Wonderful! - Wonderful! 246: The Tradition of Having a Fridge In Your Garage

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Griffin’s favorite successful spacecraft impact! Rachel’s favorite new-to-her poet!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya 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. That's the sound of the fall leaves. Oh, is it? It's leaves falling outside. It sounds a little bit like our coffee maker when it gets going.

It does. Boy, that's how you know, huh? That's how you know. I think of leaves more like, allow me. Yeah, do your onomatopoetic sort of leaf sound. This is Rachel's onomatopoetry corner. That's fun. It's fun to make leaf sounds.

Whoosh. Oh, boy, howdy. I miss Austin. I miss our friends in Austin. I miss a lot of stuff about Austin. But when I open up that weather app and I do a little side-by-side swipey-swipe comparison, where it's like 60 degrees and flirting with sweater weather compared to 90 degrees. I know.

Not sweater weather at all. Boy, howdy. This is exciting. I'm very excited to have fall be a thing. Yeah, I'm so not used to it. Griffin took a little video of our boys. And in the background, you can see the trees, the leaves changing colors. Yeah, in real time. And I was like, I am not even ready. I am. My heart can't take it.

I'm so ready. You baked some pumpkin muffins this morning. You did. You've made chili like three times in the last month. You're fucking ready for fall. Don't tell me that you're not. For sure. My little Midwestern heart is just so excited. I'll say small wonder, hockey's happening. We can't watch it. It's Schrodinger's hockey. If we observe the hockey, it will exist, but it is happening. It's just not televised yet. I think the game tonight is televised, though. Playing those Chicago Blackhawks.

Cannot wait to see this contest. Sure, there's been some changes to the lineup. Am I going to miss Villejuso? Of course I am. Am I going to miss David Perron? With every fiber of my being. Yes. Probably not as much as O'Reilly and all the boys are going to miss Perron.

Yes. He's the heart and soul of the team. all the boys are going to miss Perron. Yes. He's the heart and soul of the team. I'll never forget seeing them front row for my birthday. David Perron's handsome face just skating by. The light glinting off his perfect teeth. His perfect jaw. God dang. What a fella.

But hey, Red Wings, enjoy them. Detroit, have fun. Have fun, Detroit. Can I say my small order? Yeah, sure. I've kind of lost track of where we're at uh so this morning i spent easily 20 minutes just looking at a variety of pumpkin patches oh yeah a lot of them in virginia uh but all like within the hour of driving distance, just so many patches with pumpkins in them.

Let's do a pumpkin into an apple. Do a pumpkin patch. Pick out our pumpkin. Apple. Pick the apples. Squish the apples into cider. Squish the pumpkin into pie. Just go fall to the max um yeah part of me wonders like if we do the pumpkin patch

and skip the apple picking like that's well i just feel like it's out of order i feel like if we go straight to patch then we've we've There's got to be an orchard slash patch. Oh, no, there definitely is. Out there that can scratch both these itches for us at the same time. There definitely is. A lot of them turn over, though, right around this month. So if we're closing in... We've got to hurry.

We've got to get in that sweet liminal space, that transitory period. Apples and pumpkins? Apples and pumpkins. One go? One go. God, I'm stoked right now. Didn't think I would be, but talking about fall gives me just the max vibes. We got our door open to the office, getting that good leaf-swafting cold smell into the, oh man, I got a candle going, a nice wick habit. I believe that's a brown sugar cookie some sort of situation okay from a sensory

perspective this this office is a very good space right now and i just want you to know i appreciate that and i appreciate you okay all right bring it back can i talk about my thing i'm also excited about my topic this week yes please i go first this week yes i'm going to talk about nasa's dart mission oh i knew it This happened last night. I didn't realize that this is like hot off the presses. It's Tuesday morning as we're recording this Monday at around 7 o'clock. I had not heard of DART mission

at all until I saw a video of the Applied Physics Lab mission control celebrating the success of the DART mission when at 7 o'clock last night, they crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid that's 530 feet in diameter, 6.8 million miles away. That's insane.

