Wonderful! - Wonderful! 124: Oh Boy, Hoop and Stick!

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

Griffin's favorite packaging! Rachel's favorite temporary film distributor! Griffin's favorite meaningful book! Rachel's favorite animal sounds!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. Ocean wave. Oh, this is recorded on the boat. We're reporting from the boat. Hey, everyone. This is Griffin and Rachel.

We're reporting to you from the boat with all the hype. I'm an octopus. And this is a huge development. And a lot of people are talking about this. An octopus has found its way onto the ship that Rachel and I are on. And I don't want to scare anyone. I don't want anyone to freak out because they look so weird because all the arms and the slime and no bones. But you know what's great about an octopus, though?

What's that? Four hugs. That's true. Yeah. about an octopus though what's that four hugs that's true yeah or like eight christian side hugs is one way of thinking about it which would be totally dope if those christian side hugs were not pulling you towards that very large beak that it's got where its butt should be are you sure about this one octopus okay who am i to tell you your business we're on a boat right now when you hear this we're not like when we record this we're not on a boat right now um but when you hear this we should be on a boat so just believe make believe with us in the space what do you think we're doing right now

oh like when this is what are both us doing boat us what are both us doing uh iOTUS? What are BOTUS doing? I mean, I am probably eating, you know, a french fry because I'm bad. Rachel McElroy! I'm eating a french fry. Yeah, I'll probably have me a few french fries. We're on the JoCo cruise,

the Jonathan Colton cruise. To be specific, and just based on my experience from doing it for the first time last year, I'm probably, um, just grabbing, um, just too many desserts.

They have a big open salad bar situation. They have a handful of different desserts. I don't want to miss out on one of them desserts. So I'll grab one and then the other, and then the other lot of flan. Oh boy. Is there? Oh, right. Did you not find the flan bucket? I other a lot of flan oh boy is there oh right did you not find the flan bucket i don't remember the flan but did you not open up the flan drawer in the dessert

cabinet just wiggle that just wiggles right out of there it's a weird ship cool ship having a fun time octopus notwithstanding and we have a show to do gr Griffin. Wish you were here and living this dream with us. Do you have any small wonders, Rachel? You know, I'm going to say vanity license plates. Oh. Sometimes it's just a treat. Yeah. Just if you've got like a couple initials together

and you spend your time in traffic trying to figure out what they spell out, you know? Yeah, sometimes it is sort of a fun little rebus that it gives you and I'm into that. I think the best I ever saw was still during Travis's bachelor party in Cincinnati when we were driving to the liquor store and saw Hot Boy. Hot Boy? It was either Hot Boy or Hot Boys. I feel like there was a Z.

It may have been Hot Boys. Wow, that made us so excited. I mean, I know what it means, but could it possibly mean that on your car that's very confident of you i have been talking and i don't have i don't think i have one i don't think i have one you could talk about frozen food why would i talk about frozen food i mean you like it yeah i do like it could be your small wonder it It's pretty small. It's nice when the food's frozen. And because when you do that, it's sort of like fucking chrono locks it, right?

In a little time cube. Like you have this, you know, some chicken thighs and you just get them and they're in their fridge for a day and you're like, I'm not gonna have time to cook those this week. Let's lock them in the chrono cube. And then you can return to a time when they were not frozen in the future.

It's pretty amazing if you really think about it. Yeah. Big bonus. We may have just gotten a new freezer that we're both very excited about. Yeah. My plan is I'm gonna start doing some sous vide bags, freezing them.

And then during the week, you just give them suckers a little bath. What's there waiting for you? The listeners hold him accountable to this plan because I support it. I want you to join me in this fucking lifestyle. I want to see it happen. You want to know my theory? I think you're afraid of the vacuum sealer.

I think you live in fear of the vacuum sealer. I mean, yeah, a little bit. Sure, sure. Let's dive into that. What scares you about the vacuum sealer, which is an important part in the sous vide process? let's dive into that what scares you about the vacuum sealer which is an important part in the sous vide process um i you know i'm just worried that the bag the bag's going to combust in on itself creating a like a black hole in our kitchen well the good news is if that happens while it's

in the sous vide bath you're making soup you just pivot this is gr is Griffin's new character. You're making soup. It's a fun character. I'm going to start this week. I go first this week. My first thing is I wrote this in my excitement and it sort of changed the meaning of it. I wrote good ass packaging, which could also read as good ass packaging,

which I guess is like. Like a nice pair of pants. Like a nice pair of jeans that just frame your caboose pretty nicely. But no i'm just talking about like good packaging which is a shameful topic because i don't and i do not enjoy um unnecessarily wasteful ass packaging right you should talk about the game splendor that is so perfect oh babe splendor is for sure in my notes you know i'm gonna get to splendor okayor. Okay, good. This is a little spoiler. I guess a little teaser. I'm going to talk about Splendor here in a little bit. Yeah, there's enough trash in the world as it is,

