Wonderful! - Wonderful! 195: Transubstantiated Cheetos

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

Griffin’s favorite little robot grocery stores! Rachel’s favorite American Idol performer!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaSupport AAPI communities and those affected by anti-Asian violence: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hateSupport 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. I'm wracked with worry and concern for my wife. I, so here's the thing. I stopped taking allergy medicine for a while. That's true.

And I was fine. Okay. Were you though? Apparently not. Apparently you weren't. Apparently a storm was brewing. Uh-huh. And then mold, mold took over.

Mold is in control of Austin now. We have lost Austin to the mold. And I guess we're going to have to move to New Braunfels, Round Rock, the sort of outlying areas. Because it's the mold city now. And we're just living in it. But I wouldn't call what you're doing right now living, even. Yeah, no, I know. And it's these histamines i think i don't know much about histamines but i think that this is them and i'm worried here's the thing i'm worried i'm gonna have to neti pot and i'm scared and i don't

want to you should use the baby's saline blaster the saline nose blaster god don't there's a okay if you've never had a baby it's a boy they get full of bad stuff in their nose region and they're so y'all they're so wicked stoops that they don't know how to blow their nose yet and so you got to get in there with either drops which is how a real pedestrian way of clearing them out. But then they make these like saline blasters that like just gets up in there and it's just like. And every time I see that happen, the baby obviously doesn't care for it until it gets all that bad stuff out of there. And I think if it were only so simple for me, an adult man. Yeah.

With an adult nose. Have you tried it? I haven't. I'm afraid to harness it. Yeah, you're right. It's a scary thing. I think you're going to have to netty, baby. I think the mold is inside you now.

Yeah, I know. The call is coming from inside the nose. I know. Anyway, we're going to try very hard to make this a not sonically unpleasant episode of our podcast wonderful to listen to. Rachel's putting on a very brave face, and I'm so glad that you're here. Do you want to just do it? Do you want to just do the damn thing? Uh-huh.

Do you have a small wonder? I'm going to say, and this is something we talked about recently, when barbecue places have really good bread. Yes. True. It's not a reliable thing. A lot of barbecue places are like, we don't need good bread. Our barbecue stands alone.

Yeah. But sometimes they got that really good bread. You gotta have that thick, moist bread. Yeah. That thick, damp bread that can really sop it up. Sop it up. Sop is the only word that's appropriate. That's true.

We got some good style switch BBQ the other day, and it was good. It was good. Got some spicy ribs. Ate it right before filming a video project we were doing yesterday, which was one of the bigger mistakes I've made in my life, because I had the spicy mouth while we were recording the whole time. Yowza, folks. life because i had the spicy mouth while we were recording the whole time yowza folks um i'm gonna say um i've been making game boys again lately and i've talked about that but man there are so

many game boy games that are so choice hun so many good ones tetris heard of it is a good one castlevania super mario land, the six golden coins. Can't beat this stuff. Pokemon Pinball, Pokemon Trading Park. What was the game that Henry was getting into? Yesterday? Or the Castlevania Adventure? Oh, okay. Yeah, a good one.

A little too difficult. And here's the thing about those Game Boy games, folks. They're hard as hell. They're extremely hard because they're usually pretty short. And so they need to be impossible in order to keep you from beating them in like 10 minutes. But man, I'm getting nostalgic in my middle age here. But I guess I've been pretty nostalgic my whole life.

For the better days, you know, 1991. We had it all figured out. Yeah. I go first this week. Unless, do you want to go first this week? No, go. No, tell me, do you got like, if you have the energy, if you have momentum right now, and you want to just like take my spot so you can be done talking for the episode and

rest your larynx or whatever is the only- No, that is a beautiful gesture, but I would like to keep just the progress alive with our standard approach. Okay. Vending machines. Vending machines. These are robot grocery stores that are very little. They are automated snack shopping experiences where the coins and bills go into the machine

and Melba Toast comes out. Or there's a bad first example. I don't know why I started with... Some Winterfresh pops out. Do they still... I don't even think they make Winterfresh that much anymore. I mean, Doritos would have been a safe bet. Doritos are always a safe bet.

