Wonderful! - Wonderful! 128: The Big Finger

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

Griffin's favorite armored animal! Rachel's favorite evolved music! Griffin's favorite nasty guitar solos! Rachel's favorite balanced proportion!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.

🎵 Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Getting a big stretch going. A little stretch. I'm gonna attack this one. I'm gonna attack the block of this episode.

Oh, my arms hurt really bad. My back and shoulders don't want to move like this. Is this from wrestling with our son yesterday? This is from all the roughhousing that we get up to. No, I think it's important to stretch. Oh, yeah? Okay. Is this the first time that you've ever said this out loud?

Yeah, yeah. Is this the first time that you've ever said this out loud? Yeah, maybe. But I think our friends at home, they look to us for guidance and help. Even though we're trying not to goop it, I don't think it's particularly goopy to say stretch it, that back, stretch those shoulders, stretch your solar plexus, wherever or whatever that is. You need to be limber if you're going to meet this episode halfway, because we're going to be coming at you with a lot of rambunctious energy isn't that right babe yeah i mean we're we're regular rambunctious robots over here see if we're off the walls with wild shit like what rachel just said what with the robots and what have you um how's it how are you doing are you doing good i feel like we need we should check in with each other as a little way to ground ourselves before each episode.

I think a switch has flipped in my brain. And I am beginning to think about ways to be enriched instead of just surviving. Which is, I feel like, a good switch to have flipped. Yeah. Don't just thrive. Thrive. Yeah. And I'm the first one good switch to have flipped. Yeah. Don't just vibe. Thrive. Yeah. And I'm the first one to say that.

Anyone who says elsewise is stealing it from me, and it's my copyrighted motto. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. Thank you for asking. My sleep has been quite bad as of late. Yeah. But I got a good eight hours last night, so I feeling i'm feeling fresh feeling pumped up feeling ready to go been working with about five each day which is then sort of the following day is like a dream like some sort of astral projection where it's not me

and my body who's in there but that's not particularly fun to talk about do you have any small wonders i do uh i mean there's a lot of good media out there to consume right now and one podcast i've really been enjoying uh is brené brown's new podcast i believe it's called unlocking us oh uh it's not um affiliated with us in any way but i enjoy her work and i enjoy this podcast it is is a very, very enriching. I would say it's okay to talk about things that aren't us from time to time. That is not affiliated with a podcast.

That's like, that's like, that's in our turf, you know? Yeah, that's fair. I think there's time to listen to multiple podcasts is what I'm saying. Yeah.

I tell you nailed it coming back season four. So fucking good. It is like only getting better and it is like nailed it coming back season four so fucking good it is like only getting better and it is like uh nailed it season four and new terrace house dropped on netflix this week so it's like it's a fucking gift and it's like taking me there uh wow the new terrace house we're in some chunks of episodes with some challenging material what with not great stand-up comedy which is a real uh a real trigger for me. I have to tie Griffin to the furniture to make him stay in the room.

I literally Naruto ran out of the, Rachel, I don't even think you realize that that's what I did, but I just like, I dove off the couch and fully Naruto ran to get away from what was happening on the TV. I rarely let Griffin fast forward. I feel very serious about watching a show in

its entirety but in some cases in this arc i have let him fast forward it's been very kind of you uh hey i start things off this week and i'm going to kick things off with my first topic which is armadillos the dillo oh the little dillo a special friend that we get here in texas that is not uh in most of the contiguous united states yet they're spreading they're getting out there with armadillan from pj masks that may be your main point of contact like it is for us armadillan on the pj masks it's very strong um no i want to talk about armadillos they're the little rats that wear armor and like what else do i need to i don't need to justify it past that i don't think do i like there are little rats that wear armor they're the one of the few animals that's like

oh shit it's rough out here it's fine because i've got this armor that's going to protect me but they're faster than the turtle right so they're like they're you know they've one-upped they they beat turtles in nearly every category something i learned though while preparing the segment is that very few armadillos actually use their armor for protection in the wild. Most of them just run away or jump away or skitter away very, very quickly. There is one, the three-banded armadillo,

one species that does use its thick hide to protect it from predators. They don't have natural predators so much, which is why they are spreading throughout the United States. They started in South America, moved up through Central America, and really kind of got to Texas. And they're like, this is chill here.

