Wonderful! - Wonderful! 154: Closed Casket Almond Funeral

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

Rachel's favorite upwards arbor! Griffin's new favorite candy bar! Rachel's favorite linear physical challenges! Griffin's favorite mid-aughts rock album!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Demand police accountability and reform: https://action.justiceforbreonna.org/sign/BreonnaWasEssential/Ways to support Black Lives Matter and find anti-racism resources: https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatterVote! - https://vote.gov/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. Hey, this is Rachel McElroy. And this is wonderful. Watch the throat, babe. Oh, I was drinking some water. You were drinking some fluid. I saw my opportunity to seize the crown. When you play the game of wonderful, you win or you die.

Whoa. I can say this is a show where we talk about things that we like. Yeah. And things that other people like. And just generally the good stuff. Not as good though saying that as it is to get in there with the title. Oh, saying the title of the freaking program. Oh, that's so satisfying.

I'll tell you what though. Yeah. I don't know that you did it as well as I do. Oh, heavy as the head. That wears the crown. Yeah. So do you want to talk about small wonders or should i because now i feel like the world's all fucking topsy-turvy i don't know which way's up

i don't know who's doing what who is who am i rachel are you griffin are we both rachel i have a very specific small wonder i can't wait to hear it i like a dried fruit in a salad oh my god oh my god forget about it like a cranberry or trader joe's has a as a dried blueberry dried blueberry in a salad is the all-time best shit you get that in there with some like a nice like crunchy cool salad with some dry blueberries in there oh there's a nut in there too with dried berry yeah that's all time babe a plus that's all time um oh look at you look at me you're all prone now yeah i don't have one i mean have we done sun chips only on this show only on this show would we try to remember if we've discussed sun chips i like them i like them i like sun chips i like the graininess of it i like the flavors a little uh garden garden salsa me

too garden salsa sun chip it's like the exact kind of spicy that i like garden salsa we also have been getting hummus every week like nice hummus been dipping just plain plain sun chips into the hummus that's a That's a little flavor combo. From me to you here from the wonderful kitchen. You go first this week. I know this for sure. We've gotten all switched up, confused, mixed around, thrown into the big tornado of podcast chaos, but I know which way is first, and it's you.

I brought a show and tell. Oh, shoot. Okay. What's she got rachel's got some what is this hun take it i clipped it out of our tree okay so let me can i try and describe what it is i'm looking at please so rachel has handed me a piece of arbor i think it's safe to say it is a stick a stick like from a branch but a sort of mutant tum. I think it's safe to say it is a stick, like from a branch, but a sort of mutant tumbleweed has grown around the branch.

I'm a little alarmed having this inside my house because it looks like sort of a monster, like a beholder from D&D with all these tentacles expanding outward with what looks like

wheat but it can't possibly be wheat because it's part of this nightmare sort of lovecraftian thing so are you gonna tell me what it is what is this yeah that is talandia talandia which is also called an air plant an air plant okay so this these guys in like the little globes people are hanging them from the ceiling. Yeah. Putting them in a piece of driftwood. This is one you found naturally out in our yard? Yeah.

So that big oak tree in front of your office has a few of them. Oh, yeah. Up ends. How about that? Yeah, I didn't know that these were like a thing, but I guess it makes sense. It is literally like a tumbleweed that has grown on the tree. That's how I would describe it. Huh.

Okay. You're going to tell me about these bad boys? Yeah. So I didn't realize, like, I didn't know anything about them. What am I supposed to do with this, by the way? Now I'm just holding Talandia. You can put it on the ground. But is it going to shed?

No. I don't want a bunch of dusty plant leavings, a bunch of pollen in my car. I mean, you can throw it out your window right now if you want. No, it's nice. You gave it to me. It's a gift. Well, I don't, you don't have to keep it. I mean, you can throw it out your window right now. No, it's nice. You gave it to me. It's a gift. Well, I don't, you don't have to keep it. I'm just going to hold it the whole show out in front of me like this.

It's very large, by the way, too. It's huge. It's like softball sized. Yeah. So this is something I was not familiar with. I had seen air plants and little displays. I thought it was like a cactus thing. Well, I thought it was a synthetic. When I saw those, I thought it was like a cactus thing well i thought it was a synthetic when i saw those i thought it was like a synthetic thing that's a living thing um when my friend ariel came to visit i she spotted them and said oh

that's an air plant and i said oh i didn't know what they were called don't you wish you had nature proficiency if you could if you could like look at a tree and be like, oh, that's that tree. It's up to no good. Sometimes I've noticed my dad will do that because my mom gardens. And so we'll just be walking around and be like, hey, what plant is that?