right? So I don't like just when you open up a big thing and it's just got a little thing in it, and it's like, guys, come on, you can do better than this. Recyclable materials, though, that's all right. When it's like, hey, we made this out of dirt um we made this out of dirty newspapers i'm like oh cool it doesn't smell bad so that's good that you've done that um i guess honorable mention to like uh like consumer electronics that has good packaging and in a fairly like um efficient way i think apple is probably the standard bearer in this in this regard because apple products are so like about the packaging they're so about like the experience efficient way. I think Apple is probably the standard bearer in this, in this regard, because Apple products are so like about the packaging. They're so about like the experience of opening them up and everything is

like so thought out and considered. I will say those, those earbuds could probably be in a smaller. You think the earbuds could be in a smaller, they could be a little smaller guy. I mean, they're really only like the size of like a, like a half dollar.

Yeah. But they come in a pretty small, when you get them them in a phone they're like wrapped up sort of in the bottom of the box i have for sure like accidentally thrown those away before they're so little so i don't know but you get it and it's like the phone's in its little coffin and you pop that out and then there's a little hole you tuck your finger in and pull it and then there's the instruction book right there and the chargers in its own little cavity. It's all so thoroughly thoughtful and just meticulously designed. And I dig that.

The Oculus Quest, the headset that I got, the box it comes in is just gorge, just this gorge, just slick black box and you pop it out and it's got this little molded thing that looks exactly like the headset that it just slots right into with like little holsters for the different controllers that really does it for me i like a good-ass package okay i don't i think what makes me really savor the flavor of a good-ass package is how bad clamshell packages are. Yes. Anytime there's a clamshell package in my life.

Like I, I hate that. And it's, it's become less. I don't think I get that many packages that are clamshell anymore. Like I'm trying to think the last time that I opened one, but I mean, toys,

toys, yeah. Toys are like the last passion, but even toys are like toys have these little, if you have not bought a toy for a child lately, like a lot of them have changed to sort of like cardboard based solutions and instead of having like those annoying ass little twist ties or like plastic wire wraps around the toys as like uh you know safety measures uh a lot of the toys when you like buy them online and they

don't have to worry about those safety measures just have these little black circles on the back that you just kind of twist 90 degrees and the toy just pops out it is pretty rad and they did not have that shit when i was a kid it's true uh but clamshell packages are uh an absolute nightmare in 2009 over six this was a long time ago but it was the most only thing i could find about it uh over 6 000 cases of people being admitted to emergency rooms or with uh with cuts or puncture wounds from clamshell packages oh my gosh like christmas day is like a fucking bloodbath man because these bad packages that are just like designed to keep people from stealing shit in a store but really like you just

tuck the clamshell package under your jacket and go home and cut your hand open opening it it's still got stolen like you've just you know hurt them or whatever uh as rachel has suggested for me the pinnacle of this is board game packaging and boy howdy you could do much worse than splendor splendor is a game where you i think we've talked about it on this show it's you know like a um it's like a monetary like ladder building game where you collect gems and buy cards to make it easier to buy more gems and you win uh and all the gems come in these like these little tokens that have a nice heft and each one has its own like slot like holster that they everything just perfectly fits in all

the components all like feel really really good you know like when you get like a new board game and then you put it back in the box and it's just a mess you know like a game of monopoly monopoly yeah the money and the cards are all over the place this has like little slots for them it's perfect and like like clamshell packaging like this did not used to be a thing like you like you said about monopoly game of life for me the worst was we were obsessed with hero quest growing up which was yeah i think milton bradley's like uh board game dnd take from gosh probably the 80s early 90s uh and it had all these like little intricate components that you could punch out of cardboard i love that shit all the flying frog games so like uh last night on earth have those like nice thick cardboard sheets that you punch

all the shit out of like i've always loved that but in hero quest like they had one little flimsy cardboard divider you could use to like keep things separate and it didn't even last like one game and then it was just fucking like nerd salad in there like it's just a disaster in there and it is completely inscrutable the reason i like thought about this is because at my desk i got uh the this rpg quest that our friend chris uh plant helped make and it's like just this slick black box it doesn't need to be on my desk like i should put it in our like board game zone but like it just looks it just looks nice you open it it's got some nice art on it with all the cards that live in there i just like a good box i like a good box that keeps the thing i'm not even that organized a person in real life,

which is maybe why I need my, you know, my, the products I own to sort of take care of that for me. Yeah, it simplifies it for you. So this goes here. So like, I like a package that serves as like an ongoing case and ongoing sort of storage solution instead of something you just like tear up and throw away. But yeah, I appreciate a good package, especially when I think about how just awful it used to be. I definitely remember one Christmas, I got a pair of headphones to go with my new CD player that I listened to the soundtrack for Rent

and the Beatles One compilation album. Those were the only two CDs I owned. But I got a clamshell package with the headphones inside and in opening it i like cut through the cord with the scissors and like that's it that's it um so again hey what's your first thing my first thing is video rental stores okay you know i used to work at a video rental i did not know that yeah like an indie one no actually i kind of thought it was but i found out later it was not what was it when i was in chicago like around

2006 2007 while i was studying for the gre i worked at west coast video which was on it was like it was like near belmont and broadway uh in chicago and um apparently west coast video is like a chain i've never heard of it before but um they closed in uh like 2000 what do i want to they closed in 2009 so i got in like in their last three years of existence. How many of those VHSs did you swipe there? I didn't, um, it didn't work there very long. Okay. I remember that, um, I was actually, I was let go. Oh, babe.

