Wonderful! - Wonderful! 299: There's Always Gonna be a Bryce

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Rachel's favorite satisfying fried treat! Griffin's favorite viscerally upsetting kids' books!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Reproductive Freedom for All: https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

🎵 Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful! Ooh! Oh, is it a spooky? This one is gonna be pretty spooky. I this is wonderful. Ooh. Oh, is it a spooky? This one is going to be pretty spooky. I guess it's our last one before Halloween.

Yeah, before we get all holiday-y. You're looking very autumnal today. Thanks. We just did my bim bam, and I wanted to look autumnal. Yeah, that's a great sweater. Thanks, it's shrank. I went to great lengths to keep this sweater from shrinking, but it's the type of sweater, I won't say where I got it from because i'm not gonna put them on blast it was not a cheap

sweater and i put first time i put it on i was like i'm gonna shrink this bad boy no matter what i did in the dryer no i didn't i air dried it thank you very much oh yeah so that's the only tip i have in my toolkit that's all you have i knew you were ready i saw don't put it in the dryer i saw you like poised to strike bet he put it in the dryer is what i thought didn't it just got smaller or i got bigger it's also possible are you still growing well i've been hitting the iron church and getting gains yeah you're pretty swole so i am well i'm pretty i am more inflamed because of how badly i've injured my shoulder. Going to the Iron Church. Praying a little too hard, we'll say, there.

And it hurt their rotator cuff. So I'm going to go ahead and say small wonder. Get it right out of the way. Ice packs and ibuprofen. Ice packs come in a lot of shapes and sizes these days. They do. I have one for my rotator cuff now. That makes me look like a cool future

centurion. Yeah, it looks like you pull a weapon right out of that thing. Yeah, like a hidden shoulder blade. Wait. I do. That's why they call it that. Do you have a small wonder, I wonder? I bet you do somewhere.

Squishing around beautiful brain ears. Some morsel of gratitude. I got a pumpkin bread mix. Holy crap. From an establishment. It's one of those like just add eggs,

oil and water kind of things. Yeah. I did that and I added chocolate chips it i just ate it i just finished it actually well did you finish the whole thing i finished the whole thing downstairs when i went downstairs i was like i'm gonna go take some ibuprofen for my sore shoulder and you're like okay babe let's record right after and i was like sure thing i went down and i did have the medicine and also some of that good pumpkin bread and chocolate chips for whatever

reason our children are not particularly into this loaf, but Griffin and I have been tearing it down. I'm all about that loaf. But now that loaf is gone because of my actions mostly. And I'm pretty sad. Pretty sad about it. Pretty torn up. I can get more.

I would love that so much. You're being very cagey about where you got it from, though. I'm wondering if this is like you've got a guy. Oh, no. It is a large establishment that has many products. about where you got it from though i'm wondering if this is like you you've got a guy oh no it is it is a large establishment that has many products uh and i am confident i think that they will still have this product did you perhaps exchange it with joseph is that where you got this mix at joseph's exchange area trader joe's oh no oh's fine. No, I haven't been to Joseph's establishment in a while. I thought you were just like not wanting to give publicity to Trader Joseph.

Because here I go, but they don't have a delivery option. So, and most of what we do now is we get our groceries delivered because we have two small children who keep us busy 24 hours a day. And so I like getting my groceries delivered, but Trader Joe's. And you don't have to explain why we haven't gotten hit up Trader Joseph's. They don't offer that. and i hate it let's let's make a date of it no that would be sad let's just do that would be sad um you go first this week i do what do you got for me okay um the topic i have this week actually came from that pumpkin bread because I was-

Wait a minute, what? Because I was eating it and it whispered to me. What? No, it didn't. But it tasted- There's a little slip of paper inside. It tasted to me a lot like a cake donut and I wanted to talk about cake donuts. Cake donuts.

Yeah. We've almost certainly done donut donuts before. I didn't see it. Really? And I checked both spellings. Wow. I checked the D-O and the D-O-U-G-H. I always do U-G-H.

Yeah. Because it's dough is the root word there. I'm not going to shorten it to donuts. There's a place in Austin called Shipley's Donuts, which always confused me. What did you think it was? Well, Rachel, maybe they make some sort of nut-based treat. Okay. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's a thing already guys yeah it's true

I just like the ease of it the shortness I can spell it and get on my way what life are you living where you don't have time to drop a UGH in there you know what I mean like we are busy we have two children that keep us fucking

on call 24-7 I guess i'm just in support of the evolution of language xmas or christmas which do you depends man depends if i'm in a hurry i like having both okay all right not what i believe but so i this one's interesting for me because i don't really like a yeast donut i don don't really like a traditional yeasty, like flaky donut. That is true and strange. I find it very unsatisfying. I feel like you will eat one of those regular guys in a few minutes, and then it will feel like you haven't eaten anything.

