Wonderful! - Wonderful! 156: Wonderful Teen Tournament of Champions

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

Rachel's favorite impromptu gathering! Griffin's favorite always-on TV show! Rachel's favorite grammatical poetry! Griffin's favorite ghost movie!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/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 Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. On this show, we like to talk about some in-your-face stuff. And we like to get bodacious about it. And you might why are they so in my face about it i feel like i'm watching some edgy program on mtv like spring break or road rules or um nick news i know that wasn't on mtv and it wasn't really in your face although i felt like linda ellerby was kind of confrontational from time to time.

You know, she was brave. She was brave for sure. Brave and bold. Kurt Loder is another person whose name I remember. Still very brave. Still brave. But on this show, typically we do take it a little bit easier

on you and your ears. And we give you what you need, which is a little bit of... Pop-tarts. Pop-tarts. A little bit of pop-tarts. Can I interest you in a pop-tart in these trying times? Do you have any small wonders?

Oh, I want to talk about a thing that I did that I'm very proud of. Okay. I already got online for a grocery store and I ordered our Thanksgiving dinner. Oh, yeah. And I have never planned so far in advance for Thanksgiving. And to know that this dinner is going to be made for us and available for pickup. Oh, it's incredible. Don't get it twisted.

I'm still making the sweet potato casserole. I'm still making pecan pie, my two sort of road dogs. Griffin will make the sweet treats, but the other staples will be made for us. Just don't even sweat it. Yeah, you know how we feel about these foods. We've talked about it before. In these trying times, it is nice to know that I can take a little stress off my plate and put a little food on my plate.

And just sit and watch your fucking football, watch your Buffalo Bills do their thing out on the gridiron. I don't think. It's football. How are they playing football now? This is what I'm saying. Are they not touching each other, I'm guessing? I'm detached from Tweedo, and I'm detached from professional sports to the extent that

I, gun to my head, don't even know if they're still doing football. I feel like they're not. They should do the flag football is what they should do. Yeah. I don't know. Hockey could figure it out. I don't they're not. They should do the flag football is what they should do. Yeah. I don't know. Hockey could figure it out. I don't know. Anyway, my small wonder, I have taken my first trepidatious steps into the world of ASMR

because I have so much trouble sleeping. And it has been recommended to me that it may soothe me in a way that will make sleep a little bit more possible so uh i've i've uh do it last night no i did not try and do it last night but i have i have taken a few uh anxiety naps uh and just sort of thrown the air the the old earbuds yeah and griffin was a big holdout those of you familiar with the mcaulroy family will know that justin and travis are big proponents but griffin's always been kind of the rebel yeah i don't think i really understood the genuine kind of therapeutic effects that it it has on a brain uh especially a brain as sort of busy and horrible as mine uh and so

it's you know i could do this for you, Griffin. You don't have to turn to the YouTube. For real, you do have a very pleasant voice. I know. I could just, I could pull out one of my old poetry books and just sit next to you and quietly read it. I'm more into like, just sort of like people scratching a mic

or people just like like squeezing a microphone oh interesting or like raindrop sounds i'm not big on talking because then it gets in my dreams and i don't like i ain't trying to get incepted because i saw a movie about that once and it can get really complicated do you want to tell me you need need a chair. You need a chair. Let me see if I remember. There needs to be a kick. Someone does a prank on you to get you out. And Ellen Page has to be there. Like, as far as I know, like, if Ellen Page isn't there, then you can't even do it. And she's always hanging around.

Do you want to do your first thing for me? My first thing is something I was thinking about yesterday that is kind of a relic of a very specific time period and that is the flash mob oh man i kind of forgot about them obviously now they're not really happening for many reasons there's probably a lot of people who don't know when you say that think of something scary scary. Yeah. But it's not. It's dancing for the most part. So this is something that I believe I became familiar with with the 2008 Grand Central Station flash mob. That was a big one.