As if she, as a gardener, can maintain the encyclopedia. I at least knew, I wish I knew which ones you could eat. I wish that I could be out in nature and look around and be like, you can eat that bark. That grass is sweet and delicious. And you'll get conflicting info too. I posted on Instagram a photo of this wild berry bush that is growing around our house. Yeah. And some people were like, oh, don't eat that.

And other people were like, if you cook it, you can eat it. Well, that's true of virtually anything. If you cook anything enough enough except for like uranium okay so the plant yeah so the plant uh there are over 600 species of uh this plant uh it is included in the family bromelike oh sure pineapples spanish moss one of my favorite wait pineapples and spanish moss those two seem pretty distant relatives what the characteristics i was like how how is this related is that they get a lot of their moisture from their their leaves from their little pointy or you know textured leaf system uh which is why they don't, or at least in the case of the air plant

that I brought in the Talandia, they don't need soil because they are absorbing their nutrients like through the air and through moisture in the environment. Oh, that's interesting. And so their leaves are kind of silvery-ish and they are varying sizes depending on the climate. Okay, so the thinner leafed varieties grow in rainy areas, and the thick-leafed varieties grow in areas more subject to drought. Okay. So you can find them in the desert, you can find them in Central America,

and they'll just look a little different depending on how much moisture they have access to. Are succulents part of this family? Because I'm thinking about it, and the top of a pineapple is so succulent like it has these big broad leaves that absorb the moisture boy howdy i wish we knew the answer to that we need like a real fucking nerd in here that can sit in here i guess that's what a producer is a producer just a producer just sits in the studio with you and you're like hey is this a they look it up real fast hey do this math they don't even look it up they just fucking know it yeah they push up their nose oh well technically

well that is a cost savings to the listener yeah like we we pass the value along to you by not fact checking so you have to do so you have to do it. So you have to do it. It's like you're our producer. It's like you checking yourself out at the grocery store. It's exactly that. You feel empowered when you listen to the show. Yes. So these plants, you'll see them on trees as the example I brought in.

They'll also be on telephone wires. How'd they get up there? How the fuck did they get up there? I mean, you said it yourself. They're like a tumbleweed. So they just blow up onto a telephone wire and grab hold? Yeah. I live here now. Trees make sense.

Trees is plants too. But I don't like them being on man-made objects. And what's incredible, so I said that they will get their nutrients from rain. They can also get it from decaying leaves and insect matter. They have something called trichomes, which allows them to absorb that moisture. I've heard that word before. Look at you. A long time ago.

Don't know what it means. It's the structure of the leaf that allows them to absorb i think i may have been thinking of a tri tri-corner hat you always are god but i look good in a tri-corner hat don't i i have a picture of me when i went to colonial williamsburg gotta make it about you here we were talking about me and how good i look in an old-timey tri-corner hat and immediately i'm saying as another person with a large head there is something about the tri-corner hat that i think is flattering the triangle is a very slimming shape it draws focus to a point it's all about forced perspective when you're dealing with a large dome

i just i'm not a hat wearer and that picture of me at colonial williamsburg i was like how good the tri-corner hat let's bring let's bring it to the mainstream the tri-corner i will say it is tricky to find one large enough for me yeah yeah um so they uh are very hardy plants they can go a long time without water um if you have an air plant what they suggest is that you take it and you just dunk it in water once a week and soak it for a few hours and then you just let it dry out and that'll hold it over so have you been looking at this air plant that is now laying on the floor of the office and thinking like wow you really went through a lot to grow and flourish in the way that you did and i ripped you from your home i mean the thing i can put that back out there it'll be okay yeah you're right i should just chuck it back into one of those trees i'm gonna do it right now okay

i don't know how to open this i can't open this you're free right right back onto the ground I can't open this. You're free! Right back onto the ground. I'll take another swing at that later. I will say that that particular air plant looked like it had already flowered, and that is something that they do towards the end of their life cycle. Well, you just, why did you have me do that whole symbolic gesture then?

Well, I don't know how close it is. Maybe it's got a good few months left. Have me throwing a dead ass plant up in the air. These plants do need sunlight, but not like necessarily direct sunlight. And they do need air circulation too. So it's, if you're going to buy one and put it in the little globe, make sure that you can still get air through there and that you don't put it directly in the hottest part of your house. People think that these are like parasites.

I mean, if you look like that particular specimen that you just threw out the window. Yeah, heroically threw out the window. It was actually on a dead branch, which was why it was so easy for me to clip. And so people think like, oh my gosh, is this killing the tree? And it's like, no, it just, it likes to go in places where it can absorb, you know, more nutrients and also get more shade.

