Wonderful! - Wonderful! 256: Sister Podcast of Terrible

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Rachel's favorite seasonal performances! Griffin's favorite non-debatable Christmas movie!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Harmony House: http://harmonyhouse.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. This is Wonderful. This is a show where we talk about this is Wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. This is Wonderful. This is a show where we talk about things we like. Things that are good. Things that we're into.

It feels like we're recording a promo for Wonderful, which we are, I would say, famously bad at. Yeah. No, but I mean, bad in a way that is, I think, still enjoyable to people. Yeah. I mean, we haven't gotten any complaints. I mean, I will say that last promo, I wrote an original poem. That one was good. So it does seem like now you're saying

that the poem was bad. No, the poem is good. In the past, though, when we've had to be like, what's our show about? Hot dogs, hockey. Yeah, here's the thing. I don't know. Video game.

You have been in the game longer than I have. Do you feel slightly insecure? Yes. Okay. What was... I didn't know if there was more to it. Just about the lack of format for our show in an era of infinite podcasts.

Of hugely formatted podcasts. Well, yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, we don't have enough cliffhangers maybe is what I'm concerned about. We don't really do enough to keep them coming back week to week. For example, you suggested that you would eat cream of wheat and then talk about it. And I don't know that you ever talked about it. Okay. Well, maybe we can fulfill that promise.

Yeah. Okay, well, maybe we can fulfill that promise. Yeah. I ate cream of wheat, and I had the most spectacular diarrhea that I've had in my maybe adult life. And I couldn't – I was sick before that. And so I was like, maybe it's just that. Yeah. Yeah, we should say.

Maybe I should eat cream of wheat again. And then I ate it. I did eat it a second time. And it did make my stomach feel pretty bad. Really? So it could potentially be. And maybe it's time that we go back through the history of our show and see which things we've talked about in the past before make me violently, violently ill. I will say the first time you had it, I believe Henry was sick and then we kind of were like,

oh, what a baby. And then you and I both got it for a long time and we're like, oh, this is terrible. No wonder he was so miserable. So that was our first return to cream of wheat. So the second time though, I didn't realize. It was enough to make me wonder if I am gluten intolerant, because I cannot imagine a worse thing for you to have than cream of wheat. Man, I am glad that you are off Twitter, because I feel like you would get so many messages after this episode.

Here are the variety of tests and products that you can invest in as somebody who is likely gluten intolerant. I don't need any more tests. I had cream of wheat twice, and it made me sick both times. So you heard it here first. Anyway, this is a wonderful show that's good.

And do you have a small wonder, Rachel, light of my life? Oh, wow. Maybe it should be that you just called me that no no okay uh who hmm huh i guess i will say uh seasonal specifically this disorder oh no i hate that yeah that's thumbs down that's on my other podcast terrible wonderful yeah now um like a like a seasonal coffee creamer you're currently drinking uh trader joe's cold brew gingerbread oat latte yeah and then today when i went to the store, I found a almond milk peppermint mocha creamer.

That's exciting. So I bought that. Oh, wow. So it's in our fridge right now. Surprise. Wait, Griffin just ran out of the room. What?

Whoa. But I get excited about that. I think, you know what it always makes me think of is when we go to your brother Justin's house. That's, yeah. He always has the most exciting, experimental coffee cream rice.

It's very, very sweet. The McElroys take hosting very seriously. And whenever we visit Justin and Sydney and the girls, they have prepared by purchasing a lot of snack items. And often, and I don't know if they always do this but there is a seasonal creamer in their fridge always always i just find it very charming um one time i went and stayed with justin city a long time ago and they had pretzel flips yeah which were pretzels and crack they were crackers on one side pretzels on the other i don't know how the physics of this thing works.

All I do know is that I ate them and commented on how I liked them. And then for the next every other Christmas that I came in town, they were like, don't worry. We got those flips for you. That's so sweet. That's very sweet. I'm going to say bathrobes. Bathrobes. Rachel got me a bathrobe for our anniversary.