That was a cool. That was one of, I will say, one of the cool ones. Yeah. From like 2008 to 2010, 2011, these kind of blew up youtube uh and it was a seemingly spontaneous assembly of strangers all kind of doing some kind of choreograph movement without any kind of advanced notice so a lot of people would kind of it'd be in a public place a lot of people would stumble upon it and be like what's happening this is crazy i remember the name improv everywhere or improv anywhere improv everywhere did the grand central station okay yes um the the origins of this everything i found

to 2003 there was a senior editor at harper's named Bill Wessick who organized his own flash mob where he created an email account, a Yahoo account, just to give you a sense of the time period, called The Mob Project. And he sent a message to himself and forwarded it to 40 or 50 friends pretending like this was this cool event he had found out about. And it was getting people to go to a ninth floor rug department of a Macy's in New York and approaching the same rug. And anytime any kind of sales assistant came by, they were to say that they were shopping for a love rug for their commune and that they made their purchase decisions as a group and so everybody he ended up getting like 40 or 50 people

there to participate in this yes his uh intentions for this were a little cynical he was kind of making fun of hipster culture of like oh this is you know like look everybody wants to be at the spot you know everybody wants to do this like crazy hip thing and this is like a commentary blah blah i would say this trend was not especially kind to our retail workers no no actually when i was researching, there is a particular flash mob that led to significant damage. It was a pillow fight in San Francisco, 2009 on Valentine's Day. They did an annual mass pillow fight that caused more than $20,000 in damages.

Where at? In like a store? In a park. In a park? How do you do $20,000 worth of damage Where at? In like a store? In a park. In a park? How do you do $20,000 worth of damage in a park? You gotta clean up those feathers, dude. Oh, I see, I see, I see. Yeah, somebody's gotta do it.

Yeah. The more harmless ones, the ones that I always found really great are the choreographed dances. Yes. There have been a lot of performances of thriller throughout the country. There was a performance of single ladies in London's Piccadilly Circus where a hundred women performed the choreographed dance together.

Ohio State University did one in 2010 to Don't Stop Believing. did one in 2010 to don't stop believing uh and it it of course like led institutions everywhere to be like should we be doing this is this a thing yeah our college is gonna do it now should we do one i think the office is like the one that kind of like well that was harlem shake right no they did the walk down the aisle to like the yeah the one song that was like well they also did their own they were trying to do their own viral yes yeah yeah they did a lot of that was like a sort of proto-Flashmob. Well, they also did their own, they were trying to do their own viral. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, they did a lot of that stuff.

This was a thing. The record was a performance of Thriller where they had 14,000 people in Mexico performing the Thriller dance. Wowzers. The largest Flashmob. That's intimidating. Yeah.

I feel like if I saw 14,000 people all starting to move in unison, I would just like, I would open a manhole cover and just jump inside and hide and wait. Yeah. I don't know if I would ever actually want to participate in anything like this.

No way. But watching the videos is so charming because it, I don't know there's just something kind of beautiful about all those people working together for a particular goal that is kind of silly but it is fun and and nice to see the dance ones never did it for me but you mentioned we haven't actually talked about what the grand central station one was it was easily over a hundred people it was it was do you know how many people were involved with that 200 people 200 people were involved with that where at a specific time i think there

was some sort of signal uh all of the people froze in place like like mannequins and so the people who were not part of this would just be walking and then the world froze around them like that's the kind of thing that i think is really fucking cool it is cool i mean it's like a very busy noisy location and to just watch this video of people walking through in the silence like just staring at these still people yes very incredible i also recall they've done a lot of stuff obviously on subways uh and like public transit systems are kind of perfect for this because it's like a captive audience inherently i remember one where they got a bunch of twins a bunch of sets of twins and uh one part of the twin set uh like 15 people all gone on this train at the same station dressed a certain way and then on the very next station

the other half of the twin pairings got on dressed the exact same way and sat like the exact same way opposite their twin without addressing it and the other people exact same way and sat like the exact same way opposite their twin without addressing it. And the other people at the train were like, what the fuck is going on? Improv Everywhere is a little different. Like a lot of what they do comes across like a flash mob. But the purpose of a flash mob is more that it is, it is strangers participating in this, either whether it's like emailed or text, like this instruction that everybody is following. Whereas Improv Everywhere, I'm sure,