And that's frustrating for me. I understand that. But also, sometimes I want to eat a donut and not feel like total shit right afterwards. You feel like a cake donut is too much? I feel like if I eat, just to simplify the language here a little bit, a lot of cake, my body does not respond so great to that. If I eat just a glazed donut, an airy pocket of wet sugar. Yeah. It's not, you know, it's going to psych me up in a way that's going to burn very, very quickly, but it's not going to load me down. I feel like a yeast donut is kind of like cotton candy.

And that's great to me. Yeah, I agree. I like to have an experience when I eat, and I feel like a yeast donut doesn't offer that to me. Okay. eat and i feel like a yeast donut doesn't offer that to me okay uh so there is unsurprisingly a bon appetit article from 2016 that is called you're either a cake donut person or a yeast one i'd push back against that too because it's delightful to have a lovely little mix in it stop trying to like you know put me in a box see now you're saying both before you were like i would never shorten the word donut but now you're saying i want both both kinds that's different we're talking about food instead

of words yeah and i think even you know that yeah i do um apple cider donut also big thing this time of year it's basically the whole reason that i have been considering going to a pumpkin patch establishment yeah they are very far away from where we are located which seems to be universally basically the whole reason that i have been considering going to a pumpkin patch establishment yeah they are very far away from where we are located which seems to be universally true no matter where you're living well yeah i mean if you live in a metropolitan area they don't usually have sort of pumpkin patch i could probably get an apple cider donut at the joseph's i think i think mr joseph actually would be able to help you out with that. He deals in cidered snacks. So the whole composition of a cake donut, unsurprisingly, it's basically cake batter. It's got baking powder and or baking soda. So it is more like cake in that sense,

where a yeast donut relies on yeast. See how easy that is? That's the mnemonic device I usually use. So the rule for me is cake is cake and yeast is yeast. That's the sort of the... I don't know how I'm going to remember that. I know, right? Um, so yeast donut came first, because unsurprisingly, like it is it is frying, Because unsurprisingly, it is frying, which society has done for hundreds of years. People, as long as there has been oil that you can get hot, people have dunked stuff in it. Yeah. It took them a while to figure out what is good to dunk in the hot oil.

Like a book is not like- No, you can't eat a book. A hand hurt. I always say that. You can't eat a book. A hand hurt. I always say that. You can't eat a book. Yeah. But with a cake donut, when we talk about baking soda, baking powder, we're talking about chemical leaveners, which leaveners. Yeah. Leaveners.

You okay? It felt weird to say. I think it's okay. I think you did a good job, actually. Cake donuts first appeared in the u.s in unsurprising in 1830s around the same time that baking soda and baking powder first became commercially available god bless whoever that was it was like these round guys are good what would be better though what if cake what if we did what if cake what if cake though uh cake donuts i guess

became exceptionally popular during world war one the salvation army set up canteens in france during world war one where women serve soldiers freshly fried donuts uh with this donut period in our history uh the salvation army donuts were so popular that the ymca and the red cross quickly followed suit and the cake donut earned its place as a distinctly patriotically American snack. So maybe I just love my country more than the average person. I am always saying that shit about you. Yes.

USA. Yeah. Do another one. USA. Oh, I meant like another, like a thing of American. Oh. I'm gonna buy me a Ford truck and crazy dive in down the road.

I'm a Yankee Doodle dandy. Oh boy, yeah. Yankee Doodle. What is Yankee Doodle anyway? I don't actually know. What's that about? It's like a jerking it joke, but they like, it went on for way too long. And so they had to, like, they just were too embarrassed to change it.

Is this that patented Griffin McElroy blue humor? I don't think so. You think what you're saying right now is a true fact? If you had never heard the term Yankee Doodle before, and someone said, like, I'm Yankee Doodle. You would probably assume it was some sort of jerking a joke. I mean, you know there's a whole section of the country where people are referred to as Yankees, right? Yeah.

But are they referred to as Doodles? No, that's true. Okay. Or Doodle Dandies? Clearly, you've proven your point. Thank you. Okay. Or doodle dandies.

