Wonderful! - Wonderful! 229: Big Cinnamon Roll Energy

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Rachel’s favorite deep-cleansing patches! Griffin’s favorite tabletop community center!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaNARAL Pro-Choice America: https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

🎵 Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. What's up everybody, it's Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Let's keep it casual and cool this time. Okay. I feel like we've been getting a little too prim and proper and uptight

and like not fun anymore. Like we're not, we used to be so fun. Yeah. What happened? See, I don't know that I'm in that headspace. So if you want to be the fun one. I just ate a big cinnamon roll. So I have kind of a sugar rush going for me right

now. I'm going to have a lot of energy and it's up to you to try to contain it. Are you ready for the challenge? Probably not. Let's go, you know? Anyway, I don't think I... This is a show where we talk about things that we like. And that we're into. And I don't think I have the energy to keep that character going for

another moment okay here's the thing about big big cinnamon roll energy is i it's like a burns out fast like a dying star it's just a quick chemical reaction that's like get get wild dude now go to sleep yeah and then you end up sleepier than when you started. I've eaten cinnamon rolls every day for the past three days. And it has done things. Yesterday I took two naps. Hello. Hello, folks. Is this thing on?

And then, if you can believe it, he had trouble sleeping. Yeah, because I did that part during the day part. And so at the night part, I was able to stay up and doom scroll on my phone for two and a half hours. Ooh. Ooh. But that's not wonderful, is it? Do you have a small one of the wonders? A small one of the wonders.

I couldn't get my mic to go up, so I made my chair go down. Don't laugh at me. Can you go first, maybe? Okay. Gosh. Splash pads. don't laugh at me can you go first maybe okay uh gosh um splash pads splash pads i didn't know what a splash pad was i think until i moved to austin yeah me neither actually and maybe that's just because austin's so hot all the time also like we didn't have kids and it's true i think it's designed for young children right it is uh it says it's you know it's it's you know cement on the ground with holes and water shoots up out of it yeah kids run around

they frolic yeah and i just love one every time i see one i'm like oh that looks refreshing i've never gotten in one because they weren't invented yet when i was a child and i would feel i don't know weird being the only adult scampering around in a splash pad. But it makes me think about there's a scene in the movie Blank Check where the very rich kid and the FBI agent who he weirdly is trying to seduce run around and play in a splash pad. And I always thought, that looks fun. There are a lot of parts of that movie that I thought, oh, that looks nice. Must be nice to have a million dollars. I thought of my thing. Okay. And this just came to me this morning. This is hot off the

press. Yeah, sure. So it occurred to me, I was thinking about travel. Yeah. We have some travel plans coming up. And one of the big stressors for me is that our baby will only sleep in a very dark room. And a lot of times when you travel, you can't really guarantee that. And then I thought, I wonder if they make some kind of travel blackout curtain for this purpose. And then I looked it up, and they do. It has little suction cups on it and a little Velcro, and you can just kind of attach it, and it'll make your room darker for you. And I am already anticipating the good times to come as a result of this product.

So is your small wonder this travel blackout curtain or is it that yet again, the internet has anticipated your very specific need and fulfilled it for you instantly? I think it is the travel blackout curtain. Now I haven't tested it yet. I don't know if it works, but I am excited that it exists. I'm grateful for this invention.

The number of times you and I have sadly, futilely attempted to hang a comforter on a curtain rod. Yes. And destroying a curtain rod in the process because the comforter was too big. Hanging like all of the towels in the hotel room up trying to make it darker. I feel like our blanket fort game has improved just based on how often we've tried to sort of create the vampire-like sleeping situation that our children require. Our baby is at an age where he is very curious, very easily excitable. And when we go to a new space and then we say, all right, nap time,

he just like he is too activated. It's just not going to happen. He's always he just wants to get in the minibar and rummage it. You go first this week. I do. Will you give it give it to me now? I almost didn't do this one because it might be kind of gross. Oh, no, babe. But then I just kept looking around thinking like maybe there's something else.

And then I was like, no, it has to be this. The fact it's you bringing that makes me confused and concerned. It's poor strips. No, I'm wicked with you i'm so on board holy shit yes yeah we have some right now actually i just used one before the segment can you tell and you didn't invite me to join you i can't tell look at that nose cute as a button clean as a whistle i don't know actually if they expire. These would most certainly have expired. I mean, it's like cement.