I like it right here. They don't look super tasty, right? They don't look tasty. If I were a predator, I would be like, eh, I don't think so. That seems like a lot of work. They are kind of toothsome. One sort of negative thing

is that most commonly, you will see them here on, let's say, the side of the road in a state of distress, in a state of not being that cool. And that is because one of their defense mechanisms is that they can leap

three to four feet in the air when startled. That is, whoa, it's cool, right? You think you think like you know air jordan that's fucking cool except if a car is passing by or over at the time that the startling happens that's good that's a series wrap on that particular armadillo so that way they're not quite as strategic as the turtle no the turtle sees that is like that's why those limbs in that's why we don't jump um it is it's just amazing i like that they i they're i can't think of many other animals a lot of other animals are like we need defense mechanism let's evolve something i know we'll make our wings colorful so it'll be scary and armadillo is like okay

like i've got a bulletproof vest um i don't know that that's necessarily i don't think it is bulletproof uh genetic research into armadillos traces their earliest lineage back to uh a thing called glyptodonts glyptodonts perhaps uh 35 million years ago they were just like big ass armadillos they're basically uh and uh i can never say this i never feel confident in my pronunciation of uh ankylosaur ankylosaurus ankylosaur ankylosaurus anklio is the way i would go anklosaurus and we'll just say it there and i'll know that i will be wrong uh mixed with like a turtle was like huge like a big ass armadillo that's that kicks ass for me but it also had like the spiky club on its tail um their armor is made up of what are called scutes or scutes perhaps can you spell that s-c-u-t-e-s it's basically just like overlapping scales of like bone and horn uh which is what their their

armor but their bellies are always so soft and that's why they can that's why they can roll up into a little ball and i love that uh there are a lot of different species of armadillos most of them are endangered uh which is a big bummer uh the one that we get here in the states is how many bands do they got how many bands do they got they got nine banded nine banded armadillos are the ones that we most commonly see here meaning their armor is made up of nine overlapping scutes um but there's a lot of different ones there's a pink fairy armadillo uh that is native to south america that has pink armor which is fucking great like are you kidding me it's like on some anime bullshit at that point

i'm picturing like a peppa pig like a little peppa pig but wearing armor and that's real cool and i just think they're real cute and you know i feel like armadillo is not an animal that everybody has a crystallized like image in their mind of what it looks like beyond it has a shell but you look at it and it's pretty cute in the face and the belly and its feet and it also looks like it means business like if i saw a three foot tall one of these one of of these ankle sources, I'd be like, I'm not fucking with that.

Are you kidding me? There's no way I can penetrate that thick hide. You do have the leprosy thing. Yeah. I was going to say like, they're not, it's not great. They're not huggable.

I don't think, but it's not like they're always spreading the stuff. It's not like they're like walking around, like whom got to give, this'll be a fun prank to humans. Also like mice and some rabbits and some monkeys spread leprosy as well. It's just that their body temperature is like really low.

You're bringing them all down. Listen, rabbits. You refuse to let the armadillo take the full blame for this. Yeah, I do. Their body temperature is like 90 degrees, which is fairly cold, which makes them like a good uh transmission vector there's that fucking word again uh for leprosy but like i don't know

man aesthetically they're really good they turn into little balls they look like little fantasy armored cinnamon roll knights and i like that oh i just got like a vision of like an armadillo pokemon that instead of like bursting out of the ball just like unrolls from the ball that rolls back up babe you should design pokemon i think so that's good what would that one be called well i mean you have sand shrew which is like i think kind of well i guess that's a shrew though wouldn't it be but it kind of looks armadillo-y what there's got to be an armadillo they've done every they've done every animal at this point. And now they're like moving on to like objects.

