Wonderful! - Wonderful! 267: What is a Short Podcast if Not Poetry

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

Griffin's favorite silly yet raw musician! Rachel's favorite poet on the poetry circuit!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaEquality Florida: https://www.eqfl.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. It almost, it felt like I was trying to set up the all musical episode that we've been doing. Oh God, please don't. Please don't ever make me do that. Would you prefer that if I did do that,

I sort of like sprung it on you? No. No, you would want to know ahead of time. No, no to both. See, I think you would have an easier time if you didn't have to prepare. Like if you knew the musical episode was coming up, it's going to stress you out for an extended period of time. As opposed to, I just start singing when we start recording.

And you're like, well, this sucks. But, you know, at least it's going to be 40 minutes or so. And then it's over and done. Here's the thing. Like, I really like to yes and your choices on this show. Yeah. And if that's not true, I want it to be true. I feel like it's mostly true.

And I feel like on a musical episode, I would be so miserable. You beatbox. You could do the beatbox. I can't do that either. Oh, shoot. Flute? I mean, maybe.

It's been a long time since I've played it. I don't even know where it is. I don't know if I still have it. Flute? I mean, maybe. It's been a long time since I've played it. I don't even know where it is. I don't know if I still have it. Your flute? You have it in like a hard shell case like you're a hitman, like you're a sniper, you know? Do they usually put flutes in soft cases? I don't know. I don't think they typically put instruments in soft cases because you really don't want that thing to get, you know, beat up.

I don't know. I assume a flute is pretty strong. I don't think I could bend a flute over my knee. I've never tried, though. Why don't you go find your flute? I'll try to bend it over my knee like a big, strong man. It's just there's a bunch of, like, click-clacky, like, keys on there. Sure.

And they can get all out of whack. Yeah. And no one knows what the buttons on the flute does. That's why like even you you just kind of like press the buttons until the sound

is like right. Yeah, no, you just learn like which finger I mean, it's like guitar. It's like, oh, these two go here. I think. And that sounds

like music. This is a wonderful show. We talk about things that are good. Things we like. Things we're into. Do you have any small wonders for me to snack on yum yum um i'm still playing stardew valley oh yeah don't say anything else

though because if they want to hear that they gotta dish out i know i was thinking maybe we should set some kind of pledge goal where I provide like an update on my experience. Oh, sure. Because I am in year two. We should do a video where I get to tour your farm. Although you've warned me that your farm is not quite aesthetically. It's okay.

You've been very secretive, even to me, your husband, your partner. Well, I still don't know what I'm doing. Yeah. I'm doing. Yeah. I'm enjoying it, obviously. I feel like maybe even I'm on year three now. Good Lord almighty. I don't think I've ever made it to year three. Really?

I think I usually get all my business done within the first two calendar years and then I'm on to the next. Well, no, I'm not saying I'm better at the game than you. It sounds like it. I play it in a fundamentally cruel and broken way. I have started Googling a lot, which is surprised even myself. Yeah. Like, all right, I've got to know

I can't catch a sturgeon. What am I doing wrong? Yeah. And like you realize after you do that, oh, it's only available in this one season in this one place.

Yeah. That's crazy. That's wild. But it's been a nice thing for me to do uh you know when i want to check out for a little bit sure and maybe listen to a show and and i'm enjoying it good i'm really glad to hear that um i i say um i say what i say i should have come up with something when we were talking you get so excited when i talk about stardew valley it's like you can't help i can't think i just start thinking about stardew valley and then like the rest of the the the thing is

it just goes off the rails um you want you want some help yeah television music snack foods well no you're just yelling things we talked about perfect match i think already we talked about the sort of having that that big garbage bag to climb inside every night like a and just make a warm little garbage tent yes um how about we've talked about bubbles before we've been doing a lot of bubbles we've been doing a ton of bubbles any variations on bubbles? This is the most I've ever struggled with this, I think. Henry makes little crafts at school sometimes.

And they're so sweet because sometimes he makes them specifically for us. Yeah. Yesterday, he made a little boxy little orange man made out of orange tape that was me and it said number one dad on it and the one is backwards it's like so unbelievably cute he made a little smiling grute which is like and wrote happy grute on it and he spelled happy h-a-p-e-e it's like so freaking cute. Yeah, they really do kindergarten right now. They do it so good. I feel like he comes home and you can tell he did it himself without help and put the work in and did it his own way. And I feel like he is supported and creative and it's exciting.

