Wonderful! - Wonderful! 217: I Don’t Think We Should Worship the Egg God

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Griffin’s favorite colorful shedding game! Rachel’s favorite obsolete noise exhibit!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya National Black Women’s Justice Institute: https://www.nbwji.org/ Huntington Children's Museum: https://hcmkids.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. This is a show where we talk about things we like that are good that we're into and we like them. Yeah. A lot of people come to us and they say, what's your show about? The word doesn't, Wonderful, doesn't really tell me what your show's about. Is it a murder?

Is it one of the many murder shows? Yeah, I mean, it should be. I think we'd have a lot more listeners. If we just talked about murder? Yeah. And I said, oh, okay. People love that. Well, let me try that.

Let me try. Once there was a woman and her name was Janet. And she had a husband. And they were on vacation in a place far away. Perfect. Perfect. This is right. But when Janet got back home, the husband was not there.

And everybody said, where did he go, Janet? Janet said, I'll never tell. But you know what happened? She killed him. With a big hammer. Let's interview the neighbor. Okay, I'll tell you. Neighbor, what can you say about Janet and the husband?

Well, she always carried a big hammer around with her everywhere that she went. And she said, one day, husband, you're going to get one of these. And she'd sort of smack someone in the head. Did you like that, listener? Did you like that? That's what this show could be. A man died! Do you have any small wonders?

Doesn't sound like you do. I think you should go first. We had some lovely friends stay with us this past weekend and they brought with them the witchcraft of Magic the Gathering. And I went to my local friendly game shop and I bought myself a a commander deck and uh played a couple games that's a fucking that's good yeah it's good yeah there's like a whole new way of playing it where you have like a big ass deck with no repeat cards in it and uh

it was very cerebrally engaging yeah it. Yeah, I was almost convinced and I thought maybe I should play this game, but now Sweet Griffin got me a deck and I just look at it and I'm so intimidated. Yeah. There's so much words on the cards. There's a lot of reading.

And I just feel like... I hate reading. How do you make this game? It seems long and hard. It is, but it's enjoyable too. I think you should give it a shot. How do you make this game? It seems long and hard. It is, but it's enjoyable too. I think you should give it a shot. I don't think you will like it.

Okay. But I do think that you should experiment. Uh-huh. Your 30s are a time to experiment with magic. No, that's true. That's true. Okay, so now it's my turn to say a small wonder that I have. Uh-huh. I will say, you know, reading the same book that your friend reads and then talking about it with them.

Yes, book clubs kind of, but in a small way. I perhaps made the mistake of recommending what I would probably call a murder book to my friend. The bleakest murder book I've ever heard about. And I had lunch with her recently and we talked about the murder book and it was nice. Yeah, sure. I mean, I felt bad because it did end up being a murder book. You didn't know it was going to be a murder book when you recommended it though, right? Correct.

Yeah, no, I thought, I mean, I thought it was just a bleak book about motherhood. gonna be a murder book when you recommended it though right correct yeah no i thought i mean i thought it was just a bleak book about motherhood and i thought this would be a nice way to talk about motherhood with my friend but then there was some murder yeah that's a shame yeah stop murdering everybody hey hey cut it out um i go first this week okay i would love you know what my thing is because it's up on my computer screen i forgot to close it but i am going to talk about uno we don't talk about oh no no do you think that that like when that song uh popped off that's fun do you think that uno people were like we gotta get down the like red phone in their office rang and they're like we've got a new idea for an ad have you heard the new song the new the new limb and will joint and then they're like yeah we heard it and they're like

uno rights with bruno and the uno president was like holy shit you're right not since pizzeria uno not since pizzeria uno grill have we had this sort of synergy uh it's the perfect game man uno is the perfect game it's like a desert island game for me i feel like i i really like it i actually when you when you got the magic the cards i thought like oh here's another game that you can play with two people yeah although when you play uno with two people it's like it's weird it does because there's so many like skip your turn pass your turn right move uh to your right one and two player uh reverse counts as a skip so it's just skip skip skip skip skip skip non-stop yeah yeah um but man if there's just people sitting

around doing nothing and there's a deck of uno cards nearby it's like well we may as well we might as well just be playing uno yeah yeah that was a charming thing when we were on the boat i think uh we we rolled up on your dad and car and Carol at the dining hall and they were playing Uno. They were just playing some Uno. Just as a couple. And I just thought, oh, that's sweet. That's really nice. So Uno, if you've never played it, which is weird, but I guess there's probably lots of people who have never played Uno.