Like here's an ice cream cone, but it's also a Pokemon. Or hey, here's a ring of keys, but it's also a Pokemon. They have almost certainly done armadillos at some point. I'm ashamed of myself for not being able to pull what the armadillo Pokemon is. And I'm ashamed of you. Thank you. What's your first thing? Okay, I am bringing a musical group this week oh boy and it uh manheim

steamroller again this is your fifth time bringing manheim steamroller babe you i know you listen to other music you know i'm a real roller i don't know what to tell you you love their christmas music you listen to it year round it's fucked up up. No, I'm talking about Tao and the Get Down, Stay Down. Yeah. Have you talked about them on the show before? I feel like maybe, but not as a formal topic. Okay. You do not sound very confident about that.

Well, it's not on the site. Then you're good. The site is canon. Mm-hmm. So I actually saw Tao and the Get Down, Stay Down in 2009 at South by Southwest. So this was a year after their first album came out. And at the time, it was kind of a more folky group. Tao Nguyen is San Francisco based, and she plays the guitar, and she's a singer songwriter. The group actually

originated in Virginia in 2006, began recording. And then as I mentioned, 2008, that first album came out, We Brave Beastings and All. And I saw this band at a small club in Austin and I was instantly charmed. And so I want to play a song off the first album that really hooked me in that is Bag of Hammers. So this is like a folky, like poppy, you know, fun song. Sure. Really gets in there. The whole album, just constant banger. She has such a great sense

for what is gonna be a good hook and what is gonna feel like the song that you wanna listen to over and over again. Right. And I kind of followed the band into their next few albums, particularly We the Common, which came out in 2013.

And then Tao and the Get Down, Stay Down took kind of a, I don't want to say a turn, they kind of evolved. Right. And part of that was because Tao started collaborating with Meryl Garbus, Tune Yards. I was just about to say that the new song you had me listen to

sounded like really kind of tune yards in a way I very much enjoy. Meryl started producing some of the albums, kind of manipulating the band's music, and kind of amplifying some of their kind of more, I don't know, kind of catchy, interesting musical qualities. And the review I read on Pitchfork kind of talking about this collaboration compared the music to The Breeders, Luscious Jackson, and Chibamato. Oh, yeah. Which I just like, oh, I like all of those groups. That explains a little bit, huh? Yeah.

In 2019, Tao hosted Song Exploder. Oh, I didn't hear that one. Took over, apparently. Oh, she took over hosting the show, wow. Yeah, she met the host when she did an interview in 2016 for an episode, and the host was kind of a fan of her music. Krish Kesherway? Yeah.

Yeah. and the host was kind of a fan of her music. And then she took over. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, so you may be familiar with her from that incredible podcast. It's so good if you've never listened to it. So the new album from this band is coming out May 15th.

It's called Temple. And, you know, initially there was a tour plan for this album, which is on hold. But it's really incredible. It like really has evolved from that initial album, that initial song I played for you. And somehow, you know, a lot of times a band will evolve and you're like, oh, now they're not really for me. But somehow I just feel like I've grown with the band. So I wanted to play the new song Phenom. Or Phenom.

I think Phenom. I think Phenom. I think Phenom. Yeah, for sure. Which is just super fresh. Phenom. Power cowards never stop it I have nurtured you corrupted I am erupting, don't interrupt it Careful I'm an animal trap, trap, trap

First of the secondary class, class, class The music video, you obviously can't see it, is fucking amazing. I would encourage you to look at at so it came out last week uh and the video is kind of based on like a zoom call right basically and so it's it's tau and then a bunch of kind of professional dancers on various like zoom windows in this call uh there's eight backup dancers all doing choreography, and they rehearse the whole thing, like, isolated online. Yeah. And so it's just, it's a very apt and relevant video for the time. It's fantastic.

