Wonderful! - Wonderful! 138: All the Dan Marinos

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

Rachel's favorite many-toothed sea creature! Griffin's favorite basketball game! Rachel's favorite memory machine! Griffin's favorite transportive anime movie!Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaFor more ways to support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ 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. In the studio of frickin' Dilbert over here, on your freaking computer and your phone, checking your text. Excuse me, I have business emails. Rachel just like, I was like, I'm ready to record to you, my love.

And you were like, hold on. Let me put you on hold for a second. Yeah, Kyle, go, shoot. Yeah, Kyle. Oh no, it's just Griffin. Don't worry about it. How's the mergers going? Like freaking Dilbert over here.

Buy, sell, sell, buy. All the time with me. Just put me on the back burner going like freaking dilbert over here buy sell sell buy all the time with me just put me on the back burner so you can dilbert out gotta get that commission you know and you're reading dilbert you're reading a hardback which i don't even know they made collection of dilbert comics jokes which maybe i don't know if you've got the like heard the news it's got that ribbon built in for a bookmark. It's funny. And it's like the tie that curls up. But Dilbert is canceled. Okay. Well, I guess I'll have to get rid of these books then.

Scott Adams is an extremely problematic big piece of shit. And I think that means by proxy Dilbert, who did nothing wrong, is canceled. Wait, here, I'm going to throw away my books right now. Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. And that's them rolling down the stairs? That's them. Or were you just very quickly throwing away like six books? That's them falling into the trash can.

Okay. This is wonderful. A show where we talk about things that we're very into. Do you have any small wonders aside from Dilbert, your very favorite comic strip? Okay. You go first always uh i am playing a video game right now called last of us 2 which i don't really want to talk about but i do want to talk about uh accessibility options in video games uh are very very cool and something that developers are very much

prioritizing right now and last of us 2 has a ton of them including things like um you know text to speech for uh a lot of things there's a high contrast mode where like the backgrounds are in sort of black and white but like characters and important objects are just bright vivid colors to help people who need help seeing things like that i think it's fucking rad and it's such an important thing for like making video games available to everybody and it's really nice to see a game as huge as last of us too it's like the year's biggest blockbuster so far like take that stuff so seriously uh it is like a i believe a guiding light for uh other other games that you know will follow in its footsteps and it's just

really cool to see that stuff yeah also the game is pretty neat i thought of it i thought of a small wonder what is it the puddle jumper the puddle jumper is good when i was a kid and i wanted to get in the pool i had to put on a water wing yes which was sort of effective but not particularly safe exhausting it was exciting because you were essentially keeping yourself afloat by the strength of your biceps alone like you kind of had to like constantly yeah it was not the puddle jumper is is for children it uh is for particularly small children uh and it has like a bands around the arms and then this whole like band around the chest it's a life it's a life vest plus water wings essentially that is designed to keep a kid just upright no matter what they try to do it's not for like infants

and i will say that for a long time henry was was so slim that he could not effectively wear it but this summer has been the first summer where it has fit him appropriately and it is incredible yes it's very very nice um hey you go first this week do you want to break me off a piece of that big wonder is that gonna be our thing no um all right i'm gonna give you a teaser for my first thing oh boy oh i know this one yeah rocky yeah i'm talking about sharks all sharks yeah just sharks oh yeah sharks are fantastic i can't really talk about jaws although that is how i lifted the song i'm saying mainly i can't talk about jaws because i'm not super familiar with the film i have oh really i've seen it maybe once

and that was a long time ago i've seen it yeah i've only seen it a couple times but i feel like it leaves quite an impression it does yes it does are so much so uh that henry knows that that is the song associated with sharks because that is what we sing the things he knows that i don't know where he is learning them from i don't know he's quarantined like he has no excuse it's not gonna be like yeah this kid at school is obviously teaching him about jaws i think a lot of times we don't pay attention to the things he is watching and maybe that is how he's learning it. Maybe, but he's not watching Jaws. That's true. I would notice if he was watching fucking Jaws.

Anyway. Sharks are the big fish. They are. There's a lot of debate about whether they're fish or mammals. What I read said fish. I used to think mammals, too. Yeah, whales, I guess, are big, sort of more chill sharks most of the time. This is my understanding of ocean taxonomy.

The fish, so they have the gill slits on the side of their head like the fish do. Right. And then they have the pectoral fin. Right. This is going great so far. I feel like always the need to like, you know,

set us all on the same level. Yeah, absolutely. So let's just agree. It's important to note shark have fin and shark have gills. Yes, we are all in agreement. There are more than 470 species of sharks. Number one. No, I'm just kidding.

