Wonderful! - Wonderful! 122: Spatial Basketball Relations

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

Griffin's favorite foundational messaging app! Rachel's favorite sports entertainment! Griffin's favorite gaming place! Rachel's favorite eye hair!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 coming at you hot. We're coming at you live on this one. It's a new sort of technology that your podcast app offers. This is actually technically, I guess it's a phone call, right? If it's a live podcast that only you're hearing.

Davis. Hi, Davis. As soon as you press play, we race to our microphones. We race to our microphones, drop what we were doing, which for me was a big bowl of spaghetti. I was super excited to eat. I threw that on the freaking ground. But you didn't have to do. I know, but I didn't want to be late for you, Davis.

Our new focused, listen, there's probably not. I tried to pick a name that probably nobody is named that listens to our show. There's definitely some folks with the last name of Davis. But I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Davis. Okay. And you know who you are, Davis.

You're special to me. And I'll never forget the time that we shared together in Miami. That one hot summer night back in 1978. We made love under the moon. 1978, Griffin, come on. 1999. There you go. We made love under the moon 1978 griffin come on 1999 there you go we made love under the moon as we danced to samba music your improv skills are so good you would think i have been doing this for a decade do you have any small wonders um i've been getting these like little mini, these little mini ice cream cones.

Yeah. Um, they're like little, little drumstick cones. Yes. You know, but they're so tiny. They're so little. They're like the size of your palm. And as such, they are relatively low calorie because you can eat them in one bite. They're like hundo cowboys.

Yeah. But they, they really satisfy my dessert craving and they're just such a sweet, delicious frozen treat. I love these. Not even for their, the fact that they are not, you know, gonna blow up my sugar levels just from being like,

but the size of it is exactly how much ice cream I want i never we get like a pint of ice cream from lick or amy's or whatever never finish it never finish it because i don't i only want a few bites of ice cream at a time and that's perfect it's perfect what this is god it's tough for me to think of a small wonder uh a lot of my mental i want to let you in on something a lot of my mental brain space has been occupied by the animal crossing new horizons and tinder direct that we watched together when we were on tour in cincinnati and just like sort of my brain won't stop sort of boiling is really the right word you're most well i'm trying to think about like what i want to name

the town because that's the kind of thing that like i know if i don't figure that out ahead of time i'm gonna like sit down with the game so excited years of waiting and then i'll sit there in front of the screen and then nine hours will have passed and i hadn't named the town um and so like i've just sort of been kicking that around uh and i don't even want to float shit on the show because it's like that early in development but it's just like constantly been percolating okay uh but i guess i want to say that nintendo direct was um hot shit and uh i'm very excited for this uh for this game to come out i'm uh over the moon griffin's reaction was similar to when he watches a wrestling match it was just like just standing up cheering yeah you know running around in a

circle i'm glad you at least know i mean you know this you've been playing this game for quite a while now and you're you're quite into it or the you know the last one one month the one well i mean that's the longest i've ever seen you play any video game so that's significant so at least you had that background when you saw me like when they you know broke down a piece of river or something like that and you saw me like i was slapping your arm like yes yes yes you at least had like some vague idea of why that might be a good exciting thing yeah i'm not gonna defend myself any further hey i go first this week okay my first thing is a o l instant messenger

this is not a thing i still use obviously because it doesn't exist anymore but i would be it was so formative for me and i would imagine a lot of my contemporaries that i would be remiss on not like recognizing its its excellence uh aol instant messenger was first released in 1997 and it had a great run until a series of mergers brought verizon to in to be in charge of the aol brand and uh the uh the chat service was unfortunately shuttered december 15th 2017 beautiful two decade run though it had a good life a strong life yeah really a one decade run because i don't know that so many people were using it past the year like 2010 or like whenever social media kind of became a thing but man if you so if you are a younger person and you were not like an internet user back then I think it's kind

of tough to stress how like kind of drastically different things were with regards to uh online like popular communication and like kind of online identity uh and for me like aol instant messenger was and i think this is true for a lot of people like my first big footstep into having a sort of like online identity or like an online uh like a facade for online communication um and that's why it was sort of so revolutionary is because you could get it for free and everyone fucking had it because a lot of people had aol from the free discs uh and so it just had this instant install base that meant like just everybody had it um everybody at my middle school had it and i remember in like computer class,

just like everybody would have it open a little bit or like in library. Well, you would learn ways to like keep it minimized and turn off like the alert sound so that it would flash in your task bar and you'd wait for the teacher to go away and you can boop, hop in there, chat a little bit, boop, hide it.

