Wonderful! - Wonderful! 143: Rare, Exclusive Gak

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Griffin's favorite seminal skateboarding game! Rachel's favorite holes! Griffin's favorite Seattle rock! Rachel's favorite kid's channel!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/To become a supporter of the Maximum Fun network: https://maximumfun.org/join/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

i'm gonna get so sweaty in here are you it is okay is this the show are we in it hi this is rachel hi this is griffin it? Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. It's getting sweaty. It's not that it doesn't feel that bad to me. You know what it was. See, you're used to it.

I had my big, fat gaming rig pumping out pixels and frames coming at me hot and heavy. Master Chief was there. Pixels and frames coming at me hot and heavy. Master Chief was there. Just so fucking, just pounding out the bad guys and we were getting, it was getting hot and sweaty in here. Griffin has a very sparse office that has 700 pieces of electronic equipment in it. So then one might actually argue it's not sparse at all.

And in fact, it is filled with electronic equipment. Yeah, that's true. I imagine if I get the PC running, I imagine if I get the 3D printer running not sparse at all and in fact it is filled with electronic equipment yeah that's true i imagine if i get the pc running i imagine if i get the 3d printer running all at the same time it's just gonna it could be a sweat lodge i could i could go on a real journey in here but i don't think it's that bad and we're only in here for a little bit so let's and i will also say that a lot of these electronics help you make a better podcast which is a timely thing yeah we're talking about better podcasting through the maximum fun drive maybe i wouldn't say that the uh the the

money that our listeners have so kindly sent us over the years allowed me to enhance the podcast by buying a 3d printer i'm not talking about the 3d printer no but there is plenty of stuff uh within eyeshot of uh the of investments into the show. All these fancy microphones. Sure. I mean, there's a power converter cleaner thing that I don't know what it does, but apparently it makes things sound better. There's all kinds of stuff.

Maximumfund.org slash join is the link you can go to if you want to support our show and the network at large. It is the Max Fund Drive going on right now. I think we have this week and next week, right? And then it's over. Time's running out. If you want to become a member of the network and you want the cool gifts that we have arranged for folks who give it whatever level feels comfortable for you, we'll go into those a little bit later on in the show. But yeah, please help us out. The turnout has been great, but we still need help, especially, you know, during these weird times where we are not touring and certain ways that

we were making our living have become completely cut off from us. So once again, maximumfund.org slash join. You know, small wonder, I can go first if you'd like, please. We've been watching Taskmaster, right? And we've talked about like every week. We're just like really dog pounding through that show. Yeah. A lot. And we are currently on the season with James Acaster on it, who I first became familiar with through The Worst Idea of All Time. He was a guest on there several times and I thought he was hysterical.

And so I think it was last year, the year before last, we were on a trip looking for something to watch on TV and he had a four part special on Netflix. Have you not talked about this? Called Repertoire. I may have brought it as a small wonder before, but we've started rewatching it again because it's so fucking funny. He's so funny. God almighty, he's funny.

It's really good stand up. So that's what I'll bring. I'm going to say wearing my glasses again. You have been bespectacled more than you usually are. I had this lifestyle where I really only needed my glasses when I was in front of a computer. And I was only really in front of a computer when I was working. So I got in this habit of not wearing glasses unless I went to work. And that lasted for several months into this pandemic.

And then I just realized, you know why I wore glasses? Because they helped me see better. And I liked the way they looked. The traditional two reasons for wearing glasses. I should, even though I'm not leaving the house, maybe I should wear them again. Yeah. So I just got a little reminder of like, hey, that was functional and not just related to leaving the house.

Cool. That doesn't make me worry about you at all one day i'll get to wearing uh pants that are not cozy but i'm not there yet you wore jeans to like run out somewhere uh on one of our few excursions out of the house and you were like it was like watching a baby giraffe learn to walk again there was something about the stiffness of the fabric that you were just not used to i think the second you crossed the threshold back into our house you just ripped you ripped them off like you're a professional wrestler like no way i go first this week i would like to talk to you about a subject that i don't know you probably have some passing familiarity with but you certainly do not uh i believe have a deep deep admiration for

tony hawk's pro skater tony hawk's pro skater named after the professional skateboarder tony hawk uh what's your what's your exposure to tony hawk i was trying to think so as as we've mentioned before on the show i was not a nintendo household oh no uh and i pretty much stopped playing video games once i entered high school which was late 90s so my exposure to tony hawk actually didn't happen until college uh when my friends hit this like nostalgia tour of ebay that involved getting old games right well at that point it wouldn't have been too super old because the first tony hawk came out in 1999 okay so you just barely missed yeah this was like 2003 or so when i was like oh what is this tony hawk okay uh i mean 2003 is still uh i would argue the prime of the tony hawk series there were a ton of tony hawk games the

first one came out on playstation nintendo 64 and dreamcast back in 1999 and it spawned this whole series that went on for a very very very long time until some more recent attempts to make tony hawk games have been terrible skateboarding terminology into american households across christ air became a sort of household phrase uh yeah it it was a i realized after um what was the other one i did oh god i can't remember uh it's like a cultural sort of phenomenon situation. Like it is NBA Jam is another sort of like great like example of this. Just like, I feel like I didn't play video games like this.