I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding at all. Most of them are fish. I love this. I think you'll appreciate this because i know you love a nickname until the 16th century sharks were known to mariners as nope not mariners mariners to dan marinos as all the dan marinos got together and agreed this is the tito taylor of 2020 thank you for reminding me about Tito Taylor. I still get tweets about that. People still...

From people named Tito Taylor? Mariners. Mariners. As, quote, sea dogs. But that's like seals. I feel like seals are very clearly the dogs of the sea. I know. Well, maybe before we even knew what a seal was.

I didn't know this the teeth embedded in the gums not affixed to the jaws that's probably why they come out all the damn time yeah uh sharks can lose 30 000 or more teeth in their lifetime fuck off that's that's more hairs than i lose the rate of tooth replacement varies from once every eight to ten days to several months. Can you imagine? Every day a shark loses one of his teeth, right? No, they said once every eight to ten days. They lose one tooth. Yeah.

Or they reset all their teeth. That's what it sounded like. No, the rate of tooth replacement from once every eight to ten days to several months so that to me suggests that they all their teeth get replaced because if they lose 30 000 and then you only lose one every eight to ten days how long does a shark live oh gosh i can't do that math it's the math is hard but i think it's saying they replace all their fucking teeth i don't think that's true i think that's true i have i collected so many shark teeth necklaces the only way that's happening is if shark are just like every time they talk like hey jerry how's the oh shit hold on how's the how are the kids oh fuck another one came out shit oh

man in most species teeth are replaced one at a time as opposed to the simultaneous replacement of an entire row that's probably good for sharks, huh? That would be a bad Tuesday. There is a shark, though, that has an entire row replacement, and that is the cookie cutter shark. I like that. That's cute. Apparently, they leave little round cookie bite marks in, you know, like other sharks, and so that's how they got their name.

That's adorable. Isn't that adorable? I was reading a description that says they can take ice cream scoop-sized shaped bites out of other sharks, so they really should can take ice cream scoop-sized shaped bites out of other sharks. So they really should be the ice cream shark. Yeah. It stopped being cute, though, unfortunately. I want to tell you about another shark, super rare, called the megamouth shark.

Ooh. Only actually less than 100 have ever been seen. Holy shit. These sharks. They swim with their mouth wide open. Good so far. And they have 50 rows of small sharp teeth. All right.

In each jaw. I know we're supposed to like sharks now. And I get it. Sharks are over hunted and have very, very, very bad and unfair PR, which is probably not helped by me actually featuring Deep Blue Sea on this very show that we're talking about now. But I am still allowed to be extremely afraid of them, right? Like I would never do anything to hurt a shark or sort of get out there and say like, hey,

we should all be out there hunting more sharks. But I personally am allowed to hear the thing that you just said and be fucking mortally terrified of that, right? Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of teeth, granted. Growing up in Missouri, not particularly afraid of sharks. No. Did not go to a beach until I was a teen. Wow, really? Yeah.

And it was Virginia Beach, probably not super well known for sharks. Maybe not. Here's what I'll tell you for 2019. Only 64 unprovoked shark attacks. See, that's fine. And only two people died from shark attacks in 2019. That's not great. But 64 unprovoked, like how can we prove?

You know what I mean? They probably came to shore and they're like, oh, I didn't do anything. And they're like, you're probably mooned out. I will say of those 64, 41 were in the US. So I think we all know. I think they're great. I think they're super cool. There's so many of them and they all have these different little features.

I read about a shark that is pink that I was kind of excited about. Oh. I mean, there's a lot of cool sharks out there with a lot of different quirks, and I would encourage you to look into it, and I will tell you, don't worry about these guys. No. It'll be okay.

I read something that said, don't wear glittery jewelry and splash around a whole lot, and you'll be fine. Okay, that's probably good advice. Yeah. Yeah, I remember, I think it was on the,

man, it may have been on the special features of the Deep Blue Sea DVD, but i remember somebody talking about like oh no all the sharks are very sweet it was the dolphins that we worked with who are real assholes that that quote always stuck with me whenever i think about sharks i'm like sharks are fine it's lisa lisa frank has done like a lot of good pr for dolphins who are apparently big assholes i believe it yeah um hey can i tell you about my first thing yes my first thing we were watching because everybody's talking about it the the last dance the um uh yeah sort of

