Wonderful! - Wonderful! 194: Deep Fried Halloween

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

Rachel’s favorite battered goodies! Griffin’s favorite image-making devices!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. A show about things we like, things we're into. And I know you're wondering, who the heck are we to get to sit up here on our two matching thrones and tell you what's good? Oh, this is my secret fear. This is my secret fear. Oh, shit.

Yeah, what am I doing? This is my secret fear that everybody that listens to this show has this thought that you are just demonstrating. Who are these two clown clownos up there saying, hey, you better start liking persimmons or whatever. Well, we both went to eight years of tastemaker school. That's true. Oh, Jesus. Is that what we are? I don't think we are.

I don't think we are. I don't think when I talk about like, you know, Ruffles potato chips on this show, the next day there's a spike in Ruffles stock, which of course this stock ticker shorthand for is R-U-F-F. Get there though, it's about to hit a big boom. I don't know anything about stocks. Do you have a small wonder i do okay um there's probably a better way to talk about this but uh waterproof clothing okay we uh are planning one final trip for these summer months and i have been looking for clothing uh that i can wear that will not become damp yes in this hot climate yes and i have been particularly interested in these fabrics, these moisture-wicking fabrics. They're very important to me at this point in my life. I have no patience for damp clothes that I made damp with my body stuff. Yeah, I'm kind of sweaty Betty, I guess. I think we all are these days.

Well, I think I'm going to maintain that I'm sweatier than you. I'm just going to say it. I'll allow that. I think my kind of- But in my defense, I don't exert myself. I think my nervous energy comes out in sweat. And your nervous energy just causes your skin to fall off. Okay, cool.

I guess I have lots of issues with my bod. Well, hey, I'm saying I'm sweaty. It's not like I'm putting myself on a pedestal. You get weird poops and your skin falls off. And I guess I get a little sweaty, so we're even. I'm going to say my good friend and yours, Theodore Lasso, holding down the sat over there across the pond people are kind of freaking out about this season it seems in which way in what way

i think they're nervous about ted lasso's kind of turn from perfection oh interesting i think it's been very good well no the character himself oh i see this i mean this idea that he's having kind of a crisis of confidence yeah it's it's it's very interesting to have like it would be like if in the second mighty ducks movie like somebody came in and was like hey gordon bombay you're doing it wrong and he's like oh shit am i oh man yeah it's it's it's it's fantastic and they are fucking taking huge swings with it too oh my gosh so charming so charming. There's a Christmas episode. That Christmas episode, Griffin has introduced me the idea

that prior to the holidays, you watch holiday themed shows. Yes. And this one has entered the rotation. Definitely, for sure. Yeah. Hey, you go first this week with the big boy. What do you got for the big boy?

What do you got for the big boy what do you got for the big boy i mean that's kind of an appropriate way to couch my wonderful thing can't wait are you gonna talk about fish's big boy because oh boy no i am gonna talk about uh state fair food state fair. Get down there. Texas State Fair just announced no masks, no shots required. You can get shots on the campus of the fair. Yeah. Get yourself a Double Stuff Super Fried Oreo. Yeah. And also an immunization, a sort of deactivated pathogen that will make you immune to the global pandemic.

Not immune, but mostly. Get your shots, folks. You think the shots are deep fried? I think that they probably are, yes. I think they hide them in the Oreo. You take a bite of the Oreo and you go, ouch, what was that? Yeah, I want to couch this in saying that the fair food I am thinking of actually has not been acquired from a state fair. I do not believe I have been to a state fair.

You're – what? I don't think so. They didn't do one in San Luis? So we – carnivals. Carnivals is what I went to. So like what I really honestly wanted to talk about was funnel cake. Okay. But there's not much of talk about was funnel cake. Okay. But there's not much of a story with funnel cake.

It is exactly what you think it is. You ever hear it called elephant ear? Yes. Although that is apparently a slightly different thing. Oh, is it? That's like a big flat funnel cake. Yeah, I think it's kind of in the way it's created. Dutch baby.

Interesting. Yeah. It's kind of in the way it's created. Dutch baby. Interesting. Yeah. But I realized that ultimately what is exciting to me about the idea of attending a carnival or a fair is the food you can get there. Yeah, that's about. I mean, I don't know if I could go on a tilt-a-whirl at this age, at this juncture.

Or like a scrambler is one of them. Or the all-boy spider or yo-yo, all the big ones. Yeah. Carnival rides are terrifying. I'm sure we have carnival workers who listen to this show who take great pride in their craft and that's fine. When I go on a ride, I operate under the assumption that I would hear about a disaster if it had happened. But it's difficult when a ride just pops up in a parking lot to feel total confidence in that ride.