Uh, I requested a lot of personal time in the early months. Wait, was Tommy Smurl your boss? No. Rip him. No, no. I was one of like four employees and we all worked kind of by ourself and they didn't close till midnight, which was a little sketch. Yeah. And occasionally the manager would work and he would always grant me the time off. And then one time when I was out of town, he called me and left a voicemail and was just like-

Firing you? Yeah. yeah just like you're not present enough and we really need somebody who has more available time yeah make sure to return those videos you have checked out whoa like you can't even use their services anymore well when you're an employee you can just like take stuff out sure um but yeah i i enjoyed my short time there. We did have a room of pornography, which was a little uncomfortable for me, just working there by myself with people coming in. Yeah, sure. But I was there when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

with Johnny Depp came out on DVD. I put those on the shelves. That was me. You did that? I did. Babe. Yeah. You didn't throw them in the garbage. shelves. That was me. That was you did that? I did. Babe. Yeah. You didn't throw them in the garbage.

No. Where they belong. I feel like the DVD cases smelled like chocolate. And I don't know if I was just imagining that or not. I think you may have had a sort of head injury situation. But I have always liked a video rental store. Okay. And it's obviously not something you see a lot of anymore

no but the ones that are still around are kind of like impressive places yeah they're boutiquey and cool like uh what i heart i heart video yeah you know it's actually called i love video it's just they use a heart and so i always call it i heart oh vulcan video is another place here in austin yeah for sure justin worked at Blockbuster for a while, and I famously talked about why he was let go and the sort of dark deeds he got into. But it was like two blocks from our house. So just I went there every,

in the summer I went there every single day. I like really, really, I really liked the Blockbuster video. So I wanted to tell you a brief story about Blockbuster. Oh, okay. Which is kind of just the origin of blockbuster which was uh the first store opened in dallas in 1985 with an inventory of 8 000 tapes and they started video game rental in 1987 interesting i did not think that it started that

that early huh yeah um shortly after that hollywood video opened did you have a hollywood video in your town uh we had one within like a stone's throw of the town like i definitely went to hollywood video to get yes we did i did we definitely got some stuff i think it was like on the way to church there was a hollywood video video kind of out of the way and so like when blockbuster didn't have the tapes we craved um there were also rental opportunities at like grocery stores do you remember this did your grocery store absolutely yeah isn't that wild to think about it is strange to think about how they i remember actually we got a copy of yoshi's story for the nintendo 64 that we rented from a grocery store and then they they stopped doing rentals while we had it and it

was like so do we, do we keep it? Do we own this now? And the answer to that was they never came looking for it. So yes. Um, so here's, what's interesting about Hollywood video.

So in 1995, uh, so less than 10 years after they opened blockbuster filed a lawsuit against Hollywood entertainment for hiring five former Blockbuster employees that they alleged had trade secrets, which could be used to better their sales. Isn't that crazy? That is pretty wild.

I don't think, how are you going to lock that down, Blockbuster? Like, give these people some good insurance. Also, at the time, Hollywood Video only had 117 stores, where Blockbuster had 2,800. Well, I mean, you can't, you gotta, if you see a pret, at the time, Hollywood Video only had 117 stores, where Blockbuster had 2,800. Well, I mean, you can't, you gotta, if you see a pretender to the throne, you can't let them accrue power, hun. You gotta squish them down beneath your big Blockbuster

boot. In May 1995, the judge ruled in favor of Hollywood Video, stating that Blockbuster failed to demonstrate irreparable harm as a result of the hiring. Yeah, what were the trade seekers that they could possibly, okay, so we do them. We put them in a box.

Yeah, and it does alphabetical order. There's a barcode on the box. You could scan the barcode to check out the tape. We copyrighted that. We encourage people to rewind the video cassettes. Here's another thing i didn't know in 2000 blockbuster turned down a chance to purchase netflix for 50 million dollars fucking goobers netflix for a while like wasn't wasn't you know the big thing and so i think blockbuster was like we're not gonna take a risk on netflix thank you yeah well i imagine blockbuster was just like in this place where

they're like well we'll just do a netflix that's yeah blockbuster was gonna start their own like rental um streaming thing and it just never took off yeah uh at its peak in 2004 blockbuster had more than 9 000 stores uh in 2004 also there was a hostile takeover attempt of Hollywood Video by Blockbuster. They were so, okay, so that was it. They were so angry. They were so, it's like Game of Thrones. Like, they were so fucking focused on, like, the other kingdoms vying for the rental Game of Thrones that they didn't notice the fucking Netflix dragons, like, flying through the

sky. Like, we're gonna eat your geese. We're gonna eat your sheep and shit. What I think is interesting is Hollywood Video did eventually agree to a buyout by movie gallery which was actually a smaller fucking dunked on blockbuster like we don't want your money what a petty little kingdom they all had no idea yeah i had a friend that worked at hollywood video and their big thing was that the employees dressed like ushers like Like they all wore like these white button down shirts and black vests. I mean, in memory serves, Blockbuster had kind of like a Best Buy motif going, I feel like.