And then Tony Hawk's Pro Skater came out and I was like, all I could think about, all I could play for a very, very long time because me and my group of friends got extremely into Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. And it did like familiarize the world with skateboarding in a way that uh you know indie skateboarding tapes or the x games or whatever had never really had the crossover appeal to do yeah you just knew about the pants you just what the skateboarding pants the big pants what the skateboarding pants

the skateboarding kids they wore the big pants. I guess so. And the vans. The vans I'll give you. I don't know about big skateboard. Are you talking about JNCO jeans? Yes. I don't think that was the dominion of skateboarders. I feel like that was the skater of love.

Okay. We could go back and forth about JNCO jeans. But yeah, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, 1999. You controlled one of any number of actual pro skaters. I'm trying to remember. I bet if I sat here for like 10 minutes, I could remember most. Bob Bernquist was one of them. Oh my God. Shamefully, I'm blanking. There's so many. And you play in a series of levels and there are different goals in the career mode of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

that you have to accomplish, like achieve a know, achieve a certain score in two minutes, or go find this hidden VHS tape, which is delicious. Or the most common one was collect all the letters in the word skate in order to accomplish that goal. And as the series went on, the career mode evolved and became like way more in depth with like a lot more stuff to do all the way up to Tony Hawk's Underground, which was my personal favorite, where you actually created a skater. You could, I think, take a picture of your face with a digital camera. And at that point, you'd save it onto a floppy disk

and then put that floppy disk in your computer and then like email it to this specific email address that the game would generate for you, assuming your PlayStation 2 could connect to the internet and you could rip it it took forever but then like that's griffin and he's wearing a beanie and he's really good at skateboarding just like me and you could like invest money in your board that's where you guys got the idea for monster factory do you think that was the i mean we did a tony hawk game on monster factory so that that's very full circle if so um that like the career mode was like

so dope like we would go through and accomplish every goal even when like the levels were super annoying it would take us so so so much time to do it uh that tony hawk's underground game by the way was so great because it also had a map editor and uh our friend justin uh made huntington west virginia in the map editor and tony Hawk's Underground. We probably spent maybe 300 hours total playing in Huntington. Even we knew every single square inch of it and all the in-joke references that were in there from the little NPCs who would give you the missions to do things. And we just spent so much time playing that game. But that reminds me of like the best thing,

personally speaking, about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was the multiplayer was so good. It was so good because it had the like things you'd expect, like two people do skateboarding for two minutes and we see who can get the higher score. There was also graffiti mode where every time you did a trick on like a ramp or something, you would change that ramp to your color

and whoever had the most objects at the end of time, that was their color, won. But you could also steal an opponent's object by doing a better trick on it. Wow. So there's like a lot of strategy to it. That was really fun. The one we spent the most time playing was horse,

where it set you in front of like a ramp or a grinding rail or something like that and said you had 10 seconds to like do a trick and you set the score and the other person had to beat it and then they could set the score a grinding rail or something like that and said you had 10 seconds to like do a trick and who you know you set the score and the other person had to beat it and then they could set the score and then it just went back and forth and back and forth like that i'm not like i was thinking about this while i was prepping this segment and like the sense memory of just like on a saturday after like a sleepover just playing horse in tony hawk pro skater one or two or

underground or whatever like for the entire day like that's just all we we snacked on something in the ito family and just played tony hawk horse just like non-stop can i ask you what these tricks this is what i never understood yeah the tricks was it like a memorization of which buttons in which order or were you just mashing? Oh, no. I mean, maybe when you started out, you were just mashing. But, you know, they would add certain things to each title. But the core DNA of like what you did in Tony Hawk, like never changed.