is a little more mapped out and coordinated in advance. God, this is hurling me back into like an internet hole. There was like early aughts group called Prangsta Group that did like really early versions of like this stuff like there was a musical that just broke out in the middle of a library about how much they love reading uh well oh my god i was like obsessed with them this was like early ass internet stuff uh yeah i'm not familiar with this one um hey can i tell you about my first thing yes my first thing is i'm a little bit embarrassed about uh it is we've talked about top chef before on this show uh and how much we

really really do enjoy that that that program well today i want to talk about the opposite of top chef uh which is chopped chopped chopped is the opposite i think in almost virtually every way it is a show on the food network uh that there is about infinity episodes of. Yeah, this is like our hotel room go-to. So yeah, we've talked about that before, about like HGTV is a channel that has a bunch of programming that Rachel and I do not watch

unless we're in a strange place and in a hotel room and we don't have access to our usual streaming shit. And it's like, well, I guess we just turn on HGTV and watch whatever is there. Chopped is like the HGTV of television shows. Because at some point, Chopped is on some channel. There's going to be Chopped. Chopped is airing right now, I bet.

I have no way of proving that except that Food Network shows one of their shows and then gives you a palate cleanser of Chopped before it gets to its next program. I don't know that I've ever turned on Food Network and not seen Chopped. Yes. So there are nearly... Well, I guess I kind of revealed it. There are nearly 600 episodes of Chopped. There are nearly... It's weird that I would have kind of revealed it. There are nearly 600 episodes of Chopped.

There are nearly... It's weird that I would have thought there are more. That's so many. It's only been on the air since 2009. In 11 years, they have produced 600 episodes of the television show. I mean, they could definitely film a few a day. So they actually shoot four seasons at a time. Oh my gosh.

Which is wild because this show is a pretty brutal shoot. It is a 12 hour day filming this program. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, I guess they have to clean and reset every time, but it seems like the, I mean, the show itself seems like so fast paced. I mean, it's, that is not super uncommon for a a television show i feel like 12 12 hours to shoot a whole episode front to back with like very little you know they don't

need a lot of extra b-roll or shit like that like 12 hours is not especially wild except you consider that they're shooting four seasons at a time it is one of the more grueling like production schedules of a television show that is on uh online i've seen some horror stories actually from contestants uh just like yeah the craft services uh like they gave me two rubbery eggs to eat ted allen has ted allen from uh queer eye for the straight guy the original right isn't that what he is from yeah uh it has said that he isn't allowed to sit down i mean he is always standing he is always standing up that's typical so if you've never watched chopped which seems unlikely it is a cooking competition show where each episode there are three chefs uh who are or no there's four chefs aren't there who are competing i should

really know how many chefs there are i believe there's four uh There are three rounds that they are whittled down over. So yes, there would be four chefs. There is the appetizer round, the entree round, and then the dessert round. And in each round, they have a mystery box that they open up and it will have a wide array of garbage that they then have to make a dish out of. And they have to use all the ingredients.

And they have to use all the ingredients. They get dinged if they don't. So usually the ingredients will have some sort of weird outlier or two in them so it'll be like here is some uh you know pork ribs and uh some barbecue sauce and some chocolate ice cream and some like oysters oysters and some atomic warheads like yeah and good luck uh chefs have fun uh and so the odds are like so stacked against them that and there's judges there's judges celebrity chef judges right uh who then tear these meals usually apart the odds are so stacked against them that it makes it genuinely exciting when somebody cooks something that looks even remotely palatable uh those are

usually the people who who end up winning and like there's a lot about the show that's bad like the it has a sort of manufactured overdramatic tone that is like absolutely repellent to me um but like it's always there it is reliably it is reliably hitting at a six to seven out of ten in a way that's just like you're talking about a bad relationship like you know it's not great but it's consistent i mean it can't hurt me chopped can't but it can be bad but it's never so i've never hit the threshold with chopper i'm like this sucks click it. Click. It's always just, it's always there. Well, and it's the variety of it, right? Like the three meals, the three baskets, the

different contestants every episode. You can set your watch by Chopped. Yeah. And it switches up so much. It's like I was saying, it's relatively fast paced. So like, if you're like, oh, I don't like, you know, this basket basket there's another basket coming in like seven minutes just around just around the river bend um it it has had some sort of positive effects like it has launched a lot of chef careers it is uh each episode the chefs usually hail from a restaurant in various parts of the country and they do a little feature on that restaurant and it's been uh for the most part, pretty positive for the businesses featured, which is nice. But it's also created this weird subcategory of professional chefs who are known for appearing on Chopped.

