Wonderful! - Wonderful! 201: Keep it up, Tetris Boy

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Griffin’s favorite motivational emotion! Rachel’s favorite relatable poet!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. I've lost my fun voice. My fun, deep voice. Welcome to the block party. If this is your first episode, you don't even know that I was sick last week and had a fun, deep voice.

This is a very special episode. Oh, okay. Not in the, like, Saved by the Bell sense, where we're going to talk to you about drugs and stuff. Yeah, to my knowledge, neither of us has a problem that we need to confront the other one about. Yeah, except I'm kind of a chocolate. I love chocolate so much. This is a show where we talk about things that are good

and things that we like and things that we're into. I'm Griffin. That's Rachel. We are married. We are married. We have two kids. We live in Austin and we like to party yeah and what other things do we need what other sort of bio bullet points um i would just say that

initially we started a show that was a reality dating show podcast specifically the bachelor but we did occasionally we did some other shows. And we would make jokes. And we would bring our. Tell me more about these jokes. These jokes. Well, so, you know, a lot of people on the show were funny, either intentionally or not intentionally. And then we just started to kind of feel uncomfortable with the whole premise of the franchise. It made us feel bad to do it.

Yeah. So we did this literally diametrically opposed podcast. Yeah. So approximately 200 episodes ago, we switched to this format where we just talk about things we like. This is 201. So like a whole new era. Yeah.

Our seasons are 100 episodes long. Welcome to season three. Yeah. It's literally all we do and we like to start things off with a little discussion of maybe not like things that can inspire a grand discussion we call them small wonders we do do you want do you have and typically how this segment works is i ask rachel she has one i'm ready this time oh shit okay containers yeah oh my god intoxicating to see new containers in the house i have found since the pandemic began that i have spent a lot of time in this house and i have slowly set out on a path to organize every piece of this house that is frustrating to me it's been very very gradual, not a read on the speed

with which you've been accomplishing this goal, but I feel like you've been very contemplative about it. Because it's intimidating to open a drawer, see it full of random stuff and want to put the time into organizing it. But I, yesterday, purchased some containers for our snack drawers, which we have many.

Yeah, again, if you're new to the show, which we have many. Yeah. Again, if you're new to the show. We like to snack. We like to snack. And what I found a lot of times is that we would just leave stuff in that snack drawer for literal years. Yeah. And then our child would pull a snack out and we would be like, whoa, wait. Not that one. Don't eat that one.

That's from 2019. Those fig newtons have fermented those fig newtons will get you fucked up fam uh so i went through the drawers i threw away all the old food and then i organized it into containers and now i open that drawer and i just feel and henry is so stu henry is our big son he is so stoked. Is he? Oh my God, yes. This morning he was like, I want something from the snack drawer.

Let me show you. And he opened it up and he was like, these were my gummies. These are my mini Z bars. Oh, he's my child. He is absolutely my child. I'm gonna say video game. If you've never listened to the show before,

I'm kind of a gamer. There's a new Metroid game. It's really, really good. Is that what you've been listened to the show before i'm kind of a gamer um there's a new metroid game it's really really good is that what you've been playing that's what i've been playing metroid is uh uh because i don't think you've ever played one or have you you've been dipping your toe into some of the nintendo waters but i think this one's still fresh to you uh it's just like a series of like action platform games that have been going since the NES. Only this one's scary. This one has robots that chase you

and kill you instantly if they touch you. It's very good October stuff. It's really good Halloween stuff. I'm liking it quite a bit. Yeah. But actually, shit, we're talking about it on Besties this week. So I just spoiled my thoughts on it.

So please pretend. Don't tell the other boys that I did that. Please pretend like you don't know how I feel about Metroid. Okay. It's excellent, though. I go first this week. Okay. So in this show, we each talk about one.

We used to do two things, but then we had two kids. Yeah. And so now we do one thing. And this gives us a little more time to really explore the space of our thing. Which is good, because my subject this week is a bit abstract we talk a lot about food music uh food again uh but sometimes we get like a little a little bit more i don't know conceptual conceptual yes and so i i the title of my segment that i have is uh, I wrote it down and was like preparing it and then I realized I could summarize it much more quickly. So the original title was

that feeling of satisfaction you get when you do something you're scared of. But then I realized that I could just sort of reduce that to fear. Well, wait, that makes it sound like you think fear is wonderful. I think that harmless fear is absolutely wonderful. Oh, what about overcoming fear?

