Wonderful! - Wonderful! 113: Field of Necromancy

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

Griffin's favorite farming game! Rachel's favorite big screen! Griffin's favorite throat lozenge! Rachel's favorite memorial poem! Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Everything's all topsy-turvy, folks. Everything's all up and twisted around, isn't it? Cats and dogs are dogs and cats now they switched. The sun and the moon traded. Griffin is seated across from me, unfortunately getting most of my bad side, not my good side.

Oh, babe, you don't got a bad side. Only bad side of you is your,'re well i was gonna say the back of you when you leave me but some scientists might argue that your backside is actually a very good side that there's cool stuff back there that folks are big fans of we switch places switch microphones switched everything it's a freaky freaking friday over here folks we're having fun because it's our last episode before the the the holiday break that's right we're not going to give you an episode next week yeah because our episode would be launching on christmas day i believe and that's not right folks I'm not trying to get visited by three ghosts and neither

is my beloved bride that shit's super spooky yeah and I'm not wild about it by the way quick update uh this is for Rachel but I guess uh I guess friends of the family listening to this Henry likes kind of spooky stuff right and he's getting into like some Christmas stuff because it's the holidays coming up and he's about to go some Christmas stuff because it's the holidays coming up and he's about to go to Huntington and spend Christmas with his family. So he's into that. Hey, Christmas Carol, it's those two things. It's a spooky Christmas.

Yeah, that's true. Everyone's always like Nightmare Before Christmas. That's the spooky Christmas movie. I freaking forgot all about Christmas Carol. Yeah. Henry's all about it. We've watched the Mickey one and I guess he's watched the Muppet one now. He watched the Muppet one and i guess he's watched the muppet one now he watched the muppet one wow it's both this doesn't really have a big cone a big pickup

cone huh you kind of got to eat this microphone huh i don't is this what you've been suffering through i don't i don't eat it oh okay um hey do you have a small wonder i do what's that rallies rallies the roast beef restaurant? No. A lot of people are rallying this evening. Oh, my God, babe. I literally went to the restaurant rallies slash checkers. No. Of course that's what you're talking about, the rallies that are very good and important.

But my mind immediately went to rallies slash checkers. I think I called it a roast beef restaurant. That's inaccurate. They have many things. No, it's Ar have many things i was thinking of arby's um i've seen a lot of people on on twitter and facebook out in the world in the cold rallying and i just hey keep it up you're wonderful you're wonderful and you're crushing it uh i'm gonna say that new watchman show on hbo babe it's real good i think you might like it i think i'm gonna need you to remove that spoon from the mug oh yeah i don't want to get out you um uh it's really good. I think you might like it. I'm going to need you to remove that spoon from the mug. Oh yeah. I don't want to get out you. Um, uh, it's really good. It's good. I liked the

graphic novel when I read it when I was in college and was a, you know, a bit edgier than I am now. I had a bit more edge to me and it's just like a really good companion piece of that, that I do not think you actually need to know a lot about the thing. It's Damon Lindelof, do not think you actually need to know a lot about the thing it's damon lindelof right so it's the guy who did leftovers but also lost and it's got it's got big lost energy but like the goods the good stuff the like beginning of season two level lost stuff i'm like really really digging it can i ask what edgy or griffin was like he had the occasional clove cigarette and um you know you would go to the park and just look menacing in a corduroy jacket okay that's about as that's about as there thank you yeah it's about as hardcore as i got hey can i tell you about my first thing yes what is my first thing i have two

things my one of my things is a thing that i feel like is going to be harder to get you on board about so i'm going to do that first because i feel like i do second one usually i can lose attention first thing is a video game called stardew valley folks it's back it's better than ever you not talked about this i talked about animal crossing so maybe this is cheating but i do think stardew valley is uh its own sort of thing and i want to talk about why it is uh it is special to me this is a like a farm rpg life still farming uh very much a farming game animal crossing is not so much about farm you don't really have a farm you can like grow fruit trees and flowers and stuff like that but which is i

might call a farm okay it's a semantics difference i suppose uh but stardew valley is like you have a farm industry that you sort of uh brew up and it's an indie game that came out in i think 2016 uh and it has been a really really great game that i loved the first time i played it and uh they just released a big update for it this week so i'm gonna go back to it and check out all this this new stuff that came out but the reason i want to talk about stardew valley is because i think it's a really really kind of special thing. It is based on, first of all, it was made by a guy named Eric Barone, who mostly it was made by a single person, which is kind of remarkable because it's been sold several million times now. And it's in this farming genre that started in 1996. There was

