Wonderful! - Wonderful! 161: Ricolaaaaaahhhh

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Griffin's favorite pump-up holiday song! Rachel's favorite campfire food! Griffin's favorite ubiquitous freeware! Rachel's favorite magazine profiles!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.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. It's beginning to look a lot like podcasts in the studio. And what does podcast look like? Is it wrapping paper

and scissors on the ground? Rachel makes fun of my mess. It doesn't make me feel the best. But I still love her despite how she makes me feel. I'm sorry uh this is uh this is wonderful show we talk about things we like things we're into like the current state of my office and its orderliness which is not great uh i may have wrapped some anniversary present up here a big

one i think i did a pretty bang up job i don't want to brag, but this is my small wonder. I'm going to go ahead and hop right into it. I like wrapping presents. When you get that good fold over the corners. Yeah. Oh my God. That's really nice. That's so satisfying. I always think of this throwaway line from an episode of The Office where Pam is talking about wrapping presents and she says that you only should use three pieces of tape and you can see how that's possible yeah and it is a goal to strive for from I'm usually a fiver you fold it all the way over lengthwise and then you only need one piece on the bottom but then for each sort of folded up corner I use two on each side so for a total of five okay so I'm the problem I'm what they made the movie Fern Gully about

because of my insatiable appetite for adhesive strips. Do you have a small wonder? Why don't you go first? I just did. I talked about wrapping presents. That was your thing? I can't do a second one. I could.

Let me think. I've been playing so much chess lately. And there's a move you can do in chess called forking, which is like you put a piece in a place where it could capture two pieces. And so they can't save both of them. I like that. Yesterday I was playing a game against a buddy and I forked three pieces at the same time. And it was just like, how do you want me to do you, bud?

Oh, it's good. Good. Bad. Are there comments in the chess app or you can be like how you like that yeah i mean you can chat i usually don't because i am not confident enough in my skills to do so but man fork in three pieces at once you oh it is hard to beat that yum yum i'm just gonna say the the house on our street that has the 18 foot tall snowman. I guess just in general,

huge fucking outdoor holiday decorations is a real theme for 2020. Because, you know, everything requires reservations now. We've had difficulty finding an opportunity to bring Henry to holiday lights and decorations. But on our very street, you can walk a few houses down

and there is a giant 18 foot frosty the snowman and it's like it's free entertainment it's free it's sad but that's entertainment for us as we take our son on a walk he sees a big snowman he's like cool and we go home um this is probably gonna be a bit of a short one we're on a bit of a tight uh timetable here but i wanted to start because it's my turn and i wanted to talk about this holiday holiday theme we're going right in for it is uh carol of the bells you know that one i do why do you like it or do you not like it? No, I was just, I was excited to hear you. Replicate it. Do you know what that's called? I learned a piece of musical terminology.

I've probably heard it before, but I didn't know what it meant. It's an ostinato. It's like a phrase that is repeated like constantly throughout a song. So I guess technically like under pressure, the bass line, the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom is an ostinato. Or like the Meow Mix commercial. Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. Yeah, I guess so. Sure.

But for that four note ostinato goes throughout like the whole thing. And y'all know what it is. I mean, I probably learned what this song is mostly. I think most of the sentiment we all feel for it is thanks to Kevin McAllister and his many machinations uh the version by uh Mannheim Steamroller is the the most beloved version but I've always sort of conceptually enjoyed Carol of the Bells because it doesn't sound like any other Christmas carol or Christmas song at all like the idea of someone like I'm gonna write a Christmas song but let's make it extra spooky and weird and tense. But what I found out in my research

is that that's not really how it went down. The melody of the song was written by a Ukrainian composer whose name was Mikola Leontovich in 1914. And he was commissioned to write a song based on Ukrainian folk music by this big Ukrainian choir. And so he did all this research into old Ukrainian folk stories and and he found this four-note ostinato, and he liked it. So he just composed this entire song around it. So this song that he wrote was called Shchedryk. And it's based on this folk story that was sort of all about the new year, which in like pre-Christianity Ukraine, before

they, you know, got on the Greg gregorian calendar i guess was in they celebrated that in spring so it happened in april so this was an april time springtime sort of song without any lyrics uh and the ukrainian national chorus in 1919 brought it all over europe and america and toured with it and i guess that's where uh peter wilhowski heard it who wrote the lyrics to the song he heard it was like oh that's a good song. I think I'll take it. I don't think I knew there were lyrics. The merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas. Yeah, I guess you're right.

