Wonderful! - Wonderful! 307: The Thrill of Full-Sized Shampoo

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Griffin's favorite Personal Computer music artist! Rachel's favorite non-spicy non-caffeinated beverage!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaWorld Central Kitchen: https://wck.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 so long 2023 Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. So long, 2023. Stink year. I'm on that new shit now. It already feels different, doesn't it? The energy.

Does it? Of the year. We're three days in. I guess I'm not as observant of energy as you. Oh, yeah. The energy is hitting good this year. The solar energy. And lunar. Oh, okay. All right. And year. The solar energy and lunar.

Oh, okay. All right. And stellar. All of the celestial bodies are aligned throughout all of 2024. Yeah. And we're all pretty stoked about that. I actually don't have a great feel for the year so far because we're only three days into it. But I feel healthy and strong. Okay.

Don't you think? Stronger than ever? Do I Don't you think stronger than ever? Do I think that you are stronger than ever? Yes. I haven't really seen you demonstrate it yet. Okay. I mean, that seemed like strength was involved. I didn't pick up the desk, but it moved a lot.

2024, what if that's the year I get strong? Like really strong i mean i think you will oh wow now that i hold on wait it changed the energy changed when you stronger okay no yeah i could probably i could probably get that honestly the bar is pretty low right now i'm seeing you lift a weight yeah uh and if you keep doing that yeah i have a feeling i'll get strong you get fast you're already so fast sometimes we go to the gym together and i watch you on the treadmill and you're it's a fucking incredible i mean your legs are your legs become invisible because of how quickly they they rotate you're like a you're like um wiley coyote or roadrunner he's actually

the fast one if if you call the ability to run at a speed of eight miles an hour very fast that's good but here's the thing i do it for at most one minute yes i mean even that's pretty i mean that's more than i could do okay do you have any small wonders to start the year off right with now please um i'm to say like a successful lengthy drive in the car with children. Yes. We don't really put our kids

in the car for longer than 30 to 40 minutes at any given time. But for Christmas, we make that drive to Huntington, which is six hours if you are, you know, never stopping. Yes. And it went well. It went really good. There I am back. And then we went to beautiful Lexington, Virginia for New Year's, which is three hour drive. We did so much

carting around and the kids were amazing. Yeah. I mean, they don't love it. They're not excited about it, but they hang in there. Yeah. And I appreciate that. Yeah. What I don't enjoy is going on a road trip with kids and then it doubles the length of the drive because you have to stop constantly. Yeah. But I am also guilty of requiring more stops on road trips than the children do just because of the way that my sort of infrastructure works. But 2024. 2024 stronger than ever no more strong bladder i won't pee anymore i'm phasing it out can i tell you one of my other thrills about road trips too is that um that you you don't have to go through tsa so you can put any size fluid in your luggage and i still get thrill. I'll bring a whole bottle of shampoo just because I can.

Yeah, yeah. It's great. It's exciting. It's very exciting. I'm going to say we have dipped into Taskmaster again. We haven't watched that show in a long time. And we just started watching the, I guess, most recent series, Series 16. And it's fucking great.

It is so good. It is so, so funny. It's got Sue Perkins, former host of Great British Bake Off. Yeah. And a suite of other comedians who are just incredible. Yeah. So we are, I think, three episodes into that. Sort of a dead zone right now.

Yeah. There hasn't been a hockey game in a few days, and all of our favorite sort of TV shows are off the air. So Taskmaster has been coming in for us in the clutch. Yeah. I go first this week. Okay. I'm going to talk about some music I've been really jamming to,

really grooving to here in 2024. And that is an artist by the name of Hannah Diamond. I will say one of my main goals for the beginning of this year is to splinter off my Spotify account from the devices through which our children access Spotify. Yeah. Because it has rendered my algo fully useless in terms of discoverability. My Discover Weekly playlist, which I did a whole segment on this. Yeah, you used to really benefit from that. It's now just like