a developer named Amkis that put out a super nintendo game called harvest moon you ever heard of that or anybody talk about that it was it was this uh life sim rpg where you inherited a farm from your grandfather in this like tight-knit community and you had to sort of ingratiate yourself to this community while like fixing up and starting this farm and that was such a novel idea back in 1996 where it was a role-playing game but instead of like you know dragons and mummies and stuff it was like hey start here's a farm go start it up and people like really fell in love with it and the series sort of uh took off uh after a while like feel the dreams a little bit huh you know i would uh i would give you that i would give you

that costner bought a bunch of farmland i I mean, he didn't end up farming successfully, but he did. He did mostly baseball stuff. Baseball players back from the dead. So that's and that's something. I mean, it's better than nothing. The farm was a failure. And nobody likes to talk about that in that movie. But he did not do a good job farming.

No, a terrible farmer. He did a good. He did good necromancy. Yeah, good medium. I think you can give him that. But he didn't produce the crops that he wanted to produce and in that sense he is a tremendous failure and nobody wants to talk about that they only talk about his dad but me i look at him i see dollars and cents you fucked up

kevin try again no don't because who knows what sort of grim specter you're gonna raise this time anyway uh it created this new genre right this farming rpg uh and people really liked it and they continued to make games to date they have made 26 different games in the harvest moon franchise it has changed names uh i think a couple times but it's still like this the same thing the problem is that uh they started to get bad they started to not be good anymore. And development changed hands and the teams that made it sort of changed. But there wasn't much competition.

There wasn't a whole lot of other people making these farming RPGs. People like myself who enjoy a good farming RPG life sim, we had nowhere to go. And Eric Barone was one of these people who was like, I miss Harvest Moon. I just graduated from game development school and haven't been able to get a job. I'm graduated from, you know, game development school and haven't been

able to get a job. I'm just going to make this game in this genre that nobody's making right now. And he did it and made the best one of them. What's like the first farming game that you like were into? I mean, I played Harvest Moon, I believe on Nintendo 64. There was basically one on every sort of Nintendo generation. And the last kind of like good one was out on GameCube. I had one for the Game Boy Advance called Friends of Mineral Town. That is like one of the best. And folks are like wild about that one.

I borrowed that from a theater friend named Bubba. He let me borrow his game tape of Friends of Mineral Town. And I played the hell out of it. Had a lot of fun with it, and it sort of set the stage for me to fall in love with Animal Crossing. We are less than 100 days out, people. Get fucking stoked. I just really like that Eric Barone, with some help,

but mostly just him working like 10 hours a day for five years, revived a video game genre single-handedly, and it's one that I really love and i think that it's like and this is sort of i don't know i think it's easy for a uh professional game critic which i am no longer one of those i suppose to sort of get up their own butt and be like it's all call of duty shoot shooting murder games which it's not obviously it's not but like i think it's important for weirder sort of game genres like this to thrive in a way because i like the message that that sends about what games are

viable and about what projects are worth like investing time and energy and resources and creativity into and this like nailed it like it is the perfect one of these games uh and not only that since it came out uh eric barone has been updating it with like a one of these games. And not only that, since it came out, Eric Barone has been updating it with like a bunch of stuff. So this new thing that just came out adds like dozens and dozens of new features and items and events and all kinds of big things. And it's free. And the game came out five years, it came out three years ago now. So it's like everybody who's bought it is probably going to buy it.

He's just updating it to be good. Can you play with other people? That was one of the things he added. I think it was like the fourth update to the game a couple years after it came out he added multiplayer he didn't have to do that right like the game had already sold millions and millions and millions of copies but i i think it's just i don't know it is a rare thing that is so uh admirably made and admirably like sustained and i i guess in practice like eric barone has fuck you money now at this point so uh it's it's maybe just a passion project keeping this thing going for him but it's it's it is wild how beefy this game is and continues to get uh when you know it already

was like really really great and i think that that's a special thing because it could have just been like oh now you can play as a man with a mustache they did add several new i believe facial hair options in this update but they added new pants as well and several different new dogs i'm very excited to explore all of it uh what is your first thing my first thing is jumbotrons the maximum fun thing or the actual physical big boy screen objects the big boy screen okay i do think it's funny that now we have talked about rallies and jumbotrons and you have assumed it was potentially the other thing the jumbotrons one i can be forgiven for the rallies one is unforgivable so i was thinking about this the other day. Yes. While we were watching hockey.