So he wrote these lyrics to the song. He rearranged it for orchestra because he was the arranger for the NBC Symphony Orchestra, right? So he wrote these lyrics to it. And the song, like the melody, reminded him of handbells, so hence the whole title. And because the lyrics of the song, specifically the Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas, it just kind of now his version was a Christmas song. But it wasn't that when it was originally composed. And this song got a lot of play because he was the arranger for the NBC Symphony Orchestra. It was everywhere, and that is how it sort of became part of the canon of American holiday songs. And what's busted is he trademarked, he copyrighted the lyrics, and he published it,

even though in the Ukraine, it had been published almost 20 years earlier. I guess everybody just kind of wasn't paying attention to that or was okay with that but that is why to this day the lyrics to that song are copyrighted the melody of the song is public domain oh because they still uphold the copyright on that song isn't that wild hear the song more than the lyrics yes maybe that's that's why manheim steamroller is coming at you with that pure uh that pure orchestral version metallica wouldn't let that no way not at all uh so yeah manheim steamroller released the most sort of known version of it on their 1988 album a fresh air christmas which is it sold like six million copies it's like one of the best-selling holiday albums ever recorded um and yeah i'll play it i

guess to wrap up but before i played it i wanted to point out this like cool, weird music illusion that exists in it that I also found while I was researching it. That like melody, that ostinato that goes throughout the whole thing gives it a flexible time signature where different if you play it in three four time and certain bells play it in six eight time and as a result when you're listening to it you can focus on either way of like either time signature they're like one two three one two three or one two three four five six you can hear it either way and it works it's i forget the term for it but it's like a weird thing so um yeah i thought that was really interesting and now uh here's a little bit of Carol of the Bells. what's your first thing uh my thing is also kind of festive although it has a longer shelf life i'd say in this season and that is s'mores okay no you don't think it's festive who has christmas s'mores who has it's time for the hanukkah s'mores like who does i'm saying it's like a winter a winter time i guess so but you also

go camping in the summertime yeah that's true i was just trying to segue. No, I feel you. I feel you. It's good. You can say this. Carol of the Bells is fire. And speaking of fire, s'mores? S'mores? This is one of those things that I couldn't believe we hadn't talked about before. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Because it's such a perfect little treat. It's good.

And it's easy to kind of forget how good a s'more is until you have one. And then you're just like, there is nothing this good in the world. I think, um, I think for me, it's, I think about how messy it is and sticky it is. And I just think this is not worth it.

And then I eat one. I'm like, this is so fucking, this is so hugely worth it. Uh, yeah, I, uh,

I was thinking about this the other day because a lot of times you can buy like dessert treats and some more flavor. Yes. We got a series of fancy donuts the other day. That's true. Like a flight of donuts, one might say. Well, they were anniversary donuts. Let's call them what they were, which was Rachel and Griffin's sad anniversary dessert donuts that we had.

And there were a lot of uh donuts options that had graham cracker on it true i said oh man i wish they had a s'more one they didn't yeah we also get uh we were occasionally getting these little what are they called icebox pies like these little cups of like s'more leavings that's real good uh so i did a little a little history on uh the s'more and it's interesting because it's a combination of a few things yes you know and when i was reading about it a lot of people weren't talking about the chocolate they're like chocolate's chocolate there's no story there yeah uh but i found some information about graham crackers and marshmallows that i thought was kind of interesting okay hit me uh So the very first marshmallows came from a plant

called Althea officinalis. And it was the root and the leaves of the plant would create this like white stretchy marshmallow. Gross. Kind of stuff. And it was used to help with inflammation and as a laxative. Fantastic.

I imagine that's a side effect of most stuff you can rip out of plants. That's true. That's a fair point. They used to take it and also make it into a lozenge to kind of soothe the throat. And excite the bowels. Yeah, right. It was probably like those like olestra snacks where it was like, don't have more than five of these. I'll be honest.

I can think of many times in my life where I could use a throat lozenge. I'll be honest. Right now, I wouldn't mind having a laxative throat lozenge. Where is that at? I went to commercial where the guy's on the mountaintop with the horn. He's like, Ricola, I gotta go. Where's the bathroom? I'm on top of a mountain.

