Wonderful! - Wonderful! 135: Rainy Day Energy

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

Griffin's favorite automotive film franchise! Rachel's favorite eggy bread! Griffin's favorite hard-earned album! Rachel's favorite place to play!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! 🎵 Let the rain fall down upon my skin. Let it wash away all my skin. Here comes the rain again. That's good.

All I can say is the rain is pretty rain. Blame it on the rain. That's good. Are there any more rain songs? A rainy day's a- My knees always get me down. It's a nice, moody, gray, rainy Tuesday morning when we're recording this. When we're recording this, not when you're listening to it.

Well, babe, when they're listening to it it it may also not be raining whenever it is i'm so i'm of course talking about our current sort of setting i want to set the vibe you know what the lights it's a little too bright oh turn a couple lights off oh this is good you're giving me actually right now you've got the let me paint a picture right now uh i am just sort of casked in darkness i am a shadow a sort of um a sort of specter if you will over here you've never looked better i've never looked better rachel is sitting right next to my table lamp so she's got this soft sort of amber glow on the left side of her face on the right side of her face she has this more harsh sort of white technological glow from the laptop and it's just a sort of like you look like a movie poster for like uh like it's really the dichotomy of man you know you're like a star wars but you're

like is she a good side or a bad side you're like Wars. I love it. I'm really feeling this energy right now. How are you enjoying this energy right now? It's cozy for sure. Yeah, yeah, it sure is. Nice and cool in the studio too. Not too warm. Got a little warm yesterday. Today, rainy, cool. Ooh, a little thunder. Let's welcome our friend Thunder into the studio. Oh, the vibe is right. The vibe is just right. Do you have any small wonders? Why don't you go first? That's good, because I was going to say the Amy Schumer learns to cook.

Yeah. I have, I don't know, I feel like I fell off the Amy Schumer wagon. We used to watch her, the Comedy Central show, and then there is something so undeniable and so uh charming and even relatable about this this show which her and her husband who is a professional chef um they make in their their this house that they're staying in during quarantine they're making it right now yeah with like cameras controlled remotely cameras controlled remotely. They have a baby named Jean who's extremely cute.

They have limited ingredients. Limited ingredients. They have their nanny who's just running a Handycam to help them with close shots. And it's just a very quiet, very sweet sort of show, is like i don't i don't know like uh well you think about cooking shows they're usually like they exist outside of time yes and they're usually like very high energy and this this is nice it's very present it's very calm yes that is a very good way of putting it uh i think there's only two maybe three episodes at this point but it's like we we we went like we went

hard on those first two episodes and i was like more more but there's not anymore um hey do you have any small wonders i don't know if i've mentioned it yet on the podcast but we've already finished the whole run and that's never have i ever on oh yeah wow what a good show that was so good from the perspective of just like uh the the grief of like the sudden loss of a parent like it is a comedy show and it's about high school sort of romance drama sort of made uh hyper dramatic but also like an exploration of grief like it's really fucking like fascinating and it goes like really really deep uh yeah i love that one too a lot of good tv huh yeah i think when when uh when we first had a lot of time on our hands didn't seem like there was a lot of good programming out and now now it's just a

wave of of good shows right yeah i think well i mean i think there was also a fear of just like uh-oh tv's gonna stop but that's not how tv production works and that it's not gonna stop right now it's gonna stop around like october in october we better have some shit say october we're gonna be like why are we watching all of star trek the next generation be like oh we ran out of tv oh by the way there's a podcast for that yes that's true uh i believe i go first this week my first subject that i'm going to talk about i'm pretty excited about both my first one is the fast and the furious franchise oh yay uh this franchise is so special uh both to me and to uh the the planet earth to my knowledge i cannot think of another film franchise like it right like you

want to talk about action film franchises that have run uh you know if you include hobs and shaw they they've had nine films so far and i include hobs and shaw a delightful film that you must see in 4d to really get the true experience from it um i mean you got like what james bond and even the mission Impossible movies. I don't think there have been nine of those. Yeah, I think there's just five or six. Yeah. I mean, those have gotten extremely good, too.