It's like cement doesn't expire. It just becomes more cement-like. I am somebody with large pores. This is probably not- It's so brave of you. Thank you. So brave of you to share your struggle like this. I've struggled with it all my life.

Yeah. And because of these large pores, a lot of times my nose in particular, I mean, it doesn't look the way I want it to look. Let's just put it out there. Yeah. I don't know what that means, but I will sympathize with you. This is a thing. For some reason, this is a thing throughout history. People don't want their pores to be visible, even though there is nothing wrong with your pores being visible.

We all got pores. We all do. It's not like you walk around and a wind blows and you make a million small whistling noises from your gigantic pores. Some people have bigger pores than others. A lot of it is genetic. Sometimes it's like excess oil production or too much sun exposure or as you age your skin gets looser all of these things can contribute to the appearance of pores okay but part of the problem with large pores is that they

will get clogged sometimes yeah uh and this is what pore strips are supposed to do yeah they're supposed to take the stuff out and they do that exceptionally well uh this is a thing that i figured was relatively recent but i didn't really realize like that i can pinpoint the exact year because of the push that was made was so huge yeah uh april 1997 oh wow that was much earlier than I thought it was going to be. Oh, really? I did one in college. I experimented. Everybody experiments. Yeah. And you did one in college. Yes. Yeah. I was dating somebody at the time and she did one. She was like, you want to do one? I was like, yeah, why the hell not? And I did it and I took it off and looked at my leavings and I was like, I want to do this every day for the rest of my life i imagine my nose would would get pretty whittled down by that you know did you turn to the person

and you were like my relationship with these poor strips is going to continue well past well past our relationship our partnership yeah but thank you for introducing me to a thing. Yeah, I'll always remember this chapter in my life as the one where you introduced me to pour strips. It was a Japanese company created the Biore Perfect Pour Strip. That was what I first experimented with. In the first year, sales were an astounding 100 million and accounted for 20 of the company's revenue and part of that was the promotion okay so like the commercial right where somebody puts the little white strip on their nose and they like it's this beautiful woman and she looks at it and she's like ew yeah she pulls out this fucking pharaoh fluid looking looking like alien symbiote creature.

And it was, I mean, a lot of the articles I read kind of made the point of like, this is counter usually the beauty industry. Like the idea is that like you don't want to admit to have anything, you know, flawed about your skin. Yeah. Any kind of thing that might come out that would be gross. But it was also kind of spread this fear tactic of like there's stuff in there there's stuff all over it you don't even know what the stuff is now you have to remove it it really is i don't think of my nose as dirty at any given time i don't ever think like oh i could really use a biore pore strip right now it is just a like gross and guilty pleasure

of like i want to see how much weird gross stuff i can get to come out yeah what's my new high score i want to pull some shit out and have it look like shadow the hedgehog is down there that is a perfect representation it is it's yeah it's a little it looks like a little demon a little sort of abyssal monster sometimes and i love that shit um in 1997 biore specifically trying to promote the product to 20 something women uh who's one of the sponsors that's not very many women i would have sold i would have sold it to more than just 20 some odd women. No, women that are in their 20s. Oh, okay. It was one of the sponsors of Lilith Fair.

Hell yes. Gave away two million strips during the tour. Fuck yes. I am loving that. Just people holding hands with the strips on, watching the Dixie Chicks. That's fucking powerful to me. And just having them be like-

Now the chicks. Three, two, one, rip them. Goodbye, girl. Just everybody ripping them off all at the same time and just like, oh, oh, look at hers. Look at what come out of hers. Dixie Chicks, look at this one. Wow.

That's what the Dixie chicks sound like in my mind back in the 90s okay so you mentioned the cement yes uh the strip is made of a uh non-soluble woven substrate uh and then on the underside there's a polymer that attaches to the oil plugs in your pores, and you let it dry for 10 to 15 minutes, and the polymers adhere to the outermost layer of skin, and excess oil and hair that is clogging the pores. Get out of there. Hair? Yeah, sometimes I just think it's like little tiny hairs.

