Wonderful! - Wonderful! 254: Cast Him on Boiling Water

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

Rachel's favorite ugly statues! Griffin's favorite dairy-forward comfort food!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaNorth American Indigenous Tribal Food Systems (NĀTIFS): https://www.natifs.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. Ho, ho, ho. We're coming on down that chimney of your, is it December when they hear? No, it's November 30th. Ho, ho, ho. We're perched atop the chimney on the roof. We've got a satchel full of candles. Yep. Up on the rooftop. Click, click, click. That's the lighter. We're lighting some candles up here. Pocket full of dreidels. Pocket full of kryptonite.

Yeah. Everything's coming. Two pockets. Two pock is also here. And it's a whole holiday sort of extravagance. When you start an intro like that, do you think to yourself, well, if I do this now, then I don't get to do it again next week. This is my one shot.

No, because you can actually, people forget. Oh, okay. Honestly, it's not even a week. After like two days, everyone forgets everything that they listened to in the podcast two days ago. And you just warm that intro right back up. Yeah, we actually have been republishing the same episode for like four years now.

I shouldn't say that. That's probably a pretty mean critique that people lay at our show, feet of our show sometimes. But listen, it's here. It's wonderful. It's a show where we talk about things we like, things that are good, things we're into. I have had a shocking suffusion of holiday spirit over this past week.

It crept right up on me because we usually do it we usually put the tree up black friday after thanksgiving didn't have one this year because we got rid of ours before we moved yeah we did the thing when you move across country where you're like oh i don't want to pack this i'll just get another one and then it got to be thanksgiving and we were like uh-oh we we don't have any plans for our holiday spirit yeah um except for a small tupperware bin not tupperware rubber made rubber i mean what's the plastic bin yeah uh we don't need to give them free from advertising of ornaments but no no no treat to hang them on but we rectified that kind of beauty in the living room while we were putting it up

and decorating it. Our big son did look up at us while, you know, one of the slower numbers from Charlie Brown Christmas. We were listening to music

as you do when you assemble your tree. And decorate the tree. And our big son looks up at us and he says, why is this

like sad? No, no, no. He said, the music is almost making this more sad. And he says, why is this like sad? No, no, no. He said the music is almost making this more sad. And we were like, what do you mean, honey? He was like, no, not sad, but like emotional. No, he said happy. This is what was confusing. He could tell that he was trying to figure out what this like sentimental like warm feeling was and he was like

not happy but sad and we were like oh yes we know that feeling christmas emotions he's like yeah i'm feeling a lot of like emotions for christmas right now and we were so charmed and delighted by our own offspring which i guess happens constantly every single day. Yeah, I think that's kind of the goal in a way. But dang it, if that didn't just shoot me right into the Candle Nights atmosphere, loving it. Do you have a small wonder? Oh, hmm. I got one. Please go.

I'm going to jump on it. Please go. The other day, or was it Saturday maybe, Blues, St. Louis Blues were playing, who do they have that big crazy comeback against? The Panthers. Florida Panthers. Florida Panthers.

Blues, pretty bad losing streak, and then a pretty good winning streak because they're the most buck wild team in show business. They had a dog shit first and second period in this game went into the third period down uh one to four yeah yeah and a three goal deficit in hockey is a lot of goals yeah a great deal of goals and over the course of the next periods periods by the way i mean not including stoppages, are only 20 minutes. Yeah.

So you don't have a lot of time to make up a deficit like that. Yeah. But the St. Louis Blues went from playing pretty bad, I would say, to the shit hottest hockey I have seen those gentlemen play

in a very, very long time. I watched that overtime goal by Kyrou like five times. Jordan Kyrou is a very fast man. He skates super duper fast. That's his thing. Only sometimes, particularly in the last couple seasons, when he gets a good breakaway and just zooms through the defense,

he looks for a pass instead of trying to go for the shot himself, which people critique him for. In this period, this one period, it was like angels in the outfield out there he was just zooming up scoring goals left and right i think uh teresinko scored a goal from behind the net i don't even know how that physically it was fucking rad and then they went into overtime and kairi won in overtime and had one of the better pop-offs I've seen in hockey in a long time. So good. And your parents were in town.

Your dad is like die hard blues fan for life. And getting to like have that communal pop-off was really nice. Yeah. Really nice. It was nice. I am going to give a shout out to the Bluey stage play that we saw. Bluey's big play. Yeah.