When I pick him up from school, I pick him up from – I do the conveying of the biggest son. Yes. And when I pick him up from school, he comes out of the door and if he's made something to show me, he like stops right there. Like first thing he says like, I made something for you. And he just like pulls it out of his bag. It's so good. And then he'll come home and he'll tell me like go look in my backpack at the thing I made for daddy. It's going to blow your mind.

I go first this week. Yes. I'm very excited. Yes. I'm very excited. Yes. I'm talking about Petey. I'm talking about Petey. I was sent a song by my oldest brother,

Justin McElroy, a couple nights ago. Justin McElroy, tastemaker for this household. For sure. Since receiving this song like two nights ago, I've listened to it like 20 times.

Yeah. It's absolutely incredible. That song is called Don't Tell the Boys by Petey. I'm gonna play that a little bit later after I talk about Petey. But that song has been like a chain letter for me since first hearing it because I've now sent it to many of my friends

who I assume it will resonate with in a similar way. And the success rate on that assumption has just been 100%. It's been very meaningful to a lot of people in my life, which I think speaks to the strength of the song. Can you tell me who Petey is or anything about Petey? So yeah, so a little background. Petey is Peter Martin. Born in Detroit, lives in California now. He has been making music for a long time now. He started out in an emo band called Young Jesus back in 2013. And so he's been making music for

a while. But right when his music career started to kind of blossom uh covid hit and sort of put the put the brakes on it uh and so he did what the rest of us did and he joined tiktok and i'd seen a few of his tiktoks before hearing any of his his music uh and they're so completely my shit like are they always musical in nature no not at all okay they're very uh sort of absurdist wholesome humor uh that are are fairly long form i would say for the tiktok platform he has a whole series of tiktoks about puff sullivan the sig king of central high uh who gives cigarettes out to all of his grateful friends to solve all their problems. I'm not going to go on and describe this man's entire body of TikTok work, but it's exceptional.

It's one of few, I think, TikTok creators who I can just get on his page and just watch every one of them and have a lovely little time. So his TikTok blew up during like the peak of COVID and his music career has kind of followed in step. He's released an album. He's released two albums over the last two years. They've both been excellent. I've been listening to all of them for over the last two days. And there's still definitely, I would say,

a particular kind of like emo streak that pervades his music. There's a lot of LCD sound system-esque sort of synth hooks happening there. And just super, super powerful scream singing. It's giving me like Lucero. It's giving me Band of Horses. I got a little, maybe it's because of his voice and like how deep it is but i got a little like the national the national for sure frightened rabbit i think uh is is in

that same sort of uh zone uh and i it's been a while since i've kind of like i've all the bands i've mentioned i've enjoyed at some point or another in my life but mostly when i was like younger and had like more time for angst uh it's hard to make time for angst in in my life now as it is uh but man alive i have been really reconnecting with my roots over the last 48 hours uh so the song justin sent me was called don't tell the boys which is just this just this hell yeah ballad of profound vulnerability, just this full-throated appreciation for deep and platonic friendship. And a lot of his music is like this. A lot of his music talks about angsty or very vulnerable things but delivered through this like very thick lens of like yeehaw machismo that is like funny like it's it is funny that those two things are

up against each other but then very quickly that humor gets peeled back just enough for you to see like the the angst inside of it and holy shit that is like that feels very targeted for me so i'm gonna play a little bit of don't tell the boys and by which i mean editor rachel's gonna play some of don't tell the boys now uh this this verse that i want to play swept the legs out from under me for obvious reasons i will say spoilers for the oc skip ahead like a minute if you are ever planning on hearing the OC. But if not, please enjoy Don't Tell the Boys. You know Tom's a more like Ryan You're a little more like Seth You're so quick-witted when we talk about what happens after death

Heard your brother's in the desert He's been fighting for our freedom He's been chasing nameless faces Ever since he finished rehab We support the individual Without support the whole damn conflict Is either shooting guns or heroin This is like a perfect example of what I'm talking about. His music being like so disarming because there's this just upfront humor about talking about the OC just in the middle of this song, which is very funny, but then it hits you with a line like,

you're so quick, you're more like Seth, you're so quick-witted. When we talk about what happens after death, it's like, oh, damn, like you're over here looking at this OC joke and then comes at you from the other way. Oh my God, it's so good uh i i'm a i'm a i am a sucker for this type of like well-constructed yeah uh sort of deep thought it's so like epic in what it like what it covers yeah you know like there have been a lot of songs, I think, that try and, like, tackle this, like, theme of, like, friendship. But, like, it's – the song is, like, about that and, like, what it means to be, like, a man. Right.