They pair with everything. I can think of a lot of vending machines that have made real differences in my life i never worked at an office that had a vending machine in it but like i can think of at huntington city hall where we used to do a bunch of plays they had a vending machine in the basement where i would go down there you know with a buck and come back up with a whatchamacallit and i would gobble that down greedily in the bathroom so nobody else would ask me for a bite of my whatchamacallit i can think of all the vending machines at huntington high school i'm thinking of andy capp's hot fries i'm thinking of honey buns i'm thinking of fruitopia which i'm i talk

about very frequently on this and other shows i can think of these vending machines that have made real differences in my life the one tricky thing about a vending machine and it makes me surprised uh that they are still as popular as they are is that you do not know how old the products are inside. Well, they're usually pretty shelf-stable. Yeah. You're not buying a lot of milk out of a vending machine, I don't think. That's true. But sometimes you'll be like, oh, a chocolate donut.

Don't mind if I do. And then it'll drop down and you'll be like, ooh. You'll hear it hit the bottom as it drops down like, boom. You're like, oh, shit. That's not going to be good. Yeah, I guess there's a baked good component to a lot of vending machines, like a little hand pie, those little tiny apple pies, the hostess pies. Yes.

Those aren't as shelf-stable as a honey bun. A honey bun, I swear to God, you could eat a fossil of a honey bun and you would still like have a pretty okay time with it um is there also anything more thrilling than when you're on a road trip and you stop at like a a rest stop and they just have a big room full of vending machines where like you can see all of these branching pathways all these sliding doors in front of you of like snack journeys that you can go on for the rest of the trip you know what i mean like you're looking around and there's like 15 vending

machines there's like ice cream vending machines which is fucked up and then you're like gummy lifesavers yes you can go nuts on it i think that that's one of the most poignant childhood memories of mine is just looking forward to the rest stop on the on the car trip so i could get some gummy lifesavers to enjoy while i'm in the back seat playing pokemon silver there there are certain foods that i feel like i may have only gotten out of a vending machine like i feel like a three musketeers for whatever reason when it's in the vending machine that's what i want it yeah i don't know that i've uh i don't know that i've ever had handicaps hot fries bought in the wild uh i think those only exist inside of vending machines i think the vending machine produces it like a sort of sweat like a sort of

like natural organic byproduct of the vending machine. Like Andy Capp's hot fries just sort of appear inside of it. Can I ask? Cause I've never had a hot fry. Is it like a Cheeto? It is a, it's a spicy, it's bad. Andy Capp's hot fries are pretty rough.

I think once you eat a Taki once you're like, Oh, okay. That's a good spicy flavor. Andy Capp's hot fries are just sort of like crunchy pepper spray, just like crunchy chemical burning sensation in the mouth. Not super pleasant. But even if I'm like in a hurry and I'm not particularly hungry,

like at the airport by baggage claim, they have vending machines at the Austin airport. And I'm never like, I'm always like, just, I got to get my bags and get the fuck out of here. Like everybody else at a baggage claim at an airport. But if I see that vending machine, I will peek inside of it and be like, but what is, what's going on in here?

Any friends in here? Like I'm going to see some like, like I'm going to see Tastations in there and be like, what the fuck? Tastations are back? With the inflation, can you get stuff under a dollar in a vending machine still? Oh, tell me about it, right? I think you can probably still get a candy bar

for 75 cents, but I'm not sure about that. I don't think that's true, but I think you can get like a five pack of Big Red. I'm out of touch, babe. I can't run for president. I don't even think they're making Big Red anymore, so I think we're both pretty... we're aging ourselves quite a bit.

There's a 0% chance anybody listening to this knows what Fruitopia is if they're under the age of, you know, I'm going to say 27 years old. Which does describe a fair portion of our audience. I don't even eat that many snacks these days. I live a pretty snack-free lifestyle lifestyle except at the nighttime when i turn into a little snack goblin but that's that's my own supply like i know what i'm getting into there if i'm on the go which i'm also not most of the time i'm just not usually in like a vending machine mood but i still just want to dip in and knowing the convenience of knowing that i can satisfy this human need of mine very quickly with a you a dollar bill or a swipe of a credit card is very exciting to me.

