Wonderful! - Wonderful! 327: 2 to 3 Jorts

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Griffin's favorite longform commentary! Rachel's favorite experience for anxious people! Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Equality Florida: https://www.eqfl.org/

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. It's a podcast where we talk. I sound so sarcastic right now. It's a pod cast. Welcome to wonderful. It's a podcast where we talk, I sound so sarcastic right now. It's a pod cast. I don't think you have to say it's a podcast.

Wow, holy shit. I think I say that in, or someone says that in the introduction of virtually every podcast that I'm on, but you're right. It's, you know, it's not a sandwich. Oh man, I just blew up your mind. I'm having a bit of an existential crisis right now.

It could be like, here's what I'm thinking. When my entire body of work ends up in the Library of Congress, it won't be a podcast then, because that word won't exist anymore, right? So people, teens in the 2080s will be confused. They'll be like, so was this on CDs and cassettes? And they'll be like, oh, Jort, it's a podcast.

He says it's a podcast. Yeah, their friend Jort. Classic Jort. That's a future name. Basically, Jort's gonna be like Michael in the future. We Jort S and Jort P when you have two Jorts. Yeah. Listen, in the year 2081, you go into a kindergarten class.

You can't throw a stick without hitting two to three jorts on the way. But anyway, in the Library of Congress, we need to let them know this is a podcast. We're talking about things we like that's good that we're into. Do you got a small wonder to share with us right now? Oh man, I'm gonna need your help with it.

Okay. It's the music bracket thing we're doing. What's that called? There's an app called Music League. Yeah. Yeah. I got my ass handed to me in our music league. I finished last place.

Whoa. I know. I was doing pretty good until recently, but each week there is a prompt for a type of song that you were supposed to submit. Our group submits two songs. That's crazy. That's so much work.

And then everybody listens to the song and assigns points and then you have a leaderboard. And so like one of our, like our prompt this week was like dance music, like song that you like dancing to. We had your wrestling entrance music, which is a fun one to think about. Oh, it is fun.

Yeah, no, I like it. I wish I was better at it. Apparently, I guess that my taste in music leaves something to be desired. Or perhaps my literal interpretation of the prompts. I'm still not using the app. I have the website on my browser. I love that.

I love that for you and what that means for all of us. I'm gonna say, I don't know, man. We just went out to lunch with my friend Evan, who's in town to visit. He runs a punk rock newsletter called Seesaw that you should check out if you like punk music. We went out to lunch and can I just say, going out to lunch kicks ass.

I know, we used to do it more. We need to get serious about it again. We went to an Indian restaurant and I had three different types of curry in a lunch special and a bunch of garlic naan and An Indian IPA in it. I felt so fucking good after that. I got super drowsy though. Did you yeah? Yeah, I am pretty sleepy But we got to make the doughnuts. I go first this week. Okay, I'm gonna be talking about a

YouTube video that has taken the world by storm. I am talking about- Has it really, or is it just like in your- Oh, it's got millions of views. It's not just your corner of the internet. I mean, it's extremely my corner of the internet, but it's been covered widely by the press outside of my corner of the internet.

I am talking of course about Jenny Nicholson's four hour video essay on the spectacular failure of the Star Wars Hotel. That is the title of the video. It is otherwise known as Star Wars Galactic Star Cruiser. It's four hours? It's a four hour long YouTube video. Wow.

I adore how much of a sort of like zeitgeist this four hour long YouTube video. I think it's probably the longest YouTube video I've ever voluntarily watched. I haven't quite finished it. I'm about 20 minutes from polishing it off, but basically any time I'm sitting down to eat something or I've got some free time in my day,

I've just been tearing into this bad boy over the course of maybe a dozen watchings. I will say that we sit in kind of a privileged position and that we have seen video of the Star Wars themed hotel because Ryan of Ryan's World and his family. Oh, that's right. Got to stay and they did a whole video. I don't remember that.

Oh, I've watched it several times. Oh, that's so fascinating. Anyway, they stayed there. I think that it's very, there's so much to talk about, right? The thing, the reason why everybody's talking about this thing is because this is one, Jenny Nicholson is like an essayist and critic at like the height of her power.

Like this is all she does is these like YouTube long form video essays. Wow. And she's very, very, very good at it. at the height of her power. This is all she does is these YouTube long form video essays and she's very, very, very good at it. But it's talking about this multimillion dollar boondoggle from one of the biggest companies in the world using one of the biggest media properties in the world,

building one of the most sort of ambitious interactive events in the world, right? And yet despite all that, there was so much secrecy surrounding the Galactic Star Cruiser before it opened. So much so that it, so the Galactic Star Cruiser ran from, it opened March 1st, 2022, it closed September 30th, 2023. And estimates said that on the low end, the place costs like $350 million to build

and that Disney reported a $250 million loss on the venture after it closed. That's fucking, that's so much money. When they announced that it was going to close, I was considering like going to it. Specifically me and Justin and Travis were like, let's look into how much it would cost for us to get a room with dad who would like love to go

to this two night interactive Star Wars LARP, essentially. Oh, it's specifically two nights? It is exactly two nights. So here's the thing, I will try and break this down for you. Yeah. It is outside of the sort of like galaxy's edge area of the Hollywood Studios Park. You go inside and you get on like a space shuttle

up to the Galactic Star Cruiser. And then from that point on, you're in this building that is like a spaceship. They have a little, what they call like a nature simulator, which is actually just like an outdoor courtyard. So you, you know, you won't get cabin fever and lose your fucking mind. Yeah, cause there's like no windows or anything, right?