It was a, all of us were just like straight up swordfish in there. Just, just keeping our shit fully cloaked. But like everybody at school had it. And I was never an especially like social kid outside of like the circles I moved in, like my, like, you know, church and like the, you know, community theater group that I did plays with for a decade or more. And so I wasn't like somebody who would talk to people on the phone. And I wasn't somebody who was great at talking to people

who I wasn't friends with at school. But I felt emboldened by having AOL Instant Messenger that I felt like this is a way, because texting wasn't a thing back then. This was really my first foray into online sort of text-based communication. And it really changed everything. I was much braver in the chat space

than I would ever be in person. Yeah. I had so many conversations, like pivotal conversations and friendships and relationships over Instant Messenger. It really was in like preparing this segment that I really gave it a like fair credit for genuinely how like important it was in my life. side of the the people who i had known my whole life like how to meet like make new friends or meet new people or um find some sort of like common ground with somebody who i'm like just kind of acquainted with uh and like it really allowed you to do all that so like as a form

of communication it was really important but what i like really love what i'm like really nostalgic about is this uh and i should mention like if you are a uh you know if you are a uh extremely online person even before those days uh doing you know shit like uh bulletin boards or bulletin boards like uh uh like you know like this was also a thing before aol instant messenger but aim for me was like the big one that just sort of everybody was on and you didn't really have to like worry about it um what i love about it what i get nostalgic about is the very meager amount of customization or personalization or ownership you had over aol instant messenger and how much you had to juice that to build this identity for yourself yeah Yeah, that's true. There are things that I think about, like your username.

I can remember a lot of the usernames I had, and they're almost all universally so embarrassing that I'm not even gonna start listing them here. That was important. And then you'd get to the point where you'd realize, oh my God, the username I had when I was 13 is so embarrassing. I'm 14 now.

I need a new username. But is it worth having to reach out to all so embarrassing i'm 14 now i need a new username but is it worth having to reach out to all my contacts to let them know i have a new username uh things like the color and font of your text was so hugely important no that's true and i mean of course your away message your away message and your like profile that you could have that would have like uh and this was just basically like an away message and your like profile that you could have that would have like uh and this was just basically like an away message that people could look at any time uh which again you could customize the font but it wasn't my space right like you couldn't put interactive elements onto that it was literally just a message you could put up that you could change the font the

color of the font and the background of the font that was that was it and again this may seem like kind of alien if you never used it and like twitter or facebook was your first sort of foray where those options aren't even necessarily made available to you uh it really was important where like i remember all of the popular girls at at my school had a sort of sans leaning font with like lilac or like pink colors. Wow. But like then if you wanted to be kind of edgy, you would have the black background with the red text.

Oh, that was like unreadable. It was unreadable. There were a lot of unreadable sort of text options. I think I did like brown over yellow for a while because I really wanted to stand out in a different way. I love that that was such an important thing. Like your meager scraps of online sort of ownership that you could have,

which basically boiled down to like on your profile, like, well, here's my, you know, for a lot of the circles I rolled in, like here's my favorite Bible verse. Here's my favorite lyric from Everclear. And that was enough. That was something that I agonized over trying to get exactly right

because I wanted to have this perfect, idyllic picture of myself that I could use as my armor as I entered conversations that I would be uncomfortable to have in person. Now for me, so I started college in the year 2000 and freshman year. It was so instrumental in like me building relationships with people.

I just met college, you know, it was like you would like somehow exchange screen names, which I don't really remember how that happened. But then like you would be able to like see their away message and a lot of times they would like tell you where they were at, you know,. But then you would be able to see their away message. And a lot of times they would tell you where they were at. And then you'd be able to figure out, are they all hanging out together? You would check and see who was idle and then figure out, oh, okay. So they must be. All right, so if they're here.

