Wonderful! - Wonderful! 117: This is Bras

Episode Date: January 22, 2020

Rachel's favorite new Americana musician! Griffin's favorite folk game! Rachel's favorite communal self-care! Griffin's favorite sky cookie! 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. Oh, hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. My antly stinkers, though. Ooh! Ooh! Ant we stinkers? What's the name of this character?

Stinker Rick. Well, see, that doesn't really sound like a stinker name. Ooh! Rick can be a stinker. You know what? You know what your name should be? What? Dubly. Dubly? Dubly. Why? I don't know. It sounds like a stinker. Dubly? Yeah.

D-U-B-L-E-Y sounds like a stinker? Yeah, it sounds like a real stinker. I guess if I can take that, all the Dubly, Dubly's, not Dudley? No. Dubly. Dubly. That's not a name, babe. Oh, I didn't want anyone to feel offended.

And this is exactly what's wrong with this freaking PC culture. George Carlin was so right. He's like, oh, these days all the teenagers are making up seven names you can't say on podcasts can't say kevin you can't say rebecca how good is my george carlin by the way oh incredible it's a fucking slam dunk uh-huh it is he would be proud if he is he alive no one is quite sure no pretty sure no one knows for sure anyway do you have any small this is wonderful as a podcast where we talk about good stuff do you have any small wonders and this is a segment where we talk about things that are just pretty good i wanted to say the

just the surprising heartwarming nature of the show the circle on Netflix. I was also going to bring The Circle as my small wonder. I felt weird about endorsing this show when we started watching it. I know, I know. Because it seemed extremely trashy. Yeah, very suspect from episode one. But it's a very wholesome show that smacks of solitary, a show that I vociferously sort of like to talk

about uh a reality show in which people are locked away in little uh pods and forced to compete in challenges but they never actually meet each other that's what the circle is except it's social media episode one not great not great episode two episode. Wait a minute. Okay. Hey, what's going on here? Episode four. Oh. It's just a show that it ends up being surprisingly super wholesome. And that's my shit.

I love it when a show can make that turn. Yeah. You can sit down. You can watch this with your mom. You could watch it with your grandma, I think. I don't know. There's a lot of lewd language and a lot of blue concepts in it well yeah i guess so there's a lot of uh pubic bones just sort of out there well that's what the circle is it's your it's that's what they call the pubic bone region

because it kind of forms a circle if you think about it uh-huh do you have a first big wonder that you want to start us off with i do yes okay what do you got uh it is a music artist oh yes and her name is yola yola yeah i'm sure people do that to her ah shit you're probably right i actually just discovered her today um every once in a while i and i know you do this too i will check the tiny desk concerts yes just to see who's hip with the kids i don't know that that's a necessarily great cross-section of the little twee npr like concert studio is like really a great representation well and when i say kids i mean people under 40 but over 30 okay you know so those aren't kids at all and you know that some of those are boomers i think technically um no no you almost got me there maybe slid that one

past me i don't think so sir uh yola had her first full album come out just in february 2019 so just almost exactly a year ago uh it's called walk through fire and she put that out on dan our box label why does that name sound familiar he's from the black keys okay and he's also like a producer of a bunch of different artists okay yes um i had to look him up too because i was like that name does sound familiar uh he's from or uh yola's from bristol england uh and she's got like a real like country music inspiration kind of behind her stuff like if you listen to some of her music you'll instantly make that like dolly parton comparison yeah and she cites that like as one of her primary influences.

Her mother happened to have like a full collection of like records from like old like country superstars. And so it just really got her interested in the music. But she didn't really get started out that way. She was a backing singer for a lot of different bands, including Massive Attack and the Chemical Brothers and Iggy Azalea. And so she kind of, like a lot of artists, just got her start kind of standing behind other artists and kind of singing the same thing as multiple other people

until she really kind of got the confidence to go out on her own. Her first EP came out in 2016. And then it wasn't until 2019, as I mentioned that she released that album, Walk Through Fire, and I wanted to play the song, It Ain't Easier. Still everyone's falling in love Everyone's falling in love But it ain't easier There's something interesting about her sound which feels very Americana but then like modernized a little bit.

