Wonderful! - Wonderful! 191: SOOP

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

Griffin’s favorite lawyer video game! Rachel’s favorite gifting community!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. We're here for you. And we're here to tell you all about the things we like that are good and that we're into. That's what we do on this show, largely. We do other things, too. Uh-huh.

We're not just about that, you know? Yeah. Sometimes we talk about great art. But that we don't like. So it doesn't fit into the normal format of the show. Sometimes we flirt with each other. Yeah, I would say most times. Well, let's not go wild.

It's not like, you know, we're just constantly ribbing each other with little love barbs, huh? Is that what flirting is? From what I understand, yeah. Okay. I didn't really ever learn, I guess. Yeah.

Teach me what love is. Teach me what love is. I want to know. I want you to show me. I think I already have. I think you have too. Do you have any small wonders? I do, actually.

I just thought of this. Okay. When you get a blanket right out of the dryer. Oh, my God. Last night. Last night was pretty rough. We had kind of a rough night with the boys. And Griffin, I had washed our big bed blanket.

Yes. And Griffin had pulled it out of the dryer and came downstairs, cloaked in it. And it was just so nice. It was a cloak of solace so comforting when our children both of them independently refused to slumber and like timed out like almost perfectly typically the big one like you can get to go to sleep but but lately he is fighting in a little bit more yes and it seemed like the big one would be up and the little one would be down and then the little one would be up

and then the big one would be down. Last night there was a time where I went into little one to bounce him on a bouncy ball for like 20 minutes and then I came out and sat down and then the monitor for big one went off and I was like,

what the, how did they do that so perfectly? Our children were conspiring against us but that's okay i did just wake up from a nap about four minutes ago as the crow flies yeah is that your small wonder because it seems like it had to have been something we've discussed before yeah no we've definitely talked about naps on many different occasions no i'm gonna say um filled twizzlers good as hell a lot of people don't think about filled twizzlers. Good as hell. A lot of people don't think about filled Twizzlers.

A lot of people say, do you like Twizzlers? And they're like, ew, licorice, no thanks. And you're like, it can be so much more. What do they fill it with? Sour stuff. I was going to say sour cream, but that's a different thing. At some point, we are really going to have to examine our candy intake. Yeah, it's going to be when our evenings, when we've reclaimed our time, so to speak. Yeah, I think that's fair.

Food is all we have. Food's all we got right now. Food and garbage reality television is about it. Hey, I go first this week. Great. I regret to inform you that my subject will not be something that you are, that you care about. And I apologize. Oh, wow.

It's a game thing. But I was struggling this week and I just came back to Ace Attorney. I just really wanted to talk about Ace Attorney, the series of visual novel adventure games, the Ace Attorney series. Seems like a sequel to a Jim Carrey film. Ooh, that's fun. So, you know, there's the first of the pet detective and then when nature calls and then... Right, but Ace is his name in those films

and Ace Attorney is more, that's sort of a modifier of... Oh, like you're a good... This is saying this guy is a great attorney. Okay. Typically the ace attorney in question is Phoenix Wright. But that is... It's up for...

Sometimes it's Apollo Justice. Sometimes it's other folks. Don't worry about it though. I want to talk about the Ace Attorney series, which is a lawyer game. You play as a lawyer, a defense attorney, who is placed in a series of impossibly difficult trials

for the wrongly accused, and you have to exonerate them throughout these very delightful and long-winded trials. I'm talking about this because there's a new one out today that I've been playing a lot of, and it's reminded me just how much I love this series. I love this lawyer game uh what are the actions you can take as a player sword attack well it's a video game so you have sword attack and gun attack and you know it's not it's you don't

really do that uh largely what you do is you cross-examine witnesses, just like real court. And are these preset phrases you choose from? So no, it's not so much like that. It's not a, I use the term visual novel, which typically that is how those play out. Like sometimes you'll have like, choose your response to this question. This is a lot more open-ended than that. So typically how it plays out is you get into a trial and the trial is like cartoonishly stacked against your client. Like it is cut and dry, locked room murder mystery like, oh, your guy's the only one that could have done it. And then you have to cross-examine witnesses to try and find these inconsistencies to piece together the truth of the situation.

to piece together the truth of the situation. And you do that by listening to these testimonies and you can press them to like get more details about it and wait for them to slip up. And once you've picked up on something that doesn't quite make sense, you can present a piece of evidence that has been added to the court record that contradicts that.