Oh, yeah. Because one of my... Don't tell everybody what I just did. Don't tell them what I've done, Rachel, please. Don't tell them what I've done, Rachel, please. I won't. I won't. You have to tell them what I've done.

You remember when Griffin made fun of me for using my phone as a coaster? Sweet retribution. Griffin found another coaster that is, granted, less expensive, but also ridiculous. And that is a sock he found on the ground. Actually, it just came off my foot. Oh, he just took it right off his foot? Well, I was making rings on my desk, and so I took my sock off to wipe it off, and then I put it over here on this thing. I was like, it's just going to make rings there.

So I took my sock off, used it as a coaster. I'm broken deeply inside uh i'm sorry i derailed it okay so i was thinking about jumbotrons because we were watching hockey the other day one of my favorite things after a player scores a goal is when the camera pans to them and you can see them looking up at the jumbotron and they're trying to watch their own replay. Yes, I love that too. That's so good. It's like everything in hockey moves so fast. And when you shoot at the net, you really have no idea whether it's going to go in. And when it does, I feel like everybody immediately rushes back to the bench so they can watch their goal again. It's such a, I mean, obviously like any

athlete who does a good job, I imagine wants to watch themselves do a good job. But hockey is so uniquely necessary that you do this because like people I don't know how anybody scores in hockey. And if they didn't have the loud, loud sirens telling you you've just scored, you would have no fucking idea. A lot of times you'll see players like raise their hands up in celebration because they assume it went in. Yeah. And that's not true at all. When they whip all the way around the back of the goal and just kind of scooch it in on the other side, there's no way they know that that actually went in or not. And so I did a little research into the history of the Jumbotron.

Is it the history of TVs, but just very big? Sort of. Oh, wow. Okay. So it makes sense, like the progression that got us to Jumbotron. So first, electric lighting made it possible to watch sports inside. And then after World War II, television coverage of sports began in earnest. By 1980s, team owners and stadium architects wanted to make games more like what fans had at home.

So you're like, well, you're watching the game at home and you can see the players close up. You know, you can see the pitcher and like you're very connected to who's batting and what people look like when they slide into a plate. And you get to a stadium and you can't see any of that. Yeah, that's true. I do catch myself watching the Jumbotron more than I actually watch the thing. So while Sony kind of popularized it, it was Mitsubishi in 1980 introduced the first large-scale video board called the Diamond Vision. Whoa. Which was demonstrated at the 1980 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Los Angeles.

league baseball all-star game in los angeles i have to watch that because i imagine it was like the opening of 2001 a space odyssey of just everybody like that motherfucking tv do you see that fucking thing oh my god i'm gonna barf or the screen was so bad that all the little baseball players look like mario just like jumping yeah It's really big. It is 16 pixels total. So that's not, it's not, it's not our best. So Sony actually created what they called the Jumbotron. And what made that unique was that it was more like a TV screen, like a big TV screen. Okay. And what's interesting.

So it first appeared at the World expo in Japan in 1985. Uh, and this was a fully digitized screen. And then kind of the next place it sprung up was at mega churches. So at the crystal cathedral in garden Grove, California, uh, it was 12 stories tall, this church. Oh, I thought you were going to say the Jumbotron was. No. And so kind of when you look at the early records of installations of Jumbotrons, this

is one of the first locations. At the time, the price ranged from $500,000 to $2.5 million, and it was estimated that there were 60 Jumbotrons nationwide. The standard size back then was 27 by 36 feet. wide. The standard size back then was 27 by 36 feet. And so pretty much every sports arena had this except for Wrigley Field. It wasn't until April 2015 that they finally got a Jumbotron. Always just gotta be. They did a huge renovation because that stadium is- Not- Chicago, I love you. It's not a great ball field. They did a huge renovation because that stadium is... Not... Chicago, I love you.

It's not a great ball field. Can you guess when Ridley Field was built? I'm going to say 1921. 1914. Yeah. Lord. Super old guy. It's beautiful.

