Wonderful! - Wonderful! 182: Slippery Wood

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

Rachel’s favorite childhood fixations! Griffin’s favorite ancient game!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Support AAPI communities and those affected by anti-Asian violence: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate Support the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund: https://aapifund.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, everybody. This is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Do we say everybody? I'm in a space. We're in this space now where I don't remember the words that we say. End of sentence.

This is wonderful. It's a show where we talk about things that we like and things that we're into. That's part of it. That's definitely, that's in it. But at the beginning, do we go, hey guys? I always struggle like whether I say hi, hey, or hello, and whether it's important. It probably isn't. Hi, this is Rachel.

I need to listen to an episode of this show. I mean, listen, we make it. That doesn't mean I've got to consume. I used to listen to it. Did you know when we first started, I would, like, listen to it and just kind of get a sense of kind of where I could improve and what went well. listen to it and just kind of get a sense of kind of where I could improve and what went well. I used to put it on whenever I was driving Henry to daycare because he would cry and cry and cry and cry. But the sound of your mellifluous voice. Mellifluous sounds bad. And I can't believe it's a word that means like good and beautiful. It sounds like the word it sounds like your voice

has a sickness. It sounds like it's mellificentent and also it has a flu is what it does sound like. And I'm not like a words guy, but I guess that's more your corner. Thanks for joining us, everybody. Things are still wild over here. Yeah. Yeah. It's still pretty terrible. Yeah.

I said wild and that's a soft way of putting it. It sucks shit over here. I feel like with our first griffin and i were hesitant to talk about how bad things were because we wanted to appreciate this precious gift that we have he's still a precious gift but like yeah he's a precious gift that sleeps in 20 minute increments i know disaster no it's it's almost like it's a top that situation where we're like well it can't get worse and he's like oh yeah we'll see about that um yeah i mean we're we're we're getting through it we're we're doing our

best but uh yeah if we sound less than it's like super energetic that is uh that's the reason why although diehard fans probably could have guessed that. Do you have any small ones? I did actually thought about this. I'm going to say a organic carrot. Organic carrot. Okay. I like a real sweet carrot. And a lot of times you don't get a good sweet carrot. That's a good point.

When you go to the grocery store, but I found that you have a better, a better bet. Better carrot experience. Yeah. Now this may be wrong. This may just not be true. You may just be getting the wrong carrots. Yeah. Because I've had a sweet grocery store carrot, for sure. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know if organic, I've heard that like if it grows in the ground, organic doesn't make that much of a difference. But I don't know if that's true or not. Anyway, I like a good carrot. For lunch, like two days ago, I had a hot dog with a carrot. And it was very visually, it was like I was eating a big equals sign. It was very visually pleasing to me. You had a hot dog and a carrot? Yeah, the carrot showed up to tummy town with the hot dog.

It was like, you know, hiding behind him. Was this leftover from Henry or did you really go through the process? I peeled the carrot, cut the nasty butt off of it, chomped it down. Loved it. And just one hand carrot, cut the nasty butt off of it, chomped it down, loved it. And just one hand carrot, one hand hot dog. No, I wasn't like, no, I wasn't like holding nunchucks. Oh, I'm going to say, and we've just started to dip into it, Ninja Warrior is coming back, right?

Which is great because now we have a sports-based hole in our heart. Not that I would call american ninja i think may 31st right when the olympics start they're gonna capitalize on that momentum it's sad but i think i'm more excited about ninja warrior yes sadly the blues were knocked out swept in the first round of the playoffs a real heartbreaker david perron top score for the team out on covid protocol the entire playoffs. Jess and Falk, they're like, they're defensemen that plays the most minutes of anyone in the league and also scores goals.

