh yeah all the star wars as well star tours which surprisingly i would say most intense of the three uh star based rides for sure and then he would get off the ride and then he would just loudly proclaim to anybody uh that was nearby that he was six yeah uh and then how much he uh achieved on the ride in particular for uh smugglers run

millennium falcon smugglers run is basically an interactive sort of almost arcade game ride where you and five other people like push buttons push buttons and steer steer the ship and you get a score at the end uh his first time around he got hot shot was his rating so he kept going around saying like i'm a hot shot i'm hot shot and then the second time around he did even better he got marauder which is like the next to best score and he would just shout at shout at kylo ren on the rise of the resistance ride like do not mess with me i'm a marauder and i'm six years old it was really really good yeah um i'm gonna say uh my new sort of setup here we got some new friends in the office uh two new friends dual monitor setup i originally had a widescreen monitor i think it was 37 inches. Each of these screens is 27 for a combined total of

54 inches of virtual working space. It's got a lot of, it's got like arms and levers. It's got arms and levers. I can twist it. I can make that horizontal vertical if I wanted to. Isn't that messed up? I don't know why I would do that. Oh, like you could flip it? I could flip it. I could

spin those. I could do fidget tricks with it. I could do whatever I want. i'm a god in this at this at this desk thank you max fun donors for supporting this upgrade yeah it's uh it's it's gonna solve a lot of streaming based hiccup issues for me i'm very excited about not a lot of uh software works good with a big, big, big, wide monitor. But two monitors? Now we're cooking with real gamer gas. I also got a new gamer mouse. It glows in rainbow LED colors, which I don't love.

Can you not see it? I do have my feet up on the desk. No, I see it now. I guess I don't understand what the purpose of a gamer mouse is. Well, for games, the buttons shoot the guns harder. Oh. I go first this week. Okay. Speaking of gaming and being a gamer, I'm going to talk about a game series that has been on my mind a lot lately and my whole life kind of.

It's Resident Evil. Resident Evil is a scary game series for big boys, boys big brave boys i don't know anything about this like i know the title because i have heard it yes that is all i know okay well uh i have a i have some info here it's a a very long running series of zombie based action horror games from capcom which is one of the sort of one of the older and more prolific developers on Earth. It first launched with the original Resident Evil called Biohazard in Japan on the PlayStation 1 back in 1996. And it was a huge smash hit success, garnered a lot of critical acclaim, and it sold 4 million copies in its first year on the market,

which back then was a whole, whole lot. It also, more notably, scared the ever-loving shit out of 10-year-old Griffin McRoy and made me very afraid of zombies and darkness in general for, I would say, several years. We got a PlayStation for Christmas in 1997 and got three games along with it, the first of which was Final Fantasy VII, one of my favorite games of all time, changed my life.

And then there was Blood Omen Legacy of Kain, which was also pretty mature. I mean, it was rated M for mature, too scary for me to see. And then there was Resident Evil, which nothing could really prepare my 10-year-old mind for seeing a zombie, its face dripping with gore in three dimensions. Now, is this something that your parents knew that you were witnessing? I don't think they really were prepared.

I do not think they really were prepared. I do not think they were ready for it. Because I remember watching my brothers play Resident Evil Christmas morning and me seeing this and going like, what on no way? Because it was sort of the first 3D game that we had, because Super Nintendo can't generate these kinds of graphics. It was like it crossed some threshold of terror in my mind.

It really did scare the shit out of me. I remember for a long time I was like afraid to be on the second floor of our house alone, like by myself. Yeah. But my bedtime was first. So I remember there was a long stretch of time where I would just sit at the top of the stairs waiting for someone else to come to bed and then I would scurry off to bed and hop in like I'd been there the whole time

because I was so afraid of these virtual zombies. And I would be for a very long time, really until we got Resident Evil 2 a couple years later and I forced myself to play through it as like immersion therapy which worked yeah when it did um it was a rough ride but i got to the end of it now i can't imagine that approach now as a parent to be like oh are you scared of this well buckle up you're gonna do nothing but this. This was not sanctioned by my parents. It's not like my parents were like,

oh, you sneak in some Resident Evil, huh? We'll smoke a whole pack of Resident Evils. So the original Resident Evil was at the forefront of a whole new genre called survival horror, which is still a thing today. And there have been dozens, if not hundreds of games sort of in that milieu. And there have been dozens, if not hundreds of games sort of in that milieu. And what made that genre special and what still makes it special is that it had less

