Wonderful! - Wonderful! 159: The Mystery of Helium

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

Griffin's favorite art instructor! Rachel's favorite big floaty boys! Griffin's favorite communal music experience! Rachel's favorite family!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/blacklivesmatter MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Oh, hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Oh, hey. Hey, what's up? I feel like we're too proper sometimes with our like we do a podcast and it sounds a lot like a podcast a lot of times doesn't it it's like hello greetings welcome i want it to be more like we're in the hallway of high school and yeah oh

sup reggie oh man i heard you failed the big driving test again reggie come on i heard you failed the big driving test again. Reggie, come on. I heard you ran into the principal's Jeep with your Jeep. Reggie, come on, man. What if we every episode only talk to Reggie? That would be fun. We could do like those birthday videos on YouTube where we do like the whole episode, but then we go through and it's like, we all like to eat candy bars.

Isn't that right? Debra. Isn't that right debra isn't that right stephen we could have like a robot come in and fill in and people wouldn't even notice no they wouldn't it's like those books where it's like they can you can put a kid's name in it and they're like whoa they wrote a book all about me can you laugh like no you're so foolish i saw there uh i was looking our son's birthday is coming up and i've been looking at uh superhero themed gifts and they have superhero books you can buy where you insert the child's name but from what i can tell it it just it that is all it does there is no other personalization it just says like henry, Spider-Man has climbed the building. So this is wonderful. It's a show we do where we talk about things that we like,

things that we're into. Do you want to talk about something that you like and something that you're into? Yeah, I actually got this idea as I was walking into your office. There is a book by Emily Oster called Expecting Better. And she has written other books and other articles, and she has her own newsletter. She is a PhD Harvard economist who looks at all the stats around parenting and pregnancy and gives you kind of more realistic advice based on those. So instead of just these kind of blanket uh guidance suggestions it's more like here's i looked at the actual studies and here's what actually was discovered and here's what is okay and here's what you know you might want to be cautious about and

it just it feels very data informed yes uh instead of like you know great-grandmother informed it's astonishing to me it was the first time around grandmother informed. It's astonishing to me. It was the first time around and it's astonishing to me this time around too. For a pregnancy and childbirth is a process that so many people go through and literally all people are the product of. And you would think that we would have really nailed down and codified like what actually happens during that it is buck wild to me how much of that is still informed by essentially folklore like essentially things

that that our great great great great grandparents decided based on literally nothing and yet we still kind of adhere to that and this book is like an answer to that in a way that I think she also, uh, when the pandemic started, offered some great guidance on kind of developing a, a process to determine whether or not you were comfortable sending your child back to school. Yeah. Just kind of, kind of a way to weigh the pros and cons kind of more,

uh, scientifically. Yeah. That I know a lot of people appreciate it because these are hard decisions you have to make. And to have like an actual process to do that has been helpful. So I just wanted to give her a shout out. Yeah.

I'm gonna say tiny phone. I've had big, I've gone through a few phones over the last like few years. I did like a Galaxy, some big Galaxy big boy. And then I had the big, big iPhone. And I was so excited about the big big iphone when i got it

because i was like it's a screen i can watch a bunch of stuff on but then i didn't really do that very much i just got the 12 mini and it's so tiny it's so light i can fit it a lot of times i would have struggled to fit the big phone in my pocket and now i've gone back to the tiny little phone that was like you know the original iphone 4 size like little guy and i'm like oh little guy i missed you. I forgot how easy you are to hold and move. And if I drop it on my face while watching a video at night, it doesn't, like, give me a black eye. It's so darling to me the way the trend cycle.

Yes. It has to be bigger. Bigger is better. And then it's like, oh, but we want small now. Little guy. I love him. Who goes first this week? Because I have proven myself a pretty unreliable tracker of that i think it's me i think it's you it is me okay thank you thank you wonderful.fyi

uh my first thing this week i'm really excited about because it was something i'd had kind of stuck in my head for a while but i couldn't really put a name on it. I want to talk about like primary school art class. Does primary school describe everything like pre collegiate? I don't think I've ever really known what that term means. Secondary is high school. Okay. And then post secondary is college. Okay.