I feel like Justin had to wear a blue shirt and khaki. I don't remember. Yeah, no, there definitely was that. Yeah, I thought so. Kind of like a Best Buy employee. Yeah. So here's the thing. So Blockbuster closed remaining stores in 2013 um at this point there

were only uh 4 000 rental stores in the country okay right now there's only one video rental chain still around and that's family video family family video of course i have not heard of family video oh they have they so they have them mostly in the midwest and in rural areas family there are some in texas too actually okay was it is it just like blockbuster or do they have mostly sort of like kirk cameron based affairs uh i mean they have everything okay uh they have 700 locations in the in the country what the fuck yeah family video i mean again mostly in midwest and rural areas so what do they have that netflix hasn't like they have a lot of discounts so like kids rentals are free and they have certain days of the week where things are like a dollar

okay they're like their whole thing is like cost savings so here's what's interesting about them still being around um part of it is that they own their properties and they lease it out to other vendors. So you'll see a lot of family videos that also have third party tenants, including pizza places, fitness places, water vendors, wireless companies. They have licensed real estate to more than 500 third-party tenants that seems like a good little little scam they've got going on yeah so what they would do is they reduce inside and reduce in size as the demand went down and lease out that space to another company that's pretty good do it in like a car dealership or a auto body shop and then people like getting

their oil changed they have to sit there and chill for an hour and a half and you're like hey you seen hancock we got it on dvd for 399 speaking of chilling yeah the new family video third party tenant venture is cbd i was going to make a joke about that so So the president of enterprise development at Highland Ventures, which is family videos parent, like corporate parent. Right.

Said, quote, there are a lot of people that use CBD to relax. And guess what? That's what a lot of people use movies for. Cool. Yeah, sure. One of those, I will say, probably does the job.

That same guy, that same president of enterprise development said, they're coming in to buy CBD. And then they go, I haven't been in a video store in a long time. And then they set up an account. I love the gumption, right? Sure, yeah. Like we got to stay in business somehow.

This is the new thing. We're going to be on top of it it doesn't help that like if you do feel like doing something niche and renting a video there are literal vending machines that do that shit outside of like every wall yeah i didn't look into red box but i mean that's still definitely a thing right yeah it's a huge thing but you know a lot of the articles i read and it's true like going into a video store is a real like adventure in browsing oh yeah you know like they made the point in the articles like when you go to a streaming service often you kind of have to know what you're looking for you know whereas if you go in a video store you can see it's like a bookstore you see the cover

and you're like huh maybe i do want to see that it's the whole argument for like specialty brick and mortars of like it's the record store argument of like people enjoy this media and there's a community around it i think maybe movies are so amorphous whereas like vinyl has like a scene around it but this conversation right now is like really pertinent to games because gamestop is like really faltering because everybody's moving to digital everybody's like buying their games online but like there's still this community of people who just like like going to a game store and talking to other people about games and looking at it so game stops trying to like pivot around that to stay alive yeah uh so like in 10 years like who knows if everyone will have gone the

way of blockbuster yeah i don't know i don't know i don't know it happened with toys r us it had its own like sort of follies but like it fucking sucks that we cannot take Henry to Toys R Us. Our child to a large toy store. Yeah, I mean, we have some cool toy stores here in Austin, but not ones that have a billion different Spiders men. You know, like Henry, yeah, that's the thing. Henry likes those characters, those brand characters. Right, but we can be like,

no, but this is the wooden walking dog. And he's got little rubber feet and they slap against the ground as you push him down the sidewalk. Here's a, no, this is an artisanal hoop and stick. You're going to love hoop and stick. You play with it. It's red like Spider-Man. Oh, you've thrown hoop and stick into the street where it was hit by a truck and you're just screaming Paw Patrol at us. Well, let's ask. Excuse me, do you have Paw Patrol? No, they have a doll that looks like Friedrich Nietzsche.

Do you want that? He doesn't want that. But it sticks to your fridge. Yeah, I know, I understand. That's not the same as Marshall, the Dalmatian with the fire hat. Yeah. Do you have any Transformers?

Okay, they have a car made out of wood that was carved by an old, old man. And then they have an, what's that? An educational robot that teaches you Cantonese. And he says, if you play with them at the same time, it's like a Transformer. Are you interested in that? You've left.

