Wonderful! - Wonderful! 277: I am a Queen, I am George Washington

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

Griffin's favorite card in his dance rolodex! Rachel's favorite childhood celebrations!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Brady United: https://www.bradyunited.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's a show where we talk about the things we like that are good, that we're into. Tastemakers, very educated. Rump shakers. Rump shakers, shaking our rumps.

Can I ask you a question that just occurred to me? So all of your podcasts that you make, well, maybe maybe not besties but you're like on camera for most of them right or just just my bim bam okay when you record your other podcasts you do this cash feed up on the desk no you just make me feel so comfortable sorry sorry ma'am no i just i just realized like i would i would never do that like i'm i'm far too uptight it's not a kind of the greg um but i was wondering if this is just an energy you bring to our podcast and not your I would never do that. I'm far too uptight. It's not a. I'm kind of the Greg. But I was wondering if this is just an energy you bring to our podcast and not your other ones. I'll be honest with you.

The feet up on the table, chill, relaxed thing, it's not a power play. And I hope you don't. No, I don't think it is. If it seems to you, if the energy, if I'm giving off an energy that seems to be saying I need pictures of Spider-Man on this desk by end of day, just chomping on a cigar, I will change my posture. It's really just, I don't know why, it's just comfy. Yeah. It's just, I'm always at my, you know what it is? It's the opportunity to not be hunched over my keyboard for a little bit. Yeah, and we're in the studio together.

You're not like virtual with other people. No. So you want to get in a chit chat plus i know you love feet stuff wow wow please don't what's wrong rachel please don't put that in the world it's not a fun energy and it's not a thing at all i mean it is a thing for a lot of people i don't even like my feet touched i'll i will just say yeah i'm not I'm not a foot fan. No. It's for you. It's other people's feet. Why are you doing this to me?

Do you have any small wonders? There's nothing. Listen, I don't want to yuck anybody's yums. It's just not Rachel's yums. It's not my thing. I'm concerned now that people will send me things. Nobody's going to pay listen. No, no, no.

No. Okay. I was thinking about this on the way upstairs. Okay. And I'm going to say, and this is not something that I think a lot of people understand right away, but I'll explain it. A busy weekend. This is important for us now. Absolutely, this is important for us.

So our oldest son, big son, doesn't play a sport. No. Isn't really in an activity. His weekends are relatively unscheduled now. Right. Little son has a tremendous amount of energy. Yes. So the two of them, they need activities.

Yes. And there's nothing better than a weekend in which we have a morning activity and an afternoon activity. So huge. Each day, if we do that like we both leave the weekend like that was a good weekend not a joke probably the number one reason why we moved to dc it's just the number of child appropriate activities here is absolutely outrageous and plus we're like we're able to easily get to maryland and virginia which you know so like if dc lets us down for whatever reason which it rarely does we just hop over the state line yeah uh yeah that's great i'm jealous

i was out of town this weekend i know i had a really busy one you had a really busy one mostly saturday but still it was it was very satisfying yeah um i'm going to say uh is it's it is a rival podcast and so i'm crossing enemy lines i hope you didn't listen to podcasts anymore i don't but i do listen to worlds beyond number the new uh actual play podcast from brennan lee mulligan and abria eyingar and lou wilson and erica ishii it is phenomenal it's so so good do you think i would like it even though i'm not i think you would yeah honestly i would i would recommend it to anyone it's very clever what they did there's they're on their first sort of season now and they had for i i think just their patreon subscribers uh they did like a mini season where all their characters were children and met and then the season that is out now is like they meet back up as adults

and it's it's so um the production work on it is outrageous everybody's at the fucking top of their game if you've watched you know any dimension 20 stuff like is it a video or just audio uh i think just audio i don't know about that i've been listening to it audio audio style um there's like seven episodes of it out now. But it's just so different from the vibe of any other sort of actual play thing I've ever watched or participated in or listened to. And it's very intimate. It feels very – it's also very, very funny. Yeah.

The world building is out of sight. But it's just got an energy that is unlike anything else that I've ever really listened to. Oh, man. It is really the only podcast right now that I, when I get the notification that there's a new episode out, I'm like, okay. Which is great also because I have been traveling a lot more.

And so it's given me plenty of podcast time. But yeah, I'm going to say that. I go first this week. Yes. Mine is not the beefiest topic. Mine isn't either. So let's, you know, we'll get in, we'll get out. We'll get in, we'll get out.