I could do a whole thing about those. Ghost Protocol. Man, that movie just rips ass. But even like the Bond films, though they have run for certainly longer, they do not occupy this special pure place in my heart like this uh franchise does because like i i've seen all these movies and i really like all of them even the bad ones and i feel like that that is saying something uh and i also think like the story of the franchise is fascinating because by all means like it should have it should not have run it should have stopped right uh all the

movies have been fairly successful right here is a brief timeline of the fast and the furious films first one comes out summer of 2001 um i know man it's been 19 years that this this franchise has been running and it is very much a movie for uh car enthusiasts and street racing enthusiasts right uh it has uh paul walker uh in it as this fbi agent who is investigating this ring of car smugglers who are stealing like dvd players or some shit it is like a wild um but then you also get vin diesel who was not especially well known at the time yeah uh and actually like a really diverse crew both in front of and behind the camera which is like rare for a big big big summer blockbuster especially one that has run uh over the course of of 19 years um critically mixed reviews uh it's it's safe to say i mean it's a new thing and there

are lots of like great stunts and a lot of good car chases in this it is modeled essentially after those like um you know 50s and 60s just car chase sort of grindhousey movies and it fills that and you know there was and i will say too like just starting out they did not have the budget that i'm sure they have now so they couldn't do they i mean they did all right they they had a they had a deece budget they also uh made 207 million dollars worldwide for its uh for its its whole cinematic run uh it made 40 million opening weekend like mixed reviews but commercially like a complete smash hit then you get too fast too furious bigger in every way stunt wise numerically uh critically the critics were like actually um i don't i don't know about this one but commercially 236 million crushing it all things looking up looking up didn't have uh

vin diesel in it i don't think this one um uh which is just a real shame i feel like he's probably like oh you know what this is this is done i'm out they don't they don't need me for this one uh critically like people just couldn't like critics couldn't handle i think they looked at the title and they're like we can't do anything we can't do it with this title except for roger ebert uh who gave too fast too furious three out of four stars and said quote it doesn't have a brain in its head but it's made with skill and style and boy it is fast. Wow. Somebody was trying to get their blurb up on the trailer, I think. I don't think Roger Ebert needs to juice it

to get up on the trailer. But Roger Ebert was a big fan, actually, of the first three Fast and Furious movies. He had a review of the fourth one, which was the first one he was kind of critical of. He was like, we've already had the first three movies which have been translated into commercially successful video games.

Why did we need a fourth one? Oh, wait, I just answered my own question. I was gonna answer the fourth one, it was so good. So the third movie is this weird kind of outlier called Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift. Have you seen this one? Have you seen it? I don't know.

I feel like, wasn't there a time when we watched all of them? You got the complete- I don't think we watched Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift. Really? We did get the complete set, but we skipped a couple of them. The only time we ever watched Fast and Furious is when we were on vacation in Mexico, and I got such a bad stomach bug, and we were laid out in bed, and it was just on TV, and

we watched it. No, but at one point, you had the full DVD set, and I thought we watched each. Gosh, but at one point you had the full DVD set and I thought we watched each. Gosh, I don't know. I'm struggling to remember. Anyway, God, we're just jumping around the timeline right now. I'm so excited. Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift doesn't have any of the original crew

and it is like its own sort of stand apart side story that takes place in the future. The chronology of this franchise is fucked up because it's like one two four actually i think four might be a prequel to two and three comes in before seven and seven on it goes on um it it was it was critically just the weakest one here's the thing about this movie because i did watch it a long time ago when it first came out uh it's not very fast this film it is mostly about drifting which i've done drifting on this show before i've talked specifically about how great drifting is i probably mentioned tokyo drift at some point during that

segment yeah yeah this movie's not a lot about fast racing as much as it is like turning cars very well inside of parking garages yeah which is not as uh exciting to watch and also like it didn't have any of the original cast in it so the critics were very harsh on it and critically uh commercially it made like 150 million some dollars which is good but a step down right yes yes a weaker film franchise would have been snuffed out by this yes not this one not this one then we get fast and furious the fourth one actually probably my least favorite one, although in its defense, when I watched it, I did have some of the worst diarrhea I've ever had in my entire life.

But it's basically a retread kind of of the first movie, but you do get that cast back together, right? You get Paul Walker, you get Vin back in the room, you get Michelle Rodriguez, you get the squad back together. And we're enjoying that. The plot- Ludacris, right?

Ludacris is on the scene right now. I forget when Ludacris, right? Ludacris is on the scene right now. I forget when Ludacris, I think Ludacris is on the scene at this point. So like the plot of the movie doesn't really do it for me. But you do get the cast back together. And this is when the focus on the family really starts to become a major emphasis on the films. It's a thing in one and two, right?

And then three is just like, no family, just turning. And then in four, it's all about, it's all about the family. Oh my gosh, family is a character, like its own distinct character in this film. It's a vibe.

