Wonderful! - Wonderful! 121: Lady of the Bracelets

Episode Date: February 19, 2020

Rachel's favorite story structure! Griffin's favorite secret portals! Rachel's favorite clipping friend! Griffin's favorite funk anthem!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. We're about to sneak up on old Grandfather Winter. And we're gonna push him right in the well. Aren't we? You feel it? You feel this 80 degree heat coming from outside

and you just see Grandfather Winter. He's looking in the well because he dropped something down in it. Is he Whitland? He is Whitland, which is why he dropped his favorite Whitland knife that he got from his Grandfather Winter. So anyway, we're gonna

sneak up on him we're gonna push him right down in the well and that's where he's gonna live and die because it's springtime baby and what who does he usher in uh for the spring baby spring baby spring baby spring has a green hair and a leaf hat and diaper and flower shirt and grass shoes and bees. And he's spring and you get excited to see him because it means Grandfather Winter has died in the well because of us. Does Baby Spring grow up over the course of a year and become Grandfather Winter? Well, no. And then he is reborn in the spring months. I hate to say this, but once Cool Guy Summer gets in, no. And then he is reborn in the spring months. I hate to say this, but once cool guy summer gets in, baby spring is going wellward.

Ooh, okay. But the baby, he's fine in there. He's got a whole little, we got a playroom set up down there. And then pretty soon, cool guy summer is going to be down there too. He'll keep him comfortable. Really, the only one that doesn't survive the fall is grandpa winter. Okay. That seems fair. Looking forward to that. and i'm looking forward to doing this show where

we talk about things that we're really excited about things that we really love things we're really into do you have any of those small wonders that i crave can you go first oh shoot i usually use the small wonder time that you put forward to consider and think about my own small wonder uh i mean mine are all gonna be pretty nerdy if it like gun to my head um there's some new there's some new content for fire emblem three houses on the switch that is um good stuff fire emblem three houses emblem emblem emblem's not a word and you should know that now let me tell you what i'm picturing with that i am picturing a property brothers style video game in which you build a house for a young couple oh uh and these new updates you just got are a new fire emblems a third property

brother there is a third property there is yeah a fourth a fourth oh my god really a fifth well that's what the dlc is uh no it's an anime ass strategy game and uh there's new stuff out and it's really hard and it's like a i like a good strategy game that feels kind of chessy like it feels like doing chess puzzles i don't really go for a lot of strategy games so like it really takes a lot to to to get me there and yeah that's a good one you can play it on the go i like it do you have now you've certainly got a dope smell yeah griffin made a really good short rib meal oh my on friday i did there was some dutch oven work there was some day some short rib tomato sauce a little ragu on a yeah mix it with a little gnocchi gnocchi uh yeah i i i rarely like

to toot my own horn but uh it's the fucking most balling thing i've ever cooked by a pretty wide margin yeah i think it's my favorite it's my new fave yeah that dutch oven wow it can get shit done man it gets real hot in there it gets really hot in there and on the lid which i may have touched forgetting that lids can are also in the oven and they do get hot you go first this week oh great what do you um set the tone for us why don't you my first thing yes is the hero's journey all right is it sad i only know about this because of brian david gilbert um a little bit okay Didn't really learn about it in school. I learned about it from, I forget what episode that was about. I think the Zelda games, maybe? Yeah, that sounds right.

Yeah, I don't remember. I learned about it in creative writing class when I was an undergraduate in college. I think I was a junior in college, and it was my intermediate level creative writing short fiction class. And the graduate instructor came in and said, do you guys know about Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey? And maybe some people said yes, but I did not. Yeah. And blew my mind. It just like unpacks and like provides a key to so many films and books in history.

All of them, more or less and books in history all of them more or less more or less all of them um mentoring brian david gilbert made me think of my small wonder which is pat gill's interview oh yes uh oh shit ben schwartz about the sonic movie that had me busting the fuck up it is so funny good if you haven't watched it yet it a polygon video where pat gillan interviews him and gives him 10 seconds to answer questions it's so funny it's so good okay sorry um okay so i didn't i didn't and still don't know a lot about joseph campbell a lot of people are familiar with the power of myth which is a book based on a 1988 pbs documentary all about joseph campbell okay um joseph campbell was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence who worked a lot in mythology and religion. So he's kind of a