Yeah, which we haven't mentioned, I don't think. Or did we? No, we just had number nine. Number nine. Feeling fine and still married. And we went to a hotel and we had a little spa experience. We had a little dinner experience and we had a hotel experience and we had a bathrobe experience. And you also got me a bathrobe for anniversary so that i can have my own bathrobe

experience whenever i want to i don't know the brand but it's almost like a bathrobe hoodie and it's very good it has elastic wrist cuffs on it which i didn't realize i needed on my bathrobe you wouldn't think right but it makes it so that i can wear the bathrobe and do anything else without getting sticky sticky wrists yeah and i appreciate that bathrobes are great i wish i was wearing mine right now but it's downstairs so alas you have first this week i do i can't wait to hear what you've got for me you know i must be like in a real holiday spirit oh geez because uh not only was my wonderful topic seasonal but um or my small wonder but my topic is also seasonal and that is uh i'm gonna get kind of specific and say

the performances in the 1946 classic it's a wonderful life yeah man we were just talking about this the other day because henry for some reason we found ourselves explaining the plot of the film to henry well we were talking about christmas movies i was asking him what his favorites were oh yeah and he like couldn't think of any which was wild uh and then we reminded him like you know elf all of these classics and then i was like oh and then there's it's a wonderful life which would bore you to tears yeah and he was like what's it about and i said a man doesn't have enough money at christmas time that's literally and i was i was awestruck by the the the uh efficacy of that explanation.

It was so brilliantly condensed. Well, and I didn't want to get into the more challenging aspects of it because it is a kind of a dark film. Sure. It's about a man who doesn't get anything that he wants his entire life

and then his uncle fucking blows it. Well, yeah. And then he is debating whether or not to go on living yeah and in that process the movie kind of unfolds and he gets to see what his life uh or yeah there's really no way to describe the film in a way that doesn't make it sound like the ultimate downer yeah and i will say when i was researching this, Frank Capra, who is the director on this, approached Jimmy Stewart and was like trying to sell the movie to him. And he was like, so an angel named Clarence comes and shows me what life would be like without me. That's really only the last, I always feel like I can't properly partition out the sections of that film accurately because I feel like the thing everybody talks about in It's a Wonderful Life where he gets this glimpse of what everybody else's life, what the world would be like.

Yeah, it's only like the last. It's like the last quarter of the film, maybe? Every time we watch it, I remember like, oh yeah, there's this whole beginning part that is pretty slow. Yeah, I think that's a fair synopsis of it. Yeah, I love it so much. It's one of the greatest films ever. I wanted to call out the performances specifically because of what I just mentioned, which is the plot of the film. It could have turned out very poorly.

There are parts of it that are not great for, let's say, the representation of women and people of color. There's a lot about the movie that is very dated. Sure. And not particularly great on paper. Right. But Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed. on paper right but uh jimmy stewart donna reed like donna reed is so good in this film this was like her first starring role it's it's i can't think of too many films that are romantic in the

way that this film is romantic in which the female lead does most of the pursuing, right? Yeah, it's true. Like her character has this huge crush on Jimmy Stewart's character. Yeah. And especially in the time period, like that was unheard of. And the way that she plays it is so like, so charming. Yeah, plucky is the word that comes to mind. Yeah.

Yeah, she had been in like 20 other things by this point, Like so charming. Plucky is the word that comes to mind. Yeah. She had been in like 20 other things by this point, but she had never been the star. And this like blew her up. Was this before Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or after? No, it was after. Wow. So, you know, what's interesting is that Frank Capra also directed that one. Right.