The square button did flips. The circle buttons did grabs. Triangle was grinds. See, I never learned that. Yeah. I was like, how are people doing these things i had no idea uh yeah and so so you know over time you would learn how to you know do a kickflip off a ramp and then as you were landing do uh like a manual so that you could link it to the next trick

so you could grind and by the end of it like by the time we hit like tony hawk's underground too me and my friends were just like bored gods where we would just like hit. I'm not kidding. We would have, we would play horse, but if you were still doing your trick after the 10 seconds ran out, you could do it. You could keep going until the, you finished your trick, either landed it or crashed. So we'd grind in a circular pool for like eight minutes, just going through and getting like a trillion points and then saying like, okay, your turn. It was so satisfying and so good. And it just introduced like a trillion points and saying like okay your turn uh it was so satisfying and so good and it just introduced like a new kind of game into our like already pretty robust video game vocabulary and i think that's like really neat every time that i feel like i can pinpoint the

exact times that that happened throughout like my history of playing games and tony hawk pro skater was like such a huge, like landmark thing. And of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention the soundtrack. The soundtrack to the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games was a collection of mostly punk and ska music that is so, so like, so delectable, so memorable. I'm surprised that you didn't have more of an affection for Ska based on the music in Tony Hawk.

Well, that was the only Ska I really enjoyed, I would say. Yeah, I never really went through a Ska phase, despite how many like sort of checkerboard items of clothing I would say that I owned at various times. But God, it was it was it was iconic like it was like these these songs were i also didn't go through a punk phase but i did go through a tony hawk pro skater phase where i would probably uh probably because you were never much of a a rude boy i was i would which is a ska joke i know i got it um i don't think I even need to play any of the songs here on the show

because I think I can just sort of psychically inject it into the minds of everybody. So I can just say like Superman by Goldfinger. And it's just like... You're there. It's just you're there. You're there with me. They did a remake of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2 a few years ago

that wasn't very good, but they're just doing it again this year, I think. Just another remake of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 a few years ago that wasn't very good, but they're just doing it again this year, I think. Just another remake of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2. So maybe this one will be good. Can you still play as Tony Hawk and is he old? I think so. I think he can probably play as his kid. I think his kid's also a skateboarder at this point.

Tony Hawk is also pretty solid. I did an interview with him once when I was still writing uh about video games and it was like a weird uh thing because like i have no knowledge about the guy himself aside from like what buttons i can press to make you do kickflips uh but he was very he is very funny and very self-deprecating yeah there's like a long list of uh times that he has cited of people like not knowing who he is despite the fact that he is like kind of a household name yeah uh it's delightful what is your first thing my first thing yep is caves oh yeah caves very afraid of them but cool things these caves much like uh texas is the lone star state yeah and west virginia is the mountain state missouri cave state you're kidding me

didn't know it was so porous over 6 000 caves in this in this state holy shit that's a lot of caves um i've always really liked caves yeah caves are great the best thing about caves is the verb for exploring them is one of the best words i would say in the entire english language did you know actually the formation and development of caves is known as Spellogenesis. Spellogenesis. Which is, I guess, where spelunking comes from. Probably.

Did you do a lot of spelunking growing up? No, no. We just walked through paved arm rail caves. Oh, no, I would count that as spelunking. Oh, really? I thought spelunking, I thought was like you're rappellinglling you've got gear and you're got a little headlamp maybe i mean i don't know i went into a cave i wouldn't call that cave hiking there's a word for it describe your cave experience seemed very rogue it seemed very like like diy cave exploring i had

a couple times of diy cave exploring uh mostly at uh our youth pastor's farmhouse yeah had caves like in the back that we would just like just dip into with flashlights until we got very afraid which didn't take very long but there was also carter caves which i want to say was in kentucky somewhere that was like you are describing, like guided paths through like really genuinely gorgeous, gorgeous caverns. Most caves are solutional caves are also called karst caves, which is when the rock is soluble.

So like limestone, chalk, marble, when it can be worn down by water. How could any other cave be formed? Well, there's like volcanic caves too. Oh, I guess so. Where there was like a volcanic channel of lava that like over time went away. Huh, interesting. Caves in general, though, can't be more than 9,800 feet vertical below the surface,

just with the pressure of rock. If it's like deeper than that, it would like collapse in on itself yeah oh and here it comes now my like claustrophobia is kicking it yeah it's difficult to tell how old a cave is um but there are what they call isotopic dating techniques where you can look at the cave sediments to see kind of kind of like rings on a tree like you look and examine the right the cave dirt i imagine the results are just always like old as fuck this cave is so old you would not nobody's ever like oh shit this cave is this cave is two months old huh wild um uh i want to talk about my particular cave close to my heart oh yeah uh which is merrimack caverns in missouri that's i've heard

of this yeah there are billboards freaking everywhere around missouri which is probably why you're familiar with it if you've driven anywhere in missouri or surrounding states you have seen a billboard for this cave what's so great about this cave um well it's existed for the past 400 million years okay which is pretty big um there's also a lot of lore surrounding it which i will get to but i will say it is 4.6 miles of cave underground wow which is a lot of cave um there's a lot of caves in missouri worth mentioning but merrimack is kind of the the showpiece um part of it is because there is a structure in it um that they call uh the wine table which is the world's rarest cave formation it is an onyx table that stands six feet high and is supported on three natural legs wow

impressive it's a fancy cave yeah uh the story of the cave is kind of fun it's got a real circus quality to it um the big story and they'll tell you this when you do a tour of the cave is kind of fun it's got a real circus quality to it um the big story and they'll tell you this when you do a tour of the cave is is it was supposedly a hideout for jesse james i feel like every cave has a yeah um back in uh the 1870s the legend is that a sheriff tracked james and his brother to the cave waiting waiting for him to emerge. But then he found another exit throughout the cave and escaped. Wow. But I think who really kind of made it famous is Lester B. Dill, who was the big showman for the cave.