Yeah, that's fair. But again, we are pretty anxious people in general. Well, yeah, that's fair. So I wanted to talk a little bit about kind of the start of fair food okay and then give you some sneak peeks into the texas uh state fair food i can't wait this year okay uh so state fair uh used to just kind of be like look at this big tomato look at my beautiful pig and can we just get back to that please i'll i'll i want to check out your big tomato did you forget how to say it i wanted to my brain okay here's what happened my brain my mouth is the exit for words that come out of my

brain and tomato was like let me through and then potato was like, no, it's my turn. Tomato. And they kind of went out there the same time. How about it, science? I want a potato. No, I don't want a potato. Potatoes are kind of, they kind of got it in one with potatoes.

I don't want them trying to chop and screw it. Although, damn, if you could get ketchup like built into the like DNAna lattice work of the french fry oh i don't know but i mean you you yourself have talked about the pleasure of dipping you're right i love it saw somebody dipping at the airport like snooze or snus or whatever yeah i hadn't seen that maybe ever i mean i guess if if you are a smoker and you need access to your sweet tobacco, that is one way to do it. Maybe. An airport.

Yeah. Anyway, that was a gross aside. What's. Okay, so State Fair. Syracuse State Fair of 1841 is the beginning of State Fair-itude. Okay. But, you know, we didn't really see the, like, confections until, like, the 20th century.

I wanted to talk about somebody named Abel Gonzalez Jr. Okay, please tell me. Whose nickname is Fried Jesus. All right. He is a multiple big Tex, which is the Texas State Fair award winner. He invented deep fried butter for the 2009 Texas State Fair. Invented is a fun word there. I guess you just, what do you do?

You freeze it? Yeah, you freeze it and then you encase it in dough and then fry it. Okay. So you're kind of, I mean, not to be that guy, but you're, you have deep fried dough at that point with just like lots of butter. I'm sorry, folks. Doesn't that sound good, though? No!

No? What are you talking about? Oh, so you don't like butter on bread? I don't like their, I don't, okay, I wouldn't need a hot pocket of butter. Well, it's not. That is what it is. That is.

No, but it is not that size. I do not imagine that they are giving you a, like a hot dog sized encased butter. Would this liquid butter be super hot? Like super, super duper scalding hot? No, because it's frozen. And then they fry it. And then they fry it. And so it probably just reaches melt temperature when they pull it out.

I can't go. You are going somewhere that I cannot follow. Wow. All right. So candy apples. Sorry, I didn't mean to move on from Abel Gonzalez so quickly. He apparently has this whole show that I am not familiar with. Oh, Butter Boys on Bravo.

Deep Fry Masters. Oh, is that on Bravo? I can't imagine it is. I only watch Bravo. The only cooking shows I I only watch Bravo. The only cooking shows I watch are on Bravo. That's it. He was a database analyst before quitting his job in 2009 to become deep fried food guy at the state fair. Has been just kind of all over the scene, not just with the butter, but cookie dough, fried Coke.

Oh. Fried jambalaya. Oh, okay. Hold up. You got me back now. Chicken fried, cactus bites, jelly and banana sandwiches, and deep fried pineapple rings. There's a lot of stuff in there I think we can all get on board with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes.

So I wanted to get back to fair foods. Yes. Mention the candy apple, funnel cakes. Do you like a candy apple? Not really, no. Okay, good. I like a caramel apple with the nuts, but that's mainly because I like the caramel and the nuts. Yeah. You know? I don't really like biting into an with the nuts, but that's mainly because I like the caramel and the nuts. Yeah. I don't really like biting into an apple.

Oh, just full stop? Full stop. I like a cut up apple, but I don't really like biting into an apple. If you could cut up an apple and then dip those in caramel and put some nuts on them, boy, that would be good. Yeah, it's a great idea. I'll get into Texasxas in a moment but i also wanted to talk about the deep fried oreo okay invented in 2002 wow it's been wow almost 20 years uh-huh uh this came the year after the deep fried twinkie oh yeah natural

progression the oreos dipped in pancake batter deep fried drizzled with chocolate coated in powdered sugar i mean i've never had one of you no i haven't because it's you know me i'm 34 i just i can't there there are certain not in 2002 i feel like i've always had this sort of digestive constitution of a 34-year-old man. I will say that does not stop you, though. It doesn't stop me for a lot of things, but just eating a sugar. I don't like sugar on sugar on sugar on sugar on sugar. Yeah, that's fair.