pivotal figure in a lot of literary like examination and criticism. He put together The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949, which talks all about the classic story structure okay uh this story structure went on to inform star wars um just fundamentally star wars but then also the matrix indiana jones the lion king um and it follows this 17 stage structure that you find on almost every like hero's journey story. Any film with a hero in it who does journey in some regard. I was hoping kind of that you could think

of like a hero's quest kind of movie. And then the one that you have to know pretty well. And then when you could kind of help me identify oh that's good um could be like a ferris bueller it could be like a labyrinth it could be like uh a goonies right i'm just trying to think of one i maybe groundhog day okay do you think that would fit the the structure okay sure okay First call to adventure. Yeah. I mean, he has to go to Punxsutawney for work. Refusal of the call. He does not want to go to Punxsutawney for work because it's cold and miserable there.

Who is his supernatural aid? I mean, you don't really see it, right? You don't really see the entity that grants him his powers. So it is there, but not explicitly like given a face. This,

for example, in Star Wars would be like a Yoda. Oh yeah. For example. Or just the force in general. I don't know. We could get really metaphysical about it if you want. And then there's the moment where he,

this is the fourth stage, crosses the threshold, which is the point where the hero crosses into the adventure. Yeah, I mean, he enters Punxsutawney and can't leave. There's like a scene where he drives through the blockade and goes into town and he can't get out. That's a good point. And okay, belly of the whale.

I mean, arguably, when he's in there the morning of Groundhog Day doing the work begrudgingly, that's belly. Okay, so now we have exited the departure act. We are now in initiation. Okay. For stage six, the road of trials. Now this is most of the movie.

This is a majority of the film where he enjoys his powers and then things get very, very morose. Okay, then what is formerly called the meeting with the goddess but this is when they mean andy this is when the hero faces temptations often physical or pleasurable that may lead him to abandon his quest andy mcdowell well no before anyway andy mcdowell is uh oh but there's like but there's like a bunch of women that he like messes around with and like proposes to one of them knowing that it's just going to disappear the next morning.

This reminds me of Lost in Translation when he meets the lounge singer. Yeah, there's a lot of, you know, maybe art imitating life. And then this is followed similarly by the temptress. So there's the meeting and then there's the actual act of temptation. Right. Now, atonement with the father. This is when the hero must confront and be initiated by with whatever holds the ultimate power in his life. Wow.

That's tough. I mean, his own ego, I guess, arguably. He has to learn to kind of shed that a little bit before you can make any progress this leads to apotheosis which is where a greater understanding is achieved yeah this may be the moment waves yeah where he becomes kind of fatalistic yeah and and it comes in waves his realization of like what he needs to be to actually be happy uh then the ultimate boon, which is the achievement of the goal or the quest. Andy McDowell. They fall in love.

Okay. Okay, now we are on return, which is the final few stages. We're on stage 12 now. Right. Refusal of the return. The hero may not want to return to the ordinary world. I don't know that we get that necessarily in Groundhog Day. This is where it gets tricky. So the return is kind of where want to return to the ordinary world i don't know that we get that this

is where it gets tricky so the return is kind of where a lot of movies like hop out right because at that point like they've given you the climax they can't spend like yeah unless it's lord of the rings like they can't spend another hour exploring the aftermath yeah i was thinking of labyrinth in this case where sarah gets back to the bedroom and like she suddenly misses all of her friends you know and then she suddenly misses all of her friends you know and then she sees him in the mirror right there's probably some of this in groundhog day where like on his way out like a cop stops him and he's like fuck off cop and he's like oops wait this is permanent now i don't have the time travel anymore uh the magic flight is the next stage um

this is where he must escape with the boon uh if it is something that the gods were guarding well the cops the cops are now after him and andy mcdowell they're on the run they're in love rewrite but he punched uh ned ned briarley ned briarson shit i can't remember his name briarson briarson that sounds right uh rescue from without oh okay uh this is when the hero must have guides and rescuers bring him back to everyday life this is uh christopher uh oh shit what's the dude's name in groundhog day from uh chris elliott chris elliott christopher elliott is sort of his some of us are more familiar, I guess. Yeah. Final three stages.

The crossing of the return threshold. He smashes through the police barricade. This is where he must retain the wisdom to integrate it in life and figure out how to share it with the world. Okay, that is kind of like the last act of the movie when he's going through the repeats and just trying to like not perform about it but just kind of be good which then becomes master of two worlds which is where the hero is comfortable and competent in the inner and outer world he's a time walker and that's a whole thing that we can get into later and then final stage freedom to live the mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. Whoa, okay. He probably got there.

