Wonderful! - Wonderful! 153: Oops! Ope! Whoopsie!

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Griffin's favorite hot water! Rachel's favorite early aughts pop! Griffin's favorite Halloween texture! Rachel's favorite pseudo-apology!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaDemand police accountability and reform: https://action.justiceforbreonna.org/sign/BreonnaWasEssential/Ways to support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources: https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatterRegister to vote: https://vote.gov/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. This is Griffin McElroy. This is Griffin McElroy. This is wonderful. I've started doing a sort of a purging of the toxins before we start recording, because I've been listening back to the last few episodes after I've edited them, and you can just hear the toxins. All the buildup in my muscles and my bones and my humors aren't balanced, are they? I've got the black bile and my yellow humors are just not in perfect equilibrium and i've been noticing that your humors tend to go a little blue sometimes they do you know what i'm

saying talking about sort of i can do what erotic humor yeah crass that real sex in the city sex in the city humor i can also do bathroom humor yeah you can so i'm just basically listing off my cv right now times griffin will go in the bathroom and he'll cut he'll close the door and the humor that is coming out of there yeah it's just incredible you just hear me laughing from the john this is wonderful show that we like doing and it's a show that is about stuff that we really like a lot of podcasts don't say that at the top so you have to wonder do they like doing no we are not held hostage by the concept or continuity of our podcast and that is a real treat uh and my

humors are balanced and do you have any small wonders small wonders that is a segment we do we do and we like doing it. Of every show. I don't want people to think I'm sarcastic. I really do enjoy doing this, this, this year podcast. Uh,

why don't you go first? Uh, I'm going to say making beats. I've recently started making beats in Ableton and I've always, I've been making music for a long time now for, for adventure zone, but it's all been more melodic in nature, and all the beats I've used have been pre-made loops.

But now I've been getting down on that... Getting down on that... And it's fun. I have this board that has all these little buttons on it that you can program the timeline of beats into. It feels good. It feels fun and fresh. I have this board that has all these little buttons on it. You can like program the timeline of beats into it. Feels good. Feels fun and fresh.

And you can make something that's just like four bars that you put a lot of work into and then it's done. There's my beat. I like it. That is good. Okay. That was certainly enough time. I'm ready. I'm ready.

So I'm going to say that the McElroy family in this house has finally started watching Schitt's Creek. Yes. Yes. Yes's Creek. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We had a lot of friends that suggested it to us. And they told us something that we found to be true, which is that the first season, you really have to put some time in. It's not bad. It's not bad. It's just you have to get to know the characters.

There's a lot of eccentricities in the show. Well, and it's a bit one note or it's just like we are rich in a poor town yeah uh but by the end of the first season we were really invested and now we're in the second and i'm really grateful to have so much good show in front of us it's full steam ahead i would liken it to parks and rec where the first season is just kind of like there and then suddenly you're like super charmed by everyone on the show yeah it's a good one yeah i go first this week okay i'm gonna talk about hot springs i really like them i like conceptually and aesthetically hot springs yeah i like that nature makes little hot tubs for us to

get in that's pretty choice or sometimes it makes hot tubs that you absolutely should not get in because they'll burn all your skin off and you'll die because apparently hot springs can get uh quite hot uh i think you have hot spring exposure before our big trip to japan no i didn't there are obviously lots of places throughout the u.s that have hot springs i think west virginia does have some um but they arkansas does for sure arkansas i mean yeah i mean they have a town called called hot springs yes yes uh georgia also has a town called Warm Springs. I'll get into the delineation there. I was very interested in it.