michael jordan chicago bulls in their heyday mid-90s documentary neither of us are huge basketball enthusiasts so we kind of delayed in watching it but i had heard so many good things that we just yes it has it has i guess quick sidebar about the last dance like dredged up i have never been uh like my interest in sports as a thing that i would watch like multiple games of a season of and become invested in like a team and its players and their performance and stuff like that only happened in my adulthood i feel like after i moved to cincinnati where i was like living in a city with a baseball team that I really enjoyed. But like watching The Last Dance, even though I wasn't like watching a ton of games, I knew so much of that stuff through like cultural osmosis in a way that like was so interesting. Because when you grow up and you're in elementary school and

especially middle school during that Bulls like Jordan era, Like it's just every, it was everything. It was so huge. Anyway, that is, I'm not talking about that for my first subject. My first subject is actually the greatest sports game ever made, which is NBA Jam. And this is such a big,

I feel like contributing factor to that, even though Michael Jordan wasn't in NBA Jam, which is a topic I will cover as I get into NBA Jam because there's an interesting oral history on Sports Illustrated that you should go read if you're interested about NBA Jam, which is a topic I will cover as I get into NBA Jam, because there's an interesting oral history on Sports Illustrated that you should go read if you're interested about NBA Jam. Have you played NBA Jam? Like, how much do you know about it?

I mean, the only sport video game I have played was like NHL 98, I want to say. Ooh, 96 was like the hot one. And 96, I think was- 96 or 98. I think 96 is the one that was in swingers the yeah okay anyway nba jam is a series of uh basketball games uh that kind of had its heyday back in that mid 90s like uh jordan bulls era of basketball um and it was like that pre-space jam heat uh which i think was 96 the first nba jam came out in 1993 uh and it was a two-on-two

basketball arcade game uh from midway who made a lot of sort of like arcade hits like mortal combat and cruisin and um uh nfl blitz which was sort of the nba jam of football when you say two-on-two yes does that mean that there were two players on the court yes oh yeah there were two players uh there were two players from each team on the court so you had a pair of players from each team interesting it was all very very single-minded about being just a very fun accessible arcade basketball game uh this oral history i read uh in in the sports illustrated article was like super super interesting because it really dives into how that idea kind of came to be.

So there's one of the developers at Midway, a guy named Mark Turmel, was credited with like taking this new technique that game developers were using where they could take photos of people and create these sort of photorealistic assets and sprites and stuff out of it, kind of reminiscent of rotoscoping.

Do you know that animation technique that they did back in like early Disney movies like Sleeping Beauty and all those old films? Kind of doing something similar with that, except they were using them mostly for like fighting games and things like that. But Mark Turmel was a big basketball fan. So he was like, let's see if we can do this for basketball.

So the developers at Midway went around Chicago and like found players uh like sort of more lesser known nba players and just like took pictures of them while they were playing basketball and that's how they got like all of these assets and animations uh and so uh in this sports illustrated oral history uh mark trammell talks about how he was showing these like dunking animations to other developers and they're like oh yeah that looks that looks pretty good but like nobody was like bowled over by it and they didn't have the nba license at this point so this was just all proof

of concept so he's like oh let's see maybe we'll turn it up maybe we'll just like ratchet up the the at the time the dunking height it was called the ball and hoop game it was called respectful basketball simulation uh but they kept kind of tweaking it and tweaking it and called the ball and hoop game it was called respectful basketball simulation but they kept kind of tweaking it and tweaking it and tweaking it and then like eventually uh tramell started to show off this animation internally of players just jumping two stories into the air and doing cartwheels and like dunking from like the midcourt line and like doing all this like impossible superhero shit and like there were people in the studio who are like what the fuck are you doing like this this this is wild

like we're nobody's gonna buy a basketball game where you can do this while other people were like more faster keep going and so they kept going and like eventually sort of that direction of just like let's just make it stupid like let's just make it like as fun as possible without adhering to like the simulation idea of basketball and that's how they got like uh the idea of just they wanted something to sort of change the tempo of the game or add momentum to the game so they got this system where if you scored three baskets in a row you became on fire and now like all of your dunks are just like non-stop style of the stylish like wild uh maneuvers it's like tony hawk pro skater kind of even deeper than tony hawk pro skater because the basketball was

literally on fire and mark termel was like arguing with like other developers like the basketball has to be on fire and people were pushing back like no what are you fucking talking about but that resistance eventually gave way to just this idea of let's just make it fun like let's there's a turbo meter where you can hold in a trigger button and just like now you're running at the speed of light and like jumping three stories into the air and it adds a sort of a strategic element to the game uh and the the further they went into this process the more they kind of just leaned into like let's just make it fun and that sort of single faceted design direction, I think is so amazing. And it is why this game still holds up to this day.