Which is why he thought of Jimmy Stewart. But the thing I didn't really realize was the timing, which I didn't really think about. The movie came out in 1946. Jimmy Stewart had just returned from fighting in the Second World War in 1945. So prior to the war, he had appeared in 28 movies and was nominated for an oscar for mr smith goes to washington uh and won one for best actor in the philadelphia story but came home from war and found out that uh his contract with mgm had run out and his agent was no longer in the business so he was kind of like i mean more desperate i think than he would typically be yeah so when frank capper approached and was like hey

i've got this weird movie uh that's based on this story that nobody has heard before and it's kind of a gamble is it based on a book is it no so that's the other thing that's interesting so it is based on a 21 page christmas card sorry there there is this author philip van doren stern who had a short story couldn't get it published anywhere so instead he put it together in the form of a christmas card and mailed it out to all of his friends and this producer producer, David Hempstead, came across it and bought the movie rights for $10,000. That's bananas. Yeah.

I don't know which part of that, what you just said is the most bananas, banana-nanas, but I'm gonna say it's the person who's like, I got a great idea for this short story, but no one's buying it. So I'm gonna make a 21 page Christmas card and send it out to all my friends.

The hubris of that. Yeah. If it wasn't one of the greatest stories ever told, that would be a real douche move. I would say. That's the thing I keep thinking about though, is that like if I were, maybe it is because it has become so standard,

you know? But when I think of the plot, I think like that doesn't sound like a particularly great movie. What really works about it is just how great everybody is in their role and just how beautifully it's filmed and put together. So that was the other thing I wanted to talk about. It did not do well when it came out in theaters uh in fact frank capra ended up 525 000 in the hole because of that film and that's back in 1940s it was shot with a budget of 3.7 million which is a lot in 1940s i can't a huge amount of money. I can't even imagine. Part of it was that they created Bedford Falls.

It was four acres of RKO's Encino Ranch, and it had 75 stores and buildings, 20 full-grown oak trees, factories, residential areas, and a 300-yard-long main street. That's that he runs down at the end. Yeah, so they created that whole town basically from scratch. That's wild. Why? I don end. Yeah, so they created that whole town basically from scratch. That's wild. Why? I don't know. I don't know. You guys know you had towns, right?

Yeah, I don't know. It's a big world, big country. You probably could have found a town that looked sort of like Bedford Falls. But yeah, so not only did it not do well at the box office, the critics were very like um harsh on it the new york times critics said uh quote the weakness of this picture is the sentimentality of it uh describing george bailey as a quote figment of simple pollyanna platitudes that's so brutal it's not just brutal it's deeply wrong like oh It's a complicated movie. It's an extremely complex character that is played with a sort of sadness that I genuinely can't think of too many other like roles, leading roles that have that.

What an insane thing to say about this film. Yeah, no. same thing to say about this film. Yeah, no, and like think about part of what I find so charming about it is that when he's kind of, when George Bailey's kind of losing it a little bit and he's kind of stomping around the house, he's like talking to

his wife and he's like, why do we have to have so many kids, Mary? He's like yelling at his children. Yeah, that Pollyanna innocence. And like stomping through this house that is falling apart and he's like complaining i mean there's like a lot of darkness to this man at a certain point in the film yeah so the reception wasn't particularly great and part of what made it such an icon

in kind of the holiday tradition is that in 1974 the copyright lapsed so it was royalty free and everybody started putting on television interesting yeah it was just like oh okay well let's like let's put this on tv and run it constantly because it doesn't cost us anything and it's technically a holiday film uh and that lasted for 20 years and then in 1994 somehow it was like okay hold on we got we got this back there's money in here you can't you can't play this all the time um but uh yeah i mean the other the other thing i will i thought was interesting about it is um prior to this film the artificial snow that was popular at the time was painted cornflakes that doesn't even have the ballistic properties of snow.

I know. Well, and apparently the audio was not great. I can't imagine. So part of what Frank Capra did for the film was that he took fomite, which is what's in fire extinguishers. Oh, great. And mixed it with sugar and water

to create a less noisy snow. Cool, breathe deep. Breathe deep, everybody. It was also filmed like in a very, very hot time of year. Yeah. And so a lot of times you'll see like George Bailey roll up like covered in sweat. And that is largely because it was filmed like basically in the summertime. Yeah.