Hey, can I steal you away? Yes. Hey, here's a jumbotron. This one is for Colin. And it is from Abigail who says, Dear Colin, this message is coming at you via wonderful because that's exactly what you are. Life has been insane these past two years and I wouldn't have been able to face it with anyone else. You are theiffin to my rachel the berry to my loop and the sam to my frodo

i love you so much let's go watch that jonathan frakes video again now which one is that uh he do you know who jonathan frakes was no he was commander was Commander Riker on Star Trek The Next Generation, but he also was the host of, ah shit, what was that show? Unexplained Mysteries. Oh God. If I show you a picture of this man sitting at a table, looking at like a skull or an old tome

with a magnifying glass, and also there's fog behind him, you'll be like, oh that there is a Jonathan Frakes. He sits in the chair funny does he turn it around and sit backwards no he like throws his leg over it when he goes to sit down and he's the star trek man who does that he has a he had a he had a beard on the fuck beyond beyond belief beyond belief fact or fiction jonathan frakes this is jonathan frakes i'm Beyond Belief? Beyond Belief, Fact or Fiction. Jonathan Frakes. This is Jonathan Frakes I'm talking about.

Do you see Jonathan Frakes? Oh, you know, I had a friend go as him for Halloween one time. Not as Commander Riker, just as Jonathan Frakes? Well, no, no, as Commander Riker. Oh, okay. He's a handsome man. Good looking dude, Jonathan Frakes. Not really my type.

Okay. I'm more into Griffin McElroy's. That's good to hear. And Scott Bakula's. Well, that's less good to hear. Can I read the next message? Uh-huh. It is for Adam.

It is from Cheryl Lynn. Adam, these last 10 years have been wonderful because of you. Thank you for being my rock, my foot warmer, and my best friend. Building a life together with you is the best adventure I've ever been on. You're a good egg. XOXO. What do you think that they censored there at the end? Oh, wait.

Hugs and kisses? Yeah. You know what, babe? I was looking for my notes because I had filled my computer with Jonathan Frakes. And so my mind didn't really put that together. And I thought that XOXO was like a cuss word. Redacted? Well, I thought it was like a cuss word.

Or they do symbols and I don't know. I don't know. Now a lot of people use that for hugs and kisses, Griff. Yeah, I get it now. Mission Control, this is Rocket Ship One. Come in, Mission Control. This is Mission Control. Go ahead.

We have incoming, and it looks big. Can you identify? It looks like some sort of pledge drive. Affirmative. It's Max Fun Drive. That's a verified Max Fun Drive. Countdown to Max Fun Drive is initiated. Can you project a time to intercept?

Based on the current trajectory, MaxFunDrive will be here from March 16 to March 27. March 16 to March 27, roger. Rocketship One, can you confirm a visual on common MaxFunDrive phenomena, such as the best episodes of the year, bonus content, and special gifts for new and upgrading monthly members? We have a visual. Great episodes, bonus content, premium gifts confirmed, and more. Sure sounds quiet down there. Mission Control, what's your status? All systems go, Rocket Ship One. Just catching up on our favorite MaxFun shows

so we can tune into MaxFunDrive episodes between March 16 and March 27. Over and out. Can I hear your next thing? My next thing, yes. My next thing is a bit more serious than good-ass packaging. It is a book that is very important to me. It is a book by Dave Eggers

called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Have you read it? Yeah. Yeah, I feel like it was a lot of folks in our generation read it because the year it came out, it was uh a lot of folks in our generation like read it because the year it came out it was like the hottest shit ever yeah uh i read it a few years after it came out uh but i oh boy that book really really really speaks to me uh it is a memoir by dave eggers who is a very prolific writer he's written a of, I've read a ton of his stuff, like, um, uh, you shall know our velocity and,

uh, Zaytoon. And he wrote the, the circle, which they made a movie adaptation out of with Tom Hanks. I didn't see it. Cause I read some of the book and didn't really, uh,

click with it. But he also was one of the founders of McSweeney's and, uh, eight to six Valencia, which then became, what is it? Eight to six nationwide. It's like the kids writing sort of workshop thing. Uh, 826 Valencia, which then became, what is it? 826 Nationwide. It's like the kids writing sort of workshop thing.

But this, like where I became familiar with his stuff is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. And if you've not read it or heard of it, the book is a memoir about how in his early 20s, both of his parents died. They passed away due to cancer within like weeks of each other i think 32 days of each other um you know obviously completely unrelated it's just like how it happened uh and at the time he you know had other family he had siblings and his

youngest brother uh christopher who he calls toph was eight years old and so the he becomes sort of like this de facto caretaker for his brother. And they move to California and they stay in a series of kind of like rat hole apartments with the inheritance that they get. And they just try to like put a life together following this like pretty profound uprooting

that their family all goes through together. And I can tell you that description. And if you haven't read the book, like you can probably write it in your head what that book looks like and like feels like. But the reason it is so special to me and the reason it really resonated with me is because like it was not that.