Because like, when you just sort of design a game without worrying about like, oh, well, let's cut this fun thing, because it makes it less so and so. When you don't have that, you just make a game that is just fun, no matter when you play it, or who is playing. Yeah, that's so smart to me, because I feel like the number of people that would like a game that is just fun no matter when you play it or who is playing yeah that's so smart to me because i feel like the number of people that would like a game specifically because it was realistic is actually pretty small yes it seems like most people really just want to get in there and do crazy stuff so there's a bunch of other stuff that kind of falls in line with that like let's just make it fun aesthetic one is the commentary for the game which is so iconic uh it's all done by a guy named tim kitzrow and the script that he went

off of for this entire game that like inspired all of these catchphrases like boom shakalaka which was uh sort of a misquote of a lot of different like funk songs there's a sly and the family stone song where they say uh boo laka laka laka uh like it is pulled from that right and all of these things that people still fucking say like about basketball or anything i have a pair of shorts and i looked in and like it said boom shakalaka like inside the fly of them like it's everywhere uh this script was two pages long are we just gonna gloss over those shorts no we're not um we'll talk more about them later they're chubbies i got chubbies everybody because they i wanted to show off my gams get off my fucking case um and they can't do like color commentary because it's you know this game shipped on like cartridges with very

very little memory so they can't be like oh and he's reversed it and now he's coming down and jumping off the key like so instead you just have carnival barking of just like oh he's heating up boom shakalaka and like all of that is so stupid and so like iconic and great uh they could not pitch this game to the nba they would not accept it because at this time in the mid 90s like arcade machines especially coin operated ones uh existed in what everybody sort of thought of as like seedy places like bars uh there was like a a quote about like this peep show in new york uh where you could see like arcade machines like through the window and so the nba didn't want their brand associated with that so midway had to do like this whole pr campaign and pitch it and show like all these

family entertainment centers where there are arcade machines and finally the nba agreed to it uh and that's how we got nba jam now uh michael jordan was not in the game because at this time michael jordan had secured his likeness like from the NBA. So whenever they did licensed things, they couldn't include Michael Jordan in it without his consent and without him getting a chunk of change out of it. So he wasn't in the game. I forget who was... I think it was Scottie Pippen and... I can't remember who the other player was from the Bulls that you could play as. But they did get a call once, Midway did, from Gary Payton, who was also on that Bulls team, saying that him and Michael Jordan wanted a copy of the game with them in it as players.

So they sent in their own photographs of them playing basketball to use as animations. And they sent them like special edition arcade machines, uh, with them as players with like maxed out all-star stats. There's only a handful of these cabinets that exist. Shaq had two of them. One of them was in Shaq's home. So he just played, play it wherever he wanted.

The other of these like special edition NBA jam machines traveled with Shaq, like wherever he went, like wherever they were playing games, like they would have somebody pack up this machine and bring it with them. Isn't that fucking great? Can you imagine that? Like LinkedIn, like, well, what was your job during this time period? Oh, I was the caretaker for an arcade machine that traveled across the country. In that person's defense, though, an incredibly, I would imagine, valuable arcade machine,

because I don't know how many of these exist but they are uh they they were very scarce there have been a few nba games that nba jam games that have come after that uh but none of them like really lived up to that heyday i played this game so fucking much and then in college like we played it every night when we'd go over to like our friends houses and like you know have a few beers like eventually this just kind of we would put away you know whatever halo game we were playing or like whatever and just would play mba jam because you can play it all night and it is just fun what system was this on well it was on a few different systems it was on genesis but we played it on snes there was also a tournament edition but it's also in uh arcade cabinets and stuff yeah yeah man i think i could still probably pull out the code that you had to punch in to like play as bill clinton uh nba jam kicks ass

it's a good video game and that's a lot i don't know about this game there is a lot i don't know about this game but it's a very good game hey can i steal you away yeah got a couple jumbotrons here uh should we bring up the fact that we repeated jumbotrons last week and didn't even realize it well you did you did mention that it sounded familiar okay and we chalked it up to wedding season but yeah it turns out turns out uh whoopsie doopsie listen y'all it's tough but more bang for your buck huh huh? I guess so. Probably won't happen again. And then watch us do it like literally right now, this episode. We do a lot of jumbo.

We do a lot of content in general. I tell the same jokes. I'm a bim bam all the time. And when you say we, we mean mostly Griffin. Mostly me. Well, you write grants and stuff. That's content. Oh.