hot dog toilet song and pee pee poo poo man and just like a bunch of really just songs that I would say don't really appeal to me necessarily. I can't fault Spotify for thinking I'm deeply into pee pee poo poo Man because of just sort of the way that the algorithm has been fed by our children. But I'm going to try and take it back because the main issue with this is that I ended

up missing a lot of big sort of new releases from artists whose work I enjoy. Last year, there's a Wednesday Campanella album I've been dipping into. I've also talked about her stuff. That is absolutely great. But today I want to highlight one such album released in late 2023, an album called Perfect Picture by Hannah Diamond. Hannah Diamond is a musician and visual artist whose shit I got really into in 2016 back when I was really active on SoundCloud. SoundCloud, I'm so like off of it now that I don't know like what the ecosystem is like now, but it was like this really great system for very indie artists to be discovered and streamed and sort of acquire a fan base through them. And a lot of the stuff was really sort of like experimental and rough and ready. So back in 2016, I got really into her stuff.

She's part of a label called PC Music, which is, I think, personal computer and not politically correct music. PC Music is a British art collective with a lot of hyper pop sort of acts like Hannah Diamond in it. A lot of the acts have what Wikipedia refer to as cyber culture personas, very sort of like hyper real characters almost that are influenced by early sort of Internet culture of the late 1990s and the early aughts, which is now over 20 years old. So old now that it is like reasonable to be kind of nostalgic for that era. And I think a lot of the stuff that PC music has under it kind of covers that. But the music that Hannah Diamond used to put out was like very pared back. I would say kind of lightly produced songs that were just little indie gems. She has a song called High that's all about waiting for your crush to send you a message on AOL Instant Messenger, which I think like really captures

the aesthetic that she's going for. Last year, though, she put out this new album, Perfect Picture, her first album in a long time, which is this huge evolution of her whole sort of sound and vibe. The songs sound like much bigger and much more ambitious while not sort of losing that whole early 2000s internet aesthetic that her early stuff was known for. Like the title track, Perfect Picture, which is about how you sort of present yourself through these like super manicured public photographs. So here's a clip from that song. So I'm a sucker for like this like early internet culture vibe. I don't know if it hits you quite as hard. You know what?

And I didn't want to say anything before you played the clip because I didn't want to influence the way people listen to it. But it gives me more recent like Carly Rae Jepsen vibes. Carly Rae Jepsen is like, I would say, frequently alluded to in sort of like critical discussions about Hannah Diamond's work. I would say much more early Carly Rae Jepsen. Like that Call Me Maybe. There's this like yeah but it's got that kind of like electronic influence which she is doing more of recently right yeah kind of I mean I think she stepped away from that a little bit with um you know the what's the album

is it Loneliest Time I know Loneliest Time is on it she's you know getting into her fucking stevie nicks yeah it's uh sort of breezy california vibe uh whereas this is is still very much uh i don't know in in in the uh early internet era vibe um but i would say that the the the sound of this album is uh is i would say kind of reminiscent of carly ray jepsen uh. The whole production of this album was taken to, I would say, a whole nother level with Hannah Diamond's collaboration with a US music producer named David Gamson, who I'd never heard of before, but I was looking into

because the production of this album is incredible. He's been in the game forever. He started making electronic music in 1980 while attending Sarah Lawrence College. So pretty early pioneering stuff. Now he does sort of electronic music production for pretty huge names in pop music, like Kesha, Kelly Clarkson, Jessie J, Charlie XCX.

His work is super like melodic and arpeggio heavy, which really aligns really well with Hannah Diamond's whole kind of like hyper pop cutesy music vibe. I don't say that to be dismissive or reductive. It's, I would say, a pretty good description of the stuff that she does. But I would say Hannah Diamond is also not on the same level of, you know, fame as Kesha or Kelly Clarkson or Charli XCX. So it's cool to see, you know, this album be this pretty major escalation of the kind of stuff that she's making.