I know you're wondering, why did they do this thing? It's because they wanted to know what the sound it made was, which seems wasteful to me. So the danger wasn't imminent here. It wasn't like these if this doesn't work we're in trouble no it is called the double asteroid redirection test and it's basically a testing of our planet's ability to defend itself from near earth bodies celestial bodies um this one this seems like a valid exercise fuck yes it does are you kidding? So it was actually a binary asteroid system that this was targeting. There is an asteroid called Didymos, and it has a smaller asteroid orbiting it called Dimorphos. That was the target.

So they launched this craft, which is about the size of a vending machine off of the back of a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket last November. Okay. Didn't hear about that. Did hear about the radical crash. Yes, this thing traveled for 10 months. So they would have had to project where the asteroid would be 10 months, or can you steer it when it's up there? They could make adjustments, and they did have to make adjustments on the fly.

This craft didn't carry any science equipment or anything like that it had like sensors and propulsion basically is all it had in a very very very limited package um but yes this this they are this this mission was an unmitigated success from a like hitting the target standpoint the craft missed the center of the asteroid by 55 feet which is when you convert it out all the more impressive knowing that it traveled nearly 36 billion feet to reach the target it missed the middle of it by 55 feet you know there's like some engineer who's just like, God, we're so beating himself up over this. So what's unknown still is how much this will affect the like orbit and trajectory of Dimorphos. That's kind of what the project's job is now. Over the next couple of months, they get these very limited windows of time where they can actually observe Dimorphos to see like how much this impact had on on the asteroid's relative

motion yeah so it didn't like it didn't break up into like a million pieces no it didn't carry any kind of that kind of uh of payload okay but again like they don't really know right like uh they they it will that is an impossible thing for them to predict necessarily is how like how it exploded and how the explosion will make it go. But that's like not what the test is for. Right. If in the incredibly unlikely scenario where like a near Earth asteroid, which I think is anything within 30 million miles technically falls into that category. And there's lots of things that enter that field and pose no threat to Earth whatsoever. But if there was one, we wouldn't be blowing it up, right? We would just need to, from far enough away, adjust its trajectory a little bit and get it to miss the Earth. So like blowing up an asteroid would be like getting that much mass out there is not particularly realistic.

Sorry, Armageddon. And I guess Deep Impact. The photos that came out of the DART mission that came out of the craft were absolutely bonkers because it had a camera facing Dimorphos on its approach and so this video that i mentioned earlier please look it up because it is it is jubilant where you see all of these engineers at the applied physics lab watching as these photos get close show this closer and closer and closer image of the surface of this thing that is so very far away uh just get closer and closer and then they realize at a certain point like oh we're gonna hit this thing yeah and they just start celebrating and then the photos get closer and closer until

you are seeing this incredibly detailed image of like the pores of this thing before the image just like gets glitchy and red and it's like your your thing exploded uh and then they celebrate that their thing exploded yeah it's very charming and also highly memeable i feel like you can put something else on that screen and get closer and closer and closer and there's there's there's some fun to be had if you're also want to anthropomorphize is that a word i don't know like mechanical things like the mars rover that sings happy birthday to itself, like seeing this thing's impending doom as it gets closer. It is a little bit haunting, but it's just like, this is one of those things that just seems like from a humanity perspective, pretty radical that we can do that, right? Like we don't

know still about the effect of it, but knowing that we can shoot a shot that far away at something moving that fast and hit it is so cool. So actually, back in 2005, NASA conducted a kind of similar test using a craft called Deep Impact, which I was like trying to see like that. That movie came out like 98. Did they name it after that? And they're like, oh, no. Coincidentally, it was just called Deep Impact. I guess they had been working on it since before the film had come out. But it was a really cool mission, too.