Clearly you've proven your point. Thank you. Another benefit of the cake donut, while some people complain that it is dense and heavy, you have the option of inserting flavors in there. That's true. Most yeast donuts get their flavor from the glaze. Yes. But a cake donut, like a blueberry cake donut. Blueberry cake donut slaps ass.

Oh my God. It's so good and i i love how every donut chain has like a variety of donuts that they offer but all of them do fucking blueberry cake donuts because they recognize like whoever did this one yeah is on some next level shit if i see that in a dozen that is what i go for every time 100 of the time yeah Finally, I will say this is not something I participate in, but the coffee dunking. Yes. If you dunk a yeast donut, Bon Appetit says it will, quote, have the texture of a wet sandwich. But a dunked cake donut.

Okay. Incredible. I would disagree with that. Although, God, I used to buck up those like little debbie coffee sticks which are like little um yeah rectangular beauties that i would have with my coffee every morning and i would dunk and sometimes it came off in the coffee and for whatever reason it would render it all disgusting to like as soon as i saw free floating cake material in the coffee i'm like I'm out what time in your life was this I mean I was not probably at the top of my game health wise with my daily morning little

debbies yeah but um I don't know like college post-college whenever I had throwing around money for little debbies so maybe not college where i had no money to speak of whatsoever what was your grocery cart like in your early 20s i mean so like if you purchased a fruit and or vegetable what what would those fruit and or vegetables be potato is potato i think we hate count potato potato okay i learned how to bake a potato and i felt like i was fucking like fancy fancy ratatouille chef all of a sudden um so potato hot dog fruit uh no banana you were doing banana for a while, I thought. When I traveled. Banana was a special luxury for me. It was because when you're on the road.

A trip to the islands. Trip to the, yeah. No, mostly, I mean, it's so stereotypically like ramen and hot dogs. Oh, babe. But I mean, fruit, fruit roll ups. I don't consider myself the pinnacle of healthy eating by any means. But when I was in the world, I understood like I should buy a fruit and or vegetable. Yeah.

Just for to keep up appearances. Yeah. Just to like put in my house to display. Yeah. No, they didn't. There was no judgment at the, I believe, Jewel Osco where I bought my shame dogs on like a monthly basis.

Yeah. Can I stop talking about this and steal you away? Yes. Thank you. People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Which is why here on Just the Zoo of Us, we judge them by so much more. We rate animals out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics,

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shirt, or hoodie before they disappear at the end of the month. Details on merch, resources for volunteering, and all things Co-Optober can be found at MaximumFun.org slash Co-Optober. That's C-O-O-P-T-O-B-E-R. Thank you so much for your support and have a great CoOptober. Can I tell you about my topic? Yes. Okay, here I go. It's our last episode before Halloween.

And so I like to talk about frightening stuff. And so I like to talk about frightening stuff. I like to be a sort of weaver of terror and nightmares for our listeners. They know me as they call me Dr. Scary. Or the Ghoul Master. Or the Ghoul Master. So we have talked about Goosebumps before. I was going to do Goosebumps, but then I realized that we did that during a virtual live show uh once and so that series is you know fantastic and very formative for a lot of us i want to talk about

goosebumps is like way less acceptable almost illicit feeling brother in arms which is scary stories to tell in the dark oh yeah yeah you, yeah, yeah. You know about Scary Stories? I didn't know how much of a generational thing Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was. No, that was a thing. It was, I think, largely memorable just because of the design of the cover. Yes, very scary covers, very scary illustrations. But I don't honestly remember any of the stories, although I might if you describe it. I'm going to say some, and I bet you will remember some of them.

So Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was a series of three books, each one a compilation of a couple dozen very genuinely terrifying short stories accompanied by equally terrifying illustrations. The books were written by Alvin Schwartz, and they were originally illustrated by Stephen Gamm were largely decried by fans of the original books. Uh, but they presented things in a more sort of like Gothic, less like visceral kind of style, uh, that the original books are known for.

Um, the first book, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was published in 1981, which was way earlier than I thought it was. Uh, and it contained 29 stories from just a wild array of genres. So the kind of stuff included in that first book include, and I'm reading off Wikipedia here because there's a list, jump stories, stories that end with a jump scare, ghost

stories, including a retelling of the Suffolk Miracle, folk music, including the Hearst song, a story involving voodoo death, a witch story, a story of a man who shapeshifts into an alligator. Awesome. A couple of stories of omens of death, a retelling of Algernon Blackwood's novella The Windigo, a game called The Dead Man's Brains, a boogeyman story, a number of urgent legends, including the legends of the hook, the poison dress, The Killer in the Backseat, and The Babysitter and The Man Upstairs, and a selection of jokes and humorous folktales. Just a wide selection.