And then you'd anxiously wait for them to become active again. Yeah. It was a big deal. It was important big deal. It was important too. Like I cannot count the number of times that like the friends I was making, especially like into high school too, like I would be playing,

I have this memory of being kind of in sort of a dark place, kind of in like a feeling lousy for an extended period of time uh depression i think they call it uh in high school and like i was playing everquest like a lot and there was one night where it was our homecoming game and i had been like sort of growing my circle of friends in high school which was sort of an agonizing process because i didn't have a great high school experience where i was just playing everquest and had been playing it like all day and one of my friends like hit me up on im like hey we're all going

to the game together you should you should come it'll be fun uh and i was like i can't i just got this new expansion and you know i'm heading to the dungeons of norath and he was like what the fuck are you talking about like let's go all have fun together and i did and i'm glad i did like it was uh as somebody who was like online all the time like it was a really valuable sort of uh you know almost lifeline for me that uh i haven't thought about like i haven't thought about it in well over a decade and it was only sort of like when i stopped thinking about it as a joke uh i sort of realized like hey actually that was really important to me yeah so yeah i'm getting like emotional talking about aol instant messenger which i was not expecting but yes thank

you aol you're you're you're instant messenger specifically you are a great messaging service a not great employer if i'm uh if i'm being honest yes yeah hey what's your first thing my first thing is the harlem globetrotters oh my god yes holy shit have you ever seen them not in person have you yes oh wow i don't think i knew that they came to like the Sandy Superstore Arena, the big Sandy Superstore Arena, a couple times. Did you get some of those radio station tickets? Probably, yeah. Yeah, I was really young when I met.

Oh, okay. So I do not, I don't remember it like super, super well. I think I remember the like fake bucket of water gag. I feel like they did that at everything where they would like have like glitter in a bucket of water and pretend like it was full of water and throw I feel like they did that at everything where they would have glitter in a bucket of water and pretend like it was full of water and throw it in somebody's face. Obviously, they did many amazing shots and dunks as well. Mm-hmm.

I have never seen them in person, but I remember them being on television a lot. Also, there was a pair of players that were on several seasons of The Amazing Race that I very much enjoyed. Oh, yes. Oh, they were so good. So good. Big Easy was one of them. I don't remember who the other one was, though.

No, I just remember them going down the water slide in that one big water park where the one couple was too afraid to go down the water slide so they just cut them like bye thanks yeah they were great um the Harlem Globetrotters have been around over 90 years uh they were founded in 1926 back before uh people of color were allowed to play professional basketball it was originally a team called the Savoy Big Five uh Chicago, and they were named after the Chicago ballroom where they played. And then Abe Saperstein founded them as the Harlem Globetrotters in 1926. And this was a real grassroots effort. He not only sewed their red, white, and blue uniforms himself, but he was also an owner, coach, manager, publicist, and sometimes substitute player.

Fuck yeah. How has there not been like, maybe there has been and I haven't seen it, like a movie about- I don't know. I watched like a short YouTube video that was very dramatic. Yeah.

And the voiceover work on that was very intense yeah but i've never seen like a full-length film on it yeah um they so they played kind of as a serious team for several years and it wasn't until the late 1930s when they started to do their like ball handling tricks and routines um saperstein worked really hard to get them to tour all over the country. And they were an incredible team. 1948, 1949, they twice defeated the world champion Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA. So they were, they were kind of an unstoppable force.

And that's when they really started to become kind of showman. And this was actually the articles i read suggested that it may have accelerated the integration of the nba the first african-american player drafted to sign an nba contract was nathaniel clifton who played for the globetrotters oh wow yeah and they think it was that those winning games against the world champion Minneapolis Lakers that may have motivated teams to say, we've got to draft some of these guys.

They're incredible. Wilt Chamberlain also played for the Globetrotters 1958. I think I knew that. Of all the sports, I would say my basketball knowledge is probably the most limited. I think I maybe know more about the globetrotters than i do about um a lot of current modern day like nba teams that's the thing i was a little nervous to talk about this because i am not a basketball expert by any means i enjoy watching basketball games but i just like

i do not know like i don't i just do not fall i don't follow really the thing about the globetrotters is they're like they're all about the stunts, right? Right. Which for people that aren't particularly knowledgeable about basketball is one of the big appeals anyway. Yes. It's like I love the slam dunk contest

because that's like, I love a home run derby. It's the best part of the sport and that should just be it, I think. So the world record for dunking was set by the Harlem Goat Travers in 2000. You want to take another run at saying... It's hard, though.