He died like a thousand times. There you go. There you go. Those are the 17 stages. I think this is like an incredible outline for anybody who wants to write like an epic story. Like I remember hearing this in my like short fiction class thinking, oh, this is it. This is it right here.

If I were to write a novel, I would just say, okay, the first, you know, 20 pages Call of Adventure, next 30 pages Refusal of the Call. You know, it just like sets the whole structure for you. It's a long ass book, hon. Well. That's gonna be like a, what?

Like a 240 page book at that point. I'm writing the new Lord of the Rings. Oh, boy. But it's called Lady of the Bracelets. All right, Lady of the Bracelets. Okay, so we got a bunch of bracelets. Some were given to... Keep in mind, I don't know anything about Lord of the Rings.

Continue. Well, then maybe you should tell me what it's about. Okay, so... Basing it on your knowledge of Lord of the Rings. Okay, so there are a bunch of really big people. Okay. I'm just... So opposite of hobbits is what you're going with?

What are those called now? Large bits. Large bits is great. Great, great, great. Nothing wrong with that. Uh-huh. And they live in the wire. Oh, so it's like they live in Baltimore then?

Yes. That's fun. And there's one that's like the most special one. Omar. From the wire. He's called to go on a quest to find the bracelet that will save his people. Okay. And there's.

What happens when he puts the bracelet on? Tell me that. He is overcome with the power. Okay. And maybe he'll do bad things. All right. If he's not strong enough. You know more about the Lord of the Rings than I think you're letting on. And there's like a little guy that guards the bracelet.

And his name is. Oh, we do this all the time. Oh, you love it. I feel like Go letting on. And there's like a little guy that guards the bracelet. And his name is... Oh, we do this all the time. Oh, you love it. I feel like Gollum. Yeah, but that's not what it's called in Lady of the Bracelets. No, no. In Lady of the Bracelets, he's named.

She. She is named. Is named Slalom. Oh. Very good skier. Okay, that's fun. This bit is accessible it's definitely not like a mad magazine from like 1971 it's fucking great thank you can i do my

first thing yes it's gonna be really quick because it's more of a concept okay it's sort of a broad idea, if you will. Secret doors. Secret doors. Hidden doors. Doors that are hidden in some way and allow access to secret areas and things. Like you pull a book off a bookcase? That's sort of the ideal, right? Like that's what you think of when you say, hey, I got a secret door in my house. You think you got a bookshelf where you pull on one of the books and it opens up a thing i think i've only seen that in

themed restaurants i get i'm pretty sure they have that shit at like magic castle in la which they might get insulted if i call it a theme restaurant but let's be fucking honest guys like you're a bunch of magicians doing anyway uh and like the jekyll and hyde club in new york city i remember had to like one of those you had to do before you could go to the bathroom uh but like i don't think i've ever actually been to a house where that is a thing uh but i like the idea of it very much at the old polygon offices actually there was a bookshelf that had a book that had to be in a certain place and it would open up the bookshelf into what was essentially our gaming room where we would capture game footage uh and by virtue of the fact that the door was a huge ass bookshelf and there was no other entry into the room it got so hot it got

so so so hot in there but it was worth it because it had a cool book door book key and i like that a lot um there's uh i think I've talked about Richard Garriott on this show before. I feel like I've talked about him a lot because he's an Austinite and he's like a fascinating dude because he was a game developer who made this seminal RPG series called Ultima

and basically used it to bankroll his own private sort of space adventure. But he owns a house here in Austin that is full of like an entire network of secret doors yeah we saw a video that kind of showcased some of the exciting elements of that house it's wild yeah there's like some skulls on a table that have to be in like a particular arrangement to open up a spiral staircase and his wine like rack that goes down and then there's a mirror next to a bookshelf where you have to reach up into the ceiling and let go of a latch and the mirror

pushes inward and opens up to a new staircase like it have to reach up into the ceiling and let go of a latch and the mirror pushes inward and opens up to a new staircase. Like it is literally, it is designed. And then behind that staircase is a room with a fucking Sputnik in it for some reason because my man is like-