So I guess elementary through high school art class, really, I guess elementary and middle school art class. I feel like in high school by the time, if you're taking art class in high school art class really i guess elementary and middle school art class i feel like in high school by the time if you're taking art class in high school you have proven some level of proficiency with art in a way that my elementary and middle school experience did not necessarily require um i i never was like i was always wild about like elective style classes like this i guess to put it in sort of high school terminology. And it is a disaster that they are not taught or prioritized in early education anymore. Because like, I was really

academically averse growing up, like I did not really care that much about math and science and stuff. Like I wasn't bad at them. But I just like they didn't light me up in a way that art class did, even though I don't really have an artistic bone in my body. And what got me thinking about this? What got me thinking about like how dialed I was, dialed in I was to art class was. Is how much you want to paint me? How much I want to paint Rachel. I'm really good at that. Yes.

But what really got me thinking about this was a dude named Mark Kistler. Mark fucking Kistler. Do you recognize that name? Do you recognize his brand at all? I mean, no, I don't think I do. Okay, Mark Kistler was basically an art educator who made a bunch of art lesson videos and had a couple PBS series

that we would watch in art class in elementary school and middle school i think where he would teach techniques um and he had two main shows that he did that taught these techniques the first was uh the imagination station which is sort of like a general like kid friendly like you know here's how these different here's how to do perspective here's how to do these different things his other show was called commander marks the secret city and this show fucking rips and i watched some episodes of it on youtube because there are some and i had like i'd forgotten about it it was like deep deep deep down in the memory banks like teetering on the edge of oblivion of me just forgetting about it forever um so secret

city what took place in this weird sci-fi fiction where mark hisler played commander mark who was like a space commander who was exploring these cities that he would draw and every sort of drawing would take place on this huge like whiteboard sized canvas and in each episode he would focus on a different technique like shading and and perspective and he would focus on a different technique like shading and and perspective and he would focus on teaching drawing 3d drawings with these like dynamic drawing techniques like forced perspective and and uh and and shading and things to sort of simulate 3d illustration he would do this by adding more and more things to this one enormous drawing of a secret hidden space that he would just kind of improvise as he went along. And there were other kind of like space creatures,

sci-fi creatures who would like chime in every now and then. And to me, as somebody who was not particularly artistic and was not very capable of, you know, recreating his techniques that he taught in these videos, but watching somebody draw a map of like this futuristic city from nothing or like this secret underground like tunnel world was to me like the coolest shit in the entire universe. Yeah, that sounds incredible. I have never heard of this, but I can see why it would appeal to you because a lot of what you do in early art classes, you just try and recreate things that exist. Yeah.

So this idea that you would use it for like world building, I can see it would be super cool. Um, and I would encourage you, like if you, if you're around my age range, the 33 year old sort of group and you had art classes in your early education, I encourage you to search on YouTube for Mark Kistler, because watching these videos really, really, really hurled me back in time in a way that very few things are capable of doing. I really like the idea of teaching art techniques rather than teaching just sort of general like, okay, kids, sit down, here's some red paint and some yellow paint and mix them together. And that's orange, you just got arted. of general like, okay, kids, sit down. Here's some red paint and some yellow paint and mix them together.

And that's orange. You just got arted. And more like, here's how you can have the tools to draw whatever the hell it is you want to draw. Yeah, I don't ever remember learning technique. I feel like the class was always like, here's a thing, make it.

And you were kind of like, well, I guess I'll see what I can do. And having those techniques be based on these fantasy and sci-fi worlds oh my god oh my god I loved it so so so much that's really brilliant yeah I always kind of worshipped uh well I don't want to say always I've definitely had some bad art teachers but I will say that that is a profession that I always admire oh for sure I mean you went to art camp didn't you yeah every summer yeah and so like you

definitely have a lot of exposure to this i will also say like i you know talking in general about art class i also did really like that just go make a thing thing because like i said like i didn't take a lot of pride in my academic work necessarily um i but like i remember very very distinctly when i started thinking about like early art classes like the projects that we would work on for like a whole week. Like, I remember very clearly making a paper mache mask of my face and painting it. And it looked so bad. Like it looked so terrible. And it hurt quite badly to take it off of my face after I sculpted it on there. But at the end, having this thing that I made, having this thing that I made, having this mask that I made and painted,

and it was unlike anything else anybody had ever made in the whole world and history of time. That was so appealing to me. That was so, so, so cool to me. And I would come home from school, my parents would be like, what did you do at school today? And I wouldn't remember like, oh, we read Badge of Courage.

