Wonderful! - Wonderful! 242: You Will Never Find My Oubliette

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

Griffin’s favorite web-based animal game! Rachel’s favorite hidden hallways!  Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Trans Youth Equality Foundation: https://www.transyouthequality.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. Welcome to Wonderful. Welcome. This is Griffin McElroy. And this is Rachel. Welcome to Wonderful. Welcome. This is Griffin McElroy. And this is Rachel. Welcome to Wonderful. This is a podcast we do. We talk about things we like, things that are good, and things that we are into. And it can, and if you're, maybe it's your first

episode. And maybe you're thinking, that sounds like an incredibly sort of abstract description for the podcast. Certainly you dial in from time to time. And one time we talked about Thanksgiving foods. I think that's it, though. Otherwise, it's a real grab bag, a real pinata of content. What you have to be here for is our love, ultimately. You must be here for our love yeah because a lot of times we talk about things that aren't i mean topical no you know maybe not

of interest to a large number of people you have to care about us you have to you have to care about us period and enjoy our enjoyment sort of via, just sort of get secondhand catharsis. As we discuss things we like, things are good, things are into. I got a small wonder. Okay. It's not small.

I can't stop thinking about it. It is the television show, The Resort. Oh my God. On the Peacock platform. Good Lord almighty. Oh my God. Okay. Let me just list off a few things.

Okay. A plus cast. A double A plus. I would give it that rating. Uh, there's, it's just like every genre. Yes. You know? It's got, it's got Kristen Milati.

It's got William Jackson Harper, uh, who played Chidi in Good Place. Nick Offerman's up in it. It's got Skylar Gisondo from Booksmart. Yeah. And The Quarry, the recent virtual horror game that I showed you Cyber Gisondo's face inside of, which is very easy. And it's like, there's like romance, there's mystery,

there's just, yeah, there's like a sci-fi element. Yeah, it's it is fantastic. It is it's set in a resort in the Yucatan Peninsula. And it is I don't want to tell you really much anything more than that. It's got like I don't know that a show's mystery has hooked me this hard since like Lost. And that's about as high praise as I can possibly give. Yeah. I don't know that a show's mystery has hooked me this hard since Lost. And that's about as high praise as I can possibly give a show of this type. Yeah, we are all caught up.

We watched the whole season thus far in a series of days. It is still airing. I think there's seven episodes out as you hear this now. And can't recommend it enough. If you're a mystery fan, it's man alive, it's great. Great. Every episode, there's like a moment where I'm like, wow, this is a really great television show, huh?

Yeah. You got anything? Oh, I get so caught up in your small wonders sometimes. Well, I'm a weaver of dreams and fantasies and nightmares. That's true. I guess I'll say, you know know our son started kindergarten he did and that's been pretty great so far yeah and he's already valedictorian got email this morning like you're smart boy is a plus 100 and we're like whoa i thought they didn't do that in kindergarten i i will say the first day of school was so idyllic for us. I felt like I was living in a fantasy because we were able to walk him to school and it was just us and throngs of other people with their children just walking up the hill towards the school.

And it was just like the most wholesome thing ever. Very, very good city living stuff, which is like why we moved here. And it was really great to see it all kind of actually happen for sure. Yeah, man, it's been great. Yeah. It's been really, really great. Big son comes home

with just like the right number of anecdotes to like tell us the story of his day. And they've all been so good. They've been delightful. I will say not great is that of anecdotes to like tell us the story of his day. And they've all been so good. They've been delightful. I will say not great is that the walk we do is slightly uphill, not a steep grade, but just enough that when I reach the school, I have a flop sweat going. Well, it's because the humidity is like 80% here. Yeah, that is, we do need to do something about that.

Yeah. I don't know if we talk to the mayor or or if we have some of our friends in texas send us like a box of dry air that we can release sort of surround ourselves yeah or i just baby powder my torso or i just exclusively wear black shirts that but that's just gonna make me sweatier. Can I tell you that was definitely, that was a philosophy for me in high school. I was a very sweaty teen. That was kind of what puberty did to me. I was constantly sweaty and the black t-shirt is always your friend. Hey, speaking of sweaty teens and puberty, I'd like to talk about my topic today. I don't think you're going to know anything about my topic and that okay, because I would like to teach you about the wonders of Neopets. I am here to learn. Neopets.