It's wild. You could have sent this to me and like said it was from any time period. And I really would have believed you. Because it really it does have that like that Dolly Dolly Parton, like of country-western narrative songstress sort of thing happening, but through, like, a soulful lens that just completely obscures, like, the actual area that it hails from. Yeah, so there's a review in Rolling Stone of her album, and they say it is a, quote,

meticulously crafted love letter to 20th century American pop that fuses a half dozen or so genres, including early 70s, country soul, singer-songwriter, pop music, smooth R&B, 60s, contrapolitan, which I didn't realize was a thing. Contrapolitan? Contrapolitan. Like country metropolitan, I guess. We got to listen to Cocaine and and rhinestones to understand what any of this is about um and so she was nominated for a whole bunch of grammys for this upcoming grammy award she was nominated for best new artist best americana album best american roots performance

and best american roots song hell yeah uh so she i mean she's definitely kind of made her way here. And I guess she'd be 37, be 37 this year. So, yeah. So if you are interested in her music and then also want to check out the Tiny Desk performance that was January 17th, she is incredible. It's very exciting to like see somebody who's kind of not afraid to be exactly who they are and kind of live their interests. She talked about how doing backing vocals became something that she just got coaxed into doing all the time. And so she said now she's at the point where she shows up places and people just kind of assume that she's doing backing vocals. And so she's still trying to kind of figure out kind of what it means to be a solo artist.

But I feel like it's exciting to think about where she might go next. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I'm glad you turned me on to her. Yeah, it's cool stuff. I listened to a bunch of other stuff today, yeah. Can I talk about my first thing?

Yes. My first thing you should not Google. Don't Google my first thing. My first thing is a game. A folk game that you play with another person Don't Google my first thing. My first thing is a game. Okay. A folk game that you play with another person that I have always called slap wrestling. I have only known it to be called slap wrestling.

And I promise it's not nearly, if you don't know what I'm talking about. I don't think I do. It's not nearly as violent as it sounds. It is impossible to like Google it though, because I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't think I do. It's not nearly as violent as it sounds. It is impossible to like Google it though, because I don't actually think this game has a proper name. But there were lots of like different results whenever I like search sort of the rules of it

that came up of lots of different names, including standoff, I found, and simply push hands is another name for it. If you Google slap wrestling, the first million results are just videos of huge Russian dudes slapping the shit out of each other. Is this the game that we played in new Orleans? Probably.

It sounds like the kind of game that I would want to play while we're in new Orleans and are hanging out with our friends in the street and have nothing else to do and have had a few drinks. Is this where you stand like hand to hand with somebody? So the rules of slap wrestling, which is what I will call it for lack of an official name, is that you stand about a foot or two away from each other, sort of facing one another, hands up, palms facing each other. one another hands up palms facing each other the uh the rules are if you move your feet you're out and you have to try and hit the other person's hands if you hit him anywhere else you are out because that's aggressive now you're fighting now it's a hand fight and we don't like hand fights around here we like slap wrestling uh you got to hit hands with the other person try and make them lose their balance and fall down or when they you know push their hands towards you got to hit hands with the other person, try and make them lose their balance and fall down. Or when they, you know, push their hands towards you trying to knock you down, you sort of

move your hands back so that their momentum carries them straight forward. You have pictures of us playing this game in New Orleans. Like, I feel like you've got a nice camera. And so you took a bunch of pictures of us playing slap wrestling. Yes, we did. Now I remember doing this. The reason I had a hard time remembering is that I've played this game so many times i've never seen it until i we played it that time this is this is not bullshit this is like i uh i was to sort of chart my interest in it like i learned

about it when i was pretty young like in middle school or so when i was in a play with like the marshall university kids sometimes the college would like cast kids for kid roles in their college like theater productions and so all hanging out with those older kids I learned about slap wrestling and tried to partake I was very weak but my center of gravity was so low that I made quite a name for myself on the slap wrestling and it just seems like the if it sounds like violent and aggressive like then i'm not describing it correctly because it's not yeah if if you suffer a lot of people have played it where you do like hands over other hands and you like well that's yeah that's a that's another

different game that will show up when you look up slap wrestling that's like uh red hands or it's like waist level and you're like kind of trying to like slap each other's hands that's not what it is it's all about making the other person lose their balance yeah uh that's it um and so like it is the perfect game to play when you have other people there and you don't have any like props you don't have any you know balls or frisbees or like any other sort of like game stuff to play with like this is a game you don't need anything you know balls or frisbees or like any other sort of like game stuff to play with like this is a game you don't need anything to play except another person and like an area that you can you know safely fall down in because i've also been in intense matches where first person