Because Chopped has had so many different kinds of seasons. I'm going to list all of the seasons, okay? All of these are real. Chopped Champions. Chopped All-Stars? All of these are real. Chopped Champions. Chopped All-Stars. I guess that's different than Chopped Champions. Chopped Grillmasters. Chopped Tournament of Stars.

Chopped Ultimate Champions. Chopped Impossible. The oddly convention-breaking Teen Tournament. That's all it's called. Welcome to Teen Tournament. Chopped After Hours. Ooh. Chopped Star Power.

Chopped Sweet Showdown. And Chopped Beat the Judge. And there's also been a ton of holiday specials and one-offs. Yeah. There's so much of this show. It is wild to me. I cannot think of a show that there is more of it,

except for maybe like daytime soap operas and talk shows and things like that. You talked about the sort of consistency of it, and that is one of the more appealing aspects of Chopped. But Ted Allen did an interview where he talked about the show's unaired pilot episode. And I would like to read a little bit about the unaired pilot episode because it is

uh bonkers it was filmed at the culinary school at the art institute of new york uh and according to ted allen it was originally a lot more elaborate it was set in a mansion the host was a butler the butler held a chihuahua and when a chef was chopped the losing dish was fed to the chihuahua the food network Network found the pilot episode, quote, a little too weird, but decided to keep the general premise of the show in a more straightforward competition format. Oh, my gosh. Sliding, sliding fucking doors. That would have been incredible.

And kind of like a murder mystery. I mean, we're thinking about whodunit. It elicits images of whodunit, the very short-lived, not great reality murder mystery show. But yeah, it's again, not my favorite show, but in a lot of ways it is my favorite. It's one of my favorite things that I know is just gonna be there.

There's always chopped. And I don't know that I've ever seen the same episode twice. Because the law of large numbers would prohibit that. That's very true, yeah. There's so much fucking Chopped. There is. Teen tournament.

Can I steal you away? Yes. We have a couple of bumbo jams here. Can I read the first one? Yes. This first one is for Matthias. It is from Alex Wee, who says, My dear Matthias, hey, look, a jumbotron.

I'll always think of you when I listen to Wonderful, and I'm so thankful for that, just as I am for all the big and small wonders you've brought into my life. I can't wait to hug you again and go eat tacos. Also, if you hear this before November 3rd, happy early B-Day. I love you so much. Colby does too.

Got this one in right under the wire. Yeah, happy early birthday. Happy early, I would imagine, anxious birthday. But make it fun. Grab some tacos. Celebrate. And then go vote if you can, if you're able to. This next message is for Anna.

It is from Daniel. Anna, my wonderful thing this week and every week is being with you and our two tiny dogs, Carl and Ginny. Though I did purchase this Jumbotron before the Nintendo Switch arrived, so who can say how the next week goes? Just kidding. Happy maybe anniversary. I love you and I like

you so much and big time and a lot. That's a great deal of liking someone. They requested end of October, so I think we did come in around the anniversary date. We've been really good about sort of our timing.

And when you say we... I mean Maximum Fun. Maximum Fun. They have sent these to us in an appropriate structured calendar. That is true. Hi. Are you someone who thinks that when one door closes, another one opens? Someone who always sees the light at the end of the tunnel.

If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, good for you. We are not those people. Nope. I'm Annabelle Gurwitch, and I'm a, you know that other door opening? It probably leads to a broom closet kind of person. And I'm Laura House. When I see a light at the end of a tunnel, I assume it's a train headed right toward me. Laura and I have created a brand new podcast for people like us. It's called Tiny Victories. When I see a light at the end of a tunnel, I assume it's a train headed right toward me.

Laura and I have created a brand new podcast for people like us. It's called Tiny Victories. We're sharing personal tiny victories or things we've read or seen that inspire resilience. So if you're looking for a tiny reason to get out of bed each week, subscribe to Tiny Victories. Available on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get tiny. Can I tell you about my second thing? Oh, that look on your face tells me that you're a real stinker about it.