He invented the bumper sticker as a means of promoting the caves he was the first one to do bumper sticker okay all of a sudden all these fucking billboards make sense uh-huh um he in the 1930s started traveling the country offering to paint farmers barns for free as long as he could paint merrimack caverns on the roof at 1.400 barn billboards existed in 40 states and 75 still remain today so this is more a segment about like the inventor of mass advertising um they also this is what is hilarious in 1960 they rented billboard space in the cave seems excessive and they claimed it was the only underground billboard in the world okay so then they had billboards other places like come see the only underground

billboard in the world um they also like in missouri they advertise it as like jesse james's hideout yeah caverns wow um it's it's kind of charming it's funny like when family and relatives would come to visit we would take them to onondaga which was like a classier kind of cave experience more national park you know like america's you know wilderness kind of feel merrimack caverns is like branson that's where they get funnel cakes in the cave there's just natural funnel cake formations growing inside um they have several rooms of the cave that they have named based around like the theme behind that room i mentioned the wine room where the wine table is located that you know rarest cave right sure uh they

also have a greatest show under earth room where they do a light show. I doubt that that, unless they've been doing some serious updates to this light show, I doubt it still holds that title. And then there's the Hollywood room. So there was a movie called Tom Sawyer in 1973

that starred Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher and they get lost in a cave and that is filmed in Merrimack Caverns, Tom Sawyer in 1973 that starred Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher. And they get lost in a cave. And that is filmed in Merrimack Caverns. Also an episode of Lassie was filmed in that part of the cave. They still talk about that on the tour today. That's sad and great and perfect. And just to give you like some Missouri folksiness, like the tour guides will kind of take you through these rooms and they'll kind of tell you things and i mentioned the wine room on the tour they will tell this joke that you know

it was called the wine room for the wine table but it is now called the wine room because of the whining that visitors do when they learn the room is only accessible after climbing 58 stairs doesn't that just put you on the tour don't you feel like you're really just went on a fucking 58 stairs. Doesn't that just put you on the tour? Don't you feel like you're on the tour right now? I really just went on a fucking, like, my own personal mental jungle cruise sort of situation. My biggest thing that I remember, and my parents always found it kind of funny, like, so it's paved.

You walk in. There's a gift shop in the cave. Perfect. And at some point they they sing the star spangled banner and they have a flag wave at some point in the tour i want to say it's the end of the tour i don't know if they still do this but just to really bring home the kind of like patriotism and splendor of this whole they like full-on like play and have a flag wave this hole loves america america loves this hole i'm i'm like traveling back to like i was remembering while you were talking about a trip we took to ruby falls

in chattanooga and i like have all these memories of like doing a rock tumbler thing and like uh something there's something with like we did actual panning for gold and like all these things around ruby falls which is like this sort of touristy underground waterfall situation but now i'm also having this like mandela effect situation where i can't remember if that's a trip i actually went on or not or if that's just like a thing i remember like my brother's doing on some like i i know i needed to ask them about this yeah i think it's a nice waterfall i don't remember we um we used to go to this cave like every year partially because it's a great summertime activity because it's like 60 degrees it's so nice um and also it's

just i don't know there's something really cool like the stalactite stalagmites the whole the whole thing of caves the the water in there, these just like incredible drips and structures and bats. The acoustic reality of being in a cave is the most incredible thing about it for me. When we used to do sort of unauthorized spelunking

in our farmland caves, it's like those, I'm really fascinated by anti-noise chambers that like like are scientifically like completely devoid of sound and so you go inside and soon like the sound of your own heartbeat is so loud that you like can't i feel like caves kind of have that going on in a way that i find very like i thought i thought the love of caves was so deep that i could take a geology class in college and it would be successful for me that was not the case no turns out there are

more than just a few types of rocks base salt and i just i couldn't hang no one's got time for you base salt is base salt related to salt is is is it i don't even know the word you're saying i'm sorry oh i may be saying it wrong it's the other the other problem so just a couple primo just just real rock heads over here yeah uh hey can i steal you away yes Well, looks like we got a couple of comments. And I would love to read this first one, if you don't mind. Please. I haven't looked at it.