Got a nasty hit. Was it game one or game two? He got basically tackled in his skull. Yeah, and that player got suspended. Like it was a serious hit. It was a nasty thing. But yeah, disappointing way to end the season. But I got to tell you, I loved watching with you yeah like three times a week for holy shit how long

is the seat we watched so much hockey we really did it's this i i hope we continue that even when the world is not suffering from a terrible pandemic i believe you go first this week yeah i think so all right what you got uh so i thought of two things to call this okay uh one is intense interests okay which is apparently what science science calls it what science calls it scientists call it um or what i also what i came to it as which is dinosaur kids dinosaur kids so it is i'm specifically talking about a a kid that loves and knows everything about dinosaurs for sure for sure um but i realize that that is a type of uh intense interest that that kids get okay yeah our son i believe has intense interest in dinosaurs yes yeah i mean

not as much as superheroes yeah but almighty that. The whole idea of intense interest is that kids of a certain age, like three to five years old, typically start to become categorizers of particular things that they like. Yeah. And they start knowing everything about it. Yeah. And I love that. Yeah, me too. It's just the best. It's just the best.

Like, it's so fun, especially to have him tell us stuff that we don't know and or to like mention things to him once and have him remember. Yeah. So, okay. So almost a third of all children at some point, typically between the age of two and six, have some kind of intense interest. The most common intense interest is vehicles. planes trains cars yeah and the next most popular by far is dinosaurs it's vehicles above dinosaurs i wouldn't have guessed that in a million years so henry knows a lot of like marvel and dc superheroes and like deep cut ones like weird like green goblin like captain cold yeah uh and dinosaurs he uh he of course knows you know the t-rex the brachiosaurus uh and chylosaurus yeah and also uh you want to do

our favorite song uh parasaurolophus or is it parasaurolophus i don't remember it's parasaurolophus wait parasaur i got something for all of us listen guys weird kids youtube has a lot of dinosaur songs yeah yeah uh and so when i was reading this article so this is an article from the cut uh 2017 uh and it talks about how um mastering a topic can be real like confidence boosting sure it's like it's kind of the first time that they potentially know more than adults you know and can kind of come into a situation and and like you know know know the score knowing something that your parents don't know is an intoxicating like feeling when you are very young i corrected my mom on some bible trivia of like who washed jesus's feet with oils like something like that and i still remember that to this day and i was like five years old and

i'd read it in some illustrated bible stories book. I remember being at Thanksgiving and telling my uncle about tryptophan or whatever, that chemical in turkey that makes you sleepy. Yeah. And he didn't know about it. And I was just like, how? How does that work? How do you know? Your brain's bigger than mine, huh? You're older.

How do you not know? So the one thing about this, though, is there was a study in 2007, and researchers followed up with the parents of 177 kids and found that the interest only lasted between six months and three years. So if your little kid wants to be a paleontologist, it's very probable that they will not hang in there. Well, it turns into other things, doesn't it? Well, that's what they say. So when you go to school, you know, there's this emphasis on being an all-kinder. Right. You know, like somebody that knows a little bit about everything. Right. And you realize that, you know, math and history aren't necessarily dinosaur heavy.

Yeah. And so maybe you should learn more stuff. Well, I was saying like an interest in dinosaurs could turn into an interest in Pokemon, which are just dinosaurs with powers. It's true. Henry knows a lot of Pokemon now, too. That's true. dinosaurs like teaches you how to ask questions and find answers and gain expertise uh and it helps you kind of build those skills and and become somebody as an adult that you know seeks out what you're interested in yeah it's delightful it's delightful when it's when it's any kid like i love seeing some kid who like knows every state capital and they're like four years old or they can like play sweet riffs on a guitar or whatever but when it's your own kid it's doubly it's doubly sad it's

to watch your four-year-old shoot the shit with your dad because they just want to talk about like fucking gorilla grod or whatever like that's it's so good um i will say so three separate studies found that older children with intense interests tend to be above average intelligence sure so you know on all those pokemon yeah it's not necessarily something to be ashamed of yeah there was a time where i could do the whole poker rap which is nothing now i feel like brian davy gilbert has made that accomplishment of so you guys like a craving to just like listen to the one song yeah me too me too yeah so i i thought about bringing dinosaurs and just like talking about how cool dinosaurs are but then yeah i decided that was

a pretty big topic and maybe i want to break it down break it down yeah like i could do a whole ankylosaurus like segment have i ever told the the joke that Henry made up at the, there's a place called the Dinosaur Park. Are you sure you didn't make that up and he overheard it? I did not. Why would I? Okay, it was a dinosaur-based Star Wars joke. Because Henry has, like, a Kylo Ren toy. He has not watched those, the new trilogy of Star Wars movies.