Right. So it doesn't have the full sunlight. So you'll find them a lot on the dead limbs. That is a cool subject. I never really knew that that was like a thing. I thought it was just sort of detritus that had gotten stuck on a tree. I didn't know it was its own sort of functioning organism. I know. I know. I watched a lot of videos about these air plants. They're very popular with the millennials. The video suggested that because they're so low maintenance

and kind of alien looking, people like them as little decorative elements. And they absorb some of the toxins like in the air too, just like a regular plant does. Oh, thanks. Thanks. I feel terrible for what I just did to that poor guy then. Can I tell you about my first thing?

Yes. We've been doing this show for so long now that I feel like you can follow our growth as people. Okay. You can like, you can- Are you going to talk about flossing? No, you can, God, no. You can track the like changes in our preferences and the kinds of things that we like.

I think that's kind of cool. I mean, when we started the show, you were talking about Sudafed. Right, right. So I want to talk about something that's a new love of mine, and that's the Almond Joy. The Almond Joy candy bar. That is very good, and my love for it is very, very new. It's like just now we got a big, Rachel's parents sent us a big bag of Halloween candy, not knowing that we have no plans to do a safe candy distribution.

We don't know how to do a safe candy distribution. So really, they just sent us a big bag of candy for us to eat. And it's all fun-sized Hershey's and Kit Kat and, for some reason, Whoppers and Milk Duds. Yeah, Milk Duds. Rachel and I, we talked about this i like one milk dud but then any more milk duds and it just becomes sort of a chore but the almond joy was in there and i was like i haven't eaten an almond joy in a while let me pop one of these

and it was an absolute journey it was an absolute flavor delight but more than that it was a textural masterpiece the almond joy when you talk about your evolution on the show right do you feel like the almond joy is a more dignified candy i think it's more of a grown-up candy i feel like i'm putting away my childish things in which i know that i've talked about the milky way on this program but now you offer me a milky way and i'm like that's a lot of nougat and caramel my friend a three musketeers is just a big fucking nougat log. I can't, I am 33. I can't eat that much nougat.

I love a Three Musketeers. It's so much nougat. But an Almond Joy is you get that snap of that tempered milk chocolate. You get a little chewy grainy from the coconut and then you get that hard crunch

when you hit that almond inside and then those three textures just crunch when you hit that almond inside and then those three textures just dance dance around your palate and just a little like a little orchestra of textures and flavors that now that's a mature bite isn't it are you trying not to say symphony because that is another candy bar i guess it is sort of another candy bar uh i like it i like it in the same way that i feel like I've also grown to love a Snickers and that there's a lot going on inside of a Snickers. Yeah.

That like you can just enjoy all of the different textures of it instead of just having a more one note. A Hershey's bar, I don't even get it. It's just chocolate. It is just chocolate. You want to pair a Hershey's bar with something else. Yeah, absolutely. Like a s'more, for example. It's a chocolate. I mean, you want to pair a Hershey's bar with something else. Yeah, absolutely. Like a s'more, for example.

It's a chocolate platform. Kit Kat, you get the crunch, but then it's just the crunch. Almond Joy is coming at you from all different angles. What's the take five might be the ultimate? Oh my gosh, that is my favorite. Maybe that's too much. Maybe take five is too far. I haven't had one in a while.

Maybe I can't handle it. Take five is like what? Pean peanuts and pretzels and caramel and yeah and it's got five different sort of layers of butter yeah maybe that's too much i don't know but an almond joy i feel like comes at you in the right i don't even like almonds that much i don't really eat that much coconut but for some reason you put all these things together one whole almond like they're not trying to sneak anything past you well per fun size bar. Well, yeah. There is.

I do like the way that they are nestled into the coconuts as if you are at like a wake or a visitation for the almond. You're at a closed casket almond funeral. And I really, really dig that. So that's like the first fold of my twofold love of the almond joy. My second is more conceptual. first fold of my twofold love of the almond joy my second is more conceptual and that is that almond joy is the only candy bar with an evil twin that is the mounds bar yeah how fun is that it's so fun the the difference is this mounds uses dark chocolate to almond joys milk chocolate and mounds doesn't have an almond in it that's it

it is a it is a hollow empty vessel for a tree nut that will never arrive and that is sad in a lot of ways if you think about it i see i thought about it as like you know they did some some testing and maybe there was an even split of people that were like, you know what I like? I like dark chocolate. I like coconut. I don't like nuts. But that is what they have. This is what I want to talk about.