But Hot Springs, they're all over the U.S., but they're also all over the world, and they occupy, like, different sort of cultural places for those countries. Like Rachel said, we went to Japan for our honeymoon. We've talked about it a ton, and we stayed in Hak which is this like hot spring resort town and we were fortunate enough to stay in like a pretty nice hot spring resort where you could just go and just dip in uh they were indoor springs but you had like a nice little like outdoor view from it and it was really surreal it was really surreal and like oh in the basement there's just water yeah and they're they're like when people talk about the sort of rejuvenative effects of it like that's not a bunch of bs like it felt if i felt very very fresh getting out of that because of the i don't know the minerals the chemistry like i i told you right that i like kind of passed out because i stayed in too long no you didn't tell me that when when it was uh it was

separated by gender and i went in and sat by myself and i really had no concept of time and i sat in there until i basically couldn't stand it anymore and then got out to like shower off and when i was in the like changing room i just like had to sit down for a long time because i really overdid it wow well i'm glad you're okay i was i had one road dog in there with me uh we did not speak but we gave each other a nice nod. And that was it. So yeah, I mean, it feels super, super nice. It's not just a hot tub. The water feels excellent because it's coming from a special place. We also went to Unesun, which is a hot spring water park. Just not, I would say, a traditional hot spring experience, but they do have a water slide and that's pretty excellent. There's a few different things that can cause hot springs. And in researching hot springs, I finally kind of understood why people get into geology and want to pursue that as a scientific discipline and career, because it's really very interesting.

The mantle of the earth contains a lot of naturally radioactive elements that as they decay they give off a lot of heat so that's why the deeper you go into the earth the hotter it gets uh it's not just because the center of the earth is a big hot ball which is what i always assumed no no no the mantle is also giving off a significant amount of heat and when water comes up through there and it touches up against that hot rock keeps on coming up and that is that's hot water and that's what makes a hot spring also in volcanic areas that that water can brush up against magma which is basically just rock that got so hot that it was like fuck it i'm now i'm goo uh and then that water is typically far too hot for you to get inside yeah yeah a water can be

boiling in volcanic areas and so if you try to get into it uh obviously that would be uh that would be a big rip that's also how you get geysers and uh fumaroles which are geysers that are just steam when it comes up uh and yellowstone is obviously a big one for this yellowstone also has the biggest hot spring in the United States and the third biggest hot spring in the world. And it's one of my very favorite geographic features like ever. I don't know if you've ever seen it before, but it has what's called the Grand Prismatic Spring.

Isn't that a dope name? Isn't that so choice? It is 370 feet wide, 160 feet deep, and it gooshes out 560 gallons of 160 degree water every minute. Um, it is a big blue pool. You've probably seen it before. It is like a very, very famous sort of like national park thing,

but it has, it radiates out this ring of like microbial, like rainbow material. That's like yellow and green and orange and red as it like emanates out so it looks like a cross-section of like a crystal geode it looks so cool and it's so big uh and it's this perfect like deep deep deep deep blue color uh because of the depth of the pool uh it looks so so cool i don't know that i have seen this it's illegal to get into it because it's also i mean it's 160 degrees fahrenheit that's not pleasant yeah that's

not gonna feel hot that's too hot to get in folks uh so there's a third type of like hot spring cause and that is when this hot water is coming up from the surface from uh the the radioactive decay of these these things in the mantle. And then it mixes with cold water under the surface and then it creates Warm Springs. And the town of Warm Springs, Georgia, has so many of these that they just went ahead and named the damn town that. And that is where FDR convalesced

when he was convalescing with polio and seeking treatment there when he was governor of New York before he was even president, he built a house there because he liked it so much. Lots of people would come there from Atlanta just to get away, but also it was a rejuvenative town where people would just come and soothe their ailments in these warm springs. So he built a house there. FDR built a house there. That was where he died when he was president in his fourth term. And he would just go there and chill out in the warm springs. And somebody was doing a painting of him and he had a stroke. And that was it. But they have what's called the Little White House there, which I think is a fun name.

So what was the temp of a warm spring do you know i mean i assume not 160 degrees fahrenheit yeah uh i assume it is pleasant like a nice warm bath i did not look up the specific temperature of the warm springs um i just like i really like the aesthetic like i really like the idea of just out in nature, just a rocky pool of hot water that you could potentially bathe in, just like given off steam. And maybe there's some buckets and towels. Just the look of that, the idea of that is like pretty cool to me. It's pretty choice. No, that's very serene.