And Jimmy Stewart just walks in and is like, I think I'm high as hell. Like, yeah, man. It's the snow. Huff it. Huff it, Jimmy. I say I love your Jimmy Stewart. I don yeah, man, it's the snow. Huff it. Huff it, Jimmy. I say I love your Jimmy Stewart. I don't even know if it's good anymore. It's not.

I'm just so into it. Thanks. Yeah, so it's just, I don't know. It's so beautiful. There's this scene that I was reading about where Jimmy Stewart is in the bar. And as I recall, it is, I don't know if it's which time he's in the bar, whether it's like the time before Clarence rolls up or after. Anyway, he is talking about how he's like at the end of his rope.

And he's saying like, you know, I'm not a praying man, but if you're up there and you can hear me, show me the way. That's before Clarence. That's before Clarence. Yeah. And then like Jimmy Stewart in that moment, like breaks down in tears. And apparently that was like not in the script. He was just like, he was experiencing this like kind of real trauma, like having come back from war for years and like having to kind of build his life again.

Uh, and he just really kind of tapped into like the loneliness of George Bailey and created a really beautiful scene. How old were you when you first saw this movie? I mean, pretty young. My parents took my film education very seriously. So I watched a lot of black and white films as a young person. And this is one of them uh and so i was probably i don't know seven or eight maybe okay my dad also took my film

education very seriously but but in a different way a different way yeah through a different we both grew up on the marks brothers but i also got a little bit of uh jimmy stewart katherine hepburn like carrie grant yeah education i was in college when I first saw it. And I feel like that's, I don't know that I could have hung in there if I was any younger than that. But man, what a good flick. So like funny, you know, like and timeless in a lot of ways. I just. And so sweet. It makes me cry.

I know. A few times every time I watch it. Pretty reliably. I can't think of another film that... Sometimes I'll watch a movie that has made me cry in the past and I'll be getting close to the end of it and be like, oh man, I haven't cried. Have my emotions somehow dulled by the ravages of our modern world?

Not this one. This one will just be like in the middle of some it'll be the scene where he's like giving away all of their honeymoon money so that he can keep up the old building and and i'm like oh really i didn't do this last time that was me crying not my jimmy stewart impression i know it was probably confusing yeah i mean are there moments in the film when i think wow you either choose a violet or you choose a Mary, and they're going to quite literally distill women into either the object of men's affection and using that inappropriately? There's just a lot in it that's not great. Yeah, sure.

But Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed put their whole hearts into it. Yeah, sure. But Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed. Can't, can't, can't. Put their whole hearts into it. It's beautiful. When they smooch. Oh. Can I steal you away? Yes.

I'm Jordan Cruciola, the host of Feeling Seen, where we talk about the movie characters that make us feel seen. And I'm the show's producer, Marissa. Jordan, you've interviewed so many directors, actors, writers, film critics, and I like to play this little game where I take a sip of coffee every time someone says, that's such a great question. That's such a fabulous question.

Or they tell you how smart you are. I think that you are rather brilliant. And of course, the big one is when they cry unexpectedly. Jordan, I don't want to cry on your podcast. I wasn't expecting to cry. I mean, it makes me kind of want to cry. Feeling Seen comes out every Thursday on MaximumFun.org. Listen already.

What are you waiting for? Jordan, that's such a great question. Listen already. What are you waiting for? Jordan, that's such a great question. Hal Lapland here with breaking news on a revolutionary form of entertainment, professional wrestling. For more, we go to our correspondent, Danielle Ranford. Professional wrestling is the craze that's sweeping the nation featuring fisticuffs and colorful costumes but who can help us make sense of this world of body slams lindsey kelk has the answer sources tell us of an amazing podcast called tights and fights filled with discussions of the absurdity of professional

wrestling plus all the sincerity and hilarity that you could shake a stick at. Listen to the Tights and Fights podcast every week. Find it on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. And your old-timey radio. This one's an episode for the stars. We're rolling out the red carpet for this one. I'm also talking about a film. Okay. And I'm not interested in getting into the Christmas movie debate on this one, on this flick. I'm going to talk about Die Hard.