But he said, which dinosaur is a big fan of darth vader and kylosaurus and i was like that's good shit my man that's like a real good joke like that's a that's a wild maybe he heard it somewhere maybe he heard it in like a youtube video or something like that but it was a it's a yeah that joke construction is a little advanced yeah hey can i steal you away yes okay i have a couple pompadons here and can i read the first one of them to you yeah go for it this one's for ke, and it's from Sarah, who says,

Keister, happy sixth wedding anniversary. I'm so lucky I was able to spend the past year quarantining with you, baby B, Kalua, and Magnus. And thank you for being the guinea pig for all the TikTok meals I made. Hopefully we are all moved into our new house right now. If we are, I think it's time we add a corgi to our family. Love, Lady. It's always fun. And this was asked for close to april 25th so maybe they have that corgi by now probably have that corgi probably

got tiktok stardom getting all the tiktok uh points griffin inexplicably doesn't have tiktok i don't but there's a lot of things i don't have i i curated a fucking primo list on fine like i invested so much of my heart soul blood sweat tears into creating a quality vine fellowship that every time i turn on that app i got something delightful and i do not know how to do that with tiktok i do not it. Yeah, who's got the time? Apparently the rest of my family. It's true. It is true. Hey, do you want to read this next one? Yes, this message is

for Safety Town Chat. It is from Tay. Can't believe our chats only existed since November 2019. Fully don't remember what I did before we talked every day, and I don't know that I would have gotten through the pandemic without y'all. Can't wait until the world is normal again so we can retake over Safety Town, squeeze each other at McElroy shows, rent a big house, and live our queer co-op dreams.

If you're talking about the Safety Town in Huntington, do not mention us. Although multiple people have pointed out, including Sydney's mom, that there is now a child painted on the building that looks a lot like you. Yeah, I'm not the one that stole the batteries out of the car. Oh, yeah. There was a bit where somebody picked up batteries and carried them somewhere. I think it was Travis, and we got in trouble for that because apparently the batteries are very expensive. And that's why we had to leave. I shouldn't be airing out this dirty laundry oh i got stories for days shit about mayor steve williams you wouldn't believe very nice man it's very nice i hit his car once and he was totally

cool about it jumbotrons we're about to do another uh drawing for those uh for the second half of 2021 if you're wanting to get a message on the show you haven't done it before uh the demand is much higher than the supply uh so once again we'll be doing a drawing for jumbotrons only personal messages and that drawing starts today go to maximumfund.org slash jumbotron drawing to enter a drawing to purchase one of the limited jumbotron spots on wonderful and that drawing closes on june 4th so uh the the date of your message is just estimated not guaranteed because again the supply is so low we don't want to do a whole bunch of these per episode but uh if you want complete details please visit maximumfund.org slash Jumbotron drawing. And if you have any other questions, you can email Daniel at MaximumFun.org. Somewhere between science and superstition, there is a podcast.

Look, your daughter doesn't say she's a demon. She says she's the devil himself. That thing is not my daughter. And I want you to tell me there's a show where the hosts don't just report on French science and spirituality, but take part themselves. Well, there is. And it's Oh No Ross and Carrie on Maximum Fun. This year, we actually became certified exorcists.

So yes, Carrie and became certified exorcists. So yes, Carrie and I can help your daughter. Or we can just talk about it on the show. Oh no, Ross and Carrie on MaximumFun.org.

What is your thing? My thing this week is a game that I've had a wild hankering for lately. It's been a while since I've played it. Free sell. No, it isn't free sell.