It was not, there is not like a lick of like self-indulgent melodrama to it. Yeah, it's very funny. It's a very funny book because he's a very, very funny writer. And that humor touches on the, one of the things that like really, really meant a lot to me was like that it's not just sad going through something like that. Like it is obviously heartbreaking and very very uh difficult in that regard but it's also like very um confusing

like there's a lot of there are a lot of feelings that sort of accompany a loss like that um and a lot of those feelings are you know complicated but they are also like wildly self-involved and guilt inducing uh and he like doesn't shy away from that in the book and it it is it lends to it a humor and also an authenticity that you just instantly buy like this is a real person like writing about the real stuff that they were going through because it is not played up for for melodramatics. And just to really put a face on that, the re-releases of the book starts with this 40-page index, which is the version I read had this huge index that is all written for laughs.

And most of it is written about the major themes like the major themes of the book and it's like peak like dave egger's comedy shit uh the very first theme that he dives into and uh steal yourself because it sounds kind of terrible at first blush uh is what he calls the unspoken magic of parental disappearance and like i i want to read that explanation that he has in the book but just to like cushion the blow a little bit like in no way is the theme of this book or like the book itself like celebrating yeah that his parents died or like really making light of it at all uh it's more of a recognition of like how profound and a change this is unlike anything like he had ever known before uh and like very few things in your life ever will be so i want to read that entry in the index because it is uh kind of

incredible uh the unspoken magic of parental disappearance it is every child's and teen's dream sometimes it's born of bitterness sometimes it's born of self-pity sometimes one wants attention usually all three factors play a part the point is that everyone at one point or another daydreams about their parents dying and about what it would be like to be an orphan, like Annie or Pippi Longstocking, or, more recently, the beautiful, tragic knaves of Party of Five. One pictures in place of the love, perhaps unpredictably given and more often withheld by one's parents, that in their absence that love and attention would be lavished upon them that the townspeople one's relatives one's friends and teachers the world around would suddenly be swept up in sympathy and fascination for the orphaned child that his or her life would

be one of celebrity mixed with pathos fame sprung from tragedy the best kind by far uh most daydreamers some live it and this aspect of the book will intimate that it is just as it was in pippi uh it is in real life. Thus, an incomparable loss begets both constant struggle and heart-hardening, but also some unimpeachable rewards starting with absolute freedom, interpretable and of use in a number of ways. And then it goes on and says, That loss is accompanied by an undeniable, but then of course guilt-inducing sense of mobility,

of infinite possibility, having suddenly found oneself in a world with neither floor nor ceiling. Wow, that's really well done. Yeah, it like walks a pretty fucking fine line, I feel like, of exactly what I'm talking about. So I read this book like four months or so after my mom died.

And I was, when that happened, I was like a couple months out from graduating high school. So that is already like a pretty fucking tumultuous time, right? Like it is arguably like the time where you're facing down the biggest sort of like change in your life. You're facing down like,

and it's scary, but it sort of like change in your life you're facing down. Like, and it's, it's, you know, scary, but it is also like super exciting because your life has been this one thing this whole time. And now it's about to be this completely different thing. Uh, and so like, I went through, I went through this while also going through that. And so like, while it was such a like devastating time, uh, I didn't really have anybody or anything that was telling me like, while it was such a like devastating time, I didn't really have anybody or anything that was telling me like, by the way, like you're gonna feel other shit too. Like it is going to be, it's going to be confusing

and it's going to be like, there are going to be things about it that there will be some sort of like, excitement feels like a terrible way of putting it, but just like looking forward and having no idea what comes next is like a thing where like, I think a part of your brain can't help

but try and fill it in with like good shit and positive shit. And, you know, I feel like leading up to that and during that, like a lot of people are just telling you like, you know, you're gonna dress in sackcloth and ashes and be sad for the rest of your life. Yeah. And so when i read this book and it had all of these like really uh genuinely entertaining

but also like super thought-provoking things to say about these like super confusing uh like yeah selfish feelings but they are universal feelings. Like, it made me, it was an enormous step in, like, the grieving process for me to, like, get this take from this book that I had gotten from nowhere else. And so, like, I have lots of books that I love. Like, I have lots of books that I would say are better books, like, books that I think are classics and say are better books like uh books that i think are classics and and books that i reread from time to time but like i've never had a book that like was that like instrumental to me at the point that i read it uh and i've actually never gone back and and reread it yeah there's a part of me that's like kind of scared to do it i'm kind of scared to do it right like i don't know if

it aged well i don't know if the tone of it aged well uh i have like i have some memory issues from like around that time so like there are parts of it that i don't remember but i think it is telling that like there's a lot of stuff i don't remember from then but i do actually remember a few excerpts from the book like this thing about the the unspoken magic of parental disappearance or uh there's like a weird third of the book then like becomes it's a memoir but it of the book then like becomes, it's a memoir, but it like dabbles into like magical realism from time to time. And also a third of the book is an interview that book Dave Eggers does