Whoa. This movie kicks ass. This movie kicks ass. The last movie we talked about doesn't kick ass. Sweet, beautiful, cry tears emotions feelings christmas time this movie not i mean some of that maybe a little bit but most of the time bruce willis kick an ass great performances great performance excellent performances i would say reggie val johnson in in in a a filmic turn that is uh i can't imagine anybody else in the role.

Yes. Bruce. Alan Rickman. Alan Rickman becoming a celebrity pretty much overnight with this flick. Yeah. Everybody being like, oh, we need a villain for our film.

Let's get Ricky. And Bruce Willis, who was not an action star when this film came out. It's so hard to imagine. I know. When this film came out, It's so hard to imagine. I know. When this film came out, he was known for Moonlighters. Moonlighting.

Moonlighting, not Moonlighters. Moonlighting, which was not an action-packed affair, I would say. The role of John McClane was originally offered to Arnold and Stallone and all of the big-name action stars of the era who all turned it down. What's so good, Bruce Willis is like he understands comedy and that he does does a lot for this performance he understands like vulnerability certainly more than Arnold Schwarzenegger or Stallone or any of those like 80s like beef boys yeah do uh when he was cast in this role people were like this this is going to be a flop he was offered i think like five million dollars which was like a pretty huge sum of money

in 1987 yeah yeah yeah uh and so everybody was like this comedy guy can't doesn't have the chops to be this big action star and obviously when this film came out like they all ate their words and he became like the biggest action star for a very very long time um the whole movie takes place in one location nakatomi plaza and i love like a like a bottle movie like one where it's just like you're gonna really really really need to get comfortable in this setting because this is it it's the whole thing and it's just dripping with like douchey 80s high rise los angeles like there's like a like a like a drug and alcohol usage too that feels very 80s very very very 80s but also at the same time like they are just beneath the surface like only like 10 of the tower is actually built and the rest of it is under construction, which makes it a pretty good playground for like an action movie made up of a handful of escalating

action sequences. The best thing about this flick, let me say first, I don't care about whether or not it's a Christmas movie. It is set during Christmas. It's got Christmas stuff in it. It's got Christmas stuff in it, and I am always excited to watch it. And if Christmas is the reason for that annual watch, then who am I to disagree? Does it espouse some of, let's say, It's a Wonderful Life's positive, life-affirming holiday messages? No, it does not. No, it does not. No, it does not. I would say it espouses life-negating messages by the number of murderings that do take place in this film. Yeah, and you know this is true because, like,

the movie starts with, like, he is separated from his wife. Yeah. And then at the end of the film, it seems like maybe they're going to get back together. Yeah. And you don't really care. At least I didn't. I was like, okay, well, good.

I don't know, man. For me, that was like not, I don't know. When the movie ended, I did not hang hope on that. I think Bonnie Bedelia was who played Holly Gennaro McClain. Is that her name? I think so. I don't remember. Yeah, his estranged wife.

And she's great. She's great, honestly, in all the films. And I feel like, I don't know, I was stoked for their reunion at the end of the film. What is great about this movie? We talked about Bruce Willis being more vulnerable than the other sort of action stars of the era uh in this movie John McClane starts out in a bathroom stall when this group of

uh so-called terrorists bust in and take over Nakatomi Plaza and start you know shooting up the place he is unarmed he is shoeless for reasons that oh's right, because he has to take his shoes off to curl up his toes into balls to get, yeah. He is shoeless. He is weaponless. And then it's like, okay, now start fighting your way back against this big group of international thieves. But be smart about it. He is like a former police officer or something? He is an active, I think, NYPD.