And it's not just like a gag, right? It is a, it is a level of vulnerability that most, fuck it, like any other action movie has not really allowed it to have particularly between uh vin diesel and paul walker's characters yeah there is a a male intimacy there yeah that is so like special especially when you consider the like actual close ties that this cast has together right it's the fucking like lord of the rings thing where it's just like us you know dozen people or so are going to spend every waking moment of our

film careers together because this is like all we're doing uh and that is like such a pure and beautiful thing although fast and furious isn't a very enjoyable film in my opinion but what's that looming over the horizon and i swear i'm not gonna recap this is the last one i'm gonna recap but fast five is my favorite of the franchise uh it was the first one that like i remember watching and thinking like oh wait i've seen some of the other films before but this one is this franchise beats ass huh like this franchise is something very very special uh takes place in rio de janeiro like like gorgeous scenery uh you you you have that that cast uh together again only at this point it has stopped being a car enthusiast movie for car

enthusiasts at this point it has become a big budget heist movie series and all the other movies since that have just been big budget heist movies with a focus on cars uh there are certainly cool cars there to be seen and enjoyed by everybody but for the most part it's them trying to steal a bank vault uh from i forget the exact plot uh and the action sequences become just fully cartoonish at this point this movie caps off with a um if you've never seen any of them watch fast five it caps off with a car chase where one of the cars is towing this like 10 ton vault down the streets of Rio de Janeiro, just swinging it around like this huge fucking cube shake shaped wrecking

ball. It is so radical and, and so outrageous. Yes. Speaking of the rock, speaking of cube shaped objects, we also have the rock making his debut in this film. And he is,

he plays this, I forget if what sort of police force he is working for but he's trying to take down the fast and the furious crew uh watching him and vin diesel slam their huge meaty bodies into each other there's a fight scene that they have in a garage that is like full-blown like uh they live style just like these big burly boys throwing each other through big glass windows and shit. He is so funny. The film is so funny. And there is a levity also to this franchise that is sort of injected in Fast Five that all the other movies have also been like funny and not trying to adhere to this like grim, edgy.

There's nothing edgy about the films anymore at this point even when it's like got charlie's there on like vying for nuclear weapons like it's still like kind of winky about it uh it is i it is just all the movies that have come since then like fast six fast seven seven with fast eight whatever fate of the furious um have been cut from the same cloth as fast five fast five like established this formula and it was hugely successful like the the the biggest movie i think this one or actually it was fate of the furious had the biggest opening weekend in china of any movie like ever like it is a it is a huge global phenomenon uh and just all the movies since then have been like so fun and so watchable

uh and it's it is it is fun from a like uh it's from from fun from like a meta standpoint at this point where it's like i enjoy watching the movies but i also enjoy that these movies are being made by these people whose like entire sort of like uh you know careers and and stuff have been like shaped by these movies and the people that they've made them with which makes it even sadder that you know when when paul walker uh passed away during the the making of fast in the furious seven which like fucked me up in theaters. It is just a special, incredible, over-the-top, gentle, sweet, caring,

radical, fast, furious thing. And the next one's gonna have John Cena in it. Like, they can do no wrong. The big boys. You know, I don't know you to be somebody who's particularly enthusiastic about action films but you definitely this is near and dear to your heart i like um i mean i like action films that are like special in some way right like i will still watch the matrix movies uh because it's like still fucking cool Like there are things that happen in those movies that are,

uh, cool and revolutionary. And like thinking back to the first time I saw them and thinking like, this isn't just some big, you know, dumb shootout. Like they are doing some really fucking rad stuff with these movies. Like that's the kind of thing.

A lot of, um, some like old art, martial arts movies, Ang Bak, which is this, uh, Mu thai movie where they're actually kind of beating the shit out of each other and like the stunts are absolutely

remarkable and dangerous and just like cool like that's the kind of stuff that i vibe with i feel like it can't just be like rambo yeah yeah no no you know no shade to Rambo or whatever but like what I love about these movies is that they the stunts are like absolutely remarkable but if it was just the stunts I don't think I'd enjoy it like I'd enjoy it but I wouldn't like be talking about it on our show right now it is the like the joy of it the abundant generous joy of these movies is is something really special. See, I told you I was going to go so long. What's your first thing?

My first thing is the sweet eggy bread that is the Hawaiian roll. Oh, my God. I know nothing about the Hawaiian roll except that I love eating it. Tell me. Tell me. We had some last night, yes? Yes. Oh, yes.