We read Johnny Tremaine. I would be like, look at this shitty mask i made we would use uh clay not like on a sculpting table but just sort of like molding clay that you could then sort of like glaze and bake and have like a really rough shod little cup and again like i would be like hey i finally cracked uh you know the order of operations of math today. But screw that. Look at this tiny little cup I made. So no part of you ever like wanted to be an artist.

You just always kind of enjoyed it. Oh, I think there was definitely a part of and this was the great thing about having these art classes is that like everybody that I went to elementary school with doodled and everybody drew and everybody like no matter like where you landed on the like popularity social spectrum of that school, like you you were interested in some regard in art. And I don't think that's like something that you can accomplish with the way that art is currently kind of built into the core curriculum. There's the I'm sure I'm, you know, all about this because you're like in it. But a lot of art education in schools these days takes place in the form of arts integration, which is about like integrating visual or performance elements into the everyday curriculum of math and language and science and all of those things, which benefits in a lot of ways

the core curriculum, right? Because it makes students pay closer attention to math and science and engage with it in a way that maybe they wouldn't without that artistic thing. But it doesn't necessarily build up the art education side of things. It uses art to benefit core curriculum instead of the other way around. I have an exact example of things. It uses art to benefit core curriculum instead of the other way around. Now, I have an exact example of this. When I was in high school, we were told to make an alternate cover to the book Grapes of Wrath in our English class. And I remember being like, okay, not really understanding what was happening or why we were doing it. And just being like, well, this is fun.

Well, and ever since the emphasis was placed almost entirely on standardized test scores and No Child Left Behind came along and more or less made it prioritize that, arts education has been slashed, right? The budget for National Endowment of the Arts with regards to like how it would benefit schools has been slashed. And so there's not much room for art and music classes and stuff like that and that's where you get things like arts integration and saying like oh i hope that's enough and it's not because you don't make the thing and then that's what i'm saying like i i i was good i was a good test taker and i got good grades in school but nothing that i accomplished with regards to like my gpa ever came close to like my pride in making a shitty cup or a shitty mask. And I think that's kind of heartbreaking. This is kind of a two in

one because I genuinely love the things that I did in art class. But most of all, Mark Kistler out here, everybody, regardless of whether or not you grew up watching him, watch some of The Secret City. First of all, it's got that 80s pbs aesthetic that i am like so crazy about but also just like watching this weird mustachioed jumpsuit wearing spaceman like drawing basically like sci-fi fraggle rock is like absolutely the coolest shit in the whole world so that that is my first thing okay my first thing is a little themed in that it is the floating character balloons in parades. Okay. Is this a thing that happens much outside of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?

I mean, you know, there's the Christmas parade, too. Oh, sure. And then a lot of places will have like a July 4th parade. I don't know that they have the floating character balloons as much yeah sure um and given that these are big budget items i don't know that you'd find them in your home city but yeah i mean i was specifically thinking of the macy's thanksgiving day parade when i did this um i i always like i don't know if I'm watching a parade like that is what I'm looking for

absolutely you know like I enjoy a marching band and I will even tolerate sometimes like a reproduction of a Broadway number but what I'm looking for are those balloons those big balloons and especially when they go wrong

and I don't want anybody to get hurt I never want to see anybody get hurt. But watching Mr. Peanut just like dead, draped over a telephone pole or something is my absolute aesthetic. I have a great suggestion for you later in this segment. Okay. Because I looked up that very thing. Fantastic.

I was like, I want to talk about this. I was like, I also want to know the terrible things that have happened. I also want to know the terrible things that have happened. So the balloons are typically between 60 feet long and 30 feet high. And each balloon needs around 90 handlers. And there are all these rules around the handlers. They get training because of the enormity of these balloons. Sure.

So you have to be at least 120 pounds in good health and then you go to a training where you kind of learn about the like geometry and physics of balloon handling uh and then you test it out on the field and there's a team leader and then there's also uh a police officer that marches with each balloon in the parade. Okay. Just a quick question. Yeah. Never thought about this. There's 90 handlers. If as a prank, 89 of them coordinated to all let go at the same time,

would somebody go flying up into the heavens suspended on a big Pikachu? I mean, yes, probably. So they used to just be filled with air, but now it is a mix of air and helium. How would they float if it was just air well so they used to be attached to cranes on what's the point what's the point well i guess so in 1958 there was a helium shortage uh and so they yeah how is it just get get more helium. What? I don't know. It's in the air.

