Wonderful! - Wonderful! 189: Soup and The Fugitive

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

Griffin’s favorite overnight social parties! Rachel’s favorite immersive teaching tools!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. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. This is a show, a special show, made by that is on the internet that you can download on a website or whatever. Uh-huh. I don't, can I say something?

Yeah. I have been making podcasts for a lot, for over 11 years now and longer than that even. Wow. And I still don't know how to listen to one of these dang things. Like, you get, like, a computer program. I don't know where you get it. Like, I don't think they have, like, computer stores anymore where you go to get the programs.

But then once you have the program like you can download it you burn it onto a cd yeah and you put it in the cd player in your car i've been making podcasts for so long that i have done that before uh-huh i have a cd somewhere i believe that has like episodes of of jordan jesse go on them because cars didn't used to have like the function no to play no they didn't they hated podcasts cars did you didn't actually say what our show is about yet it's a show we talk about things we like things we're into do you have any small wonder um is it that hat that hat're wearing? You know, here's the thing about hats. I will make hats my small wonder.

But the thing that is an obstacle for me is the entire time I am wearing a hat, I am thinking only, I'm wearing a hat. I'm wearing a hat. I have a hat on. I have a hat on. I'm wearing it. I'm wearing the hat. Because I do it so infrequently that it's like a thing to totally occupy my mind. Right. But I do like a thing to totally occupy my mind. Right.

But I do like a hat. Yeah. I had a one since... We both have heads that... Yeah. We have challenging heads. Yeah. You know, a lot of people don't know that about me,

but my head is only slightly smaller than Griffin's. Do you want to say your hat? Do you know your hat size? I think I'm seven and a half. Okay. That's much smaller than griffin's what's your what do you want to say your hat do you know your hat size i think i'm seven and a half okay that's quite that's much smaller than well yeah but it's still pretty big yeah uh i used to have a cincinnati reds cap that fit me just right and then i lost it uh and then i had a houston astros hat that fit me just right and i also lost that one but that one i had imposter syndrome for, cause I didn't really know anything about the Houston Astros.

I just went to a game and found a hat. It is hard to find hats in your size. I have tried many times and I have found you a couple hats, but, but none of them have made your, uh, your everyday carry. My, my,

my off court buddies. Yeah. Uh, I'm going to say arpeggios. I like, I've been working on a lot of uh i thought you were talking about the restaurant oh no yeah there is a mediterranean restaurant that also has pizza uh called arpeggio grill yeah uh well what is uncommon is that they serve like in like 48

inch yeah like you have to put it in your trunk. It won't fit in your front seat. Even then, like it, it has to squish into the trunk. It's sort of a rakish angle. No, I mean, I was going to talk about sort of fast, like beatle beatle and music, but I think I do want to actually just stick with this Mediterranean restaurant that sells huge sort of like,

I would love some more music theory though on the beatle beatle. Yeah. I just think they, I think it's cool. And it's also a fun way to sort of, if you have a MIDI keyboard, like make things that sound cool but you're very lazy because you just hold down some keys

and it does the beatle-deedle-ees for you. Which I appreciate. I go first this week. I'm going to talk about sleepovers. Which when I got on the wonderful.fyi website to see if this was a subject we had

discussed before I saw that you had discussed sleep which is great I still stand by that yes it's

objectively good but it's like saying like like breathing you know what I think we've probably done breathing

yeah and I've also talked about hands like I'm grateful for just getting up every day yeah you sure you sure do um interesting thing about sleepovers not a lot of sleep well it depends it depends on oh man that's a whole appeal of the sleepover is staying up late that's a good yeah i i i guess i uh i definitely was not living my healthiest life at uh at my childhood sleepovers of which i took part in a great deal because i moved in that community theater circuit and like theater parents are pretty wild theater parents are like for me like paramount like yeah, everybody having fun in here?

Brought some more popcorn. Yeah. Put your shirts on. I'm going to turn the lights on. I just, they were the most exciting thing for me growing up. Regardless of their scale or the activities that took part during the sleepover. The fact that. Can I say that I bet you were a really great sleepover guest.

I was. I was very respectful to the parents. Yeah. Polite to the parents. Down for fun games. Yeah. You know. I could stay up for.