The Deep Impact craft traveled way further. It traveled 267 million miles. And then it was actually the craft was two parts uh there was like the craft itself and then it had this super heavy copper payload that it fired out at a comet called temple one at a relative speed of 23 000 miles per hour so like it didn't even need any explosives on it like the kinetic energy that this copper weight had uh just blew a crater like so very big into this into this uh into this comet um and then the craft of it like took pictures of the dust and debris and stuff that came out so that they could learn more about sort of the composition of comets

like temple one so like this was way 267 million miles away, much, much, much further away than this mission. But the difference is that Temple 1 is over four and a half miles wide. So like it's almost 50 times bigger than Dimorphos. Yeah. So still an incredible accomplishment. But the fact that we are able to hit something with such like pinpoint accuracy is is just radical it's the same reason i get excited about that the the james webb telescope and like all of these things that are just like that's just good like they obviously you can always argue that like oh the the budget that went into this thing could

have been fun and all these other ways but like there's so many ways that i would rather adjust the budget of everything uh yeah and the idea that we have proven ourselves capable of potentially having some sort of defense against this thing that we've seen so many horror movies about like, it's just great. Well, and it's also a reminder, like if we can figure that out, there's probably a lot simpler problems

that we could attack. That's beautiful. Yeah, that's that's the dart mission watch that video watch the video of the applied physics lab celebrating it is nourishing from like a a human perspective from a scientific perspective from just like a nerd like this is just a big room full of fucking nerds and they're like 10 years like they just they just did a very very cool thing and uh i'm i'm very excited about that this morning i'm excited about that i'm excited about fall it's just everything's everything's coming up millhouse uh can i steal you away yes thank you got a couple tumble booms here and I would love to read the first one.

It is for all of our listeners, and it's from Simon, who says, Hello, wonderful listeners. This one goes, here, let me do this in like my late night radio DJ voice. This one goes out to all the other single people who might feel lonely or crushed by the world. Sometimes you are needed. You are loved. Look out, Del delilah look out delilah i'm coming for your throne simon that is very uh kind very sweet now everybody that listens to this show has received a jumbotron that's right you can put that on your resume okay jumbotron recipient. Do you want to read this next one?

Yes. This is for Noah. It is from Nick. Hey, Booger. It's Booger. I'm so glad that I asked my roommate for your number and invited myself to your game nights. We've had more than 10 wonderful years together of travel, raising two munchkins, and binging reality TV at the suggestion of our favorite podcasters.

I can't wait to see what the next 10 plus years have to offer. I love you and stuff. Uh, hover boots. Um. Oh, okay. Food that is like a, like a pill, but you put it in a special machine and then it turns it into a big pizza. Um, I'm just saying the things that the next 10 years have to offer.

I thought, see, I was thinking about the next 10 plus years of reality television. Oh, yeah, I mean, hover boots, once those are introduced, like, they're going to be such a common part of our lives. Yeah, every reality competition will have a hover boot challenge. Frickin' Mark Cuban just

hovers in through the window in Shark Tank. Most game shows quiz contestants about topics they don't even care about. But for more than 100 episodes, the Go Fact Yourself podcast has asked celebrity guests trivia about topics they choose for themselves. And introduce them to some of their

personal heroes along the way. Oh my gosh. Shut up. Oh, I feel like I'm going to cry. Oh my gosh. It's so, so, so good. Join me I feel like I'm going to cry. Oh my gosh. It's so, so exciting. Join me, Jake Heath Van Straten.

And me, Helen Hong. Along with guests like DJ Jazzy Jeff, Yardley Smith, Roxanne Gay, and so many more. On the Trivia Game Show podcast, go fact yourself. Twice a month, every month on Maximum Fun. oranges marvel or dc fork versus spoon chocolate or vanilla best bagel what's the best disney song we got this with mark and how every week on maximum fun we do the arguing so you don't have to oh all answers are final for all people for all time we got this hey dude hey dude what's up what's up you want to hear the thing more than anything it's a trip to the Poetry Corner. Yeah.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I've trapped you in this prison of coming up with a theme song every time we do this. I trap myself in there, too. That time the basses just fell down and just kept going up the fretboard hitting hitting the the illegal notes so let me let me be honest with our listener um i'm out of poets yeah uh i think when we first started this corner i had a deep deep bench of poets that i knew and loved and and was familiar with and could very easily think oh you know who i should talk about this one. Now I'm at a point where I am seeking them out. Okay.