Space enthusiast. He's a space enthusiast. It is wild. You can find videos of it. But there is also, and I learned this today, a pretty wide like category of YouTube videos of what I would call home improvement dads with too much time on their hands building secret doors in bookcases and or wardrobes and or whatever the fuck. I like this you know i was one of those kids that got real into lying the witch in the wardrobe yes and like spent a good part of my childhood just looking for those secret passages

into narnia and there there there is no shortage of videos of like you know goobers actually making it happen in a way that makes it seem so accessible like oh i could i could do that we would have to convert one of our rooms into the secret room and it feels like you're diminishing the square footage of your house somewhat like maybe just a closet like a small closet we could take some of our larger closets and put another closet in the closet that's fucking great that's very good i think you've reached the back of the closet oh no oh no there's more more closet we i don't know that we own anything that i would worry about enough to hide inside of the closet panic room uh aside from i guess ourselves and our child um so i i that's

again sort of a broad uh category but what i also like are just like knowing the secret sort of doors and routes in buildings uh that not everybody knows all about. So like when I think about secret doors, what I think about is there was in the journalism school at Marshall, this like hatch on the floor outside of my advisor's office. And it was just like an access hatch to this wind tunnel that like went under the J school over to the old library. And you could like exit out onto the street over there, but it was like really well hidden and it took a lot of effort to pry it out.

But once you did it, like created this wild windstorm in the journalism school that would knock the ceiling tiles out of place. So it was like this, you were channeling the elements. So cool. I always get jealous. I mean,

I wouldn't necessarily want to live in a harsh climate, but those areas of the country that have real severe winter and they have those underground tunnels yeah uh i mean huntington has a lot of like tunnels that aren't necessarily like a completely interconnected network um but it's an old town and there are i don't know i feel like an abundance of you saw some of it in the mbim bam tv show we shot in some of them under the keith albee that just has like an endless cavern of storage space that like sprawls beneath like a significant portion of, you know, the street that it's on. And I think that's really neat. I think just knowing the secrets of a place is such a like rewarding feeling, even though like if we had a secret room in this house, like it would be more of an annoyance. Like if there was a secret door into a bookshelf into

my office, I feel like I would just like, oh, you know, I'm carrying my coffee and my soup. I can't pull down my magic book. I think about that. Or if you were like, you know, it's nighttime and you like, can't see where the book is that you have to pull down but i i think i just like the idea of like secret spaces i think there's something very seductive about that and about it being kind of a showpiece like in your house if you did have it like it would be the thing that maybe you showed people maybe you didn't maybe that's how you make people feel like actually welcome in the house is like hey i'm letting you in on the big secret this is where our sex room is. That's probably what they might think at first blush. Would you be prepared to bring a contractor

in and have that conversation that is like, I know there's a door here. I want you to get rid of the door and make it look like there was never a door here, but maintain the integrity of the room behind the door. I would say two things. One, we live in a pretty whimsical city so i'd be surprised if they would be completely blown away by that request another one of those secret rooms all right i got it we could also just get gary this guy and just like so like what do you what do you got in there some fucking tesla coils like no it's my office don't worry about it it's a closet it's gonna continue to be a shoe closet but we're gonna make it look like not a shoe closet go for it go going to make it look like not a shoe closet.

Go for it. Go nuts. Hey, can I steal you away? Yes. We have a couple of jumbotrons. Can I read the first one? Wow. Yes.

Oh, I see why you want to read this one. Yes. This message is for Beth. It is from Lex. Hey, Beth. This is just to say I have bought the Jumbotron on this show with our faves, and which you are probably not expecting to receive. Forgive me.

You are wonderful, so kind, and so loving. Thank you for six years me. You are wonderful. So kind. And so loving. Thank you for six years together, Love Lex. That is very nice. What a treat for me, the reader. You know my favorite part of that poem? Nobody stole any fucking fruit. That's true.

Everybody got out with all their original fruit. And I like that. Everybody celebrates out of their poem and it's like, they're a fucking thief. We're celebrating fruit crimes. Here's a message for nova and it's from vick who says just a quick shout out to the love of my life i'm so incredibly proud of you and i can't wait until we get to spend the rest of our lives together in a small suburban town in wisconsin until then sinking netflix and multiple four-hour phone calls will have to suffice. I love you so much, Mia Moore. Or perhaps my armor?

I love that. It's like, hey, babe, you're my armor. You protect me from the slings and arrows of this world. You provide me with a thick, steely exterior. That's not what it, no. A powerful, thank you for being my powerful steel exoskeleton. No. My mech that I climb inside to fight off the angels. exterior. That's not what it is. A powerful exoskeleton. Thank you for being my powerful steel exoskeleton. My mech that I climb inside to fight off the angels.

