Wonderful! - Wonderful! 187: I'll Be In The Cry Room

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

Griffin's favorite home firework experience! Rachel’s favorite daytime entertainment!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.

Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. A bold experiment, a bold social experiment about what happens when you put two strangers. Oh. But then they fall in love and they get married in a room with two microphones and say, do your worst. What happens? What dark depths? It's one of those experiments

where a lot of it starts before the experiment. It's one of those, yes. It's an experiment within an experiment within an experiment, within this great experiment we call America. Thanks for listening to Wonderful. It's a show where we talk about things we like, things that we're into,

things that are good. Yes. And I mean, in this long summer, there's a lot of good stuff in there. Oh, it's almost July, huh? It's almost freaking July, the hot dogs month.

This is the month for hot dogs. I'd like to say hot dogs month occurs more than one month a year. But if it's going to be one month of the year. Yeah, that's fair. It's going to be July month of the year. Yeah, that's fair. It's going to be July, huh? Yeah. Yeah.

Do you have any small wonders, Rachel? Yes, I was anxious to start. Okay, please. I'm going to say eating at a restaurant. Eating at a restaurant. This is something that we have done lately, and it is novel. Yes. And enjoyable.

It is enjoyable. I'm glad to be able to get back out there i i yeah eating nice food that hasn't been uh that has been cooked to order is is an exciting experience someone come up and talk to you and ask you what you're interested in and to provide you details on the food they say say you had water in your cup, but because of your actions, it's almost empty. Let me fix that for you. And it's like, what? I feel so pampered. They're like, do you want bread?

And you're like, oh, how much does it cost? And they're like, it's free. And you're like, what? Griffin and I went out to lunch last week and we were curious as to when the last time we had been in a restaurant was. And so we checked the email to see what confirmation we might have. It appears that January 2020 may have been. Was the last time.

The last time. Which was a bit of time ago. Yeah. I'm going to say, what am I going to say? We've talked about Tic Tacs on the show before, right? Probably. Fuck. You love those tic tacs on the show before right probably you love those i mean you could just say generally uh car candy car candy is pretty great um you know i'm driving a lot more now because we're taking the kids to daycare now uh or summer camp as we tell our oldest and when you say driving a lot more, you mean approximately 10 minutes a day.

Maybe closer to 15 minutes a day. Okay, okay. But I have reason to have car candy again. Yeah. And it's exciting. You get in the car, you're thirsty. You're like, I wish I had a sweet little treat, a little pick-me-up.

A couple of tiki-takis. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. Who goes first this week? I believe I do. Yes. Okay. I apologize. I'm even more out of it than normal.

I feel like, uh, I, I feel, I feel sick for the first time in like a year and a half or so. Cause as it turns out, wearing masks and not leaving your house and washing your hands a million times a day, pretty good way to not get sick. Yeah. It turns out. But now I got like a sinus thing for the first time and i'm like what's going on with my body i don't even remember this feeling i've

been the picture of health for so long well as much as you can be as much as you can be as griffin mcelroy as me which is not yeah my best picture of health is a toddler drew it um anyway i want to talk about a firework that i love that's very near and dear to my heart okay and because of that i feel like i should put like a legal disclaimer to say don't maybe you shouldn't play with this firework uh or any fireworks and now that i've legally covered myself i want to talk about roman candles the most badass firework oh gosh those are scary to me yeah they can have a and and i don't want to get sued for fireworks libel but there have been some oopsies that roman candles have been responsible for i will say as someone who didn't really grow up with the home homebrewed fireworks the way that some people do i'm not like making my own black powder charges well i'm saying like my exposure to firework

was like professional firework show. Which is probably the safest and best way that you can enjoy fireworks. But I would say when I got to about college, all of a sudden it was like, oh, let's set off the kinds that you can do at the home. Right. And they are scary to me.

Yeah, particularly roaming candles. But if you can harness that fear, you're going to have yourself a real fun time. Roaming candles are, in my mind, sort of the quintessential home firework. It's a long tube, and you light the fuse, and then a series of multicolored explosives come launching out the end of it. And to be clear, this is the one that you were supposed to set on the ground and then walk to a safe distance away. Oh, really?