Just get helium. I don't know the history of helium. Hold on. Where's helium come from? Hey. Hey, wait a minute. If you had asked me, Griffin, where's helium come from, I would have told you helium tanks at the supermarket.

But then there's another step after that, isn't it? It doesn't generate inside those tanks. So where does the helium come from? I mean, my answer would be science, which I know doesn't necessarily answer your question, but feels comfortable to me. Like you put air in a centrifuge and you spin it and there's a little bit of helium at the, but what?

Where does helium come from? Nobody knows. Farms? Farms? Probably farms. It's like at the top of a corn silo. It's just it makes helium up there and you scoop it up in the tanks. Oh, Jesus.

Can we stop doing the episode for a second so I can Google where helium comes from? You probably should. So balloons started in 1927. They replaced, so the parade actually started three years earlier, and they used to put live zoo animals on floats. And then I think they realized there were several problematic things about that, moved to balloons, and started right away with the big ones. Just didn't even scale up slowly. Just went right for it., started right away with the big ones. Just didn't even, you know, scale up slowly. Just, just went right for it. Just big right away.

I just started imagining an alternate version of Miracle on 34th Street where like Santa's up there on the Santa float and everybody's like, wow, that guy really looks like a rhinoceros. Get out of the way. The giraffes, the giraffes are chasing the children. Why did we do this? Why did we think this was a good, look at that Santa. He looks so, oh, he's been eaten by four lions. They've drawn and cornered the Santa Claus.

So this kind of speaks to just kind of the nature of American history. When they first started creating these balloons, they did not develop a plan to deflate them so at the end of the parade for several years they just released them into the air that's so much worse than i thought you're gonna be like they shot them with guns they fired a big harpoon into them that might have been better uh they just they just released they just released them and and then they and they were like this is somebody else's good luck everyone this is gonna land on someone yeah so there were several things that led to them

stopping doing that um first uh felix the cat caught on fire. They released him and he got caught in a high tension wire and burst into flames. Cool, cool, cool. So that was one incident. Another was a Tomcat balloon, 60 feet large, was released. And a woman who was taking flying lessons ran into it. And they used to offer a reward to anyone who retrieved and returned the loose balloon. What? And so there was speculation that she was trying to get the award by running her plane

into it. Luckily, she was with a flight instructor who helped her kind of regain control of the plane. With a big inflatable cat wrapped around it? How do you come back from that? Don't know, but she was able to regain control of the aircraft, luckily. Oh, that's good, okay.

But yeah, so this was 1932 and they stopped just letting them go go that's so fucking funny god i wish i went okay again i don't want anybody to get hurt but the idea of at the end of the macy's thanksgiving day parade everybody just being like okay there goes the big yellow m&m and just like the reports of people in their apartment buildings like calling and saying i think i see a ufo oh no no that's snoopy yeah never mind the parade was yesterday i forgot yeah and also just like to put a reward out there you're encouraging people to like fly their planes into them yeah no it's a it's a flawed system that's why i'm saying i'm just strongly in the corner of

shoot these balloons to and make them die and go to balloon hell and then that way planes won't run into them i think that's the ethical decision uh uh so that i the example i wanted to give is exactly of a balloon that was uh put towards balloon hell uh and and i didn't want to give there are examples of people like actually getting injured like there are rules now around not doing these balloons on like high wind days and i think i think i've watched a parade before where they have delayed it and delayed it just to try and wait out the weather i i remember learning that if one of these balloons runs into like a light pole or a telephone pole, the telephone pole loses and falls right over and will hurt anybody nearby. Yeah.

So the example and there is a there's a four minute video of this is 1997 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with Barney the dinosaur. Oh, no. What do you do? So super high winds. There were several accidents during that parade. Barney the Dinosaur, so this four minute video shows from somebody's apartment building.

The dinosaur is kind of going back and forth on either side of the street. And you can hear the crowds just kind of like gasp as it hits like their side of the street. And you can hear the crowds just kind of like gasp as it hits like their side of the street. You can tell that they can't control it. And there are like people, like three handlers to a cord trying to like hold it down. Oh God.