of an emphasis on just like blasting your way through hordes of monsters. And instead, it was more about like sort of shrewd resource management and making sure that you didn't, you know, expend too many bullets in one section. And then on the next one, like you're, you have no ammo and you're just boned. And that was sort of revolutionary because all of a sudden, like this game could scare you, not from gore or monsters or jump scares, but rather from sort of establishing this constant tension of almost being out of, you know, ammo or healing items or whatever. And that there have been, I think, eight of these games in like the main series. And that sort of balance has shifted back and forth. But but really, it it is sort of unreproducible, I think. I don't get scared by games where a monster is chasing you.

I get scared in games where it's like, oh shit, my knife just broke and now I don't have a knife anymore. Yeah. I have a very sort of mathematical approach to it and it works for me. for me um all of the games have also a very sort of elegant power curve to them where you start out the game and you're just an unarmed toddler you know wandering around the streets of the zombie apocalypse and then you're really a toddler no i mean that would be wild if you sort of went you know birth of babies yeah muppet baby zombie uh but then by the end of the game you have like you know fucking two rocket launchers on each shoulder and you're just running around. It's very it's weirdly empowering, which 10 year old me, I don't think appreciated the first time that I played it.

Also, for all of their sort of gore and scares, Resident Evil games are also like profoundly dumb and super campy uh particularly the original resident evil i sent you a video i'm not sure if you watched it i did that featured um some of the worst writing and voice acting in video games or really all media that's what when i watched it i was anticipating that it would just be bad performances, but the writing was also terrible. Bad performances, pacing, writing, like really nonsense stuff. I'm going to actually, if we could play a clip from that video, just so people could get like a little cross section of what kind of performance we are talking about here. Because I played this game a long time ago, and even now, watching this video,

I was appalled at some of the things that were said in this video game. I have been looking around for clues. Okay, I'll go to the other house and see if I can find any clues. Will you do that? How about going down to check by yourself? I have a rope here. Will you do that? How about going down to check by yourself? I have a rope here. Oh, do you? Well, then I'll try to go down using the rope.

Whoa! This hall is dangerous. There must be a back door somewhere. What is it? Blood. I hope this is not Chris's blood. I can treat you, except for your major injury. Would you like me to?

Yes. Please do something for me, temporarily. Oh, no. You must be kidding. After we've come all the way here. Ladies first. Go first, Jill. But Chris.

Give me a chance to play nice guy. It's funny. I'm not like a big fan of zombie media now. Really, neither of us are. We watched Walking Dead for a while, but the shine kind of came off that apple. Yeah. But it's kind of undeniable that when Resident Evil came out in 1996, like the zombie genre across all mediums was pretty dead. It was pretty quiet.

But it almost single-handedly like revitalized the whole thing. And that's where you get a lot of the bigger name zombie stuff that came out of it. It's also interesting because the game's director, the series' longtime director, Shinji Mikami, he expected this game to tank. They were projecting that it was gonna sell like 200,000 copies and be like a hit for a niche audience because they didn't expect people to enjoy playing a scary game. Yeah.

But horror as a genre is like a different beast now than it was in 1996 but like even back then it wasn't like a particularly broad mainstream appeal thing yeah but this game you know kind of proved that a scary game could could find huge success uh and it continues to and they keep on making the things uh also capcom has been remaking some of the older resident evil games uh and they have been wildly really really good like oh uh across the board like picture perfect games uh i've been playing resident evil before it's up on my pc monitor right now uh it came out i think a couple weeks ago and it's my game of the year with a bullet like by far it is really really really fun and good and um you feel

comfortable saying the game of the year in april of 2023 i said so far i mean fucking new zelda game comes out in like two and a half weeks i think and so that's probably gonna probably gonna bump it a little bit but we'll see i'm i'm really uh i'm really enjoying it and it has made me realize i have a you know a complicated history with this series but i also i it is the same way that uh you mentioned henry like riding those scary rides and feeling very gratified and very confident. There is something about sort of, you know, grabbing your courage like that and realizing like, I can do this, that, you know, 12-year-old Griffin felt when he beat Resident Evil 2 for the first time. And, you know, I'm not

12 years old or scared by video games as much anymore but uh i still definitely feel that way when i when i play a good one of these so yeah that's resident evil and now and babe you're ready now for it oh yeah that's all that's all i need stardew valley is a great sort of gateway i think to resident evil there's a lot of similarities. Uh-huh, farming. You know how- Is there farming? There are herbs. Okay. You know how sometimes in Stardew Valley, you'll be going through the mines and you'll have to fight like a ghost or a mummy?