to lose their move their feet is out and so both people will just start falling backwards and instead of moving their feet they just fucking dead ass plank drop straight back can you really play it with somebody of a particularly different height yeah sure because i feel like i've only really ever played it with people that are close to my height uh yeah no i mean you can that the the balance of it no pun intended is like the balance right and so i really was you know a skinny 13 year old kid playing against college students and they would try and hit my hands and like i would just move them and they would fall over uh yeah it's there is a great equalizer in slap wrestling and i because it is like the perfect game to play when you have like downtime with nothing else to do and nothing really to like

play with backstage at shows like with the rest of my like contemporary theater friends like growing up we would play it constantly we would constantly slap wrestle uh i remember me and justin turned our co-workers at joystick onto it and then at like shows like i remember very fondly like waiting for trains at 1e3 and just like every time we were at a train station we just slap russell real quick and knock out a couple rounds uh it is it is so fun and uh i it's also kind of a great ice breaker game like playing it with those joystick guys i remember like feeling more close to them because you kind of well one you're getting like in the person's like personal space in a very like sort of harmless uh gamey way but also you you're not just getting in their personal space you're getting like in the person's like personal space in a very like sort of harmless uh gamey way but also you you're not just getting in their personal space you're getting in their fucking head yeah no that's much better than like okay uh say your name and an animal that you would

be if you were an animal yeah and i don't like those games no i don't have the kind of free time where i just didn't just sort of chilling with nothing to do and there's other people around i feel like honestly since and then i'm gonna sound like you know banksy but since cell phones maybe now i don't have as much of a reason to slap wrestle when there's nothing else to do it's true uh but it's still like if it is i will still play this like if everybody's just standing around with nothing to do for waiting in line for a concert or something like that, like slap wrestling, man. It's fun as hell.

I'm glad you reminded me of this because I'd forgotten about it. Because as I mentioned, that was my only time playing. It was that one time years ago. Let's remember next time we're together, nothing going on. Next time we're together. Next time the two of us aren't torn apart by our brutal schedules uh hey can i steal you away yeah the internet is a labyrinth and it's guarded by monsters viruses um swordfish operations swordfish hackers what else is in there just uh clouds of you know

terrorism nasty whoa i don't know i'm sorry all right cyber i mean cyber terrorism thanks bullying cyber bullying important to a cyber mild cyber bullying very important mild step down from cyber terrorism i would argue anyway we've gotten extremely intense very quickly, which I don't think our advertiser will appreciate, but I do want to tell you about Dashlane because Dashlane is a service that helps make everything you do on the internet way easier. It will fill out your forms faster.

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It's not the first love. It's not the second love. You do this every time. It's third love. No, you do this every time, Griffin McElroy. This is my first time doing it. Oh, how did it feel? Pretty good. Was it your second time doing it? Was it your third time doing it oh how did it feel pretty good was it your second time doing it was it your third time doing it you know if it were my third time it would be the best time because what i'm talking about is third love this is bras

thank you i always forget to say what it is this is my favorite mbc family drama this is bras there's mandy Mandy Moore going through her closet. She's like, hey, guys. Hey, guys. This is bras. And her family's like, I know. It's been four seasons. I'm old.

Now I'm young. But they're still bras. Is that what it is? Yes, exactly. Except it's socks. Oh, shit. Bras, not for your feet. Nope.

Turns out. That's the twist at the end of the pilot. I was actually on the Third Love site the other day. Oh, what's up? Because here's the thing. You know how sometimes you get in a little rut with a particular retail site? Oh, yes. Oh, all the time.

Bestbuy.com. I'll just – what am I doing here? For a long time, I got the t-shirt bra because it's like a real great bra and I love it. But I started looking. They got other ones too, turns out. Oh, boy. A lot of other ones. And not only that, they got a lot of different sizes.

They have half sizes. And not only that, every customer has 60 days to wear it, wash it, and put it to the test. And if you don't love it, you can return it and third level donate it to a woman in need. They make it incredibly easy to find the right bra and the right size. And if not, they give it to somebody who needs it. That is. You're giving me a voice right now that is so tender. Stop fighting me on this, Griffin. I'm not, I promise. Third Love knows there's a perfect bra for everyone, so right now they are offering our listeners 15% off your first order.