And the result of this collaboration is just incredible. If you're a fan of Charlie XCX or Caro Caro Bonito or like so many other artists in that vein, Perfect Picture is going to be your jam, I think, as it has become mine. And I want to end with my favorite song off the album, which is called Affirmations, which is a really good anthem, I think, to start the year off with.

It's just all about this printed out list of five affirmations that she keeps on her wall, which include lines like, I am building my own world, and I'm a businesswoman and my own CEO. It is catchy as hell with a chorus that goes extremely hard. I can't stop listening to it.

So I'm going to play a bit of Affirmations now. That's it. Hannah Diamond, check it out. It's fun. It's a great album that I like listening to and I also really like seeing an artist like grow from a level of not particularly like mainstream sort of success to like taking on more ambitious stuff and having it kind of, you know, align itself with the work and the art that she was doing earlier in her much more independent days until now. She's still, I think, I mean, PC Music is not the biggest label, but yeah, you know what I mean. Check it out.

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Only on Maxim maximumfun.org hey griffin yes i want to slow things down a bit okay with a cool glass of lemonade griffin i would have sworn on a stack of bibles you were about to take us to the poetry corner griffin knows i don't really do voices and now we and i think this is a pretty good demonstration i haven't really decided what this voice is trying to do and you can hear that in my voice as i change focus yeah no for sure i mean it's very house of cards asking it's very foghorn leghorn uh-huh and it's uh it's it's i'm gonna need more of that i can't reproduce it it doesn't even have to be now it doesn't even have to be for the podcast

just like you know maybe later when we're like having dinner or something be like can you pass me the peppercorn uh lemonade is my topic okay um this is something our children have gotten really into recently yeah specifically the small one demands lemonade and any number of vehicles and lemonade for him can mean really anything that is kind of a yellow color we We have given him Gatorade that is yellow and been like, this is, now this is lemonade. We have still successfully, I think, avoided caffeine with our children. And that doesn't leave you a lot of options

outside of water and juice, but lemonade, lemonade is a hit. They've tried, Henry has tried soda and he said it tastes too spicy. Yeah, I love that. love how little kids think anything that has too much flavor is spicy well i think it's the effervescence i think it's yeah when you're you know six years old you don't have the kind of like uh vernacular to say like on the this is too bubbly for me this is too yeah yeah carbonated father i said they're like this

spicy it does weird things to my tongue spicy must be um i also i also love lemonade there was a period in my life where uh it and i think i've mentioned this before because i didn't have chocolate for a while um but that i avoided caffeine because i thought that there was some kind of allergic reaction happening to it and there was you didn't think that necessarily no no one one doctor said one doctor and we really stuck with it yeah and i remember when i went to the doctor as like a middle school student and they were like oh yeah no no that's not it that's not it i was like oh huh yeah um anyway lemonade was was a go-to like sprite and lemonade great options for me uh were you sorry to interrupt yeah but did you know that

they changed sprite no to starry everybody was drinking oh i thought that was some kind of local thing no that's like sprite now i guess are you sure or maybe it's sierra mist that they changed okay anyway it's fucking good i didn't have any i thought it was just like one of those like dr thunder situations no it's like new sprite huh we'll get some okay uh lemonade uh has obviously been around for a long time because essentially it's just lemon lemon sugar water lemon sugar can you please do it like men in black please oh man i've explained this to griffin where i can hear a voice in my head and then what comes out of my mouth is so not that channel vincent d'onofrio in this one specific way you're just gonna do house of cards again sugar water that's not bad that's not will you will you do it god it's so good thank you how do you do you do that? You actually can see me physically retract my skull backwards.

Griffin's a real physical comedian. Yeah. Okay, so when we talk about the history of lemonade, maybe not as we know it today, but when it is first documented, we're talking about Egypt. We're talking about 13th century.'re talking about like 13th century uh it's obviously been around for a while it's weird to think about lemons existing in ancient times to think about you know it seems like such a modern contrivance yeah well and you think about

egypt i don't know what climate lemon trees need to grow. I didn't do that research. I don't think of Egypt as a place that is particularly temperate. But again, we don't know anything. We don't know anything at all. I think we've proven on this show time and time again, we don't know a lot of stuff. We research for a good hour and we feel confident about that. And then we make guesses.