You know what I mean? It's the dipped in chocolate and then powdered sugar. Like deep fry me up an Oreo. I'll eat that bad boy, sure. But like also coated in chocolate and also with powdered. I don't think I like powdered sugar like deep fry me up an oreo i'll eat that bad boy sure but like also coated in chocolate and also with powdered i don't think i like powdered sugar very much it gets on gets up there eating pancakes with powdered sugar you're like this is a good bit that noise is that bad yeah oh okay uh okay so now i want to talk about te. Please. So since 2005, the Big Tex Choice Awards have been offered each year. State Fair confessionaries fry up food for a chance to become a finalist in the awards.

It's just fried foods. Yes. Okay. Yes. So here are the finalists for 2021. Oh, boy. The savory finalists. Okay, so wait.ists for 2021. Oh, boy. Here are the savory finalists. Okay, so wait.

This is like happening soon, right? The Texas State Fair is very, okay. It's a month away. Okay, wow. Get stoked. Okay, so savory finalists. We have crispy crazy corn. Okay, cool.

Which is just, you know, fried corn, but in little individual kernels. Fun. Then we have what they call the deep fried I-35. Oh, shit. Which is a fried kolache. Oh, God. What's inside that kolache?

Just sausage? Well, so there's brisket, there's peach juice. Whoa. Uh-huh. That sounds incredible. I'm, there's peach juice. Whoa. Uh-huh. That sound incredible? I'm wicked into all those. Yeah, see, there's a lot of complexity in there. Deep fried seafood gumbo balls.

Sure, man. Something called pork shots. Fuck yeah, pork shots. You're telling me I can get COVID-19 shots and pork shots at the same event? They take a sausage. Is this pork shots? Yes. Okay, awesome.

Okay. They take a sausage and they wrap it with bacon. Yeah. And then they fill it with mac and cheese. Nope. That was it. You want me to stop there? Yeah, that was it. How do you fill a sausage with mac and cheese. Nope. That was it. You want me to stop there? Yeah, that was it.

How do you fill a sausage with mac and cheese? So the bacon around the sausage creates a little bowl in which they put the mac and cheese around. Something called pork shots could be so fun. There's also the Lucky Duck Dumplin'. Okay. fun uh there's also the lucky duck dumpling okay uh which is a pastry filled with cream cheese and duck bacon and sweet corn oh okay sure okay sweet finalists all right this is where it's going to get a little too rowdy i feel like something called the armadillo which is a cookie butter ice cream sandwich uh that is fried yeah shaped like an armadillo oh okay um brisket brittle what uh which is a uh kind of like peanut brittle but with sweet brisket the peanut is replaced with

brisket how's that sweet well mean, there's still the brittle part. I guess. The buttery, sweet brittle. Yeah, that doesn't sound very good. And then a Texas pumpkin poke cake. Okay. Which is a pumpkin cake with vanilla glaze, caramel, whipped cream.

And then you fry it. You sure? How do you fry whipped cream? Damn it. What would they think of that? Well, the pumpkin cake. Pumpkin cake is fried. Oh, and they put whipped cream.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Two more. Sorry.

This, I know, is a lengthy segment. I'm on pins and needles. I know. Deep fried Halloween. You can't do that. This sounds so brilliant. Okay. This is Isaac Russo.

Is this your front runner, you think? I mean. Put money on it. Let's see. We'll follow up. Okay. So it is a large soft pretzel. First, dropped in the fryer, bathed in candy corn syrup.

Oh, man. Followed by rainbow sprinkles and powdered sugar. Oh, man. Then they take orange and white buttercream icing and put Halloween candies on top. Marshmallow whipped cream, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, Hershey's chocolate syrup, candy corn. The most... You want to see it? I'm not sure I do.

It just kind of looks like they dropped something in a pile of candy it's just the most rowdy debaucherous i feel like guy fieri on his worst day would take a look at that and be like that's criminal that's too much stuff it's the pretzel really that got me like the idea of putting a pretzel in a fryer i'm like all right you you piqued my interest but then candy corn syrup something else buttercream frosting and then halloween can't what is halloween candy sprinkled on top you're describing the gamut the whole spectrum of candy it's deep fried Halloween. Okay, that's fair. Okay, and then finally a fried toffee coffee crunch cake. That's my shit.

That's all I need right there. It's like a cake donut and it's got toffee and almonds. God, yes. It's dipped in an egg product and covered in panko and vanilla cookie crumbs. Well, okay. Okay, yeah, sure. That's mine right there. That's not going to win. I feel like, can I be honest with you?