It's hard to say the Harlem Goat Travers. You say it over and over again? Okay. World record. Michael Wild Thing Wilson in the year 2000 set a world record by dunking on a 12-foot hoop. 12 feet. 12 feet. 12 feet.

So the other thing I also don't know much about is just sort of like spatial relations. But I think that's pretty big, huh? It's pretty big, I think. I'm 5'10". Yeah. So that's twice me plus four inches. Yeah, twice me plus four inches.

Yeah. That's up there, baby. That's real high. That's so... How big... How high is the hoop usually? I think it's 10 feet. Is that right?

There's gotta be people dunking it higher than... I'm thinking about it, and now I'm thinking like, that's not actually that high. Will you look it up real quick? How high is the hoop? That ballroom's 10 feet. That's two more feet, Griff.

That's pretty substantial. Two feet is like one of my legs. Hold on. There's twice me, four inches, and one of my legs. Is that how you measure everything? It's just... Hold on. How many Griffin legs?

10 feet is one me, and then up to my shoulders, and then you add one of my legs on top of that? That's a very high basketball rim. Yeah. It's pretty substantial, I think. Was there a trampoline? I assume not. Okay.

You'd never know. Yeah. So I can't talk about the Harlem Globetrotters without talking a little bit about the Washington Generals. These fucking guys. So I wanted to kind of talk about the Harlem Globetrotters without talking a little bit about the Washington Generals. These fucking guys. So I wanted to kind of talk about the history. So in 1953, they recruited a team called the Philadelphia Spas to tour as the Foils.

Spas? S-P-H-A-S. Spas. Spas. This team had actually beaten the Globetrotters before, and so they thought they would be a good team to travel with. They were rebranded as the Washington Generals. They've also taken various identities throughout time,

such as the Boston Shamrocks, the New Jersey Reds, and the Atlantic City Seagulls. If you do a little searching on the Washington Generals, on the Generals website, they list three times that they have beaten the Harlem Globetrotters. The Globetrotters will only acknowledge one time, which was January 5th, 1971. They were playing without one of their star players.

And part of the thing with the Globetrotters is that when they are doing stunts, the other team, the generals, is not allowed to maneuver. So if they're doing their little tricks or whatever, the team just kind of has to let them do their tricks. Right. But when they're rushing the hoop, they can get in there and block and do their regular things. So they were without their star player, Curly Neal.

And so they kind of toned down the joke aspect of the game, which is usually like 70% of the game. It's like them doing their antics. So they played more of a straight up game. And so the Washington Generals had basically more of a straight up game and so the washington generals had basically kind of tied it up and at the end the 50 year old manager of the generals who was also a player coach like abe saverstein had a last second bucket to win the game hell yeah boy how confusing must how much apparently there were like children in the audience crying

because it was like so upsetting and unnerving to see this happen uh two things real quick spas is an acronym it's sphas and that's the south philadelphia hebrew association oh okay the organization that uh initially funded the team and also by by merit of just bad Googling on my part, if you do want to know like where to get a nice massage or kelp wrap in Philadelphia, I can help you there as well. The Globetrotters defeated the Generals 16,000 times. Oh my God.

Get literally dunked on uh in 2015 uh harlem globetrotters management chose to end contractual relations with the generals resulting in them ceasing operations however just two years later uh the owners bought the generals from the klotz family and revived them as an active team. I think we talked, I remember distinctly in my Bim Bam episode where we talked about like getting really into this new. It did seem familiar to me. The beast or something like that. There was like some new player who were like,

this is who we need to finally defeat the Harlem Globetrotters. I wanted to tell them it's probably still not going to happen for you. I will also say another remarkable thing. they do a lot of charitable work oh yeah um in the 90s uh a former globetrotters player purchased the team uh and tripled revenue in three years and quadrupled the size of the team in five years uh and under that management they uh amounted to more than 11 million in charitable contributions well that's so great yeah so it's a it's a cool thing it's it's done a lot of groundbreaking things i didn't mention the fact that there are women on the team uh in 1985 uh olymp Olympic gold medalist Lynette Woodard joined becoming the first woman

on a men's pro basketball team. This 1985, the WNBA didn't start till 1996. Jesus. So more than 10 years before. Yeah. So yeah, it's a cool thing. There's a lot of history there. And it's super accessible