So it's from Tess for nate says congratulations to my wonderful boyfriend nate for finishing his master's in electrical and computer engineering i'm so proud of you for all the hard work you put in especially when you had to take classes at home wherever you end up working i know you will do great i love you so much my top scientist don't forget to drink water i don't know if that was for um i don't know if that was for nate or for us or for just the audience uh but i do appreciate that tess uh added in uh do you have particular pronunciations you need to clarify which is the service we offer all of our jumbotron writers scientist isn't a typo it's just scientists with a sh sound at the start

do not correct this is an important part of the message. Fantastic. No, that was mostly me saying that so people didn't think I made a goof from Up. No, no, no. I appreciated that she gave us that guidance so we didn't somehow gloss over it on accident. Sure, of course. Can I read the next one?

Yes. This message is for Daniel. It is from Nicole. Dear Daniel, I entered to win this Jumbotron on July 3rd. Then that evening you proposed to me. I need more than 350 characters to express all the reasons you are wonderful. But to sum it up, thank you for being my best friend and for blessing my life.

I love every inch of you and then some. P.S. Thanks, Mike, for introducing us both to the McElroys. Ooh, a two message in one there. And then we frown on that. That secret. The deception. This is for Daniel. Mike, get out of here. roys oh a two message and one and then we frown on that the secret the sneak the deception this is for daniel mike get out of here get the hell out of here mike we're not gonna tell you again you pay for your own freaking message one sweet missive at a time folks or else they all get mixed up in our heads can i hear your second thing yes my second thing i think you will find much more relatable than mr hawk and his uh aerial sort of journey uh i want

to talk about wow i am really you could carbon date this episode based on the topics uh we've selected so far i am going to talk about rilo kiley uh because i i've been getting like nonstop like Facebook ads or whatever. I think back in, I want to say like 2004, I like did for the first and only time like likes on Facebook. It's like, what are the movies you like? It's like, well, Lost in Translation. That's like where I was at. And now to this day, it's like, happy 50th birthday lost in translation.

I was like, I need to just get rid of all of this because it is not what I use Facebook. But Rilo Kali is one of those things. And they are re-releasing their first self-titled LP, which is like incredibly rare. I've never heard it before. And as far as I can tell, it's like not on the internet anywhere. So it just reminded me how much I really like Rilo Kali. So it just reminded me how much I really like Rilo Kylie. In particularly two albums, there was Execution of All Things and More Adventurous, which I think came out in 2000 and 2004.

And I just, wow. Listening to those albums while preparing this segment was, again, just a really, really great little time capsule. But it also led to like kind of a realization about myself and my music taste that i found very interesting uh if you've never heard rilo kiley you uh first of all it's a fucking lie because they've been uh they've had their songs in everything uh i have an extensive list of tv shows that their music appeared in uh but they were an early aughts rock uh band they were on barsouk records which was an indie record label in seattle that had uh that was it's probably pound for pound my favorite like collection of musicians to ever exist uh barsouk had death cab harvey danger uh they might be giants uh rilo kiley maps and atlases, Fantagram was on there,

and The Long Winters were also on Barsouk Records. And I think like a lot of like Seattle rock bands, Rilo Kylie was very guitar forward and very just sort of like, you know, loud and melodic. It was led by Jenny Lewis, who has gone on to have an incredibly like successful career. Since then, we saw her in concert at uh austin city limits we did which was uh very fun uh but i first sort of like became aware of her music through rilo kiley like i think most folks did i actually started listening

to rilo kiley because somebody told me uh that the uh that that jenny lewis was in the wizard she played like the the i can't remember her name. The girl. The girl, I guess the one girl that goes across the country playing video games. And I want to just, I guess, start by playing one of their biggest songs, which is off the album,

more adventurous called Portions for Foxes. And the talking leads to touching And the touching leads to sex I didn't know this. that song is named after a very like obscure bible verse it's also like uh one of the catchier songs i've ever heard about like a really unhealthy physical relationship uh and i i like there's something about that juxtaposition of it being a very fun very poppy very memorable catchy song uh about like kind of a toxic situation between people that feels very rilo kylie and feels very like yeah of the music from that era uh there's just something really clean about that song like um jenny lewis's voice is like incredible and she

can like alternate between these very kind of vulnerable verses to just like wailing through the choruses but i also feel like uh the guitars of this band are it's so incredible everybody played guitar not at the same time but like everybody was a multi-instrumental multi-instrumentalist uh and and so that's why it's very guitar forward i feel like i could do all the guitar parts from this song with my mouth right now. And that I think is indicative of the Seattle rock music that was coming out of that genre. And thinking about it, listening to this band and listening to the music again this morning,