I feel like brisket brittle is going to win. Yeah, I can see that. It's something new. Yeah. It's a new genus of, man, we have spent a long time on this segment. Not that it's dragging, but that I only want to talk about fair food and the science of it and the developments. It made me realize that there is an opportunity for Munch Squad to go in a new direction and that I should reach out to your brother. That is a threshold that once we cross it, then the show the title of the show will need to change

when i was doing my research i read about a state fair because you know they're all over the country and they all follow this kind of fair food ethic now uh somebody took a burger and instead of buns use funnel cake all right kick ass so yeah there's there's a lot of potential there, and I'm just excited about it. Sure. You know, the innovation. Granted, again, I have not been to a state fair, so I can't claim a lot of knowledge, but it's exciting. Hey, can I see you away? Yes.

Please. Thank you. Are you feeling elevated levels of anxiety? Do you quake uncontrollably, even thinking about watching cable news? Do you have disturbing nightmares, only to realize it's two in the afternoon and you're up? If you've experienced one or more of these symptoms, you may have FNO, news overload. Fortunately, there's treatment. Hi, I'm Dave Holmes, host of Troubled Waters. Troubled Waters helps fight FNO. That's because Troubled Waters stimulates your joy zone. On Troubled Waters, two comedians will battle one another for pop culture supremacy.

waters two comedians will battle one another for pop culture supremacy so join me dave holmes for two to two doses of troubled waters a month the cure for your news overload available on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts hey what's your thing? Are you ready? Yeah. For the heat? I want to talk about kids' cameras or photography for children. Okay. Tell me, did you have a camera or did you have access to maybe many cameras growing up as a child? Yeah. I mean, I feel like it is kind of, I don't know, the practice in our house at least was as cameras got more advanced, I got, you know, the camera that was less advanced to play with. Interesting. I remember a camera I had that looked kind of like a laptop battery.

Okay. It was like a long bar with a little wrist strap. battery okay it was like a long bar with a little wrist strap uh and yeah that i remember using that um and also you know just the disposable ones that is a concept to disposable cameras are like extinct now right like we're not people still use them at weddings don't they or no maybe not i don't know i don't know but yeah it seems like now that everybody has a camera in their phone, you probably wouldn't see that. I can't believe I have to say this, but there's probably people listening who don't know what it...

Yeah. They can't... Disposable... They were like little cardboard and plastic cameras that you could take like 24 shots with. They had a little like plastic wheel that would advance to the next frame and then you would take it to uh like a walgreens or whatever yeah or a walmart or any place that had like a photo center and you'd give them the whole camera you'd

give them the fucking camera and they would print out the pictures like a few days later and give them to you but there was no way to know what they looked like yeah uh and so you would just kind of hand this box to somebody and then see if anything you took came out i met ben folds on my 16th birthday at the first concert i ever went to and my friend took a picture of us with a disposable camera and then like a month later they're like here's the picture and it was so awful center and like blurry and bad and i was like fuck i should i should have had you take multiple pictures but there's only 24 snaps on this one bad boy and you throw it away it's so wasteful but we did have those any any like vacation we went on or like church camp we

would have like a disposable camera yeah because those things were cheap, you know, and like it was not a scary thing if you damaged it in some way. Yeah. There were also so the sort of form factor you've just described like this long rectangle was a common thing for like lower end cameras. We had one in our family that was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme. And any picture you took on it, you would take the film out and get it developed at a photo center. And then it would have a tiny little superimposed image of Michelangelo in the corner. Specifically Michelangelo?

I don't know if there were other like turtle cameras you could get. We had the Michelangelo model, which is like not even, he's not even my favorite. Oh, really? I like Donatello. Yeah, I guess you're kind of an intellectual.

Okay. I mean, I also like to party. So there is, these days I feel like there are like digital cameras for children. Henry has one. You can buy very cheap, cheap, cheap digital cameras. Yeah. They're covered in like thick plastic. So if you drop them.

You can chuck them out of an airplane window. They usually have less buttons. So it's pretty straightforward how you take a picture. But they also can do some fun stuff. We were playing around with Charlie who got a little digital camera that can do like green screen stuff. That is like kind of advanced and very interesting.

And there is something so delightful to me about a kid with a camera because it's, it's so empowering because even if you don't have like a, an artistic bone in your body and you cannot draw, I have never been a good artist like at all i do not have the ability to to draw things i just never really learned how um but you can take a picture and obviously there is a an incalculable skill ceiling of art for taking pictures also but you can you know without knowing how to pick up a pen and draw certain shapes or whatever you can take a you can hold up a camera and press a button and then have this piece of art essentially yeah well and it's also i mean this is like a larger art history

conversation but it's also interesting just to see what a kid would want to take a picture of exactly yeah no it's it is a a picture is like a representation of like what that person was seeing at the time that they took the picture and so that gets so interesting for kids because it's like yeah maybe you're not following the rule of thirds or whatever but like henry has grabbed my phone and taken some pictures on it that are like, oh, that's kind of cool. That's like what you were looking at and how you wanted to frame this and how you sort of captured this moment in time. That's so neat. And it also is kind of a way to learn, I don't know, to kind of learn what photos are for.