We had talked to Henry about it and he said he was interested even though honestly we as much as griffin and i love bluey big son is kind of indifferent when he gets into it he gets real like if we start watching bluey in the morning we'll watch bluey for a very long time yeah um but it's not an everyday no he doesn't have a lot of like merch associated with it, but he indicated he wanted to go to the play and Griffin and I were very excited about that. And it was just as charming. So darling.

And like gorgeous as we were hoping it would be. We're talking about like chest high puppets of the main four dogs. Yeah. Each puppeteered by two people. Although there are, there is an extra dog. There is an extra dog.

Let's not spoil it though. Let's not spoil who it is. I'm not going to spoil who it is. It's who you want it to be. But I'm not going to spoil who it is. And it's just an episode, it's like a 45 minute long episode of Bluey. Yeah.

With like dancing and games and bubbles. Some of your favorite. Keep you up bits. Oh God, the Edith and I don't know, when they are old ladies driving a car oh so good anyway it was delightful yeah it has a big message about being a big a big sibling uh which we were hoping would find purchase in henry's mind but then uh he got

some birthday presents for his birthday that he felt i would say quite territorial about and maybe some of bluey's messages did not penetrate as deeply as we would have i had i had this concern that it had the reverse effect in which it had not really occurred to him that he was being put out by being a big sibling and then the show was all about that and then he came home and was like actually fuck this you know what it does kind of suck sometimes yeah but uh boy sweet boys love these boys love this show who goes first this week i do not know it's me all right it's me i i know the last episode we put up was a live show yes which i believe you went first i did go first and then i think the week before that you also went first oh man i'm sorry No, it's all right.

I just won't do this. You do two bits in a row. No, see, I didn't prepare for that. Oh, okay. Speaking of our DC live show, which was awesome. Yeah, very fun. First of all, there was a topic I did not get to cover. Yes.

And so here at Cutting Room Floor, my topic this week, which is, I'm trying to think of a general way to talk about this. I'm going to say the statues on the Washington National Cathedral. The statues on the Washington. I mean, I'm going to say gargoyles, but we're going to talk about some things that aren't gargoyles. Well, I mean, if it's a statue up on top of a tall building, I think it's a gargoyles yeah we're gonna talk about some things that aren't gargoyles well i mean if it's a statue up on top of a tall building i think it's a gargoyle oh that's where you'd be wrong okay there is another name for those so a gargoyle not to like jump ahead too much but a gargoyle is a very specific thing okay and if it is not a gargoyle it is called a grotesque a grotesque yes it is that's cool i know that's really cool actually so in advance of our dc live show i felt a lot of pressure to kind of educate myself a little bit more about this city that we have only been in for a few months now yeah uh so i went to the

washington national cathedral did like my own little self-guided tour yeah they have this like app you can download to like read about little facts as you walk through the various rooms. That's cool. And, you know, there's a lot of history there. Sure. Just like a tremendous amount of history. So the Washington National Cathedral was designed to be a national house of prayer,

open to all and supported by people throughout the world. It does not receive federal or church support. And so there's a lot in there from a variety of faiths. It doesn't receive church support. No, it's supposed to be like a house open to all faiths. I had no idea. Yeah. So there are a variety of services.

I mean, granted, the Christian iconography is pretty intense. Sure. But there's a lot of- We love gargoyles. A lot of other elements. We love these scary man bats. We love the television show Gargoyles. We do love, Christians do love the television show Gargoyles, though.

I never watched it. It was pretty badass. Yeah? Yeah. It was Keith David's, like, masterpiece, I think. So a lot of what came out of that was a lot of, like, private donations. Okay. Which is kind of how the gargoyle came about.

Okay. I feel like you are tiptoeing around gargoyles. Well, there's a lot I want to talk about. Take your time, baby. I'm not rushing you. I love that sweater, by the way. Oh, thank you. It's fetching.

This shirt's dirty, though. Don't tell anyone. It's very warm. Okay. Okay. So all gargoyles are grotesques, but not all grotesques are gargoyles. I understand this now. So gargoyles were designed specifically to prevent rainwater from eroding a building, and so they have a little spout built in.

They could have just had a sort of gutter, though, yeah? Like, I get that engineering— You want, like, a rain gutter around a cathedral? Like, I get that engineering. You want like a rain gutter around a cathedral? Well, or just a sort of, you know, vaulted, like an incline to let the water fall. Huh. Yeah, I don't see how a scary statue of a bat monster is like engineering wise the best solution.