This is what I remember most about these books is each one included at least one story and many illustrations that scared the shit out of me. And many illustrations that scared the shit out of me. But they would be sandwiched between like a goof or a game or, you know, song lyrics, like parody song lyrics. Yeah. You never really knew which way Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was going to come at you, which was part of the appeal to me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I had forgotten that they were kind of like a hodgepodge. Like an Uncle John's bathroom reader of terror. So the second book was called More Scary Stories

to Tell in the Dark. It dropped in 1984. It had 28 stories in it of a similar sort of mix of genres. And then there was a bit of a gap before the final book, Scary Stories 3, More Tales to Chill Your Bones, which hit Scholastic Book Fair shelves in 1991 with 25 stories in it. That's the one I remember being the most sort of scarring for me. Yeah. See, I don't remember that release. And this may be speaking to our age difference. Maybe.

Because I may have moved out of the Scholastic category when that was out. That's a fair point. No, this was very much like on Scholastic Book Fair shelves, which I think we've talked about on the show. Oh, yeah. Come to your school and sell books there because where else are you going to buy books? And it was always kind of wild to me that they were allowed to be there because there was a lot of sentiment at this time in the 90s to to try and get these books banned uh because i i can't stress this enough it's not the stories that were in this book were not like what if your teacher was a mummy or uh they weren't like bog standard sort of like are you afraid of the dark

tales like some of these stories were quite fucked up um there's one called harold from scary stories three uh about two farmers who build this scarecrow effigy of another farmer that they hate named harold uh which long story short comes to life and skins one of them alive oh my god and then And then there's the red spot, which is the one I remembered the most, which I'm not going to get into the details about in case people are squeamish, but a young woman has a very personal encounter with a bunch of baby spiders that is no good. And then there's the haunted house, which is a pretty right over the plate, very scary story about a priest going into a haunted house to

sort of exercise it. And it is notable mostly for the horrific illustration of a living corpse that is part of the subject of the story, which there's a 2019 documentary about these books, where a commentator referred to this image as the picture that shat a thousand pants. I have it pulled up here. I wonder if it will jog your memory. I do remember this picture. It's very, very, it's a desiccated corpse. It is very, very scary for a child.

It's interesting though, the instinct to ban a book like that. Because I understand like, hey, I don't want my kid to read that. Like, I don't even want my kid to see that. But I don't feel like it needs to stop existing in bookstores. That's good that your brain works like that

because there's a lot of people who do not. The American Library Association says that the series represented the most challenged books from the 90s. And then in the 2000s, they were the seventh most challenged books, despite the fact that some of them were 20 years old at that point, which is not to say that like classics don't end up on banned book lists across the country, but like horror short story compilations.

And the fact that this series can hang on that list i think says something about their sort of longevity and genuine terror that they uh that they introduced to people who uh were maybe not accustomed to that genre i certainly wasn't uh i never owned one of these books myself uh because i felt weird about like bringing them into the house like my parents never said like hey this book series is no good yeah no smoking no drinking no scary stories to tell in the dark uh but if it sure looked like something that i should not have my hands on but my neighbor bryce did oh bryce and so i would go over to bryce's house and we would do sleepovers and trade some pokemon and then i would grab scary stories to tell in the

dark and just tear that shit down uh and it really uh every time i did that i remember i would hit a point where i'd read some story or reach some illustration where I'd be like, that's it for tonight. Scary stories to tell in the dark. I will catch you next Bryce sleepover and we will pick up from where we left off. That is the thing, right? Like you could ban it at a library, but there's always going to be a Bryce, stories of people like sort of trading this book around in this like underground sort of exchange uh to to to spread it around taking like a highlights magazine and wrapping it around the outside yeah right uh and i love that um it is scary

the thing is like i get the instinct i would not not want Henry to read this book. No, no, no. Because it would really, I think I know him well enough to know, it would really mess him up. Maybe middle school age kids is sort of where this is. Although I will say, like, it just varies so much, right? Like, we know kids that are Henry's age or younger that would not be scared by this. Yeah, I guess that's true. Not, like, disturbed in the way that Henry would. Yes. And I feel like people need that choice yeah