Yeah. Hey, can I do, real quick, do you think it would be possible for me to, and I know this is a bit uncouth, but do you think maybe I steal you away now, yes? Yes. Here I go. I'm picking you up. put you in my backpack into my vault because i took you out of the museum where you were before because you're a work of art that was weird that was creepy but i stole you from a museum this is why we usually play music instead of really developing a narrative doing some light role play hey we got a couple jumbotrons here did you know about these i did will you read the first one

i will the first one is for amanda and it's from micah who says hey amanda know what's wonderful the fact that you're cancer free thanks science that fucking cancer is gone i'm glad i got to flip off the tumor after they removed what was left of it i love you and our girls anastasia and beatrix and that is they wanted that spring or whenever really split the uprights with that one amanda that is such amazing news uh i'm glad that too i hope the tumor saw you flipping that give them a cold one right between the shoulder blades and just like knew like man i really was out of line you know me i'm not always a fan of of you know cursing yeah you know but i feel like this is a good one that's a good one let's

keep this one yeah it's a it really stinks that cancer so give it as many birds as you possibly can i guess you only got the two middle fingers but if you do it like repeatedly it's like you have more can i read the next message yes yes yes it is for m it is from m it's for it's for E-M-M and it's from the letter M. I assume that it is the M stands for something and it's not in fact from the letter M. They're just having fun with homonyms. Oops.

Homonyms. Homonyms. Homonyms not homophone. Homophones. Homophones. Homophobes. Where am I going with this? Can I read the message though? Yeah, I quit.

I'm going to leave. The last four years have been made indescribably better with you by my side. It's been an honor to watch you grow and to share so much of myself with you. I'm so proud of you for making it through your first semester of college in one piece and i know you're going to continue kicking so much ass thanks for being the gina to my jake love you oh i love lost was that a lost reference yeah gina was the name of the one woman you remember she was a smoke monster and jake was um played by andy sandberg on lost but he gets sucked up in the plane and explodes like pretty early on so this is a really deep cut reference i'm glad you got it yeah oh yeah welcome back to firesideide Chat on KMAX. With me in studio to take your calls is the dopest duo on the West Coast, Oliver Wong and Morgan Rhodes. Go ahead, caller.

Hey, I'm looking for a music podcast that's insightful and thoughtful, but also helps me discover artists and albums that I've never heard of. Yeah, man, sounds like you need to listen to Heat Rocks every week. Myself and I'm Morgan Rhodes, and my co-host here, Oliver Wong, talk to influential guests about a canonical album that has changed their lives. Guests like Moby, Open Mic Eagle, talk about albums by Prince, Joni Mitchell and so much more. Yo, what's that show called again? Heat Rocks, deep dives into hot records. Every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Can I talk about my second thing? Yeah. My second thing is also musical, and it is kind of similar to your thing in a lot of ways, but I'm not going to talk so much about an artist or a song or an album as much as I'm going to talk about one kind of concept, and that concept is St. Vincent's fucking disgusting, nasty, fuzzy fucking guitar riffs and solos oh they are so

good uh i thought for sure i talked about saint vincent before but according to again the site i had not even if i have i could talk about the guitar solos it's like their own separate things if this site goes down by the way we are fucked wonderful that fyi we have no back we are dead um she just wails she just like really really really shreds on guitar and not just in like a like ingway malsteam way of just like wow she plays the guitar really good like it is a different sound than any sort of guitar fronted uh musical act that i've ever heard and i think that's what like really makes her special uh if you've never heard of saint vincent uh her her name is annie clark uh and she's just a super talented producer singer songwriter uh and she has also been in the game since like the early

aughts much like tau uh she started out playing guitar for polyphonic spree and uh with sufjan stevens's touring band uh and then formed her own group again in 2006. How weird. How strange. We did not coordinate this. What happened here? Her style has changed a lot over the decade and a half that she has been doing music.