Is that true? I'd probably... Well, there's fountain fireworks that you are explicitly... Does this one have like a long stem on the bottom? No, you're thinking of the Humble Bottle Rocket. Okay. The Bottle Rocket, I would say, is probably the second most quintessential home firework. So what is the Roman candles set up?

It's just a long tube, and it's like a magic wand, and explosives come firing at the end of it. And so your impression is that you're not supposed to set that on the ground and walk away. Yeah, I don't think it has a base. You're just supposed to hold it up and point it at the sky and not point it at a friend. But we'll get there. Yes, but, like, I enjoy a sparkler. I enjoy a fountain, but like- Ooh, a snap and pop.

Don't get me- Snap and pops are not nearly as exciting as you always remember them to be. Yeah. That's the ones you just throw at your friend's feet. Actually, I think our small child would love a snap and pop. Probably.

No, our small child would be scared of any of these options, if we're being being honest it's just that roman candles put the power and stupidity of fireworks in the palm of your hand oh it's beautiful and that's exciting for me don't but don't play with roman candles don't get silly with them because they're extremely dangerous that said one fourth of july in college my friends and i were at uh one of our houses fairly rural part of town out out in the middle of nowhere where you could really do what you want and um it did turn into because we had an unbelievable amount of roman candles just a game of wizard duel which looking back on it was a we could have gotten very seriously injured. Yes. Because Wizard Duel was, instead of pointing at the sky,

you, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, paces fire. And then you do the whole slow-mo monologue. But those fireballs don't come at you slow, do they? They come at you quite fast. This is unbelievable to me that this happened. Who do you think was responsible

for beginning this game of Wizard Duel? Nobody was injured, by the way, which is probably a statistical anomaly. I mean, it seems like Justin McElroy. No, it's Travis McElroy. I'm surprised that you thought that was more of a Justin thing. Well, I mean, Justin is the leader. Justin is the oldest. He does make a lot of the decisions for us. And you have told me about some exploits that Justin has gotten into that were a little dangerous. Were a little goofy, for sure. Yeah, no, it was a bad idea.

But, you know, target practice with Roman candles, I guess that's a bit of a better, as long as it's not like a flammable thing. Can I ask where you purchased these? Because in most places that I grew up, they were not allowed in the city limits. And so you had to kind of like drive outside of town to get them sure different states have different laws uh what the year i lived in cincinnati we had to drive to kentucky to get them oh my gosh and then but in west virginia like it was are you kidding is there's there ain't no laws while you're really yeah for sure uh so you could go to like the mall parking lot would just have this huge tent set up. And you were allowed to set them off like at your house?

Sure, yeah. Wow. Yeah, no, things may have changed. And there may have been laws. It may have not been legal and you just didn't know. It may have not been legal. But we, yeah, I mean, we always went pretty hard on 4th of July. Not because we're a particularly patriotic sort,

but we like grilling food and using fireworks i don't know how else to put it roman candles are some of the most dangerous fireworks that you can own that is why they are illegal to own in delaware oregon new york new jersey massachusetts minnesota and rhode island and maybe other other territories here in the states there's entire countries i don't think you can own Roman candles in the Netherlands. Like there's entire countries that are like, fuck no, are you kidding me? Look at that.

It's a bad idea. But I don't know. When you use them responsibly, which is I suppose a relative term when you're discussing fireworks, it's kind of neat. Does it say on the package, like it would be nice to know how many projectiles

you're going to get with a roman candle i think it tells you i think it tells you so you can like count and be like okay now i know it now i can set this down yeah we definitely had a couple at that fourth of july party we were like okay it's finished and we set it down and then um they are a marvel of fireworks engineering when you think about it because there's a bunch of different charges in there you light the fuse the fuse goes down ignites the first you know star which ignites the lift charge underneath it and that's what propels the explosive out and that lift charge ignites a delay uh fuse like underneath that which lights the next star which lights the next lift charge which lights the next delay fuse when you look at how they're all kind of stuffed in there, which don't cut a Roman candle open,