I wasn't one to crash early. Uh-huh. Could make some snacks. Yeah. wasn't one to crash early could make some snacks um yeah my sleepover activities were very rarely anything that would be frowned upon by an adult unless you weren't destructive in your sleepover well maybe self-destructive because uh i used to spend the night at my buddy clint's a lot and we would more or less just play nintendo, like, till the sun came up. And we would eat nachos that we made out of, like, corn chips and mozzarella cheese and pepperonis and hot sauce. Ooh, oh, man.

Yeah, it would fuck you up. But it's good gamer grub. And then we had our friends, the Minskers, we turned their basement into a rec room. I think I did a whole segment on rec rooms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But man, we did a lot. After we did that sort of remodel, we spent the night there. I spent the night there probably like every weekend for a while.

And we would like make really stupid movies and just goof around. I think I probably did more sleepovers than the average bear. Yeah. make like really stupid movies and just goof around. I did a lot. I think I probably did more sleepovers than the average, than the average bear. Yeah. I mean, the theater scene kind of sounds like it lended itself to that. Like,

would you go straight from a show to the sleepover or was it a totally distinct? It was usually a distinct thing. I don't think I ever did a sleepover cast party. Okay. That's what you're asking. Yeah. And for me, it wasn't even like the excitement of like i'm sleeping somewhere that's not my house i'm just the type of person that like gets really excited to have activities on

the books or or yeah time for activities and that's all a sleepover is is saying like you and me are gonna hang out for this entire evening yeah and there's nothing you can do about my calendar is booked i am i am done making plans this is a this is a full 12 hours or more my calendar says nachos and zelda on it and i'm looking at your google calendar yes it also says do you remember i still remember the anticipation of asking your parents if you could spend the night at somebody's house yeah like i still remember that kind of like heart pounding moment of like i want this i want this see i feel like i did it so much without uh running a foul of of parental guidelines that it it became pretty pretty easy for me well yeah i'm sure if you've got three kids like that's what

that's the thing i thought about more now that we have kids so the idea that somebody else will be in charge of your child for the evening is like kind of yeah thrilling i thought about that while preparing this is like uh this segment is probably one of the more likely segments on this show that will be used against me in a house court of law when henry or gus are trying to uh convince us to let them spend the night somewhere like exhibit a this episode of wonderful just think like you get like a date out of it you don't have to pay anybody that's an excellent that's an excellent point this is sort of a broad category i guess because you could fold in slumber parties and like lock-ins. I don't know if you ever did a lock-in.

Oh, I did one lock-in at my friend's church. Yeah, I did two lock-ins at church. And it was not what I expected. I thought it was going to be a lot more fun than it was. in at church where at one point we ate soup and watched the fugitive and i was like what the fuck are we doing here what are we doing here lock-in for people over 60 we're at church and i'm eating i think it was loaded baked potato soup and we watched the fugitive now the soup was fantastic the movie is the tommy lee jones incredible performanceitive. You know what you're getting into with the fugitive. There was also another church locking where we played volleyball and I was bad at it. And I was like, well, I guess this is my night.

I was also not a big slumber party fan because the amount of societal pressure that is placed upon you during a bigger sort of slumber party, especially like in like, oh my God, there's an episode of Pin 15. There's so much about Pin 15 that is a tough watch for somebody who like really lives through that shit with an eerie amount of accuracy. But there's a slumber party episode that is haunting. Folks can turn on you.

You get a real like mob mentality. i remember i had a slumber party for second grade and this is when everybody was saying psych all the time oh no yeah and so we were all in the extra bedroom and a girl was like there's somebody i saw somebody outside your door and i was like no there's nobody there and she's like no no i did i did and i was like i really you didn't see anybody and she's like no you have to check and then i got up to check and she was like psych and everybody laughed and i was like okay that was nothing i i sort of objectively speaking though not just sort of like leaning on nostalgia because i do have a lot of like very fun sleepover memories i think sleepovers as a concept are kind of a cool idea for like the introduction of autonomy to kids in a hopefully

controlled setting it is a you know sleep sleeping somewhere other than your house when you're a kid is like uh an exciting thing no matter what. But with a sleepover, you have this kind of built-in extended period without adult supervision necessarily. And that introduces a level of sort of independence that is kind of important to learn how to handle and handle responsibly. No, that's true. learn how to handle and handle responsibly. No, that's true. I remember like watching my first R-rated movie at a friend's house for a sleepover and feeling like, oh my gosh, should I be doing this?