Is this something you participated in? Yes. So Neopets came out in 1999 when I was a 12-year-old boy. Is this post-Tamagotchi? a 12 year old boy is this post tamagotchi this is in the same say it is slightly post tamagotchi but it's very much also in that same sort of window of time neopets was a browser but i was it is because it's still a thing which is wild a browser-based virtual pet game question mark i had this reminds me of a program on cd-rom that we had at my house that was all about cats and you could have your own little cat and you could brush it and feed it but it was not web-based yes the web-based nature of neopets is mostly when i'm while i was prepping

this and learning all about how neopets changed because i have not played it since uh i don't know my sophomore year of high school, maybe. Can you remember anything about your pet and or pets? I had a dragon. Oh. That's about it. Okay. While I was sort of prepping this,

I realized that really kind of what this topic is, is the wonder of early internet. And I don't mean DAR wonder of early internet and i don't mean like darpa laboratory early internet but like everyone has internet now internet like you got a you got an aol disc in the mail that gives you internet now that anyone can get it uh not anyone obviously but more people have it right and neopets was the first thing that i can remember doing where I was like, oh, I can kind of do this thing that I like doing, which is playing a game. But I can do it in websites. And how just thrilling that was as a concept.

Did it was it able to like did you create like a login or was it just every. OK, I didn't know. Yeah, you had a login. It's like a login or was it just every okay i didn't know yeah you had a login it's like a fresh experience it was not um it was not at least when it started out like an animated like flash or java interactive thing it was all websites you would click the feed my neopet button and then it would take you to another web page showing you i don't know know, a happy JPEG of your magic fox. Oh my God. And it shows that a number has increased and then you refresh the page to go back to Neopia, the hub world where all of the Neopets experiences are stored.

It's basically just like indexed web pages. It was not like press WASD to move your character around and okay press f to launch the fire but like not that just web pages okay and we fucking loved it that way was there like a like a server situation where you would yes so it i mean not okay so now we're getting into club penguin territory i do know about that okay you know about it i'm guessing you didn't experience it no i didn't no i was working at a boys and girls club and we would bring the kids to a computer lab and they would be allowed to access a certain number of websites and one of them was club penguin yes club penguin was way more interactive It had like actual interactive games, which I'm sure Neopets,

I know for a fact Neopets now like has that stuff. But this was not that. This was just, it was the equivalent of playing like an adventure game on a graphing calculator. Like that's about the level of interactivity that we were talking about. But it was a huge monster hit. I have very wrongly assumed that it was just this weird corner of the internet that people of my generation and honestly probably younger than me like remember fondly, but wasn't like a phenomenon. I am super wrong about that.

a phenomenon i am super wrong about that basically it launched in november 1999 and by the end of the year it was getting like 600 000 page views a day which for the era is so much yeah so so much they had to like find investors right away because they couldn't afford to keep this thing alive uh and they went on to sell it to viacom uh who basically used it as a like a advertising platform for nickelodeon and the products that they advertised uh they sold it for like 160 million dollars in 2004 so like it was not some weird little you know uh corner of the internet like the many many like flash cartoon websites that existed around that time like this was a monster thing they had toys for sale at like target and other big stores like in the early aughts uh they had like happy meal toys of neopets all of this stuff that i don't i did did not know really was part of the wave.

Was there like a limit, like you couldn't customize or were there like set characters? Like how do you make a toy out of something that is so individual? You didn't really customize, right? Like there were different breeds of Neopets that you could find. Very, very, very limited number of them at the start of. Oh, and I should ask, too, were these like real deal animals or were they like Pokemon? It ran the gamut. OK.

Some real deal animals, some like. You did say dragon earlier. Yeah. Not a real animal, a dragon, except Komodo dragon, which is confusing to our sons and me, adult. Yeah. You could like the level of interactivity eventually they would add like a battle mode where you could make the pets fight uh and and other sort of very like rudimentary interactive elements but for the most part it was like i'm going to go to the video store

with my neopet to find it a video to increase its mood. Or I'm going to the pet store to get my Neopet a pet, which was called If Memory Serves a Pet Pet, which is very good. Or I'm going to get this magic paintbrush that's going to change the color of my Neopet to some rare variant. And then people will see it. How did you get currency?

Through Neopoints is, I believe what they are called. variant and then people will see it how did you get currency uh through neo points uh is is i believe what they are called uh and some of that was through the very limited game interactive elements there was a tree that you could go to i think like once a day to like get a gift and so you would see like maybe it was neo points maybe it was uh you know some some paint brush maybe it was x y or z right um it was not a great game but there was something really really exciting about loading up internet explorer which you could do from any computer at the library or at your school or at home and access this this game that could be anywhere all at once. Right. That was such a foreign concept back back when Neopets first launched and was just enough to be like, oh, my God, this is God, this is something that we can do. And obviously, like, if you take that idea to its, you know, inevitable extreme where we are now with like, you know, the biggest company in the world investing in metaverse shit.