look at diagrams on the internet. It's fascinating. It's fascinating how they make those happen work. Yeah, it doesn't like go all at once. It doesn't just explode in your hand. Yeah, that would be absolutely terrible. And then there's different chemical compounds in the fireworks that make them turn different colors. But if I had a month to prepare this segment and three hours to explain it on the show i do not think i could do a good job yeah discussing the chemistry and any kind of way that would be accessible to our listeners or myself um but i just i i like a roman candle i do like about bottle rockets scare me in a way that roman candles don't because if you light a roaming candle and point it, you can pretty much imagine where those little sploters are going to go.

A bottle rocket is like, I've had bottle rocket injuries before. And they're so small that they're not terrible. They're just like literal burns. But you light a bottle rocket and it's just like, good luck, everybody. Because this guy could go really silly if it wanted to. Oh, man. We used to tuck them into our chain link fence and then just like light a bunch of them all at once and then just kind of scurry away oh god

this is this segment is difficult for me don't do any of this this is this is what i'm saying i'm 34 years old now yeah i'm pretty sure these there's a lot of restrictions in texas as to what you can do because uh it's a it's a dry place that has been prone to fires yeah i mean not not lately as of this recording but yes for sure uh the year i moved here there was like a horrible fire in the wake of fourth of july festivities um so yeah joking aside be safe if you're listening take this stuff very very seriously but if we are going to talk about the premium firework yeah the ultimate firework in my mind it is the roman candle of course and and who are we to stand in the way of july 4th and its great power yes but do it responsibly and think about the puppies there's doggies that get scared of

fireworks very very easily and there's of course people who you know for whom the sound of loud explosions may trigger a a post traumatic sort of response so be thoughtful about that as well but i will tell you the the childhood memory of a firework is a powerful one it It's classic. It's classic. But perhaps it is best saved for the professionals who, who do amazing work. Hey, can I steal you away? Yeah.

Thanks. Got a couple of Brumple Brams. Do you want to do the first one? Yes. So this is a message for Deirdre. It is from Jameson. Deirdre, I love you and our pet family. Even though our lives currently revolve around our elderly cats and their various issues,

I know we'll get through it together. You are my everything, and I look forward to the years ahead as much as I've loved the years behind. Love, Jameson. The way you put emphasis on words in pet family made it sound not like they had

a family full of pets, but that they had a pet family. Like they had a family, an entire nuclear family that was like, this is our pet. Who rescued who?

This tiny family. Who rescued who? I feel like the Stevens family rescued me, if you think about it. I'll do the other one here because it is for Tyne. And it's from Justin who says, Hey Tink, it's me, your baby. Surprise. I'm so thankful to have you and our wonderful dog Zoe in my life.

You've made the past 12 years the absolute best that I could have asked for. Thank you for marrying me, loving me, and always being there for me. I love you always, my tiny Saurus Rex. Oh, that's cute. Got an anniversary coming up on July 6th. Got that 13-year anniversary. Woo! Coming up

real soon. Ty and Justin, that's a long stretch. That's a long haul. That's longer than we've been together. You think we'll make it? To 13 lucky number 13 probably yeah i mean i'd hope so i'm not planning on doing anything to fuck this up in a major way are you no excellent sounds like you'll see you'll see you then in a few years one two one two three hi everybody my name is justin mElroy. I'm Sydney McElroy. We're both doctors. Nope, just me. Okay, well, Sydney's a doctor and I'm a medical enthusiast.

And we create Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. Every week I dig through the annals of medical history to bring you the wildest, grossest, sometimes dumbest tales of ways we've tried to treat people throughout history. Well, lately we do a lot of modern fake medicine because everything's a disaster, but it's slightly less of a disaster every Friday right here on MaximumFun.org as we bring you sawbones and marital tour of misguided medicine. And remember, don't drill a hole in your head. Hey, what topic have you prepared for us for this episode of Wonderful,

the podcast on the Maximum Fun Network? That's some good framing. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. It is the matinee. Oh, yes. It's the matinee performance. Oh, I love a matinee.