If you think about it. I guess so. Yeah. Anyway, here's a Jumbotron for daniel and it's from andrea who says having entire conversations through gifts of muppets and goats isn't for everyone how lucky then that we met under such strange circumstances since we're fluent in many of the same languages my asl and your science stuff notwithstanding can't wait to come bother you and colleen and give kaylee a smooch on her perfect furry face you're the best you know we love some muppets over here we do we do what's a perfect furry face do you think are we talking

about like length of the fur or softness are we talking about like if there's stuff matted in there has a lot to do with i mean with the features right i feel like good eyes, nose, and mouth placement. Symmetry. Fibonacci sequence. Yeah. The golden ratio. Eyelash length. Eyelash depth. Can I read you the next one?

Please. This one is for Corey. It is from Hannah. My dearest goofball, quarantine has not been great, but quarantining with you makes it better. Thanks for always being down for a game of hand and foot a carpool karaoke session or cleaning up after henry when he eats too fast or has a hairball okay almost had me there you had me in the first half i'm not gonna lie henry bow and i think you're the best. Love, your weirdo forever. R. Henry's never done a hairball, right?

No, but he does eat too fast. Yeah. Maybe they are talking about him. Is he doing hairballs? I don't know. There's a lot about this kid. He puts a lot of stuff in his mouth. He does.

I've seen him eat hair before. Not like a lot of it, but like one or two. I should have done something. Gosh, being a parent is hard. Hey, if you want to get a Jumbotron and maybe twice on the show because we're bad at this, well, good news. We have spots for Wonderful

that are opening up for the second half of 2020 and we're going to be doing a drawing to let folks in to purchase Jumbotron slots because demand is, we do two of them an episode and demand is pretty high for these. So if you want to get a Jumbotron, you have until Friday, July 3rd to enter the drawing. And then if your name is drawn, you'll have the option to purchase a Jumbotron on the show for $100.

Only personal messages. We're not doing commercial messages at this time. And the air date is estimated not guaranteed. So if you want all the details, go to MaximumFun.org slash Jumbotron drawing. And if you have questions, email Daniel at MaximumFun.org. Welcome back to Fireside 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 Wongong talked 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 tell you my next thing? Yes! It is also a game. Oh, wow! I know. Oh, wow. Where are you going with this? It is Simon.

Simon? Mm-hmm. I'm curious to hear about Simon. Yeah. This game has been around since we've been alive. Feels like it has always existed. I imagine people are familiar with it. There have actually been a lot of-

I don't know, man. A lot of versions of Simon that I will allude to in my segment. But maybe not in the last 15 years, yes? I feel like Simon kind of had its heyday. So it is a device, operates on batteries traditionally, creates a series of tones and lights that you have to repeat. So you push buttons, there's colors, there's lights, there's sounds. You have to remember them and repeat them to win the game. Okay.

If you lose the game, you have to start over. You can play this by yourself or you can play this as a team. I personally liked this game because you could play it by yourself. As an only child, I was always seeking out games that allowed you to play by yourself. And this is one of them. I'm trying to remember. You have sent me on a fucking complete trip right now. Yeah, I'm wondering what you're doing.

In a way that you never have really before. I find your segments very engrossing but this is the first one that is like reminding me of all of those like tiger electronic uh games that we had and we had a fucking lot of them like lights out and merlin the 10th quest yeah so that's the thing there were a lot of variations of this that were created right um i am familiar and this apparently so this was a milton bradley yes product and i thought oh i had a version of this also from milton bradley called max backtalk whoa it's from 1986 and the thing with this was that you could record your own sound under the light so the light would shine and then you would record into the speaker a sound and it would be associated

with that light uh there was a commercial for this that did star the guy from uh police academy oh sure gutenberg no the one that did the voices oh michael winslow yes sorry i couldn't remember his name everyone remembers michael winslow for his incredible voices but uh um the problem was that you had to remember which sound you made with which color because it would repeat it to you and a lot of times i would kind of trip myself up so most of the time i just usually ended up saying the color oh that's that's good. I would be like red. I'm pretty sure by the way, I just gave my phone a terrible virus by looking at listings for Merlin the 10th Quest, but sorry.

So Simon was launched in 1978, appropriately at Studio 54 in New York. They apparently they constructed like a big Simon that that hung over the dance floor and that was their big release yes are you kidding you would not catch me on that dance floor at that point like people be like griffin come on we're all doing so much cocaine i'd be like hold up guys uh it was created based on atari's arcade game Touch Me. No, thank you. This was an arcade version that was housed in a cabinet and had four large circular buttons of the same color. And this was in 1976.