Eventually it is knocked into a streetlight, which tears it open and starts to deflate. But the winds are still strong they can't get it down and so at the very end of the video there are police officers swarming the balloon with knives and stabbing holes in it to release the helium okay i do want to see that i do need to see that i ended up just there's a certain point uh when you're watching the video where you're just like all right i know what's going to happen let me just get to it like i was surprised that the video was only four minutes because for the first minute i'm like when when are we getting there so i didn't just send i i

don't know that i would have anticipated a julius caesar style assassination of barney you see the video uh at the end and it's's just these uniformed officers just triumphantly walking away from this corpse. With their hunt. Who made that call? With the NYPD, there's no way

they were prepared for this situation. So somebody would have been like, all right, everybody, you got knives? Get in there. This is our moment, lads. I think I'm going to disagree with you.

I think they have to have been prepared for that situation. There was a room at the police station where they're like, all right, y'all, you know the plan. We're going to have a lot of fun this year. We got a new yellow M&M floating up there. We're really excited about that. But knives at the ready. It was definitely kind of scary to watch but the thing that is most enjoyable is that when you think about the fact that it is barney the dinosaur and just what are you guys doing oh the children watching this and

watching their you know their like television hero just yeah just mortally wounded yeah over and over again yeah that must have been rough to watch uh hey can i steal you away yes thank you we got some gumbo prawns here do we this one This one is for future Sam, and it's from past Sam, who says, hey Sam, it's past Sam. When you're hearing this, you've either just started your last semester of your bachelor's degree, or you're finishing it up. Listen, you don't give yourself enough credit

for the work you've done, and I am so proud of you. I hope that everything is going well, and this message from your favorite people finds you happy. Congratulations on that bachelor's degree. You know, for the longest time, I didn't know what that meant. And my idea of what it did mean

was so cartoonishly wrong. I thought it was just like a thing for like single folks to go and learn a little bit of pre-med or whatever um but that ends up not being the case and uh i'm not a particularly intelligent man you make a good art project though oh do i though a nice uh a nice uh plastic grocery bag holder made out of, yeah, oh boy. Made out of a tissue box. This next message is for Micah.

It is from Andrew. We've come a long way since meeting as bar trivia teammates, and I'm so lucky to have your humor, depth, and kindness in my life. Your D&D adventures are epic, your art is inspiring, and your company brings me so much joy. Though our trivia team always lost, I've never felt more like a winner than when I'm spending time with you. I love you. That is so, so nice. That is so nice.

Guys, remember bar trivia? Yeah, you've got to tighten it up. You've got to tighten it up. It's all about finding your weaknesses. For us, it was sports. So we found ourselves a sportsman and his name was Chaz and nobody liked him. He was a total tool, a terrible person. But damn it, he knew so much about sports.

Yeah. Carried us to victory, didn't he? Mm-hmm. I miss Chaz. Whatever happened to him? Let me Google. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. He got run over by the Wienermobile.

That was pretty good. That was kind of good. He got run over by the Wienermobile. It's kind of good. I can remember as a child thinking it was odd that here was this can full of meat. I'm Jesse Thorne. This week on my show Bullseye, David Letterman on shame, regret, and canned hams. Is this the best delivery version of pork? That's this week on Bullseye

for MaximumFun.org and NPR. Can I do my second thing? Yes. I was kind of surprised we haven't talked about this. You did a small wonder once a long time ago on Lollapalooza, but I want to talk about music festivals

in general because I think I've talked about this on the show i'm suspended in this weird state of maybe being too acclimated to our current sort of uh situation where when i see like movies or tv shows where people are gathering somewhere it weirds me out it makes me like uncomfortable so maybe this seems like it it strangely bumps up against that yeah i know what you mean like i i follow the austin city limits instagram account and they will post pictures occasionally of previous concerts where people are just shoulder to shoulder and i think the

idea of standing that close to that many strangers like seems crazy to me now yeah i definitely fell off of this scene as i got as i sort of aged out of them i guess but there's a part of me now that like thinks about you know when quarantine has has ended and the pandemic is is you know more or less over this being like a pretty wild way to get back into the world yeah it can i just say it blows my mind that you went to Bonnaroo repeatedly. Yes, three times. It just seems so counter to a lot of your traits. Yes, it absolutely is.

That's the main thing I kind of wanted to talk about. Concerts in general make me a little bit anxious and a music festival sort of takes that anxiety and multiplies it by a billion especially something like a bonnaroo where uh you don't know like you're gonna sleep in a tent there's no electricity there's some some uh porta potties right like that's not great an acl and a you know a pitchfork music fest or like the other two that i've been to a bunch uh that that takes care of it a bit because in both those situations i can just go home and go to sleep but like something with like a camp out element is like, where am I going to poop in the morning?