Well, I mean, think about like your eyelashes, how they keep like dust out of your eyes yeah sure you need some kind of protrusion to kind of like right keep the water from collecting and damaging the stone and i totally understand that and i i feel you on that you want a cathedral built like a slide the only difference is that my eyelashes aren't shaped like scary bat monsters do you know what i mean like they're just kind of like hairs and i'm not i'm saying like a hairy cathedral is also a weird look um but i have to believe there was an easier way yeah there's like a suggestion the history is kind of inconclusive as to whether or not they built these like fantastical creatures to like, you know,

scare the devil away. Yeah, sure. Like, I don't know that anyone can say that for a fact. There were probably some like, you know, dark ages sculptors who were like working on it and they finished it,

a cathedral and looked up and were like, but what is Spider-Man going to jump off of like you know what i mean um that's the end of my bit i don't really have more to the skit than than that than middle ages sculptors who like spider-man but i imagine there's some one listener that really enjoyed that yeah for sure uh okay so a bulk of the gargoyles at the Washington National Cathedral were created 1960s through 1980s. And so individuals could donate a gargoyle or a grotesque

and collaborate on the design. Huh. And so according to a historic cathedral newsletter, prices for donating or adopting gargoyles and grotesques have ranged from $700 to $15,000 over the years. Damn, good for whoever could get in there for $700. I know, right? I think probably – when you say over the years, you mean from 60s to 80s, right? Yes.

Because I have to imagine if this were to be a thing that was available today, like $15,000 would be quite a low number to get a gargoyle up on the national yeah because you could i mean you could basically indicate it whatever you want and that's what i really enjoyed the most about the gargoyles and the grotesques is they are all over the place oh that's great um like there's an alligator there's a bulldog there's a ram there's something called there's an alligator oh babe I'm just getting started. There is what is, quote, the ugliest monster. The donor requested just an ugly monster. And so it is a four-armed human figure with a beard, long hair, and a mustache.

Cool. There is the grandsons. Now, this one is a little judgy. Okay. So the donor wanted a statue that would kind of resemble their grandsons. And one has a halo and one has a cookie in a stolen cookie jar. That's fucked up. Right? It's like, oh, all right, we want one for the good grandson.

Yeah. One for the bad. I want to enshrine in stone forever in the nation's most hallowed, sacred place. The fact that Dylan is a thieving shit and Michael is great. I know. That way when people of any faith come to celebrate or bow their heads in contemplation, they will look up and be like, Dylan is a shithead, though. I hate that kid.

Michael is great, though. And what a call shot, too. Like, you wonder how old these grandsons were. Yeah. You know, when this was done. Like, because they are depicted to be children. Yeah. You know, so it's just like, oh, at age four, I knew.

What if Dylan goes on a date to the National Cathedral and his date looks up and says, are you the shitty kid? Like, no, I'm the good one. Are you the shitty kid in that gargoyle? No, man, that's totally Michael. No, it isn't. Michael's the angel, clearly. Other gargoyles and grotesques include a crooked politician, which is a little statue that has a pinky ring and a cigar and hundreds in his coat pocket.

Love it. Timely. He's clowns in Washington. Yeah. A horse skull, a duck with a photographer coming out of its mouth. Yes. So this was supposed to be like kind of poke fun at the tourists a little bit of like, look at this photographer willing to get inside this duck. I am so sick of these people with cameras trying to climb inside our ducks. I don't know that I totally understand that one. No.

There's a unicorn. There's two hands gripping a golf club. Excellent. And then there's a dentist working on a walrus tusk. Cool. But the one I want to talk about was the result of a contest in the 1980s. It was a draw a grotesque contest. The National Geographic World Magazine, which was the precursor to National Geographic Kids, asked young readers to submit designs for a new sculpture. 1,400 kids from 16 countries responded, and the winning artwork was a sagacious grotesque, which was a toothy man with

an umbrella designed by a 12-year-old. But the third place finisher is the one that I think is most remarkable, which was Darth Vader. There is a Darth Vader grotesque on the side of the Washington National Cathedral. Can you do that? Did George Lucas have to give a thumbs up on that? At some point, I read some interviews saying that they had asked him, like, hey, did you know? And he was like, no, I didn't.