Yeah, there's a lot about the sleepover sort of rite of passage that like makes you feel more adult. Yeah. Which is why all of that sort of pressure exists around it and why a lot of that pressure in when it gets a little too big in a slumber party setting, becomes sort of performative in a way of like, well, I rule the roost at this adult function that we're having. I found a Washington Post article from November 16th, 2000

that discussed the trend of big co-ed sleepovers as like a recent development which i guess makes sense i could i could see that being a um a construct of of sort of our generation uh i feel like the first one i went to was prom night i think that like i made it all the way basically through my childhood without without being permitted that experience yeah but what i mean around what time around what year would that have been like 2000 yeah so precisely when yeah actually that article was written about my co-ed slumber party oh i see see this is also like when this was this would have been late middle school for me this would have been like eighth grade so like that's about when i started doing that also with our like theater friends um and

you know the the headline of the article is like parents have mixed feelings about co-ed sleepovers uh but they also sort of argue and it's mostly the kids arguing this point and some cool parents that like it is safer to have an event like this in a in in your house in a controlled environment without knowing of course you know without having it happen in a place where you don't necessarily know what's going yeah yeah there was a lot of fear in that time period when parents were kind of bred and this is probably still true to think like you don't know your child. Your child is going to do things that you can't even imagine. And I just remember feeling like so frustrated by that narrative

because it's like, come on, you know me. Come on, I do crazy stuff. But like every news station, like every article, and you still see that today, it's like here's what your kid is doing when you're not looking. Like you have no idea what the secret life of your child yeah i i would suspect that that is true for every generation like every generation like i guess that has that thing but that said i don't know what i i don't know what the norms are now like i genuinely don't it's easy to say like well it's you know kids are kids these days

are cooler than we ever were so it's probably like they do co-ed sleepovers all the time it's like who gives a shit um but it was a big deal back then and it was like a big topic of conversation um because there's this i don't know there's even when you're following the the the letter of the law as we always did there was always this feeling of like, should we be doing this? And yeah, it was, I don't know. It was just a huge learning experience that I consider very positive

and helped form some very deep friendships and sort of got you to view, it introduces social dynamics that have not existed up to that point in your in your friendships and i think that's just like a valuable thing um and i was just such a good boy that it was not very i say that there was one post homecoming party where i think me there were like eight of us and we drank like four smirnoff ices between us it was like the worst thing we ever did um and we got just fully herbie fully loaded man oh that's so gross yeah hey can i steal you away yes

we got a couple of grumble bombs and i want to read this first one because it is for Eli, and it's from Rebecca, who says, To Ellie Bear, you're wonderful. Thank you for all the amazing things you do and for being my best friend and partner. You make my life so much better. Thank you for showing me all of the McElroy shows. They have brought us even closer together and catching up on Wonderful and Taz has made this year much more bearable. I love you. I like the two uses of bear. There's Ellie bear and then there's bearable.

And I know that probably wasn't intentional, but it warms my heart. Yeah, no, I think it wasn't intentional maybe, but I'll be honest. I just like to think that this is a message between two bears. And that's exactly what scared me about it. See, I think it wasn't intentional maybe, but I'll be honest. I just like to think that this is a message between two bears. And that's exactly what scared me about it. See, I liked it. I was reading it and I was like, this is sweet, this is sweet. But in my, like, back of my head, I was really scared. Can I read the next one?

Uh-huh. This is a message for CD. It is from Mary Darling. Happy 30th birthday. You are my wonderful thing every day and I am so grateful that we get to be alive at the same time. I can't wait to marry you. Love always, your Dove. Oh, 30th birthday.

