Wonderful! - Wonderful! 302: A Two-Hour Turbo Nap

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Griffin's favorite set of horror movies! Rachel's favorite savory all-in-one food! Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Fair Elections Center: https://www.fairelectionscenter.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. This is a show where we talk about things we like that's good that we like that are into. That we're into. Specifically. We should start doing a show where we talk about

things that we're not into and that other people are into and that we actively... Oh, that's interesting. You know, just to spice things up in the recording studio. That's interesting. I mean, we've talked about sort of evil wonderful. Blunderful, if you will. Which, as I understand, is the promo that? That's interesting. I mean, we've talked about sort of evil wonderful, blunderful, if you will. Which, as I understand, is the promo that is running this week.

Yes. I believe you are correct. But you're suggesting a sort of like proxy wonderful. That's just like, you know. Almost like archaeologists. We try and figure out like. Oh, cool. What?

Why? Sure. Why? What? How? Now, I will say that sounds like more work. It does. Because like, I don't know, we could try to like freestyle it like NASCAR.

Yeah, right. Like, what's the deal? What's going on over there? All of a sudden, it's like a stand up routine. Yeah. That would be unlistenable. Yeah, I think you're probably right. Let's keep doing it the way that we've been doing it.

No bad ideas, you know? No, that one was bad. There's no such thing as bad ideas, just bad actors. So do you have a small wonder that you wanted to share with the class? You want to tell us about? You want to do that? You want me to do it? Yeah, why don't you start?

Strike's over. Thank you so much to our negotiators for getting that sweet deal. And so there's a lot of stuff that we have not talked about. True. Because of the strike. And I'm going to start things off right now, kick things off with our Flag Meets Death season two. Just finished it a couple nights ago.

Incredible. Incredible work. Incredible stuff. Like, the first season was phenomenal. And the second season is a very dangerous thing for a show that has a phenomenal first season. Especially when the first season ended with such a, like, shocking thing that happens. And it's like, like well how are they gonna how are they gonna move on from this how are they gonna walk this back yeah uh and they did and they

did a fucking great job with it yeah um and uh loved it wish it was a little bit longer only eight episodes uh i i you know left me wanting more but they i don't know they did a lot this season so that's uh it's a lot of bull okay i came up with my thing okay when you have a reason to clean your house okay because for me it's the most motivating thing there is i personally have relatively low standards for the cleanliness of our house but if i know that we are going to be hosting people in any form, then I suddenly have a motivation and I feel good about it. I'm like, I should do this all the time.

And I won't. But, you know, having that reason is, you know, a good push. It's having two people in our home who are actively working against the forces of cleanliness uh makes it makes it a challenge we need to really harness second son because he's still at that age where he's like oh yeah let's clean up he doesn't realize you know that he could rebel against that yes we need to really tap in okay before it's too late it would be wild if like we gave him an allowance, but not old son. Yeah, right. That sort of economic disparity, bringing that into our home. Uh-huh. A choice and a bad one.

I go first this week. In step with this being able to talk about film and TV again, I must confess that when we were preparing for our halloween week episode which was what just like two weeks ago i prepared a whole segment on a scary movie uh because that is what i usually do in that time and then we literally sat down to record and i looked at my notes and i was like oh wait a second i was so excited to talk about a scary movie around halloween that i forgot that that is uh not acceptable uh but now we're a little bit past halloween but i'm gonna go ahead and do this segment anyway yeah because i because

it's not like a halloween themed film at all no it's several films actually it is the all the works of uh of jordan peele all of Jordan Peele's horror films. I should say, specifically all of his horror movies. I wouldn't lump Keanu in with that, although Keanu is a fine film. I'm talking about the, it's not a trilogy,

but I'm talking about Nope and Us and Get Out. I fucking love these flicks a lot i they are some of my favorite like horror movies of the last decade and i remain like uh incredibly impressed and inspired by jordan peele and the work that he has done in this in this space yeah no he i mean for a variety of reasons i don't think anybody expected him to perform at such a high level from the very beginning from the job you know like he he obviously has a really strong background in comedy uh and some people might have known that he loved just the horror genre but like wow yeah it's not just like uh narratively interesting it's like visually