Hey everyone, it's I, John Hodgman of the Judge John Hodgman Podcast. And I, Elliot Kalin of the Flophouse Podcast. And we've made a whole new podcast. A 12-episode special miniseries called I, Potius,

in which we recap, discuss, and explore the very famous 1976 BBC miniseries about ancient Rome called I, Claudius. We've got incredible guests such as Gillian Jacobs, Paul F. Tompkins, as well as star of I, Claudius, Sir Patrick Stewart, and his son, non-Sir Daniel Stewart. Don't worry, Dan, you'll get there someday. iPodius is the name of the show. Every week from MaximumFun.org for only 12 weeks.

Get them at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Can I tell you my next thing? Yes. This one not quite as epic as The Hero's Journey. I'm talking about the humble but effective fingernail clipper. Oh, yeah. I love this guy. I gotil clipper oh yeah i love this guy do i got one of these guys look at this guy here's where the rubber ones went i know you're looking for the rubber ones they were up here griffin always has fingernail clippers in the strangest

parts of the house i grow nails very quickly now are they mostly on your fingers and toes or would i find them in other places on your body uh that's a you know i'm not gonna let the you know where my nails are babe you'll never tell i'm not gonna tell the audience but you know exactly where i grow my nails he's got he's got eye nails that's true it's difficult because he has these long beautiful lashes in which i would never want him to trim but the eye nails yeah nails make me uncomfortable. You can't have one without the other, babe. The reason those eyelashes grow so thick and lustrous is because it's also got nails.

Do you want to hear about the nail clipper? Yeah, sure. Around 1875, patents for the modern nail clipper began to appear. We were biting them before this, huh? You know, there are a surprising number of articles on the internet of people positing what clipped nails before the nail clipper. And there's no consensus on this?

Some of it is like, well, you know how dogs wear them down on the concrete? People probably did that. I guess at what age in what era did we start to give a shit about our nails and also people suggested you know just ways of filing the nail oh yeah that was and then of course you know like just knives scissors yeah you know sucks god that sucks i gotta tell you about the person um who did the first patent for a nail trimmer named Valentine Fogarty. Holy shit. That's so great.

Yeah. This was a circular nail file. It's not exactly like the clipper we know today. The first patent for the clamp style fingernail clipper was 1881. Okay. We are used to the compound lever clipper. There's also a plier clipper what is that oh like like instead of having the resistance you just like literally it's literally just like a

pair of scissors then kind of well i mean it looks like like a plier like it's the kind you would like clip like a dog's nail yeah that sucks wow that's rough geez this is this one skeezing me out a little bit babe now let me tell you a little bit about the thing that changed everything. Didn't happen until 1947. There are people alive today that didn't have access to this clipper. Okay. It's the one that has the jaw style design, but it has the little nibs near the base to prevent lateral movement.

Interesting. You know the little nibs? I love those guys. And then there's a notched rivet, which adds the thumb swerve to the lever. Oh, yeah. And I'm just doing that right now. See, you see me.

It's a pleasing thumb swerve. You see me over here messing with the thumb swerve, and I'm just kind of spinning the top of the jaw all the way around. And at this point, it's not just a grooming tool, babe. It's a toy. I'm having fun with it. not just a grooming tool, babe. It's a toy. I'm having fun with it. Yeah, it's the original fidget spinner.

Hey, hon. Why did you decide to talk about this? It is such a perfect little tool. It's good at what it does. I mean, a lever is a satisfying tool no matter what. Yes, that's a good point. But I just think about just like the general size and shape.

Now, some would argue that the size and shape is not exactly the size of a fingernail oh um you know you have to you have to go around one side and then the other and then the middle yeah you know um but i just like i find the process of clipping fingernails like so precise uh and it's just kind of the perfect tool to do it. You say perfect, but that is selling our imaginations short. So I guess. Here's the thing. How can we improve that? Okay.

So there have been improvements. Oh my God. There's like just a general, like a fatter clamp, you know, so you get more like. That's just, that's just. Work on it. There's also a side model. So instead of like coming like this way, you can hold it sideways. I like that actually.