Yes. So the Hawaiian roll is kind of similar i was thinking about it today kind of similar to a challah bread it is isn't it i never piece that together yeah like a challah bread and a brioche are all uh enriched with eggs and butters plural which i've decided to for this recipe you add in one eggs and two butters um you got cow butter and then you're gonna add in some bat butter you didn't you don't think about bat butter but it's there uh so the the whole idea of like a sweetened bread um became really popularized uh from portuguese immigrants uh specifically, specifically coming to Hawaii in the mid to late 19th century to work ranches and plantations. By 1910, many of these Portuguese families baked their own breads using recipes brought from home.

But when refined sugar was scarce, they used local ingredients like honey and pineapple as sweeteners. Oh, interesting. Now, the actual Hawaiian roll does not have any pineapple juice listed as an ingredient. Right. But I found a lot of recipes online that suggest using it to get that kind of sweetness. I imagine that would have a completely different flavor profile. I imagine that you don't typically have a lot of like citric sort of acidity inside of bread but i bet that'd be fucking good so the uh king's hawaiian

that is kind of like that's that's the go-to like you can find like a generic hawaiian roll for sure the uh the hot dog buns we had last night were actually like a generic hawaiian that was a product trip by the way i don't think i've ever had like hawaiian roll hot dog buns we had some big uh frozen what's the name of the omaha steaks beef franked holy shit that was a hot dog and a half man grilled it up oh busted out that grill for the first time in the summer hello yeah that was nice uh so king's hawaiian actually um was created by a japanese american man who lived next to uh like a family of portuguese immigrants who were creating these sweet breads that were traditional to their culture but those breads would become stale after like a day,

as a lot of, you know, fresh big bread does. So in 1959, Robert Terra opened Robert's Bakery on the Big Island and started specializing in these kind of Portuguese style breads, but had increased the shelf life, had done some kind of magic, some kind of magic yeah that had made them kind of softer than last longer yeah he was a bread wizard if i remember his uh autobiography uh just eggs butter sugar um not anything sorcery sorcery yeah but then yeah the sorcery uh so this uh robert's bakery um moved to uh king street in honolulu which is how it became king's hawaiian um the bread uh was so popular it became like a big thing that tourists would buy it and then like ship it home interesting and so like people that

was like if you took a trip to hawaii, that was what you would pick up while you were there. So in 1977, they moved to California, and the rest is kind of history. I will say, though, I was watching little videos about it, and they talked about how when they started creating creating like mass production uh robert bought all of his equipment but the bread was so like wet and sticky that he like the equipment consistently couldn't handle it like most bread is not nearly that wet and sticky and so he had to modify his own equipment to like withstand the like tackiness put paper towels everywhere to kind of...

So Robert's son is the current CEO. So it's still very much like a family business. But I... You read a lot of dishes that use this bread specifically because the sweet egginess. Right. dishes uh that use this bread specifically because like the sweet egginess right um it works really well with like a i don't know what what am i thinking of like a like a pork kind of i'm thinking of pork i'm thinking of like a barbecue kind of a barbecue a pulled pork situation a ham

situation what i'm thinking of is how like every fourth video that is that pops up in like my Facebook video feed that is like tasty or one of those other cooking things has a like just cut a whole sheet because they come in sheets of King's Hawaiian rolls in half. Put a bunch of shit in there. Like just make a layer of cheese and a layer of marinara and a layer of fried chicken and then you put that on there and you cover it in butter and then you put it in the oven for like 20 minutes and then you cut them all up and you have just made a thousand sliders i've always wanted to do that uh this is like a big thanksgiving thing too i feel like that's where i discovered it first was that um like thanksgiving at my aunt's house i feel like that's where I discovered it first was that Thanksgiving at my aunt's house. I feel like we always had these.

It was like the only time of year I ever had it. For us, it was Easter. Because you saying pork made me think like, oh, we would have this with our ham and whatever other Easter egg salad stuff we would have for Easter. Yeah. It's a magical bread. It is a very good bread. I mean, what else is there to say

it's the it's the fast and the furious franchise of breads oh yeah i'm really laying it down family family it's all about family hey can i steal you away please hey can i read you uh the first of our gumbotrons? Our what? Gumbotrons. This first one is for Chloe, and it is from Ben, who says, I have gotten this message to celebrate our previously impending nuptials, but now I just want this to be for you.