That is another good thing. Yes, absolutely. There's so many ways of phrasing this. I just don't want it to sound like you're saying, like, you know what is the greatest human emotion? Fear. No, I mean, I am a hugely anxious person. And so I would not describe that as something that has been particularly fulfilling.

But this was, again, a thing that was sort of inspired by hanging out with Henry, our four-year-old son, almost five. Because watching the pride that he has and the excitement that he gets from doing something that he was scared of is awesome. It's so good and so relatable. I appreciate that you are glasses half full about this, because I tend to just feel guilty that our child is fearful and that we have somehow done that to him.

Oh, yeah, for sure. No, that's unavoidable. Absolutely. So I'm sitting there in that emotion, just feeling full guilt, and you're cheering him on and really reveling in the moment where he overcomes it. We are both anxious parents. And so it is tough not to pass that along to our kids. I know. both anxious parents and so like it is tough not to pass that along to our kids and i think we're extremely like aware of that now yeah but as new parents like it's tough especially with the first kid because like you they are in in your anxious eyes a little fabergé egg that the world is trying very hard to destroy yeah um and and you know for for almost five years down the line and with two kids under our belt that's not where we keep our kids, but you know what I mean?

Like, we know that that's not the truth. And so like, we're, we are fighting a bit of programming here. Yeah, for sure. But it's also a great gift we've given him because every time he conquers one of those fears, it's amazing. So he just, he just, uh, started a swim class and the first time that like he put his head underwater, which is not something he really does, he came up and he was stoked and really excited about it. He did it a second time that didn't go quite as well. And so he wanted to quit swim classes after that.

So it's a give and take. It's a give and take. But like when I was a kid, I remember like some of my most potent memories are from these times. For instance, I used to be terrified of roller coasters. Yeah. We went to Kings Island a lot. And Kings Island is dope. Like it's a great theme park.

But I would only want to go on the rides that were like you know the theater rides where the chairs move around or like the haunted house ride or whatever if it was like a roller coaster i couldn't which sucks because king's island has a ton of great roller coasters uh but then i remember i went on the outer limits uh flight of fear the like uh spring break preview that our dad took us to like this the year it opened and they were like, Dad told me and I realized now this was a terrible trick. He was like, it's indoors. How scary could it be? I love that. That is such a like a nice like Clint McElroy, like salesman pitch. Yes. Of just like, huh, yeah, no, that's a good point. And then later, wait.

Wait a minute. Is it? The answer to his question, his mean-spirited question, when I got off the ride was hugely scary. Yeah, almost. Very fast and terrifying. Probably scarier in some ways. The scariest, yes.

But also, I was into roller coasters after that like i was so exhilarated and proud of myself for doing that scary thing and like those very strong emotions are why i remember that so vividly yeah no that's that's a really good point because i remember the first roller coaster i went on and then once i did i was like okay now i can do roller coasters you know and then and then i will say then it was like well but i'm not going to go upside down oh okay see you i really pulled the bandage off with the flight yeah see i like put another restriction on there that took me into another year of like well now i do roller coasters but i don't do the ones that go upside down. Right.

And eventually I, you know, I overcame that too. Sure. But yeah, it is. It's interesting how you do it and you're successful and then you're like, well, I just do it now. Yeah. You know? I realized in sort of writing down my thoughts on this that you could extrapolate this out to cover like a lot of things that are appropriate for this very spookiest season which is to say like haunted houses and scary movies like in general that's true um both of them sort of do the same stuff to to your brain and they are exciting and fun um and a lot of that

is like chemistry right like your when you get scared your body produces adrenaline obviously which like causes heightened senses and just a bunch of stuff that happens to your body that is in a again a harmless environment like exhilarating but it can also produce dopamine uh which is thought to sort of like cement your fight or flight response to specific things. Because it's like the reward system for your brain that conditions you to like feel certain way, like pay attention to certain things. And so like those two things kind of go hand in hand. And there's a marked difference between feeling those hormones in a situation that you feeling those hormones in a situation that you subconsciously know is not actually that dangerous versus a situation that you are like in danger, right? Like that's not fun. That part is not

quite as fun. Like watching Scream in theaters and getting those jump scares and knowing like in the way deep down back of your mind that like it's okay i'm not actually going to be murdered here uh that's where you get the like ah ha ha ha ha but if ghost face is really chasing you with a very real knife that is not you don't get the second part you just get the first part obviously um but like yeah i it just, a lot of it is hormones, but I think it goes beyond that. I think it is the sense of discovery about yourself, like knowing what you are capable of finding out what you are capable of is amazing.