Go to thirdlove.com slash wonderful now to find your perfect fitting bra and get 15% off your first purchase. That's thirdlove.com slash wonderful for 15% off today. Got a jumbotron here. This one's for Otter Pop and it's from Panda Pants. Oh, this one's going to be cute. Who says, as I write this, you're cozied up next to me on the couch watching YouTube and there's no place I'd rather be.

Marrying you last year fucking ruled. Our honeymoon in japan will this this year will too you got so excited i know thank goodness for the chance to yell about how much i love you through the most wonderful tm tm tm podcast prepare yourself i'm gonna grab that butt later oh my gosh that is they're living a parallel life from us you realize it is weirdly parallel to us in a way that kind of freaks my being a little bit how much how fiercely you're gonna grab that butt that you do need forewarning about prepare yourself what does that mean maybe maybe uh panda pants startles easily because of the panda pants yes and so otter pop is just trying to do panda pants you know a solid this is fun fan

fiction of our fans it's literal fan fiction can i read you the next one yep this message is for casey it is from julie casey i just wanted to drop a line to let you know some things that i think are wonderful every dog scottgrim versus the world, eating Bunch O' Crunch at the movies, playing Overwatch, listening to this podcast, and you, absolutely not in that order. Thanks for being the best husband I have. I think I'll keep you. Love, Julie. That is, that order seems pretty good to me. And that might just be because I don't know Casey. What is Bunch O' Crunch?

Is that like, that's like a toffee thing, right? No, Bunch O' Crunch is essentially a crunch bar, like a chocolate bar with like rice crunch in it, but it's like little, you know, nugs of them. Little crunch nugs. Oh, that sounds good. Should be the name of it. I think I would do, okay, I'll do Casey

and then, oh God, Scott Pilgrim, Every Dog, Overwatch, then Bunch O' Crunch, and then our podcast. It feels wrong to put our podcast first because- Yeah, but not last. Okay. We're definitely above Bunch O' Crunch. Thank you. Nearly two decades ago,

Commander Data sacrificed his life. The Greatest Discovery is also about Star Trek Picard. Jesse Thorne won't let us stay on the network unless we do all the Star Trek series. And so here we are, doing a show about maybe our favorite Star Trek character of all time. If you're excited to watch the new Star Trek Picard series and you'd like some veteran Star Trek podcasters to watch it along with, we're your guys.

Sorry you're stuck with us. What the hell are you doing out here, Picard? Saving the galaxy. So subscribe to The Greatest Discovery. You can find it anywhere you find podcasts. Or at MaximumFun.org. I got so excited to hear your second thing, I fully punched my laptop.

Take that, Joni Ive. Who? Joni Ive. He's designed Apple products for a long time. Wow, is this a thing people know? Yeah, he's sort of a part of the sort of cult of personality. Oh, do you mean Steve Jobs? No, I didn't.

No, babe, I didn't mess his name up that bad. He's also not with us anymore. Joni Ive is actually not with Apple anymore. But he designed it and he would always be like, this time I made the fucking edges rounder. This time we've got five fucking cameras, don't it? Now it's big, now it's small again. Now it's big now it's small again now it's big again this time you can get a big or little i'm joni i've i'm the smartest man ever does he have

an accent or this one's got no apps oops oops it's got apps again that was clearly not right no screen on this one you just kind of yell at it this one. You just kind of yell at it. This one's an orb. You can eat it. If you want, you should get bored with it. Do you see how round it is? I've done it again. Is he

Ringo? I might be. Can I tell you my second thing? Yes, please. Okay. This has kind of been a long time coming, and I just decided I'm going to do it. You're leaving me. No. I knew it.

It's like Marriage Story 2 up in here. We haven't watched it yet, so I don't know if we should say that. It just seems like closer, but with half as many people, huh? Just every clip I see of that. So even closer then really close yes because less people yes every clip i see is just adam driver and his face is so red and scarlett johansson is so upset with him and it is very close to their face i don't want to see that

maybe they'll do another one that's happy and we can watch that one. That's fun. A prequel. Okay. What is your second thing? This is something I've been thinking about for a long time. It is not ending my marriage to Griffin. It is group therapy. Oh, yeah. I'm bringing it. I have been in group therapy over a year.