Oh, no! I mean, he's got that big horn with the open end. You're saying he's gonna poop into the horn, Rachel McElroy? I'm saying, in an emergency, all horns serve as toilets. Rachel! I know, this is not the kind of humor. This is so off-brand for you. So wildly off-brand.

But, so this is, like, very labor-intensive and expensive to do. So by the end of the 19th century, they started using gelatin because it was, you know, kind of approximately the same texture. Sure. And you can make gelatin taste like a lot of things. Graham crackers. This, I feel like, has to have been covered on a sawbones. Although I'm not 100% on that, but that but oh that they were like a digestive thing well it's a little more sinister uh-oh uh an early 19th century presbyterian minister named sylvester graham believed that humanity was on its way to collapse due to a like sex obsession and so he in the 19th in the 19th

sorry did you say 1969 the summer of love no you said the 19th century no simply not if only he knew uh yeah no kidding show him some show him a fucking episode of riverdale like what's up now pal uh and he thought that the food we ate was contributing to our need to have sex right he said uh that for example a steak dinner with wine uh could increase the excitability of the genital organs depends on the size of the steak, just sort of anecdotally speaking. That's a good point. Me and a big, big old, just gut full of red meat,

not at my most randy, let's say. So he tried to find a food item that he thought would curb that desire. And so the graham cracker was invented, which he named after himself. I will say this. I think he crushed it. I don't think of graham crackers

as being a particular aphrodisiac in any way. No, it's true. He created a boner neutral food. I bet the s'more would just outrage him. The s'more, the lascivious stretching of the marshmallow and the dripping gooey chocolate. Oh, my. Do you need to go eat some snake?

Some snake? Some steak to calm down. I think I might go actually eat a snake. That would probably do it. Sure. So the combination of everything together actually first debuted in a 1927 Girl Scout guidebook. Okay.

The book was all about, you know, being a good Girl Scout, but there was a suggestion. A troop leader named Loretta Scott Crew called for a recipe that she called Some More. I figured that that was probably the etymology which was 16 graham crackers eight bars of chocolate and 16 marshmallows uh we're not sure exactly when it went from some more to s'more probably i mean somebody was in a hurry i can figure that one out um but yeah and then of course you know there are like Malamars and Moon Pies that have kind of a similar vibe. But the s'more in its proper form was actually a creation of the Girl Scouts. Do you like a Moon Pie?

Oh, no. I think I'm looking for the graham cracker in the Moon Pie. The Moon Pie is all, it's like very spongy, like the whole thing, top to bottom. Okay. I legally, I feel like being from West Virginiaia being from appalachia i can't say anything bad about the moon pie is that the origin of the moon pie no we just really liked moon pies that and rc cola were like a huge thing the chocolate isn't really chocolatey as i recall which is part of it like there's a suggestion of chocolate but i like that i like the texture of a

s'more because you're getting like a little more oh it's no substitute for a s'more but i like a moon pie a lot yeah yeah is there anything else nope that's it now i want a moon pie so now we have to talk about what we're going to do about that i guess a s'more would also do it but we don't have the stuff for that i don't think i mean we could put that together with what what? We don't have marshmallows, I don't think. We just whip some eggs with sugar and mayonnaise? We don't, but we have plants, so let's just dig up some. There's got to be some white stuff in some of these plants. Hey, can I steal you away?

Yes. All right, we got a bunch of jumbotrons here we're catching up making up for lost time so let's start doing them here's one for shane and it's from ashley who says shane you are my sunshine when skies are gray my partner in quarantined binge watching crime my favorite everything and the most wonderful part of all my days have a fantastic birthday and don't forget to take your vitamins. I love you always, Ashley. P.S. I will be replaying this episode of Wonderful for all your birthdays to come.

Love you. That's so smart, Ashley. You gotta work smarter, not harder. It is smart, but not technically allowable, unfortunately. It is illegal. And let me say, this timestamp, Shane, this one is only for your 2020 birthday. And any other, it doesn't apply to any other ones.

And Ashley, if you want that, you gotta pay up. Can I read the next one? Please. This is for Claire. It is from TyTy. Claire, watching you work in your new garden has been one of the most wonderful parts of this year.

I'm so proud of your new green thumb and excited to eat those dang beans and peas. You and our shitty kitties, Nina and Nugget, fill my heart with joy in a tumultuous, frequently unwonderful world. Let's get Thai and finish DS9. I love you, Tyler.

DS9, what do you think that stands for? I was assuming you would know. I do. Oh. This is a nerd test. Prove your credentials. Deep Space Nine. Yeah.