I wish we had. I don't think we have a lot of them. And we certainly don't have them here in Austin. I don't know that we have a ton of them in Texas. Not a lot of water out west. That's a them here in austin i don't know that we have a ton of them in texas a lot of water out west that's a good point it's a problem yeah what's your first thing so this is a musical artist that i have thought about bringing uh basically ever since we started the show and i was hesitant because it is difficult to find a lot of the music it's uncle cracker and it's like it's maybe a surprise that rachel's such a big fan

but you're just wild about uncle cracker actually my uncle nobody knows that nobody knows that about rachel piece of trivia it's not just a real it's not just a fun name i know the artist uh i want to talk about is ron fontenberry uh of incredible moses leroy oh i thought his name was just moses leroy no well isn't there egg on my face yeah that was his grandpa ah shoot um this this incredible moses leroy is a band that i found when i was like sophomore year of college thanks to my friends at the time uh and very much like rooted in that time period like the albums for incredible moseley roy range from uh 1998 to 2003 so very kind of limited window basically right around when i was entering college uh and it's difficult to find that music now. Ron Fontenberry went on to do other bands beyond Incredible Mosley Roy, including a

band called The Soft Lights, which I'm not as familiar with. But now he is the owner of like a music production studio. So he does like sound mixing and recording for like commercials and companies and stuff. The song you had me listen to, which I just kind of knew about through Osmosis, I knew the Soft Lights version of it, but not the Incredible Moses Leroy, but that's why it sounded so familiar. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So this is music that you'll find on a lot of like, you know, television and movies of the time period. this was on scrubs oh for sure um there was also a movie that came out more recently movie called this film is not yet rated uh that has

the song fuzzy which is also the song that was on scrubs yeah i mean scrubs isn't a little time caps like you like yeah there's so much music on that show i think there's like a special polyphonic spree episode where like they all got sick and had to had to go in well that's all zach braff right like that was his whole thing like the same thing with garden state yeah i think you attribute that to to to zach braff all of his movies are like uh you know notable for their soundtracks uh so moses leroy the inspiration for the name of the band, was Fontenberry's great-grandfather. And he was a Texas union leader and civil rights advocate at the turn of the 20th century.

And he fought against segregation and the poll tax in Houston. So that, in combination with Ron's personal interest in comic book and, like, superheroes, put together kind of the incredible moses leroy that's a great name um he got started kind of late making music uh he didn't really get into music until he was in college he just taught himself guitar when he was at uc san diego and then you know joined a bunch of like grunge influence like bands around college for a long time, and then self produced his own 18 track debut 1998 bedroom love songs was the name of the album. And just kind of use that to

shop around to kind of get an album produced. So I want to play a song from the album Electric Pocket Radio, which came out in 2001, which is the one that kind of got me interested in this band. The song is 1983. On chalkboard grass that was so green. We pointed at the sky and we wrote out our names. We gave each face to a cloud and every cloud to a name. Not to be confused, it's sort of a spiritual sequel to 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins. Is that the year? I can never remember the year.

Yeah, 1979. Okay. So there have been a lot of comparisons. When I was reading about Incredible Moses Leroy, a lot of people made comparisons to Beck just because it was this indie rock artist that was kind of combining genres, you know, and, and using a lot of electronic elements,

um, also kind of experimental. Um, Ron Fontenberry has said that he was influenced by like pavement and the beta band and the strokes, but then also like, you know, Michael Jackson and, uh, and just like different eighties artists, you know, Michael Jackson and just like different 80s artists.