So your right or left hand, it doesn't matter. Because the argument is that your stronger hand is going to be the more precise hand. Okay. And so people say if you use it like from the side with like a side handle, then it doesn't matter as much with your dominant hand. I also, this is the fun design, is the one that has like the real long pole. So that if you can't reach your toes i was just about to say that's a real thing what about just sort of an automated sort of

mulcher that you could kind of very whole hand in well i was thinking feet i can do my fingernails well i can do my left hand so my left hand nails look like professionally done and my right hand nails always look like a child uh has tried to do them uh with like a pencil sharpener or something like that my toes like forget about it i need you would want to put your your toes into a machine yeah yeah yeah that doesn't terrify you at all well the machine's gonna be custom made for my feet oh that's nice and all of a sudden this does sound like a product that we would sponsor. This is something we could put in our secret room though, ultimately.

Yeah. But then it's not going to like, people are going to see that and not instantly think it's not a sex dungeon. Can I talk about my second thing? Yes, please. My second thing is a song and it is a powerful theme and anthem that will get you just ready to go. And that song is tighten up by Archie Bell and the Drells.

I love when I sent you this song just to make sure that you had heard it before. The way that you first found it was through The Simpsons. Yeah, it was interesting because there's like a Simpsons bit where it's like Homer. It's like a flashback. And he's like performing this song as a one-man band. And I remember thinking like, huh, that's funny. And then years later when I heard the song, I was like, oh, that's an actual song.

I heard it for the first time when I was a child, probably when I, no, when I was about like 20. I heard it on You Look Nice Today. There was an episode where they talked about Tighten Up by Archie Bell and the Drells. And now like today it pops up constantly on like the four or five different playlists that I have it on. And the reason I have it so widespread is because it is a perfect song.

It is so straightforward and good and pure. And I just almost always am in the mood to hear it. And that's not true for a lot of songs. Like it's never come up and I've been like, oh, I'm not I don't have time for you right now archie bell and the drills is tighten up it's always like oh hell yeah here it is it's time to go and now what is the normally people would hear the phrase tighten up and they would think that that is not a thing somebody wants to do do you have a sense of what tighten up means and maybe you don't want to tighten up but archie bell is just so sort of like enthusiastically telling everyone on earth, one person at a time. He actually, if you listen to the whole song, names every single person. Oh, that's fun.

Yeah. So he's like, Rachel McElroy, tighten up. And he gives it to everybody. And so everybody tightens it up. up if you've never heard this song it is just like it is this early kind of like foundational funk hit uh that came out in i believe 1968 and it is it it's sort of like it topped the r&b and pop billboard charts and was really the first sort of funk song to uh to achieve that level of popularity uh so yeah if you've never heard it i'm gonna play just the beginning of the song is so so powerful and so strong so gonna play just the beginning of the song. It's so powerful and so strong.

So here's the beginning of Tighten Up. turn up on that bass now turn it up yeah now let that guitar fall in oh yeah at the beginning there he says a lot of great shit including we don't only sing but we dance just as good as we want

and I'm not entirely sure what that means but I'm glad that he feels empowered to dance just as good as we want uh and i'm not entirely sure what that means uh but i'm glad that he feels empowered to dance just as good as he wants uh he also starts out by saying that they're from uh they're archie bell and the drills they're from houston texas and the reason he said that apparently is because uh and this was in an interview with some magazine uh it was after the kennedy assassinations and he had heard a comment that nothing good ever comes out of texas so he wanted to uh he has a quote where he said he wanted people to know that we were from texas and we were good uh the song is just like you heard that clip and there's you

know obviously a lot more to the song and it's all very good but like you kind of get the structure if you hear the first 30 seconds of it where it's archie bell just sort of enthusiastically encouraging all of his bandmates to tighten it up and play incredible fills uh the bass the bass runs on this song the the licks are so fucking hot and then the like the break beats like the the drum breaks are like so incredible. And I feel like they are inspirational to a lot of like the funk music that came after. Honestly, there are lots of different genres where I feel like you could hear those exact sort of beats happening inside of them. Like it is such a fresh song.

Like if you and I were at a party and this song came on, we would feel like the party was cooler yes absolutely i would feel welcome it is a it is a it is a comforting song for me the origins of the song are kind of wild right so archie bell and the drills is the band that that uh put it out and uh you know popularized it uh archie bell the the origins are kind of complicated archie bell uh from houston texas a big family he had like six or seven brothers and sisters uh and he got drafted to serve in in the army during the vietnam war uh and he was a musician already at this point he was bummed out and his bandmate uh named billy butler taught him this dance to like cheer him up that's like how the story goes then the dance was called tighten up at the same time in houston there was another r&b group that was called the tsu tornadoes

uh and they would like play shows around town and this was like the riff they would play that two chord they would play that and it was like that song was like their theme song they would like play that to like get people pumped. The TSU tornadoes and Archie Bell and the Drells had the same manager. So he like put them in a room together. Archie Bell had like, took this riff, took this dance.