And a lot of those will be submitted either by you or by the prosecution. Sometimes there's like an investigation phase before you actually go to trial where you can collect evidence. So you're kind of playing part detective, part lawyer. You're wearing a lot of hats in these games typically. But you just listen to these testimonies and pay very, very, very close attention. And if you see something that doesn't make sense, you can present a piece of evidence to contest it but if you mess up too many times you lose the trial um how long does like one of these go well it differs right usually one of the games will have five trials uh included

in it and the first one's like fairly straightforward these games are formulaic occasionally to a fault because usually in the first one, you are the one who's been accused of murder and you are representing yourself in court. And those are usually pretty cut and dry. The final one in the game I just played is like, I mean, it's a few hours. It takes a while. Is it always murder?

It's yeah, murder or attempted murder usually in those. So it's not like you robbed this convenience store. I mean, there's probably there have been a dozen of these, I think, like mainline ace attorney series. And so, you know, that's a lot of cases throughout them. There have probably been some less fatal occasions occasions but i don't know i don't get into true crime that's not like a type of of of media that i typically consume so this is really how i scratch that itch

yeah um i just really like it because it's it's for one thing it uh first came out in 2005 on the game boy advance uh out in japan or 2001 actually it didn't come to the States until 2005, or it was a Nintendo DS game. And it kind of introduced this visual novel genre to the States and popularized it. And now there's a ton of these visual novels, which are essentially just stories presented in a video game format that you largely just read. But these are more interactive than that. And trying to solve the puzzles of each case is really satisfying. There is this focus on turnabouts where everything is so stacked against you. And when you start to find those little holes in the prosecution's argument and things start to look a little bit less hopeless until you finally like have that eureka moment, it's like something that not a lot of games have been able to replicate.

And when it works, this new Ace Attorney game that's out today does some incredible turnabouts with that. And it just feels really, really satisfying till you get very invested in these wrongfully accused people's stories. And when you start to figure out like, oh shit, you really didn't do it.

It's just, it's a really, satisfying thing it makes me like i never watched law and order or any of those types of shows i get i guess why people enjoy that because courtroom drama is about as high stakes as it gets uh so can you like replay like if you like mess up and you lose can you like replay? Like if you like mess up and you lose, can you like go back and try again? Yes. Although it's, I mean, you can also save at any time. So you can just sort of like, if you really start to mess up, you can, you know, save scum a little bit.

And some, I will say this, there are varying degrees of quality between the games and the trials. This new one that's out today is very good. But there have been some where like instead of feeling like oh i'm a super genius whenever you start to figure out these inconsistencies and contradictions it's like how on you're guessing like how on earth was i supposed to get that like there's i remember one where uh one of the big things is this eyewitness saw the killer holding

a bunch of bananas when he killed somebody. And the whole time, like it's not explained like what is going on until you realize that one of the pieces of evidence is a, um, a baseball mitt. And you point out like he wasn't holding bananas. It was a baseball mitt. So the eyewitness isn't good at seeing things.

And the judge is like, throw them out. And I'm like, that's not court. That's not laws. That's not how any of it goes. But the new game, I would say, is really, I think, just a bunch of really good cases that you have to solve and figure out.

There are these really great what are called meltdowns. Whenever you really back one of the witnesses into a corner and tear them apart and usually expose that they themselves are the killer they have these like extended hyper dramatic animations where like you know their wig goes flying backwards and they it's like you've just like defeated a boss the the dramatics are like out of control uh anytime you present a piece of evidence like usually pho Phoenix Wright will slam his fist down on the desk and scream objection. When you played it on the DS,

the DS had a microphone on it. And so instead of pressing like a button to present evidence, you could yell objection into the microphone to present it. Oh, it's so good. The prosecutor in the new game is this like Dracula looking dude who keeps like filling up a glass of wine every time he's about to like trick you into a corner and like smash it on the table.

Yeah. And then immediately apologize for it. It's it's the games are very funny. They're very well localized, which is, you know, understandable and like genuinely very funny, but also like still follow the puzzle format of the original cases and not like screw all that up. I think these games, I think the world of them. And I genuinely think anyone would would enjoy them. I don't know. I think I'm going to be a lawyer now because I'm really good at it.