incredible too it's it's firing on all yeah fronts um yeah we watched all of key and peel when it was on the air uh i think we saw in theaters uh yeah that's probably true when it was announced that jordan peele was making a horror movie like i remember we were both fucking stoked yeah because we you know were so deep into his his comedy work but i don't think we or like really anyone else was prepared for Get Out because it really changed the whole game. I'm not going to spoil like anything about Get Out for the like three or four people who haven't seen that movie. a remarkable slow burn horror movie that explores this like insidious obliviousness of middle class white yeah it starts out in a very conventional way you know it's it's like a couple they're meeting the parents you know you think that like it's going to be a traditional kind of horror

movie and that is not what happens at all no not even in uh the least little bit uh you get some staggering performances from uh daniel kaluuya uh who is just incredible and honestly everything that he does uh but as the sort of like uh you know audience surrogate of meeting this uh meeting his girlfriend's family and learning the sort of like horrifying truth of their reality is is um truly breathtaking bradley whitford bradley whitford bradley whitford and katherine keener perfect as as as the mom and dad of that family bradley whitford is i think one of the funniest actors alive uh and katherine keener i mean this this this movie has so many highlights. The very first scene with Daniel Kaluuya and Catherine Keener sitting across from each other as she tries to hypnotize him out of his smoking addiction is maybe the most incredible scene of any horror movie that has ever uh been been released i think about that scene all the time and it is uh it is iconic in so many ways and yeah it's very rare that i can

remember a scene from a film that vividly but a hundred percent i can picture it that movie has a lot of different types of scary things that happen in it which i think is what is so strong like it has sort of creepy uh you know tension it has uh yeah there's like a mystery there's a mystery there's you know there's some jump scares there's some you know slasher level sort of horror but this scene is on like another level of like being, being the horror of being trapped within one's own mind is like fucking out there and, uh, incredible. Uh,

and so get out was nominated for best picture and best actor for Kalouia and best original screenplay, which Jordan Peele won making him the first black screenwriter to ever win that category. Fucking great. Yeah. On so many levels to see a horror movie recognized at the Oscars at that level is incredible.

Seeing Jordan Peele recognized as a black screenwriter is incredible. It was such a, you know, it's a thrilling launch pad. And so everybody was like, well, shit, man, what, how do you, again, how do you follow that up? And the answer was with us which didn't

receive like nearly as much critical acclaim um i remember when it came out folks were not quite as like bowled over by it as get out but man i love that fucking movie i love us yeah uh it is so funny and just terrifying. There's still like elements of like social commentary. Of course, yeah. You know, it's still beautifully filmed. If you have not seen Us, it's about a family on vacation trying to survive as sort of murderous doppelgangers come out in droves to murder. Winston Duke plays the dad of the family uh and he is just hysterically funny

throughout even once sort of like the the scary doppelgangers come out uh lupita niyango is mesmerizing yeah i mean you'd expect her to be incredible but she is particularly incredible she's incredible in two different ways right like this movie has the cast of actors play their you know uh you know family on vacation and also their doppelgangers each one brings like something special to both performances but lupita's portrayal of the mom and the like soul speaking member of the doppelganger contingent is, I mean, it's creepy as fuck and incredible.

The movie ends with a fight scene between them set to this incredible remix of I Got Five on it, which is, I still go back and listen to occasionally because it just absolutely rules. I love us. You know, it's not as, I think maybe groundbreaking as as get out was but it is i don't know it it belongs to a category of horror films that i really really like and

seeing the ways that it subverts that category and kind of perfects that category was like truly astonishing to see. And then the most recent one is Nope, which we just watched. I had seen it earlier this year and we just watched it as like our scary Halloween movie this year because you had not seen it. And I think it's actually my favorite

of the whole bunch. It is a horror movie where a family who owns a ranch for horse actors squares off against an alien entity that is my favorite and I think sort of scariest representation of an alien I've ever seen on film. seen on film. The way that it kind of keeps the monster behind the curtain and then blows a breeze through that curtain occasionally to give you just glimpses of the thing before revealing it in a scene that is genuinely gave me nightmares and kind of like stuck in my mind for a very long time. It's incredible. It is incredible how much it builds up the threat of this alien before slowly kind of like revealing it until there is a sort of climactic thing towards the, I mean, honestly, middle of the movie that happens at an unfortunate show at a sort of fictional ranch that is, it's just fucking terrifying. So so so so scary why why would

you say it's your favorite do you think um well after that you know sort of climax scene there's like a very extended very scary sequence that happens uh and then it sort of turns into home alone a little bit where all of a sudden it is not like, how are we going to survive this thing? How are we there? There's, you know, horror movies are pretty much universally formulaic, right? There's a whole concept of in the slasher genre. You have the final girl, you know, format. Yeah.