You remember that one? Oh, no. No, I don't. I think that was, oh, I think we did like a thing because I was celebrating 35 and you were celebrating 30 and I think we did like a house or something but I also

we would have had a several months old baby yeah no I think that was the house where we like we set up Henry in a pack and play and said birthdays are important and we all rented motorbikes and we jumped I jumped from one roof of that one house and said, birthdays are important. And we all rented motorbikes.

And we jumped, I jumped from one roof of that one house to the roof of another house on the motorbike. And I was like, I'm 30, I'll never die. You remember that? Yeah, it sounds like you. That was a fun one. Hello, I'm Riley Smurl. I'm Sydney McElroy. And I'm Taylor Smurl.

And we host Still Buffering, a cross-generational guide to the culture that made us. Every week, we share media that made us who we are. Things like Archie Comics, Sailor Moon, and lots of Taylor Swift. And now that Riley's an adult, it comes with 100% more butts. And now I am totally comfortable with it. So check out new episodes of Still Buffering every Thursday on MaximumFun.org. Join in, Riley. Butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts.

What do you have to discuss with us on your uh topic today uh my topic uh is children's literature okay and this is something we've kind of addressed before i mean we've discussed specific pieces of children's literature what i'm talking about more is the idea that there are books made for children's enjoyment. Okay. Which is a relatively recent thing. Can you dial in specifically, are you talking about young adult? Early, yeah.

I'm talking about early readers. Okay, okay. Like first, second grade. Okay. I mean, I don't want to cast dispersions here because anybody can enjoy a book of any age, but are we talking something in the sort of Captain Underpants? Yeah, yeah. Like those books where, you know, the language is accessible enough for a child to read individually as they are learning. Okay. Yeah.

learning. This is something I remember. It's so funny because when I was in first grade, we had these Carolyn Haywood chapter books that were literally written in the 50s. Carolyn Haywood, the author, was born in 1898. And I was in first grade in the 90s, and I guess it would have been late 80s and we were still reading these books but it was just like having the um you know the ability to to read something you know myself that was about kids like me was incredible yeah uh and it was like for enjoyment i mean obviously i was building skills but like it wasn't like a you know like a boring a is for apple kind of thing it was like a story with chapters i mean this is the conceit of the scholastic book fair uh which i know we talked

about scholastic books on this show before i don't know if we talked about the book fair haven't done the book fair but just having a like shopping mall full of books like this uh was intoxicating yeah yeah so uh there's an npr article in npr article oh it's funny i like the portmanteau yeah uh from 2016 that talks a little bit about kind of the emergence of children's literature because like i mentioned initially it was just like uh primers primers yeah i don't know how i would say primer but that sounds a little highfalutin you're very british uh which was mostly about like letters and syllables to help people learn the bible you know it wasn't a, we want to encourage people to be lovers of literature. Yeah.

It was like a, here's what an A looks like. Right. And it wasn't really until like Lewis Carroll in 1865 with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Yeah. That it was like, imagination. Kids can imagine things and it's powerful. Are we calling that a kid's book though? Well, no.

I was going to say that some of that stuff is like no i know tough to get through yeah yeah this is like peter pan tom sawyer little princess uh secret garden you know it's a little before goosebumps oh it was a little bit before i Okay. I guess I don't know. But it's just this idea of writing books for kids so they could get excited about reading. And those books, while popular, were not actually really taught in schools, largely because they kind of took an anti-education stance. Yeah, sure. This idea that you could be a very logical person and still be dealing with these fantastical things and not have the skills to understand them yeah so it was like i don't know if i want to teach kids in school that they don't need to actually go to school like if you

think about like huck finn like it's just like uh finn is fiercely anti-education i mean there's a whole world out there that is exciting and nourishing and it's not school? Yeah. They were not taught in school. But what kind of changed things is in the mid-20th century, U.S. was very competitive with the Soviet Union, this whole idea of there are other countries and their children are performing better than our children, you know, on tests and have better outcomes. And so there was an article in Life Magazine titled, Why Do Students Bog Down on the First R? And also a book called, Why Johnny Can't Read and What You Can Do About It. And both these pieces kind of talked about how we are we are giving children kind of boring you know what specifically was called like dick and jane readers which is like see dick see dick run run dick run like like not really encouraging them to like immerse themselves you know yeah any progress

we have made with henry reading has been built upon the promise that once he is able to do this he can read these books he likes yeah himself like that is the that's the carrot for him it is not enough for him to just be like i want to have this knowledge in my brain it's like i want to read these spider-man stories yeah my obsession and the reason i thought about this is that like i have been obsessively buying henry's books for a very long time now and i always feel good about it because it's like oh books are good uh but we have way more than we could possibly need for a room full of children uh and so much so now that henry will be like do any new books any new books today like like he expects new books every week.