Richard Baer and Howard J. Morrison saw the game, thought it had nice gameplay, but was visually boring and the sound was terrible. the game thought it had nice gameplay but was visually boring and the sound was terrible so they did a prototype based uh using the texas instruments microcontroller chip which apparently a lot of the games used in the 70s makes a lot of sense to me yes uh and they named the game at the time follow me which was renamed simon based on the whole Simon Says phenomenon. Not really a phenomenon, but I don't really know what to, I mean, because it is also a game. So the sounds, the tones of the game were inspired by the notes of a bugle.

So they used the tones associated with what a bugle could do. Okay. I think they were talking about like, you know, four tones and what instrument would be appropriate for that. Does the bugle could do okay i think they were talking about like you know four tones right what instrument would be appropriate for that and they use the view does the bugle only make four i guess so right i guess a bugle only makes doesn't cover the full range of an octave right yeah so they said there is the e note c sharp note a note and then an e note that was an octave lower than the blue so i guess three that makes more sense i guess well no it's four different notes that's like the taps notes right that's like yeah yeah

simon debuted in 1978 at a retail price of 24.95 which is equivalent to 98 dollars holy fuck no way i know this explains why I got a Max Backtalk. Well, I'm pretty sure as technology advanced, we did have one of those old-ass Simons, though. It was the top-selling toy that Christmas. Well, that's 1978. That was a little before your time. Yeah. I imagine it had reduced in price a little. Well, yeah, and advanced in technology.

Although we had a lot of very old toys by the time I came around. So there have been other versions as i mentioned of simon there have been uh let me just name some of them there's the simon trickster the simon sticks the simon flash the simon swipe the simon air and the simon optics so let me tell you a little bit about the Simon Air and the Simon Optics. Are these new, like advanced tech Simon? Yeah, these are like post 2000. Okay.

Simon Air, it was like a circular device and you could just wave your hand over the color and it would sense. And sometimes you had to do like two at the same time. Or if you were doing two players, they would light up four and you and the other player had to wave at the same time. How pointless just let me touch the button it's it's dawning on me right now sorry while you're talking like have we explained exactly what simon the game simon is i said it's a device and there's a series of tones and lights and you have to repeat them okay okay but they get longer and you have to it's a memory thing yes okay uh simon optics is like you are you control it it's

like a google glass situation i bet that works really good there was a thing tiger made called the r zone that was a head head-based game system that was like had the sophistication of like a tiger game handheld which were like these very very very low quality kind of game and watch games but they had a little cartridges that you could plug into them i remember i had like a primal rage fighting game cartridge that you plug into your r zone which was a lens that covered one of your eyes but it looked like dog shit and the games were like so bad and it cost so much money it was so stupid. I really enjoyed this game partially because I mentioned

because I could play it by myself. Also, I have always had a terrible memory. I psych myself out when it comes to patterns and the sequences. But I still remember with my Max Backtalk the song that it would play when you messed up. Which says a lot about my skill yes but it would go wow yeah that really left a mark on you i know right that was the song of failure that i

became so accustomed to your anthem wow uh you have made me very nostalgic just now. Congratulations. Thank you. Can I tell you about my second thing? I'll go quick because we've been going pretty long. Yes. Mine's a movie and it's Spirited Away. And you can watch all these Ghibli flicks on HBO Max now, which we picked up mostly for this very reason.

Because Henry likes him a Totoro. Yeah. He also enjoys him a Ponyo. It's shocking how little Totoro appears in that film by the way it's a plot for the reflection it's not a great film for a three-year-old because not a lot of stuff happens a lot of challenging themes in there too well yeah i guess so sort of handled in a ghibli-esque a sick parent which is not easy for a young child not great a lot of uh a lot of convalescing in the ghibli uh totoro sooro, so squeezable. Very soft.

Henry likes to squeeze him a Totoro. Spirited Away, I feel like is aimed at an older crowd. Maybe not Princess Mononoke old, because that has a lot of decapitation in it. But an older crowd. Miyazaki, I think, was aiming for like 10-year-old girls when he was designing like this movie and who it would be for.