It would be wild if you did know if Egypt had the kind of climate that would be suitable for lemons. That is not something you learn in school. No, absolutely not. In lemon class. Lemonade as we kind of know it now started in Paris in 1630. Apparently there were vendors that sold it from tanks strapped to their backs i love that so much was there a cup or would they just like open up your mouth and be like i'm picturing like a camel back and then yeah just like a faucet and and and i imagine cups i'm envisioning like those tanks Those tanks that like pest control, like folks use to like spray around the house. Yeah, yeah. To ward off ants, except it's lemonade and the long nozzle of it just kind of blasts into your mouth directly.

And you pay, you know, five francs per squirt. Oh, no. Please don't let that be the title of the episode. Five francs per squirt. Oh, no. Please don't let that be the title of the episode. Squirt. Britain came in in the 1780s with the carbonation. There was a chemist who invented an apparatus for making carbonated water. Spicy lemonade is what he did. And then Johann Schwepp.

Oh, sure, Schwepp's. Yeah. Developed a method of carbonation using a compression pump that made mass production more efficient. Of carbonated lemonade? In the 1830s, Schwepp's Fizzy Lemonade was available to the public. I never really rocked with that. The first carbonated lemon drink I think I ever had was CC Lemon when we were in Japan, which fucking rips.

So many vitamins in that one. So much vitamin C. You know, lemonade, if it has actual lemon in it, is a good source of vitamin C. Sure. But as you know, a lot of lemonade does not actually have lemon in it. Part of the reason lemonade became popular in the 18th century was the temperance movement. And lemonade was pushed as an alternative to alcohol. that is so good that it has induced a sort of euphoric effect back at huntington outdoor theater there used to be a vendor that would set up a tent at the very back of the theater uh and they would have just the sugariest sourest fresh squeezed lemonade uh that you could ever imagine and that shit would send me up into the rafters um so part of this temperance

movement sun kiss had a slogan this was goodbye to liquor here's to lemonade straightforward straightforward no promises there just this is was a thing and now it's gone and this is the new thing and then a warrior came marching over the dunes it was mike and mike said why not both try my hard lemonade oh yeah man i forgot that that was a thing i mean it was my dad's gateway drug yeah i think it was as it was a lot of dad's gateway drugs into having two alcoholic beverages per year around the holidays usually was mike's hard lemonade um the last thing i will say about lemonade uh from 1877 to 1881 the white house banned alcohol from all state dinners uh president rutherford b hayes was trying to court the prohibition party uh and his wife lucy uh who was a renowned

teetotaler did i do it no teetotaler not teetotaler it's trying so hard to say i know i do i watch i love you so much because of the effort that you put into this show and everything that you do in your life and i don't want to like ever stymie you or try to contain you in some way but i i i can't get enough of the fact that this one word is your this is my penguin this is my penguin one day you'll do it and you'll just say it off like that guy's acting like a real teetotaler and you'll it'll be like a new era has dawned the problem is i think i used to know how to say it and then i got really in my head i think you did that's exactly what just happened i watched the synapses fire and then fire but i watched the two lobes of your brain go like no no no no no no no no no no no no i got it let me handle this one uh tito tay. I think you said Tito Taylor the first time. That is how it started.

Which is fucking great. Which reminds me a lot of Friday Night Lights. Yeah. As if there was another member of that family. Of the Taylor family. Uncle Tito. An Uncle Tito. I'm Uncle Tito of the Taylors.

You're getting better. I'm saying this. You're getting better. The next time you try to say that word on the show, if this arc continues, you're going to fucking crush it, babe. Anyway, his wife was named Lucy and she was nicknamed Lemonade Lucy because of her push of this beverage. Unfortunate. I wouldn't want that one in high school, I would say.