I wondered if you ever had law ambitions. Between this and watching the OC and just seeing Sandy Cohen out there just yelling, objection! Man, I would love a… It kind of seems like maybe you're just attracted to the yelling. I think I might just like the yelling part of it. There's a lot of yelling. There's a lot of yelling. There's a lot of pointing.

Yeah. Yeah, I think maybe that's my jam. I don't know. One of my dear friends went to school. She double majored in theater and political science and ended up becoming a lawyer. And it seems like that is the perfect combo if you're going to be a lawyer. Yeah, I can see myself not necessarily being good at learning all the different laws and how it works in a courtroom. But I can see myself being very good at like when cross-examining a witness if they say something.

And then I'm like, can you repeat that, please? Did you just say that the gun was a red gun? Exhibit A! The gun is blue! It's one of those blue guns! So my client couldn't possibly have been the gun one, the gun user. Yeah, you're ready.

Case closed. Folks of the jury, couldn't possibly have been the gun one the gun user yeah you're ready case closed folks of the jury i rest my case the gun is blue peace out i feel pretty good about that that was good hey can i steal you away yes please thank you Oh, Grumpo Bumps, this one is for Grace. And it's from Tay, who says, Grace, you're my small and big wonder every single day. I'm going to marry you so hard one day soon. I know, not if you marry me first. I love you from Tay.

P.S. Hi from Toaster, Spritzer spritzer and shiner you gotta you gotta personify your appliances you gotta personify your appliances toaster is always there for you spritzer is always going to be there for you shiner i don't know what that is is it one of those like um sticks with the two sort of conical brushes that spin around and you hold them on your feet, you know, and they polish your shoes for you. You know? Yeah. I mean, yeah.

It's probably that. If I had one of those, I would for sure personify it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, can I read you the next one? Yeah, please.

This is for Annabeth. It is from Andy. To my dearest Annabeth, I'm incredibly excited to be marrying you next summer. I hope I'll have an easier time writing my vows in this jumbotron, but I hope you know that Winry, Loop, and I are so lucky to have you in our lives. I am endlessly proud of you, and I am eager to see what adventures await us next. Love always, Andy. And I should say that after Winry and Loop, it does say cats in parentheses,

which I'm guessing is for my benefit and not the recipient of this Jumbotron. It's possible. It's possible. It could just be that Andy loves the musical cats and just wanted to get that in there also. Just get that one in there. Just like a big scrimple shakes. Scrimple. Scrimple dinks.

I love scrimple dinks. Prepare yourself for the greatest pro wrestling podcast spectacular known as Tights at Five. A back-dropping audio showcase that helps you understand the world of pro wrestling with a lot of love and no toxic masculinity. Featuring

host Danielle Radford. Time to kick butt and chew gum. And I'm all out of butts. Lindsay Kell. I'm a brutal Brit and my fists were made to punch and hit. I was doing the voiceover this whole time. Hear us talk about pro wrestling's greatest triumphs and failures.

And make fun of its weekly absurdities. On the perfect wrestling podcast. Tights and fights. Every Saturday, Saturday, Saturday on Maximum Fun. fights every saturday saturday saturday on maximum fun what have you prepared for us today rachel to discuss one of you teed up i have prepared something that i may have mentioned as a small wonder but i don't recall ever doing a full-length segment on okay buy nothing groups buy nothing groups i appreciate these for their comedic sort of ability i think you have talked about this on the show but it must have been a small wonder yeah i think it was um uh so this is something that i just kind of recently got into like since

pandemic uh it's actually been around since 2013. It started in the Pacific Northwest and kind of moved its way across the country and then across the globe. As a like Facebook group, first and foremost, or did it have its origins outside the platform? Yeah. So it's kind of a bulk of its work is done on Facebook right now, but they are looking into an app platform so they can get off of Facebook. Good. But so this is something that is really useful, particularly for us as we had a new baby. You know, we have four years in between our oldest and this new baby. So a lot of stuff either had fallen in disrepair or we had just gotten rid of.