Yeah. Okay. Well, zombies are, what is a mummy if not a wrapped up zombie? Think about that. Yeah, that's good. Think about that. More guns than Stardew.

I will grant you that. In general, there's more guns in Resident Evil than in Stardew. Yeah. But aside from that one difference, they're basically the same exact game. Okay. Can I steal you away? Yeah. Hi, I'm Jackie Cation.

Hello, I'm Lori Kilmerton. We do a podcast called The Jackie and Lori Show, and you could listen to it anytime you want it because there's hundreds of episodes. Yeah, I mean, we've been doing comedy forever, and we should both quit. So why don't you listen to us before we leave this not only terrible business, but this awful world. And find out why we can't. Because we love it so.

Jackie and Lori Show, every week here on MaximumFun.org. here on MaximumFun.org. I'm sure you've noticed how giant corporations are controlling more and more about what we consume, whether it's our food, our news, or even the shows we enjoy. The Greatest Generation is a show that stands up to Big Star Trek and says no, we can laugh about costumes that fit too tightly in the groin area. We can make a star

trek podcast that's basically only about that the greatest generation the show for free and independent thinkers about star trek and the groins of different costumes reviewing every episode in order so subscribe to the greatest generation on maximumfun.org you'll be doing your part in telling the star trek Industrial Complex that they can't control your mind. So, my thing this week. Yes? Is, it resolves maybe a cliffhanger.

Loyal listeners will remember, in 2019, I talked about umami as a wonderful thing. Yes. I'm so excited. This week. Sour? Salt. Oh, man. I had like a one in five chance of getting that right.

Are you going to talk about sour someday? I feel like we have maybe even talked about sour. At this rate. So let's see. Last time I, it's 2019. So every four years. So four years from now, maybe sour. Okay, cool.

Maybe sweet. Maybe? Probably not sweet though. Probably not sweet. Everybody already knows about sweet. But salty, that's new. Tell me about salty. So I was thinking about this because when we were at disney yes we spent most of our afternoons

at the pool at our hotel and one particular pool trip i was proud of myself because i brought veggie straws down to the pool yes and i was thinking to myself about how salty snacks are so great by the pool side by the poolside. By the pool. That's so true. Don't give me anything sweet. Don't give me anything sour or umami. There's something about being wet and eating salt that feels right. Uh-huh.

Like your body wants it, but wants both of them. Uh-huh. And then our last day at Disney, we were heading towards kind of a late lunch and we got those soft pretzels oh my gosh i will also say at home i have a particular kind of loud pretzel that i like to eat that's what i call them because they do produce i would say jet engine decibel levels uh and i think part of the reason i like them is because they're like real salty it's so loud. Like there's no doubt about you're eating

a pretzel when you're eating these pretzels. It's like a sourdough pretzel. It's like the thickness of my wrist. And every time you bite into it, it's almost like it's like saying like pretzel. So I didn't

really know a lot about salt. I knew there were different kinds of salt i know that sometimes salt can be kind of like a fancy thing yeah you know that like makes the dish seem fancier uh do you mean sodium chloride oh don't get ahead of me griffin i'm kind of a science nut i'm actually not planning on really talking about the science very much. So thank you. Well, I'll do that part. Okay. So most of the salt we eat is evaporated from saltwater solutions.

So like seawater. Yeah. I watched a fascinating documentary in Japan of like people who make like artisanal salt on like big big sheets and it's very expensive because it seems like a not efficient way it's like a huge like mile long table will get you like one shaker fall um some types of salt are directly mined. And then there's like the way the water is evaporated affects the crystal quality, the shape, the minerality. Yeah. And then like the light hollow flakes of salt are produced through like solar evaporation in open containers. Yes. Yes.

So there's kind of two sorts of salts. There's cooking salt and then there's finishing salt. I love finishing. Finishing salt is like when you're a grown up and you buy your first container of like that good, like rock salt and you just sprinkle that on top of a steak or something. Man, that makes you feel good. Well, I'm talking about like a real,

like a flaky salt that you might put on like a chocolate chip cookie. Oh, that's great too. So table salt is mostly what you find in salt shakers. I read an article at Bon Appetit 2021 that talks about how they don't recommend salt shakers because it's so easy to over salt and table salt in particular is like super fine.