I mean, okay. saying that they had like asked him like hey did you know and he was like no i didn't i mean okay i guess of all the characters from star wars to have on the cathedral well no i mean darth vader's pretty bad guy most of the time like he kills a lot of people yeah well so that was the thing they it was instructed to kind of you know that this was going to be kind of a scary thing that traditionally gargoyles and grotesques were kind of ominous figures yeah but they haven't like famously killed people and then you put that up on a church you know well i mean there's a cerberus and an alligator like you know it's not like everybody up there is friendly.

I guess that's true. I alligators are the only evil animal. So for you, it's not the fact that it's Darth Vader. It's, it's Darth Vader's goodness. That is a concern for you. I'm saying,

I'm saying, I don't know. It makes sense, right? It's like, it's like Freddy Krueger was up there. If Freddy Krueger was up there, I wanted saying, I don't know. It makes sense, right? It's like if Freddy Krueger was up there. If Freddy Krueger was up there. I think it would be fun if like Jack Porkins from Star Wars was up there.

We go for a bit of a deeper cut. Uh-oh. Don't you think? I don't know what you're talking about. Jack Porkins? It's probably my favorite Star Wars name, but how can you choose? There's so many good Star Wars names, babe. One day I'll show you some of them

and it's stuff like Dep Booply and Shet Jizzly. And they're all like, they all play space jazz, which is called Jizz. Okay. I can't believe I have not

gone to this cathedral. Here's the thing about these grotesque gargoyles. Like this is a very tall cathedral. Yeah. And there are 112 gargoyles. So it's not like you can walk around the bottom and really see these guys. It's almost just like a little insider like hint. So next time you're there, you know, I don't know.

They have a gargoyle tour. Like when you show up, you can do the gargoyle tour like when you show up you can do the gargoyle tour which i did not do okay um but there is like an observation deck and maybe you can see some of them from there do they have a carillon there the bells bell tower thing you know i don't know i think they do i don't remember seeing it it's under construction there was like a pretty like uh serious natural disaster that kind of compromised some of the construction. And so there's some work going on there. Make some more gargoyle space.

Yeah. I'll drop 15 large to get Jack Porkins up on the National Cathedral forever. Can I steal you away? Yes. we have got a really great pork orasso here and it is from alec nope it's for alec alec didn't send it alec received it and william is the one who did send this message perfect perfect happy b-day every year gone by you are more beautiful and wise i'm proud to watch you become the storm of dming tarot and academia that i always saw in you if this is 30 by god i can't wait to see 60 your friends say

they love you and are lucky to have you too. They're here for you. Love, your eternally infatuated husband, William. It stands to reason that 60 is twice as good as 30. Oh, I like that. You know, as we get older, stuff just keeps getting more badass. So it's not like 60 is the new 30. It's like 60 is...

Is two 30s. Two 30s. You have the wisdom and strength and excitement of two 30-year-olds. Well, I have one 30 when you can have two 30s. Well, when you're 30, it's like being two 15-year-olds. That's terrible. I don't want to be two 15-year-olds at all.

That means that I'm two 20-year-olds. That's, I mean, sure. I don't think anything we've said has made sense. No, I mean, math is fun. Hey, I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin. Listen, you like podcasts, right? Sure you do. Don't try and lie to me. You're listening to one right now.

So why not try a different one called R1, The Flophouse. Uh-huh. And on The Flophouse, we watch a movie and talk about it. And then sometimes we also do other stuff. It's all meant to be funny and fun, and we think you'll have a good time. And just to be clear,

the name of the podcast is not R1 The Flophouse. It's just called The Flophouse. I do a lot of correcting Dan. The Flophouse. A lot of correcting Dan. Hey, it's John Moe, inviting you to listen to Depressed Mode with John Moe, where I talk about mental health and the lives we live with all kinds of people. Famous writers.

David Sedaris, welcome to Depressed Mode. Thanks so much for having me. Movie stars. Jamie Lee Curtis, welcome to Depressed Mode. I am happy to be here. Musicians. I am in St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm talking to Amy Mann. Great to talk to you. And song exploders. Rishi K. Sherway, welcome to Depressed Mode. Thanks so much for having me. Everyone's opening up on Depressed Mode on Maximum Fun.

This is an easy one. This one's a layup. This this is gonna be one more when you hear it you'll be like dang i wish i didn't i didn't i hadn't i wish i thought of that one because that's an easy one macaroni and cheese oh macaroni and cheese i felt like for sure we had talked about macaroni and cheese but i've i went through the backlogs by which i mean wonderful.fyi i didn't see it on there macaroni and cheese henry used to love it been off the game for a while just got back into it last night and when he did i also did because i ate some of it now i will say this is this is something about our fancy son that is worth noting. We got Henry hooked on the deluxe. Kraft mac and cheese deluxe.