Or the bugs claimed it. Or the bugs claimed it. Or the bugs claimed it. If we put it in the garage and then we came out one day and the bugs were swinging one of their little baby bugs in the swing. And we're like, ooh, that's yours now. You yikes. How cute would that be though? Not. Just little bugs taking turns in the swing?

I guess that's cute. Damn it. You're right. In a very Joe's apartment kind of way. Oh, God. I guess that's cute. Damn it, you're right. In a very Joe's Apartment kind of way. Oh, God. I need to stop referencing that. Are we the only people that have seen that movie? Possibly.

I saw it in theaters for some reason. Me too. Well, you know what it was? It was like MTV's first movie, and we wanted to be cool teens. Gary O'Connell? Jerry. Jerry O'Connell. Not Gary O'Connell? Jerry. Jerry O'Connell. Not Gary O'Connell the evil.

He sliders into a world where he turned into Gary O'Connell. God, I've just referenced sliders in Joe's apartment within like two minutes of each other. I'm 700 years old. I know. So all that to say that babies and children, there are things that you purchase sometimes that you know you're not going to get more than a year or two's worth of use out of it. Right. And so Buy Nothing is great because it is a group designed to basically pick stuff up from people that they don't want anymore and to not pay anything for it. Right. localized. So not just your city, but your neighborhood has a group. And right now there are at least 4 million participants across 44 countries with more than 6,000 independent

locally led groups. So for example, the group I joined is very specific to like our area. And the idea, the people that founded it uh Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller wanted to not only contribute to less waste but also kind of build community and so it's this way to like drive over to your neighbor's house and be like oh you have a cooler yeah and you know I don't need to know anything else about you oh I know and then you see him at like a fourth of july block party like a couple years later and you're like oh yeah the cooler family yeah that's not our name yeah sure i'm using that cooler though it's a great cooler uh and so yeah so it keeps everything kind of hyper local uh

and just kind of focus on this like spirit of goodwill, you know, like I am a member of other marketplace groups where people are selling like treadmills and they're like, this treadmill retails for $2,000. I'm selling it for $1,800. You're right. Cool. It's got your foot gunk all over it. Great deal. Nice. deal nice uh and so they they built this whole like rule system around it kind of focused on um first keeping it legal you know like not giving away anything that is you know against the law

yeah but i mean come on they can't do if you're like, who wants to buy these beanbag chairs for free? Wink, wink, wink. Wait, in this scenario, is the beanbag chair full of illegal substances? Yeah. Oh, okay. Counterfeit Pokemon cards. What is that? They like, is there a typo in them?

Like what makes them not above board Pokemon cards? You make them yourself. They're counterfeit. You print them off. you make them yourself they're counterfeit make them yourself yeah this is a thing it's a huge issue do you know do you do you know about like pokemon card fever i'm sorry to divert things but it's it is bananas i saw a sign on our local target saying that they would no longer be selling them well you can only buy like two packs at a time or something like that yeah and then mcdonald's had like a promotion where they like i didn't know about meals and people just ransacked mcdonald's because they had to have that first edition

bulbasaur give it to me wow you must have a lot of kids huh yeah i love these nuggets yeah uh they also it's it's a community where you're not allowed to like advertise business or anything. So it's like you're not going to go on there and like get pulled into somebody's side hustle. Well, they can't control what they say to you once you get to their house to pick up the beanie chair full of counterfeit Pokemon cards. True. It's largely volunteer run. Like each little neighborhood will have administrators that kind of make sure that all the posts are appropriate.

The one thing that they have really had to focus on, though, just because it is neighborhood based, is kind of not playing into like the systemic racism of communities. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of times when you join these groups they say like what are your what's the closest street intersection and a lot of times that was a way for a group to kind of like keep certain people out oh yeah so they have especially in a place like austin that is so like purposefully stratified a lot of cities like a lot of cities like austin have that like physical boundary of like a highway or something.

So they are looking into a new native platform called Soup Share on our platform. Soup. Soup. Soup. With the goal of expanding by nothing beyond physical boundaries and also disassociating itself from Facebook, which, you know, is also problematic. Wow. Beyond the physical plane. And they encourage people to not focus as much on intersections because part of it is like prove that you live in this neighborhood because you can only be part of one neighborhood group.