It's great. But don't get me started on the... Let's just say the facilities where one might excuse oneself. I have never been to a game there. I've just seen a lot of drunk fans on the L after the game. I mean, that's its own kettle of fish. I wanted to talk about the video board at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium. I have seen this board.

It's a big boy. So remember I said 27 by 36 was the standard? 72 by 160. Feet? Inches? Yes. Feet? Feet.

Feet! Yeah. You thought it was inches? Feet, daggone. Well, in my defense, it couldn't possibly be feet. What the fuck? It weighs 1.2 million pounds. What? That's so much. Holy shit.

Oh my God. If I could send one object back in time to the 80s, it would be this thing. It would destroy the planet. Everybody would be on their huge cell phone and they'd look over and be like, what? This thing cost $40 million, which was more than the original cost of the building. Okay. Good investment, I'd say. So maybe you don't need one that big. I mean, it's tough to say when you see John Cena's big, powerful body slam a man to the ground on that TV and you feel the shockwaves from said slam and you see it on the big TV. Oh, I don't know.

It was it felt like 40 million worth to me. To me. There's a lot of other stuff to talk about related to Jumbotron that I'm not going to get into. There's a really good article from 2015 on SB Nation that I read a lot about. And it talks about all the little features that they do on Jumbotrons, like Kiss Cam, for example.

Oh, yeah. I'm not a huge fan of that. But I do like that there is a screen that lets me see close up what is happening. Because that means that no matter how bad my seats are, I can still see that concert. I can still see that. The concert thing is the big one for me.

We'll pass. I used to be able to get competitive about my spot at a big outdoor concert. Now I would much rather chill on a blanket with some drinks and some buds and just watch the big screens. That is way more my jam you mentioned uh jumbotrons and churches and it reminded me of the fairly i don't know

small to mid-range size southern baptist church that i grew up in uh when i was like 13 or 14 they added two like projector screens like you would have in like school just like roll down screens where they would put up like the the hymns like the lyrics for the hymns so that you didn't have to use their your hymnal and it led to just a full-blown meltdown for the like why some of the older uh patrons of the oh did they think it was an eyesore i think they thought that you you know it's like how people don't like the new math. What's it called? The Common Core math stuff now.

It's just like we had to use the book. Yeah. We had to flip through this 600 page book anytime it was singing time. You must also. Well, there was a lot of outrage about the Jumbotron at sporting events, too, because a lot of the players and coaches felt like it was really distracting because you know for a long time when it was like a new invention yeah sure you not look at this giant it's the big one the big tv

put fucking frazier up there let's go can i steal you away? Yes. Here's a personal message. Speaking of jumbotrons, this one's for Amanda, and it's from Patrick, who says, Amanda, thank you for all the love and excitement you have brought into my life this past year. From photo shoots of our cat to evening coffee and snacks, I love every minute of it. I can't wait to see all the places we want to go together from Phoenix to Toronto. I love you forever. Phoenix or Toronto. You get them

both. The hot, the cold, the spicy. Have you been to either of those cities? I've been to Phoenix. Done shows in Phoenix. They know me in Phoenix. Went to Phoenix. I've been to Toronto. I went to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. See, we know. Spicy, cheese and gravy.

Hot, cold, you know? Uh-huh. Both poles, you know? Yeah. No, good energy. Can I read the next message? Yes. It is for Steffi.

It is from Bree. To my big baby Steffi, the cutest and smartest girlfriend, thank you for the endless kitty cat pictures of Hobbes and the unboxing videos. I can't wait to put a ring on it and not just on Stardew. Cheers to watering our greens. I will now plant big smooches on your face. I love you and thank you for loving me too. Yours truly, big baby Bree.

Yeah, I mean, water your greens, but only until you build that ladder up to that wine game. It's all about that artisan wine. That's where the real money is. What is putting a ring on it in Stardew? Getting fucking married. You can get married in Stardew? Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't because I'm married in real life. And that's cheating, folks. Thank you. No one can tell me it's not. No one can tell me it's not because digital love is still love. Anyway, Jumbotrons for our show are going to be available to air during the first half of 2020. We're doing the drawing again because y'all are here for it. Starting, oh, Jesus, today.

No, wait. Yes. Wednesday, December 18th. Thatcember 18th that is today that is today you all can head to maximumfun.org slash jumbotron drawing to enter a drawing to purchase one of the limited jumbotron spots on wonderful this is how we have to do this because the demand is uh much much bigger than the supply so uh that that drawing closes on thursday january 2nd 2020 uh we're only accepting personal messages at this time, and the air date is estimated, not guaranteed.