and then also looking back over the history of bands that I've talked about on this show, it was always a subject that I was interested in, this idea of when I am older, uh, I'm talking about like when I was in my teens or whatever, looking forward, like when I'm older, what is going to be like the crystallized, uh, era of music or the crystallized, like, uh, the canon of music that is like my, the, the like music that i identify with the one that i like really think established my like core musical likes and dislikes right and looking back like my i i my mom

and dad were like into uh chicago and sly and the family stone and um and steely dan yeah and like these bands and and whenever we went on a trip or something uh i remember we stayed with our friends the stutlers once and they had a record player and they spent the whole weekend playing records and it was like the same you know four or five fans yeah and but they all knew every word and i became like really interested in like okay so this is like this is your guy's music like this is the yeah and you know there there was that for people who grew up in the nineties who are like, yeah,

grunt, like came up through grunge. And it's just like, that was my, and looking back, I think like that 2002 to 2005 era is where all of my musical tastes really crystallized. And I think listening to Rilo Kylie,

it's like, that was kind of the sound it crystallized around yeah i made a mistake i think while i was in college i mean it wasn't a mistake but i became friends with a group of people who exposed me to a lot of music but they exposed me to a lot of music that had already happened yeah and so my my window in college i missed a lot of those like new artists i mean i heard i would hear some of them on the college radio station but mostly i was hanging out in a group of people who were like, Hey, have you heard much Stone Temple Pilots? And I was like, Yeah, sure. Let's go back. Let's go back to then. And I kind of missed the music of the period. It was bands I listened to were like, they might be giants and Ben folds. Yeah.

And then in like my freshman year of college, I hung out with like, mostly like hipsters who, some of which are very dear friends, which turned out to be very unsavorably individuals, but their impact on like my musical taste is like very clear because they sort of broke me out of that, that echo chamber and showed me a bunch of music some of which i found completely intolerable but some of which

like rilo kylie and clap your hands say yeah and uh wolf parade and like all of these bands that and and uh tv on the radio is one of those like all of that stuff really came about in, in, I guess it was college, right? I guess it was, I guess it was around that time. And that is, it's, it is strange for me to reflect on. Like that's, that's when I found the music that I'm going to like, like for the rest of my life.

And I just think Rilo Kylie is like a per, it falls perfectly. It is the median of that, like that, that interest uh okay so the songs that riley kiley had uh music in the shows rather that um that they had songs in uh dawson's creek bovie the vampire slayer six feet under gilmore girls the oc gray's anatomy uh one tree hill dollhouse 90210 and wedding crashers they have a song on the soundtrack for wedding card wow so just like all of it that is a very specific time period it's like see it is it is crystallized around the

crystal it's like it's like a four-year window yes it is a perfect four-year window that is like uh i don't know just where a lot of my musical interests lie uh and uh yeah ryle kiley great great ass band they broke up and i 2011, 2012, and have sort of flirted with, you know, doing a tour here or putting out, like, an EP here. But, yeah. These two albums specifically, if you've never listened to them,

check out More Adventurous and Execution of All Things, which came out in 2002. And to leave us off, I want to play Spectacular Views off that album I just felt very much like NPR. Let's listen to Spectacular Views off 2002's The Execution of All Things. What's your second thing? Before I do my second thing, should we say something else about Max Fund Drive?

I think we absolutely should say something else about Max Fund Drive. Can we talk about the levels maybe? Yes, let's talk about the levels. So whatever level you are comfortable giving at, we fully recognize that it is a weird and bad time, but whatever support you are able to give, we very, very much appreciate.

And if you give at $5 a month, you are going to get access to all of the bonus content, over 200 hours of bonus content for all the shows. Yeah, and that bonus content keeps dropping. I just listened to Lords of Crunch the other day. Lords of Crunch, yes.

And it is a delight. That is the Adventure Zone live show that Justin DM'd using a serial-based game that he created himself. It is a... A plus. It is a wild, wild journey, that one. There is so much bonus content.

And if you enjoy our shows and you have not listened to it, you are missing out on a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff. And that's at $5 a month, $10 a month. You get access to an enamel pin designed after the show of your choice by Megan Lynn Cott. They are beautiful, beautiful pins. Yeah, so when you donate, you can select all the shows that you listen to to receive part of your donation. You can also select whatever pin you want.