Yeah, I don't know if it's as hot as it was when we were kids. That's fair, yeah. know if it's as if it's as hot as it was when we were kids that's fair yeah so it belongs to a type of card game uh called a shedding card game which is basically you want to get rid of all of your cards and that gets into like crazy eights and you know go go fish i guess and the point of the game is to get rid of all your cards you start with a hand of seven cards there's like 108 cards in a deck i think and they all have uh numbers or symbols and colors on them. And the point of the game is there's like an active card in the middle that everybody plays on.

And if that card is the same, if you have a card that is the same color or same number or symbol as that card, you can play it, right? And you want to get rid of all your cards that way. If you don't have a card you can play, you have to draw until you do. That's basically it. When you get down you can play, you have to draw until you do. That's basically it.

When you get down to one card, you have to say uno. If the next person takes their turn and you didn't do that, you have to draw two cards. So there's a focus element to it as well. And then in addition to the numbers, there are special cards like reverse, which reverses the order of play, and skip, which skips the next person. Like cards that say draw four. There's draw twos, draw four fours and there's wild cards which you can play yeah uh that's it there there is a a way of keeping points which you do in like real i guess uno real hardcore uno and i never ever ever ever play that way and did not even know about it until i researched it neither but basically when you go out of cards uh you get points for everybody else's cards that they have in their hand and

they're worth different amounts depending on like what kind of cards they are so if they have like a wild card in their hand it's like 50 points or something like that wow and it's first to 500 wins so that's how you do it in like professional in the uno parlors uh i've never played that way though i just do like you just play and someone wins and then you play again that's about it there's no continuity for me when it comes to when it comes to uno but as simple as the game is it it lends itself to so many like great moments that happen in every uno match like when somebody cannot play does not have a card to play and then draws a card and that doesn't work either so they have to keep trying and they draw 20 cards and just spiral into madness

because they cannot believe how bad their luck is or when you're down to just one card and like the card that is active is this the right color for you so you just have to wait until it gets back to your turn and hope that nobody changes it. Like the amount of tension and like kind of poker face that you have to put on because you don't want people to know that you're about to win on the next turn.

Can I ask you, this is an aesthetics question. Sure. How do you organize your Uno cards in your hand? I mean, I go by color and order order so i do like all the reds in order all the yellows in order when you say in order like number yeah yeah number and then symbols yeah i mean you got to do it that way yeah anything else is is completely illogical um there's also like there's so many great things like just skipping the same person over and over again so they can never like if you have a hand that's just all skips you can just

look at the person to your right and just be like sorry dog you actually don't get to play uno with us this game uh or when you reverse order and then the next person that you reversed it to reverses it back to you and then you reverse it right you just have like a little dance a little uno dance with that person just a one-on-one sesh it's it's it's so nice and it happens every game and i think that that's just lovely i think that it's so nice that there are just these moments that you know are going to happen when you play uno uh what i really love about you Uno is that everybody has house rules and some of them have like built themselves into the like psychic fabric of of of mankind. Like there are things that people just say are true about Uno that every it's like the Mandela effect that just people say like this is how it works in Uno. the Mandela effect that just people say,

like, this is how it works in Uno. The big one, and whenever this happens, the Uno Twitter account has to come in and be like, no guys. And then everybody freaks the fuck out. So the big one, and I don't know if this is gonna hit you as weird or not, is there's a concept called stacking in Uno house rules, where if somebody passes,

hits a, like plays a draw two card to you in stacking rules you can play a draw two on top of that to compound the effect and pass it on to the next person oh no no i've never heard of this okay this was like how i played growing up if someone tried to draw two to you instead of drawing two you could put another draw two on that and then the next person would have to draw four unless they had a draw two and then it would become a draw six to the next person. And in 2020, the Uno Twitter account came out and said, hey guys, stacking is nothing. That is not a rule.

We don't play that way. And Twitter like set itself on fire. Like Twitter had a full meltdown. Like you can say whatever the fuck you want, official Uno account, but we are going to play this weird progressive yeah no i've never heard of that there's also jump in rules which i also played going in which is that if the active card on the table is the same exact number and color as a card that you have you can play it

no matter whose turn it is and just like slam it down and get it in real quick which made uno a lot faster i'm not familiar familiar with these street rules you have. Well, lots of people are, and it's just this weird thing where people aren't sure what is official Uno rules and what isn't, and occasionally the Uno Twitter account has to lower themselves in

like an angel sent by God. Just like, nope, that's not it. That's not rules. So the game was first made by a dude named merle robbins uh in reading ohio which is a suburb of cincinnati in 1971 and he just like made it and played it with his friends and family and they're like uh merle you crushed it dog uh and so he spent eight thousand dollars 5,000 copies of the game, which is a pretty good cost per deck investment,

if you ask me. And then he sold them out of his barbershop. Oh my God. That is how Uno started. And it continues to be kind of wild from there because he sold the rights a few years later to a dude named Robert Tayzak for $50,000 plus royalties. So a nice little 10 times profit on that.