And it's between these lines that are, like, join my little cult. We'll talk about the childhood traumas that shaped us as adults. And then you just hear him go like, come on now. It's like those things back up against each other in a way that is, it feels earned and it feels like completely authentic and genuine. While also being like super funny and poignant. Like, it's masterful. I was glad you sent me the video because i found the video really charming the video is just him and his buddy just like going

hiking and spinning around and like lounging in in bed and watching the oc in their underwear like yeah and then like wrestling out in the woods yeah uh so don't tell the boys has joined this like pantheon of like oh i'm gonna listen to this song for the rest of my life yeah but i wanted to also highlight uh one of his first breakout songs is called haircut uh which features vocals from returning wonderful artist maya folic or is it mia folic i actually don't know i don't remember this was a long time it was like episode 50 that you brought to the show i still listen to her music, though. She fucking rules.

It's incredible. Yeah. And she's very good on this song, too. So I'm going to play a little bit of Haircut to take us out. I was in a quarter life crisis and I couldn't explain. I've been feeling so different about all the same things. Remember that summer that I shaved my head just to prove that i had control over something i played the sims till i was 21 i had a little laugh that i always wanted

till you dragged me along to your best friend's party where the conversation always started hey there darling did you get your hair cut i think i cut damn near every last one of them i make jokes when i've been feeling uncomfortable am i all right i really think i'm in trouble so yeah i'm i am like in the nascent stages of this afterglow of finding this artist whose work, I think it just rules and feels like it was made for me. And also his TikToks are just universally hysterical, which doesn't feel especially fair. It feels like you're sucking up all the talent and keeping it just for yourself.

But yeah, that's Petey. He's PeteyUSA on TikTok if you want to watch that. But if you've liked the two songs I've played here, just go listen to the rest of his music because it's like, it's all really good, man. Can I steal your way? Yes. Thanks.

I hope they've got the bread bowl. Have you seen the bread bowl at this place? Good evening. Welcome to Maximum Fun. Have you been here before? It's her first time. Very good. Might I recommend our special?

Oh, please. Can I interest you in the Max Fun Drive? I'm told they're cooking up something quite extraordinary this year. I've heard about this. With limited time thank you gifts for new and upgrading members? That's right. We'll take it. How would you like your episodes? Can I get them excellent with new Boko on the side? Oh, are there live stream events? Absolutely. You know, if you're interested in events, Meetup Day is returning.

What? Oh, you're gonna love Meetup Day is returning. What? Oh, you're gonna love Meetup Day. It's the best. Okay, let me make sure I have everything. Max Fun Drive 2023 with limited time thank you gifts, live stream events, Meetup Day, excellent episodes, and of course, new bonus content. Sounds perfect.

Great. We'll get it started and it'll be ready in two weeks, March 20th. Oh, can we also get a couple of waters? Of course. Where am I? On Maximum Fun. What do you want?

A podcast miniseries about The Prisoner. Whose side are you on? That would be telling, but okay, I'm on my own side. It's one of my favorite ever TV shows. We want a podcast on it. A prisoner podcast. You won't get it. By hook or by crook, we will. Who are you? I'm

Elliot Kalin. Who is number one? Jesse Thorne. But you are John Hodgman. I am not a prisoner podcaster. I am a free man. Are you okay? Elliot, are you alright? Okay okay I'll watch it all four episodes of the potting you are

out now I see a book yeah you know what that means it could mean anything but I assume it means that we're gonna go to not one of the sides of the room, but where those sides can join.

And that is a corner. Yeah. And the corner has poetry. Poetry. I like that you switched it up. if you i don't want to be predictable yeah i want to keep things fresh yeah i don't want people to be like oh poetry corner again in a marriage and in a podcast podcast is like a marriage oh okay explore that okay sure i mean i was going to talk about my thing i really would prefer that. I wanted to just start by reading the poem.

What the fuck? Yeah. Baby. Because that's how I found this poet. Okay, let's see it. I've started like picking up anthologies because I'm trying to find poets I wouldn't find otherwise. Right. And so I went to a bookstore not too far from where we are called Politics and Prose.