Lemonade, Lemonade Lucy. That sounds, there's something there, don't you think? I mean, I had a lot of unfortunate pronunciations and choices around my name so to me that does not sound bad no yeah i mean your your uh point of comparison is pretty dramatic yeah griffin sometimes talks about how people um what did they used to call you you know griffin macaroni yeah it doesn't hold a candle to i don't think people maybe don't know your no i've mentioned it before the real fans know my my maiden name yeah and i'm gonna leave it at that

yeah all right who's schlong rachel schlonger um lemonade lemonade love it What's your favorite? What's your favorite? What's your go-to? Oh, man. I'll say this weird. Simply lemonade is a good one. Okay. Yeah. I find that since my consumption of the Chick-fil-A businesses products has been dramatically reduced in years. I would say that was like where I got lemonade. Yeah. And I associated it with that so much. I mean, I like it when it tastes like a real lemon. been dramatically reduced in years i would say that was like where i got lemonade yeah um and

i associated it with that so much i mean i like it when it tastes like a real lemon i'll say that i don't really like it when you can tell it's just like a sugar water drink now i will now i will say i did like the country time we used to have oh yeah no us too we were a big crystal lighthouse yeah we always crystal lighthouse that's my performer name um yeah we used to have like i feel like we just always had a picture of the country time powdered mixed lemonade yeah our refrigerator growing up at all times so i do like that i do also have a pretty unfond memory of drinking it out of an aluminum cup once and that was bad it was not advisable to drink a sour beverage like that out of an aluminum cup it was like uh drinking a bag like drinking a battery uh do you want to know what our friends at home are talking yes okay good

because here's tim coming over the top rope with my small wonder is the mistake everyone makes when we ring in the new year accidentally writing the previous year on important papers. It's just funny to me how universal it is. Oh, yeah. I do like that. I feel like I've been thinking about 2024 for a while. Oh, wow. So I've been ready to write this down.

There was an open house at Henry's school, and so all the parents had to sign in. And it was my first time seeing the date written out of like January 3rd, 2024. And I have to imagine every parent had the same reaction of just like immense gratitude to the parents who had signed the list for me for showing me the way. I for sure would have thought that in a major way. I don't write checks anymore, which was my main sort of area. I have one person that i write a check to and it really keeps me you know in the game yeah sometimes i have to write that check and i have to like google it every i don't have to google it but i feel like i do uh moa says my

small wonder all those lanterns you release around new year's is the second year we release them instead of fireworks and not only are they beautiful they're way less anxiety inducing to send off i've never done that before but it looks so cool now it does look cool i wouldn't i mean i guess it's probably easy enough to find those on the internet yeah probably you probably make them it's just paper what would you call it what terms would you type in flying yeah that's the thing right it needs to be able to like lift up into the sky. Flying paper lantern up in sky like Tangled. Tangled lantern, paper but real. Tangled lanterns from Tangled but real in real life for flying. Good. And wishing. I bet that would work. That'll probably get you there. Thanks to Bowen and Augustus for these

themes on Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you to MaximumFun.org for having us on the network. We sure do appreciate you. They got a bunch of great shows on there. We've listened to a lot of Stop Podcasting Yourself on our drives. And there's, I mean, there's so much on there for you to go check out. We have a bunch of merch over at MacroMerch.com. Oh my gosh, the shirt is out. There is a new Three Wolves inspired shirt howling in front of a moon, but instead of

wolves, it's me and Justin and Travis, which is very good. I will say our naming of the year episode for Mbembe is coming out. I am halfway through it, so I still don't know what you picked. You haven't hit the prestige yet, I would say, of the episode. So get that out and listen. Just check out our stuff. We do streams on YouTube over at the McElroy family. We've got a bunch of stuff going on.

And we hope you'll join us for a new year of content. Of content. Of content. Of mandated. It's like the lowest bar you could set. It is content. No one can say. It exists.

No one can say it's not content. No. No one can say that. Thank you so much. Just have a good january that makes it sound like we're not going to do another episode this month we will we'll be back next week so we'll see you then bye Thank you. Maximum Fun A worker-owned network

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