It's amazing as an adult, right? Like I, I get stage fright every time we do a live show. Um, I'm anxious all day. Like it really fucks me up. Like I feel super exhausted and sick to my stomach like all day if we're doing a live show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though we've been doing this

for years and years and years and years. But then when the show's over, when we walk off the stage, it is indescribable how good it feels. Yeah, the transformation is kind of incredible because I've been able to attend some of these shows and backstage, you and all your brothers, I would say, are just kind of like quiet balls of nerve. And then to see you perform, it's just like a totally different experience like it just like it feels like going downhill on a roller coaster of like all of a sudden you guys are like on stage literally

screaming but that's like but that goes back to when we were doing like children's theater i was terrified every time we did any show yeah and we did a lot right but when you're out on stage and you're kind of on show mode, you start that. Descent is a good way of putting it, like down the roller coaster. And then when you get off stage, it is that sense of discovery. It is still that adrenaline pumping. But it's also a sense of relief of just like, oh, thank God. It's over.

We made it through. I am, full disclosure, we've not done a live show in front of a crowd since last march i i genuinely don't even remember yeah uh and i'm scared like i am genuinely scared of yeah of doing it again but i also know like i will i will probably be fine i'm there with my my family and um not in any immediate danger and so i I am also weirdly looking forward to like that feeling that I get when I get off the stage. And I think that feeling more than makes up for the anxiety.

And I think it's probably why I do what I do. I think it's probably why I did children's theater my whole life growing up and why I do this now. Some people do parkour, you know? Some people do parkour, but for me doing butt jokes on a stage in front of some people makes me feel alive and it's honestly and this is sort of my last thought about this is like it's the best part of being a parent i think at least of kids that are the age that henry is

growing into now is you get it twofold like hen Henry used just very low stakes example, but Henry is scared of slides. Like he does not, he's scared of slides. He thinks that they are scary. But when he does go down one, you can see like he wants to do it a thousand times, right? And you can see that like that excitement, you can see that relief,

you can see all of that thing, but you can also see the pride that he feels that he's able to do that but also you feel it too i know that's the thing is that now we are so used to him being kind of fearful that i feel like we kind of like amp up a little bit like is he gonna do it is he gonna do it can we get him to do it and then when he does we have that same feeling of like oh god he did it we we uh rented a swimming pool uh over the summer like somebody's house's swimming pool and we had done it a few times with henry and he had he had gotten over his fear of just like swimming uh and loves the water now but we were just like hanging out with our friends we had a couple of friends that were there

and he pushed this little plastic slide up to the edge of the pool and went down it into the water and me and rachel looked at him and looked at each other like what are you kidding me it's so awesome it's so rewarding and exciting and it genuinely is like it brings me so much joy yeah to see that um and yeah all of that is to say like fear can be cool when it's not a you know something that is going to hurt you something that you know is not going to hurt you yeah uh and it's it is uh i'm not like saying anything anybody doesn't know i'm sure like you know whether or not you like scary movies or whatever. But I just find it so fascinating how formative it can be.

Yeah, it's true. It's just everywhere. It's been with you your whole life, like your reaction to these kinds of things. I think it's amazing. I think it's so good. Can I steal you? This is a thing that we say, leftover from the Bachelor era. We never changed it, which is weird.

Well, we also still play the Home Improvement song inexplicably. That's good. But yeah, when we're about to go do our advertisements and grandpa trams, then we say, can I steal you away? Yes. you away yes got a couple of bubble tubs here and i would love to read this first one because it is for jared and it is from isabel who says jared i don't know when you will be hearing this but i just wanted to send you a message saying that i love you through this good good podcast you're my best friend favorite person and I love being your girlfriend. Here's to many more years of cuddles, smooches, and silly late night conversations. Love, your girlfriend, Isabel. Should we explain, since I believe this is our block party episode?

Oh, sure. That when you say bubble tubs, what you need is jumbotrons. These are called jumbotrons. And that's typically people send sweet love messages. Yeah. Like Isabel has done for Jared here. Oh my gosh. And sometimes, but it's you know me, I like that sort of irreverent