Yeah. And it's really a wonderful bookstore. The most DC-ass name for business I've ever heard. I walked in and I thought it was going to be all like New Yorker cartoons on the wall, but it is not. It is very friendly. It is very accessible. The building you've just described sounds so hostile to me.

Yeah. I thought it was going to be like New Yorker cartoons and like, I don't know, like pictures from like Meet the Press. Yeah. Pictures from Meet the Press for sure. Meet the Press is always putting out some really high flying pictures. What are we reading today? So the book I got, the anthology i got is called the path to kindness poems of connection and joy um and it is just an anthology of like you know good

vibes good uh and so the poet i found in this anthology is called brad aaron modlin in fact one might say his name is Brad Aaron Modlin. It's not just that he's called that. I'm not sure why I framed that that way. I don't know. It's fun. You got to keep it fresh. The poem title is

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade. Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark. After lunch, she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather's voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else, something important, and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the psalms during cigarette breaks, how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear, also that you have enough. when your own thoughts are all you hear. Also, that you have enough. The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence. And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions and feeling cold and all those nights spent

looking for whatever it was you lost and one person add up to something. That's great. Isn't't that great that's really great the poem i mean the the title and like the the concept of it is genius right like this feeling as you become an adult that you just missed a bunch of like critical information and then being able to pinpoint those days you were absent and think like was that did it happen and i missed it yeah um like i i have a very like telling story specifically in middle school when i was sick almost the entire week that uh teachers were covering sex ed oh honey there was this i remember i was there the

first day and there was the suggestion that we were going to like have a whole unit on it in our science class and then at the end we would watch a baby be born and everybody was like oh god oh god oh god and then i was just sick literally like actually not faking sick the rest of the week and and now when i pinpoint some of my sexual awkwardness i think right that week was that the week and also i remember when you were pregnant with henry there were a lot of sort of misconceptions there about like you were like is it gonna hurt like my you were like is it gonna hurt my butt when the baby comes out? And even I and the doctor were like, oh, Rachel, that's not part of it. But yeah, I love this poem. I love a poem that like kind of deftly includes humor.

Yeah. Without being like specifically a funny poem, you know? So I got really excited about this poet. And then I did some more research on him. As I mentioned, it's Brad Modlin. He is a associate professor at the University of Nebraska Kearney. He's originally from Ontario. And the book that this poem comes from is called Everyone at This Party Has Two Names.

That's good. Which I love. Yeah, he got his PhD in creative writing, his MFA in creative writing, and then his bachelor's was in English with an emphasis in creative writing. That seems like, how much can you learn about creative writing? He really put all his eggs in this basket and it worked out for him. I guess so. It'd be a shame if he was like, I'm kind of over creative writing. Because it feels like you've really kind of pigeonholed yourself a little bit.

It's a really dangerous path to take. Don't you want to do some like technical, just write some technical manuals? Not that that's not hard work, but you can kind of, you know, turn it, you can be a little bit more right-brained. The poem I read has actually been featured in a few places. It was in this podcast that I wasn't familiar with actually until recently called The Slowdown. And it's just a podcast that comes out every like workday and it's just like a five minute long podcast with a poem. Wow. And so they have like a poet pick a poem and the poet actually that picked this poem was Ada Limon, which I thought like, oh my gosh, we keep crossing paths. Yeah.

Serendipity. But yeah, she featured it. It was also on another poetry podcast called Poetry Unbound, which has kind of a similar concept of like, hey, here's a poem. That's your podcast. See you next time. You need to start doing the circuit of poetry podcasts, I feel like. I mean, these aren't like chat shows. These are just like, hi, I'm this person and I like this poem and now I'm going to read it. like a hi i'm this person and i like this poem and now i'm gonna read it yeah that's profoundly different from what you literally just did and are currently still doing on this podcast right

now i'm not a poet laureate no you just went to school for poetry for like a hundred years you're basically a child sort of uh reading shell silver state no babe come on come on come on well all right i guess if you if you're listening now and have a poetry podcast let me know yeah i shouldn't volunteer you to co-host like that yeah what if i like that other podcast better your hair looks so good today rachel just got a haircut and i think it looks great. I'm not saying this to you to like butter you up and keep you keep the heat here. I'm not like scared about losing the heat from this podcast. Like I know you're right or die. I just think your hair looks really cute. Thank you. I mean, not to derail the show, but I have learned, you know how they tell you like,