and entertaining to all people. And they helped Scoob and the gang beat up all the old men who pretended to be ghosts or whatever. I don't know about this. Yeah, I mean, Harlem Globetrotters have been friends of the Scooby, the Scoobiverse for quite some time. They had a cartoon show, which I knew about. They also had a live action Saturday morning show

called the Harlem Globetrotters popcorn machine okay this was in the 80s i'm not familiar was it a popcorn based cooking show because i'm extremely extremely into that so great with all the ball tricks and the dunks and the popcorn well you wouldn't want them to dunk the ball in a in the popcorn no i was picturing more of like shooting popcorn into the hoop. Into each other's mouth? Oh, that's nice too. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense, I think,

than throwing a popcorn kernel up and into a basketball hoop. I think it's gonna be tough for a camera to capture that. But that's not our job, is it? That's the director of cinematography's job. And can I steal you away? Yes. Got a couple jumbotrons here.

This first one is for Yuan. And it's from uh jansine who says baby brother we've had quite a rough 2019 but we've made it you've shown incredible strength and have grown so much i am so proud of you here's to hoping we finally got our matching tattoos by now and it didn't hurt too much anyway like, like mom said, love you yesterday. Love you still. Always have and always will. That's very sweet. That's very sweet. I wonder about these matching tattoos. Yeah. Do you think it's like two halves or like a snake?

And then when you touch them together, they turn into a real snake and jump out of the body? Or along those Scooby-Doo lines that we were just talking about. I'm thinking like a Scooby-Doo Scrappy-Doo. That can be really good too. That's fun. Can I read you the next message? Yeah. This is for George.

It is from Meredith. George, listening to Griffin and Rachel with you every week is just wonderful. You're my favorite person and the best cat dad around. Thank you for letting me take you all over Disney World laughing at my pun-tastic jokes and being my emotional rock through the really hard times

of the past year. Here's to six years of marriage. Love you, my dude. Yeah, I mean, laughing at a pun-tastic joke is laudable, I think. Is it hard for you to be in a family of such talented pun people

yeah yeah it's but that's my cross to bear and you know i like to insulate you from that because you don't know how bad it gets um but it's it's rough out there i'm trying to think of a pun to like cause it like be an example of something that they might say but my brain is so incapable of enjoying them that they can't it can't even make one right now hi i am laurie kilmartin and i'm jackie kish together we host a podcast called the jackie and laurie show uh we're both stand-up comics. We recently met each other because women weren't allowed to work together on the road

or in gigs for a long, long time. And so our friendship has been unfolding on this podcast for a couple of years. Jackie constantly works the road. I write for Conan and then I work the road in between.

We do a lot of stand-up comedy. And so we celebrate stand-up and we also bitch about it. We keep it to an hour we don't have any guests we somehow find enough to talk about every single week so find us you can subscribe to the jackie and laurie show at maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts okay bye hey can i hear your second thing yeah my second thing uh it's gonna be a quick one is arcades arcades i haven't been to one in a while uh intentionally that wasn't like part of a bowling alley or a movie theater or something

like that well pinballs pinballs yeah i mean i'm thinking recently we haven't been to pinballs in a couple of years now yeah uh but like if you're a fan of games and you are like into that scene, like the arcade growing up for me was always such a like super exciting place to be. Um, and I'm not going to go into the history of arcades because it's short and like basically arcades came around and they got super popular and became like a cool hangout spot. And then home video games became a thing. And then arcades slowly, uh, excruciatingly mostly died over the course of a few decades um but i i i have so many like really positive arcade experiences am i like dating myself

the most this episode yeah right it makes you sound like you're maybe 45 years old i'm not i'm i am 32 um in in huntington we had like two pretty big arcades worth talking about. The first was at the Huntington Mall. And it was just, it was called Tilt. And it was just a straight up arcade, like a big ass arcade. We had one at our mall called Exilorama. Ooh, that's really good. You know, it had tickets and prizes and like the whole deal and like a pretty good selection