It has gotten more, I would say, art rock, art rockier. I think particularly after she did a collaboration album with David Byrne from Talking Heads called Love This Giant. And I think that it is it has only gotten sort of more our rock feels like a slam, but it really isn't. It's just like getting stranger, I think, than her music was before. But the one thing that has kind of remained a constant throughout like all of her work are these like crunchy nasty fucking guitar riffs uh and a good example if you've never heard her music is it's probably my favorite song of hers uh cruel off her 2011 album strange mercy which has like just this short little section in the middle that just fucking blows my mind every time i hear it so

here's that. A lot of that sound she achieves with obviously like effects, pedals and fuzz boxes and like special like pitch bending effects that are largely played with like with pedals at live concerts. Like she's got a fucking like spaceship flight deck essentially that she stomps on. But a lot of that sound also just comes from like the way she plays the guitar very sort of like percussively. And also just the way that the,

the music itself is arranged. Her music has sort of an unsettling vibe in general, especially these days, I think mass seduction, which I think was her most recent album. There's a lot of music on there that is just kind of like a little bit eerie for lack of a better term, or a little bit just unconventional

in a way that is like, makes you really pay attention. She did an interview. Oh God, I didn't write down with whom or what entity. I apologize for that. But she did an interview pretty early on, I think around 2009 when Actor came out, where she said,

I like when things come out of nowhere and blindside you a little bit. I think any person who gets panic attacks or has an anxiety disorder can understand how things can all of a sudden turn very quickly. I think I'm sublimating that into the music. That's a good word, sublimating. And she's just like, she's a great lyricist and a great performer, but like that is the, that's the stuff that I think about. Like the fact that her music and especially the guitars can sound like kind of transgressive at times, like kind of like bordering on unpleasant in a way that like that, that walking that line is so like fascinating. And she has just kind of leaned more and more into that aesthetic as her uh career has gone on and like i don't know how i think that that is its own kind of challenge

beyond like i'm gonna write a catchy song or i'm gonna write um a poignant moving song writing a song that has elements to it that are that are transgressive that are kind of like yeah uh uh an assault in a way but making them like fucking cool and making them like uh contribute to the music is like something really uh special uh so there's i want to play one more song off actor which was her uh 2009 album i think maybe her second or third uh following the album uh called black rainbow that i'm just like uh i'm obsessed with it because it ends with this like minute and a half long breakdown of this same riff moving up scales with this,

this just like symphony, this cacophony of instruments being added to the back of it. And the, like the backbone of it is just this nasty, like spooky guitar riff. Uh, so, so here is black rainbow. I can only play like obviously a few seconds of the song but it's 90 seconds of just like this

until it reaches like such a high register uh that it is like it it kind of I don't know it I am very anxious I'm I'm pretty anxious in general. These days, like that anxiety is obviously like very high. And I find something kind of cathartic about listening to like anxious music. And I think there's a lot to it. That's a really good point. You know, it's interesting to talk about

both of these artists in the same episode, because it does make you think a lot about how this tendency towards getting more experimental the longer you're in your career makes sense right because you kind of master you know and become potentially less excited about a certain style right and you want to do something that is exciting and stimulating to you as an artist and so you just kind of start getting getting wild i think where i where i bounce off of like, because I have so many artists, especially ones that like I found in college,

like St. Vincent, that like did start trying out new styles that I feel like they went so far and kind of lost their voice. Like they lost what was special about the music they were making in the first place. Whereas I think St. Vincent, her style has changed dramatically,

but there's a backbone there that you can trace throughout her entire career. Even when the music is unrecognizable from what she was first making, it still has her voice in it. And I think that's why it works. Well, that and it's also still thoughtful of the audience. I feel like sometimes artists, you can tell that they're interested in it, but they're not necessarily trying to relate with

you as a listener right exactly which i feel like both of the artists we bring this week are conscious of that like i still want to say something and i still want to connect with the people listening to yeah uh what is your second thing my second thing is symmetry symmetry the thing when the thing's the same on both sides. Yeah. I love this. Yeah, me too. You know what's good also? Asymmetry. Oh. I like it too.

It can be good. All right. I like that too. I mean, they're both good. I mean, this week I'm going to talk about symmetry. Maybe next week you can talk about asymmetry. And that would be very symmetrical. Mm.

Mm. A paradox. A conundrum. What I was interested in particularly is why it's so pleasing right why your brain enjoys seeing symmetrical things yes yeah and why you kind of seek it out and why when given the choice like for example in designing a home let's say an animal crossing yes you would choose kind of a symmetrical design, right? And this is something that's been written around a lot and examined a lot.