Because I actually know the answer to that. And it's not a great place. And also, I'm going to have to wait like a half hour before I can get in it. I was going to say, Griffin and I have known each other for nine years now. And we have been camping once. And that was for a friend's birthday celebration. It did not go well. It did not go well. It did not go well.

And we do not own tents. We do not own sleeping bags. It is not something that either of us tend to choose willingly. But this was 2006. This was 19-year-old vivacious Griffin. The world was my oyster. No, I mean, I still definitely had those anxieties back then, right? Like it was not.

I was in a really weird place in 2006 right my mom died in 2005 basically as i was graduating high school and then my first year of college was a fucking mess like i was i had very little i was excited by the opportunity to kind of have a clean slate and be whatever i wanted to be which is not you know that is not exclusive to going through a sort of major shakeup. Like I was going through, like everybody goes through that, but I, for whatever reason,

like the limiters were taken off completely. And like, I lost my scholarship and I was just like, I made a lot of really shithead decisions, both in like how I was treating myself and the types of people that I was like, kind of, uh,

trying to assimilate into. Um, and by the types of people that i was like kind of uh trying to assimilate into um and by the summer of 2006 like i had kind of realized the error of my ways especially when i lost my scholarship uh and yet like this opportunity presented itself to go to bonnaroo and it was such a like wild adventurous thing the first concert i ever went to when i was when i was 18 was in 2005 yeah that's when i went and saw ben folds in in cleveland that. The first concert I ever went to was when I was 18, was in 2005. Yeah. Was when I went and saw Ben Folds in Cleveland. That was the first concert I ever went to.

And then like less than a year later, I went to a music festival in the middle of hot ass Tennessee and saw dozens of shows. And thinking back about it, like so much of the music that I still enjoy now that like informed my music taste growing up in my adult life,

I discovered at music festivals. Like the first time i really listened to fucking radio head yeah was when they headlined bonnaroo 2006 i was in the audience like so what are these guys all about and then like whoa oh man because they basically played all of okay computer front to back and i was like holy shit this is so good that is a great point. Because it's so accessible. You know, you buy this ticket and then you can walk, you know, 20, 30 feet and discover new music. And it makes it very easy for you to just, because that always happened to me. I would go looking forward to one or two shows, but the shows that I ended up loving the most were the ones that I wasn't expecting to see. Absolutely. It was eye-opening in a way that was far bigger than, oh, I found some new bands I

like. It was eye-opening in a way that like, this is a life experience that I didn't know that you could have. And I think that's what helped me sidestep a lot of the anxiety that I would have about being sort of way out of my element is that I was so far out of my element that I saw completely new elements that I didn't really know existed. It's the same way that I think that like travel is genuinely an important thing for people to do because seeing how the world operates outside of your bubble is like such an essential component of developing like empathy and open mindedness. This was kind of similar to that in a way because it was I was so uncomfortable and I was so in the unknown that like it was it genuinely was was sort of life altering in a way that like changed what I knew about the world and also changed what I thought about myself and like what I was capable of doing.

And also there was dope ass music everywhere. Like it is, it was such a cool environment. Um, and also like, there's a kind of thing that is like only works in that environment. Like there are certain concerts that are the flaming lips. I've been thinking a lot about lately and I've seen them in a music festival

setting twice. And both times was just like, I'd never seen music like that before. I'd never seen a concert like that before. and that's sort of the flaming lips is like whole like aesthetic i think the first time i saw them was at i think 2006 bonnaroo and they were playing on a headline stage and they passed boxes of laser pointers out through the audience i think i've told you about this before and they just pumped this fog machine out so that like you're shooting lasers through the fog and like making your own sort of like disco display but at one point the words shoot wayne appear on stage and he pulls

out this huge parabolic mirror and just like refracts all of the lasers back into the audience and you know stuff like that there's a lot of like side uh attractions at at a bonnaroo and at a other festivals but i feel like bonnaroo is sort of designed for it. Like the Sonic Forest, which is just this huge field of pylons that you walk through, and as you touch them, they make different noises.

And the Silent Disco, which has spread far beyond music festivals at this point, where there's a DJ playing into wireless headphones, and so everybody's dancing, but to the outside observer, it's completely silent, and everybody's dancing to nothing.