And it's something you think I'm going to be really into. What you got? Okay, so this is a trip to the Poetry Corner. Now, I know I've been spending a lot of time in the Poetry Corner, but it is where I feel safe. Right. I was bored in the poetry corner the room really is just a room with one corner now and that is the poetry corner and that is where i always am it's a weird almost sort of light bulb shaped room with one corner and the

rest of it is just sort of round edges uh the reason I am particularly excited is the poet I am bringing is one that I know for sure Griffin knows about because it is E.E. Cummings. Hey! Is it your heart? I carry it in my heart? Yes. Oh, is that really it?

Oh, I'm sorry, babe. I didn't mean to burst your poetry bubble. No, I expected you to come ready. Okay. To be fair, you said Griffin knows a lot about E.E. Cummings. I know this one poem by ready. Okay. This is, to be fair, you said like Griffin knows a lot about E.E. Cummings. I know this one poem by E.E. Cummings. You know this one poem.

And I know the style of E.E. Cummings. Otherwise, I know nothing about E.E. Cummings. I have often noticed that when Griffin has to call a poet or a particular style of poetry, this is who he goes to. Or Shel Silverstein. It's one of the two. True.

It's either Sylvia Stout taking the garbage out, or it's E.E. Cummings and his crazy lines of crazy words. And his many, many commas and periods. I have never been a huge fan of E.E. Cummings, but I thought this would be fun for both of us because you could get a little more background on this guy you're always shouting out yeah and i could kind of figure out what the fuss is about arguably the worst poet to read their work over an audio medium because it's ee cummings work is also very much about how it is it is hard to arranged and laid out and it has a sort of visual element by virtue of of how it is organized on the page

i feel like a lot of people know about ee cummings just because he was kind of head of the class on on creating poems in this kind of crazy spacing and and punctuation and lowercase i learned about him in school and like i can't i cannot remember too many other poets or like obviously i learned about probably robert frost and uh maya angelou yes yeah uh but like ee cummings i think stuck with me for whatever reason and became became my like go-to poet reference because of the uniqueness the visual unique if i don't have an ear for poetry but i have an eye for like word layout and that's what e cummings has yeah so he uh was born in massachusetts got his ba and ma from harvard uh and uh was writing in the very early 20th century.

And so that's kind of interesting, I think, given the time period to be this kind of avant-garde in that time period. He started writing poetry very young. The article I read about him said that between the ages of 8 and 22, he wrote a poem a day. Well, were they all good though of course not i'm sure they weren't but just the practice of it i think a lot about you know that that uh thousand hours or whatever it is like 10 000 10 000 hours oh well that's a bit more i guess i have a little more to go uh but it just investing the time creating a practice out of it like says a lot for kind of how he became who he was um he was in the first world war uh and then uh returned home he did he

did what apparently a lot of people were doing in the time period which was volunteering for ambulance service uh which was a popular choice among people who were pacifists. Isn't that what Hemingway did? I don't know. I thought that's what Hemingway did. I don't know. But so he, once he came home from that, he resumed his long affair with this woman, Elaine Thayer, who was married to his friend. Uh-oh. But here's the interesting thing.

His friend knew about and approved of the relationship. Huh. Elaine ended up giving birth to E.E. Cummings' daughter, and then Thayer got divorced from Elaine so that she could marry E.E. Cummings. And then a year later, she divorced E.E. Cummings and ran off with somebody else. So it's kind of an interesting but tragic love story

that he carried on this relationship kind of in controversy for years. And then they were finally together and she called it. But it sounds like they were all pretty cool with it. Yeah, and everybody was on board. I think it just, you know, ultimately it wasn't meant to be. But I think it informed a lot of his poetry because he wrote a lot of love poems. Sure.

The thing that's interesting about E.E. Cummings that I didn't really realize until I started doing research. So he started kind of experimenting with form in the 1920s. And those kind of experimentations actually got him an award. In 1925, Dial Magazine chose him for their annual award of $2,000, which was a full year's income for the writer. Yeah. And then he was able to publish an additional collection kind of furthering his experimentation with style.