oh, you should get your haircut every six weeks. Yeah i thought come on no you should it really helps it's a month did you know it's it's a month for me if i go longer than a month it starts to get i'm like five weeks now and it's getting a little a little bit wild i love a haircut though still trying to find that special someone here in D.C. I've been bouncing around. If you have any recommendations, this is your segment, and I don't want to run roughshod all over it talking about the sort of difficulties of having my special hair. Usually when I read the poem of a poet that is currently practicing and publishing, I will reach out to them via any social media I can find and let them know, hey, just so you know,

we're going to talk about your poem. I wanted you to know because I'm celebrating your work. But I feel like Brad is going to be really let down if I reach out to him and say, hey, we talked about your poem. We loved it. We also talked about haircuts for about 15 minutes in the middle. You know, but what is that if not poetry? See, and you can just play that. See, this is why poets are so easy. So you can just say that.

I know. And there was part of me that was like, oh, is it? Yeah. In fact, I would say in pretty much any social circle, if you're ever sort of uncomfortable with the way that the conversation is going, you can just say the sentence, what is that if not poetry? And the people will either be like, oh, wow, or they'll be so confused, but that'll give you some time to get out of there. Maybe we should stop calling this segment the poetry corner and start calling it what is. What is that if not poetry? What is that? If not poetry.

If not poetry. Oh, that's a good name for your poetry that? If not poetry. If not poetry. Ooh, that's a good name for your poetry podcast. If not poetry. If not poetry. It sounds weird, actually, when you sort of separate it without the content. No, I like it. If not poetry. Question mark?

Just to kind of close out our very brief segment, I will say that the other thing that I like about this poet is he is very collaborative. He's done poetry that has been the basis of orchestral scores. Wow. He worked with an artist for a Brooklyn art exhibition. He's done speeches, meditations. He's also got a book of short stories. Yeah. conversations uh he's also got a book of short stories um yeah he's i mean he's a he's a talented poet uh somebody who is very early in their career and i was excited to to find him and get on board fun yeah fun it's we brought similar stuff from different fields yeah yeah just just kind of a

like a funny but but full of heart kind of episode. That poem hit me hard because I missed so much school. Yeah. And I think it's what sort of imbued me with the absolutely all encompassing imposter syndrome that I struggle with on a day to day basis. Because it's like at a certain point you miss too much school and then you feel like, oh, shit. Like at a certain point you miss too much school and then you feel like, oh shit. They introduced some sort of like topic here that the rest of this math is going to build upon for the rest of the year. There are a lot of books. I'll be like, Griffin, you know, remember, you know, when everybody had to read Catcher in the Rye in school and you're like, did we?

Well, okay. I wasn't so absent from school that I fully didn't read a book. I feel like maybe you missed a whole book. I just was never assigned that book. I just didn't read that book. I don't know, man. I read lots of other books. I think you would like it.

Ask me another book. I better read it. Grapes of Wrath. No. That's a big one, huh? That is a big one. Is that the one about the two guys who work at the farm? And one of them's like the rabbits?

And then there's- Of Mice and Men, you're thinking of. That's Mice and Men. Read that one. All right. Is that play? Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes play, sometimes book.

I love that. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for a theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Yeah. The buzz. The buzz about the drive has started. We got our special early access to some of the pledge gifts this year.

Very exciting stuff. Very exciting. We have a virtual live MBMBAM coming up next week, March 17th. I believe it's at 9 o'clock Eastern Time PM. And you can get tickets. If you go to macroy.family, you can find a link to that. We also have some tour dates coming up. You can check those out as well.

I don't know what's announced, so I'm not going to just sort of like guess. We did just announce that we're going to just sort of like guess uh we did just announce that we're going to be doing uh moon tower in austin which is exciting uh in in april i believe the 13th again i'm just shooting from the hip here we don't have notes up for this segment of the show and i i i'm just i'm so sorry i'm doing my best. But go to McElroy.family. It's all there. And yeah, we got merch over at McElroyMerch.com too, if you like that kind of stuff, if you're into that kind of thing.

That's it though. This is a short one, but that's fine because now you can get back to doing whatever it is you're doing. Now we've filled your cup. Yeah, and what is a short podcast if not poetry? Oh, God. The potential is so huge.

I know. Thank you. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.