But for all the details, go to MaximumFun.org slash Jumbotron Drawing. And if you have any questions, go ahead and email Daniel at MaximumFun.org. Reminder, it closes January 2nd. So if you're the kind of person that unplugs from Christmas through New Year's, go ahead and do that now. Just do it. Sign up for that drawing. Have you ever watched a movie so bad you just needed to talk to somebody about it?

Well, here at the Flophouse, we watch a bad movie and then talk about it. Yeah, you don't have to do anything. We'll watch it and we'll talk it. We do the hard work. Featuring the beautiful vocal talents of Dan McCoy, Stuart Wellington, and me, America's Rascal, Elliot Kalin.

New episodes every other Saturday at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts, dude. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Can I tell you about my second thing? Yes. This one's gonna,

you're gonna like this one. You're here for this one. Okay. Ricola. Am I, am I here for it it do you not like ricola i mean i like the product i don't like what you remember i don't like what you're doing but do you remember but do you yes yes i remember yes griffin the big horn yes the silly pants. Yes. I remember. He does it so loud. And it's like, why? Isn't it an avalanche danger?

Because his pipes are so cleared out from these sweet cough drops. Yeah, I think so too. I am glad you remember that commercial. I think about it sometimes and just laugh myself awake from the dream I was having about Ricola. Were you expecting we would talk about this commercial longer? self-awake from the dream I was having about Ricola. Were you expecting we would talk about this commercial longer? I, y'all know, I think from the Sudafed episode, which may have been the first episode of this show, how I feel about most over-the-counter remedies for things.

I'm a little suspicious, right? Or not suspicious, but like if I have a headache or something, I'll go pop a couple ibuprofen. But I'm not like doing that like, ah, this will fix it for sure. It's like, yeah, I'll take these and maybe it'll help. Maybe it won't. I don't know. It's sort of hit or miss for me. Sudafed, guaranteed a hit. It's going to be a success whenever I take it. It's going to do something to me. It'll make me healthier or it'll keep me up all night. It's going to do something. Ricola, I also hold with the same amount of reverence. If I have a cough, if I am congested in the chest, if I have a sore throat like I am,

I have one in my pocket right now. I'm not eating it until I'm done with this segment about Ricola, which is maybe ironic, but I don't want the sound of it rattling around my mouth on the microphone. I will say, unlike Sudafed, I believe that this cough drop really only holds back your symptoms while the cough drop is in your mouth. Yes, it is a stopgap measure. Yes. Absolutely. Do you think anyone says Ricola? No.

No one on earth has ever said it. My child mind operates like this. I don't want Hall's because Hall's has chemicals in it. I want Ricola. Oh, interesting. Because Ricola is... Do you think they're made out of like dandelions? It's just Swiss herbs, baby.

And that's health, isn't it? Not Hall's. Made in a lab somewhere. Ricola? These little brown, craggy, sort of turd-colored little lozenges? The more you say it, the weirder it's starting to sound in my

head ricola uh here's some fun facts about ricola it is a portmanteau or not a portmanteau it is they've taken letters from several different words uh company started in 1930 it was a confectioner's uh shop called uh and i'm gonna butcher this and i apologize apologize, Richterich and company Laufen, which you take the first two letters of those three words, Rie, Kol, La, that's where the name comes from. They were a confectioner back in the 30s, but in 1940, they started to put out this Swiss herbal sweet, which had a blend of 13 herbs and spices. No, just 13 herbs. Ooh, can I guess them? Do you have them in front of you? I do have them in front of me. It is the same recipe

except in America. America has a slightly different recipe, but let's see if you can guess. Well, obviously the main active ingredient in it is not, I guess, technically an herb. You know what it is? It's just menthol. Oh, okay. That's what gives it that effervescence that actually does

shit. The flavor comes from these 13 herbs. Let's see if you can guess some of them. Well, lemon's not an herb, right? No, it's not an herb. Most people are still trying to figure out if it's a fruit or a flower. Ginger? Is ginger one of them?

Can we confirm ginger? No. Okay. Some of these are wild. Wild, like? Like crazy? You've never heard of them wild, wild, like, like, like crazy. You will not, you've never heard of them. Oh, okay.