But Robert was a funeral parlor owner in Joliet, Texas. Am I saying that right? I've never really known how to say that. I think it's Joliet. Joliet, Texas. never really known how to say the name it's joliet joliet texas uh he started a company called international games which he ran out of offices behind his funeral parlor uh and the game like grew and he found like a publisher for it and it grew and then in 1992 mattel acquired international games picturing these like clandestine like conversations like oh i'm i'm so sad about

julie right i know i know i know it sucks yeah yeah hey i heard something uh you got you know you got the game i mean i'm just imagining mr tazak just like as people are walking out of the funeral parlor like i'm so sorry for your loss here. This might cheer you up. For happier times. For happier times. That'll be $3, please. Just a wild, strange journey that Uno has been on and continues to be on. And I just love it.

Yeah, me too. I just love it. It's like drinking water. It's like, yeah, that's Uno. Yeah, you play Uno. I wonder if our big son is old enough to play Uno yet. Nope. First time that kid gets skipped.

First time that kid has to draw four. Yeah, that's fair. He's going to have a full amount. It requires a certain maturity. Yeah, you're right. I was thinking more about his ability and less about his emotional wellness. Because Uno will get you. Uno will make you pretty upset.

I'm a grown man. And if I have to draw 30 cards because I just can't get a yellow one, I get pretty PO'd. Hey, can I steal your way? Please. I got a few Ramambarobs here, and I would love to read this first one because it is for Emma, and it's from Jonathan, who says, Whether driving cross-country or staying in and being wretched goblins together, I'm grateful for every moment that I get to spend with you and for the journey that has led us here.

I'll always tell you if our meat is safe to eat if you put up with my egg rituals. You're my favorite person, I love you, and I can't to eat if you put up with my egg rituals. You're my favorite person. I love you, and I can't wait to marry you in just a few months. I love our listeners. Yes. But you know how I feel about egg rituals. As blasphemy.

Uh-huh. Sacrilege. Yeah. I don't think we should be worshiping the egg god. Griffin has preferences for his eggs. Yes. And rituals are outside of those preferences. Scramble them.

Yeah. We don't have to get fancy. It's all one and done. Scramble it. It's all going to go the same in my belly, isn't it? Yeah. May as well just scramble them. Can I read the next one? Yes.

It is for Michael. It is from Mia. Hi, darling. It felt fitting to get you this about two years after we've met, and you put me on that good McElroy fix. I know I've probably said it today, but I love you bunches. Congrats on that last college semester. You're almost certified the smartest person I know.

Let's go cuddle with the cat and watch bake off you're my favorite wonder that is so sweet um do you think they're getting so there's not new bake off is there anytime someone do you think they've got dark web bake off or they like just started they're like hey look at this little show i found i think it's probably dark web bake off that's possible where they do like sexy bread and paul hollywood doesn't have a shirt on most of the time do you think he's orange all the way down in all the right places Hi, I'm Janet Varney. And just like you, I survived high school. And we're not alone. On my podcast, The JV Club,

I invite some of my friends to share the highs and lows of their teen years. Like moments with Aisha Tyler. But when you're a kid, the stakes are just pretty low. Go to school, try not to get in trouble, get laid. Jamila Jamil. I watched television probably every waking hour during that time when I was shit-faced on medicine. And Dave Holmes.

We talked and talked, and then everybody left. It was just us two, and I was like, I love you. Learn how you too can be a functioning adult after the drama and heartbreak of high school. Every week on The JV Club with Janet Varney. Find it on Maximum Fun, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a judgment-free show. We have wasted this world.

Our magic put a storm in the sky that has rendered the surface of our planet uninhabitable. But beneath the surface, well, that's another story entirely. In a city built leagues below the apocalypse, survivors of the storm forge paths through a strange new world. Some seek salvation for their homeland above. Others seek to chart the vast undersea expanse outside the city's walls. And others still seek, what else? Fortune and glory.

Dive into the Aether Sea, the latest campaign from the Adventure Zone, every other Thursday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you listen to podcasts. What do you got over there? What are you doing over there? What do you got? Huh? I'd like to take you to a museum. Oh, okay. What do you got over there? What are you doing over there? What do you got?