But the thing about E.E. Cummings is that what he was writing about was not particularly avant-garde. His experiments with language were more about getting you to kind of rethink these kind of standard topics in poetry because he was writing about you know like nature and childhood and love right in kind of a way that was pretty pretty typical to poetry at the time well and pretty explicit like there was never i

don't remember reading any of his poems and being sort of confused about what they were addressing yeah i remember picking up an e colemings book at the library and thinking like, oh, this is a lot more accessible than I was expecting. It's super accessible, yeah. Yeah. A lot of poets talked about his work and said that he had a, this is Richard Blackmer who wrote essays about craft. And he said that E.E.

Cummings has a fine talent for using familiar, even almost dead words in such a context as to make them suddenly impervious to every ordinary sense. They become unable to speak, but with a great air of being bursting with something very important and precise to say. uh so he he wrote a lot of as i mentioned love poems uh and uh the one i was gonna read is the one that you you caught on i kind of read all of it in the span of about a second and a half so don't blink or you'll miss it there is so this poem i don't have any real sentimental attachment to it but there is a line towards the end that has always stuck with me. Oh, is there more to it than just that one line? Oh, yeah, honey. Oh, I always thought it was just that.

No. Sort of like half a haiku, and he was like, I'm done. There are a lot of brackets and parentheses and line breaks, which is not necessarily going to come across in my reading, but I think it will kind of communicate what I said, which is that, you know, he's not writing about anything particularly experimental. And so you can develop a connection to him, even if you may find the punctuation a little intimidating.

I carry your heart with me. I carry it in my heart. I am never without it. Anywhere I go, you go, my dear. And whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling. I fear no fate, for you are my fate, my sweet. I want no world, for beautiful you are my world, my true. And it's you are whatever a moon has always meant, and whatever a sun will always sing is you. Here is the deepest secret That's really good. I love that. That line, yeah, that line, keeping the stars apart. Like I had to Google it because I was like, are other people using this line? Or did this line really stick with me for like over a decade? And I think, I think that's what, what happened. I think I remember that. I remember Justin saying that. I think it was part of, I think maybe Justin and Sidney had it as like part of their vows

or something like that. Yeah. It's a very good line. Yeah. No kidding. I don't know. E.E. Cummings is not somebody that, you know, I keep on my bedside table, but it's admirable, you know, that he was like, it's not like I have to write about something crazy and

abstract. I don't have to take a flower and make it sound like it's the Grand Canyon. But if I do some work with the spacing and if I think about the cadence that most people read with and put something inventive on the page, it will make the topic new again. So it's cool um can i tell you about my second thing yes i'm really excited i struggled a long time with what to what to talk about here because this is our last episode before halloween and i like to talk about like classic horror movies that i like because i really love this genre a whole lot um but i i couldn't think of one that was like exciting one that got me excited enough to like

really want to focus on it so I've talked about like the alien franchise I adore the thing um evil dead like they're classics that like I want to watch every year around this time and I just remembered another one that I love talking about it's the movie poltergeist have you seen poltergeist yes I have fucking poltergeist is so good it's got everything that's the craig t nelson right it's got the craig t nelson in it you gotta have coach you must have coach in your movie this this film if you have not seen it is like the ultimate trojan horse of horror movies because it was written and produced in part by Steven Spielberg. And back then it was released in 1982, which was two years before the PG-13 rating was invented.

And the Motion Picture Association originally gave this film an R rating. But Steven Spielberg and the director of the movie went to the mpaa and like appealed that and and pushed for a lighter rating so that more people could come see it and because there was no pg-13 they were like all right we're gonna kick that right down to a pg right on down to a pg rating and this film is fucking terrifying and it has some genuinely like gory practical effects and super scary practical effects i saw this film as an adult and i'm glad i did because if i saw it as a kid it would have ruined my life a lot of a lot of children in danger a lot of children in danger a lot of uh undead activity visualized in ooey gooey ways. It is a ghost story about a family

living in this sort of planned neighborhood that has been built, you find out throughout the film, sort of unceremoniously on top of a cemetery. And so the spirits of that cemetery are haunting this one particular household and you watch