They have made you think that. And that's fucking wild. I want everybody to take a step outside of themselves to really holistically look at the Mounds Bar and the Almond Joy Bar and what the creators of these bars have tried to do in like uh like they forced you into a binary synthetically driven a wedge between america between americans which we don't need more wedges coming between us but there was if you were alive in the 80s and 90s you saw the ads that that they don't do so much anymore with the song written by beloved jinglesmith Leon Carr, Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut. The whole thing is sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. And Joy's got nuts.

Bones don't. And they come in with that, bones don't, in a way that makes you think, well, that's the working man's. dope in a way that makes you think like well that's the that's the working man's listen i don't have time for your almonds because i can't afford to feel like a nut i'm supporting a fucking family over here you've got three seconds maybe you don't have time for a nut no no i just want the i just want the dark chocolate and the coconut, and that is it. Didn't know this, Mounds came first. There was a candy maker in Connecticut in the 1920s, made the Mounds bar, sold it for five cents a pop.

And then when World War II broke out, the company that made Mounds, they had a shortage on all of their candy making supplies, so they just focused on the Mounds bar. And then we got past World War II, and they started to thrive because people were crazy on all of their candy making supplies so they just focused on the mounds bar and then you know we got past world war ii and they started to thrive because the people were crazy about the mounds bar so they went ahead and threw a fucking almond in there and they were like this is now almond joys uh which we are selling alongside the mounds they also made the peppermint patty the like weird like peacemaker they must have had a good deal with some coconut somewhere yeah they got what peppermint patty didn't have coconut in it oh but it has that it has like a texture i guess kind of but it has a pepper it's more of

a peppermint cream pat you're right you're creamy creamy cream i can see why you would you would get there though if you get did a cross section about amounts and you i mean the inside seems similar yeah um so in the 70s right they did ad campaign. Sometimes you feel like a nut and it positioned these two nearly identical candy bars as, as conceptual rivals. It created the candy binary as, as you put it. And that's gotta be one of the cleverest marketing stunts, like of all time, right? Because I, before I discovered my love of the Almond Joy this year, I still would have sworn myself to be a mounds man, even though I didn't really like mounds either because I don't really like coconut. But I knew that about myself. It's like, what's your what's your are you a Hufflepuff or whatever?

Like, are you a cake or pie? Like, everybody has these like things in their mind. Everybody has these like things in their mind and they created one out of fucking nothing by saying which of these two, again, virtually identical candy bars do you now love and you hate the other one and you hate everyone who likes the other one and think that they are like completely out of the same company too. It's not like, you know, it's not like two rivals created these similar products. you know it's not like two rivals created these similar products it's like the same company we've created a rival for our own candy bar yes choose one two candy houses equal in standing it's like it's it is wild and it succeeded obviously because like you went from not giving a shit about these two candy bars to giving a shit about at least one of these candy bars.

It was a huge success. I feel like Twix tried to do this with their like, are you left Twix or right Twix? And people were like, that's nothing. That's fucking nothing. Get out of here, Twix. But it's still like the source of that meaningless distinction between the do you like Mounds and do you like Almond Joy is the fact that a distinction between these two candy bars exists at all. That there was some candy maker that took a look at mounds and plopped a single fucking almond on it and then was like, that's a different thing.

You're not mounds anymore. All right, what are we going to call it? Mounds with almonds? You're fucking fired. You don't get it. You don't get it. That's a different thing. It's you don't get it that's a different thing totally different thing it's a different thing entirely we're gonna give it a different

colored wrapper we're gonna give a different name and we're gonna create a fake civil war between these two candy bars i think you're underestimating the power of dark chocolate though you're acting as if it is a similar candy but not only is it have the nut but it has a different kind of chocolate okay i will grant you that but what i will not grant you is that snickers has tried out a lot of stuff over the years snickers has had like here's peanut butter snickers here's dark chocolate snickers yeah here's here's when hershey's bar is like here's dark chocolate hershey's i guess they do call it special dark, but they don't call it like Stewart's chocolate. This one's Stewart's or evil Hershey's.

And you can only like one of them. That's true. It's fucking wild to me that these two candy bars are called different things. And it's not just called almond mounds. It's called almond joy. And if you like these, you have to fucking hate mounds. It's out ofmond Joy. And if you like these, you have to fucking hate mounds. It's out of control. It is.

And yet it is like foolproof because now I will never eat another mounds. I will only eat Almond Joy. Oh, so you've totally switched camps. I've completely switched camps. Because I realized I don't like almonds, but it's not about that. When you're eating an Almond Joy, it's not about how you feel about almonds. It's about what almond, that one almond crunch brings to the entire bouquet.