Sometimes I like convince myself like it's not actually oil, it's just little hairs. Because your whole face has little hairs, you know? For the part of the body that is kind of like your profile picture. Your showpiece. Your showpiece, the center focus. The face

does some pretty fucking gross stuff. It has some pretty whack stuff going on up there. For what it's supposed to be, the star of the show. I mean mean the whole body's pretty gross though the whole body's pretty gross but face is just like there could not be more crannies i mean your face is always out you know that's true a lot of times you're covering up the other parts but your face is like hey what is that in the air get on me yeah that's true that's a

good point i didn't think about it like that. What if I just keep a Biore pore strip on my nose at all times? And then that way, my nose will not be ravaged by the elements. And if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. Is that anything?

You weren't listening to me. So blackheads, not actually dirt, typically. Okay. So you're thinking like, oh, my face is so dirty. What it is is the oil gets oxidized by the air and then appears black. Oh, yeah. We're getting a little clinically gross, I would say. It's not like you're super dirty is what I'm saying.

Okay. I appreciate that. You're saying the filth comes from inside, not from outside. Yeah, I guess that's fair. That's beautiful. So these strips, as I mentioned, they're effective of getting like that top layer, but it's not actually like you're not really problem solving. I don't know, dog.

I have seen there has been a depth to my output that makes me think like, wow, you really got deep the fuck down in there. Yeah. I mean, if you have had a been to somebody that gave you a facial and you get the extraction. Are you familiar with this? No. They really dig a tool in there to get the stuff out. Oh, that sounds horrible.

No more thanks. It's pretty painful. Yeah. And it makes you realize, oh, there's no way a strip could really do this because they used a tool. Just let me live the fantasy a little bit longer, please.

I read also that if you use them a lot you can cause damage god dang why can't one thing be fun and good and nasty but okay i mean it's not it's not like permanently damaging it just said that it could actually cause your pores to be even larger. Well, guess what I'm going to do when that happens? Use more pore strips. Win-win. I will also say something interesting. The pore size on your face changes. Sure.

Just sporadically, depending on your hormone levels. Yeah. My pores are real tight right now. Oh, baby. You have no idea. I'm going to wrap it up and say that that's pore strips. All right. Love them.

You got to wrap it up so you can come over here and just get close to my face. Check out these supple pores. You're making me feel weird. Yeah, that's my job here. Do you want to steal me away? You steal me away this time. Okay. Wow.

Got a couple scumbo bobs here, and I would love to read the first one if you don't mind. Do you mind? I do not. Excellent. This first one is for Sean. It is from Madeline, who says, Sean, this weird and wonderful universe brought us together, and for that I am endlessly thankful. I'll always love our Lego building sessions, spontaneous date nights, early bedtimes, and falling asleep while you play some weird indie side-scroller. I'm going to marry your butt off.

Love from Madeline and the literal farm we are raising together. And I am going to put a codicil here to say it might be Madeline, but I don't know how to tell the difference between those two words. And so I'll say both of them. And so it won't be insulting that way. Okay. I think that we should get into romantic Legos. Now, hear me out. I saw there's like Lego flowers now.

Have you seen these things? Yeah, sure. I mean, that seems romantic. Sure, yeah. I mean, so is a Y-wing bomber from star wars that would be pretty cool too don't you think yeah when you when you like that just can't lit candles god i love legos do you want to do the next one yes this is for gage it is from sarah cricket bug by the time this Goomba prop reaches you, we will

have been married for a whole year. This has been by far the best year of my life. You're my sunshine and my rain. Just an absolutely incredible person. Are you sure you're real? Let's solve some latent puzzles tonight. 1, 4, 3. Squishy mushrooms.

And this is another Manchurian candidate style code that has activated somebody who is going to do an assassination. And that's too bad. Like, I don't like being the vehicle for that. And I'm sure you don't either.

But I do want to say that now I have a hankering to solve some Layton puzzles. Have I ever showed you Professor Layton? No, I didn't know that was a thing that anyone else

would understand. He's just sort of a fancy British man and and he solves puzzles and he has a little boy named luke who helps him tell me it's a video it's a video game yeah and somebody will be like put these matchsticks into the shape of a box and he's like you got it, but in doing so, he also solves a murder. Whoa, okay. It's good stuff. Yeah. Hi, my name's Graham Clark, and I'm one half of the podcast Stop Podcasting Yourself, a show that we've recorded for many, many years. And at the moment, instead of being in person, we're recording remotely, and you wouldn't even notice.