I did it. Yeah. I did it. Babe, congrats. Thank you. That's so choice. You fucking dick. I'm going to add this to my LinkedIn.

Nerd. Anyway, here's another message. This one's for Ara. It's from jude who says my darling era thank you so much for all the joy and love we've shared in the last three years i never want to imagine my life without you and i hope i never have to here's to many more years of laughing cooking and growing together and snuggles with our bunny if this airs in december happy birthday and anniversary all my love forever your pumpkin jude uh that's just economical right there you get that birthday you get that anniversary you're sneaking up on the holidays

that's good plan to have all that stuff to me and rachel anniversary on the 7th we get that slammed right up against christmas we make it we got it so tight if only our birthdays were in december too we could really just sort of cram it. And just have a joyless rest of the year. But boy, howdy, the anticipation for the big one. Ooh, that would be nice. This next message is for Mike. It is from Adina. You're the best partner out there for me

and I couldn't be happier about how far we've come or what a strong team we make. Thank you for being so wonderful, loving, and supportive. I can't believe how much fun we're still having after seven months of quarantine, and that makes me incredibly excited for the fun life we have ahead of us. I love us.

I love us, too. That's such a nice way of saying that. That is such a lovely way of saying that, and I'm glad you're having fun after seven months of quarantine. What do you think the secret is? Do you think's um twister twister you think yeah just straight up twister i think after seven months of playing twister every night you probably have some pretty wild homebrew homebrew rules some additional sort of secret dots for the forbidden twister dots

you know what i mean do you know what i mean i mean i yeah i assume so you know you didn't actually have to wink because this is an autumn i didn't want to confuse you yeah well hello i'm renee culvert hi i'm a Alexis Preston, and we're the hosts of Can I Pet Your Dog? And we got breaking news. We got an expose. All the beans have been spilled via an Apple podcast review that said this show isn't well researched. Well, yeah, no doubt.

Of course it's not. Not since the day we started has it been well researched. Guessing and anthropomorphizing dogs is what we do. The Can I Pet Your Dog promise is that we will never do more than 10 seconds of research before telling you excitedly about any dog we see. I'm gonna come at you with top 10 enthusiasm, minimal facts. We're here for a good time, not an educated time. So if you love dogs and you don't love research, well, you know what? Come on in to Can I Pet Your Dog podcast

every Tuesday on Maximum Fun Network. My second thing is gonna be very, very fast because I'm looking at the notes I wrote for it and it's mad fucking boring. So you got to be honest with yourself sometimes. The thing I want to talk about was Microsoft Paint. For reasons that will become clear to anybody who watches our upcoming Candle Nights special, which we'll have more details about here at the end of the episode, because I don't have them in front of me, but it's going to be very, very fun. I think it's on the 19th.

That feels right, but we'll have more details that will be for sure accurate at the end of the episode. I did a lot of illustrating this past week or so. Not in Microsoft Paint. I think I did it in Procreate, which is like the unfortunately titled uh apple like illustration app that's very very fun to mess around with but that got me thinking about my long history with digital illustration most of which took place in ms paint uh i just ms paint has been included in some form or another in every windows release sometimes like a third-party drawing app uh and then as a more uh it was paintbrush for a while and it still is there today on windows 10 but all the way back in 1985 with

windows 1.0 there was a a paint app uh included with the with the operating system uh and back when it came out in 1985 it was this third-party app with uh one bit monochrome graphics so you know not the not the best not the most sophisticated stuff at all but it was free it came with the thing and it was probably everybody's first exposure to digital art which is really cool and then as time went on you got windows 3.0 they were like hey here's color and everybody's like whoa that's huge another big thing was like graphical formats which is like not something that we think about today, but back in the day it was actually super important.

Like now we got JPEGs and people are like, oh shit, I've heard about JPEGs. I used to use it a lot for cropping. Oh yeah. Back before the platforms would give you the option to do that, like in the platform itself, I would open up a JPEG in the paint and I would crop it and then I would save it again. Yeah, I mean, things like importing actual images was a feature that had to be added to paint I would open up a JPEG in the paint and I would crop it and then I would save it again. Yeah.