And so I figured I'd be able to find something and I did. Okay. A lot of what I read about kind of referenced just the natural symmetry in nature. You know, this idea of like a starfish or flower petals or a snowflake. You know, this idea of like a starfish or flower petals or a snowflake you know this idea of a lot of the things that we admire in nature have this symmetrical quality right and then also people themselves you know have you heard like the more symmetrical a person's features are the more

attractive they are like it's this idea of like there's something comforting about symmetry, there's something familiar about it, and that often asymmetry can be a sign of illness or danger. Like a lot of times when, for example, you're looking at a person to identify whether something is wrong, you'll look to see kind of like, okay, well, is that hand bigger or more swollen than the other hand you know okay if you like are looking at a finger and it looks kind of swollen you'll like look at the other finger on the other hand to see kind of is this well if you have to do that i would argue you're

a bad doctor if i have one huge finger on my left hand and you have to say like hold up i got to check the right hand for reference huh there's no big, huge finger on this one. Yeah, I guess that is quite bad. Hey, Jerry, come, Dr. Jerry, come look at this. You think it's going to be big on the other hand too, but it's wicked not. So like, what's going on with that thing? You're looking at the thumb, Steve. That one's supposed to be a little bit bigger. I always do that, don't I?

Well, let's get those things off of there uh i think there's just there's something kind of i what what i'm saying is there's something kind of biological in our in our interest in symmetry and our kind of desire to seek out that comfort it's it's familiar you know and our brains will recognize it. There is a physicist that has written about symmetry and order and says that it's something that we crave in this kind of strange universe. You know, when you're in unfamiliar circumstances, you will look for things that are symmetrical, that are similar to what you're familiar with. Right. The other thing I found when I was researching this is the work that

your brain does to kind of create symmetry. So have you heard about this Gestalt psychology? No, I haven't heard of that one, that one psychology. I've heard of a lot of other ones though, haven't I? So this is the idea that the whole is other than the sum of its parts. So instead of being the sum of its part it's other than so i want to show you kind of an example of this yeah because i have no fucking idea what that yeah i knew i had a feeling it would be really abstract uh so this is the image that came up a lot when i was researching this all right show it to me and i'll see okay what we're looking at is but i don't even it's three pac-mans up a triangle there you go okay so what's this supposed to be showing me so the idea

is that your brain kind of projects this other triangle on top of the solid triangle because you're looking at the circles and you're seeing they form that shape okay there's an this would be impossible for me to describe i just see pax man's and they're trying to eat the the space but there's three like uh less than signs and they're also trying to eat it so that's what i see it's like a triangle that is solid covered by an upside down triangle an invisible triangle except there's no outlines around the upside down one. And so you're just kind of filling in the blanks. So what does this have to do with symmetry? So the idea is that your brain adds up the details of an image, is more of like a calculator

than just taking in information exactly as it is. Okay. And symmetry is kind of one of those shortcuts. You are looking for it conscious like your brain is doing the work to try and find it uh so it isn't necessarily always intentionally there it's just something that your brain is like all right where is another thing that is like this because my brain is lazy and if it sees something that's symmetrical it only has to look at half of it because it's like well the other half well it's it could be why it's so

jarring when you're looking at something that's supposed to be symmetrical and isn't your brain like instantly is like wait what is this like kind of seizes up um and symmetry is just one of the major principles that kind of drives the organization of your brain uh which explains you know why we like it so much and why we look for it like your brain is doing the work it is trying to find it and when you see it you're like oh that's nice that's comforting right um i feel like that's what's really appealing to me a lot about like you know interior design and like those opportunities of like you know putting a outfit together like or even like creating art you know a lot of times when i was doing like pottery or whatever like what you're trying to do is you're trying to create symmetry right you know pottery specifically like your shit will fall apart and so it's very like appealing and comforting

and like you feel that sense of accomplishment of like oh look look at this it's the same on this side as it is on that side i did it uh yeah you brought up animal crossing are you like is symmetry sort of the the benchmark of your design process well so here's the thing so i'm getting those bunny things right like i'm getting all the bunny things oh yeah and you only really have to have one of each little bunny item at least this is what we're all assuming right we don't know we don't know what this fucking rabbit wants the idea was that you're going to collect all these bunny things and then on bunny day you will present them somehow demonstrate that you've accomplished the bunny things you have to eat them in front of