Huh? I'd like to take you to a museum. Oh, okay. And don't worry, you don't have to put your jacket on because it's an internet museum. Do you mind if I put my jacket on? Yeah, if you're chilly. Okay. I'm not.

Just looks cool. This is the Museum of Endangered Sounds. I did not know what this was until you sent it to me, and now I think it's adorable. It is pretty adorable. It has been around since 2012, but I just kind of rolled up on it today because I was looking, you know, I was thinking about the dial-up sound. Oh, yeah. Sure. You know, I was thinking about the dial-up sound.

Oh, yeah. You know, the... Sure. Is this related to Justin's tweet that he did? Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. Exactly. Yeah, he... Justin McElroy was tweeting about 90s internet.

Yeah, I saw that. I did see that tweet, and it made me think of one that I did not tweet. Can I share it with you really quick sure i was in uh middle school in like sixth or seventh grade i was really into everclear the band and i changed my aol instant messenger away message to the lyrics of the song father of mine by everclear which is about like the lead singers like deadbeat dad yeah and somebody i was in computer class with i did this in computer class in middle school i changed it while i was in computer class another kid i was in that class with sent me an im and it hit that

away message with the full lyrics of father of mine and they told the teacher on me who came and told me to change it because clint mack made it seem like i was talking about clint mackaroy radios clint mackaroy who you know gave me a name and then walked away the teacher was like your father would not appreciate i was like yeah you're right not beloved icon yeah city's favorite right clint mccoy yeah uh so museum of endangered sounds has i mean it's exactly that basically it is a website with little squares on it there's 33 squares and you can play you can play the old sounds from the olden days yes um so we've got the instant messenger sound yeah we've got the sound of space invaders i don't want uh to ask our incredible editor rachel to

uh like splice these in so maybe we should just do them with our mouths so like the instant messenger sound is like the there's different ones depending if you're sending or receiving a message uh there's a typewriter sound there's a nintendo cartridge sound these see i i don't know we can't really do these with our mouths there's the sound of like the needle dropping on a turntable yeah that's just a scratchy, sort of a scratchy noise. Is there a rotary telephone? A rotary telephone.

There is a rotary phone. Okay, good. This is savethesounds.info is the website, in case you're interested. There's the sound of a VCR rewinding and a nokia ringtone oh yeah baby the banana exactly and of course and of course the dial-up internet sound that i mentioned earlier um how why did it have to make that that's what i looked up originally that was going to be my topic and then it got very technical and i was like i don't think i can talk about this yeah um but yeah i mean there is a reason and i can't explain it justin's twitter thread really

was illuminating to me because it really i i we internalized so much of that in a way that uh doesn't hang with much scrutiny from people who are younger than like 25 years old who are like but wait why did it make a bad noise every time you got on the internet? Yeah. Why did your website go away if somebody picked up the telephone? That's, that's bonkers. And it's like, yeah, it is. That sucked. What were we doing? There's also some sounds on here that I'm not familiar with, but I figured maybe you would be because you're like a gamer. Yeah. You're like a mind maze. No, there's a sound for mind maze if it's a game you're familiar with i guess maybe that would mean something to you can you turn the volume up on your computer and play it let me see if i it's dope loving that beat uh there's also number

munchers yeah number munchers which is great and i know that one and then there's a sound of a tamagotchi anyway there's lots of sounds on here the fun thing about the website is that you can click on it and it will play it on a loop and then you can click on another one yeah you could play all 30 ones of them at the same time you're saying okay this is what it would sound like if a tamagotchi was in a mind base exactly and was receiving instant messengers from his girlfriend so i like that universe you i do too so if you look at the site it says that it's created by brendan chilcutt but that is actually a uh a pseudonym that was created by three people. Oh, wow.

Wait. Huh? Mary Beth Ledesma, Phil Haddad, and Greg Elwood were students at Virginia Commonwealth University. And they were kind of in the car. And Mary Beth took out her BlackBerry to send a text. And all of her friends at the time had iPhones. And they could hear her texting, which is not something you can, you can't really hear people texting the same way

you used to be able to. And they thought like, oh, we should make a list of technology. We remember, um, now that technology is like getting quieter, like the, you just don't hear all the stuff. That's interesting. And let's put it up on a site. Like nobody asked them to do it. They were just, they were excited for the opportunity, I guess, to create their little like preservation society yeah uh and so they did that in 2012 and the idea initially was that they would keep it up and they created this brendan chilcutt as this kind of curator uh but you know they were college students. They weren't really able to. But the site is still there. You can still find it.