And it is maybe the most challenging thing I've ever done. And I've thought about bringing it for a while, but I wanted to feel like I really had a handle on it, which I don't. But I feel like I've been doing it long enough now that I could talk about it. This is something that I don't think a lot of people really know about. And I feel like the only time I ever saw anything depicted about it was on like on television for like you know a meetings for example there was that matthew perry show called go on do you remember that i'm amazed that i just pulled the fucking title of it wow but it's like a it was a community style show just about group group therapy instead of community college and there is something very community about the concept.

So just to give you kind of a quick synopsis. So group therapy is typically like six to 12 people. And it is selected for people that want to focus on relationships because what it allows you to do is just have conversations in the room with people and really pay attention to your feelings and trying to identify kind of what it is about what's being discussed or the people in the room that are kind of bringing those feelings out in you and in kind of a, in a safe space. I had been seeing a therapist and I was talking about how I had kind of felt like I had a pretty good handle on kind of my mental health, but that I still found myself being very kind of analytical and inward in my relationships with other people. It was very hard for me to kind of be open emotionally

and be vulnerable with even some of my closest friends. And my therapist who happened to lead a group said, the kind of the best way to build that strength is with other people. And so she talked me into it for like six months. I would like, I'd go see her and she would be like, what do you think? And I'd be like, oh, what if, you know, what if like, you know, like I can't relate to them? You know, just a lot of concerns really about the personalities in the room. Because the way that it's been for me is that I am only comfortable being kind of open and honest with people that I've known for a very long time. Right. It's like a catch-22 in a way, where having those conversations would improve your opening up to people, but it requires you to open up to people. Yeah. Yeah. And I think part of the reason the dynamic works for so many people is because you get this kind of shared sense of purpose.

And it also kind of builds this community. And you're talking with people that may not have a kind of a lot of the same common ground. But if you do find moments of kind of commonality, it kind of helps you reduce that feeling of isolation and make you kind of more confident you know that you can find shared experience with people even if they're like not you know from your background or have your experience do you feel like uh i know the answer to this but to like demonstrate uh like how long do you think it it took for you to like feel comfortable enough to like actually participate in like a material way in that in that environment? I mean, kind of the same as it does like in a in a relationship with a new person generally, like it was like four to six months of me going once a week.

And just being like, okay, I need to get a handle on everybody in this room, right? I need to get a handle on everybody in this room. Like I needed to feel like I kind of understood the dynamic and what everybody was bringing. And this is just kind of generally how I approach relationships. And so you end up learning a lot basically about yourself. Because not only are you like told to kind of examine your feelings in the moment, but you're in this room of people sharing very personal things. And kind of the way you react to that is just kind of a microcosm of how you react to that in your your day to day life. Yeah, of course. And so there's been kind of a

lot of research on it. Obviously, it's not it's not something for everybody. If you're, you know, intensely shy or have real severe social anxiety, it's probably not something for everybody if you're you know intensely shy or have real severe social anxiety it's probably not appropriate for you um but there's been uh research to say that um seeing other people's progress in a group can help individuals realize that they can also make progress. The group allows you to kind of observe, as I mentioned earlier, what the reaction people will bring out in you. And so you'll notice moments of where like your anxiety is spiking or you notice how your body language will change. And you have people in the room to kind of respond to that. And studies have shown that the kind of the peer interactions that happen in group can be very therapeutic. And so more than just, you know,

doing like individual therapy, you can identify a lot with one another in the room, and that can kind of translate to your real life. So not only that, but you can develop communication skills and socialization skills, and learn how to accept criticism. And it also helps you kind of develop some self awareness by listening to other people. I think a lot of people will enter group, either, you know, because they have a they have a particular relationship that they're kind of struggling with, or that has kind of made them feel more insecure. And they'll kind of spend a lot of time in the room exploring that. And they can have people kind of react and say, you know what you're saying to me right now, like I'm not, that's not the impression I'm getting at all.