I mean, things like importing actual images was a feature that had to be added to paint as it went along alongside color. In 95, you could make your own color palettes, which is, of course, like now it's a huge deal. Now it doesn't have to be these bright neon sort of primary colors. We can make it be whatever we want. And then you got like interface improvements more format compatibility things like transparency options which you don't think about as being like a thing that had to be introduced uh they added 3d support when like windows 10 came out uh in

2017 i really love this microsoft added an alert whenever you launched paint that said like hey this is going to be deprecated soon meaning they're not going to keep it updated and it won't be included automatically you can like download it from the microsoft store but it won't have this like continuous support and that alert stayed on whenever you launched paint for two years until they updated the app in 2019 and just removed the alert because they reversed their decision and we're like we can't take we can't drop paint it's fucking pain we gotta have paint they love paint um yeah i mean i've talked about my lack of artistic ability a lot i think very recently uh on this show but i always felt very

empowered with microsoft paint because of simple things like drawing and uh dragon drawing shapes like hey now you can draw perfect geometric shapes and fill them in and not worry about it that's why i think most of my time with ms paint i used to like make maps for like different made up board games or fantasy bullshit uh that i was on at the time um there was something just really there was something very reassuring about knowing that it was going to be on every windows pc and now i guess i can sort of expand this topic to like all of the windows freeware stuff i think back back a lot to my mom was a secretary at our church that we went to. So there were a lot of days, especially during the summer, where I would just like be at the church building for my mom's entire workday.

Right. And, you know, you can play hide and seek or explore, you know, just poke around the church and get lost in weird closets and stuff for a while but that gets boring after a bit but i knew if i sat down at one of the computers at the church when it was somebody else's i could paint i could play minesweeper soft uh solitaire i could play some fucking ski free i could play some jazz ball i could play free cell Free cell I could play some Space Cadet 3D pinball Which was the real shit And I I think was included In like 95 on There are people right now

Who know exactly What I'm talking about I do not think You are included among them Yeah I just like I like the idea Of just like Seeing a computer

And saying like I can paint on that If I need to Yeah I did a lot of that During I would produce The newscasts For the radio station At Marshall And to try and make lot of that during, I would produce the newscasts

for the radio station at Marshall. And to try and make the news anchors laugh, I would draw like really terrible, silly drawings on the monitor and then like suddenly switch between windows. So it would just appear and try and make the anchors laugh while they're in the middle of the newscast.

Like, I don't know. I have a lot of fond Microsoft Paint memories. Wow. And it's free and ubiquitous. i think that's pretty magical it is and also not very interesting to talk at length about um so yeah what's your second thing uh my second thing is i don't know it'll be interesting to kind of see how you experience this. Oh, boy. It is the what's in my bag concept made popular by Us Weekly. Okay. It's the idea, and I don't know if you've seen this or not, but they take a celebrity and they, like, quote,

like dump the contents of their purse out and you see the products they're using and what they're carrying around. We've glanced off this a couple times. I think I've talked about like the concept of your loadout, like your all day carry scenario. And then I think there was a music magazine or blog that did something like this with like. Oh, the records. The records. Meeple Music the music i think did that but this is i i will uh admit a different sort of experience from that yeah so i wanted to give you an example so this is uh busy phillips from 2018

fuck yeah what's busy working with uh and so she's got some uh some goldfish crackers in a fruit pouch i mean she's got kids it's not like for her oh well still uh there's you know some earrings and then some kind of carefully uh curated products you know like a hand sanitizer, a lip balm, a mascara. And then there's just loose slime in a small plastic tub. I'm glad you reminded me that Busy Phillips has kids or else I would have gone from like, that's so dope to like loose slime. At the time she had a 10 year old and a five year old. So we recently, quick sidebar,

went through the slime crucible because Henry got a clay face, big clay face action figure from Batman that came with slime that would like dump out of his mouth. And he did that exactly once. And it like stuck to the cardboard that we were playing with it on. And he didn't seem, he did not seem to enjoy it very much.

And so we were able to throw it away and he didn't really notice. So I feel like we've, he did mention it again though. He mentioned it once. He was like, Hey, clay face slime. What happened with it?

And we had to remind him, like, you got it on the cardboard and were grossed out by it. And so we threw it in the garbage can. We do have a Venom toy coming soon, though, with a similar accessory. Stop it. Don't package. It's fucked up to package slime with cool action figures. Because our son likes cool action figures. And you guys are trying to backdoor slime like into our house and lives.