I want to talk about robot dance. Oh. I want to start this off by saying popping a good robot off is not easy, right? True. There are master illusion dance experts out there who have done great research and toil in honing their robot dance craft. And it's obviously on a whole other level. craft uh and it's it's obviously on a whole nother level however when one is dancing and you realize like i've been doing the same move for a while let me go through my rolodex of dance moves that

i have cataloged in my brain robot dances all at least for me and i would imagine for a lot of people too it's always like the first one there and maybe you flip past it for a different dance that's maybe more suitable for the style of music that you're dancing to but to have that same card in there and everybody's dance rolodex is very very good can i ask you and this is a like a question that i i honestly wonder about yeah if somebody does a robot dance that is not particularly good i still applaud it it's still enjoyable you know what it is it's like a cannonball you see somebody cannonball into the swimming pool even if they don't make a huge splash it's like hell yeah man you cannonballed okay if i see somebody dancing like a robot and they're doing a really

bad job that's great too because it's like it's like when your friend who's not a very good singer is like can't wait for karaoke night it's like hell yeah man you do you yeah i i i that's reassuring because i've always been a little standoffish with the robot because i feel like i'm not very good at it well that's i mean it's yeah you have to stand in your truth because i feel like i do like the arm chop yeah and the torso twist yeah and the torso twist yeah the entry level sort of robot experience yeah it's all you really need, man. I don't think I'm a very good dancer, right? I've never was like.

See, I disagree with that. I wasn't good. Okay. I will say like. You got so much swag, Griffin McElroy. I can't learn choreography. That's gross. I don't.

I've never been good at like choreographed. I don't think that's true either. I do think it's true. Well, we used to play the just dance or whatever well dance central is a different beast obviously you would crush it I guess that is true anyway I don't I guess I don't feel confident in my dancing

abilities you don't have any real fancy moves I will say right that's another good way of putting it but I do love to pretend to be a robot on a rhythmic basis especially when dancing with our kids as men as as mentioned earlier they have these reserves of energy that if we do not deplete throughout the day they will not sleep in the nighttime um and so sometimes with like it's raining outside or you

know we're not doing screen time and can't think of something to do just put on some music fucking dance and sometimes they need a prompt sometimes they won't dance until you say like hey be a robot Or, you know, we're not doing screen time and can't think of something to do. Just put on some music, fucking dance. And sometimes they need a prompt. Sometimes they won't dance until you say like, hey, be a robot. And then especially Gus, just doing his like real rope, real beep-bop, beep-bop voice. You know what? He doesn't even do the beep-boop as much as he does the like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. Yeah, his is a scary robot. But, you know, it gets it started you know they can act like robots very good but it just gets the dance party started right and it's true i'm always delighted by it

yes there are a lot of dances like i don't particularly like the the sprinkler or the shopping cart uh i don't really like the fishing one where you reel somebody in see i do like that that's cute i oh i think i always like the robot one where you reel somebody in see i do like that that's cute i oh i think i always like the robot everybody always likes a robot so robot also called mannequin or dancing machine oh for obvious reasons okay um is generally speaking street dance style and it has been for you know 50 years uh but its origins like a lot of sort of illusion dance, go back to mime work. The robot is sort of given the carbon dating of like the 1920s, which is where sort of mimes would move in a way that was inhuman with their many, I learned the term dime stop. Oh, I don't know about that. It's like a dancing and i guess miming maneuver where you

just stop your body very quickly oh like stopping on a dime i guess i like it it's a good word dime stop it feels it feels great did you learn about i learned i typed in mime dime stop into google and it auto corrected to miami game stop no your computer knows you so well. Yeah, that I'm always in... Surely he can't be looking for mime information. No, no, no. He probably meant to type my name. He's probably hanging out with his good friend Pitbull and they need a new Xbox One controller. So, obviously

when you're doing a robot dance, you're adding some flourishes to the DimeStops. You're adding some pops. I appreciate how much you're demonstrating this for me. Yeah, this is just for you. the audience cannot see this at all um so it's not exactly wikipedia went down a little bit of a rabbit hole of like here's when it's street dancing here's when it's mime when there's no music if you do the robot now you're miming which i imagine is probably true of a lot of styles of dance if you do it to know music now

you congratulations you're a mime now um it also says that even if you add popping to the beat uh as long as the illusion of being a robot is maintained it is considered the robot i hate all these fucking robot gate gatekeepers that's not a robot get that out of here obviously the music also has to be like the right vibe and bp you can't like robot i hope you dance um although now this is the new tiktok challenge everybody robots i hope you dance um so it rose to prominence uh alongside a style of music called electro funk which was sort of developed around the rise of drum machines and drum synthesizers like the 808 and all those, and vocoder, talkbox stuff.