this film and you kind of think you know what it is at certain points like you think it has reached the threshold of the horror that it is going to present but it just keeps escalating more and more and more that by the end of it i genuinely was in shock at that that i was watching a pg film yeah that's a good point you know because a lot of halloween movies they like they have their villain and the whole movie is just the villain chasing people and so you kind of like you're like all right i know this and okay that's gonna happen but this one surprises you with the different approaches it takes i feel like i think because it is a you you think you know it's a ghost story and you think you know like what means. And that's what's great about this movie. There's so many things that are great about this movie. But what is great is that it plays into that expectation at the sort of start of the movie. You get the little girl looking at the TV screen static and there's the earthquake and the little hand coming out of the TV and she looks at the cameras. They're here and then the next day these parents are like responding to chairs moving in the kitchen

with almost a sort of like a sort of um curiosity yeah like isn't this delightful watch watch the chairs are moving uh and you think like okay so it's gonna move stuff around and sort of scare them that way uh but then it gets pretty wild. One of the, the little girl is sucked into the house by the poltergeist and there's a beast demon that is backyard pool scene, the backyard pool scene at the climax of the movie where undead hands shoot out of the pool. There's a tree that smashes in through a window and tries to abduct a little

boy. There is, there, there is a scene that is one of the scariest things I've ever seen in a film where there's a team of researchers that comes to the house and one of them stays the night and goes into the kitchen for a midnight snack

and sees a raw steak like explode from within itself, like regurgitating meat from out of its body. And then the drumstick he was eating has maggots all over it. And then he goes to the kitchen or he goes to the bathroom to like wash his face off. And then he washes his fucking face off, like pulls the skin off of his face.

In your PG movie, Steven? It's fucking, I watched it this morning to like remind me, it is fucking grotesque and horrifying in a way that like caught me in like my late 20s off guard yeah uh it is but at the same time the the the nonchalant way that the parents sort of respond to this spectral activity in their house slowly like uh transforms into this weirdly practical rescue mission of their daughter who's been sucked into like the ghost world and that ghost world has uh an internal logic and a rule set that is like absolutely my shit especially in horror movies and they bring

in the spirit medium who's like okay we need to figure out where the entrance to the portal is the exit to the portal we need to find out who's got her what they want we need to figure out where the entrance to the portal is the exit to the portal we need to find out who's got her what they want we need to figure out how to communicate with them and they just like go on this mission to to save their daughter definitely like tie a rope tie a rope to the mom and like send her into the ghost world like and i love that stuff i love when the the victims in horror movies like become proactive that is like the entire conceit of the final girl in slasher flex um which you know i love that shit too but this is like a different take on it where it's like the whole family is is like we're terrified of this obviously horrifying thing that's in our house but like like fuck it we are going to do whatever it takes to save our daughter and

it plays with this balance of like, yeah, guys, yeah, coach fucking get them. And also like, get out of there, coach. It's so bad in there, coach. That's such perfect casting. I feel like this is one of, this is like Craig T. Nelson's like breakout film. I mean, it is his breakout.

It is like, I feel like the only film that people regard with a lot of admiration that stars Craig T. Nelson. it is like i feel like the only film that that people regard uh with a lot of admiration that stars craig t nelson uh he just seems like such a like like a practical dad yes this film you know and so you're watching him and you're kind of like yeah i mean that's what a person would do because it's craig but what's great about this movie also is that it has a false ending and at one point craig t nelson's like all right we need to get the fuck out of here I'm gonna go talk to the manager uh I think one of the kids is like on a date and like the denouement has happened and you're like oh everything's fine and then the poltergeist like strikes back in this huge and terrifying way and like it's just the the wife and the two young kids at home and it's like

holy shit I cannot believe it's like a second way. I've forgotten about that. The movie is brilliant. Like it is structured brilliantly. Yeah. And it is like a fun watch. Like it is a fun horror movie. I think about, uh,

yeah, I just, I, I really like this movie. I think it hangs with like the thing and, and, and the alien flakes is like Spielberg, man, classic horror film. Yeah. And it's Spielberg. Another the Alien flicks is like Spielberg, a classic horror film.