You know, he is of an age, he was born in 1972. So like the music of the 80s was very influential to him. So when he put together Electric Pocket Radio, he worked with a producer from the Flaming Lips. He worked with a drummer from Beck and Elliot Smith. He worked with an engineer mixer from the Eels he worked with a drummer from beck and elliot smith he worked with a engineer mixer from the eels good lord what a what a fucking like stew that this is it's like every artist from that era i read a an interview with him and everybody was like oh wow that's like a pretty impressive lineup and he's like you know i did honestly i did a lot of the work myself

but i would just kind of share my music with them and say, hey, do you want to help me out? And he was just lucky to find a lot of interested parties at the time. God, I had not thought about the Eels in so long. I was obsessed with them. I know. I know. That time period is really like, you know, it was kind of a transition out of grunge into something like a little poppier. A little more sincere.

Yeah, but a lot more electronic, too. And so it's really fun. I would really recommend it. It's an album, Electric Pocket Radio, that's kind of hard to find. There's a lot of really good jams on there that are all over the spectrum. I mean, he has a song called Anthem that really sounds just like a power ballad kind of song. And then there's like Fuzzy, which is the, you know, very like kind of Motown influence. There's a lot of really cool songs on there. So yeah, so in 2003, the last album was called Become the Soft Lights.

Evolved like a Pokemon. What a called shot. That's wild. I know. My guess is that that transition had been happening for a while. And they were like, well, this is gonna be the last one we put out. Let's just get people introduced to our new project. It's like if the last Beatles album was called Here Come Wings.

Here go wings. Yeah, you can find some of this music. You can still buy like a CD on Amazon or, you know, wherever you're interested in getting this music. But I would recommend you check it out because I feel like, I don't know, for me, this was like the album that like i had in my car when we would go on drives and stuff and so like listening to it is very i mean you know kind of in the same way that like smashing pumpkins that kind of transported it for

me yeah hey can i steal you uh away yes uh we have a couple of granbo brams here and i want to read away. Yes. We have a couple of Granbo Brams here and I want to read the first one if that's okay. Yes. Because the first one's for Elizabeth

and it is from Harry who says thanks for two fantastic years together Elizabeth and here's to many more. I love you and our beans

and then in parentheses doggos very much. Happy love you and our beans. And then in parentheses, doggos. Very much. Happy late anniversary. Love, Harry. Now, do you, and this might be a silly question, but they don't have pet beans, do they? People love using beans as just kind of like a. A catch-all pet sort of phrase.

Yeah. Just like a sentimental way to refer to to a loved one i mean i hear it in terms of uh toes of animals but never just the animals themselves which has brought me to the conclusion that these two have just pet beans cooked or uncooked i don't know i'm still trying to figure that out yet probably uncooked it seems like they would keep longer i'm gonna keep workshopping this I'll let you know what I come up with. Drawing little tiny faces on them. That's fun.

See, that's good stuff right there. You could get one of those people that like draw your name on a grain of rice at the boardwalk. That's so good. So good. What is the other one? Let me tell you the next one. This is for Future R. It is from Past R.

Hi, Future R. It's Past R. I know it's hard being alone in quarantine but hey maybe you're home by now just know that even with the brain sads you are worth more than your anxiety would let you believe get out your skates try new hobbies and let yourself be bad at them for now you've got those good good macaroys and the mam damn fam to make you smile. I love you. I think Get Out Your Skates could be a powerful call to action for everyone to help get through quarantine. It's true.

I don't know if anyone's holding on to their rollerblades, but now would be a good time. I think if someone stands on the mountaintop like Moses and shouts and shouts get out your skates i think everybody would just find skates like we don't have skates at the house but if somebody if that became the new marching orders no it's true we would we would find a dusty pair two pairs of dusty skates like in the creek i love the way you say jumanji i said jumanji macho man to the top rope. The flying elbow. The cover.

We've got a new champion. We're here with Macho Man Randy Savage after his big win to become the new world champion. What are you going to do now, Match? I'm going to go listen to the newest episode of the Tights and Fights podcast. Oh, yeah. Tell us more about this podcast. It's the podcast of power. Too sweet to be sour.