You don't even notice the lag that's right graham and uh the great thing about this go ahead no you go ahead okay okay go ahead and you can listen to us uh every week on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Your podcasts. Did your neighbor back into your car? Bring that case to Judge Judy. Think the mailman might be the real father? Give that one to Judge

Mathis. But, does your mom want you to flush her ashes down the toilet at Disney World when she passes away? Now that's my jurisdiction. Welcome to the court of Judge John Hodgman, where the people are real, the disputes are real, and the stakes are often unusual. If I got arrested for dumping your ashes in the Jungle Cruise, it would be an honor. I don't want to be part of somebody getting a super yacht. I don't know at what point you want to go into this, but we've had a worm bin before.

Available free right now at MaximumFun.org. Judge John Hodgman, the court of last resort when your wife won't stop pretending to be a cat and knocking the clean laundry over. I want to talk about the Friendly Local Game Store. The concept of it.

All of them. And this is a thing that I don't think you have many feelings about. No, none. One might say none. One might say none feelings about. I have obviously been in game stores. Yes. To me, I didn't develop any particular attachment to any of them yes they

all seemed kind of like places that had games and when when i say friendly local game store i'm not talking about a game stop or uh you know used video game store although you know i will fuck with that as as well uh i am talking about the the hobby shop uh oh which is another another word for it a place that specializes in you know tabletop role-playing games trading card games oh stuff like that okay what did you so did you think i was talking about like a game over video games yeah i thought like a like a video game store where one would purchase video games i do like that i do enjoy those right yeah but the friendly local game store is like its own sort of concept its own sort of entity uh i've been very lucky in that every city i have lived in i have had access to a pretty sick friendly

local game store even in huntington we had a place called the hobby shop that i believe became a hometown hobby or enough it shut down and the mantle was sort of passed. Anyway, in Huntington, like we had a store like this. In Cincinnati, I used to go to a place that was pretty far from my house called Yotta Quest that I would go to and do my shit there. I went to the Chicagoland Dice Dojo, which I recommend.

And then here in Austin, obviously we have a few, but Dragon's Lair up in that sort of Anderson Burnett sort of plaza that has Terra Toys and a really good Thai restaurant. Man, what a good little shopping square that is. Yeah. We would go there. And each one of those, I feel like, is like a pretty dope spot. And there's a connective tissue sort of between those. And I think it's sort of a common thing for all game stores in that category.

And I really appreciate that, even though I do not avail myself of most of their services. Like, board games are a big thing, especially at Dragon's Lair and other stores. And back when we used to play board games and some hot one would come out that somebody would recommend, I would just go to Dragon's Lair because I knew that they would have it and they would never let us down. There are a lot of them carry like comics and graphic novels just because it is sort of a similar niche interest that uh maybe it's tough to run just a comic shop but if you run a you know gaming shop that also does comics you can kind of like gather enough of enough earnings there because people who like one the vin diagram there is pretty tight uh obviously like the thing i've done most in these types of places is dnd style stuff whether it is like spending a fortune on books and dice and minifigs and

you know tile sets for dungeons or whatever uh or you know playing with a dnd group or they do events constantly for all sorts of card games and tabletop games i used to go to the adventurers league which was just like an open invitation dnd game that you could just like go to and this like blew me away when you told me you did that yeah like i feel like you wouldn't you wouldn't walk into like a happy hour where you didn't know people no but but you would walk into a in cincinnati at yada quest is when i had like a pickup group of of dnd that i uh just like they had an open invitation day that was like a mixer where you could just like go and find a group that you could play with there at the store so it wasn't like oh fuck i have to like make friends today which is my

nightmare it's like okay come back to this shop next monday and we'll we'll just play a game It wasn't like, oh, fuck, I have to make friends today, which is my nightmare. It's like, okay, come back to this shop next Monday and we'll just play a game. And I think I only got together with them like half a dozen times or so, but it was like fun. And it was basically my first exposure to D&D as limited as it was. And it's dope. I think that is a lot of people's first exposure to role-playing games or trading card games or whatever niche interests that you organically probably are not just going to find somebody or some group of