trying to get on the real world. And then author Dave Eggers like speaks to him through the fourth wall about like him being a selfish. I forgot about that. Like Dick and for being an exhibitionist and the like opening uh the new index like kind of explains like by the way there's gonna be a really extended segment where he auditions for real world and you kind of just gotta bear with it um so yeah it's weird i don't have i can't i say book i can't think of another

piece of media that i hold in this like place that i hold this one that I'm like kind of scared to go back to it because I don't want to affect it. But yeah, I just wanted to talk about that because I don't I don't think I talk about books very much on this show. And this is the one that is like for sure the most sort of like meaningful to me. Yeah. Now, I remember when we were getting to know each other, you talked about that as the book that was most significant to you. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. What's your second thing? God, I hope it's something like Doritos, just so you can know. Sort of. Oh, boy. I want you to know what this feels like. So, in a previous show, we were talking about onomatopoeia. Okay. And so,

I wanted to talk about that, but specifically in other languages. Whoa. So you know how there are certain words we use for like noises? They use different words in other languages. Yeah, for sure. And I always think that's super interesting. Okay.

Just for like frame of reference, a word like achoo for sneeze here in English. In japanese is hakushan okay and in german is hachi uh that one's not i think that okay if i'm gonna rate them the best actually like onomatopoetic interpretation i think goes to japan on this one because that you don't think hachi is a good one well it's kind of like a chew but i don't end it i don't go hachi i think my shit's more like i don't know uh so here's the thing so uh people that study um linguistics talk a lot about this because there's no clear reason why this happens um there's been no rigorous studies done on this across cultures.

But a lot of people cite what they call the Bow Wow Theory. Okay. Which is that the idea that language has originated around the country as an imitation of natural sounds. So depending on where you were in the world, you kind of build consensus around a particular word. Interesting. You're saying like dogs don't speak a different language, right? So that sound is fixed in a way. Well, yeah, it's this idea of like you're in a region and everybody

just kind of agrees in that area that this is how we articulate that sound. And then another part of the world, people are doing the same thing. At some point in Germany, though, somebody went like, and somebody went, did you just say Hachi? I was like, no. This guy's saying Hachi over here.

So there's a really cool book. James Chapman, who completed his PhD, created a Tumblr and then ended up releasing books illustrating this. So there is a guide to onomatopoeias around the world and a webcomic called Soundimals, which is specific to animal noises and how they're annotated in other languages. So oink here in Germany is grunts.

Grunts? G-R-U-N-T-Z-z fuck yeah isn't that great that's really good so he did a little like cartoons just kind of image like here is a pig and here's what the pig says in other countries grunts is better you like that yeah pigs don't say oink hey i'm just not thinking about i've never heard a pig go oh oink, oink. Yeah, they kind of do. So I have some other ones. Okay. Knock, knock, which we would do here for knocking on a door.

In Polish is puck, puck. Man, that's good, too. Isn't this fun? It is fun. Ring, ring for a phone. In Portuguese is trim. Well, that one's difficult, right? Because the sound of a receiver is different right like if you if you place a phone call to like somewhere in europe like the ringing noise

that you hear is but the actual phone itself in their home sounds the same i don't know people people make the bells and shit inside of phones right like it's not like knocking on a piece of wood like that's that's like fixed in a way that's interesting okay so so getting to the real like rich like cartoon give me that good shit on a monopiece so bang like if you were to like shoot somebody in a comic strip and it said bang in english it would say pen in french p-a-n which sounds a lot like bread. Bread! Bread, bread, bread, bread! Bread! Oh, God! Bang in Spanish is pum, P-U-M.

Okay, I can see that. Maybe with like a silencer or something. So yeah, if you look up James Chapman and either soundimals or sounds all around a guide to onomatopoeias around the world, you'll see some of these in the the illustrations they're really cool yeah uh i i just i've always thought that was interesting like when i was in french class i remember like learning you know what different animals would say and watching these little videos and just being like oh that's funny yeah like that's not what we say that's delightful yeah it's i it's really a part it's like a facet of linguistics i've never thought about before is are the words we base on not concepts but actual natural sort of thing actual

natural things like it's it's like akin to mathematics in that right like mathematics is set there's no difference in mathematics between languages and there's also no difference in do dogs make different noises in different countries well so i read a lot about the different like we have a lot of different things here like we have like rough and bow wow right um and similarly across the globe there's different things although the one thing i noticed with cats it's almost always a version of meow well cats have it locked Well, cats have it locked down. Cats know their sound. But there was a suggestion that depending on the deepness of the bark,

you might see different words used for it. I saw a TikTok today. Are you on TikTok? No, but I saw a TikTok somebody posted on Facebook. Okay. So that's where I'm at. It's one of those of like, hey, look at what this cat is saying it sounds like words but i swear it sounded like the cat was saying um i hurt my butthole wow the cat was saying like i blew out my butthole it's so fucking

good okay i gotta show it to you okay i gotta show that to you next i gotta show you that i have so many things i feel like recently i've been like oh i gotta show you that and i never do i gotta show you long long man we talked about that yesterday that's a small wonder long long man it's good shit um hey do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about yes nicholas says my small wonder is bringing in all the groceries in one trip this always made me feel like some sort of powerful hero when i was little and it still does today plus back then the faster i helped get the groceries in the faster I could get back to unpausing whatever video game I had paused to help do you ever like carry a bag in one finger oh I mean yeah I I was very much in Nicholas's camp here where uh you know we were uh a family of five and so my mom

would like bring home a bunch of groceries in plastic bags. And I would just fucking beast mode, beast mode it out. Cause I didn't want to, I didn't want to do that. Like I didn't want to be doing chore. So I just like, like loaded up and probably family of five.