South Park humor, so I'll call the jumbotrons different words. Although somebody, I apologize that I don't have the name of that person on hand, made a compilation of all the weird names I've called jumbotrons. Yes. And I say like Grambotram a lot. lot most of the i would say 50 of the times i come you also say jumbo prawn which is great yeah but that's a real great you want to read this other one yes this message is for sheena it is from jesse hi sheena i love you very much and can't wait to be with you

forever you will always be my favorite person. Hopefully one day we can have cat cafe or escape room. But until then, just you and the two fluff butts and some gay TV shows are enough. I love you, Jessie. Why do those two things have to be separate? Cat, escape room. You're going around solving puzzles. And there's kitties puzzles and there's kitties but there's kitties everywhere and they're just ruining everything yeah i like that okay so the chess

board there are pieces on the chess board and when you look at them it'll tell you that oh the cat's not what a degree of difficulty also i think you couldn't do that because i think people would be convinced that there was some kind of clue within the cat. Yeah, that's a good point. The cat would be like coughing up a hairball and people would just be like waving. He's coughing up a key. I'm Lisa Hanawalt. And I'm Emily Heller. Nine years ago, we started a podcast to try and learn something new every episode.

Things have gone a little off the rails since then. Tune in to hear about low-stakes neighborhood drama, gardening, the sordid, nasty underbelly of the horse girl lifestyle, hot sauce, addiction to TV, and sweaty takes on celebrity culture.

And the weirdest, grossest stuff you can find on wikipedia.org. We'll read all of it, no matter how gross. There's something for everyone on our podcast, Baby Geniuses. Hosted by us, two horny adult idiots. Hang out with us as we try and fail to retain any knowledge at all. Every other week on Maximum Fun. I would love to hear what you have prepared for the class today. I would love to hear what you have prepared for the class today.

Well, in the spirit of the block party and kind of bringing people to some of the concepts and ideas that we typically discuss on the show, I'm doing a poetry corner. This is no longer a stand-up bass. It used to be a stand-up bass. It's become something else. It's like a very baritone sitar at this point. This started many episodes ago. I like to think, you know, Griffin has a lot of interest that he has become kind of the expert in because he has spent many years interested in these things i would love to hear what you think some of those are well i think i mean there's there's a lot of music that you're

interested in there's a lot of obviously video games i don't want to reduce you to video games but that is you love that shit you love that you're right you're right when we're not recording you guys should hear it it's vicious she's like keep it up tetris boy and i'm like what does that mean what is that it sounds mean uh and so mega man head what are you saying to me but i think part of what makes that interesting is that i don't know a lot about video games and And so a lot of times when Griffin and I talk, I learn a lot of new things. The same is true about this segment in reverse. Absolutely. So I was trying to think, what is something that I know that maybe not a lot of people know,

and that is poetry. And Griffin doesn't know a lot about poetry. I'm learning. He is learning. Through you. And so I started what I call the Poetry Corner, which is I'll talk about a poet and read a poem, and we all leave better for it. Yeah. Is what I'm going to say. We grow together. We grow together. So the poet I am going to talk about today is Tony Hoagland. Oh, sure.

Sure. Tony. They do great stuff. They do the ones with the rhymes in it, yes? Not typically. Even that is a 50-50 shot. Not even 50-50, really, honestly. They use pentameter and verse and meter and visual language. They're that one?

Tony? That Tony? Okay, so Tony Hoagland, born in North Carolina, grew up what he called as an army brat. And so he lived in Hawaii, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Ethiopia. Whoa. Born in 1953 and published just a lot of books until he passed in 2018 from pancreatic cancer. What I will say that I like about him, super funny, gives me kind of a Billy Collins feel, if you'll remember Billy Collins. Sure, I do.

Somebody who writes, like many of the poems that I bring to the show, like accessible poems that are kind of funny. And, you know, he's won prizes and awards for that. And I wanted to read one of his poems today. Please do that. It's called to read one of his poems today. Please do that. It's called Summer in a Small Town. I already love this poem a lot. It is not a Bruce Springsteen song. It is a poem. Hot dogs in a small town.

Summer in a Small Town. Yes, the young mothers are beautiful, with all the self-acceptance of exhaustion, still dazed from their great outpouring, pushing their strollers along the public river walk. And the day is also beautiful. The replica 19th century paddle wheeler perpetually moored at the city wharf with its glassed-in bar and grill for the lunch and cocktail seekers, who come for the Mark Twain happy hour, which lasts as long as the Mississippi. This is the kind of town where the rush hour traffic halts to let three wild turkeys cross the road. And when the high school music teacher retires after 30 years, the movie marquee says, thanks, Mr. Bittleman, and the whole town comes to hear the tuba solos of old students.