I know it's been a really hard time, and I hope by now things have gotten easier. No matter what happens, I'm so grateful for you. I'll love you always. Thank you for everything. Let me know if you want your symbolic ring substitute item. What do you think that's going to be? A hula hoop. Interesting.

And you can do a little bit of fun prop work like, oh no, what giant? I didn't know what size you were. That's really good, babe. Do you want to read the next one yeah this message is for sarah it is from mitch hi my sweetie bear i love you and you're super wonderful i can't wait to marry you unless we already are which in that case hooray i love I love you so much. I love that. This covers all possibilities. Yes. The before time, the after time. The during time. The during time.

It doesn't cover the during time. There should have been a little sentence in there. I'm marrying you right now. I'm marrying you. And that's what? Second person pejorative? Not my strength. And that was nothing.

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Yes, please. I thought of another rain song. Oh. Thunder only happens when it's raining. And you know what's appropriate? My second thing is the album Rumors by Fleetwood Mac. How have we not talked about this i don't know but are you fucking kidding me with this album do you remember the first time that you heard rumors do you remember the first time that you're like i should look into this rumors thing that everyone's always talking about i feel like i happened upon rumors

and kind of the way i think a lot of people do where i had all these songs that i liked and then i realized they were all on the same fucking album uh yeah i remember i was like in college and hadn't really entered my fleetwood mac phase yet uh and i played uh uh go your own way on Band. And I was like, this song fucking rips. What is this? And then I listened to Rumors. I was like, oh, wait, I know every song on this album already. For me, it was Landslide. That's not on Rumors.

Oh, it's not on Rumors? Nice try, though. Fucking fake Fleetwood Mac fans. I told you, they're on this scene. Not like us. Not like us real Knicks heads, which is what we call ourselves. Real Fleetwood...

My apologies. Real Fleetwood hack over there. Not like us. Anyway, I want to take y'all back to 1976. Fleetwood Mac had been around for a while, and it had sort of gone through all these different amalgamations. I think Rumors was like their 11th album or something like that, but not the 11th album that had the lineup that the band had, which was sort of like the main lineup that people talk about, which was you had Mick Fleetwood, drummer, who had, you know, the eponymous member of the band. Then you had Christine and John McVie, who were married during their stint as bandmates. And you had Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who joined the band together at a certain point in their lineup.

Their lineage is like so, so, so confusing. at a certain point in their lineup it's a very their lineage is like so so so confusing what you also have to keep in mind is in 1976 basically here's a fun mnemonic device everyone in the band was married to each other at some point and then divorced and all that happened in 1976 1976 lindsey buckingham and stevie nicks had this sort of like on again off again not especially healthy thing going on that was like in a pretty bad place uh as as it became time to record this album uh christine mcvee and john mcvee well they were in the midst of a divorce uh and you know had to just jam in that studio baby and then mcfleetwood wasn't married to anybody in the band, but his wife had just had an affair with his best friend. And now they were in the middle of a divorce.

Oh, no. And you put all that into like a small acoustically treated room and baby. That's music magic. That's music magic right there. Man, the romantic situations of the band is not just like apocrypha. The romantic situations of the band is not just like apocrypha. It is actually sort of important to understand because all of the lyrics of all of the songs on this album, these incredibly memorable, beloved songs are pretty much all about the tribulations, the romantic tribulations that all of these uh these these five people were going through um and around this time like all of these rumors uh hence the title i believe uh about like the band was going around in the press about their you know about their romantic situations uh there

were rumors that like christine mcvee was in the hospital for an extended period of time and not a member of the band anymore uh there were rumors that um lindsey buckingham and stevie nicks had left and they were bringing back the original lineup like none of this stuff was true what was true is that like they were going through these incredibly painful separations and not giving themselves any time to process them before they started to work again um mick fleetwood referred to this as quote the tremendous emotional sacrifices recorded just to like get in a room together um so like the the it informed everything on the album and to like begin uh we can talk about go your own way uh which i mentioned earlier which is a fucking bop with this like weird sort of syncopated drum beat that

like really when, when you are forced to play along with it in a video game, like you really appreciate like what the, what the fuck was Mick Fleetwood doing? And like a really just rad ass guitar solos all throughout. So just pay attention to the lyrics as I play a little bit of go your own way. So just pay attention to the lyrics as I play a little bit of Go Your Own Way. Tell me why Everything turned around

Packing up Shacking up It's all you want to do If I could Maybe I'd give you my world Open up. Everything's waiting for you. So Lindsey Buckingham wrote this song about Stevie Nicks.