I feel like this is a much larger, more emblematic conversation because I feel comfortable liking both. Huh, interesting. I think that's the difference between us. Hmm, that is interesting. It's wrong interesting it's wrong it's wrong i just love it i it's it's this is for me i feel like a good form of marketing

that is very very smart and not like explicitly predatory it's like oh you you got me yeah you got all of us and our fucking parents with this feel like a nut thing. You've really got us on that one. Good going. Can I steal you away? Yes. We have a few Grumpo prompts here. Can I read the first one?

Because it's for Davis and it's from Rebecca. Can I please read it? Yes, please. rebecca says happy birthday to my sweet husband since our california birthday trips have been canceled two times this year i figured this was a surefire way to celebrate your special day you mean more to me than i could ever articulate i want you to know that you are wonderful and i wouldn't want to do life with anyone else you're the best partner and dad love you spelled love luv there and i i'm thinking it may be because they ran out of characters oh to fill in the message well maybe you're supposed to say it different luv you i enjoy this relatable content because there are

so many people i know that in march we're like well we've got to cancel this April trip. Let's push it to September. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, maybe we'll do. Yeah. Yeah. There may be one or more extensions to follow that, but not for us. October 17th is Davis's birthday, I believe. So happy birthday, Davis. Can I read the next one? Please do. This message is for Anne, Kenzie, Logan, and Sunday from Nathan. Wow, I can't believe how far we've come in our weird little D&D game. I honestly can't wait to see what kind of adventures Uag, Whimsy. Try Ugga? I don't know.

You tackled that word in such a wild way. It's U-G-G-A-Hah and you hit it like i don't mean oh babe come back i'm so used to words in these messages just being like indiscernible clearly there's no easy way to say this. Honestly, can't wait to see what kind of adventures Ugga, Whimsy, Schroeder, and Fern get up to next. Y'all are seriously the best friends I could ask for, and I love you all so much.

Your kind and benevolent DM, Nathan. Or perhaps, nyomph! I am nyomph! I love that character. Me too. Video games. Video games. Video games.

You like them? Maybe you wish you had more time for them. Maybe you want to know the best ones to play. Maybe you want to know what happens to Mario when he dies. In that case, you should check out TripleClick. It's a podcast about video games. A podcast about video games? But I don't have time for that.

Sure you do. Once a week, Kickback as three video game experts give you everything from critical takes on the hottest new releases to scoops, interviews, and explanations about how video games work to fascinating and sometimes weird stories about the games we love. TripleClick is hosted by me, Kirk Hamilton. Me, Jason Schreier. And me, Maddie Myers.

You can find Triple Click wherever you get your podcasts and listen at MaximumFun.org. Bye. Hey, can you tell me about your second thing that you have prepared to speak on this morning for me? Please tell me now. My second thing is obstacle courses. Yes. I didn't want to just talk about American Ninja Warrior again.

Because according to wonderful.fyi, we have talked about it twice. I think once was maybe a small wonder and once was an entire segment. That makes sense. And I realized kind of fundamentally what i love uh and the reason that american ninja warrior isn't just necessarily a show that like i put on in the background is the obstacle courses i'm fascinated by like the design and like the

suitability and the placement like how they put it together especially for ninja warrior because they take themselves very seriously so much so that like people have entire careers based around that show and that they open up gyms and shit yeah so they have to take the thing you can't just have some bullshit obstacle on there that knocks everybody out like everything has to be possible to accomplish yet very very hard It's really interesting to watch them tune those. There's just, yeah, as Griffin mentioned, there's just this whole culture now built around like designing and running obstacle courses

around the globe. And it was just kind of fascinating to think about like why do people love these things so much? So I was doing research. The obstacle course kind of unsurprisingly seems to have its roots in the military. It was designed with this idea of kind of building skill and confidence through these different courses. It's interesting.

I was reading about it. The 20th century, Georges Hebert, which I really wanted to say with a french accent i was just so excited about it created what he called unparcours oh the french word for course interesting which is also the root of parkour i'm assuming uh but the idea is that it's a course where one walks runs jumps Runs, jumps, crawls, climbs, walks on unstable balance, carries, throws, etc. Frolics. Frolics. Loves. Loves.

Aw, babe. And the idea was that you build not just the confidence, but the mental toughness of taking on these different obstacles. But, you know, the mental toughness of taking on these different obstacles. So instead of just, you know, running or pushups or jumping jacks, you're like attacking things. Right. Are designed to kind of knock you off balance. The kind of the phenomenon of the race, the obstacle course race, started in something called the Tough Guy in the UK in 1987. In 1987, eccentric former British Army soldier Billy Wilson, a.k.a. Mr. Mouse, started a 15-kilometer obstacle course and designed it to kind of push participants to their limits. And then later, what you may be more familiar with now is the Tough Mudder, which— It's just a super sloppy double-dare version of the Tough Guy.