So that prevents somebody from like running a hustle like all over the city. Yeah. Collecting all the rocking chairs. Right. like all over the city yeah collecting all the rocking chairs right um and so they they said like well just let people like identify with whatever neighborhood they want to you know don't don't make their their house number be the issue uh there is a book that came out the buy nothing get everything plan which came out april 2020 uh by these two founders uh with the idea that you could i mean you can create this anywhere, you know,

and it doesn't have to be Facebook. I will say the other thing that I kind of appreciate is that when somebody posts something, there's this whole etiquette. Because, you know, if you're in like a selling group, a lot of times it's like, first I want it like within five minutes of being posted. This one is like, I would like to be considered for this.

I mean, I guess it differs group to group, right? There's got to be some rowdy ass groups out there. I think that's part of the role of the moderator. But yeah, I remember when I had, the reason I joined is that we have some friends here who had convinced me who also have young children and like had gotten any number of things like outdoor equipment and clothes. And they told me like, hey, before you do anything, like if somebody posts something, don't just claim it. Just say you would like to be considered because that is part of the ethos. Because it's a free item and, you know, obviously it's up to the person.

They're not making any profit. Give me that! Right. But, yeah, people will also post things that they want so like the today i saw people like looking for like camping equipment because they wanted to host a little indoor camping thing for their kid cute uh and and asking for like a tent and a s'mores maker which i thought, hey. Why do we have a s'mores maker? Was it a present? Yeah.

So my parents listened to the show and they heard me talk about s'mores and they got me the s'mores maker and it was very cute. Yeah. I mean, I can, you know, I can giggle at it, but when we had what was arguably the saddest New Year's Eve celebration ever this year. We cracked that bad boy out. It is equivalent to a big cigarette lighter, though. It is a big, it's a big hairdryer. Which, how were they to know?

It's a big overclocked hairdryer for sure. But it got the freaking job done, didn't it? It did, yeah. Tasty, tasty, sad, lonely s'mores on that New Year's Eve. I don't know. I think I like that this happened. And the other way it really paid off was during the big freeze here in

Austin. And where our city kind of totally failed us. And one might say the whole state did. And so it was difficult to get things. One should say the whole state did. It's difficult to get things like water. And people were on Buy Nothing just posting like hey i have extra water or my water is still on if you want

to come over and it was just a really nice way to connect with the community or saying like hey i have a key to shut off your your water if your shit exploded um or hey i have a truck that can operate in the ice if your family is uh in danger and since it was hyper local you could like know that you weren't gonna have to drive 15 miles on the ice to get it so yeah that's very cool yeah that is cool i mentioned its comedic value because also you've told me about some stuff that people have posted on there that's been pretty bogus yeah so a lot of times people will share food items which is great because there's a lot of people with food insecurity that are kind of uncomfortable going to a shelter but might feel you know safer going

to a neighbor's absolutely but sometimes it's like the one specifically you mentioned what somebody had gotten mistakenly a pizza somebody accidentally received some dominoes that they did not discover until the next morning. And they said, hey, I had a slice. It still seems good. I didn't know they had a slice. Damn, that kicks it up again. No, it's been outside the food safe zone for such a long time. outside the food safe zone for such a long time.

Yeah. Would you, would you come take this outdoor pizza? This outside pizza. And I, I think I followed that post just to see if anybody, I don't think anybody took that or pizza. But a lot of times it's a lot more useful. It's like,

Hey, I got this, you know, 12 pack of soup and I had one and I don't like it. Do you want the other 11 soups? Who wants 11 soups? Hey, 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. Thank you to you, dear listener, for listening, dear listener, to our show, this product that we create together as lovers. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. They have so many great shows there at MaximumFun.org just waiting for you to click on them and listen to them and love them.

Yeah. Maybe now that the Bubble graphic novel is out, you want to check out Bubble the show. Yeah. No one's going to judge you for being so late to it. The best time to listen to Bubble and get into it was yesterday. And today is the next best option. Oh, I love that. Thanks.

I made it up. And I think that is going to do it, man. I think that's freaking it. So I guess that's it then. I guess that's the end of it then. That would be the show that we did. Let me check. That's it.

Hold on, wait. Confirmed, that's it. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Hey! Working on it! Money won't pay! Working on it! Money won't pay! Working on it! Money won't pay! Working on it!

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