Okay, yeah. police officer he is an active i think nypd okay yeah and so that's like that's basically what we're given to believe like that he would have any skills in this arena but this this power curve that he goes through of starting off like completely defenseless and then like with each of these action sequences which get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger it's it's almost video game like which may explain like why i was so drawn to it the first time i saw it because it's like he takes out that the one guy and now he's got a pistol and then famously he takes out one guy who has like an uzi and then he sends his uh body down in an elevator with the message now i have a machine gun, ho, ho, ho, written on it. It's like, there's loot in it.

There's also this running kind of gag, but also like a dramatic setup of like, all of these thieves have really tiny feet. And so none of their shoes fit him. He tries to take all their shoes and it doesn't work. I forgot about that. Well, yeah, which leads to like a pretty gnarly glass-based shootout scene um but the

way that like i don't know the way the movie escalates to where he is just uh with without any help whatsoever and then by the end of it he's you know armed to the teeth with reginald vel johnson as his very best friend yeah you don't get that you know i was more invested in their relationship than the one with him and his ex-wife right reggie val johnson plays the one good cop in all of los angeles uh which the city police force is so like bureaucratic and bumbling that it almost honestly it is sort of the secondary antagonist of the film yeah uh in the way that it just sort of gets gets in the way does that glorify sort of extrajudicial violence against hans gruber and his crew yes for sure uh but but the way i don't know i i feel like i haven't seen too many other movies that are about like cops just not wanting to fucking do the job uh except

for bruce willis uh and Reggie Val Johnson. And also, I mean, Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. Maybe his most iconic non-Snape role. I would say even more, honestly, like when I think about his body of work, one, I get hugely sad because I loved him so much. But two, like, I don't know, man, the scene, there's a scene in this movie where John McClane catches Hans Gruber.

And John McClane is like armed. Hans Gruber is not. Catches him on a roof and is about to like blow him away. And then Hans Gruber turns around and is like, oh, no, please, no. I just got away. And it's Alan Rickman doing this american accent pretending to be pretending to be somebody else like not that guy so his like hysterically funny and uh i don't know watching him go from this like super cocky yeah i forgot about that too, too. This movie is just really, really well structured in general. The way that it is just like a constant rising action all the way up until the end makes it really memorable.

And now when I watch it, which we do usually around this time of year uh like i remember all of it i remember every action sequence and how it builds on the last one and you know when they get to the roof it's like well which time is it that they're on the roof this time because they're gonna go to the roof a few times and one of the times he fucking jumps off uh and and to me i i don't think of other action movies that way i don't think of them that way because i don't think that they are uh in in general this i don't know orchestrated for for lack of a better term this the squeak wolves mixed bag yeah i was gonna say i can't remember if i've seen any of them two is an airplane three is in new york four and five i haven't seen uh yeah no i haven't the one in new york is he teams up with Samuel L. Jackson

and they have to solve a bunch of riddles to disarm bombs. That's pretty fun. That does sound fun. Two is pretty much an airport-based rehash of Die Hard 1. Yeah. But it has its moments. But Die Hard 1, it's just a perfect action movie, I think. I can't think of any action movie that I would hold in such high regard as this one.

And obviously it launched many careers overnight. And even though everybody thought it was going to be this big box office bomb, it grossed $140 million, which was way more than its budget of like $25 million. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is it a Christmas movie, though? Probably not. I mean, the reason it is, if you feel strongly about this, is because it takes place at Christmastime.

Could you remove all the Christmas stuff from it, though, and still have the best action movie ever made? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're having a holiday party. He's there specifically because it's Christmastime. I mean.

It's not a throwaway thing. Theoretically, it is dependent on it being Christmastime. But yeah, it would work if they were having a Halloween party. Yeah. Holy shit. Everybody's in costumes. You can't tell who is who. Oh, holy shit. Everybody's in costumes. You can't tell who is who. Oh my God.