somebodies to do that with. And obviously, things are way different now that you can just hop on some Discord community and start playing with somebody virtually um things things things were different back in 20 2009 2010 uh and that was the way to do it and i always really really appreciated that um but like the thing i love most about game stores is that there are whole scenes that operate within them that i have like i know virtually nothing about, but I could not be fascinated more by. Like, I am, whenever I show up and there's, like, a Pokemon card game tournament happening, and there's just people of all ages, like, duking it out in this bracket and getting, like, super duper into it, it is really hard for me to not get very fascinated by that it's very hard for me to

not even though i don't understand it i mean i do i i vaguely understand it yeah um but seeing people who are that into a thing and have spent that much time like polishing their deck or whatever like that's that's cool to me even cooler is, you know, tabletop strategy games like Warhammer, which, like, I don't know if you know anything about that. But it's, like, a big battlefield, usually with, you know, felt rolling hills and things like that. And then just, like, an army of miniatures that can move a certain amount of distance. And then there are rules.

I feel like I've seen that at the game store it is conceptually very radical even though i don't know anything about it i know nothing about i could not begin to explain how the actual mechanics of a warhammer or similar game like that works it's pretty sick to to see it in action and see people who are into it uh you know doing it in this what is maybe the only place that they can do this one activity that they are so interested in uh i think that's rad i can't think of too many like types of businesses like that where it's like a i mean that's why they call it a hobby shop right is it's like you can't scratch this itch really anywhere else yeah but here is a space where you can do it and i also know that like flgs friendly local game store is like the acronym that people use for it i also

recognize that there's probably a lot of them that aren't friendly because with this territory also comes gatekeeping and you know snobbery from time to time i have had fortunately very pleasant experiences at all the game stores that i've been to but it's just like you know it's enthusiasm it's enthusiasm for a very specific thing and it's a place where you can it is a full service stop for those things whether it is like getting into it learning how to do it buying it playing it uh yeah before dragon's lair i had never seen a store that like had actual tables in it like hey come sit down and play this thing that you want to play yeah and that kind of blew me away a little bit and it's really cool i mean dragon's lair is sick too because they uh they do a lot of like kids

programming stuff and austin bat cave does the dnd workshops uh there for the kids and that's that's dope but it's it it they also have snacks usually for the local game stores just to have like you know i can go get some handicaps hot fries like in between fights in my dnd session um i just i i conceptually i just love the idea of just like a safe haven for this one type of gaming that is really hard to do on your own or do in a vacuum. Uh, and, and they have, uh, you know, at a good shop like that, like you, you can have your, your needs served and join hopefully like a pretty tight, cool community in, in doing so.

And I just, I really like them. I really like a good game store community in in doing so and i just i really like them i really like a good game store so keep it up everyone keep it up everybody who owns a game store uh thank you to bo n and you know what and augustus oh for the use of our theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description thank you to maximum fun for having us on the network so much fun to be had there i would say the maximum amount on a good day if you're a real gamer maybe listen to triple click maybe oh that's a good idea yeah you know what i was gonna suggest uh depression mode depression mode if you're a depressed gamer that's it's amazing how therapeutic it can be to have somebody

else talk about their mental health. Yeah. Because it can be very isolating. And so I really recommend that show. Yeah. A bunch more over at MaximumFun.org. We have a bunch of stuff over at TheMcRoy.Family or McRoyMerch.com. We got a bunch of stuff for you to check out there. Hey, we're doing a live virtual Taz this Friday at, I believe, 9 Eastern time.

That's this Friday, huh? Yes. We're playing a game called Dread, which is a Jenga-based role-playing game. It's going to be fun. Are you all going to have the pieces? Travis has shipped me what he has called a fancy Jenga set, so I can't

wait to see what that is. My plan is to not topple the tower at all because it almost certainly won't make a big loud noise that will scare the baby away. Yeah. So the stakes for me could not be higher. Uh, you can find a ticket for that at, uh, the McElroy dot family and, uh, it's going to be tons of fun. So come on and jam.

Anything else you'd like to say? Nope. No? No, I'm feeling, I'm feeling a little quiet you do seem quiet which is weird because you're usually like uh i know fucking party mile a minute over here right we need to get you a cinnamon roll stat so you can get on my level Thank you. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

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