Funky like a monkey. Woke discussions, man. And jokes about wrestlers' fashion choices. Myself excluded. Yeah. I can't wait to listen. Neither can I. You can find it Saturdays on on maximum fun oh yeah dig it

what is your second thing carving a jack-o'-lantern carving up a pump carving up a pumpy to make a jack-o'-lantern i'm glad that you like this because this will now always be your task yeah uh just a bit of history we were all excited henry was excited for henry's excited for halloween because he's old enough now to like kind of grasp conceptually like object permanence for holidays like oh it's coming up the accoutrement like he understands now that certain things go with certain holidays right he's able to be like oh this is the pumpkin and skeleton time fortunately not old enough to realize like we ain't trick-or-treating this year but that's fine because we're still gonna dump a bunch of candy in his face uh but we did he did want a pumpkin he did want a jack-o'-lantern to carve a pumpkin so we went and

got a pumpkin and he picked it out he was so excited and then one afternoon one weekend afternoon like we didn't have anything to do so i was like let's carve the pumpkin he was like hell yes let's do it let's go he very much wanted to see what was inside he really wanted to see what was inside the pumpkin he kept telling me that so i did the pumpkin thing where you cut the top off and i pulled it out and i was like okay so the first thing we do is we scoop out all the insides and he was like oh actually no yeah because it's that's gross and slimy and i don't want that and we've raised a almost four-year-old boy now who just like doesn't like messes doesn't like getting messy at all and so he just got comfortable with dirt because dirt is is soft

and dry right but slimy slimy's not and there's part of me that's like great because i don't want slime to enter our house in the way that it has entered the house of like every other child so we are fortunate in that regard but i was like dad you just get in there and you grab the gushy seeds it feels so good and he was he was not he was not having it so i went on sort of a solo carving mish uh and that's fine with me because boy oh boy do i like carving uh up a pumpkin it is like the only time of year where i like allow myself to get real sticky and yucky make a big sticky mess i have no other occasion to really do that purposefully do i no that's true uh and there is something so like so weird about that because i don't like getting nasty and there's a lot of nasty stuff inside a pumpkin and i like

how nasty it is i like reaching in uh we got a fairly small pumpkin this year so i couldn't really get in there with my instruments so i had to do sort of a scraping with my own fingernails the inside of the pumpkin and man oh man it's like it's so visceral you get the texture of the goo and the seeds i feel like the seeds are critical right like if it was just goo i don't know if it would be as satisfying but the seeds give you like very clear objective. Like, well, I got to get these seeds out.

Yeah. When you cut off the top and you pull it out and it's got the goo and the seeds just like hanging down. Oh man, that's good stuff. And the stabbing of the pumpkin, when you get to stab a pumpkin, I guess in the summertime when you carve up a watermelon,

but that's, that's just a one and done like the, the, the pumpkin stabbing is so purposeful and violent in a way that's like, I would never be interested in doing that to any other vegetable or fruit. But here I am doing it to a pumpkin.

It's just like it is texturally, it has a good hand feel to it. It also feels like you're really connecting with history when you do it yes you know there's something about carving a pumpkin that makes you feel like people have been doing this for like a very very very very very long time uh i didn't really realize the the like etymology of jack-o'-lantern uh it's another name for will of the wisp do you know what will of the wisp is it's like a it's like a phenomenon folkloric thing of just like lights uh in the woods over a peaty a peaty stump uh it's uh so jack-o'-lantern was like one one name for that it's also tied to uh stingy jack

which is another sort of tale about a guy who got tricked by the devil and so he couldn't go to heaven or hell, so he just walks the earth with a hollowed out turnip lantern. This is all new to me. Yeah, I would think, so I knew that it had something to do with Salmon, right? The like harvest festival