Which isn't a bad place to be. No, it's a fun place to be. But I just want you all to know, those of you at home, to think, wow, this, she knows a lot of poets. I want to be clear. I'm finding them. Oh. I'm finding them the same way that you could.

Yeah. You all could start your own poetry corner. Yeah, by going to the jazz clubs. And I am not litigious. So just so you know. On poetry night. If you want to start your own poetry corner, do the same thing I did, which is look for poems and poets that you like. And then try and see if you can figure out who's in that same like orbit.

Yeah. Sorry, I just had an image of you wearing like in a black turtleneck and black i think i'm imagining judy funny from doug doug's like cool beatnik sister yeah man wow that's a deep cut is it i guess so i mean most of us know doug you we all remember Doug. But I could not tell you the name of his sister. Judy Funny was her name. Anyway. Anyway. So when I'm looking for a poet that I think is going to be accessible and enjoyable for the listener who may not have an interest in poetry, I'll usually start at Billy Collins, who I brought to the show before. He was a US Poet Laureate. Sure. Super, super popular. In the realm of poet, he's super super popular like in the in the realm of

poet he's like everybody knows billy collins yeah of course you remember when i talked about him on the show yeah yeah so so the poet i wanted to talk about this week is thomas lux okay which is a new to me poet. Okay. But, you know, pretty accomplished in his day. And probably should have known about him, if I'm going to be honest. Hey, don't beat yourself up. Well, I think what happened when I went to graduate school is I started getting into this like much more academic experimental realm of poetry. experimental realm of poetry. And so I started to lose touch with like the poets out there that are, are, you know, kind of more accessible and more, more welcomed by, by the, the larger community beyond the, the poets and, and such. So, so Thomas Lux published his first book in the 1960s after graduating from Emerson College. And then through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, he

commuted between Boston and Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where he taught for 27 years. Good Lord. Before he passed away in 2017, he published 19 books of poems. That's a lot of, I mean, that's a lot of books of poems. That's a great deal of books of poems. Yeah. So I wanted to read a poem that he wrote. But before I do, I want to ask you something that I think is going to be important and valuable to your listening experience. Okay.

Which is, did you have a relative that had an old fridge in their garage? Yeah, of course. Okay. I mean, that's a, yeah. And it had a smell. Yeah. It's an important thing to think about as you go into this poem. I, while reading it, was thinking of my grandma and grandpa's house on my mom's side.

They lived in like a real small town in Illinois called Redbud, Illinois. And they had a very old fridge in their garage that had a lot of RC Cola. Did I go there for Thanksgiving one year? No. No. No, they were gone by the time we met. Oh, okay. But yeah, I think the tradition of having a fridge in your garage

was carried on through several of my aunts and uncles. So I'm sure that you have the fridge in a garage experience. Yeah. If you have attended a family gathering. Yeah, my Aunt Betty had one. And I feel like every garage fridge, I'm not making this up, has like a, there's a reason they keep it in the garage. You know?

Well, yeah, it's like the kind that still needs to be defrosted. Yes. That you probably wouldn't put like your real important food in. No. But like to put a can of soda is okay. And the can of soda you do have to decant because it carries this, it is imbued with garage fridge smell. Is this the poem? Am I guessing what the poem's about?