Yes. Yeah. He will not eat just like powdered cheese. He wants the squeeze bag of cheese. I prefer the powdered cheese. Oh, really? I do. And it's not like a nostalgia thing.

I genuinely think the texture and flavor is better. Yeah. The deluxe just doesn't stick to the noodle quite as much as I want it to. It's a very different experience. It's different.

It's like two distinct meals. Anyway, you don't need us to explain what macaroni and cheese is because the name of it has two of, I would say,

the three main ingredients of macaroni and cheese. You ever, you ever eat a whole box yourself? Yeah. In one sitting? No. I don't think so. I i definitely have i i i you know i say that i probably have i i you didn't see here's the thing you you have not spent a lengthy time living alone and so when you live alone you can do that kind of stuff i ate a lot of macaroni and cheese though

when i lived with travis in batavia oh, which was sort of like an ultimate solitude. But if this recipe was called macaroni and butter and cheese, I feel like aliens visiting from space could cook it. Like they could land and be like, oh, macaroni, butter and cheese, huh? It's not like a technical challenge on Bake Off. That is true. But I mean, if you've melted cheese before, you know, like you can't really get that. There is a margin of error there. That texture without using some kind of assistance.

Lots of people and cultures have discovered that it's good to put noodles and butter and cheese together. Yeah. Most of them, I would say, have discovered that at this point. The first known reported discovery is delightful, though, because it is a recipe from the medieval times, by which I mean the times and not the restaurant. There is a casserole recipe that was in an Italian cookbook in the 14th century called uh liber de coquina uh which i probably mispronounced of course i did uh and it had a parmesan cheese and pasta dish uh there was also a 14th century medieval english cookbook called the form of curry c-u-r-y maybe not like curry as we know it uh that was uh called macarons uh which is confusing because that's already a thing uh which includes a fresh hand-cut pasta which was sandwiched between a mixture of melted butter and cheese uh that recipe we there was an excerpt of it that has

survived to these days and i would like to read it in middle english uh because it's fun okay take and make a thin foil of dowel and curve it on pieces and cast him on boiling water and seep it well take cheese and grate it and butter cast binin and above as eosians and seru forth just do that can you imagine like a like a cast on boiling water is that what it said uh cast him on boiling water and seep it well that's very it's a pleasing sentence to me uh to translate it to modern english make a thin sheet of dough and cut it in pieces place them in boiling water and boil them well. Take cheese and grate it and add it and place butter beneath and above it as with iosins, a dish similar to lasagna, and serve. I have to imagine like 80% of our listeners right now are like racing to their pantries to figure out if they have macaroni and cheese.

Hey, great news. You have some. I would say it's like famously shelf stable i mean yes but i think once you have children the likelihood that you have it that's much higher um so mac and cheese hit the scene in the u.s in the 1700s it was viewed as a very like high society meal because it wasn't easy to have all of those things on hand but then industrial industrial revolution oh yeah like you know the to have all of those things on hand. But then Industrial Revolution made the factory production of all those things much, much, much easier

and much more accessible. And then it was macaroni and cheese. Figuring out how to stabilize cheese was a big deal in helping Kraft Dinner come about. During the Great Depression, there was a man from St. Louis. He was actually from Scotland, but he lived in St. Louis

named Grant Leslie. Have you heard of this fella? I don't know. He invented fucking Kraft Mac and Cheese, basically. He started selling

boxes of macaroni attached with a rubber band to bags of dehydrated, grated cheese. No. There was a moment where I thought

you were asking me if i like knew his family or something do you know the leslies no uh in 1937 the national dairy products corporation also known as craft uh started to sell boxed mac and cheese as craft dinner and due to like war rationing and it wasn't super easy to get a lot of meat in those times, people went just apeshit over it, particularly in Canada where in the late 30s, refrigerators weren't in every home. And so this box that stayed shelf stable for 10 months

and could feed your entire family was like pretty great. Kraft sold 50 million boxes of mac and cheese during world war ii wow that's so much uh further cementing the craft dinner legacy in 1954 craft had i would call one of the great advertising master strokes where they changed the box from its bright yellow cheesy color to you know the iconic craft dinner dark blue uh and did that change alongside an ad campaign that encouraged children to ask their parents for the blue box oh yeah that's still a thing just get the blue box dad it's so smart and you know manipulative but yeah it worked clearly uh because it was super successful and continues to be

uh it continues to be like the unofficial official meal of canada where people eat an average of 3.2 boxes of craft dinner every year which doesn't sound a lot for one person but when you consider the number of people who aren't eating any craft dinner, that starts to skew the numbers in some wild ways. Our mom made it a lot, like a lot, a lot, a lot. Then when Easy Mac hit the scene. Yeah, what are your feelings about that? Loved it. I mean, it now without having to, you know, produce a bechamel or anything like that.