I have been sitting here so anxious to hear about. The history of vending machines? Okay. Well, what if I told you that the first one dates back to like antiquity? The very first sort of concept of a vending machine can be sourced back to hero of alexandria the like ancient like engineer uh and he made a holy water dispenser where you would put a coin in this slot and it would fall onto a lever and that would release the faucet that would dispense the holy water and then the

coin would slowly slide off the lever and when it fell out a counterweight would pop it right back closed so you put a little coin in and you get a goose of holy water i don't know what you do with that holy yeah are you like putting your little hand in there or like does it come with a little little slurpy cup like a little conical sort of dixie situation like a coffee dispenser yeah i don't know i don't know if you just take it straight to the dome like if you just open up the mouth and just like hit your head stick your head in there and just go wild i don't know it seems like a danger because i'm sure hero of alexandria did like great and important work here but i bet he didn't have sort of safeguards in place for like you know you stick your tongue

in the faucet and then it closes and then it's like, well, I've died, now I've died. You think there were hot fries in that one too? I think there was a secret slot, the hero of Alexandria. Yeah, and here's the thing, and this is fucked up, pretty probably sacrilegious, but have you ever dunked hot fries in holy water? If you haven't, it's like the new French fries

in a Frosty. It's like, it's legit really good because the hot fries get really soggy. So you can just kind of like slurp it down. But also like any impurities inside of you are burned out by the hot fry powder and the holy water. Can that be our sign off now for our show? What? Slurp down the... No, and don't dunk hot fries in your holy water i think we would have to be a very different podcast to make that work uh and then you get

like commercial coin operated machines in the the late 19th century um mostly like when they were introduced to distribute envelopes postcards and, and notepaper. It was boring. In 1888, the Thomas Adams Gum Company introduced vending machines on New York City subway platforms that dispensed tutti-frutti gum. But what we know as the sort of modern gumball machine was invented in 1907. And then, of course, you also have beverage vending machines, which also date back to the late 19th century. First introduced in Paris, where they would dispense beer, wine and liquor. That's one way to do it, I think. Wow. Yeah. And then cigarette machines are like a weird thing. Yeah.

That like... Were you too young oh god no no i mean i i uh but there again there probably are some folks who are who listen to this you could just buy cigarettes out of a little vending machine and it was a specialized one where it was more horizontal and it would have all the packs of cigarettes with a little knob underneath each one and you would put the money in and pull the knob and a pack of cigarettes would come out yeah Yeah, I don't know if you had the experience of of troublemaking teens identifying those machines that were unsupervised. But that was that was the way the kids would get cigarettes. I mean, you could sneak in.

There was one at the Huntington Tri-State Airport when I was a kid. That's fucking wild. at the Huntington Tri-State Airport when I was a kid. That's fucking wild. So, you know, attitudes towards tobacco consumption have changed, particularly in the United States, so you don't really see these anymore. There's a really cool hotel, I want to say in Minneapolis or something,

that we've stayed at a couple times whenever we've gone touring, that sells little tiny cigarette box-sized paintings that artists paint and then put in the machine and you put five bucks in and then you can pull the knob and a little painting pops out. That's a cute idea. Yeah. But they are still sort of prevalent in places like Germany and Japan. Japan is, of course, the sort of ruler of this domain. They have more vending machines per capita

than any other country on the planet. And they are so legit. You can get some boss coffee in one and then turn around and get like some flowers and a fucking, you know, handkerchief and necktie out of another one. Like there is, it is a genuinely, I don't know, it feels like a very touristy thing

to be like, you gotta go to Japan and use the vending machines. But as somebody who likes a vending machine, like, it's fucking thrilling. I like that character, by the way. Yeah, thanks. He's very enthusiastic. Yeah.