Those things are designed for very high people. I think people who are very high on drugs, which fortunately for me back in my late teens and early twenties, I was one of them. So it was like enjoyable in that way. But like stuff like that, I saw Beastie Boys play with Nas in like one of their like last performances. And that was like a thing I'm, you know, now in the future, like very grateful

that I had the chance to experience. And back then was like out of my fucking gourd. Yeah, you know, you're describing it and it's making me think about the fact too, like both you and I didn't get a chance to travel internationally until we were in our like mid 20s. You know, and so this was kind of an opportunity to experience this kind of feeling of travel you know in in in the united states like

there's something about going to a music festival that feels like going to a different country i think what we're talking about and i can probably generalize this feeling beyond travel or music festivals because i also recognize like i was uh you know i was very fortunate that i was able to do this i had like a part-time job that i was able to save up money and and spend basically all of it uh on bonnaroo um but there's this not to get too like out there but because this will for sure make it sound like i'm uh high at bonnaroo but there's like this weird subconscious collective like level that i feel like at a really good concert you can you can get on of just like this like everybody's kind of at the same place right now and there's this

like kind of unspoken energy that we're all tapped into and i think you can get into that with with travel like finding new parts of the the world and seeing like how other people deal with that energy or whatever but like at this kind of environment at a at a bonnaroo at a big you know arena music festival where everybody's into the same thing like you can get that at concerts everywhere i feel like at a good music festival it's designed to elicit that and that's such a special thing like that is such a a genuinely i scoffed at people who talked about that kind of thing going to like a fish concert or a grateful dead concert or whatever jam band shit and i still am not a big jam band fan but like i for sure get it i for sure get it after going to something like this and i would

encourage like anybody going through you know a particularly transitional period of your life to like do some weird shit that you don't think you would like at all that has the potential to be like huge for you in that way um so like again like the thought of going to a bonnaroo now at 33 like is not appealing at all the thought of having two kids and trying to make something like that work is uh i can't process the math behind it uh but like an acl like a music fest that is more sort of approachable and uh i don't know infrastructurally sound is something that i am i didn't give a shit about last year or a couple years ago but now like I miss being a part of that sort of collective, you know, subconscious just sort of realm. Yeah. Well, yeah. And that like creative space.

Yeah, sure. Like that's, that's a very cool, cool thing to be a part of. Yeah. What is your second thing? My second thing is short. Martin short. So fucking funny. uh martin short it's so fucking funny uh no my my second thing is is very unique to me probably but i imagine some listeners will relate and that is in-laws oh yeah i um as everybody who listens probably knows i'm i am pretty fortunate uh and then i have a a good group of in-laws kind of in my corner. But I think for me, as an only child with a pretty small family,

it was really exciting to be a part of this family and have the opportunity to be an aunt and to have brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law and all that stuff. And I think, you know, it's like people always kind of talk about their in-laws in kind of a negative way. And I can understand why people would have that circumstance. Because a lot of times you are with people that have very different beliefs and outlooks than you do. people that have very different beliefs and and you know outlooks than you do uh but for me it was just something that i just always felt very fortunate for to have that like bigger family kind of baked into getting married yeah it's kind of it almost reminds me of the stuff i was just talking about of like whenever you do a sleepover at somebody one of your friend's houses you're like oh this is how your family does things this is like a very permanent version of that that can be very exciting when it's not like terrible yeah yeah and to have

these kind of like traditions baked into it and also to have this kind of resource to find out more about your partner yeah i mean that was like the first time that griffin brought me home for christmas i just remember just basically interviewing your dad be like bring me all the griffin materials well i also feel like there's a certain very common type of in-law that like is so excited to dump that on people like uh all of my family and yeah uh like the smurls like i feel like mary smurl uh justin's-in-law, like rolled up on you the first time she saw you. Like, you've got to see this dude as Horton in Seussical. I'll change your shit.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, that's another example of what a like unique circumstance I had was that I was not ever tested. You know, like the in-laws were not like demonstrate your worthiness. Yeah, sure. It was more like oh my gosh griffin brought somebody home this person you were being viciously tested you may not have realized it because you did really well on the test but oh my you were on the rain slick precipice of just being completely jettisoned but you did so good you did so good. You did so good. We did. I mean, there were board games involved, like in,