It's terrible. Yeah, I'm glad you reminded me of the all day carry thing because I do feel like there's a similar thing at play here where I like this feature because there is this idea that there is this like perfect combination of goods

that will address all of your needs and can be compact enough to carry around with you oh for sure you know um part of it is definitely that part of it is like a voyeurism of just like oh yeah like what does darcy carden carry around uh real quick what does darcy carden carry around i mean i could tell you she is a feature on here all right i mean I'm curious. I think whatever she's on is probably some pretty cool shit. Maybe not as cool as the goldfish and fruit snacks and slime of Busy Phillips, which is a truly a fantastic inventory. Okay.

So this is from March 2020. Yeah. Oh boy. Hot off the presses. Looks like she's got some Trident gum. Perfect. Some gummy vitamins, which you'll appreciate. Whoa, in the bag?

In the bag. Damn, that's a new one. That's bathroom candy. But now it's what? Bag candy. I love it. She has a spray-painted rubber dinosaur that she got at her sister's wedding. Okay. Some earbuds. Got to. spray-painted rubber dinosaur that she got at her sister's wedding okay some earbuds um and then you

know some eye drops and hand sanitizer uh some mascara yeah i imagine everybody's bag contains hand sanitizer after march of 2020 yeah that's a pretty much a guarantee uh so the history of this kind of feature goes back to the 90s. I found an example. So there's this great article, this racked article, where they talk about how this has kind of evolved over time. And they talk about a 1995-17 interview with Claire Danes. Where they were like, dump your fucking bag out. And she was like, what? Where she had in her backpack a tape of a song

that her boyfriend Ben Lee wrote about her. Oh, man. Wait, were they together? I guess so. They're not still together, are they, Claire Danes and Ben Lee? Okay. No. No, this was a 90s thing.

Okay. I also found a 2002 Spin article on Fiona Apple. Oh, gosh. Where she was carrying around, quote, a bag of jewels and ribbons. That sounds good. That sounds good. That sounds right. And then, quote, lots of empty card packets from when David Blaine was around.

So I guess she was with David Blaine for a while. These are little time capsules. I just love the idea of wherever David Blaine goes, he leaves a trail of empty card packets in his wake. She was carrying around his refuse? Like at the gas station, maybe the attendant wants to see a trick and he's like, all right, hold on.

And he pulls out one of his 37 packs of cards that he has. Or he just rips it open and looks for a hollow foil Charizard in there. And he's like, no, again, no Charizard. He throws him away. So Us Weekly is the one I'm referring to because they put it in every magazine it's always towards the front uh and you can find all of these archived online which was

how i was able to find them on such short notice fantastic uh it is also definitely like a marketing thing like oh yeah jennifer garner like showed her neutrogena products uh and then uh jessica alba showed her like honest company products like oh hey you know i i mean i'm sure they do carry that stuff around but all right there's also katie perry had one of her own perfumes in her purse supposedly which i think is kind of delightful if i made a a scent i would i would carry it around for sure yeah yeah it's it's all about you know spreading the brand the brand around it can also be kind of quirky and fun uh and one of the examples was nikki minaj carrying five thousand dollars in loose cash which i just love like in case you know she needs to shower herself in it or purchase, you know, a lot of, you know, gum.

I come at this from a different way where I love seeing that shit for like music producers and like traveling, you know, digital artists and stuff like that. Or like journalists who carry around like, I want to see what laptop they're using and what like headphones they're using and what moleskin they're using. Like that shit I'm super into. Yeah, I feel like it is like equal parts voyeurism and also like someone tell me what a grown up has. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The person that wrote this Racked article recognized kind of a trend in this what's in your bag story, which is there is a quirky personal item, a healthy snack, beauty products, which combine both kind of high end and low end. So, you know, like a chapstick and a super expensive something.

And then something related to either your kid's husband or boyfriend. Interesting. Which is almost universally true. Yeah true when you look at these. There's a new thing out there, which I'm not as familiar with, but through Instagram, there is something called a top shelfie, which is a what's in your medicine cabinet. No, no. I know, right? Y'all don't get to see that.

Y'all don't get to see my, I don't have a medicine cabinet, but I do have two drawers that I don't want nobody looking in to see my two bottles of fucking eczema cream side by side. Y'all don't get to see that. That's my secrets. So the thing about this, it's this site called Into the Gloss.