Whoa. Who would perform it in the studio and, you know, on stage. Stevie Nicks, not a huge fan of particularly the line packing up, shacking up all you want to do. She was like, No, that's not a good Hey, Lindsay, that sucks to say about me that all I want to do is shack up with like rando dudes. And yet, that stayed in the song uh and that is you can understand not a particularly flattering thing uh and you know i think that that is a pretty good like sort of cross-section of how raw i think they were getting when they were making this album together but it wasn't all doom and gloom they would get together uh usually in the studio just around supper time and they would have these big wild hedonistic feasts

uh and then they would do a lot of drugs uh and then around like 2 a.m they'd be like all right guys let's get to work and they would record all all night in just a really, really sort of rough and also extremely stereotypical kind of like rock star work environment. Can you say some of the other songs that are on this album? Why, I would love to. How about Don't Stop?

How about Secondhand News? How about Gold Dust Woman? How about The Chain? If you don't love me now. Fucking Dreams. The song I sang at the beginning of this segment. Like, phew.

So, like, a lot of these songs are difficult, challenging sort of relationship songs. There is one beautiful, bright light, this pure beam of energy, this Fast and the Furious franchise of this album in the form of you make love and fun which is sweet and light I'm gonna play a little bit of

this one right now It's time to try. I never did believe in the ways of magic. But I'm beginning to wonder why. You make love and fun sweet and nice, right? This song, why are you laughing? It's sweet and nice and good. This and Go Your Own Way feel like, I don't know, they feel like big hair band songs, kind of. Like arena rock a little. I'll give it to you. Yeah. Well, I think the energy of You Make Love and Fun

is unapologetically positive. It is a song about a healthy, good relationship that is making the singer and the subject of the song both very, very happy. is making the singer and the subject of the song both very, very happy. Now, the singer and writer of this song was Christine McVie, and she was singing about Fleetwood Mac's lighting director who she was having an affair with. Wait, lighting director? Yeah, and I know you're probably wondering,

was bandmate John McVie, like, cool with recording this song on the album well yes because christine mcvee told uh john that it was she had written it about their dog oh man so everything was cool on that front the history of this album is just fucking mind-boggling right yeah it is like and it's not like i do not want to glorify the unhealthiness physically, emotionally, mentally, romantically that fueled this album. talk about like old rock and roll and like the the trials and tribulations that people would put themselves through to create these like critically renowned to this day rumors is one of the most and for good reason like one of the most respected revered albums of any sort of uh uh you know genre ever ever ever recorded uh When people talk about like the hell

that bands would put themselves through to make this kind of stuff, like that wasn't just, that's not, it's not apocryphal. Like it is the real honest to God reality of the situation when they were making this album, even though it sounds like something out of a movie. And, you know if but if you uh if you'll forgive my choice of words here divorce yourself from all of that and just

listen to rumors uh good lord it is a it is just a bop it is just such a good fucking album i pulled this because um uh i i was going through my grilling time playlist yesterday i have a playlist on spotify called grilling time because i did some grilling i think it might be fun to do like a little summer series just on some of the bands just get into a little bit of get into a little bit of uh doobie brothers in there uh do a little bit of uh little fucking orleans y'all want to fuck with orleans what is happening to you griffin grilling time happened to me back in like 2015 grilling time's been a part of my life for a long time now um what is your second thing okay it's actually it's appropriate that the clouds have

lifted as we are recording this because my second thing is playing outside. Oh, man. Yeah. For me, I was really big on this growing up. I really loved to be on my bike, riding around the neighborhood. I loved to be just out in the grass, you know, living my life. Right. Playing, you know, croquet. Playing croquet? Yeah. Did you play a you know croquet uh playing croquet yeah did you play a

lot of croquet growing up we had a croquet set at my house wow i never knew how to play it though i would just kind of set it up like a golf course around my yard uh and do it that way that's a cool way to play it god croquet is a good game god i miss playing croquet with our friends. Fuck! Man! This is something we have lately been trying to get Henry to do. Not croquet. He's much too young to hold hammers. Playing outside in particular. It's interesting.