in, in some ways that, that could have been considered a test, a crucible of gaming. The thing that I didn't really know about until I did research is the whole concept of in-law and like what it actually refers to. Oh yeah. So I always assume that I think a lot of people assume

that it is just like you enter into this like legal partnership with your partner when you get married and that gives you legal ties to their family. But in-law actually started as a reference to canon law, which is the church's set of rules around who you can and can't marry. Whoa! So the idea is that in the Catholic Church, for example, you couldn't marry a non-blood relative of your spouse

if they passed away. You couldn't marry a non-blood relative? So your spouse's siblings, parents, children, you weren't allowed a non-blood so your spouse's siblings parents children's you weren't you weren't allowed to marry them okay so so father-in-law was was a way of saying like hey going forward if this is your things don't work out like this i never knew that yeah it also used to refer to step-siblings, step-parents. So a father-in-law could either mean your spouse's father or your mother's new husband. So people used to say, like, if your mother got remarried, that that would be your father-in-law.

But they've since stopped saying that as much. Because it's very confusing. It is very confusing. The earliest written mention comes in 1894, an article that states the position of the in-laws is often not very apt to promote happiness. So yeah, I was trying to do more research on this and a lot of it is just like surviving your in-laws or like ways to approach your in-laws successfully.

And I will say another circumstance we have that is i think frustrating particularly now being so far away you know if we were in a everybody loves raymond situation and it was like a that's the dream like an everyday popover yeah i might feel different uh the distance think, makes it seem more special to me because it, you know, is usually like happy circumstances that we get to see our extended family. But yeah, I just, I feel really fortunate for it. I think it is a way to kind of exponentially grow your family. And if you're lucky, they are people you like being around. Yeah, absolutely.

I love my in-laws too. I have to say, I feel like they listen. But Dave and Linda are crushing it it they keep it so real like i don't have any brothers or sisters so like when you met my parents and like you know a few of my aunts and uncles like that that's it no you got a way better deal it's just for the money for the money you got way more sheer tonnage of in-law when i think about how complicated it might be trying to navigate all the time, if I also had siblings and extended family, it would be tricky for us to kind of manage. But as it is, it's pretty stress-free, which is nice. Hey, can I tell you what our friends at home are talking about?

Yes. Well, how about this one uh from anna this one's from anna who says i recently taken up tap dancing again by following video tutorials and my small wonder is getting all the steps right in a combo for the first time i bet that's cool i bet that feels real good i love. You know, so I took dance classes when I was a kid for a very long time. And tap shoes, I feel like my family was always worried would damage the floor in some way. And so it was very hard to practice at home because it was like, are you tapping? God, you got to.

But I understand, like, you go to Savion Glover's house, and it's like a bomb went off in there. It's horror. It's like he's been sword fighting in there. It's untenable. of everything. For example, an entire poo-poo platter or my favorite so far, canned clam chowder. It makes me laugh very much and reminds me of old YouTube. One man,

one slightly disgusting trick, less than five minutes per video. We're gonna watch these tonight. Yeah, we have found our new disgusting food-related fix. Chef Club ain't getting it done anymore.

Chef Club's sold out. You know what's weird is that it's predictable. Griffin and I can narr anymore. Chef Club's sold out. You know what's weird is that it's predictable. Griffin and I can narrate a Chef Club video in like three seconds in and I've realized now like that makes it less fun.

Yeah. I know what's gonna happen next. I know where they're gonna put the cheese. They're gonna stuff the gushy cheese inside the weird chicken apple pie and like that's yawn. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song Money money won't pay you'll find a link to that in the episode description and thanks to

maximum fun for having us on the network yeah thank you to maximum fun for airing a very special wonderful promo that we just recorded yes uh and i would encourage everybody to go and check out some new shows. I think it's a good time now to just spice up your podcast ritual. Oh, absolutely. I mean, don't stop listening to us. That would supplement us with more great podcasts from MaximumFun.org. Oh, and speaking of McElroy products, if you have not bought a ticket for the the bim bam sawbones live show

yes still time there's still time you can find uh links to tickets and everything at the mackroy family.com and uh it's gonna be a lot of fun it'll be really weird we haven't done a live show since march so who knows who knows what's gonna happen but? But we'll have fun. I think that's it. And we're going to stop doing the show in just a few seconds now. But before we get there, it's very important that we tell you. Oh, nope. Here it comes. Bye. Bye.

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