Where there's just the one surviving girl girl who has you know it may perhaps is the most virtuous of all although that certainly has been sort of subverted in so many ways and then all of a sudden it's like i'm gonna fight back or i'm the only one that's gonna escape or i'm gonna x y or z this movie is like okay there's this huge fucking scary alien in the sky is killing lots of people and it is basically posted up right on our house on our land let's get a fucking video of this thing we're going to we're going to get a video of this and so then it becomes like a almost heist movie of how are we going to not fight back about this thing but we are going to be the ones who introduce real alien footage

to the world yeah and become and become famous because of it and then it gets into sort of the folly of that position while also like having it be a fucking incredible showdown that is scary and exciting and it feels like as you're talking about it, I'm realizing that the most of the other movies, it feels like a real acknowledgement of some real horror movie tropes. The other films obviously had horror elements, but this one seems like, hey, I love horror movies, and I'm going to take my favorite parts of them and put them in one film. Yeah. Because them figuring out how to defeat the know the monster it's like such a

traditional way to like approach that in a horror movie you know where they're like learning about it and they're coming up with a strategy and it takes multiple people like i don't know it's interesting i hadn't really thought about it in the line of like here's what typically happens in a horror movie but it has that for sure and of course daniel kaluuya and kiki palmer are fucking great kiki palmer in particular is so good in this movie who what's the name of the actor that plays the guy that owns the like the stadium oh um steven steven yoon yeah yeah steven yoon is very very. Oh my gosh. He has a monologue that he gives where he talks about this fictional SNL sketch of this horrifying on-set incident that he survived as a child where he talks about how Chris Kattan is just slaying. Chris Kattan is out there just killing it. It's so good.

I think the other two movies are like incredible, right? They are, they are horror classics. Some of the best to come out this one, it feels more, um, I don't know the way that it is sort of chaptered out. There is not like constant scares that happen. There aren't like a lot of jump scare things that happen. It is, it is a is a a movie of uh like of set sequences and so and those are separated out by you know little title cards with the different names of the horse actors or in one case an ape actor uh and i i i just i think it's incredible i think it is masterfully made yeah um the best best horror movie there are very few directors right now that I get excited every time one of their film comes out and that's like

definitely true with Jordan Peele um so yeah I mean it's I will see anything that that that he does uh also there are a lot of people that don't love horror movies um And I will say like, obviously there, there are elements as I mentioned, and there's, there's, there's violence to a degree, but there's such good films. Like, I don't know.

I don't, I'm hesitant to tell people like, even if you don't like horror movies, you should watch these. No, they're very scary. Like they are very, very scary is the other thing.

Yeah. I can't think of too many people like Jordan Peele who like I get excited about every other like every maybe like Edgar Wright is. Yeah. I wouldn't say, you know, he has made far more films and some of them have not been great for me. But he's also like he has such a stylish way of making films that I really, really enjoy. I feel the same way about Jordan Peele. Just the execution on every level is just incredible. Exploring like concepts and inversions of horror genre tropes.

And I think he is I think he's just brilliant. So this Halloween, if you're looking for a film to watch, perhaps consider one of these, one of these three. Can I steal you away? Yes. Thanks. Have you ever wanted to know the sad lore behind Chuck E. Cheese's love of birthday parties? Or my Saturday mornings are reserved for cartoons? Or, have you wanted to know how beloved virtual pet site Neopets fell into the hands of Scientologists?

Or, how a former Mattel employee managed to grow Sega into a video game powerhouse? Join us, hosts Austin and Brenda, and learn all of these things and more at Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries. Now on Maximum Fun. Okay, so 2022 Rachel talked about breakfast, which was way too broad. And I had to have known that at the time. Like I can't just say breakfast and then everything that falls within that category is eliminated. I'm glad that you've grown enough to accept that about yourself. I also wonder if 2022 Rachel really thought that the topics were so infinite that I could just say a meal of the day.

Yeah. So anyway, so this is a breakfast item. Okay. So you're saying that you have not completely plumbed the depths of breakfast. No, because I mean, if you think about it, there is breakfast as a concept, which I may have talked about in 2022. Yes. And then this is an element of breakfast. I see.