I can't even imagine how much food you had in that house. We tore that shit down, man. We went wild on it. Uh, Megan says, my wonderful thing is parking lot guardian angels when you're scouting for parking uh in a crowded lot and someone walking out to their car notices

you and waves you over to take the spot they're about to leave warms my heart to see people help each other out in such a simple yet beautiful way oh that's so nice it is nice i love people just like doing a good deed or like when somebody takes your grocery cart from you like you're walking towards the little corral and they're like here i'll just take that because i need one yeah that's nice this also makes me think about your dad that time that we went to trail of lights here in austin and we waited on this one spot where somebody was like pulling out real slow and someone tried to snipe that spot at the last second and your mom and dad like jumped out of the car they just didn't even say anything talk to each other say anything they both jumped out of the car to like confront

and if you knew rachel's parents like this i do not think it was like an i am spartacus moment for my parents it was like no communication they just both threw themselves they're like no i don't i do not believe so i do not believe so uh thanks 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 um thanks to maximum fun hey guess what starts next week max fun drive it's the max fun drive we're gonna tell you all about it when it kicks off but uh yeah for the next two weeks starting next what monday uh we will be doing our annual pledge drive and can i tell you like the episodes that we put out during max fun drive they're like specialer they're they're i mean we haven't recorded ours yet so let's see let's not throw our hat over the fence we'll try our best to make it special and like a lot of people here

like pledge drive and they think oh but it's actually really fun yeah it's fun and you know we we have a lot of cool stuff for people who uh who who join as members or uh upgrade their their super fun bonus stuff levels yeah. Super fun bonus stuff. Yeah, we have fun bonus stuff, fun bonus episodes. Rachel played Animal Crossing that she is still on that tip. Yeah.

Still on that tip. You got me in there. May have been just opened up Club LOL. May have been working on that comedy club. May have been getting petition, you know, assigned by all the villagers. I've never been more attracted to her folks. Yes, that's true

uh yeah so we're gonna tell you all about that next week but uh y'all have been so supportive of us in the past and we it it means the world and so yeah that'll be soon and geez anything else thank you all i feel very uh i feel very warm right now i I feel a lot of gratitude towards our friends at home. Oh, yeah. For those of you that are looking for more of a wonderful community, I'm going to encourage, again, our Facebook group. Oh, yeah. Which is actually listed under Rosebuddiescast because when we created it, we had a different show.

Yes. But the folks in there a lot of times will share their reactions to the stuff we talk about. So if you have a particular video rental store that you enjoy. You you know that's a good place to talk about it with other people that listen to the show a lot of people have been asking us to come out of retirement for love is blind with rose buddies and i can't i don't even know i don't even know what that would fucking look like i know i don't even know even know where I would fucking begin with that. Yeah.

She gave the dog her wine out of the cup she drinks from. Yeah, there are moments when we watch that show and we have a lot of funny things to say to each other. And then there's always that sense of relief that we don't actually have to say them to each other in front of other people. Yeah. Boy, howdy, it's a trip though.

Anyway, I think that's it. You're doing really well. And that idea you had today, you should fucking follow up on that. Yeah, make a little note to yourself. Make a note to yourself to get that done because I'm telling you, it's not like the other ideas. Some of your ideas are a little you're stinkers but this one they're not stinkers but they're just like intangible sell a reminder set a reminder on your watch

say like hey come back to that come back to that idea pursue it make it real i still have pictures of jonathan freaks over my computer i think i gave it a virus Money won't pay, working on it. Money won't pay, working on it. Money won't pay, working on it. Money won't pay, working on it. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported. All right, Adam.

MaximumFun wants us to record like a promo to tell people that they should listen to The Greatest Generation. You want to do that? No, I am tired of all the extra work. I just wanted to talk about Star Trek with my friend. I think it would be good to try and get some new listeners by appealing to the audiences of other shows.

This will only take a minute or two. It could be good for us. We sit down for an hour or two. We can talk about a Star Trek episode and make a bunch of idiotic fart jokes about it. It's embarrassing. If it got out that we made this show, I think it would make us unemployable.

Adam, I have bad news for you. We have tens of thousands of listeners at MaximumFun.org. Oh my god. I think I'm going to throw up. The Greatest Generation, a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. Every Monday on MaximumFun.org. I'm really going to be sick.