You know, like people, people that will be in your corner pretty quickly and they have no real like stake necessarily in how things turn out for you. You know, like it's not like a family member or a friend who you you trust but you also feel like oh well you're really invested in me it's like oh this person i see once a week believes this about me right this this must be a really strong part of who i am that they could pick up on that already um and i think that also that it's a safe environment to kind of experiment with trying to say different things out loud to people and communicate better. That said, I mean, it is kind of terrible. It's very sweaty.

Yeah. I usually will come back from it very sweaty. I feel like I can tell when you get home from work because you're in the middle of your workday. Like, oh, shit. Like, it must have been wild up in that chamber. Yeah. Because people will bring, I mean, the people have varying levels of mental health issues. And, you know, when you're in the room, it's not like you're matched necessarily with people who have like your exact level of, you know, like anxiety or your exact level

of depression, you know, and so you're talking to people who will bring a lot of stuff that can be upsetting or can remind you of other things that you'd forgotten about. And it's, I mean, it's intense and you're literally, at least in my experience, sitting in a circle all staring at each other. Yeah. I feel like it's got to be right. That's got to be universal, right? They don't have anybody like staring at each other. Yeah, I feel like it's gotta be, right? That's gotta be universal, right? They don't have anybody like setting a straight line.

Yeah. And then the therapist just kind of acts as facilitator. It's not guided in the way, at least my experience hasn't been guided in the way that I thought. Like there's no like topic for the day. It's emotion jazz, baby. The first couple of times I was there,

I feel like people just sat silently for a while, just kind of waiting to see, waiting to see who's gonna share something since you have told me about like your experience uh it has sounded so appealing to me from me like uh i i go to individual therapy and like most of the days that i go to it like like I catch myself at the end of it, like, wow, these things have all, all been true for me, you know, lately or always. And I've never really thought of them cause I didn't fucking say them out

loud to another person. And my brain isn't that introspective where it's not. So the idea of like having a room full of people who I might have more in common with, or can give me some extra context for the things that I'm like thinking and addressing and acknowledging for the first time and saying out loud like sounds so invaluable and also like my fucking absolute nightmare vat of venomous asps biting and biting and biting until I am dead forever. Yeah, I have found my opinion about it got better

when I thought of it as kind of like a testing ground, right? Because people in the room will remind you of somebody in your life, whether it's like a family member or a friend or an ex. And you'll say like, oh, they're saying things that person would say. I'm going to ask them a question and see how they would respond to this because it kind of helps you think about, oh, this person might be similar. And I have an opportunity now to ask them a very personal question that I couldn't necessarily do with the person, you know, that they remind me of.

So it's. And that I feel like is valuable to like that. The fact that I feel the way I feel, that I have that fear is probably something that I could get some help with from a big group of strangers. it makes you more self-conscious because you have a bunch of people sitting, listening to you and saying, oh, you know what? That sounds a lot like what you said about this last week. And you're like, oh my gosh, it does. Oh, do I always say that? Do I always sound like that? But I think I'm invested in it. My therapist initially said, I make everybody try it for at least three months. And at the time that seemed like forever because it was once a week for over an hour for three months and I thought there's no way but I will do it because that is the rule and I follow the rules uh and now it's been over a year

yeah and I feel invested in it and Griffin has told me it's done good things it has yeah I feel good about that it's been really I can tell like it's been it's been great for you and I'm super proud of you too like it is like I genuinely do not know if I could do it because it is and we share some of the same sort of social anxieties to lesser degrees about like being able to open up to people or being able to you know talk to people at all like like a personal level you know like a real like personal uh and and to for you to jump in and just like fucking do it is so badass uh well that's the end of the show thanks for listening everybody what's your second thing thanks for listening everybody that's it i'm sorry i always do this to you

it's sky cookies I'm sorry. Face a moment and it goes. I'm sorry. I always do this to you. It's sky cookies. It's Delta sky cookies. Hey, those are very good. Don't you fucking patronize me on our love podcast. How dare you? I'm talking about Biscoff cookies. You can dip them in coffee don't i i can't

i know what this is no hey we're both brave tell me about your relationship with these cookies you say that a lot about small sky cookies sky cookies okay let's stiff upper lip let's be serious about this sky cookies are important to me i'm talking about biscoff cookies i fly a lot and i whenever i fly delta which is probably i don't know top two top three airlines for that rewards thing i do i'm up on it i'm up on it i've been a good boy lately i've been i got down on the apps i've been yeah i don't have credit cards or any of that shit i guess i should but the way that they gamify like frequent flyer miles like scares the shit out of me because i could get like way too into that uh but i like delta because like they're they're probably you