Summer when the living is easy and we store up pleasure in our bodies like fat, like Eskimos, for the coming season of probation. All August, the Ferris wheel will turn in the little amusement park and screaming teenage girls will jump into the river with their clothes on right next to the no swimming sign, trying to cool the heat inside of the small town of their bodies for which they have no words obedient to the voice inside which tells them now steal pleasure that's good that good one that's really good yeah now you grew up in a big city so you this you maybe don't resonate with a lot of this well with your big city living um but us us west virginians oh this hits home yeah it's home i remember my many days swimming in the ohio river and the many many chemical burns i received i am i really like the line about the music teacher and thanks mr biddleman on the movie marquee.

Oh, God, that's so perfectly done. Yeah. He talks a lot about his experience of, you know, trying to kind of make poetry more accessible. You know, he went to undergraduate at University of Iowa, which has this famous Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing. And he was just surrounded by people who took poetry very seriously and wrote about very serious things. And his kind of desire was to like react against that and, you know, make his poetry relatable and accessible. And I really think he does that. Yeah, sure. Very well. I will also say, he talks about how he thinks poetry is best when read aloud. And he said, quote, a poem in the air

is different than a poem on the page. A poem when you read it is getting the best attention it will have. You experience it in real time. You you're you're big on this too right yeah yeah i really i really like uh going to poetry readings and reading poems out loud because you can't cheat ahead you know you don't know how long the poem is you don't kind of have words that jump out at you before you read them that's true i've never really thought about that but i experience the poem in a much different way than you do. Like I can see kind of when the poem is going to end, for example. Right. But when you're listening, you don't know.

And so you're kind of just hanging on every word. And that's what's kind of cool about reading poems on the show. It's dope to be surprised what the last line of a poem is. Like now, steal pleasure. Yeah. It's a really cool ending to the poem. But if you're expecting more to come after it it just hits even harder like it's yeah that's a really interesting thought yeah he uh he told uh in an interview with the houston chronicle he said humor in poetry is even better than beauty

if you could have it all you would but humor is better than beauty because it doesn't put people to sleep it wakes them up and relaxes them at the same time. He talks about that a lot of like, as you know, people kind of tense up a little bit when they're getting into a poem and that like first kind of line that you say, that's kind of funny or, or,

you know, like engaging, like lets people kind of relax and enjoy the poem more than they might. So, yeah, I just, this is kind of one of those poets that more than they might yeah sure so yeah i just this is kind of one of those poets that fits into like my wheelhouse and i feel excited to bring to the show because i feel like nobody's going to be alienated by it sure they're they're right in

there with us i'm right there with you for sure hey thank you to bowen and augustus for the use of our theme song money won't pay that was the track you heard at the top and bottom of the show. And it's so good. And we're very appreciative that we can use it. Find the link to that in the episode description. And hey, celebrate this MaxFun block party with us by checking out some other MaxFun shows. There's so many.

Rachel is an enormous fan of Stop Podcasting yourself. A devotee, I would say. But there's so many shows. There's so many ways to explore this wonderful community. There's going to be some events and fun stuff happening pretty much all week. Yeah, there's some crossover stuff. Yeah. You're going to of a lot of fun stuff i would recommend also the jackie and laurie show yeah it's like real funny ladies kind of talking

about their experience being funny i like mission to zix it's a yeah uh sort of funny space opera fiction podcast that's really good oh and depression mode is really good too yeah um that's like a great show john moe brings on people to talk about kind of mental health and their personal experience with it uh which can be just really kind of cathartic to listen to if you go to maximumfund.org block party you can find out about all the stuff that's going on uh during this week there's an awesome poster that i really need to grab uh designed by paul g hammond it's it's fantastic um and there's a block party playlist that uh everybody added songs to on spotify that you can go listen to um so there's a lot of cool stuff going on and and

we would encourage you to check that out and if you are a new listener if you've never listened to this show before this is it this is Yes, this is about what we do. We talk about things that we like. It's short. I like that part. It's a half hour in and out, and you get a little spring in your step, I hope. Yeah. But that's it.

We got to go. We got to go. We got other stuff to do. We know you're having fun, but you can't hog us. Yeah. I will say we have no sign off, which continues to be a problem because we never know how to leave. Yeah, but we do like to try out some new stuff. And so this time I'm going to try Bazinga!

That was too loud. I think I did it too loud, but I think the concept is strong. 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. Working on it. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported. A man goes to the doctor and says that he's depressed and that life seems cruel. The doctor says, ah, the treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him and you will surely feel better. The man bursts into tears and says,

but doctor, I am Pagliacci. Ah, okay, says the Doctor. In which case, try listening to the Beef and Dairy Network podcast. The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is a multi-award winning comedy podcast and you can find it at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.