I don't think I know what free sell is. Is it just solitaire? No. Okay. It's not a video. You don't play it on a computer or a Nintendo Game Boy or a Sega Game Gear. Oh, this is fun. Are you going to have me guess?

Sure, yeah. Here's another hint. I saw it on an episode of The Americans, which I've been watching, and it instantly activated this thing in me where I haven't played this game in a long time, but it's all I want to do right now. Hide and seek?

No. Hopscotch. I love the idea in your mind of The Americans, a Cold War era spy thriller. They have a sequence where I guess spy work is all I can say. I was trying to think of older games that have been around for a long time that they would show American children. This game has a ball. Oh.

It's not dodgeball, is it? No. God, no. Okay. Fucking dodgeball. Dodgeball is so good on paper, but then like throwing a ball a lot makes your arm wicked hurt. And not to mention getting hit by a ball. Oh, I don't. Well, that's not a concern for me. It's just the throwing. Oh, yeah, you're very fast. Yeah. It has a ball. It has a ball.

I've talked about Foursquare before on this show. That's true. No, it's not Foursquare. uh i'm gonna give up bowling bowling i used to bowl i mean close to monthly in huntington because in huntington there were lots of bowling alleys yeah and when you grow up in a very suburban area that doesn't have a lot to do bowling is like the thing you do as a kid yeah slash teen i don't know that i didn't grow up in the suburban area of huntington but there were i mean scattered hither and yon these bowling yeah i'm just saying like not like a big city where you can just like walk around yeah that's your activity uh that has obviously diminished since we have had kids and then a pandemic happened uh but we've gone you know several times with our friends there used to be a place called Dart Bowl that we would go to. Yeah, that's no longer.

That is no longer open. This industry has been hit pretty hard by this quarantine. When you were in high school, could you still smoke in bowling alleys? Or had they stopped that? I mean, I wasn't smoking in high school. Well, no. I'm just saying that when I was a kid, I would go to a bowling alley and I would come home head to toes telling like smoke. Yeah, there was a place called Colonial Lanes, which I don't know if it's

still open, but it was in a Huntington that I'm pretty sure they just let you smoke in there because it always smelled like smoke like in the like late aughts when like I know that that was not anything that was supposed to be allowed. Yeah, that bakes in. That gets deep in that slippery wood. But damn, oof, I'd love deep in that slippery wood but damn oof i'd love to hit that slippery wood some heavy ones throw a big boy down the lanes oh god doesn't that sound good as hell right now eat some fucking tater tots and string some coors light yeah that does

sound nice we i think the last time we were bowling was one of our friends birthday they like rented a party bus and we like showed up at the bowling alley without a reservation. It was, it was a, it was a thing. Uh, I,

bowling checks all the boxes for me of like, it's a game of skill that doesn't involve cardio exercise. Uh, and I am sometimes pretty good at it. Like I have definitely had times where I've gone bowling and like gotten lots of them big strikes and gotten lots of them still pretty. I still like a spare. I know a lot of people, they get a spare and they're like, I get a spare. And I'm like, hell yeah.

And I've definitely gotten like, I've probably gotten close to like high hundreds, close to, you know, swiping at 200 on my best day and then also i will go in there and i will bowl like a fucking 40 yeah which is if you're not familiar with bowling a pretty bad score a not great score yeah uh i don't know what it is maybe it's just like i need to pick my ball out better and that's always such a satisfying thing you feel like you're like picking your magic sword from the wizard. You know that trope in fantasy where you go to see the wizard and he's like, I've got like 10 of these magic swords. I just thought it was funny that you could have said like picking your baseball bat or your golf club and you win. Why the fuck would I know anything about either of those things your wizard i don't know anything about golf i i have played golf a few times and secretly in my heart of