So we got one of those little salt bowls now by the counter, which makes me feel like a real chef. Yeah, except you get salt on your fingers when you do that. True. I don't like that. Really?

Because then it's like, well, what am I supposed to do with this salt? I mean, heads up, you already have salt on your fingers. Okay, but you understand. That's very cute. But you know there's a difference, right? Thank you.

I know it's cute. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for saying that. It's not like I have grains of salt on my fingers. If I did that every time I scratched my eye, I would be in shrieking pain. Thank you for saying it was cute. It was cute.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Are you going to keep reading your notes? Kosher salt, which I don't really understand or know anything about. No shellfish in it. It comes from ocean water

that shellfish did not swim in. It's not necessarily kosher, but it got its name from its use in the koshering process okay don't know what that means so i think it's not like the salt itself is kosher it's like when when they are making something kosher this is the salt that is involved okay um bonetit recommends a number of different kinds of kosher salts, which I'm not really going to go into. Sponsor us, salt companies, if you want to. If you want to get that press. They mentioned Diamond, Crystal, and Morton are the most common brands in the U.S. and are heavily processed.

So water is injected into underground deposits to dissolve the salt. And then that brine is refined for purity and the water is injected into underground deposits to dissolve the salt and then that brine is refined for purity and the water is evaporated but if you use one of their fancier ones they say it's less refined and more flavorful i only use japanese sun-dried flake salt no harsh chemicals for me things aside from the salt which which is i I guess, a pretty harsh chemical, but it tastes fantastic, so I'm okay with that one. I already mentioned the flaky sea salt. The things I didn't really know anything about,

so there's black salt, which is apparently super flavorful. Ooh. I don't know that I need salt to be saltier. Well, it's supposed to have- Um a like a eggy sulfuric aroma. Okay. And it not only enhances flavor, but it's like an essential ingredient in different spices, like Indian spices. Okay.

And then Himalayan pink salt again didn't know anything about this most of it comes from pakistan um there's no evidence supporting any claims that it's healthier cleaner um but it's pretty it does look cool uh so here's the thing i never really understood that i was particularly interested in. You know, like salt makes everything taste better. Yes. Like how a lot of times when you're cooking and you're not getting a lot of flavor, they say to add salt. Or if you watch a cooking show and then the judges are always like, uh, did you season this?

And if they're like, no, it's like a big thing. I didn't really understand why salt made everything taste better other than obviously salty is a flavor and that's good yeah uh but it actually draws out water uh which can either you know enhance the existing flavor or uh it makes room for other liquid ingredients like like vinegar without the risk of being like soggy or diluted so they suggest for example like if you're gonna make uh like a vegetable side um add salt but then let it sit so like add salt, but then let it sit. So like add salt and let it sit for eight to 10 minutes to draw out some of the water before you cook it. And that'll like make the flavor that much better.

Okay. So I thought that was interesting. It makes sense when you think about it, like everything has kind of an inherent flavor, but it also has a lot of water. And if you add salt, it will draw out some of the water and you'll get more of the flavor. I like that. And the flavor. I like that.

And the water. I like that. Bon Appetit also had some suggestions on things to add salt to that I wouldn't necessarily think about. So they mentioned like, you know, chocolate ice cream, which wasn't super surprising, or cocktails, which, you know, I love. I love a salt rim. You love a salty cocktail. Around a cocktail. Also, pancakes with maple syrup, which I thought was interesting for salt.

S'mores, melon, pineapple, or mango, which I don't usually think about. Lemonade, which I thought was an interesting idea. They also say, like, if you're making like- Salty lemonade? Yeah, I guess apparently, you know, it makes like the sweet sweeter and the sour sour. But those two flavors are, I don't need a beverage that contains intense all flavor,

like intensity of every flavor. Yeah, I mean, I have never done this. So I don't really know if it's a game changer or not. They also said like the top of pies and cakes to add salt to. Apple cider is another one they mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. I just thought that was, I don't know.

I think there are a lot of reasons that you can crave salty food, and some of them are kind of like dangerous reasons that you should talk to a doctor about like for example like if you're dehydrated you're more likely to create crave salt oh that's interesting so yeah so if you are somebody who like perpetually craves salt which i think maybe i am i should probably you know look into the reasons behind that um but think you'll find it. But I just think it's such a magical thing that pretty much any dish you make, you add salt and it is probably going to taste better.