And if you've never seen it before, rectify that because it's one of the best movies I think probably ever made. It's my favorite Ghibli movie. And I actually got to do the do like an intro for it when they re-released all the Studio Ghibli kids movies in theaters last year. So if you saw that, then I'm probably going to repeat myself quite a bit. It is about a young girl named Chihiro, who, along with her parents, ends up in this strange, magical world where spirits come for

R&R, basically. And she gets trapped there. Her parents get transformed into pigs. And she has to kind of integrate herself into this world to find a way to there her parents get transformed into pigs and she has to kind of integrate herself into this world to find a way to save her parents and get out um really great character by the way oh yeah like if you think about movies that are targeted towards young girls like typically it's all like love interest princess kind of stuff and this is this is not that movie there is nothing conventional about this movie in a way the way that it handles sort of like conflict and plot structure and like what her like quote-unquote hero's journey is like she definitely follows the archetypical hero's journey but in a non-archetypical way yeah uh and she starts out the movie kind of a kind of a bratty kid who's moving to this new town and just isn't

happy about it uh and is just very scared uh of everything and by the end of the movie like her her her journey has been like very strange and non-linear but it's also been like very very realistic i feel like in the way that she that she grows uh the thing that about this movie that really bowls me over is how like um deep and rich this spirit world is that this that this movie takes place in uh all sort of focused around this big resort where spirits come and you know relax in in in the baths that are set up there and just have this sort of like luxurious break from you know the the the real world that they inhabit and it doesn't tell you a whole lot about how this world works right it just establishes that like there are rules like these are clientele from from the spirit world that like

come here very often but like you don't learn why you don't really learn much about these spirits they have very very specific traits and very very specific attributes but you never really like go beyond like the surface level the movie just kind of assumes it like throws you in there right with chihiro who doesn't know anything about this world and just kind of assumes that you're gonna just roll with the punches yeah that's one thing so when you're like when you're younger and you're first learning about you know creative writing you hear a lot about like trusting your reader you know trusting your audience and that if you are too expository like it's going to be very clear that

you don't trust you know your audience to come to the conclusions that you want them to come to and miyazaki like is always just like really good at that in all yeah in all of his movies like he's he's very very good about that but spirited away for me is just like ghibli firing on all cylinders the movie comparison that is often made and i think is apt is wizard of oz although wizard of oz is even like a little bit more explanatory about the things that happen in his world but not super explanatory she lands in in uh munchkin village or whatever and like they're just like oh you killed the witch and now it's time to go to the wizard she starts out in kansas like like this is very real and then it's totally and that happens here it's all all of like the spirits and uh like themes of the movie are uh based in like shinto buddhist folklore which like i'm not an expert in uh but like i find that like very very fascinating that they you know he's plumbing

a very sort of like traditional thing for these very very vivid and colorful ideas all of the like architecture is based on like classical uh i forget that there's like a open air architecture museum of like ito tokyo era buildings and stuff that's like still open that you can go visit that apparently all of the designs are based in everything is so ornate like every room from uh you know the bathing rooms to like the boiler room where some of the movies takes place. Everything is just so like, that's nothing new again for Studio Ghibli movies. They are all about just these scenes dripping with detail. But it's just so, so rich here.

But the things that this young girl has to do to survive and find her way out of this world are just so weird. to like survive and find her way out of this world are just so weird. Like she has to save this one spirit whose body has accumulated all of this garbage by giving him a bath. Although his body is just like filthy and disgusting and like taking over this whole room. That whole sequence to me is so fascinating because it's not like she's fighting off this beast and it's not like she is conquering this villain. It's like she's trying to do this act of kindness with this terrifying thing that she doesn't understand.

And to me, like, that portrayal of, like, bravery and growth is so great. Like, it instantly endears you to this character, I feel like, and shows you very concretely a way that she is growing. And that's just, like, one example of, of like the kinds of things that she has to do. The challenges that she has to overcome. They are not the usual things that you see in movies. And to me that's just like is why this movie succeeds so much. On top of the fact that like you feel like this world. You are only seeing the top layer of it.

And you are just overwhelmed with this belief that just there's so much more going on that it's just not going to show you because it doesn't have time. Like if it explained why these spirits were here and who they all were, that would be the whole movie and it would be a bad movie. Yeah, right? Like, like, for me, their fantasy tends to be intimidating, because like with something like, you know, Lord of the Rings, where there's this like, really rich history, and you have to kind of absorb all of this knowledge of the Rings, where there's this like really rich history, and you have to kind of absorb all of this knowledge of the world. Like this movie does not require you to do that. It's also a movie about sort of like traditional Japan butting up against like commercialism