Holy crap. We have been talking a lot about this because uh now that our children are both in responsible care facilities uh we are able to do things during the day and we have been desperate to find a matinee performance of a film and it is difficult to find because you know obviously that's not a high seller on a monday through friday correct but uh i love it i love yeah i love a matinee movie especially on the weekends because then you get out and it's like i still got my full day exactly exactly usually they are are a little bit cheaper than an evening performance uh at a an establishment like the alamo Drafthouse. They will have a separate menu sometimes for the daytime,

which is exciting. That is exciting. It's got like a brunch kind of feel to it. And I don't know. Yeah, it's just like leaving the theater when it is bright outside is kind of like a fun time travel. It is. If you've never done live theater stuff, a matinee

performance is kind of a trip. Yeah. So that's when I did my research, that was mostly what I could find is what, what matinee really means in the theater. Yeah. I mean, it just means an early show. Usually we would do it on Sundays, uh, like at two o'clock or so we would knock out a performance of Charlotte's Web or web or whatever well yeah and i think in a in a medium where the audience is such a big part you know it it's interesting to talk about the makeup of a matinee right sure uh which is a lot of what i found is that uh there was kind of a funny phrasing for it uh the matinee audience is those who don't want to stay up at night and those who aren't allowed to stay up at night and those who aren't allowed

to stay up at night. Yeah. That's a fair way of putting it. Uh, in that it is typically, um, you know, you're older, you're older crowd, uh, and you're a very young crowd. Yeah. Um, and usually like the matinee kind of gets a bad rap, I think, cause it's difficult on performers to do like a matinee show and an evening show. Oh, yeah, for sure. And also, you know, like it doesn't have the, potentially the electricity of the evening performance, you know.

Oh, the theater comes alive at night. But there's also an argument for the fact that, you know, we are getting people, especially like very young children, you know, who are like this may be their first exposure and they're excited yeah i'm curious and uh you get some school groups maybe and and it's it's a cool oh that was always fun a cool thing that was always a fun a fun show is when you would do them for school groups who came in why why are you are

you saying that because a lot of the times maybe like a group of middle schoolers are not the most captive audience or respectful audience or. Yeah, that's fair. Like cool about it. Sometimes it was great. We definitely did shows for we did performances of Seussical, which was like the last show that I did for like elementary and middle schoolers. That was like awesome because like every all of them were enraptured. And then we also did a show for my cohorts in high school that was a fucking nightmare.

A fucking, like the most unpleasant performance experience I've ever had in my life. Were they just like shouting stuff? Shouting stuff. It's so, God, okay, this is a total sidetrack, but yeah, they were shouting, like literally talking, shouting stuff shouting stuff uh it's so god okay this is a total sidetrack but yeah they would they were shout like literally talking shouting stuff and then uh they were also there were parts where like the performers would go down the aisles like from back of house on the stage and there were kids that were like grabbing at the performance as we're like trying to trip them

and at half at halftime during intermission my dad who is the director of seussical came out and fucking yelled at everyone which was cool for me and then after the show the principal got on the speaker and said that i think it was for the sophomore and junior classes like that's what that performance was for everybody at that show was like banned from like events like uh pep rallies and wow how would they enforce that well they enforce it by just saying like the sophomore and junior classes are not taking part in uh these these these other events during school for like the rest of the year so that show and my dad when your dad yelled at the audience was your dad like hi i'm clint mcgory i'm griffin mcgory's father yeah exactly he is the star of the show and i'm very proud of him it was cool and mortifying and so

frustrating and the second act of that was the most like chili i bet chili as shit both from the people in the audience and also the performers who are like solosaloo fuck you guys anyway sorry that was a huge tangent but also one of the most one of the most sort of wild days of my life was that performance i bet and i bet you are not the only one that has had an experience like that. No, for sure not. Yeah. So the matinee, from what I can tell, history all the way back to 1843 at New York's Olympic Theater. In New York, kind of the big thing that I could find is that Wednesday is kind of the big matinee day. They were actually often called like ladies days uh because back in the the early 20th century like women you know you didn't see a lot of women out by themselves in the evening yeah so if they wanted

to go see a show daytime was kind of their time that's weird that's why i mean it's it's it's not great but it's it's strange uh this the scheduling scheduling is a little tricky. So shows are typically scheduled 2 or 2.30 because the actors' union requires actors to have at least two hours between shows. So if there's an evening show at 8, then usually 2.30 or 3 is kind of the furthest you can push it to give them an actual break.