Yeah. That's cool. I would say you are the salt of the earth. Okay. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I think that's from the Bible.

Okay. So it's probably good. It's from the Bible. It's probably good. It's probably good. I think it's one of the sermons on the mount. Okay. Don't hide probably good. It's from the Bible. It's probably good. It's probably good. I think it's one of the sermons on the mount. Okay. Don't hide your light under a bushel and what have you.

Oh, is that from the Bible? I just thought that was like a folksy thing that you and your family said. No. That me and my family? Yeah. You thought that me and my family came up? That me and my family? Well, no.

I thought it was like, I mean, I just thought it was. I mean, it's a huge praise. Huge praise. Because the J-Man himself, I think, came up with that. So, like, if you're saying, like, you thought we came up with that, that's huge for us. Thank you for listening to Wonderful. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. I'm going to link to that in the episode description.

Hey, if you live in Denver or San Jose, you should come out and see My Brother, My Brother and Me or The Adventure Zone, which is only going to be in San Jose. We're going to be playing there later this week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Coming at you. Before we go any further, though,

we should return to a segment. Oh my goodness, you're so right. In a previous episode who's to say what episode we talked about returning to listener submissions you're right here we go uh which you can send in your brief uh wonderful thing to wonderful podcast at gmail.com that's right and maybe we'll read it on the show like this one. Galen said, lactose pills. I was in denial of my lactose intolerance for like forever because of my deep love of the cheeses. But now I eat cheese like a mouse monster

and just pop a chewable pill before and have a great time. Really not sure if this is the right way to tell you about this, but there you are. This is the only way to tell us about this. This is something that we should both try. I think, specifically me, This is the only way to tell us about this. This is something that we should both try. I think, but specifically me, and you can share in them, should wear a bandolier of chewable lactose pills that I can just, I don't even think about it. I limit like straight milk.

I don't drink milkshakes anymore. I don't eat dairy ice cream. But if I have like a charcuterie board in front of me, that's different in my mind. Yeah, you have a real blind spot to cheese. Like we were in Florida and we were talking about ordering pizza and you turned to me and you said, do you like deep dish pizza?

And I was like, that is a lot of cheese, sir. It's so much cheese. And we declined on that. But if we had had a happy- One of these incredible, my incredible lactose pill bandolier would not be an issue. Laura says, my wonderful thing lately

is prints in concrete. I pass a set of bird prints on, footprints on my way to work and it always feels like a joyful little message from the past oh that's cool have you ever had the the good fortune of doing this uh vandalizing of happening upon wet concrete and accidentally leaving a mark no yeah because i'm afraid i'll get like sucked in to it and be entombed. And then like neighborhood kids would like be playing hopscotch over my skeleton and not even know about it.

That's like my worst fear. Yeah, natural. Totally natural fear. I do like that celebrity like handprints and stuff. Yeah. They have that in front of their sort of recreation of the man's theater in Hollywood Studios at Disney World. And I gotta say, I popped my hand into John Travolta's hand cavities.

Perfect thing. And I don't know what that means, but it's important, I think. I think it's meaningful, deeply. Wonderfulpodcasts.gmail.com. Send in your submissions, please. It's so full of fucking spam and garbage. We need more signal

to help the signal-to- noise ratio reach a level of usability that is, I would say, sort of baseline for any email. Yeah, and just two to three sentences. Yeah, not a whole, we don't need your whole life story. I eat laxos pills, so I don't fart so bad. Like, that's great. That is not what the listener said. It's not what Galen said, but it was like. like that's great be sure that is not

what the listener said it's not what Galen said but it was like anyway all that stuff I already said about Bowen and Augustus and the shows

coming up macroymerch.com we got a bunch of great fun stuff on there you can go to the macroy.family check out all of our shows go to maximumfun.org

check out all the shows there and then we're gonna be coming at you hot and heavy with a new episode next week so don't touch that dial it's got jam on it keep it locked 93.1 The show's there. And then we're going to be coming at you hot and heavy with a new episode next week. So don't touch that dial. It's got jam on it.

Keep it locked. 93.1, the wonderful FM for all the great oldies, country, hip-hop, techno music that you crave. Yeah. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.