Like, it kind of follows that. There's like a thread connecting those between neopets yeah and the metaphors yeah the matrix um and that's that's just wild but to like extrapolate that out there was so much stuff about the early internet that wasn't like oh here's a different version of this thing or here's here's a different way to do this thing with the internet. It was realizing the capabilities of what the internet as a service could do. Like, oh, shit, I can play a game on here that's accessible from anywhere. Or, oh, shit, I can download.

I'm really aging myself. like they might be giants released an mp3 only album and like it made headlines and it was so like oh shit like i can just download this from my computer legally and listen to or burn it to a cd. There were all of these things that were thrilling because they felt like discoveries. They felt like genuine innovations that would change the way that I consumed media. And I don't know that we are going to hit a sprint like that in my lifetime again. Maybe we will but but like now it's uh nfts which like neopets recently dabbled in much to the chagrin of their uh vocal community um i it and this is not old man yells at cloud shit like you know, obviously am very invested in tech shit and gaming stuff.

And I'm very excited about where all that is going. But there was this age of innocence where we had a computer in our house. We got the internet on it. And then for the next like four years, just constantly, it was like, oh my God, like I can do, I can do that on internet. I can't imagine what it's like, oh my God, like I can do that? Yeah. On internet? I can't imagine what it's like

all of you sharing that space. Bad. It was very bad. Because that's what I used to do. I used to come home from school and I would immediately get on the computer until dinnertime basically. Yeah.

You know, playing my games and talking to my friends. I mean, there was a time where me, Justin, Travis, and dad were all playing everquest on our one did you have a schedule did you have like a set post we had time limits uh so it was like an hour you could play everquest for an hour and then uh had to get bumped off but then we also uh didn't have broadband until we were yes your phone line yeah and so like we couldn't that was always a big deal

yeah we had some app or some software downloaded where like if you did get a phone call people could like leave a message and you would hear it but like if i'm raiding you know the lower the lower duck i'm not gonna just like stop my raid do you know what i mean? Yeah. Like, sorry, Aunt Dana. Like, I know it's urgent and you need us to get back there also wasn't like, there weren't blogs necessarily that I was following. It was all word of mouth. And so you would hear about like, I remember the first time somebody brought me to their house and showed me like,

oh yeah, I download all this shit on Napster. And I, do you want a CD? And I was like, what? All of that was like super, super fun and exciting. And I also know like looking back at it now, I would feel like a space alien if I could go back to those days and be like, yeah, guys, that's a picture of a wolf. You need to calm down. I was just talking to my friend the other day about that. Her daughter just started college and is, you know, kind of having that moment of like how

do i make friends and i was telling her like oh yeah i used to walk around the quad with my disc man at night uh by myself and just that concept of carrying around a disc man is insane yeah anyway uh i'm uncomfortable with how sort of like uh back in my day this bit was no i think i i think you have appropriately focused on the advance of technology and not this it wasn't it wasn't better than it is now because like obviously now like i can put a fucking like three pound headset on my face and be in virtual reality like anywhere like that's undeniably very sick of course yeah uh but man it was just you felt like just the just the gods were coming down from the mountain like every week like oh you want to watch a movie on your computer yeah anyway can i steal your way yes cool

we have a grumbo bob here and i can i read it because it is for future isabel philip and noel and it is from past isabel who screamed into the time tunnel hi future isabel, Philip, and Noelle. And it is from past Isabelle, who screamed into the time tunnel. Hi, future Isabelle, Philip, and Noelle. You're all wonderful, and I hope you're enjoying some of your favorite wonders. Ice cream, pole, Veronica Mars, satay prawns. I almost said stray prawns.

Prawns that, free-range prawns, they broke out of the containment unit. No, satay prawns. Couch cuddles pokemon mount stromeo rue tails and of course your family near and far sydney trip soon glad bethany got you onto the mackerel and zelda shares the love with you there's a lot of australia in this there's a tremendous amount of Australia. It took me on a journey, I would say,

to below the equator. And I had a great time. Went to the opera house. Hung out with all my Australian friends. Did other Australia things. Did other Australia things. Yes. That I do know about. Beach. Beach. Yes. That I do know about. Beach.