know those cookies they're probably ethically horrific in some way that I don't know about, but, uh, they got movies most of the time and that's pretty fresh. Their bathrooms are microscopic. Most of the time. It's hard to even like, I don't want to be blue here,

but like get toilet paper down there because like the thing is so, the stall is so narrow that you can't like open up your legs enough to like get anyway, their cookies are off the fucking chains i'm talking about free biscoff cookies that they give off they give out a delta flights every delta flight uh they offer you free snacks pretzels cheese it's or cookies and if you choose anything but the cookies you're wrong you've chosen a lot of the times they'll give you they'll give you more than one. Give me those Cheez-Its and those cookies. I'm a silver member probably.

I'm on my way to becoming a silver member. That's nothing, sir. Traveling in the morning. I do fly a lot. Just flew last weekend. Getting a shitty cup of coffee with some cream and sugar in it and a packet of biscoff cookies that you can just sort of i don't dunk it because that's too messy for me in the airplane i

need to be pretty like you know spotless the whole time but i will take a bite and i'll take a slug of that that coffee and just sort of let it in the mouth damn that's good that's so satisfying it's how i start off my day and i just love it if you've never had one biscoff cookies are just these super crunchy shortbread cookies that are flavored with like caramel and then spiced with uh a bunch of different spices there's like cinnamon and ginger and nutmeg kind of a gingerbread sort of situation yes happening there um and you can buy them in some stores i think you i think in america they are strictly imports you know you can get that spread right cookie butter is the thing here's the thing i love biscoff cookies they come from belgium in belgium they're called speculoos

uh and they were originally in like the 1700s given out on Sinterklaas, which is St. Nicholas Day, which I guess is a different day from Christmas Day. It's December 6th. And now I eat them on airplanes to get very strong. Delta started serving them on their airplanes in 1986. Oh, man. Which means I've never lived in a world without Sky Cookies, and that's a blessing. And other airlines, I thought this might have been true,

but I couldn't remember explicitly. Other airlines do also offer Biscoff Cookies sometimes. American Airlines do, Alaska Airlines do. I forget who else. But if it's your birthday, sometimes Delta will turn them into a little crown for you and put a little crown of biscoff cookies on your head here here is my question undoubtedly we could purchase these and have them in our home when they sell them in stores

though they are much smaller they're much much much smaller would you want to have them at home and would that potentially make the sky cookie less special? This is my question. This is one of those foods that I could see myself. This is true of the weirdest shit. And you can probably attest to this. I probably talked about this during the bars episode where I was like, I just like having. I like having some sort of fruit and nut bar.

Some sort of grain bar nut bar yeah some sort of grain bar in the house at all times right yes because if I'm a little peckish but it's not really a good time and I don't really want to have a huge like wild snack I'll grab a bar kind of feel like I would get this way about Biscoff where I don't want to just go to the store and buy a box of Biscoff cookies that I could then have like at night you know after dinner here and there i would want a fucking like wild bulk barrel of biscoff cookies so that i would know that like for breakfast when i have my morning coffee i'm just good i'm covered in the biscoff department okay so you'd want like a gallon size i either want no biscoff cookies or i want 30 000 biscoff cookies in my house uh delta serves them uh

because they're fucking good but also because they are vegan and nut free so like it's nice kind of works for for most folks yeah I just, I really like them. I don't like, I don't love like a super sweet, super rich treat, especially when I'm flying. Like I really, I really do try to stay like sort of more conscious about my like body and the things I'm putting in it on a day where I'm flying because the flying already kind of beats the shit out of me. And I just think that they're just kind of mellow and rich and satisfying. And with that morning coffee, it's so good. but cookie butter is just biscoff cookie crumbs all ground up

mixed with fat flour and sugar so it's kind of like nutella but it's actually ground up cookies and that's pretty wild i don't love that don't love that love biscoff don't love when we gelatinize it i i like the concept of it but all i can think is wouldn't you just put it on other cookies like i don't think i'd want it on anything but other cookies when i googled it it was like you put this on bread to make a sandwich like you do with nutella and i wanted to be like yo google people aren't doing that that much with nutella like please don't send me links to like, here's a Nutella and peanut butter sandwich that I like to make. That's fine.