And he's got kind of a fun voice. And I pitched that show to the travel channel which is just like let me go to you know wherever anchor watt and just be like no vending machines here see you next week see you next time i hiked up machu picchu these buildings are so small no vending machines zero out of five bye um I was really hoping you would talk about the physics of the vending machine because I think a lot about how they decide what is an acceptable distance for an item to fall. Oh, yeah. You know, like you get something off that top row, you got to think, one, like, what do you put on the top row that's safe to fall that far yeah you would think that vending machines would have a sort of like concave like facade so that if you get something off the top

row it like slides downward usually you see like chips up there which makes sense because you could drop a bag of chips okay if they put the lifesavers up there you, you're huffing dust at that point. There's nothing left for you. Hey, I don't have anything else. It's vending machines. Vending machines, you know. You know. I'm a sucker for convenience. And like, you really can't get much more convenient than here's a box.

Put a dollar in it. Here's some Skittles. And get the fuck out of here. Yeah. You don't have to talk to anybody at all. Nope. Hey, can I steal have to talk to anybody at all. Nope. Hey, can I steal you away? Yeah.

Cool. Got a bunch of bumble bombs here because we missed last week. So let's just get going here with this message for Jason from Sarah, who says, Dear Jason, Thanks for being everything I ever dreamed of in a partner. You're the best hugger, father, gaming partner, cleric, and cat barf cleaner. I could not imagine doing life without you, and our child could not have a better dad to do goofs with.

Let's stay married for 15 more years. I love you a million, Sarah. I'm imagining that's sort of a rolling goal. 15 years. And not a deadline. And we out. Like a sort of macabre finish line of love. Because man, if you find somebody who's good at cleaning up cat barf, you got to hold them tight and never let them go.

That's my favorite song. Yeah. You want to do this next one? Yes, this is for alex it is from ryan hello my darling wife depending on when this message goes out i want to wish you a happy two years of marriage or 11 years together or happy birthday or maybe happy canada day only time will tell my love for you burns brighter than the intensity of a thousand suns and each moment we are apart feels like an eternity of longing to be back in your arms it's very sweet but if it burned with the intensity of a thousand suns the planet would be uninhabitable and i don't want to split hairs

but i'm not the one over here talking about obliterating the planet at all life on it with really the intensity of one sun is still a little too much true for this planet earth i love you with the intensity of um like 30 imax screens which is still like inconceivably bright and powerful but it's not going to pose a threat to you know human existence as we know it just saying think about these things people actions have consequences here's a message for ste, and it's from Kat, who says, my spicy turnip. I can't begin to tell you how lucky I am to have found you. Thank you for always supporting me in my dreams, hobbies, and challenges, and loving me,

Gautier, and Henry so much. Let's go watch something good and eat some tasty curry. You are my favorite, and I love you. How do you think one receives the nickname spicy turnip? Like what do you think you do to get there? It's gotta be Animal Crossing, right? That is entirely possible. That is my main sort of experiential awareness of turnips is the stock market and animal crossing the

higher the bell price the spicier oh i like that i'm gonna read this last one for katrina from michael who says my sweet boo berry i can't believe i've been lucky enough to spend a whole five years of my life with you i can't wait to spend the rest of them with you and our kittens listening to podcasts playing pokemon and running TNT campaigns with our friends. P.S. Thank you for all the good, good soups. Oh, a soup maker. Mother always wanted me to marry a soup maker. You dabbled in soups.

I've touched upon the dark arts of soups. I've liquefied certain vegetables into more desirable, sort of malleable forms than one might slurp out of a bread bowl. Sure. If you're sick of constantly arguing with the people closest to you about topics that really aren't going to change the world, we're here to take that stress off of your shoulders. We take care of it for you on We Got This with Mark and Hal. That's right, Hal. If you have a subjective question that you want answered objectively once and for all time for all of the people of the world, questions like who's the best Disney villain, Mac or PC, or should you put ketchup on a hot dog?