that is, but it was brought here, the like jack-o'-lantern was brought here by irish immigrants and like carving vegetables is the thing that people have been doing for you know a very for literal millennia uh but folks in ireland in the 19th century started carving super scary faces onto turnips for lanterns on on halloween or sauerland uh and i would encourage everybody to look up like traditional turnip lanterns on on halloween or sauer and i i would encourage everybody to look up like traditional turnip lanterns because they're scary as fuck they put our pumpkins the pumpkin is so round

and pleasant uh the carved turnips that they were submitting for this holiday were some real are you afraid of the dark quality yeah but oh yeah no bud. Oh, yeah. No, this is very scary. It's not even real. They're not hyper-realistic. They're just like Tim Burton-level upsetting like masks of death. Oh, this one has teeth.

Yeah. It's really, really, it's really out there. And they serve two purposes. The first was to ward off evil spirits, I guess just by being spooky and lit from within by a candle. And the other purpose

was to just look very scary for the holiday. Yeah. Play along at home. Look up some old Irish turnip lanterns because they are really, really out there. So Irish immigrants brought this to the U.S., but obviously it popped off, went very, very viral with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which was published in 1820. Yes. went very very viral with the legend of sleepy hollow which was published in 1820 and had the headless horseman with the jack-o'-lantern head and sort of it it was uh a more common tradition here here in the states ever since so yeah uh yeah i just really like it when you carve the

we just did straight triangle eyes this time right we weren't getting fancy you can get fancy i like that but when you carve the triangle into it and you put your hand inside the pumpkin and just like pop it out. And that little piece comes out. That's really good. We did our pumpkin so early this year that I'm almost certain we're probably going to have to do a second one because it's going to decay. And boy, that looks even spookier, doesn't it? That is the tricky part is that a lot of times you try and time the carving with the weather because a lot of times you try and time the carving with the weather because a lot of times, like right now, it is very, very hot and you cannot put a pumpkin outside in this weather.

But I found in Texas, you really, no matter what, you've got two days. You have about two days before it becomes just... We've been keeping our indoors, which has been helping its longevity. But as soon as we put that thing outside, it's over. Rachel and I live in a part of town that has some wilderness nearby. So we are, I have become weirdly like comfortable around seeing bugs in the house

because it's just a fact of life. Like I saw a huge ass centipede in our bathroom yesterday and I was just like, oh, I'll get him. I'll get him outside. But yeah, it's seeing like fire ants swarming all over and we would definitely get deer we would have like a oh yeah a little deer on our front porch there's deer outside the biggest deer ever ran through our yard yesterday and i had my window open and it scared me i'm not scared of deer i love deer i've talked about deer on this show it's great great. We get to see deer all the time, but this was an absolute fucking unit.

Anyway, carving pumpkins is good. What's your second thing? This will be interesting to talk about with you because this is something that I didn't realize was identified as regional until recently. And then my research indicated that maybe it isn't regional, but it is the expression op. Op.

I mean, it's a very Midwestern. Yes. That's like the meme is it's like the Midwestern catch-all for like any occasion. Are we spelling that O-P-E exclamation point? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Is this something that you've ever found yourself saying? Op. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Not like it is not for for me it was never the catch-all like phrase that it is for for some in the in the northern midwest but uh you know if i ran into anybody or was about to run into anybody exactly you get you give them a oh oh yeah this happens to me a lot if I am in public.

You know, like if I am in a grocery store or somewhere where there is the possibility that I will turn a corner and someone will be there. Yes. It will come out of my mouth just instinctively. Yes. That's what's made it actually really hard to trace. Like I was doing research on kind of the etymology of ohp. to trace like i was doing research on kind of the etymology of ope and it's difficult to find because it's it's like it's an unconscious reaction from a lot of people just because

you've absorbed it i'm trying to think of if it's and maybe you found this in your research is it short for something yeah so there so there are people that kind of suggest that maybe it is it is a way of saying oops okay uh but kind of shortened like yep instead of yes i'm thinking about oops now i've never said oops in my life i've never like yeah it's it would i'm gonna start incorporating that into my lexicon just to see like how it treats you but like if i like spill a glass of water and i go oops it feels so dennis the menace like oops yeah oh oopsie well that's what so i found this great article there you know when i was researching ope everything was like from a regional newspaper in the midwest okay uh This is from Chicago Magazine.