Here's something that I wish they still had so back when when movies were first hitting and they were like they were movie palaces you know like like very fancy like this is an experience kind of place uh neighborhood theaters would have cry rooms and a cry room was a soundproof elevated room in the back of the theater with a large glass window so the mom could still watch the movie with her child he was crying that's sick can you imagine how great that would be that's so sick that would be amazing uh many theaters that provided cry rooms also came equipped with electric bottle warmers, complimentary formula, and a nurse on duty. What the fuck? Right?

Wouldn't that be so rad? I mean, it'd be rad if any sort of preparation or concerns were taken for families with young children. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I wish that that was a thing. I know Alamo Drafthouse will do baby baby days where they will like have the lights up a little bit.

And they'll show basically like rated R movies for adults. But you can bring your baby and not worry about inconveniencing somebody else. Yeah. Which would be awesome. I do not think that would be successful necessarily for us. But if you have the kind of child that will chill for two hours yeah that would be incredible uh the other thing i will say about matinee performances um movie theaters back in the day would have what they call the

actual mickey mouse clubs so not the show but like opportunities to bring your kids in to see cartoons and stuff uh this is like back in like 1929 they would have blocks of disney animation and uh people get door prizes and bring their kids it's a whole big thing that's fun um and this this was true with like warner brothers as well like let's have a let's have a big performance for kids during the day uh which i love yeah uh and i personally as i mentioned like the matinee too because uh i don't know there's something especially if you can go on a work day sneak out don't tell uh or you know like respectfully request time off so you can go see fast and the furious night yeah exactly yeah well what always what matinees make me think of we whenever you did a show like a

community theater show in huntington and i imagine this is probably the norm for a lot of sort of community theater companies you would end the run on a matinee so that you would have time for strike, for striking the set immediately after the last show. And you would have time for a kick-ass cast party. So matinees always make me think of strike and a kick-ass cast party, which I'm very, very nostalgic for. That's nice. Yeah. Is that? That's it.

That's it. Yeah. Okay. I love a matinee. As our listeners know, I am not a theater performer, so I don't have a lot of personal anecdotes. But as a audience member, I really enjoy them. Yeah. Hey, thanks to Bowen and Augustus for using our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. You can go to MaximumFun.org, check out all the great shows there you know shows out the out the wazoo i would say yeah hey uh if you haven't listened to bullseye yeah uh really really really recommend it yeah incredible show uh we have a new graphic novel uh from taz coming out on july 14th we're going to be doing a live event uh with some special guests going to be doing some reading going to be talking about the book uh it's a virtual live event we're not going to be

in in person not yet uh but yeah you can find links to that and details and how to secure a ticket and we have partner booksellers who are going to be uh selling copies that have signed uh book plates and um so uh you can find details at macroy.family. You can also find our merch and stuff there too. But that's it. That's the end of this one. And now let's do just a quick evaluation. Usually once we finish recording,

Rachel and I will sit in a room silently for about 15 minutes, just like really thoroughly critiquing yeah each other and then we give each other a score out of a thousand points so uh i will say i enjoyed your topic thanks uh your sitting pose was a little distracting to me i'm very spread not in like a man spread kind of way to use that to use that term but it's more of like a butterflied like clam yeah like a camp counselor kind of like let me show you yeah uh this dandelion right yeah so points how many out of a thousand out of a thousand yeah i do we usually do a thousand always everything uh i'm

gonna say 876 jesus i'm really deducting for that spread. I was going to say you get a thousand because you're perfect in every way. But now I'm going to drop that punitive rate to 612. Oh no. Deal with it. Money won't pay. Money won't pay. Money won't pay. Money won't pay. Bye. Hey! Hey!