Yeah. And it's Spielberg. Another sort of it's like, oh, I think we're going to have some fun E.T. action. And it's like, no, we'll learn a lot along the way and become closer friends. Yeah, it is. It's yeah, I just the house is the sole setting for the film and is a haunted house. And like, that's cool because you watch it kind of deteriorate over time it has a lot of really memorable characters like the spirit medium who comes in and kind of saves the day uh it's it's man it's a great flick if you've not seen it and you have the stomach for it i would highly recommend tuning into it this this this hallows eve i'm glad you brought that i feel like i have kind of shied away from the scary film this season. I would watch Poltergeist tonight for sure.

That one sounds good. Yeah. Can I tell you what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Emily says, seeing lost Nerf darts. My partner and I don't have kids, but we've been spotting these little blue and orange darts in yards along our cul-de-sac lately while walking the dog. It makes me smile to see the remnants of kids having fun.

I think I've probably spent about 10% of my life looking for Nerf darts that I fired off. We had a Nerf gun before we had Henry specifically to keep our cat in line. And I remember- We did not shoot our cat with Nerf darts. No, there was the suggestion that it would de-incentivize some actions we didn't like.

It was a water gun it wasn't like we weren't sure he was shooting nerf how did we end up with a dart gun we definitely had a nerf dart gun because i think i just bought it for fun finding those darts under the couch okay well i think i got them for goofing ups and fun griffin just had a good time gun yeah a good time nerf nerf is fucking rad man okay uh michael says keyboard shortcuts i do a lot of digital art for fun and as a job and being able to switch between tools quickly is wonderful i remember when i discovered keyboard shortcuts i was like four years into editing the shows probably even later than that and it like halved my editing time because i like have all my shit so, so specific. It's like, it is the first thing I do

when I get a new piece of software. I've started using Ableton instead of Logic for all my music composition stuff. And it is like a whole different set of keyboard shortcuts that I spent so long learning in Logic and now I'm having to deprogram my brain, but it's, I love it. You know what's funny is that I know copy and paste uh in my in my

microsoft word i i don't know cut though never memorized that one really babe i know it's just right next to it it's x it's it's control x i will go up i will copy something with my little shortcut and then i will go up to the edit menu and I will select cut. You know you don't have to copy and cut it, right? Oh no. When you cut it, it puts it on your clipboard so that you can paste it. I think, I think, I think I knew that. I think, babe, the way you're looking at me makes me, makes me question that. You should learn, I, I recently learned, uh uh me and dad have been doing a lot of writing uh and uh i just learned all the google docs keyboard shortcuts

there's so many and it's so it is invaluable to know that stuff uh hey i want to thank and this is an important one bowen and augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. This is the song that is by that artist. You can find a link to it in the episode description. And maybe last week, did I attribute a different song

to the very talented Bowen and Augustus? Yes, I did. Am I super tired? Are things kind of buck wild right now? And maybe you should cut me a little bit of slack before you we got a lot going on a lot going on yeah a lot on our minds a lot on our minds you know we're expecting i'm gonna use that now for no brain fart you know pregnancy brain i don't think i get to claim that. No. Anyway. You have had a lot of sympathy pains, though, and I appreciate that.

Those are just, I had those before you were pregnant. I just hurt. And also, thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go to MaximumFun.org, check out all the great shows that are there. Yeah, you may have heard an ad for the new show on Maximum Fun called Tiny Victories, but it seems like it would be of great interest to our audience. It is a 15-minute show. It comes out weekly. And the hosts talk about the little wins they've had.

Yep. And I think y'all would like it. There's so much good stuff there. Triple Click. Fan Tie is fucking fan... More like fantastic. It should be the name of that. It should be the name of the show.

And I think that's it. And so I'm gonna... We're gonna put this one to bed folks yeah thanks to everybody for your for your nice congratulations on our our new new child coming yes it was uh very very nice to see that this i mean this is folks you may not realize that. That was our announcement on this episode. So you can come here for the fucking exclusive scoops and skinnies on everything that's going on. Maybe one of us will get a piercing, and you'll find out about it here first. Before anyone else. I don't know what I would get pierced.

No, I don't. Nothing below the neck. I have thought that your ears are perfect for a piercing. They're certainly load-bearing. I just love your ears, I think. Okay, well let's bejewel them. Thank you. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

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