And if you use the hashtag itg top shelfy you're kind of competing to get featured on their site who the fuck wants people to see their medicine cabinet this is the thing so it is a bunch of people trying to be influencers and they have all the like top end facial creams and moisturizers and i am now It's not like, here's my three-year-old Band-Aids. As a protest, I'm going to send a picture of my drawer, which contains, just off the top of my head, several empty pill caddies, some poorly maintained electric razors.

Some NyQuil that expired in 2016. Yes. Nose hair clippers that have needed new batteries for about three months. Because of the truly astonishing amount of play those bad boys get. This one appeals to me a little less because it is so deliberately curated. Yeah, of course. Not only does this website kind of screen for the products, but it also screens for the person.

So they're looking specifically for a person who is not wearing a lot of makeup and has some kind of like romantic backstory so they can feature them and the lifestyle that they've created. But yeah, I was kind of fascinated by that, that this has evolved into a new thing. And of course, Instagram would be the perfect place to do this. So yeah, so this is one of those things,

like I have thought about it for a while, bringing it to wonderful, but it's kind of embarrassing because it's like, while I'm not hugely into celebrity culture, like I definitely was interested in knowing, you know, what kind of gum, you know, Madonna chews. And it's surprisingly zebra stripes.

Hey, real quick, I want to tell you what our friends at home are talking about. I know we're out of time. But Emma says, hi, y'all. Something I found wonderful recently is the YouTube channel Lockpicking Lawyer. He reviews locks and how easy they are to pick. The comment section is immaculate, including absolutely destroying the locks that take a short amount of time to be picked. It's so satisfying and so fun

to laugh at something so innocuous. I've seen some of these. It pops up in my YouTube recommendations. And it's fun. Sometimes he gets sent like locks in the mail from somebody who's like, you'll never break this fucking lock. And he breaks it in like a second and a half.

Ben says an album, Gay Story by In Love With A Ghost, so great to de-stress slash sleep slash meditate slash vibe to. Wanted to include this one because I recently did my Spotify year in review thing and this album is I think my number one. It's a great little chill sort of lo-fi album that I

love In Love With A Ghost and I also highly recommend this album Gay Story. You can find it on a lot of places but it's real nice. Nice to vibe out to. Hey, okay. A lot of places but it's it's real nice nice to vibe out to hey okay a lot of stuff real quick uh maximum fun.org thanks for having us on the network and thanks to bowen and augustus for these for a theme song money won't pay you'll find a link to that in the episode description uh two events that we need to tell you about yeah one

you know about one is news to you yes uh so the one you know about maybe is our Candle Nights special. It is airing December 19th at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It has little bits from all of the McElroy shows. It's pre-taped. Holiday themed. And it's all holiday themed, all Candle Nights themed. Rachel and I have presented a long form Rachel's Poetry Corner with illustrations and an original piece from myself. And it's pretty buck wild and the hardest I think I've ever worked on anything. So I think you're really

going to enjoy that. Yeah, there'll be a candlelights poster available for sale and all proceeds will go to Harmony House in Huntington, West Virginia. Yes, tickets are pay what you want with a $6.25 minimum. That's $6.25. And you can find details all at McElroy.family. So come watch it. It's going to be absolutely amazing. And I'm actually really excited to see how it all turns out.

And I think you will too. Yeah, so if you go to McElroy, or sorry, TheMcElroy.family and click on Tours, you can get more information about that. Also there will be a newly announced show that we are doing specifically with Just Wonderful. Yes. And that'll be December 29th.

Tickets are going to be available December 10th at that same location. There is an organization here in Austin that I am passionate about called Austin Bat Cave. And it's kind of a year-end fundraiser. We are going to do a wonderful performance online. Yeah, Rachel's been on the board for them for what? Like half a year now or something like that? Yeah. And it's an amazing organization that helps to foster all kinds of sort of interest in

writing. Yeah, they do writing programs for youth and they actually also do some adult programming now but but the idea is to bring creative writing instruction to people all over the city that might not have access to it otherwise i've done summer dnd workshops with with them with like young young folks for the last three years it's a really really special organization we're stoked to be able to support them with a live show. So there'll be more information about that on themacleroy.family if you go to tours. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully by the time this comes out, that link will be up there.

Yeah. But yeah, that's it. Okay, we got to run because you're late for a meeting now. Yes. So I guess tell them that the dog ate my computer, right? I was recording a podcast with my husband. And everyone will be like yeah us too it's 2020 we're, workin' on it

Money won't pay, workin' on it Money won't pay, workin' on it MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.