a lot of like real estate for a mall arcade yeah way more than you would expect half the food court at our mall yeah and it had you know the usual the prerequisite stuff it had light gun games uh ddr it had uh air hockey ski ball all that jazz and like all kinds of like great shit uh the second one was called the pub and this was like a pizza place uh and it had a just like a huge it had like a big dining room area that had like oh it was a weird like 50s theme sort of vibe with like a jukebox and did they serve alcohol yeah yeah yeah uh i think so i think they had like beer but you could get like huge pizzas and shit but then they had like this huge arcade in the back room uh with like the same stuff i was very focused on like prizes at that one because you know they would do the

you know put a game boy advance up on the prize shelf and be like it's only 12 000 tickets um and i never even would come close to that but But they had like really dope shit. They had like kind of rarer arcade games, which I was always excited to see. Like they had, there's this Sega game called the Ocean Hunter, where you were these undersea like explorers with these like big jets that you held on to. And you could like, and it was,

oh God, it was such a shit hot game. So they had like a great selection. Also, it was like really near my church. And also Justin worked there for a summer. So me and my buddies used to like dip on over there after church was over. game so they had like a great selection also it was like really near my church and also justin worked there for a summer so me and my buddies used to like dip on over there after church was over justin would put some free plays on ocean hunter and we would just like eat pizza and have coke and just like cruise on it and it was sounds delightful so amazing um and i think like today they kind of operate in a different space than they did when I

was, when I was younger, where now it is the ones that are still around, which again, there has been a great calling, um, are either focused on more like, uh, novelty or preservation or else are supported by like really huge, like competitive gaming scenes. Uh, there are a lot of stores for a lot of arcades for which like uh the newest street fighter cabinet uh with like the latest updates is like their anchor of their entire sort of like financial backbone because of like everybody comes here to play this street fighter game against each other and we have tournaments and like all that stuff uh i went to a ton of places in chicago that were like that um but like growing up it was different like growing up it was different and you know

when i when my dad was growing up it was different like when he was doing it for me like i loved video games and i did not have uh the like means to go out and buy any game i wanted anytime i i got a game i either traded in a horrifying amount of other games so i get you know the game boy camera and i like traded in every video game i'd ever owned just to get it uh or i would like wait for like christmas or a birthday and hope i got the game that i wanted so like being able to go to a place and get like a couple bucks worth of quarters and then use those to like play a bunch of different games was always so exciting to me uh because i just i just really liked playing

a bunch of different stuff uh and these days like whenever i go to a pinballs which you mentioned which is this amazing arcade here in austin where they do have like don't they have like adult nights or something like that where they yeah it's like a after a certain time they like you're supposed to shepherd all the children out yeah and they can you like bring your own beer or something like that i forget yeah uh yeah it's really rad but like when i go to those places now it is more like a nostalgia play for me like i am not usually going there to play the hot new video game. I am going there to play the games that I kind of like really cherished my time with

because it was a harder sort of thing to come by for me. And so like when I go there and I see like the old, like the six person Capcom beat them up cabinets, like the Simpsons game or the X-Men game or some of those light gun games, like all the time crisis games person capcom beat-em-up cabinets like the simpsons game or the x-men game or uh the some of those light gun games like all the time crisis games and uh police trainer like i've played that so much uh because of my time uh getting free plays at the pub during justin's incredible summer

and it still broke my heart whenever he quit that job what is police trainer it's like a light light gun game but like you shoot uh like balls as they fly through the air and sometimes there's like matching puzzles and it's not like time crisis is like a straight up like guys jump out from behind a rock and try and shoot you and this one's the objective to become a policeman yeah the ranks it's maybe a bit like problematic to for me a young person to be like be yeah this is all police work is bang i'm shooting all these different targets um but i liked like the puzzles and stuff like that uh house of the dead like all of those like great i enjoyed me a light gun game um but like that's it like i go to the the arcade very rarely now

but it's just like seeing those games and i play them and they're not games i can really play at home necessarily or at least have the same experience playing at home and it just like it makes me feel like super nostalgic in a way that i don't get for a lot of games um and uh thinking about this segment really made me want to go to pinballs uh get back there i'm not a big pinball enthusiast never have been but uh they have a lot of uh a lot of games too yeah that simpsons. I don't know what it is about that game, but everybody in our age range is just like a little bit obsessed with that game.