hearts i really love playing it uh i just don't live a lifestyle that is conducive to that right now um but i i play a lot of golf video games and every time i play them which i played a lot of at this point i see like oh a five iron i don't know what that means sounds good to me that's the thing and that's i mean it's like bowling too like you just have to you just have to learn technique you know i mean that's that's the big variable i used my style used to be go with a really light ball that i could just throw the shit out of right down that lane and that was very satisfying and not very effective i don't think my my problem was that it was it would always go down the lane so slowly that it would be right in the center but it would only take like

five pins down because by the time it got to the end it was just like no mo uh it it's just it's very tactile like i love the the feel of the of the ball and the smell of the shoes and the the smell of the shoes no there's like a you know a a greasy the the grease that they use on the on the i like seeing like people on dates too. People on dates. There's so much good people watching. There is a, as a spectator sport, it's the best because you go with a big group of friends and it is like a dance circle

where like somebody gets in the middle and everybody has to watch them. Like that's, that is bowling. Like you are drawn, your attention is drawn to. Yeah, and there's downtime so you can like chit chat. Chit chat and go drawn, your attention is drawn to. and there's downtime. So you can like chit chat. Chit chat and go to the bathroom. No questions asked.

What activities can you not go to the bathroom? I mean, darts. If you're playing one-on-one darts, you can't like take a pool. Like, you know what I mean? Bowling is perfect.

You get like a group of five people. Oh, and you have time. I have time, yeah. I just, I love bowling. I think it's great. And I really, it's one of those things that you don't know what you, now that we're in this weird liminal space post quarantine,

which is even more liminal for the two of us because we have a newborn and aren't exactly going places like if for whatever reason i just got the strongest urge uh the history of bowling wait can i ask a question first did you have a friend or friends that was like on a league that was like real good probably but i didn't know i definitely had a friend that not only used to do bowling on the weekends but he had his own monogrammed ball okay with his like initials on it i don't know if i had that friend but i definitely had a lot of friends who were very serious about everything we did whether it was pool or bowling or you know hitting the dog tracks or whatever yeah um okay so this game is

wicked old and there's been so many different versions of it there were drawings found in egypt dated back to 5200 bc depicting bowling so people have been throwing things at smaller things for a minute uh ancient romans used to throw balls to get them closer to other balls which is where bocce ball comes from which is yeah that makes kind of bowling uh and around the year 400 um there's uh skittles is a big game that is is sort of a a uh progenitor of you know certain types of bowling it can be played out outdoors or indoors it can change scale essentially but in german it's called kegels and uh that's because in the year 400 around the year 400 germans uh as like sort of a religious ritual would throw rocks towards these clubs called kegels and the

clubs were meant to represent heathens which is okay which is which okay if that i mean if that i don't know if that's great or not, but it got us bowling. What is that game that we've played in Chris Plant's yard where you throw bones? Oh, God. What is it called? I feel like it sounds like an Ikea word. It sounds like grew, but I think that's the fucking Despicable Me, gentlemen. Coog? Coob.

Coob. Yeah. Coob. I'm so sorry, everybody. I like that I said that it sounded like an ikea word because it does it does i guess uh yeah i mean that is like a bowling outdoor game essentially where you throw sticks at other sticks like bowling sort of comes from a lot of this uh and you can there's something to be said about like a one-handed game you know oh sure a game where you could feasibly like hold the drink in one hand and do what you're supposed to do with the other. Absolutely. That's lovely.

So, you know, the game of throwing things at other things outside spread throughout, you know, most of Western Europe from the 14th century on, taking on just like a bunch of different variations. And when it took place outside, they would do things like lawn bowling, which took just like a bunch of different variations. And when it took place outside, they would do things like lawn bowling, which took place on a bowling green, which is where that comes from. There's a city in West Virginia called Bowling Green. There's a street here in Austin called Bowling Green. I never just put two and two together that that's describing an actual lawn. There's a place in Ohio, I think, called Bowling Green. Yeah. So indoor bowling alleys started to open up in the middle of the 19th century, which is about when 10-pin bowling started to rise in popularity. Before that, it was 9-pin bowling, where they're put up in different configurations. And then there's different rules of you have to hit the first front pin before you can knock any of the other ones down.