Okay, so we're diving down. Next time, you're going to get into an ingredient of the foodstuff. Probably. Okay, what do you got? This is the breakfast sandwich. of the food stuff. Probably. Okay, what do you got? This is the breakfast sandwich. Breakfast sandwich is great. Yes.

You and Russ, I want to sit you and Russ for a shake down across the table. I would listen to a podcast that's just Rachel and Russ talk breakfast sandwiches. I would like to make that podcast. Yeah, that'd be good. Yeah, didn't him and Chris Plant brought us breakfast sandwiches when we were in New York? They were fucking great. Very good. Very good. Okay, breakfast sandwich. brought us breakfast sandwiches when we were in new york and they were fucking great very good um okay breakfast sandwich this is not something i enjoyed as a child no i was trying to remember

my first breakfast sandwich um and i man i don't know it probably would have been college maybe we all experiment with breakfast sandwiches in college i know um do you do you have any recollection of my first breakfast i don't even know for sure i maybe have had one egg mcmuffin that's it i mean that's the question right are we talking do we lump egg mcmuffins in there i was not a big egg mcmuffin guy or sausage mcmuffin or whatever mcmuffin um i just found the biscuit to, it left me wanting. The English muffin left me wanting. But then. Well, you come from an area that has a fine appreciation for biscuits.

That is, oh, what the fuck am I talking about? Yeah, Tudor's Biscuit World is just like coming home. Oh, is that the jingle? I think so. Yeah, I mean, we would get some Tudors. We would get some Tudors. You exposed me to this when when maybe my first time in Huntington, first or second time. Yeah. And you warned me that this was my whole day.

That's it. And it's exactly. When we go in town now, I can't do tutors. No. Because we have children and we need to be able to watch them. And none of your family members do anymore either. No. Yeah.

Because you can't take a two hour turbo nap in the middle of the morning. Yeah. You can't take a two hour nap at 1030 the middle of the morning yeah you can't take a two-hour nap at 10 30 in the morning anymore because there's children there's mouths to feed unless we got them to eat tutors too and then we could all as a family hold our hold our torsos and rock back and forth while falling asleep some of it is the savory breakfast right like our children are not in an age where they appreciate a savory breakfast no um and i i don't know that i got there for a while i also there were a lot

of ingredients that were a little unfamiliar to me like i didn't eat a lot of breakfast sausage or gosh ham in particular like a lot of these breakfast sandwiches have like a ham element yeah i obviously was comfortable with eggs and bacon, but that was about it. Yeah. And cheese, of course. But yeah, it wasn't until I got older that I was ready. Yeah. You know?

So breakfast sandwich, unsurprisingly, during the industrial age when people did not have time to eat breakfast in a more elaborate way, there was like a big surge in on-the-go meals, breakfast carts like on the factory floor that had these like sandwiches ready to go hot hot and ready to go yeah okay i don't know how you do that in a cart in when you wrap it in foil oh yeah i guess that's fair remember foil i don't love foil um a lot of this is traced back to the UK, which is called like a BAP sandwich.

BAP. Yeah, which speaks more to the kind of bread than the contents. I feel like we heard about that on Bake Off in some season. They kept talking about BAPs. And I was like, I don't know what the fuck that means. Here, it really took off fast food. Yeah, of of course this is what i really loved in my research so within a like three year period both jack in the box and mcdonald's started releasing a breakfast sandwich okay and what speaks a lot to the authority and influence of McDonald's is that a lot of the things I read said, you know, a weird happenstance at the same time, like exactly just two fast food chains.

And they said like between 69 and 71. But then if you do a little more research, it's like clearly Jack in the Box in 1969 released a breakfast sandwich. And then three years later, McDonald's had one. Just like, whoa, what a coincidence. I feel like McDonald's rarely trails behind in that category. They instead have bold experiments, not so much these days, but in like the 90s. And it was like, we're going to go ahead and get out ahead of bratwurst and pizza. We're doing those now.