Basically music that kind of sounds like a robot made it, very naturally and organically came up around the robot. But in 1974, it really made a splash when the jackson 5 came out with the song dancing machine uh do you know that one i don't know that i do yeah it has that hook and it's like you know that nope okay no but i mean i can imagine yeah clearly uh they they did this song live on like carol burnett and sunny to share and soul train and during that that sort of bridge break michael would walk out in front and then just do the robot really really good and so all of these things happened in sort of the mid to late 70s and made a dance that would become permanently embedded in the minds of basically every human being uh who saw it doors were opened in in these

moments of like you mean i can do that and it's dancing excellent what an exciting development right because like coming out of like the 70s when it was like disco it was like very choreographed yeah you know and this idea that like you could just do kind of a casual arm movement well you could also choreograph the hell out of it but it is it's a it's a whole new genre I will say than like doing a Saturday Night Fever kind of routine yeah although I you know I can plus one um yeah that's it obviously like you see a lot of sort of popping and locking style dances which sometimes i mean i feel like when youtube first came out that's like the only videos that were out were like high school dance tournaments where some nerdy kid would come out there and just

fucking tear it down uh there is some some robot meat in a lot of that style of of dance um that is well above my pay grade. But just conceptually, I love robot dance. I love doing robot dance with my kids, our kids. And yeah, I like robot dance. Great. I like robot dance. Can I steal you away?

Yes. I'm glad you said that because nobody says that. Can I just say thank you to you for such a thoughtful interview? Oh, my God. Yeah, I think you nailed it. Bullseye. Interviews with creators you love and creators you need to know. Listen to the Bullseye podcast only from NPR and Maximum 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 Our One The Flophouse. It's just called The Flophouse. I do a lot of correcting Dan. The Flophouse. A lot of correcting Dan. Okay, so my topic this week was another one of those, surely we've done this before, kind of topics. But I didn't see it anywhere. So if I have, tell me.

Okay. But then know I'm probably going to still do it because it's what I'm talking about this week. Okay. The birthday party. Oh, interesting. Did you check wonderful.fyi? I did. It's not on there. I guess you're good then.

I don't know. You know, this is one of those things that they caution you against as your children get older about like, oh, man, your weekends. It's just like a birthday party all the time. And I did at first have this kind of like, oh, I don't know about that, talking to a bunch of people I don't know real well. I don't know if I like that. But this past weekend weekend part of my action pack saturday was a birthday party now granted it was the child of a very close friend of mine right which i i had that advantage for sure but it was a really good birthday party and it really

made me appreciate like i don't know just just all the like little little touches yeah that like that you think about when planning it and then if you attend one you're like that was good that was good this party from what i understand again i wasn't invited because i was on tour had sonic the hedgehog themed party favors which is yes so exactly henry's wheelhouse wow um so there was a bounce house yeah which that was the reason that it came up for me was the bounce house uh birthday party thing when you were a kid no no this is this what an outrageous i thought because it happened a lot when we were in texas and i thought like oh this must be a texas thing and then like it turns out no it's like a nationwide thing like everybody

does the bounce house now and i i didn't, this wasn't possible when we were children. Which when I was looking into like the bounce house, it's been around since like the 60s. Huh, interesting. I mean, obviously you couldn't like rent it and set it up in your home during the 60s. But like it's not a new invention. It's just really taken off as a birthday party. So maybe let's just rework this whole bit and just have it be about bounce house i thought about that yeah that's where this started yeah i bet

and then i was like i've got almost nothing to say about the bounce house after i say like here's how it started yeah sure the end yeah the birthday party though is really interesting um obviously there's like extremes right like what is the fanciest birthday party you think you've ever had? Can you like recall? That I've ever had or been to? Had. Can you remember like birthday parties? Like I did one.

I think I did one at Burger King. That was the fanciest birthday party you've ever had? No, I'm just trying to list them off in my head I mean a lot of them were at my house I don't remember a lot of destination birthday parties but I know that's another thing now

of like you rent whatever are we talking specific as a child like fancy birthday because I was thinking about there were a couple years there where we like rented a. No, like an Airbnb. Yeah. No, I'm talking specific.

I should clarify. I'm talking specifically about children's. Childhood birthday parties. Birthday parties. That's a whole different. That's a horse of a different color. Like bowling alleys, showbiz pizza. I feel like I definitely had a showbiz pizza.

Or Billy Bob's is what it was in West Virginia. I definitely had at least one birthday there. I think just the one, though. We did one of those recently for Henry because everybody sells it. Like if you talk to another parent, they're like, you go, they have the whole room for you, and then you leave and you're done.

Like you don't have to clean anything up. You don't have to set anything up. To make it clear, not a Chuck E. Cheese or Billyy bobs this was like a different birthday no this is one of those play place kind of situations um okay i was just curious because birthday parties now like there's such a huge range uh we have done the bounce house before for henry as well we did we did learned a lot big hit now it is something that he has requested again it also fucking rained i don't know if you remember that it right they came set it up on saturday the birthday party's on sunday it rained a lot overnight you went out there and then i had to

go out there with like towels and a shop vac and just sheer force of will i think we were nervous with the timing of the party that if we waited till the day of there was some risk i had to buy tarps to lay on the ground because our backyard was like a mud pit gosh i forgot we've been heaven and earth to make that bounce house work so the birthday party not really a thing until the late 19th century and it's fascinating when you read about the reasons why, because it just reminds you of like what the olden days were like. So birthday celebrations prior to that time period were typically for really wealthy people and national heroes. So it was like, I am a queen. I am George Washington.