in the wake of the 80s, when Japan had this like bubble economy around technology that kind of popped in the early aughts. And they were sort of having a reckoning with that. It's a coming-of-age story about a 10-year-old girl, but it's also tackling much headier themes that I do not consider myself qualified enough to talk about. It was the most successful Japanese movie of all time when it came out in 2001 and received just rave reviews. of all time when it came out in 2001 uh and received just rave reviews uh currently it is the ninth highest rated movie ever released on metacritic which is like a an aggregator of of you know review scores and stuff uh it came out in 2002 with disney as the distributor in the u.s but disney like barely put it out in theaters and made it in 151 theaters and they advertised it like less than their uh like direct to vhs like here's the third sequel to aladdin like i remember like my cool

arty friends talked about this movie but like i had never heard of it well then it won the oscar for best anime picture and then people were like okay well now maybe we should start paying attention to it uh and you can watch again you'll watch all these movies in hbo max but like if you've never really gotten into ghibli like spirited away is a very very good one to get in there too because it really shows you uh one like how very very good they are at at uh animating things just like no matter what they are and creating these incredibly vivid scenes but it also represents this kind of uh non-traditional storytelling that is just so uh just beguiling it is just fantastic uh and i love it i love it it's a good movie and i've just watched it again

and it's good kind of spooky henry didn't like it there's a big big big mean baby in this movie we were watching it and we're like henry watched the bathing the monster scene and no face and all this shit and henry's, I'm down to clown. And then this big baby shows up and is like, I'm going to break your arm. And he was like, I'm done. Bye. Turn it off. Baby's too big.

Get it out of here. Do you know what our friends at home are talking about? Well, I mean, obviously I wouldn't. Well, I'll tell you. Rosario says something I find particularly wonderful is running into sticks or branches from trees that look like or could be used as walking sticks. We decided to make a campfire for Father's day yesterday and my dad found a tiny branch that looked just like yoda's walking stick there's a picture included as a primo walking stick with

like a head and everything good walking stick i love a good walking stick we used to go hiking in the trails behind the museum in huntington and just like every time i found a walking stick i was like yeah i'll pretend to be gandalf for a little bit that's all it was really if i'm being honest uh zachary says something i find wonderful is the feeling of crushing up a still warm popcorn bag after pouring the popcorn into a bowl i like to hold the warm ball of garbage in my hands until it's cold before throwing it away and that feeling always relaxes me even if it is just for that short moment how How powerful. I am so envious sometimes of these submissions because it indicates a mindset that I wish I could have more of.

You know? If we had this mindset, this show would be so fucking easy. We could do it every day. I know. I know. Like paying attention to like, oh, wow, a hot knife and butter.

Wow, that is really great. And like actually being able to retain that joy a hot wadded up bag of popcorn is like so far beyond hot knife you're right this is like zachary's on some next level shit and i appreciate it and you know next time i make popcorn from a bag i'm going to savor the moment yeah yeah really enjoy it uh thank you so much for listening 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 yeah maximum fun uh really great community there's a lot of really great content

right now if you go to maximum fun.org you will find just tons and tons of podcasts like new episodes coming out every day you do not have to wait around uh to find a new incredible podcast on maximum fun uh we will have a link in the episode description to resources to support Black Lives Matter and find more resources for anti-racism education that are invaluable. There's a lot to dig into there that are very, very helpful. I think we do have ads again next week, and we will be donating the ad revenue to another cause that we will select donating the ad revenue to another cause that we will select and tell you all about but for right now

you know don't let up on the gas there's still a lot of things to fight for like arresting the police that killed Breonna Taylor and so so much more but you know good place to start and keep going is that link that we will include for you I think that's probably it

yeah probably yeah and until next that we will include for you. I think that's probably it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's probably it. And until next week. I'm sweating like a dog. Me too. I'm sweating like a dog up in here. I thought it was because I was nervous,

but I think it's just actually hot. It's not nervous. I don't even think it's that hot. I don't even think it's that hot. And Griffin's got on a sleeveless tee. I've got, some people call it a tank top and I'm wearing it the hell out of it. Or is it wearing me? No. Anyway, do you think it's that hot. And Griffin's got on a sleeveless tee. I've got, some people call it a tank top, and I'm wearing the hell out of it.

Or is it wearing me? No. Anyway, do you think it's the sexual heat between us? Ooh. I don't even consider the fact that it may be the sexual heat between us. But I am wearing a tank top, and you are looking at my freckly, freckly biceps. And I know what that does to you. Each freckle just sends a beam to me.

Pure erotic energy. Just heat. Yeah. It's like a sexy magic eye painting. What's in there? Me. I mean, it looks to me like a rhinoceros.

That's correct. That's actually my rhinoceros tattoo. So you're cheating? My mom. My mom. My mom. My mom.