Well, and McDonald's had the McGriddle, which was crazy. I don't know that I've ever had one. Oh, man. It's fucking good. I didn't really like McDonald's pancakes, so the idea of making that a sandwich didn't. It wasn't necessarily a pancake. It was thicker than a pancake with little delightful

crystalline nuggets of syrup embedded inside of the thing interesting um but they made you feel so shitty i think some of the worst i've ever that fast food has ever made me feel in my life was from the mcgriddle interesting because it was something like 14 000 calories like it was so much it was so much uh stuff and it would it would it would uh i mean it put tutor's biscuit world to shame, which is saying something. So part of the thing with Jack in the Box is it was 24 hours. So they came up with something called the Breakfast Jack, which was ham, fried egg, American cheese, and a hamburger bun. Cool. Whereas Egg McMuffin, apparently the creator that was connected to this invention really benedict uh so tried to come up with a fast food version that's where the english muffin came in

okay uh minus you know the hollandaise like the the mess sort of the defining characteristic of a right eggs benedict but by the way like in my research i became really fascinated with jack in the box and i'm not going to get into it but they have had so many hills and valleys uh in their in their their time uh it's a fascinating story i would encourage anybody that is curious to to go look into jack in the box they are voyagers yeah of food yeah there there's a point in their career where they decide to stop competing with like burger king and mcdonald's started being like, what if we have tacos and egg rolls? Yeah. Cool.

You cannot read too much about Jack in the Box. But yeah, it's a breakfast sandwich. I will always eat a breakfast sandwich any time of the day. I like putting a little hot sauce on there. That's what I was about to say next. A little hot sauce on a breakfast sandwich. Yeah. Really, really. Specifically Cholula in our household our our son actually does eat breakfast sandwiches but he eats them as a as a main course and he removes the egg and cheese he yeah we've

talked i think about saucy biscoes on the show before some of i i will never i don't think i will ever say the phrase sausage biscuit in normal speech like ever. See, I still do. But you know me. I'm so precise in my language. Yeah. It's very difficult for me to compromise. Saucy bisco is just so fucking fun to say.

Yeah. Yeah. And fun to eat. We have to be careful, though, because if anyone else ever watches our child, they will have no idea what he's talking about. Hey, you want some small wonders? Yes. Our audience sent in. Micah says, my small wonder is fabric shavers.

I just used one for the first time on a favorite skirt of mine that had pilled pretty bad. And not only is the skirt in much better shape now, but the process of running a gently buzzing object over fabric and watching it become smoother was fantastic. I have been trying to come up with the reason that I need one of these because it does seem amazing. Yeah. But I can't think of an item of clothing I have that would to come up with the reason that I need one of these because it does seem amazing. Yeah. But I can't think of an item of clothing I have that would really need it.

Yeah. We are still sort of in our COVID comfort loungewear era. Sweaters, right? There's an opportunity in sweaters, I think. But yeah. Anyway, they look awesome. Somewhat related. We have a little like a scraping comb for a rug in our living room that sheds super duper bad.

That shit is so satisfying. Yeah, I know. I've been looking for it because it's so easy to misplace. I know. Matthew says my small wonder is playing video games you played as a kid. I just picked up Skyrim after a few years and it always brings back a lot of nostalgia of playing it at 11 years old when it came out. Whoa. That's pretty young for Skyrim, it feels like.

When you mentioned that, all I think about is when you were living with our mutual friend, wasn't he playing that constantly? Yeah, I mean, that would have been in 20... 2011. 2011, 2012, which I think is pretty much

right around when Skyrim came out. And yeah, I mean, that game completely, completely took over our lives. It was sick. It was great. It's still a fun game. It's still a fun game to play.

But obviously I do this a lot with lots of different types of games. Thank you so much to Bowen and Augustus for these of our theme song Money Won't Pay. I think Bowen's on tour right now. Oh, yeah?

I bet you that's a very, very fun experience. Oh, that would be cool. I'm not sure where to get tickets for that, but if you enjoy Bowen's music, you should go and see him. Thank you to MaximumFun.org

for having us on the network. Go to MaximumFun.org. Check out all the great shows that they have on there. Shows like Judge John Hodgman, which we were lucky enough to guest on at a live show here in D.C. a couple weeks ago, which was a real fun time.

We have merch over at McElroyMerch.com. You can go and see some of the offerings we have there. And also, our Candle Night show is coming up. Yeah. You can find details for that over at mackroy.family all proceeds for that show are going to go to uh harmony house just like we've done in in years past uh we're gonna have special segments with us and guests and you know it's always a very very good time um and again mackroy.family so you can find out details for

that gather around the hearth and enjoy some candlelight's warmth with us um that's it our house has been buzzed by the same giant helicopter four times since we've been recording this i think it's joe i think joe's trying to you think he just joy rides sometimes i think he's joy rides i think he wants he's a big fan and so he wants to know like he's hanging out the side of his best friend's ride. Like, is Rachel talking about breakfast sandwiches? Oh, I love those things. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows

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