Almost. Okay. So this poem is called Refrigerator, 1957. More like a vault, you pull the handle out and on the shelves, not a lot. And what there is a boiled potato in a bag, a chicken carcass under foil, looking dispirited, drained, mugged. This is not a place to go in hope or hunger, but just to the right of the middle of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit from within red, heart red, sexual red, wet neon red, shining red in their liquid, shining red in their liquid, exotic, aloof slumming, in such company, a jar of maraschino cherries. Three quarters full, fiery globes like strippers at a church social, maraschino cherries,

maraschino, the only foreign word I knew. Not once did I see these cherries employed, not in a drink, nor on top of a glob of ice cream, or just pop one in your mouth, not once. The same jar there through an entire childhood of dull dinners, bald meat, pocked peas, and see above boiled potatoes. Maybe they came over from the old country, family heirlooms, or were status symbols bought with a piece of the first paycheck from a sweatshop, which beat the pig farm in Bohemia, handed down from my grandparents to my parents to be someday mine, then my child's? They were beautiful. And if I never ate one, it was because I knew it might be missed or because I knew it would not be replaced. And because you do not eat that which rips your heart with joy.

That is a good poem. Isn't that charming? I don't think I've ever laughed at a poem that much before that you've read on the show. I've read a few kind of like humorous poets before. That one was funny in a deeply relatable, very specific way that I adore. Yeah, I really, I appreciate, I was excited to discover him. Bob Hickok is another poem I've talked about on here before. It's that same kind of like-

He did a poem about a state, right? Bob Hickok? Yeah, yeah. He was traveling like across the Midwest and wrote a poem about it that I read. But yeah, just that kind of real experience that I just really enjoy. And Thomas Lux did a lot of those poems. That was delightful.

It was delightful. I really wanted to kind of introduce what the poem was about because I feel like it is even more powerful if you are picturing that fridge like for a minute of course billy collins actually has has talked about thomas lux before uh and he said the refreshing thing and the enviable thing about him for me was that most of his poems weren't about him they were about something else something interesting marine life mining vegetables he would smuggle in an emotional content, but his poems were always interesting and very eccentric. A lot of poetry today just fails that test. It's not very interesting. Great. Sure.

I was reading about him a little bit. He actually, he has a daughter that went to the UT Austin School of Social Work and now has her own book out. Not a poetry, but a fiction. That's great. So I thought that was really cool. But apparently like an incredible teacher, super passionate about teaching. I mean, obviously he taught at Sarah Lawrence for 27 years.

And just a really like unique kind of welcoming voice. I was excited. I was excited. I was excited to find him. I would encourage him. He's got a lot of books, 19. So, you know, I would encourage people to seek him out. Can you spell his last name? L-U-X. Oh, okay, cool.

Yeah. Yeah, and he just passed away in 2017. So you can find a lot. A lot of my information I pulled from a New York Times obituary. But very cool. Exciting. Exciting to find a new poet like all the time. I just I can't encourage people enough to keep seeking out stuff that speaks to them. Hey, I just did a really big stretch. It was a big stretch. Yeah, it's a big fall stretch. It felt fall to me. My tummy came out so hey thanks to uh bowen and augustus for these for a theme song money won't

pay you'll find a link to that in the episode description thank you to maximum fun for having us on the network go to maximumfun.org check out all the great shows that they have there please and uh we have stuff at mackroymerch.com uh some shows coming up in Detroit and Cincinnati and here in Washington, D.C. That's at bit.ly slash McElroyTours. And I... That's it. Y'all just get out there and, you know, and... Can I ask you something yeah i've noticed that your brothers

have started making you end uh episodes of my brother and my brother me with an inspirational quote and i feel like sometimes you you try and bring that energy to this show too well i feel like i was bringing that energy to this show before they asked me to do it on my i know right and now it's too much um i think they're jealous that they don't host this. They're jealous of you. Wow. And they're jealous of me. That's a lot.

That I get to host it with you. It's a lot to take on. I know it is. But yeah, you know, this should be a safe space for me. To not have to say anything entertaining in the final stretch here. Yeah, you've done enough. Take her easy. So why don't you close done enough. Take her easy.

So why don't you close her out? Thanks for listening. To all our wonderful listeners out there, keep reaching for the stars. That's good. Perfect. You did it. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

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