And, you know, ball size and pin size differed you know just you know depending on where you were if you're playing in a pub it would take place in sort of like a ski ball uh thing with like netting on the sides to sort of catch errant pins and yeah those are you know you can still find those in some some pubs in in england um and then at the turn of the 20th century but brunswick got in the game started to started to sell balls and pins and alleys to places, which is also right around when the rules for modern 10-pin bowling were established by the United States Bowling Congress, which is an organization that I guess had to- Those clowns and bowling congress. Yeah. So that was like around the 1900 and then it just like blew up over the next you know few decades obviously it's not as popular now as it was in say 1950 uh but i don't know man

i feel like bowling's gonna have a big comeback yeah i like for you when our kids are older to like have you know i mean we've talked about, but just some kind of league that you do. Curling is throwing things at other things. Yeah. I like a throwing things at other things game. I mean, you don't really throw it, but you slide it. You know what I mean. Hey, thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay.

You can find a link to that in the episode description. I'm sorry that we don't have any wonders from the home audience. We haven't done that in a little bit because we have been so under the gun to get these recordings out but we'll get back into it what is that email a wonderful podcast honestly

no idea no idea no idea and thank you to Maximum Fun have we said that? no No, we haven't. Thank you, Maximum Fun, for having us on the network. There's so many great shows on the network that you should go listen to and try them out and find a new, you know, try a new favorite show out today. Maybe it's going to click with you. Maybe it's going to triple click with you, which is the name of

one of the podcasts on the Maximum Fun Network. That's very clever. And they can use that. That's it. And that's use that. That's it. And that's it. That one's it. How long have we got? How long is this? We're not even at a half hour yet. You just want to shoot the breeze for a few minutes?

Remember last time we toyed with the idea of our farewell being, we got to go. We got to go. And us running out the door. I mean, we could do something like that. I'd like to think that this isn't forever. It's not forever, folks. Although it feels like it.

No, it's, yeah. And this could be translatable. I think a lot of people maybe listening don't have kids or have not experienced raising a young child. And so maybe they can't relate. But it's one of those times in your life where it's really hard and you feel like it's forever.

And I feel like everybody can probably relate to that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's happy times, certainly. I know we complain a lot. He's very cute. He's very cute. I mean, of course he is.

He looks like you. And whenever him and Henry have, like, times together, like, sweet moments, it's, like, so good. It's, like, so good. together like sweet moments it's like so good it's like so good um it but yeah i like putting my face on his face that's good that's good too yeah yeah um and but um he just doesn't sleep the only thing he doesn't do and he's very angry he's so mad at me in particular. He only really knows me, you, and Henry. And he loves Henry. And he appreciates you. And he fucking despises me.

What do I do for him? What do I do for him? He laughs at you too, though. That's a fair point. Which is good. Is it? I don't know. We can't keep this in the show.

This isn't interesting. I think it's interesting. Henry has started to ask questions about my job and i had to tell him that i'm funny for a living because he's four and that's like the only way that i can i can't explain to him the pot the medium of podcasting right now and he's been giving me a lot of shit about that lately like yeah isn't it your job to be funny? Like, yeah. Wow. When you say it that way, that's bracing my boy.

We have just started taking Henry places. But before that, we only really took him to either the dinosaur park or the zoo or McDonald's. And so he said to me, he said, Daddy is funny for a living. What do you do? And I said, oh, I work at a big building. I go and I drive there and I write for people. And the only place he could think that I could work was McDonald's. And so then he asked me if I worked there.

And I said, no. No. But it's very revealing for the past year that that is the only establishment he thought existed outside of dinosaur park in the zoo which he knows i don't work at because i feel like he he would have seen you there yeah mcdonald's he has not been he doesn't see anybody so yeah you know it could be me mcdonald's may have grants opportunities i'm sure they do all right that's a half hour money I love you.