Yes. So, you know, obviously we're going to push our wonderful pin, but there are a lot of great pins out there. Great pins, great shows. For you to choose from. Yeah, that's the great thing about when when you when you join the network you do choose uh exactly max fun takes a portion of the of of what you give uh to you know keep the lights on and support us in the ways that they support us but then you elect to give like specifically to the shows that

you listen to it's a very so we'd encourage folks who are going to continue their donation to still log in and maybe update with the new shows you're listening to yeah of course we also we also just started doing boosting this year so like if you don't want to jump from the uh ten dollar donation level where you get the um where you get the the uh the pin and a membership card and the bonus content but you don't want to jump up to twenty dollars you know you can do twelve you do thirteen you can do whatever if that reflects reflects how much you've been listening to our shows, then that's awesome. $20 a month, you get the card,

you're going to get the pin, you're going to get the bonus content, you also get a MaxFun game pack that has a bunch of really cool shit in it, like dice and cards. Yeah, some cards and yeah, it's cool. Other neat stuff. There's other levels that you can give at,

which you can see again at MaximumFun.org.join. uh but yeah if you're thinking about doing it you know there's not much time left in the drive so we would encourage you to just go do it now doesn't take very long and um we really really really appreciate you uh it has you don't want to know what my voice sounds like without this beautiful microphone yeah it's true and we and we need those donations to get these beautiful microphones let me plug in the old microphone real quick so you can hear what Rachel's old voice sounds like. Click. Griffin.

Why would a different... It's time for me to do my second thing. But why would a different... Are you going to do the whole second thing in that voice or should I switch the mic back? No. All right, let me plug this other mic in. Crash. I dropped it on the floor and it broke so now you do have to do the whole second segment

like that oh no and if we're gonna buy a new good microphone we need folks to go to maximum fun.org join here you can use my microphone and i'll use the bad one. Okay, babe, go on right ahead. My second thing is... Nickelodeon. All right. Can we share this microphone so you stop sounding like that? Yeah, absolutely. Are we talking about the whole freaking channel?

Yes. Okay. You have talked about Are You Afraid of the Dark? We have addressed SNCC. Okay. SNCC's gotten its time in the spotlight. We have not talked about the network as a whole. God, I'll be honest, babe.

That feels ambitious. That feels like a lot to cover in one segment. Well, I'm not doing a whole book here. Okay. There probably is. I would read the hell out of a book about Nickelodeon. Yeah, I would too. Okay.

Nickelodeon was the first network devoted entirely to kids' programming. Really? Wow. I know you'd think PBS, right? But PBS had adult programming. Oh, yeah, sure. No, yeah. It was conceptualized by Dr. Vivian Horner, who worked for the Bank Street College of Education

and launched in Columbus, Ohio. Huh. There's a lot about Nickelodeon. I would have thought for sure it launched at Universal Studios. It officially launched on April 1st, 1979. Whoa, holy shit. What?

Yeah. It didn't launch in like 1991? No. I mean, that's when we're familiar with it, but it was around before then. It was on Nick before we were watching it. So Nickelodeon started with a show called Pinwheel. Oh, yeah. Okay. Which was similar to Sesame Street. nick before we were watching it so nickelodeon started with a show called pinwheel oh yeah okay

which was similar to sesame street there were uh action scenes in a victoria style boarding house with muppets okay or puppets would be more appropriate sure yeah muppets are the gym henson estate is very litigious when pinwheel was phased out it was replaced by eureka's castle i was gonna say now i remember yeah that's what you're thinking yeah yeah yeah um i loved nickelodeon like as a kid like to have a network that i could just turn on and anything was for me yeah i mean literally anything that came on the i can't think of another tv network that was ever like that. And I think Nick, I aged out of it at some point, but there was a channel that you could just turn it on and it would have.

That was like when we got cable, that was like my number one destination. Absolutely. It, as I mentioned, just started with the one show. And when they started to build out their programming, it was still only from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.

and then it would switch to the movie channel. I guess, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense, right? The kind of the hallmark that kind of started it and kind of gave the origin to the green slime that is associated with Nickelodeon is the Canadian sketch comedy, You Can't Do That on Television.

That was, okay, yes. 1981 is when that started. On Nick. Yes. Okay. Well, that was its American debut, was on Nickelodeon. Okay, interesting, fine.

I think that probably established the grand tradition of Canadian television shows joining the Nick Network because most live action shows that were on Nick were Canadian in origin um the green slam also as you'll recall uh showed up in double dare double dare it showed up in uh figure it out and the nickelodeon kids choice awards which started in 1988 that yeah i guess there was lots of slime being flung around i imagine mr jim carreyrey ingested an unconscionable amount of slime during his many appearances on that award show.

So Nickelodeon started with no advertising. Much like PBS, it was just children's programming. When it wasn't children's programming, like the interstitial was actually a person dressed as a mime. was actually a person dressed as a mime. Okay. When it was commercial free service, it was a male mime portrayed a character doing tricks in front of a black background in between programs.