the rabbit but i got like multiple sets of balloons just because i felt like in my bunny room that i've created i wanted you know i wanted it i was very thoughtful about how i laid out all of my bunny items so that it clothes, for example, line up. There's a- I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I was not as thoughtful. I just kind of threw all that gaudy shit in one room

in a big pile to get the points. And then as soon as that rabbit comes and goes, I'm throwing it in the river. It's gonna be a real going out of business sale. It'll be kindling. Hey, do you wanna know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Calypso, which is a badass name, says simply,

in Australia, we call sweatpants tracky dacks. Thanks. That's it. Tracky dacks. Tracky, T-R-A-C-K-Y, second word, dacks, D-A-C-c-k-s tracky dax these are my tracky dax i love that i love it so much do you think people just say dax when they're in a hurry but then dax shepherd is around and he's like what and they're like oh no we were talking about our sweatpants again he goes oh okay it happens a lot don't worry about it he's because he's really nice. And he's everywhere.

I wish I could say tracky dacks, but it feels like it feels like it's like I would then be like the kid at high school who got into black adder or whatever and then started using a British accent or called things like, you know, a lorry or whatever. That reminds me of like, you know, when people refer to tennis shoes as tennies no not here at least that's hard for me uh kaylee says legos i love these colorful bricks with all the free time i've

had lately i finally broke open a lego set i bought months ago but didn't have the energy to work on but man they're so fun to do it's like putting together Ikea furniture, but instead of making a Nordkisa, you can make a little Star Wars plane. That's so wonderful to me. I am counting down the days until Henry is interested in Legos. Yep. I will probably regret it when they are everywhere and we are constantly cleaning them up. Yeah. But right now it is so satisfying to participate in and I just want him to like it. Yeah. Now all we have is magnet tiles which like he doesn't really engage with he likes it when i make incredible beautiful symmetrical geometric masterpieces with it and then he can come and stomp on it like a reptar but i'd like to think

it's a developmental phase where he instructs us to make things that he can destroy it seems like this is a natural evolution for him. Yeah, like our sleep cycle and the Magnetiles Tower, as discussed earlier. Hey, thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you so much to Maximum Fun

for having us on the network. Maximum Fun is, it's a community i would say a very kind funny kind of hip folks uh that are smart well you know i am not always whoa i'll let you the listener figure out and you know who we're talking i think they're always smart i'm not gonna die we are always smart i just i didn't i we are potentially including ourselves they're fat oh i was talking about the listeners they're smart and cool and inclusive oh i thought we were talking about the talent on the max fun network oh no so i wanted to be cautious about how much wicked not smart stroked

our own egos yeah for sure uh sure. Anyway, I would encourage you. I mean, this is a time I think when people like having a lot of content because, you know, it helps you kind of feel less isolated. And so Maximum Fun is a great place to find great content from cool people. Yep. We have other stuff at McElroy.family. Been doing a bunch of stuff on the old YouTube channel. Having fun with that. Yeah, Dr. Sydney McElroy put up a video on how to

appropriately wear a mask yeah which I haven't watched yet but I'm very grateful she did yeah uh and I think that's it I think just like this week um this week let's clean let's clean up just a little bit and I don't know what that means for you I don't know what that means for you but let's just tidy up what's that in the corner you've been putting that off for too long tidy it the floorboards get those tidy please oh don't do the floorboards here's what i'm suggesting okay find a drawer just find one drawer that you could tidy start there you'll open that drawer later and you'll be like i'm so glad i tidied that drawer i can find all my old exotic coins and here's exotic coins. And here's all my cool knives.

And here's my slingshots. This is a weird drawer, but I'm going to go start firing these knives out of these slingshots because I've just invented the ultimate weapon. Sling. Sling. I love that movie. My mom. Working on. My mom.

Working on. My mom. My mom.