I don't know if you've seen people do this sure but everybody will post pictures on the facebook of of them covered yeah covered in mud i'm like great job you're dirty like cool yeah the dirtiness doesn't appeal to me i think that's why i like the kind of the sterile-ness of of the ninja warrior i remember it uh at a church camp once there was like a mud activity that they were like put on some grody shorts and like a shirt you don't mind ruining and we're just gonna have a big mud fight and play in mud and i was like and i was like fuck yeah let's do it and then you're in the mud and like a few minutes in you're like wow i'm super dirty right now and the sun is

starting to kind of bake it onto me in a way that is fucking terrible i do not when you're wet and muddy and gushy and slimy oh it's so much fun but then you get out of the mud and you're like now what well and you know it's gonna get in your fingernails and in your mouth and that's hard to get out your butt crack yeah yeah that's that part of you know i have a hard time with the beach because sand gets in the butt crack and it's like it's right up in there no no no uh i don't know if you talked about this let me know when we did american ninja warrior did you talk about the company that does that does the obstacles no okay so it is a company called atTS. They started in 1999 as Alpine Training Services, and they taught outdoor classes like canyoneering. And then it was actually Biggest Loser was the

first show to come to them and say, build us a course. And then they kind of took off from there. So they do, as I mentioned, Ninja Warrior. They also do Amazing Race whenever there are obstacle courses. Oh, yeah. Is that show still on? I don't know. I feel like there hasn't been a new one. You know what? I heard that they did film a season prior to the pandemic that they have not released yet.

I guess they wicked could not make that show now, considering there are many countries that we are not allowed to fly to right now. They also did a bunch of shows that I was not familiar with. They did something called Dodgeball Thunderdome, which is currently on Discovery. Okay. So I guess the idea is you are doing an obstacle course, but then they are also throwing balls at you. It sounds a little like Wipeout to me.

Sounds quite a bit like Wipeout, but meaner. I don't know if the participants themselves are also throwing the balls. Yeah. Also shows like Spartan, which was the rock show. Oh, yeah. With the obstacle course. That's not still on the air, I don't believe.

I don't think so. They also did a show that is also not on the air from 2018 called TKO with Kevin Hart, which was another obstacle course show. They do Floor is Lava? I guess that's more of a... I can't see it on their website.

It's possible it just hasn't been updated. So a lot of the people that work for ATS not only design the obstacle, but they have to be kind of fit enough to test it out. If you go to a live taping of american ninja warrior you will see people running running the obstacles right before the show is filmed to prove that they are able to be they're ready to go and i think that's that's all that i wanted to say about that the other shows that i got excited about but i've never seen is something called america's top dog where they do a like a you know a dog show clips of this style i've seen

i've definitely seen dogs try to run up a warped wall and it's like they can't they don't have opposable thumbs don't try it guys don't try it you're gonna hurt yourselves and then this show i kind of remembered being excited about but we never watched holy moly which was a 10 episode mini oh no we did watch that and it didn't quite do it for us. Didn't quite grab us. Because we take our shit seriously. We want to watch hard bodied athletes who have honed their craft

and have a fucking 14 foot horizontal leap do their thing. I kind of read a little bit about why people like watching these shows. And some of it is just that, you know, the individuals that run these courses are sometimes like Olympic athletes. But then there are sometimes people who have just spent the past few years really training, you know. Yeah, I think that indulges a part of my brain that's like, man, I wish I could get to the point in my life as a person, as an adult, that I could do this. I love it when they're like 45 too

and you're like all right all right i could still do this right uh can i tell you about my second thing yeah my second thing is an album from a canadian uh indie rock group in the mid 2000s uh which really i'm sure somebody just checked off their fucking wonderful music segment bingo card. But I want to talk about Wolf Parade. Yeah. Specifically the album Apologies to the Queen Mary, which came out in 2005, was their first album and a huge sort of critical smash hit breakout success for them

that I don't really think they ever quite caught up to or surpassed because there was so much buzz. Wolf Parade was sort of formed Voltron style from members of a lot of other like big Canadian, well, comparatively big like Canadian indie rock groups. And so before the album even came out, they had two EPs that were out. And so the big, you know, your pitchforks and what have you were like a buzz about this album before it came out. I can't tell if that was like a particularly great time for music or if we were just of