He never really seems to want to do it. And then once he's out there, he just has the best time. Yeah. And it always makes me feel good about myself as a parent because i feel like there just seems to be some inherent value in it and then i did some research and actually there is yeah i don't think i think i would have trusted you on that point without research i think well when i was a kid recess always seemed like a way that teachers would burn off our energy you know like it didn't necessarily and i think it was kind of always treated that way too like it was never like recess is just as important as like math class you know but like

in some ways it is yeah absolutely i talked about sunshine i'm not really going to go into it all the values of sunshine remind me though good though, good or bad? Good. Okay. In? In moderation. Yeah. Children should be active for an hour every day. Wow.

And that's just Rachel saying that. And also there's value in unstructured activity. Right. So the skills that you can build in school and being on a team are valuable but also just you know problem solving taking risks and being creative yes you know can build kind of self-esteem and also you know just just general life skills i can tell any time that we haven't like a lot like taking henry to play outside enough whenever he goes in the backyard and looks at the slide that we have back there and it's like, fuck that. No way.

Are you kidding me? Look at that thing. Yeah, that sounds good. I'd love to break every bone in my body, you two dummies. What's your problem? Some of this may be genetics that Henry is not a particular risk-prone child,

but I think some of it is also he is kind of an indoor kid and we are trying to shake him loose from that habit, I think. Well, it seems a little kind of an indoor kid and we are trying to shake him loose from that habit. Well, it seems a little hypocritical because we're both indoor kids. That is not. See, you met me as almost 30 something adult. But when I was a kid, I was very much an outdoor person.

Interesting. Yeah. It's just changed over time. Well, that's because you were a Sega Genesis family and we were a Super Nintendo family. So we actually had... You had a reason to be in the house. Yeah, we played Sonic the Hedgehog and beat it. And you're like, well, there's no more games. Better go play outside.

There are all sorts of like weird benefits too that kind of surprised me. There was an optometry and vision science study that showed children who play outside regularly have better distance vision. Well, yeah. Which I guess makes sense. I will cede that ground.

Also, so if your child spends more time in front of like, you know, a television or an electronic device, they're only using the two senses of like hearing and sight. They're not using like, you know, smell, touch. Sometimes Henry tries to eat the iPad. So that's taste.

Children that play outside more are better able to, as I mentioned, kind of troubleshoot and negotiate their environment. And also, and this is not as applicable now, but you can kind of learn how to work together with other children. So the idea of playing tag or hide and seek, like this idea of kind of working with other kids to complete a game is something that you can typically only do outside. outside. The other aspect of socialization, children who play outdoors regularly are more curious, self-directed, and likely to stay with a task longer. Children who spend most of their time indoors with little exposure to activities requiring their own initiation show less ability to initiate or participate in new activities. This is something I've been really conscious of,

and I'm saying all this mainly because it is like it is something that we have started to notice in henry now that he's school age like obviously a young child has a limited attention span sure but i want to like find activities that lengthen that yeah um because a lot of like you know games and television stuff like are designed for that short attention span yeah i i think i mean i think uh i think it's about sort of like balancing yeah the two things because there are certainly plenty of redemptive like good things to do inside yeah no there's a lot of great i mean we are lucky in that there's a lot of great educational programming you know that yeah i feel actually really good about henry participating if you are a parent of a youngster we have been deep into the noggin app which requires a subscription but it's like nick jr's thing and there's like some you know you know just fluff kids entertainment

stuff on there but there's a lot of genuinely approachable interesting like logic reasoning uh and like his favorite characters too you know yeah so like he's he's solving puzzles and and using math and and building these skills and also like engaged with it right yeah although even like the educational stuff like i will see him get like way too zombified like out into it so it's all you know it's all about uh much like the sunlight moderation yeah i think this is by no means a criticism of of people that don't spend a lot of time outdoors uh for me i just in this climate where activities are very limited i really appreciate kind of the the kind of the boundless opportunity that comes with being outside right now like like just being on a walk and being able to find like a rock you've never seen before or like see some kind of crazy plant

yeah and a big you know there's a lot of crazy plants out there yeah yeah there's like like seven or seven or eight yeah uh so yeah i i just wanted to i don't know express my appreciation for that uh i feel like that's something that has been of interest to kids for generations and it's cool that it's like something you know that going outside and like and like building something out of rocks is still like a thing it's kind of crazy getting in a big public pool with like 400 other people. Rachel's always talking about how good that is to happen right now. It's a good thing you do like outside because if you think about it, most of the world is outside.