I preferred the X-Men game. I really liked playing as Nightcrawler because you could just jam on the special button and he would dart all over the screen and just like blow everything up. I didn't even have to be particularly good at the game

to do it. But yeah. Hey, what's your second thing? My second thing is inspired by you. Oh. And it is eyelashes oh thanks babe these are the hairy mustaches on either sides of your eye if you think about them i would say more and and research supports this kind of like your eye whiskers oh yeah that's fun uh apparently eyelashes function kind of the same as whiskers do for a cat or a mouse. They kind of like alert you to obstacles and dangers near your eye.

That's not a wide margin of error. Automatically like shut your eye if something like brushes your eyelashes. Do you think that's why mine are so long? It's because I need a little bit of extra time to get these big orbs covered up? I don't know. I just I think you're blessed i think my eyelashes are almost constantly touching my glasses is that bad it's not great i mean i don't know why it'd be bad it's just how are they going to do their fucking job if they are constantly being touched i think

part of it too and this is true actually a lot of people with lighter color hair will have lighter colored eyelashes you got these real dark ones yeah really really frame those eyes real well thanks hon is this whole segment just gonna be you talking about how dope my facial features are no um so there was a study not too long ago um of eyelashes specifically of of mammal eyelashes, which are obviously most of what you find. Most eyelashes. I mean, there are like, you know, birds and stuff

that have eyelashes. Crocodile got an eyelash, probably. The ostrich. Ostrich is beautiful. Are you kidding me? Some of these ostriches with their come hither eyes. There was a study of chimpanzees, pandas, porcupines, cougars, camels, over two dozen mammals. And researchers determined that most mammal eyelashes are one third the length of eyes.

One third the length. So depending on the size of your eye, your eyelashes are most likely to be one third of that length i'm having a hard time if you did like the diameter of your eye that's the length okay it would come out i think i was thinking about the depth of my the height of my eyeball i don't like thinking about my eyeballs as balls i like thinking of them as little plates on the front of my head i don't like thinking about my eyeballs as balls. I like thinking of them as little plates on the front of my head. I don't like thinking about the meat back there. There is a suggestion that this is like the optimum length,

not just for protecting the eye, but minimizing the flow of air over the eyeball. So if you're a mammal, you have those wet eyes. Oh, yeah. I hate them uh and in order to keep um evaporation at bay uh the eyelash at that length will stop the dust from getting in and also keep the the airflow appropriate because the air will come up over the eyelash and and avoid coming into so it's kind of like a badass spoiler for my eyeball. Yeah, exactly. I like these guys.

Exactly. So although mammals in the tests varied from a one-pound hedgehog to a thousand-pound giraffe, the length of the eyelash were invariably one-third the length of the eye. That is a fun fucking fact. Yeah. Thick eyelashes, like on a giraffe or a camel, are more effective at blocking airflow,

but they also limit access to light. So the suggestion, like a camel in the desert would need a thicker eyelash and one that's more protective against the sunlight. Good idea, camel. Giraffe, kangaroos, and camels have several rows of eyelashes, actually. What?

Camels have three sets of eyelids and two rows of eyelashes. I don't like that. That's like a cone heads. No thanks. That's yucky. There is a suggestion, though, like if you curl your eyelashes, like the curl of the eyelash doesn't make any impact into their effectiveness. And that if they get too long, it's actually possible that, you know, it works against you.

I should get I should go get mine looked at by science. Get yours measured. I think mine are too long. I don't think that's true. I think I need to go. Do you get a haircut? No. are too long i don't think that's true i think i need to go do you get a haircut no no so eyelashes like hair on your head will like just fall out and the length they grow to is is generally mine have none of mine have ever fallen out really yes so now you're just getting braggy i'm like a no

it's not a brag it's a real serious problem you've never had a little eyelash on your cheek and made a wish no i just keep getting more and more and longer and longer eyelashes they hang down to my chin i'm like a junji ito monster over here it's fucking bad hey can i uh tell you what our oh sorry i was just gonna say i think they're lovely and don't change a thing thank you babe i love Thank you, babe. I love yours too. Eh. Eh. Hey, our friends at home are talking. They're all abuzz. Can I tell you what about? Yes, please.

Angeline says, I recently moved to Philadelphia. I got some great, great spa racks for you. And I discovered that the Free Library of Philadelphia has instruments that you can rent and bring home for a few weeks, like a book. They have a bunch of stringed instruments and some drums, including even a steel drum. Public libraries are already such great wonders. And I thought this service is an extra wonderful way to serve the community. That is amazing. That's fucking incredible. I read this and I was like, I can't not talk about this on the show.