the age where we were really into music. I think it's almost certainly that like that was the period. It was a great time. I think objectively, a lot of really good music was being made, but there's good music being made all the time. I think that's just the part of our lives where we were really paying attention and like really open to hearing new stuff um so wolf parade uh came about in like 2003 and it came together the group came together pretty quickly they uh formed and recorded an ep over the course of like

three weeks uh and a couple years later, they released Apologies to the Queen Mary after being signed to Sub Pop, which is like one of the all time best indie labels ever. And this record was huge. I remember it was like one of the like first cool bands that I listened to in real time. This was my freshman year of college when this album came out and I was listening to it and I was like, oh time this is my freshman year of college when when this album came out and i was listening to it and i was like oh this is like the first cool band i've listened to what's the first band i've listened to that wasn't like they might be giants since i was you know 11 years old uh so that is notable and like i just put this album in my ipod and it never left uh until i

guess i got rid of my ipod because people weren't using ipods anymore um it slots into this like indie rock field with modest mouse like very very cleanly and uh like arcade fire and neutral milk hotel i was thinking tv on the radio tv on the radio i mean it definitely fits into that time period but i think it has a sort of wild screechy ambitious uh like sort of canadian brainy sound uh that a lot of bands that that you know everybody was into uh were were enjoying at the time and a lot of those artists really collaborated modest mouse sort of shepherded wolf parade to sub pop and uh they performed together a whole lot uh and this album is just loud and it's wild with these like huge arrangements and there's two lead

vocalists on the album so there's like that you get that sort of uh linen harrison sort of uh mccartney vibe where it's just each song is like a different sort of tone with a different voice singing it which is always i think really really cool when it's not like fully discordant and weird um there's just guitars on guitars and guitars and guitars uh and sometimes it's like kind of shrill in ways that you don't really expect but uh works to to what the song's build to um and it's like really again, it's very brainy, but in a way that they still have a lot of rough edges on a lot of the songs.

It's just a fucking great album. And to give you an example of what it sounds like, I'm going to play the sort of most successful song I think they ever did, like their big arena rock anthem, if you want to think of it that way, which is I'll Believe in Anything. And I can take another hit from you

And I can take away your drinks from you if you want to think of it that way, which is I'll believe in anything. You know this song, right? I think it's the, I don't care. I don't remember if it's the one I sent to you yesterday to listen to. No, I do. This, this, uh, I mean, this was on my iPod. Yeah. It's a, it is a phenomenal song. I mean, this was on my iPod.

Yeah, it is a phenomenal song. It's like in the pantheon in my mind of like the great songs with like under pressure and stuff like that, where it's just like, oh, well, this song is just kind of perfect and is ambitious, but it achieves like everything that it tries to go for. It's really complicated, the arrangement is, but it builds like, so you hear all the individual parts

like really really clearly uh and i think doing something that is kind of unpredictable i think the parts of this song that you hear even like the opening screechy like like is is unpredictable and it's also anthemic is like a needle that i don't know how they threaded like i don't know how anybody threads that needle but but they do that a lot uh throughout this album and that's like the hallmark of really good indie rock in in in my mind um and i think for all of its like loudness it is also lyrically like very cerebral uh and and very like poetic there's a track called grounds for divorce which is also one of my favorite songs on the album uh and and very like poetic there's a track called grounds for divorce which is also one of my favorite songs on the album uh and i want to play a bit from but there's uh uh lyrics

that go uh you said you hate the sound of the buses on the ground you say you hate the way they scrape their brakes all over town i said pretend it's whales keeping their voices down it's like such a weird like uh kind of dreamy way of... I love your descriptor of Canadian brainy. I feel like that, for some reason, feels really apt to me. Oh, my God. It's like fully, fully, like, they work with poetic... What's the word? Like, visualization of things that is just so out there.

And yet, like, you hear it, and you're you're like oh i get what they're i get what they're saying by that uh i think another i think that's like really tough to do also is like writing things that are kind of abstract but can again be the kind of thing that at a live concert people are just like screaming at the top of their lungs like yeah man whales keeping their voices down like it's such a like wild thing it also also has just these, Grounds for Divorce has these like nonstop guitar arpeggios out of just like an 80s, like soft metal band. So I'm going to play a little bit more experimental and a little bit less like accessible, a little less like populist in a way that uh is kind of remarkable for apologies to the queen mary uh and it again like it's one of those things i

say it a lot whenever i talk about music on this show but as soon as i this popped up in a time capsule uh playlist that spotify generated i think partially out of things that i've been listening to since i've been a spotify user but part of it was just kind of wild guesses which is why like there's a lot of M&M on there that's like oh I didn't Spotify I never really had an M&M phase but there is this uh I'll believe in anything popped up and it just transported me back to fucking Pitchfork Fest 2010 just like jumping up and down with all my friends in Chicago like like screaming a lot, like tearing up to all believe in anything, which is like, I don't know, just a really, really wild experience.