The TSU tornadoes like did the background. And then they just like, and apparently it sounds like kind of like loose and improvisational. It took like 30 or 40 takes. Like they were in the studio like all night putting this down. But this, you know, this manager was sort of the alchemist who brought like all these different components together. This was originally a B-side to another song that they were trying to make like happen. And it just wasn't.

And then DJs were like, hey, let's flip this over. Oh, shit. and it just wasn't. And then DJs were like, hey, let's flip this over. Oh shit. And then it just sort of became a, it became this national hit while Archie Bell was deployed.

Archie Bell was in, Archie Bell was deployed. He was stationed in Germany and he was injured. He like injured his leg. And so, you know, even after he came back, like he couldn't dance.

They had choreography and stuff. Like he couldn't really do it. So like while he was recovering, they put out this full-length album and they went on to like have a bit more of a a career after that but like this is by far like their biggest uh hit and it is it is just really really good you look to see if there's videos on the youtube there is they are like pretty low quality but you can see the dance the dance is not like curious it is not like you know like jackson five level choreography

and that like it's a lot more clue as to what tightening up is no okay but i think it's okay to not know explicitly what you know like but this is not far from the time frame where everybody was like telling you what the dance was and how to do it i just wondered if this was like an actual like a like a dance people would be at the club and you would be like oh that man there was a tighten up dance right but it was not it was very low impact i would say i would argue um but really i think this was just like the party starter like this was. Like this was just the song that made you want to just fucking groove because Archie Bell was up there telling you to do it. And then you would hear like just all of these different sort of patchwork,

just funky ass like sections of this song. It's just great. It's just perfect. I'm going to like, it's nice to know that I have this constant in my life of just like, here's a song that i will always be excited to hear um unless i like burn out on it but i think it'd be hard to do uh i love tighten up do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about yes please alex says my wonder is maritime museums the columbia river maritime museum has an exhibit

called the light ship columbia and it's an actual place you get to walk around. A floating lighthouse. Neat. A lot of maritime museums have floating exhibits like that, and you can see what it was like living aboard as a boatswain. I think I mostly picked this one because it had the word boatswain in it. Have you ever been in a maritime museum? No, but...

Yeah, this is something that people that don't live on the coast don't really get access to. I'm sure it's very cool, though. I'm open to it, for sure. I've been to aquariums, which is like a fish museum with water in it, if you think about it.

Oh. Yeah, and fishes, it's like boat pets because they live under them. You are such a poet, Griffin. Thank you. Nathan says, lizards are wonderful.

I'll take Nathan's word for it. That's it. That's it. But it makes you think, doesn't it? It is evocative in a way. Lizards, my relationship with them is we live in Texas and so I almost always step on them

all the time every day. Every day I'm walking and little, little guys just... I guess I like big lizards, too. I like a lizard on a rock, just sunning. Yeah. I like that. Our friend had a big lizard that would eat bugs and stuff, and that was pretty cool.

Yeah. I guess they're eating bugs, and maybe there's a lot of bugs i'm not a big fan of that they like to eat and that's good to me i guess and some of them have beards and that's funny like sideburns and shit that's cool but the problem is king koopa's a lizard i hate that guy such a childish spirit thank you to bowen and augustus for these for a theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network.

Max Fun Drive is coming up very soon. Yeah, we recorded our bonus episode. It was so good. Griffin assures me it was good. It was very good. Rachel has never talked about video games professionally before, but she played Animal Crossing New Leaf

for like two weeks a game that i adore and i know a lot of our listeners do and then we talked about this video game for like 45 minutes and it was a lot of fun i liked it a lot we got to play together a little bit and that made me very happy um yeah i think that it. We are so proud of you. We're so proud of you. And it's about time that somebody said it. You've been working hard. You have, you know, and you're loyal.

You're so loyal to a fault. No, you're not that loyal. You're loyal, but not to a fault. You know, you're a good amount of loyal. Yeah. And it's because of that that I think it's's important we wrap this one up by saying proud of you Working on money more. Working on money more. Working on money more. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture.

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