Is it being expanded every day? No. Oh, okay. No, so this is the thing. It's funny because they created this site. This museum that is dead? Yeah. Exactly.

They were finding the sounds largely off of the internet just kind of searching for them because for example like they don't have a vcr anymore you know so it was kind of difficult like people would request sounds and they would be like well i now i have to go try and find that sound somewhere because i don't actually have that thing you're asking for right um so so it was a little difficult for them to keep up so So it's just kind of sitting there now. But it still works. Everything's still good. There's no broken links.

You can still really enjoy your trip to the past. that if it was being maintained and indexed and had like lots of uh had an actual human curator uh it it would be a little bit more helpful but i wonder like is this nostalgia or is it a like uh is it like an artistic or cultural thing that merits preservation do you know what i'm trying to say like is it do you think it's just like oh this is a fun thing hey remember these sounds or is it like it is important that we that we preserve these sounds because i think you could make a case for the latter yeah but maybe if it was a more sort of like thorough i mean archive it's it's like it's where you draw the line right like the library of congress like holds you know yeah I'm not saying the library of congress is like nostalgia play retro much

uh but I do think that like I don't know hearing these sounds really puts me in a headspace that very little else is able to do of like wow i really did used to fucking live and and breathe and die by the sound of receiving an instant message from somebody i was waiting to receive an instant message that's very true i i don't know there's certain things like the pay phone and the rotary phone too that it's hard to i don't know it's hard to kind of describe what that was like what that process was like and how difficult it was to get in touch with people. Right. And I feel like there's some value in like knowing how these things that like

define our lives these days used to work there's also I do not think about it ever I will say all sounds aren't created equal because like for example they have the windows 95 startup on here yeah which maybe historically isn't significant yeah Yeah. But 90s kids know. Yeah. If they had like the theme music for EverQuest on there, it would put me in the grave. It would turn me into a 200-year-old skeleton. Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe we talk about this.

We increase the traffic. And then there's a resurgence. Oh, you think they're going to bump it up? Yeah. Yeah. And maybe they're like, hey, let's get back in there. Join the board. You know? I could become a docent.

That's my dream. And what would you do? Let's say I'm a visitor to the site. Yeah. And I stumble upon cash register sound. Would you pop up and be like, so when you paid, sometimes people would have to hit the click clack. And here it is. And it would make a ding dong. Who are you? Why are you in my house?

Why is Internet's Griffin McElroy been chosen for this role? What's that sound? Well, it's the sound of a girl who you haven't spoken to very much at school telling you that she thinks you're a little weird and she's not at all interested in you. Oh, okay. That's weird. You guys like that noise? No, we fucking hated it. Seems like you're bringing a lot of baggage to this explanation.

I absolutely am. I absolutely am. 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. Put that one in the Library of Congress. Yeah. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. They got so much fun stuff there.

A lot of podcasts and puzzles and activities and word searches. All over at MaximumFun.org. Yeah. Do you want to talk about your show? Yeah. We have a live show coming up on Saturday for Mabim Bam. You can find tickets at bit.ly slash mabimbamvirtual, I believe.

And they're just 10 bucks. It's such a good time, y'all. It's a good time. And even if you're like, oh, I have plans Saturday. One, congratulations. But two, you can watch it later. Yeah, it's been on demand for two weeks

and they really are a great time. They really are. Come on out. And also, y'all are on the road again. On the road again. We did just announce a tour with- Starting next Munch in March. Starting in Munch March.

Munch in March. Munch, we're coming to DC.C. and Detroit and Cincinnati. And then in April, we're going to be in St. Louis and Kansas City and Minneapolis. And then we're doing, I think in June, I can do this. In June, we're doing like Boston and Connecticut, I think. And then in July, we're doing Salt Lake City and some place and some other places shoot San Diego in July Salt Lake City in July

and Portland in July that's it that's what we've announced so far I don't remember seeing Boston yeah Boston baby Boston Beantown Beantown Boston Beantown the best

part of my day is before I see you come out the door before you come out the door I think you're not gonna you're not gonna be there are you referencing something? it's not your fault oh

I thought you were doing a Ray Romano. My Boston Ben Affleck and Ray Romano sound pretty similar. Debra. There's people who have not seen Good Will Hunting who listened to the last minute of this show and probably thought I was having some sort of hemorrhage. There's also people that have seen Good Will Hunting and still didn't know what you were talking about. Still probably thought. How would it be if Good Will Hunting starred Ray Romano? I think it'd go a little something like this.

Do you like apples? Deborah, do you like apples? How do you like those apples, Deborah? He's a man of a thousand voices. voices MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.