How did they get money to make the network? So that was the problem. I could have freaking told you that, Nickelodeon. By 1984, they were operating at a loss of $10 million. Yeah. They did a rebranding that year, and within six months, it became the dominant channel in children's programming. They rebranded themselves as the First Kids Network because that was when Disney Channel and Cartoon Network were coming up. Okay.

And that's when they started doing traditional advertising as well. up okay and that's when they started doing traditional advertising all right as well i mean if you think about it the origins as i mentioned uh was um you know with with a woman who focused on education you know and so she's focusing very much in the sesame street vein of what is going to be beneficial to kids education as they operated at a loss, it became what is going to keep us in business. In 1985, also to keep kind of viewership high is when they launched Nick at Night. So that was when you got like the Donna Reed show, Bewitched,

all those kind of older shows so that adults would keep watching it. Yeah, that was when we would just turn it off. Yeah. Because those shows were boring as hell. As soon as it went black and white, it was like, oh, this isn't for me. Good night. Bye.

1990, Nickelodeon Studios came about. Okay. Which was always like the big prize for Double Dare was that you could go to Nickelodeon Studios. Did you ever go? No. Did you? Yeah. I mean, it was at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.

So if you went to Universal, you could do it. And I remember we went and they were filming the mystery files of Shelby Woo. And it was like the fucking coolest shit ever. That's cool. I got some special limited edition Gak. I got special secret Gak that I took home to all my friends. I was like, guys, look, it's thermodynamic. So it's purple and you slap your hand into it and it turns white to all my friends. I was like, guys, look, it's thermodynamic. So it's purple and

you slap your hand into it and it turns white. I think they eventually released that on the market, but I was first on my block with Hot Gak. All my friends were like, is that Hot Gak? I was like, yeah, I played with it while I watched the mystery files of Shelby Woo in person. it while I watched the mystery files of Shelby Woo in person. Nickelodeon Studios closed in 2005 and was converted into the Blue Man Group Theater in 2007. A shame. A heartbreaker. This is also around the time they did Nickelodeon Magazine, which I had forgotten about, but

was a result of a multi-million dollar joint marketing agreement with Pizza Hut. Okay. And so Nickelodeon Magazine was available for free at Pizza Hut. I don't remember that. Damn, I wish I had that hot tip. I loved that magazine. The reason you think Nickelodeon came about in the early 90s is because that's when they started with Doug and Rugrats

and Ren and Stimpy and Rocco's Modern Life. Yeah. The Four Horsemen. And then a year later was SNCC. So that was Are You Afraid of the Dark? Clarissa Explains It All, All That, The Amanda Show, Kenan and Kel, which launched the careers of Kenan Thompson, Amanda Bynes, and Jamie Lynn Spears. And Kel Mitchell, in a different direction, but sure. Nickelodeon released its first feature-length film in 1996 with Harriet the Spy. Oh, God, yes. Went on to earn twice its $13 million budget.

And then two years later, the Rugrats movie, which grossed more than $100 million, became the first non-Disney animated movie to surpass that amount. Are you going to talk about Nick News with Linda Ellerbe? I am not goingby i am not gonna talk let's just save that because that's a whole segment in and of itself yeah we should talk about that is the

fucking coolest shit that nick ever did all right we'll we'll say we'll circle back to linda i was just gonna end with uh 1999 where the channel previewed spongebob squarepants directly after the kids choice awards became the most popular Nicktoon in the channel's history, consistently ranking as the highest rated series for Nickelodeon since 2000. By 2001, a third of the series' audience was made up of adults.

Wow. I think I missed that by a hair's breadth. Yeah, Spongebob was after my time, for sure. But now Henry's been watching it, and it's great, because it's like fucking funny. Like it's great, because it's, like, fucking funny. Like, it's one of very few shows that Henry watches that I watch, and I'm like, that's fucking...

Hey, this Spongebob guy's funny. Hey, thank you for making me... This was an incredibly... This was a deeply nostalgic episode. Yeah, it was. Thank you. I mean, we even talked about caves, which is just old holes.

Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And one last time, maximumfun.org slash join. Please think about supporting us and the other shows

that you listen to on the network and look at all the different pledge levels. And yeah, we thank you all very much. There's been lots of folks who have turned out already. And if you haven't and you like our shows and you rely on them for entertainment or, you know, whatever, think about helping us out. Yeah, and if you're not able to at this time, feel free to just tweet about the hashtag MaxFunDrive to let your friends know in case they're able to give right now. I think that's it. Let's stop recording and go about our days.

I'm going to eat a hot dog. Oh, okay. Yeah, what are you going to do? I'm going to listen to you complain about eating a Hot Pocket later. I said a hot dog, but I do love that you, the way you connect me, but like me that lives in your brain, I could say like, I'm going to go eat a steak and you'll be like, oh, a Hot Pocket, huh? That's cool. Bye. Hey!