Because I will say as a kid, if I went to the zoo, for example, I would take a lot of pictures of the animals. Yeah. if I went to the zoo for example I would take a lot of pictures of the animals yeah or like in my my trip to Washington DC when I was in eighth grade I took a lot of pictures of like monuments but it was like the pictures of my friends that I actually wanted to return to that is and that's a really interesting thing that differs from person to person I will never forget, we went to, I think we were at some amusement park in Hong Kong. And there were a ton of tourists there who were taking pictures of like every single like stop at like this aquarium thing that we walked through and every single. And I remember thinking like that is a, it's such an interesting thing the thing that people think like uh this is the thing

i'm gonna want to look at later or this is the thing that i'm gonna want to post online so that people know that i saw a jellyfish yeah uh which is not inherently like a you know culture to culture thing it's like you know our our parents take pictures differently than we take pictures just like our children take pictures differently from us and that's so cool yeah um the main reason i wanted to talk about this i've been getting into uh game boy collection modification stuff again and i dug out my old game boy camera have i ever showed that to you no it's a game boy game it's a cartridge that goes into the game boy and then it has this little bulb on top that you can actually swivel 180 degrees. So you can do selfie mode if you want to.

And then you can take these 128 by 128 pixel grayscale images with it. You can take like, you can snap like 30 of them and save them to the cartridge. And then you can, there's like, on the game itself, you can like add silly stickers or you know, a little doodle onto the images

or like superimpose words onto them. Yeah. You could also like take a picture of your face and then put it on like an old Game & Watch game so that like you're sprinting on like a racetrack or like doing a side scrollingscrolling like space shooter, but your head is all the other.

Yeah, this game came out in like 1998. So it's kind of like incredible. I think we had this before we had like a digital camera at my house. And where it got really wild, I still have my Game Boy camera, which is like a collector's item now because you can't just reproduce. You can't emulate that.

It's got a freaking camera on top of it. What is really hard to find and I don't have anymore, there was a printer. So you could print out your pictures in these like postage stamp sized thermal paper stickers. So you can make your own stickers. So I had like, for like a couple years, like all of my binders and folders and pencil cases were covered in these like homemade stickers I had made with the Game Boy camera. And it was such a rad thing because I, again,

like I always had a creative streak, but for like visual arts, like I had no venue for that. I had no way to sort of get that out. And then here comes the Game Boy camera. That's clever. Yeah, that's what was so exciting about the Polaroid camera. We never had one in our house,

but it was so cool, this idea that you could take a picture and immediately see it. Yeah. I've always thought it was a very like cool thing and now like there are an infinite number of photography apps with an infinite number of like completely bonkers filters on them and the escalation that has happened there like makes me wonder like what's it gonna what's it gonna be like will henry be able and gus be able to like foster that creative streak with like any app that makes

their face look like you know pikachu's face or whatever the fuck like that's a huge escalation i feel like if i had access to that when i was a little kid like it's all i would do ever uh but i don't know i'm not i'm not trying to get andy rooney up here it's just uh yeah it's all I would do ever. But I don't know. I'm not trying to get Andy Rooney up here. It's just, yeah, it's just something I've been thinking about. There is something to be said for the dealing with the constraints of this is a 128 by 128 pixel grayscale camera. Now let's make some cinema. Let's make some magic with it.

Yeah. God. Pour one out for the game boy camera so does your game boy like still have the pictures you took on it i don't think so i think i i remember looking and it was it's it's not that would be incredible like 10 year old griffin like yeah yeah no unfortunately in my in my baggy pants flexing flexing my huge muscles hey um i want to thank bowen and augustus for these for a theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description and uh hey thanks to maximum fun for having us on the network go to maximum fun.org check out all the the flop house and uh how about story break yeah

triple click don't say i don't know the shows on the max fun network i know them all know them all i think that's it i'm gonna i'm gonna... I'm gonna go. I'm gonna get going. Okay. It's been real. Wait. Are you going forever? Oh. Don't make me put a label on it.

I'll be gone a period of time. And then you'll come back? With Taco Bell. a period of time. And then you'll come back? With Taco Bell. For both of us. Oh. 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.