That's why we're here. Yes, I get that these are the biggest questions of our time. And we're often joined by special guests like Nathan Fillion, Orlando Jones, and Paget Brewster. So let Mark and Hal take care of it for you on We Got This with Mark and Hal, weekly on Maximum Fun. You want to hear my thing? Yes. By the way way you are looking hale and hearty over there oh thanks i think my vending machine segment healed healed you i think also you ate some hot fries and holy water uh during the break and that has really sizzled out there's like something so sonically pleasing about that to me hot fries and holy water yeah no it's definitely some it's

definitely something it could be like it could be any genre of music you know like if you were to write a song yeah you do a country song you do like like punk like a like an r&b yeah there's a lot of potential there sure yeah um which leads me to my topic which is consecrated talking transubstantiated cheetos that's what i was thinking of that you get up to do communion and they put a hot fry on your tongue and you eat that and it turns into the body of christ inside of you yeah love it uh no my my first my my first and only topic is a american singer by the name of remy francis wolf that's a cool name yeah uh she actually her first kind of public appearance was on american idol in 2014 i feel like there is a whole i fell off that show, obviously. Yeah.

I don't even know when. I definitely watched Clay Aiken do his business up there. I definitely saw Bo Bice do his business up there. I forget when that was. But there's like a whole genre of musicians now that came out of American Idol that I don't know that that's where they came out of so she she was not actually like a contestant that hung around for the season she

at 17 sang let's get it on for jennifer lopez keith urban and harry connick jr are those the hosts in 2014 yeah wild okay um i don't think they're still there necessarily but that was that year uh but she did not continue through the season um but she uh is kind of incredible did you listen to any of the songs i sent you yeah she's like a mix of like a tremendous number of of genres right um i of course turned a pitchfork because they have such a concise way of genres. I, of course, turned a pitchfork because they have such a concise way of referencing all of the influences. And they said that Wolf exists at the center

of a Venn diagram that includes the post-PC music hyper-pop contingent, feel-good lo-fi bedroom pop artists, and the current wave of funk and disco yeah you can't beat that that's a lot of really good fun stuff um i actually so i heard her on the radio the other day whoa um austin city limits radio will occasionally play artists that are either slated to come to town or have been in town. And it was just a total surprise. I'd never heard it.

And I did the thing that people that listen to the radio do, where I was like, Remy Wolf, Remy Wolf, Remy Wolf, Remy Wolf, like all the way home, trying to remember this artist. So I wanted to play a little bit by her. Thinking. a little bit by her thinking. I think I'm going to do a grumpy old man.

Okay. There's things over there that I know you don't know about. Listen. I'm so defensive. There are things over there that I do not know about. Yeah. I'm so defensive, there are things over there that I do not know about. Yeah. I'm so defensive, I get caught up in the modern day, the fishing net that's pulling at my feet. So you can see she's, I mean, she's good with the hook. Yes.

It's kind of that like fun poppy sound, but it feels a little different. And her music videos if you have a chance to check them out you know when i was reading about her i was like this reminds me a lot of d light's groove is in the heart like her music videos and and luckily when i was reading about her they they talked about how that she uh she was really influenced by that uh in addition to um janet jackson beck santana jack white uh chibamato um and then art like old like staple artists like uh shaka khan and daryl hall david byrne michael mcdonald erica badu like all over the place just somebody that you know loves music uh she actually went to college at the usc thornton school of music uh finished in 2018 can you play also that part of that song

where walter mathau gets on and does like a like a verse he does like a guest verse shit who is the other guy in grumpy old men you ever see see that flick? No. But I mean, obviously, I am familiar with it. Yeah. Man, am I like 500 fucking years old? I feel like the Crypt Keeper in this episode. I mean, honey, you always have been.

It's part of what drew me to you. Is it Jack Lemon? Yes. I just Googled it as you were stumbling. I can't remember if it was Jack Linen or Jack Lemon. Lemon. That's a fun name.