They were talking about Ope, and they were suggesting that Oop's does sound kind of childish. And Ope is- It's the cool older brother of Oop's. Well, Ope is a way of like, you're not quite saying you are making a mistake because it's a very like minor inconsequential social breach usually. And so Ope is a way of being like, you know, I didn't really make a mistake here.

This isn't really a mistake situation, but this is an accident. I acknowledge something not ideal has happened. Well, and in this article that's called The All-Purpose Expression of Midwestern Politeness, article that's called the all-purpose expression of midwestern politeness they they reference the linguist ben zimmer who is the language columnist for wall street journal and the former columnist for the boston globe and new york times magazine and he he is the one that makes the connection to oops which he says comes from whoops which comes from upsidaisy i say upsidaisy more than i say oops uh and and he was the one who was cited a lot do you remember when rick perry said oops what you'll have to remind me what what of the many fuck-ups rick perry has done

that merited an oops he was talking about the agencies of government that he was going to do away with all right he was trying to name them yeah and he forgot whatever the third one was and said sorry oops at the end that's so what a space alien that dude is at that time during that debate it was just like oh this guy's not ready yeah um but i kind of agree i don't like i don't like oops as much as oh no yeah it's a if you feel like a real goober i've never really sort of like identified why i don't say oops but it's it is it is quite childish i think the reason it's associated with the midwest so a lot of people say it like there there are people all over the country and all over the globe that will say, oh, but Midwestern people tend to get focused on for just their unnecessary politeness.

Right. And this article cited a bit from John Mulaney's stand-up special, Kid Gorgeous, where he says, my wife said that walking around with me is like walking around with someone who's running for the mayor of nothing. My wife said that walking around with me is like walking around with someone who's running for the mayor of nothing. Which I think is a very perfect way to describe that kind of unnecessary politeness of like, you know, there are no stakes here. You know, you're not trying to form a relationship with this person. But you want to acknowledge that you have good intentions.

And I feel like OPE is kind of a charming thing. And I have zero control over it. That feels thoroughly baked into me. Like West Virginia is not necessarily Midwest, but there are some, that Venn diagram, I feel like overlaps quite a bit in Appalachia. And it's always so jarring when I am sort of like behaving with that standardized level of over politeness and like over apologetic sort of thing. I remember I was at the grocery store.

The turning the corner at the grocery store is like where this phrase where the rubber really meets the road. And I was coming out of an aisle while a woman probably in her like 60s uh was coming the you know the the other direction and we almost collided but we didn't and i probably let out an oh excuse excuse me sorry and she said i hope you don't drive like that and i wanted to be like wait a minute wait a minute but that's not. We don't do it like that. Yeah, the grocery store is kind of like the quintessential place because it's like the only time where you are like, essentially competing with other people to get resources. Yeah, doesn't happen anymore. Now, the handful of times I've gone to the grocery store, it's no two human beings have even come close.

Other examples Chicago Magazine gives is accidentally pulling on a push door, realizing a car is coming when you're about to cross the street. Just reflexively OAP. The article suggests that where the Italians have prego as their kind of linguistically fluid go-to word, that is what OAP can become. Interesting. become interesting uh yeah i you know not a lot not a lot of science out there about op uh not a lot of uh history associated with it i don't know that there is a first usage maybe it's maybe it's short for oprah and it's like when you're when you are endangered in some way you are calling out for aid like you're coming out of the grocery store aisle and you see your cart's about to run

into somebody else's cart and you get like that fight or flight response and your heart starts to like palpitate and you just want to be like, Oprah, help! And you just get out. I wish I had enough control over it to change that for you.