That is the coolest shit ever. Wow. And the idea of instrument libraries, which i know there are like initiatives that do this sort of thing in in bigger cities but like having it be as uh commonplace as a as a library like that is so you imagine if you're like a little kid like before you know your school has a band and you like i mean i remember this because i was a band you have no idea what instrument to pick because you haven't played like 90 of them this is a cool opportunity to like get to know new instruments and for somebody like me who like listens to a bunch of bluegrass music and then it's like i'm gonna learn to play the mandolin and so i go and get a mandolin and then i try to

play it for like a week and i'm like i am never gonna be able to fucking figure this thing out i you know won't be out one mandolin uh jenny says i'm on my way out of cincy from the taz show and i'm struck by how wonderful bridges are there are so many between ohio and kentucky and they look so beautiful and powerful all the unique designs give a city a lot of character too i did notice some good bridges in cincinnati we got great bridges in the tri in the whole tri-state area we got a lot of great bridges a lot of great new river gorge bridge can't beat it a lot of great bridges, a lot of great New River Gorge Bridge, can't beat it, a lot of great suspension bridges. Yeah, what was that lighted one that we took?

That was in, I think, in Ironton, actually going out to Ashland, I want to say. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, so like in fairly unexpected places, like gorgeous, gorgeous pieces of infrastructure. Yeah, obviously not only relegated to the ohio kentucky west virginia tri-state area yeah i am i you know i did see some bridges in other parts of the country i have seen them i've almost certainly i don't think i have ever forded the mississippi river

i'm pretty sure every time i've crossed it has been on a bridge so uh hey thank you to bowen and augustus for the use of a theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description and uh thank you to the maximum fun network yeah if you are interested in finding new podcasts i encourage you to go to maximumfun.org there are new episodes of shows posted every day and they are always very funny and fun and informative if you really enjoy the stuff that we make and that the network at large sort of champions, well, good news,

the MaxFunDrive is just around the corner. It is your chance to support us and support this amazing community by becoming a monthly member here. And we're gonna have lots of details for how you can do that and all the really cool stuff that you can earn for becoming a Max fun supporter uh including all the bonus content including like we've talked about before

the episode where rachel played animal crossing for a month and then talked about it and is a very near and dear episode to my heart got lots of other stuff too uh from all of our past bonus endeavors that you're you're gonna find something you're just gonna love i guarantee it but yeah uh that kicks off here in a couple weeks uh and so we're gonna have more details for you then but you know keep your ear to the ground hey what should we go out on you know what i had a lot of people on twitter and facebook uh expressing their enthusiasm for us ending last show saying that we were proud of them. Oh, okay. I like the little like affirmation at the end, you know? So is there another way we could potentially compliment our listeners and make them feel good about themselves?

I feel like that's going to get exhausting to think of new ways to do that every week. So I would push that we try to come up with a sort of boilerplate, but it's got to be powerful. Yeah, right? I want it to be powerful. Proud of You is like, it covers everything, but it also like, I feel like there's going to be people who know like, I did not do, I really boned it this week. Yeah, you said you were proud of me last week and okay, I deserved it. But I boned it this week, so it feels like you're almost making fun of me a little bit.

So like, maybe we do a sort of nerds box double package of just like, hey, we're proud of you, and sun will come out tomorrow, or like, you know, something like that, like better luck next time. I love the nerds box double package. That's a good suggestion. Yeah, I would like those.

I can't eat nerds anymore, I don't think. That's just straight-ass sugar, man. That would ruin me. Okay, anyway, we're getting distracted thinking about candy again. Don't change a thing unless you're trying to change. Ah, shit.

We need to bust out how to make friends and influence people. Yeah, you're right. What about congratulations on washing your hands an appropriate length of time today? That's got, it's so important. You got to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or whatever. Happy birthday.

Happy birthday. Is that what they did? Good work. Sometimes I'll do all of, I'll do all of stay from Lisa Loeb. So it takes me a long time, but these hands get really clean. We'll come back to it. Money won't pay. Work it off. Money won't pay. Work it off. Money won't pay.

Work it off. Work it off. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.