I know that some people do that, but I do not think that is Nutella's main use now. No, it's like a dessert treat. I like Biscoff cookies in their snappy, crunchy, shortbread form. That's my jam. I do love them very much. I love them.

Thank you, Delta. I have submissions from our friends at home. Joel says the recent mention of McGruff the Crime Dog and other animal PSA mascots made me think of the Lee County Lit... Jesus, this is so rough to say. I cannot believe that this is what they called it.

The Lee County Litter Lizard. Cutouts of the lizard are set up at various local parks throughout my that this is what they called it. The Lee County Litter Lizard. Cutouts of the lizard are set up at various local parks throughout my small hometown reminding kids to throw their trash in nearby bins. I loved him as a kid and I still do now.

He's a cute little guy. He's against littering and he always seems just as happy to see me as I do seeing him. Lee County Litter Lizard. That is hard. Litter Lizard.

Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. Litter Lizard. That's like a vocal warmup that we would definitely sing before opening night of Oklahoma.

Joel sent a picture of this wonderful lizard. It's very big and imposing. Can I see it? Got a yellow baseball cap on. Oh, whoa. And a big smile. I think he looks kind of like a gator. Oh, he does kind of look like a gator.

That is powerful. Yeah. And he is wearing a T-shirt. It's a white T-shirt that somebody has written in Sharpie, Lee Litter Lizard on it. That's so fun. Okay. Thank you.

That's a very good. I want to hear about everybody's local PSA mascots. I want to make a podcast about local PSA mascots. I want to make a podcast about local PSA mascots because I find it so fascinating. Vijay says, my small wonder is the smell of old Navy ships. I read that sentence and I was like, the smell of old Navy, like they're ships.

You mean the literal old Navy. I've worked on two separate battleship museums one in hawaii and the other in california since i was 16 and now as a 29 year old the smell of the old oil and ship stuff makes me feel at home the smell even grew on my girlfriend over time but initially when i would get home after work she would always say that i smelled like ship what's an old ship smell what is this life old oil okay i can kind of put together kind of what that smells like and ship stuff i have always been very like very very deeply landlocked uh so i don't think i've even been on any kind of ship except for a cruise ship. It probably has its own smells.

It's like Old Navy ship. See, I'm adding this to my bucket list of smells. And this is a special list. I've got one bucket that I've been going around the country and putting smells right in it. One day, I'm just

going to dunk my face in there. Huff it all up. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use for our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And hey, thank you to MaximumFun.org while we're at it, while we're thanking people. Yeah, thank you, Maximum Fun, for hosting our show and hosting a lot of shows like the Jackie and Lori show. And Mission to Zix. Yes, and round springfield all great programs uh you can find more at maximumfund.org if you like the stuff we make

it's all at mackleroy.family uh you want to check out our merch or uh other podcasts or live shows coming up we're working on uh on some more dates for that. There's still tickets for Cincinnati, right? Yes, I believe so. Those are coming up in late February. But we'll be announcing a couple more short tours for the spring coming up here soon. Rachel and I are going to be doing a wonderful on that aforementioned cruise ship, JoCo Cruise 2020.

There have been no cabins available for that for like a year, so I don't know why I'm telling you. But look forward to a live episode at sea. Yes. We'll do lots of fun. Ooh, what's great about the sea? That's what's... We always do like local wonderful,

and I feel like ocean, there's so much. There's a lot of stuff in the ocean it's really big coral every time you see that i think of your walking dead impression get to the car i can't say anything but his name bye everybodyマリオ ワーキングオフ I'm on I'm on I'm on I'm on

I'm on I'm on I'm on I'm on MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported. Hey, I'm Janet Varney.

And like many of you, some more recent than others, I used to be a teenager. In fact, just about all of my friends were too, including wonderful women like Alison Brie. I'm dead center on the balance beam. And this is like a big gym. All the kids' parents are there watching. I have to stop, like, you know, when you have to pee so bad and you can't even move. And then I just go. I just pee right in the middle of the high balance.

So join me every week on the JV Club podcast where I speak with complicated, funny, messy humans as we reminisce about our adolescences and how they led us to becoming who we are. Find it every Thursday on Maximum Fun.