Beach. Yes. Bondi Beach. Yeah. What did we watch? We watched some kind of like. It was humiliating. Whatever it was,

it's not the kind of thing I want to talk about on the show. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, have a good Australia. This week, the greatest discovery becomes greatest trek that's because greatest trek is for way more than just discovery we're the hit show on maximum fun that covers all the new star trek shows lower decks strange new worlds picard prodigy discovery and any other star trek show paramount

throws at us come check it out for our funny and formative recaps of all the new stuff this Star Trek industrial complex churns out. It's in your podcatcher every Tuesday. Subscribe to Greatest Trek. It's a new Star Trek podcast from the makers of The Greatest Generation. Hey there, it's Annabelle Gurwitch. And I'm Laura House. We host Tiny Victories, the 15-minute podcast that's about the little things.

Getting into the tiny victory frame of mind is about recognizing minor accomplishments and fleeting joys. Isn't it a wonderful day when the first password you try actually works? When it's freezing cold outside and toasty as I'll get out in my shower, my tiny victory is that I turn off the water and get on with my day. We can't change this big dumb world, but we can celebrate the tiny wins. So join us on Maximum Fun or wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's get tiny! to podcasts let's get tiny you ready yes my topic this week is the secret passageway oh just the just the general idea of uh of a hidden okay yeah i mean the fact that they i mean they have obviously existed in television and film and literature yeah uh but like this is a real thing yeah for sure you see now in buildings

and has a kind of in a lot of ways always existed uh which is super cool yeah absolutely i feel like my introduction to it was probably lion the witch in, and the Wardrobe. And that, you know, wasn't, wasn't like functional in the way that, you know, it is in other pieces of media. Well, just the idea that you would walk through a wardrobe and end up in a fantasy land. Yeah, no, that was sort of the whole conceit of the. Not like, not like in the more traditional sense of like you lift a book on a bookcase and it swings open are we sure that they didn't just have a big sort of annex on that house that the that rich weird family had that just you went through the wardrobe and it was actually a functioning door to like this that would be a different sort of story altogether yeah right

because then like then the creatures they they can come into your space. They can come into, oh, no, thank you. Yeah, it's a little too much to have a lion in your bedroom. Aslan, like, great dude, great hang. Do not need a lion in my real house where I eat and sleep and take care of two kids. Just standing at your refrigerator in the middle of the night. Yeah. Going through your leftovers.

I don't need to see that. I'll come to you. So super functional. Like now it's just kind of like a novelty thing for most people. But in history, prohibition, obviously. Speakeasies. Love it. Like getting to where you could get the illegal alcohol.

Also in medieval castles. Yeah. You know, like trying to escape um i know in some like uh like european cities they have alleys that are like intentionally kind of confusing for sort of general defense purposes yeah uh and also underground railroad And also Underground Railroad. Yeah. A lot of secret passageways. I was trying to think, like, how is this a thing in media? You know, like, I know I've seen this in a number of things. My immediate recognition was through those, like, Choose Your Own Adventure books. Yeah. And obviously, like, Scooby-Doo.

Yeah. But also, the Addams Family had the book that said Greed on it, and that was how you would get oh that was in the adams okay interesting young frankenstein with the candlestick so fucking funny that was that is always the very first thing that comes to mind um indiana jones uh last crusade, yeah. There's a lot. There's a lot there. There is. So the thing that made me think of this, our house currently has a lot of like those cabinet doors that you kind of push to open. Yeah, like they have a magnetic latch that you have to kind of push in and then pull out to disengage.

Yeah. And so one wall of our entryway is like closet space. And so we have like coats and then Griffin has some like tools and we have reusable bags. And then one of the doors you push and it opens to our downstairs. Yeah. It is indistinguishable. Yeah. And so it's a real fun showpiece for us so far when people come over. And it's also a really great way to like sell a playroom to Henry because it's like you're going to have like a secret entrance to your playroom.

Which is fun now. It will be less fun when he's, you know, down there playing violent games without us knowing and smoking reefer. violent game without us knowing and smoking reefer uh-huh i mean i don't know it's not hurting anyone i guess we know i mean if he's five well yeah i'm hopeful that we have a little time before that happens yeah um so there's there's like companies now that do this that is not surprising at all uh You can go to a company called Creative Home Engineering and they specialize in building concealed doors into bookshelves, walls, mirrors,

wardrobes, staircases, closets, fireplaces, and even vintage phone booths. I think I've done a segment on Richard Geary at his castle. Okay. I just wanted to make sure we hadn't duplicated

this topic before. And I will also say this is like a thing in like offices now, like companies. Like you had mentioned this right at Polygon at one point. Yeah, I think I can say this because the Vox office isn't there anymore. But the floor that the Vox office was on had like a bookshelf right behind the front entrance reception that it wasn't like you pull a book. It was like a magnet lock, only like the magnet was in some in some book that you had to position in just the right way. And then it would disengage the lock and open the thing. It was very cool.