I used to go, actually every summer I used to go to an art camp, which by its definition you would assume is not a particularly outdoor activity. But it was, in fact, outdoors. And so we did a lot of outdoor activities in addition to our puppetry. A lot of sort of paintings of birds, a lot of bird sketching, a lot of examinations of the Fibonacci sequence. That is the correct way to pronounce that word, by the way. That's beautiful. Your pronunciation is incredible.

Oh, of the word Fibonacci? Yeah, thank you. The way I say it, it sounds like a delicious dish, doesn't it? I like the Fibonacci. But no, it's the name of a mathematician or something. I don't know. I would she um but no it's the name of like a mathematician or something i don't know i would know if i wasn't such an it's such an outdoor kid you know

if only i had read more books in my dark room oh wait i did oh wait it was video games do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about yes please anna says something i'm finding wonderful lately is the youtube channel cracking the crypt, in which two very pure and very smart gentlemen solve a variety of Sudoku puzzles. Please enjoy the video that got me into them, which I've linked below. You obviously can't click on anything because you're hearing this with your ears, but it's called The Miracle. And it's a gentleman solving an incredibly difficult Sudoku puzzle with a single, like two numbers filled in and a very specific set of rules. I have seen everybody on the social media talking about this video. It is an incredible, incredible Sudoku solving feat.

And it's like a half hour long just watching this person just like sit there. And then like they figure out one number and the rest of it just like completely falls into place. It's very satisfying to watch. Amy says, my wonderful thing is getting to work early. I'm a healthcare worker and I just arrived to my place of work about 10 minutes early today. And I love the few minutes I get to just sit in my car and finish my morning coffee and mindfully prepare myself for the day. Amy, you're doing great stuff out there. We appreciate you. And also, that is a very, I mean, it's been a while since I've had to drive a work, a car to work.

But I do remember, you know, sitting in that TCBY parking lot, which I think we can all agree is of equal import. Just like, you know, smoking a pack of cigarettes, like, oh God. That yogurt isn't gonna swirl itself. What are they gonna ask of me today? All day. What was it?

What did he call it? Every day that I get in that TCBY, it is a tremendous emotional sacrifice just to do the work I have to do. You know? Because me and all my employees, my coworkers at TCBY, we were also all divorced from each other. And what was your album that you created?

I mean, you know, Fudgy Swirl. It wasn't an album, baby. We weren't making music. You know that, right? At TCBY, they don't make music. Still art, though oh yeah absolutely it was art the things i did in there oh my god erratic i still watch a walk into any tcby in the country and they're like oh my god is that cinnamon swirl griffin mackerel yeah it's me don't worry about it i heard he once brought his own box of cinnamon toast crunch into the tcby to make his own forbidden treats uh that's a rumor that didn't uh

it was french toast crunch um thank you to bowen and augustus for these for a theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description and thank you to maximum fun for having us on the network thank you maximum fun you can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Thank you, Maximum Fun. You can find a lot of incredible shows on the Maximum Fun. And I'm going to go ahead and recommend The Greatest Generation. Yes. Which, you know, earlier we were talking about, you know, a potential return to Star Trek this fall. Well, for you, it would not be a return it would be

a welcome yeah uh if you are a star trek enthusiast that's the podcast for you yes absolutely um and uh yeah i think that's a going i think that's about it i think that's about it uh-huh oh i have uh you know how we were we were ending with like a little tip, like a little piece of, make a list of all the great things you've done. In your life? No, just past few months. Oh, okay. of tasks and new exciting recipes that I have completed and just just adventures I have been on you know the past couple months yeah like that big public pool party that you went to you were raging at and I was like babe no babe please don't you know that really hits

that really hits with me because it did happen in missouri it did happen in missouri yeah um which i and you flew on six different planes to get there rachel um she didn't really do that she'd want me to say Hey! Working on Hey! My Hey! Hey! Working on Hey! My Hey! Hey! Working on Hey!

My Hey! Hey! Working on Hey! My Hey! Hey!

Working on Hey! My Hey! MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported. Hey, I'm Janet Varney, host of the JV Club podcast.

Ah, high school. Was it a time of adventure, romance, and discovery? Class of 95, we did it! Or a time of angst, disappointment, and confusion? We're all tied together by four years of trauma at this place, but enjoy adulthood, I guess. The truth is, it was both. So join me on the JV Club podcast where I invite some great friends like Kristen Bell, Angela Kinsey, Oscar Nunez, Neil Patrick Harris,

and Keegan-Michael Key to talk about high school, the good, the bad, and everything in between. My teenage mood swings are getting harder to manage. The JV Club. Find it on Maximum Fun.