That's a fun name. If you've never seen the movie, it's two old gentlemen who are really fucking cantankerous. And that's about it. They made two of them. They made two of them. They made grumpy old men. Then they made grumpier old men. Even more pissed off in that one i don't know do

they hold up i don't know i'm sneaking a second segment into the show what's up everybody we're bringing back the old format just for me though because i'm doing grumpy old men and then rachel's gonna do grumpier old men and then they made one where they were the president i think and it was called head of head of state or was that the Chris Rock movie where he became the president? Oh, Griffin. Sometimes you go places I can't go with you

and it makes me so lonely. I'm so sorry. I warned you. I texted you. I was like, I'm going to do a whole Walter Matthau sort of review on this episode.

I should have known when I sent you that song, I should have thought, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no. I no i've lost him yeah i only listened to like a few bars of it and i was watching some of my favorite clips from the funny uh old uh grumpy old man movie so anyway she has a new album coming out october 15th called juno which is the name of her dog oh uh she has done a lot of her music producing in the pandemic and And so her first biggest performance was slated to be Bonnaroo on September 4th. Not really sure as of this recording the status of that performance.

But she's also coming to Austin City Limits this year. That's fun. So there's a bright, bright future ahead. I also wanted to recommend an album off her new track. It's called Liquor Store, which apparently got a boost when Willow Smith covered it on Instagram. Ooh, that's good. She's also had some attention from John Mayer, who apparently reached out to her just to be like, hey, you're crushing it. Cool track.

Yeah. She has released EPs, but this will be her first big album. She had an EP, You're a Dog, and then a year later in 2020, a follow-up called I'm Allergic to Dogs! That's so good. What was the first one called? You're a Dog. I thought you said Eurodog. I do like that, though.

Is a German shepherd a euro dog you gotta love it so many like a french bulldog is a euro dog so many potential names for this episode i know um i just you know i'm always looking for the song of the summer yeah and i know it is uh about to be september it will be september as of the airing of this uh episode yeah but i really i feel like remy wolf should have the song of summer if she doesn't already we haven't i'm we haven't mentioned this on the show first of all we did just watch that episode of lion guard again with uh christopher jackson with christopher jackson singing shuja pondaonda which is a bop but I'm gonna say

Song of the Summer at least for me is my own drum from Vivo particularly the Missy Elliot remix that comes in at the end holy shit well I wanna say that Remy Wolf has a song of the summer though you just swooped in here

I mean there can be multiple songs of the summer i guess that's fair uh so yeah go go go check her out she's got a lot of really cool videos on youtube and and they're like all bops all the songs are bops that's 100 and and the slaps you do not get that kind of guarantee from rachel the slaps and bops. For nothing. That's going to be all slaps and bops. Hey, thank you to Bowen. Speaking of slap bops, thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that right in the old episode description. And thanks to Maximum Fun for having us on the network.

There's so many great shows on the Maximum Fun network that you should be listening to, like The Flophouse. Rachel's been hitting that Flophouse real hard. Yeah, we did a space jam episode yeah i i'm afraid to listen to it because it's just like i i that movie space jam 2 is so important to me uh we got depression mode we got the jackie and laurie show we got bullseye we've got greatest discovery can't pay your dog. There's just endless shows. If you are all, you see all the time people are like, oh, I'm all caught up.

What should I do? Just go to MaximumFun.org and find yourself a new show. It's like a vending machine of jokes. Stop podcasting yourself. Just had their 700th episode. Disgusting. Disgusting.

No one should do the podcast. Oh, shit. I guess we're rounding 600. I'm a boom, bam. We, hey, you and me, we're getting close to 200. I know. Well, I mean, if you fold in the Rose Buddies era also, we've been in the game for a minute. We just got to keep starting over.

How many Rose Buddies episodes were there? Like a little bit over 100? I feel like we're over it. Wonderful's got to go. And then we're going to do our new thing. Oh, yeah. And it's called When life gives you lemons make math owls oh no and in this show are we re-watching over and over again is this like yes

were they the worst idea of all time yeah man those two dudes did a lot of shit together. Thanks for listening. And this is just a preview. This is like a backdoor pilot for when life gives you lemons, make math out. So how did you like it? Wait, I'm watching our iTunes review scores come in. Oh, no, they don't like it. Oops. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

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