The fucking like sniveling, uh, like day trader dude. Yeah. Who's like Hans, Bubby. This movie kicks ass. I want to watch it.

I want to watch that. And I want to watch it's a wonderful life tonight. We're going to be up until 2am. At the same time. Split screen. Picture in picture. Thanks for listening to wonderful. Uh, sorry. We're late. It's been, life tonight we're gonna be up until 2 a.m at the same time split screen picture and picture thanks for listening to wonderful uh sorry we're late it's been it's been one of those weeks but we're here now and that's all that matters um thank you to maximum fun for having us on the

network yeah we should say this is probably the last i mean it's definitely the last time we'll talk to you before candle nights spectacular yes saturdayacular. Yes. Saturday, December 17th. Bit.ly slash Candle Nights 2022. Tickets are $5 and you can pay whatever else on top of that you want. All the proceeds go to Harmony House, an incredible organization in Huntington, West Virginia, that works to end homelessness in the area. Amazing organization. It's a banger special. There's so many fun things. Have you things even like any other videos from it uh i've seen a couple other videos but i like to stay pretty

unplugged yeah i genuinely like to watch it i get really excited because we're all pretty hush hush about what we're doing yes and so it is fun to see the finished product it is fun for us too but it'll be fun for you at home if you go to bit.ly slash candlelights 2022 uh this this this special has been running for a while now uh or i guess we used to do it as a live show but uh it's it's it's one of my favorite holiday traditions now and uh hopefully you can share in that too uh it'll be on demand through january 2nd if you can't make it on saturday night so please please do it um mcquarriemerch.com we got a bunch of merch a bunch two. It'll be on demand through January 2nd if you can't make it on Saturday night. So please do it.

McElroyMerch.com. We got a bunch of merch, a bunch of Christmas ornaments and stuff. Can I also make a special announcement? Yes! Did you forget until just now? I did. So those of you that have been listening to Wonderful for a while know that one of my passions is

Austin Batcave, which is a nonprofit organization in Central Texas that works with students in Title I schools and helps them build their passion and talent for writing. In the past, we have done live performances to benefit this organization. I talked about their D&D workshops a lot's it's really, truly a very special thing. We kind of ran out of time to put together a live performance. But what we decided to do instead. And when I say we, I mean, me and Amanda, who is an incredible employee of the big giant. Really our boss.

Yeah, just she she she did this work to make something special for y'all which is a compilation of all of the poetry corners and or the majority of the poetry corners at least uh from the first 225 episodes of wonderful. So what you will find if you go to mackleroy.family is the opportunity to purchase. It's about 40 minutes and it is a downloadable file that includes some of my favorite poems

and poets from past episodes of Wonderful. Yeah. And all the proceeds from that go to Austin Batcave. Exactly. So you'll have the option to pay a dollar or more, and you can download this and hopefully enjoy it. And support this organization that could really use your help right now. Yeah.

Austin Batcave had this great location in East Austin, and it was perfect for them to hold in like in person workshops and and have their staff have a place to go and work and meet together. And they got kicked out of their space as of December 15. And now have to move, which is an unexpected expense for them. And they could really use some support. So I am hopeful that we will be able to give them a little bit of support through the sale of this Oops All Poetry Corner episode of Wonderful. Yeah. Again, go to macroy.family.

You'll find it there along with everything else that we talked about in this post-show thing. That's it, though. That's it, though. Please enjoy Candle it though. Please enjoy Candle Nights. Please enjoy yourselves this weekend. Be safe. Be smart.

Be kind. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Be strong. Be tall. Oh. Be tall and strong. Oh. Be sports. be tall oh be tall and strong oh be sports

Nike this is like my new ad campaign that I've been working on for Nike uh huh it's like be strong

be brave be sports Nike you're really inspired by dirt is gold dust for the bold exactly

dust is gold dirt Dust for the bold. Exactly. Dust is gold. Dirt's for the bold. This one's for you. Bye. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture Artist owned Audience supported