Yeah. And part of the reason I get them is that it's just like, it's so fun to see these stories and to think about kind of what learning there is to be done from them. And then also like to kind of get him excited about like new things that he can play and, you know, come up with. So this idea that we were not getting kids excited about reading and thus they were not becoming better students kind of took off in this period. And that's when we started to get like Berenstain Bears, you know, like this idea of like, hey, let's do like a whole story. And they sure will learn something.

But like there's characters and there's drama and- Action. Brother bear, sister bear, you know, like what's happening in that tree? Yeah. You know? They're learning martial arts. Yeah. So that's, i don't know i thought uh it's definitely a broad topic but just the idea

that that books would be written specifically for kids to get excited about reading and i've talked i mean obviously you all know this is important to me because i talked about reading rainbow not long ago right uh but if you think about it it's a relatively new thing yeah yeah do you have this may be a to to uh broad reaching a question but do you have like a seminal piece of children's literature that you read that like you remember activating you that you remember thinking like oh okay i like i i like reading this is reading i like that um i mean it's hard to go back too far uh you know because i remember the stuff i was reading in like second grade um but i mean where the wild things are is a great example yeah you know like the the illustrations were really exciting like the kind of the mystery of the story um i remember

really liking that and then when i got a little older like harriet the spy okay and like also like oh judy bloom and beverly cleary i really loved the ramona books um yeah i mean this this was a big thing for me for me i think it was wrinkle in time no so that was a little thing for me. For me, I think it was Wrinkle in Time. Oh, so that was a little bit older. Yeah, I don't know. I read that like early elementary school, I think. Yeah, I mean, probably I feel like that was like second or third grade. Yeah. That was the first book that I remember being like, this story is fucking cool.

Yeah. Like this is a cool ass story that's cool in the way that like my video games are cool. Yeah. And I want to do more of this. Yeah. Like that, I remember that was a, that was this very important book for me.

I never saw the movie. I don't know if it was any good or not. Yeah, me neither. We should check that one out. Once Henry is interested in movies that don't have, uh, Lego characters in them,

um, maybe we'll try slipping that one into the portfolio. Yeah, I don't want to rush it, though. You know, like there's this real concern that if you show a kid something too early, they're going to think it's dumb, and then they will always think it's dumb. Yeah, that's a good point.

Hey, thank you so much for listening. Thank you 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. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network yeah thank you maximum fun uh love love a lot of the shows on there mostly mostly listen to the funny ones um but i think uh but there's sad ones on there too there's a lot of like culture ones that are helpful to kind of learn about what's going on you know griffin and i we we tend to fall into nostalgia but if you want to if you want to hear

what's going on right now ton of shows on max fun to help you yeah uh and uh hey i we just put out a new graphic novel that it would be cool if you would think about buying it and reading it and enjoying it yes if you go to macroy., you can find out about this graphic novel. It's called The Adventure Zone Crystal Kingdom in bookstores now. And we got a bunch of merch at macroydmerch.com. There's a Besties t-shirt. There's an Adventure Zone mug.

There's just a whole bunch of stuff. And, you know, that's life, isn't it? Uh-huh it how you feeling about that hat now i mean i'm probably gonna take it off uh any minute now really yeah do you like the hat i mean it's giving me you know how i have like a like a league of their own i didn't know that actually i don't actually think that's true but i got really excited when you said that um that i have a an a league of their own fetish yeah i love that movie i just watched it a while ago no i love that movie too everybody loves that movie but i don't i thought you were gonna say like you look like gina davis you do have gina davis qualities thank you you've've got Gina Davis eyes, and she'll tease you. Money won't pay. Work it off. Money won't pay.

Work it off. Money won't pay. Work it off. Work it off. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.