But also like we had so much equipment in that room. In that airtight room, it was constantly sweltering. Yeah, it's never, I mean, in the olden days, super functional. Now, kind of a novelty more than anything. It's 100% a novelty. There are a lot of companies that do it to kind of like generate buzz about their workplaces. You know, like when you bring people there, you're super excited. Google has a reading area hidden behind a bookcase.

Weber Shandwick, which is a marketing company, has a wall-to-wall bookcase with a section that can be pushed in. Of course. section that can be pushed in of course uh shutterstock in the empire state building uh has like a whole like area uh that you can sneak away for like table tennis yoga that's fine yeah i want something like dangerous don't you like if we were to do this, I would want a chess set where you have to arrange the pieces in a very specific way. And then a hole opens in the ground to a 50-foot ladder down to just this dank oubliette that is inescapable. And you keep books down there. Yeah, I was going to say, why would you want to go down there? Well, the books have bones and stuff on them.

Like scary bone books that have like... Is this like an Evil Dead reference right now? No, I mean, it's not. The Necronomicon is a fake thing, but bone books, which are books that have bones on them that do have scary incantations and stuff. Or possibly an episode of Wishbone that has worked its way into your subconscious. Which are books that have bones on them that do have scary incantations and stuff. Or possibly an episode of Wishbone that has worked its way into your subconscious. Also, bone books does sound like pornographic magazines. Oh, no.

I didn't even think of that. Well, now you have. Yeah. And it is. I would keep in my chess oubliette my bone books. I would not tell you about it. You would never find my oubliette. It bone books, I would not tell you about it. You would never find my oubliette. It would be a secret to everyone.

Yeah. So, I mean, honestly, I don't have a whole lot more than that. No, they're great. It's super great. There is a place that I was taken to in D.C. called The Mirror. Oh, yeah. I was in town visiting my friends, and it's this bar. It's like what looks like an abandoned storefront and you go downstairs and you walk in and there's just a big full-size mirror on the wall and it is a door

into a hidden bar that's fun yeah i went to a place i think in the east village uh that my friends took me to that is like a hot dog restaurant but there's a phone booth and you pick up the phone and you talk to the receptionist like on the other end oh my god and then the back wall of the phone booth opens up and it lets you into like a very hip cocktail bar yeah it was very fun and also good cocktails and then when i had had a few drinks good hot dogs it was like the ideal evening. Yeah, that sounds like it was designed specifically for you. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like almost too much. There's a part of me that kind of bristles at it because I'm like, this is too much. But you want one too. But then it's also kind of like, I'm really glad that people are doing this. It is silly, but it is adventurous. And I like that combination i do too uh i also like bowen and augustus because they let us use uh our theme

song money won't pay which you can find a link to in the episode description um long as we're talking about things we like maximumfun.org has all the podcasts that your body craves. And you need to listen to your body sometimes because sometimes it's like, stop podcasting yourself. I would encourage those of you who are members that had access to bonus content, you still have that access and some shows are still putting out new content and stop podcasting yourself as one of them. Yeah. They put out like new monthly contact in that feed.

So get over there. On their grind, those gentlemen are. We have merch over at McElroyMerch.com. We got some shows coming up. You can find out all about that at bit.ly slash McElroyTour or perhaps McElroyTours. You know what? Just go to McElroy.family and I'm sure you'll find a link.

We got stuff coming up in Denver, Detroit, Cincinnati, Washington, D.C. We are also going to be at Dragon Con this weekend. Yeah, this weekend. So if you're in Atlanta and you're coming to Dragon Con, go to that McElroy.family website. You can find all of our scheduled stuff. We've got some photo op stuff and a few panels and a bunch of bunch of fun stuff that we're going to be doing while we're there i think that's it did i say that loud yeah it seemed very loud to me okay well why don't you now i feel self-conscious and see i i always try to be too casual this is

why we're a good balance yeah you know it reminds me me of two characters, one of which was very sort of cool and sort of level headed. And the other character was sort of a foil to that. Because she was like very weird and spirited and loud this leads me to a uh something i want to put out in the universe which is um how do we get somebody involved with that program to sit down with us make a decision as to our dharma and gregness oh okay and and that's that's our bonus episode can we can we make some phone calls and see if we can make that happen we probably could get jenna elfman on the horn i wouldn't even need i wouldn't even i would don't even i don't even need i mean obviously incredible that's number one on my list i think i accidentally met chuck lure once yeah i don't want him i don't want him but somebody like even somebody who just like

you know was like a pa or something like they don't even have to be like number one if you worked on dharma and greg or know someone who did call our hotline Bye. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.