Um, mint. Uh, there is a type of mint in it. Can you guess which mint? No. Peppermint. Okay. I'm going to stop now. This isn't fun.

Uh, well, there's some, you know, there's some hits in here. Sage is a, an ingredient an ingredient time is an ingredient uh and then you get into sort of wilder ones like ladies mantle what i don't know but it must taste good because they put it in this whorehound of course i think that is where actually some of the flavors derived because whorehound candies were uh i think some derivative of this uh and then stuff like cow slip burn it yarrow marshmallow uh speedwell aka veronica huh veronica i'm veronica speedwell i like that yeah i like that a lot too uh so anyway in america we don't get all 13. We get seven of the original 13 with three new herbs in the mix, which are linden flowers, wild thyme, and hyssop. I don't know why. I guess thyme, they wanted to flavor blast it, I guess, for American taste palates.

And they're like, let's get that wild thyme in there. Ricola has six show gardens initzerland where you can go and learn about the special herbs and uh the power that they give you i would love to go to one one day get one just fresh off the tap uh i just really i like these things i get excited uh when i know that we have them when i'm feeling under the weather because i can put one in my mouth and they will stop me from coughing for a little bit i think I think that that's pretty great. Lemon Ricola, just okay. I would much rather prefer the brown craggy one.

And now to celebrate that I finished this segment and most of my speaking for this episode, I'm going to indulge. Farewell, everyone. So if Griffin doesn't say anything in the next few seconds, that means that he agrees with everything I'm saying. So I'm just going to say that Griffin is smelly. Hey. I don't like this. And he only likes olives. The smell is from my coaster.

Your sock coaster. Hey, what's your second thing? My second thing is a trip to the Poetry Corner. Hell yeah. Do you want me to do the song since you're busy with your... I am sucking on a Ricola. And also I want you to feel the dreadful weight of having to do the Poetry Corner theme song. Poetry. song. Holy shit. That was so good. Yeah. See, this is why my expectations of you are so high.

Well, now I have to start bringing poems to the show so that you can do that. I would love that. If I brought a poem to the show, it wouldn't be good. It wouldn't be a good because i don't think i have very good taste in poems you're a man with good taste in certain things in independent farming rpgs but not in poems the poet i am bringing this week is maxine kuman uh she was born that's not one of the spices in ricola it's actually k-U-M-I-N. So it might be cumin. Oh. I'm not sure which. She was born in Philadelphia in 1925.

Got her B.A. and M.A. from Radcliffe College. She is somebody I found because she is associated with the confessional poets because she was pals with them. So Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell. But she's not particularly a confessional poet herself. So she met Anne Sexton at the Boston Center for Adult Education. There was this like poetry workshop that they both were in at this adult learning center, basically. Even though she got started, you know, a little bit later in life,

her first book didn't come out until she was, well, I guess, almost 40. So not like, particularly late in life. But getting published was still a challenge. She gave an interview where she said it was commonplace to be told by an editor that he'd like to publish more of my poems, but he'd already published one by a woman that month. Jesus. She had a pretty great career, taught English at Tufts University and spent the last half of her life in

New Hampshire breeding horses. Who could ask for anything more? She won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1973 served as a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress and she's often compared to Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop so I wanted to read one of her poems so I wanted to give a little bit of a content warning before I read this poem it's a poem about loss

and specifically her friend, Anne Sexton, that I mentioned earlier that died by suicide. The poem is called How It Is. I'll drop in a timestamp here for after if that's not something you want to sit through. The poem ends at 37 minutes and 10 seconds, which is about a minute and a half from now if you want to skip ahead.

It's a very beautiful poem. I wouldn't read it typically. It's hard to read anything associated with the confessional poets because it was a pretty kind of a dark, dark heavy bunch. But I found this particular poem very lovely for anybody that's experiencing kind of loss.