And there are so many songs on this album that can accomplish that. I'm glad you brought this band. I kind of forgotten. Me too. It was so huge too. I remember, I think I've talked about this. I had a Zune living in Chicago that I had this album on

and I was on the Brown that on the l and just like riding downtown and i saw a woman sitting in front of me who also had a zoom that i could see she was also listening to wolf parade on it and i was like man i'm glad you didn't fall in love yeah me too is uh by the way you always talk about that zoom like it's ancient history but you definitely had that when you moved here oh i still have it it's in my closet right now uh i like my father lost my charger for it so it will probably never run again i think a listener of adventure zone sent him a charger for it that they like had please don't send me a charger i won't use it um but yeah this is a this is one of the all-time best albums i think and uh if you have never heard wolf braid i'm like deeply deeply jealous of you

because it is uh apologies to the queen mary is just a uh just a trip man just a trip good jams good bops uh can i tell you what our friends at home are talking about yes i'm very excited to talk about this one ryan said something that's been wonderful for me recently is uh neil cc regas newest parody question mark album mouth dreams with the entire world being just so much lately a new batch of his absurd absurdist humor-laden mashups have been exactly absolutely clutch for me keeping my cool for me there's just nothing better for resetting after a session of doom scrolling than hearing johnny cash's voice proclaim when i was just a boy when i was just a baby i shot a a boy, when I was just a baby,

I shot a man in Reno. I was just a baby boy to be followed up by, I shit my pants over the hook from Justin Bieber's baby. I don't know how familiar you are with the Mouth series of albums from Neil C.C. Riggins. I know what you have played for me. Yes, I have played them for you. Mouth Sounds just came out, I think at the end of last month.

And it is, I just found out about it yesterday because our editor on the taz graphic novels pinged me about it like you must you must it opens with a four minute long ballad of harmonized clips of the guy singing yahoo from the yahoo commercials from the 80s that had me like i had my door open and i thought people were gonna think i was like losing it because i had it on the speakers just and we just on the fucking floor dying laughing it is so good is this the guy that did mom's spaghetti uh oh i don't know i don't know he's the one who did lenny kravitz's fly yeah i want to i want to fuck a milky way i want to eat the sun oh man uh dd says the orchestra tune-up that controlled cacophony always changes the room uh charges the

room with anticipation and makes the first strains of music sound even more beautiful plus it just sounds neat i like that too gets you pumped what are we about to hear i mean i know we're we're at a production of the nutcracker so i know what we're gonna hear but oh anything's possible i know you ever did i've never played in a big band like that you probably did this like a lot huh yeah i mean i was band. And y'all did the like... That's my impression of the tune up. Honestly, I don't remember. Oh, okay. That's more of a stringed instrument thing, I guess.

Yeah, it's been 20 years. I mean, I'm guessing that we all played a note together. Do you tune a flute? Of course you do. How do you tune a flute? You know the little head joint? You know how it's like three pieces? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The head joint, you can kind of pull in and out of the instrument to make it longer or shorter depending

on how like sharp or flat you are fantastic so sometimes you'd have to like pull it out nice you were trying i have to applaud you for the great lengths you went to not make a jerk off motion just then i realized i was doing it no but as but you. As if it was necessary. Like within a millisecond, you were like, but I can't open that door. It was really impressive, baby. Thank you. I want to thank 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 so much to Maximum Fun for having us on the network.

Yeah, I would encourage everybody, if you haven't, go to Maximum Fun and check out a new show this week. Yeah, Triple Click is a really good one. Yeah. It's got some. Video games. everybody if you haven't go to maximum fun and check out a new show this week um yeah triple click is a really good one uh it's got some some video games yeah some kataku and ex kataku folks on there and it's all about video games and it's really really good um oh i also do a video game podcast if you're into that kind of thing called the besties it's on spotify i do it with juice and our buddies russ and chris from polygon and uh we talk about one video game a week. And it's real cool. Started talking about next-gen consoles because those are coming out really soon.

And Chris has one of them. So that's going to be this week's episode. So please, please enjoy. I think that's it. Yes. I think we're going to stop recording now. Yes. I've got downstairs a granola bar with my name on it.

I'm going to absolutely destroy that thing. And then I'm going to go outside and I'm going to try to throw an old dead plant back up into a tree. I want to watch that. Going to take a few tries. I hope one of our neighbors walks by and just shout some words of encouragement at you. You can do it. I mean, is anyone a basketball coach? Money in the Bank Money in the Bank

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