absolutely uh i now i love horror movies and games and and and books like i it is a genre that i love and i'm very enthusiastic about and i know there's a lot of people who don't and so i can't help but wonder if like my enjoyment of scary stories to tell in the dark sort of inoculated me in a way to to this genre right where it doesn't uh have any sort of long-lasting psychological effect unless that shit is real scary uh it doesn't it doesn't have this like big impact on me that i think a lot of people are like afraid they will experience when they have, you know, when they watch a scary movie or play a scary game or something like that. Well, and there's also something to be said for the difference between reading words on a page

and like seeing a challenging image, you know, like I feel like I can close the book and it might mess with my dreams a little bit, but I am not actively afraid to be in the room I am in. Yes. Whereas like a lot of times if you're watching a movie by yourself like it it'll it'll get get you a little bit um so that's scary stories to tell in the dark it is a a for the fact that there were only three of these books and the last one came out in 1991. I think it is kind of incredible that they are still somewhat relevant. They made a movie about it in 2019 that Guillermo del Toro was involved in. I would like to see that. I think it's incredible that like a short story horror compilation can have the kind of long-lasting impact that these books have had.

I think a lot of that is due to the legacy of people trying to destroy these books. But I think they also kind of stand out. I would really want to see that documentary too, because I also wonder about the author who was like, no, this is for children. Like, I am writing this book and it is for children. So his daughter had a quote that i i don't have on hand here he passed away in like 92 or 94 something like that it was shortly after the release of the last book uh and he was fully like in support of middle schoolers like reading the book like

it's targeted for them and it's can be helpful to kind of like put a face on these like scary ideas that maybe they're struggling with um but he also celebrated the fact that his books were as challenged as they were yeah he said that he wanted his obituary uh to refer to him as like one of the most banned authors of all time which was a big part of his obituary when it did come out, which is, you know, it's cool to live the kind of life you want to live in that case. Can I tell you what our friends at home are talking about?

Yeah. Courtney says, my small wonder is when you're out for a walk and make it home just as it's starting to rain. Oh, I love that. I love that so much. I don't like being in the rain when it happens. Also, it is very difficult to use an umbrella as a family.

Oh my God, yes. And so you could bring one somewhere, but it is not gonna be particularly useful. So if you can get home and avoid that altogether, that is ideal. We have this big umbrella that I love using because it keeps my ass dry completely. H2T, regardless of the ferocity of the storm.

And I love it. I look like a cool, hip, little metropolitan guy. Do you? Zooming around. But then as soon as another person has to be under it, especially a person whom I have a three foot height advantage over it is all of a sudden rendered completely useless yeah greg says my small wonder is honeyed frothed milk i just bought a breville milk heater slash frother to prepare for the chilly months by

making chai and matcha lattes and the mild sweetness that comes from adding just a teaspoon of honey to a bit of milk being frothed is simply relevatory. Quick, easy, and cost-effective coziness in a cup. That does sound pretty good. That does sound really good. Maybe not milk. Can you froth almond milk? Or what is it?

Did something bad happen to it? Well, it just needs enough fat in it. That's kind of the thing. My time as a barista, the thinner the milk, the harder it is That's kind of the thing. When it is my, my time as a barista. Yes. The, the thinner the milk, the harder it is to get a good froth going.

Yes. So almond milk might be a challenge, but I bet a soy would work. A soy would definitely do me. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for theme song. Money won't pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you so much to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Why don't you go on over to MaximumFun.org and check out all the great stuff that they've got on offer

for you. You're going to love the way you hear the jokes. I guarantee it. We got some merch over at MacquarieMerch.com that you should should go and check out that would be awfully cool of you and um if you want to send in your small wonders we do not get many of them on a weekly basis so i will say the odds of yours being chosen for the show are probably pretty good uh you can go ahead and send us an email over at wonderfulpodcast at gmail.com just a few sentences just a few sentences please no more than that um that's it let's let's hit the bricks and i gotta hit the ice bath with my oh we should get a plunge pool we should get a plunge pool like i'm a mlb pitcher who definitely didn't just like fuck

up half of his body by trying to lift one weight once like fucking cal ripken over here name another pitcher um no randy johnson nolan ryan randy johnson blew up the i don't even know if cal ripken was a pitcher randy johnson was though because he exploded that bird right good didn't he with the pitch i didn't know that until I met you and now you definitely know it because I talk about it every time we mention baseball or even a ball

you've changed my life thank you baby Bye. Hey!