I feel like she does it in a really beautiful way. Cool. This poem is called How It Is. Shall I say how it is in your clothes? A month after your death, I wear your blue jacket. The dog at the center of my life recognizes you've come to visit. He's ecstatic. In the left pocket, a hole. In the right, a parking ticket delivered up last August on Bay State Road. In my heart, a scatter like milkweed, a flinging from the pods of the soul. My skin presses your old outline. It is hot and dry inside. I think of the last day of your life, old friend, how I would unwind it, paste it together in a different collage. Back from the death car idling in the garage, back up the stairs, your praying hands unlaced, reassembling the bits

of bread and tuna fish into a ceremony of sandwich, running the whole movie backward to a space we could be easy in, a kitchen place with vodka and ice ice are words like living meat. Dear friend, you have excited crowds with your example. They swell like wine bags straining at your seams. I will be years gathering up our words, fishing out letters, snapshot stains, leaning my ribs against this durable cloth to put on the dumb blue blazer of your death that's one of the best poems i've ever heard that's really beautiful beautiful and so sad happy holidays you know i as i mentioned earlier i really like love the confessional poets and love um a lot of the poets around them but have

been hesitant to talk about them on this show because again as i mentioned a lot of the poets around them, but have been hesitant to talk about them on the show, because again, as I mentioned, a lot of dark material. But Maxine Kuhnman's poem isn't morose, particularly, you know, it's, it's more a recognition of what it's, it's like to be present in this time after you've lost somebody and kind of how your connection to them continues and how, I don't know, how you're forever changed by that. And I just felt like that poem was so beautiful and so vivid to me. Like I could like picture everything. I could picture that blazer. Yeah, absolutely. It's just that blazer. Yeah, absolutely. It's just an incredible poem.

Yeah, that was really nice. Thank you for reading that. Yeah. See, I wouldn't have found anything like that. Mine would have been some like... Like an E.E. Cummings? I would have bought one, but it would have been a riddle. And then you would have been like, sweetheart, that's not a poem.

You found a riddle and then you would have been like sweetheart that's not a poem you found a riddle spitting the recall out so i can read some submissions from our friends at home uh here's one that was sent in by max who says something i think is wonderful is when you buy a used pokemon cartridge and the previous owner leaves their save data on it it's exciting to see their collection nicknames my personal favorite their main party getting a glimpse into how someone else played feels like recommendations from a fellow fan i used to do this when we would rent games from blockbuster yeah you would get like save files off like somebody's like final fantasy 6 cart and be like oh that's the party you used wow you leveled them up very very high how did you do that i never thought about that

as a thing absolutely it was a thing. And then you would go and you would try and save your save file at the very bottom save file on the off chains that you would go back to Blockbuster and rent that exact cartridge again and finish up that game of Super Mario RPG or whatever. Can people still borrow video games?

I mean, Redbox, I think, is actually just now stopping their uh game rental service because it's all like digital uh i mean partially it's that but partially i think it's just like uh games are such a most games like most successful games are such a like long tail thing right like it doesn't make sense to rent destiny or something it doesn't make sense to rent stardew valley because you're probably going to be playing it for such a long time. Not only Cool Spot. Not only Cool Spot.

There was a service called Gamefly. I don't know if it's still. Oh, yeah. I remember that. Yeah, they had a lot of commercials. But theirs was pretty good because you could keep this stuff for as long as you wanted. And then I think if you wanted to buy it, you could get a discount for it. They had a lot of hooks like that.

It was all right. Here's another one from Frank who says, my wonderful thing is driving under a bridge when a train is going by overhead. Growing up, I was always told that driving under a train is extremely good luck. So whenever this happens to me, I get excited for a little burst

of good luck heading my way soon. That's so cool. I've never heard that. It's a good way to put a silver lining on what I think is a kind of a spooky thing. But I suppose this is a nice way of looking at it. I'll now change my frame of view. Thank you, Frank. My Frank of view. That could be a new segment.

Frank, you need to keep them coming. No, I don't want to put that kind of pressure on you, Frank. Hey, thanks to Bowen and Augustus for these for our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Do you have anything to say? Do you have anything to say for yourself? I wanted to thank MaximumFun.org for hosting our shows and all the other great shows. It is a perfect site to find excellent content every day of the week.

Yeah, it is. And we have other stuff at McElroy.family. We got new merch for the month of December. I forgot that there's a wonderful Christmas ornament. Oh, yeah. I didn't realize that until somebody tweeted about it, and then I thought, oh, hey, that's cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

We should get some of this stuff, huh? Yeah that out yeah i'll see i might be able to talk to some people uh-oh i can only talk like this now no no i've lost the lower register of my voice but there's the last episode of for us actually wait are going to have an episode up on New Year's Eve? That was fucking wild. We should. Yeah, we should. We'll do it. Counting down, baby. Here comes the big ball. Bye, everybody. Thank you. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

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