I didn't have to whip up a zooey bechamel. Yeah. You know, making it in the microwave, though, I always felt like, oh, there's no way this is going to taste as good. But it does. It does. But yeah, it basically does. Because it's hot water noodles and powder like that's basically all that you need to get the easy mac going and um yeah for

me it was always like a like an exotic luxury a delicacy because you know it wasn't like a baloney sandwich it was craft dinner yeah in the palm of my hands. I would decant it into my hands and eat it like a little Peggy. When mac and cheese is available as a side, I'll get it every time. Oh, gosh, I know. Yeah, we have talked about this as a family a few times because when we travel with our children, we will go to a restaurant and they will present macaroni and cheese as a kid's option. And there's always that moment of like, is this going to be like that fancy stuff with the breadcrumbs on the top? Because our child will not want that. Which I love that shit too. If you want to whip up a fancy four cheese Gruyere, you know, nutmeg, like whatever the fuck you want to throw in there.

Yeah, it's going to be good and I'm going to eat it. I'll eat Kraft Dinner. I'll eat leftover Kraft Dinner Deluxe from my son's half-eaten bowl because it's very good to eat macaroni and cheese. When you put these things together, it's pretty much always good. And I think that that's a special food.

Keep it up, mac and cheese. That's it for the show. 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. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us for the show. 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. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. It's a great network.

We're very proud to be a part of it. And you should be too if you also make a podcast that is on the Maximum Fun network. Or let's say if you donate to Maximum Fun. If you support Maximum Fun, that is also-

You are one of us in a way. You're one of us. Google gobble, Google maximum fun that is also one of us in a way you're one of us google gobble google gobble you're one of us do you want to talk about candle nights i do want to talk about candle nights it's coming up very very soon it's on december 17th 9 p.m eastern time it's going to be virtual again this year tickets Tickets are on sale now at bit.ly slash Candle Nights 2022. All our shows, we're doing bits and skits and sketches. We're doing our shows also kind of in short form format. Rachel and I put together, I would say, a pretty authoritative holiday gift guide that hopefully you will find very useful and actionable uh is a great thing and it's for a great cause all the uh ticket sales go to benefit harmony house uh which is an

organization from our hometown of huntington west virginia that works to end homelessness in the area and uh it's a lot of fun every year so it's yeah it's it's honestly one of my like favorite new traditions not just making it but then watching it like it's it's a real treat it's honestly one of my like favorite new traditions not just making it but then watching it like it's it's a real treat there's a lot of a lot of heart in it there's a lot of heart in it uh we have stuff over at macaroonmerch.com that you should go check out uh and uh also i wanted to say because i don't think we mentioned it on this show uh the 11th hour the next the adventure Zone graphic novel comes out pretty soon now, February 21st, 2023. You can go to theadventurezonecomic.com to preorder it.

I'm extremely proud of this book and how it turned out. And I am – it's been a little bit longer between books than we have done for previous entries in the series. And so pre-orders are incredibly important for sort of getting that groundswell and for convincing booksellers to stock our books. And so you would be helping us a lot if you went to theadventurezonecomic.com to pre-order if you were planning on getting the book. And if you weren't, please maybe do it instead.

I am good. I am the craft dinner of marketing. That's it. Thank you to everyone that came out to the Washington, D.C. live performance. So wonderful. Yeah. It was a real treat. We did have a great, great time.

Any time that I can stand in front of a large group of people and talk about poetry and have them cheer as if it were some kind of rock music is a good time for me. Well, I was doing like backflips behind you while you were reading the poetry. Oh, that was nice of you. So I would say half the audience was like, you know, having emotional poetry feelings. But then the other half was like, yeah. How many backflips?

I mean, I could really only do the one. And then after a very brief hospital stay, I can maybe eke out a second one okay Hey! Working on Hey! My home Hey! Working on Hey! My home Hey! Working on

Hey! My home Hey! MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.