Yeah. I can work on it, but it's probably not going to happen. Again, if I've bumped into anybody these days, I've made a critical error at some junction. Yeah, I wonder if people have stopped saying, oh, and have started saying just full out sorry because of the concern. Or just, get the fuck away from me. Six feet, six feet.

Can I tell you what our friends at home are talking? Yes. Fiona says, I think think sola's new show stump sola on the babish culinary universe channel is wonderful i first saw her when i was watching bon appetit videos but i am so happy she now hosts her own show she only has two episodes out right now but so far i've enjoyed seeing and laughing along with her approaches to random cooking challenges it's been a source of entertainment and helpful cooking advice and i can't wait for more episodes it is she is so

charming because so many people in the world of cooking are a little bit cocky and i'm not saying that she's not she's super confident confident yeah but she's so she makes it so accessible you know you just feel like i hey i am just trying things like everybody else is and we'll see if this works she is confident and self-deprecating in equal measures which is a very tough uh balance that show is really really fun her second episode was using things bought at the bodega to create like high cuisine yeah and it is it's cool it's a cool it's a great show um and darius says this is going to sound like a weird one but i really love pro wrestling tag teams that don't break up at the smallest sign of disconnect. In a sport, in quotes, that's built on aggro tough men, seeing guys like the New Day, who have been a team for six years with exactly zero fights between them, has been a real

treat. Oh my gosh, I love the New Day. I love the New Day so very, very much because each of them is so good. And they're just having fun. They have a lot of fun with it. The WrestleMania i went to where they came out dressed up as dragon ball z characters like you really can't beat that you really can't get any better than that and it is weird like i've never really thought about i do

not watch like really any pro wrestling these days but i did watch enough to know that like you know you could not keep track of the tag teams. It'd be like, oh, Seamus and what's-his-face are together now. And then, you know, the next pay-per-view you watch, they're up against each other. It doesn't happen with the New Day. I like to think it was suggested to them of like, all right, now you guys hate each other. And they were like, no, I'm sorry. No, there's no way. Hey, thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay.

You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Yeah, MaximumFun.org is where you can find all sorts of wonderful podcasts, like Wonderful, but then like other podcasts that are also wonderful, but not named that. That's a really, really safe way. That's how Jesse Thorne pitches it. Hey, me and my brothers wrote a book about podcasting called everybody has a podcast except you.

And it's a guide on how to make podcasts. It's a very, and Hey, like a special secret hidden track in there. Oh yeah. Me and Sydney and Teresa are in there too. Yeah. It's a,

it is a pretty like technical guide on how to make a podcast from start to finish of like everything you need to know. And it's got, it's got goofs in it too. pretty like technical guide on how to make a podcast from start to finish of like everything you need to know. Uh, and it's got, it's got goofs in it too. And you can preorder it if you go to McElroy podcast book.com. Uh, and also I do a video game podcast.

I don't know if I've ever talked about it on this show with, uh, Justin and two of our old polygon coworkers, Chris and Russ called the besties. It's on Spotify for free. You can follow and listen there. And I would appreciate if you did that because Griffin still plays a lot of video video games i still play a great deal of video games uh i think we talked about uh spelunky in our last episode i can't remember i play so many video games i can't keep them all

straight i'm a real gamer uh but yeah let me find that on spotify please um i think that's it what if what what if that was it like what if that was the last thing you said? And we just, like, walked. We're just like, and that's it. We've never dropped a mic before. But I don't want to break these. Yeah. What if I slowly and gently lower this sort of, like, tripod mic stand to the ground, and we'll see if it makes a noise?

And you tell me if it, like, comes through okay. Okay. And I'll be like, and that's the bottom line i still felt bad about that no well and you know it's an audio thing i feel like dropping the mic is usually when you can perform it for people yeah it's a powerful thing to see not to hear i don't think okay now I and then and now I'm going to drop the microphone

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