I mean, they still make us celebrate fucking George Washington's birthday. It's wild. Dude is not even around to enjoy the festivities um what happened in the mid-19th century was like partially like industrialization so a lot of things started to change and that like people weren't having children to work in the farm anymore so they weren't having like 10 you know that was like easier to like distinguish the value of your individual children if we had 10 kids the number that our birthday party budget would be i imagine larger than our mortgage i mean or or nothing at all yeah we'd start to lump them together we do okay you we're

doing a first quarter birthday party. Here's also a funny thing I was reading. So this is an article from The Atlantic called The Strange Origins of American Birthday Celebrations from 2021. They also cited the widespread production of household clocks. So people just could, what? With industrialization, people were more aware of like time. They had times they had be in factories, and they had times of day that they were supposed to do things. And so everybody had a clock. And also just scheduling became a possibility.

You knew, like, oh, it's the 13th, because I've seen that clock go around a few times now, and I know it's not the 12th anymore. Isn't that fascinating to think about? You wouldn't have calendars? I mean, I don't know not in a way i guess time became more important okay yes like people became more aware of it schools also started separating by age so that kind of one room schoolhouse thing where everybody's learning from the same teacher various ages ages. That's not happening anymore. And people started selling birthday cards in the late 19th century. That's fucking wild. Isn't it just crazy to think about like, oh, we should acknowledge the day that you arrived and now you're older and here is a card.

Congratulations. You made it. and here is a card congratulations you made it uh and then there's all these kind of ancient things like like the cake on the candle was like something that happened in ancient greece sorry the candle on the cake i mean i didn't know maybe the ancient greeks did it real silly guys i don't work something's gotta be something's wrong it won't stay up silly guys i don't work something's gotta be something's wrong it won't stay up there was this whole like moon-shaped cake thing uh and then the cakes were decorated with candles in order to make them glow like the moon oh i like that the romans apparently started the birthday cake uh the germans started the birthday party uh but it wasn't until like late 19th early 20th century that people really started like investing

in the party uh i tried to find out like how much what what are these things running these days like how much a birthday party cost what's the average average cost so this is difficult to find obviously there hasn't really been a nationwide poll i found one poll from babycenter.com and the highest response was 26 spent more than 500 on their child's birthday which is wild to think about yeah that's a lot of money um there's also like super extreme so when i was looking for cost um since we're located in dc now i got pushed an article from the Washingtonian from 2022. And there was a company, like an event planning company, that said that their productions for birthdays range from $8,000 to $20,000. There was also like a balloon company that talked about that, you know, just like a balloon sculpture or a balloon archway

can run about 1200 that's why you don't need that yeah well i mean it's you know it's it's up to you obviously like and and i think i'll make you a balloon i'll i'll make you a balloon arch for for 50 bucks well part of the reason these balloons are so expensive is they're like american made and biodegradable oh i'm gonna use the fucking gnarliest don't touch these but it's important each balloon smell forever so bad if you touch it you are that hand is gonna be stinky for a long time a lot of the climb to has been like post-pandemic like a lot of people feel will one this like urge to just like really go for it. And also this like kind of internal guilt about having maybe several years where their child didn't get to celebrate. So people tend to be going a little bit harder.

I get it. But I don't know. I just, I kind of, I kind of love it for a lot of reasons. But I think it's just, it's fun to bring your child to something. And like a person has put time into thinking about like what might entertain them. Yeah. You know, like there's activities, there's cake, like there's singing, you know. Sometimes there's a little goodie bag.

It just feels like, oh, this is like a nice. Yeah. Like a nice little thing you've prepared that my child can enjoy. And we get to celebrate your kid. And cool. I love it. You're right. You're correct.

This is a good one. Oh, thank you. We don't usually end the show that way. We don't usually end that way, do we? And you're correct. And you win. Thank you so much for listening. 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. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go to MaximumFun.org. Check out all the great shows that they have on there. I got some shows coming up in Raleigh and Richmond and San Diego for Bim Bam and Taz. And you should come out and see us. And you're going to be at a con here.

I'm going to be at Awesome Con here in D.C. in the middle of June. I think it's like June 14th or something around there. Me and Trav are going to be here. We're doing signings and photos and panels and stuff. And it's going to be at Who. It'll be right here in Washington. So if you live in the area, come to that.

AwesomeCon is what it's called. We have a link on our website where you can find tickets and links to all that stuff. That's it, though. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you. Hey. I got to use the bathroom. MaximumFun.org

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