But it is a heavily orchestrated two day interactive event where the way they build it, almost robotically in all of the marketing is an immersive event where you get to live out your Star Wars story. There were supposed to be all these little junction points all throughout your stay at the hotel where you would have these scheduled events

or you would encounter things in the hotel and make a choice. That choice would then change whatever events you would be sort of invited to in the future. So that by the end of it, you would go down your own sort of like storyline, right? It is very much like a game in that sense. And a lot of that functionality goes through this app

that you had to have on your phone, right? So there's there's cast members who are playing these like in world characters, and they're all basically except for Chewbacca, like OC, original creations of this of this Star Wars hotel. And apparently, they all kicked ass, like it seemed like they were all doing a great job. But like, would get a text from a fake AI version of them on your phone through this app that's like, are you ready to help me steal this TIE fighter? You're gonna need to go into the park and scan this one QR code, and then that's gonna be basically it. But apparently, so in Jenny Nicholson's video, she kind of explains everything that goes into it.

And then the middle half of the video is just like, and here's exactly what happened, beat for beat on my stay. And it just like didn't work. Like the app did not work. This idea of her like kind of getting funneled based on the choices that she made didn't work. Like she just didn't get to do many of the events.

And this experience, at least for her, staying in this one bedroom room with a friend for two nights cost like $6,600. Wow. Which is, I mean, it's a lot of money. It's I think more than the average of like a Disney World resort, which is already quite a bit of money. So like this video kind of breaks down,

like what went wrong? Like what happened here? And- Can I ask you, you may be getting to this, the whole mystery, like the mystique, was that intentional? Like they really didn't want people to know what they were purchasing?

Well, yeah, I think so, right? The sort of thesis statement that Jenny Nicholson comes to, and I found it genuinely illuminating, not just in the subject of like this Star Wars hotel, but also like how a lot of things that Disney and other event planning companies, like major corporations, think about like inventing and marketing their thing,

which is that it's very like TikTok forward. It's very Instagram story forward, which is to say that you go to the Galactic Star Cruiser, or you watch a video of some influencer who goes to the Galactic Star Cruiser, you see them get to talk to a cast member who's dressed up like an alien, like a Rodian pop star. And then you see them take part in this like little mini game

where you're on the bridge of the ship and you're blasting asteroids with lasers, and then you see them at a Jedi lightsaber training facility. All of this is in the Ryan's World video. Yeah, right? And then you see them at this show where this Pop Star is playing while you're eating dinner, and then you see them go on an excursion

to the Galaxy's Edge part of the Star Wars park. And you think like, holy shit, this looks so dope. If this is what I'm seeing in this video, like I can't wait to see what it's gonna be like when I stay here for three days, two nights. And the answer is that's it. They showed you all the stuff that they have. They put enough stuff into the hotel

to make for like a compelling sort of like commercial, but that most of the time that you are there, you are sort of being funneled between these things somewhat randomly and that there's actually very little on the ship that's like especially interactive. We've done, we've gone to Disney since they introduced some of the like interactive components at the Star Wars park, right?

There's this thing where you go bounty hunting, which basically just means you go around and you scan your magic band on a few different things and then it'll beep and then it'll be like, and then for that you get a hundred credits that you don't do anything with, right? It's like going out and doing these extremely tedious, repetitive tasks for like a virtual currency

that you don't spend on anything. And that's like included with the price of admission to a Disney park. If you had paid $6,600 for a two day interactive thing and it just did not work and it felt like you were being kind of like shunted to the side the whole time, that would be awful. And so the reason they were secretive about it and kind of like shunted to the side the whole time, that would be awful. And so the reason they didn't, they were secretive about it

is because like they didn't have that much to show, which is wild to think about. And Disney is also like, they really make a big deal out of their like customer service, you know? And so I imagine people go to this thing and they complain about their experience and Disney probably tried to compensate them in some way, which you know, was maybe just meal tickets or something.

I found the video just incredibly, incredibly fascinating because like, and not from like a bare baiting kind of way, like there is nothing about this where I'm like, I'm glad this thing fucking failed. I wanted to go to it pretty bad. And real talk, if it was still open, I still would probably do it for the Vine just to say, I got to go to the Star Wars Hotel,

probably not for $6600, but I would enjoy having had this experience, right? But not based on how disappointing it sounds. but like I would enjoy having had this experience, right? But not based on like sort of how disappointing it sounds. But Jenny Nicholson as like a YouTuber, like her niche is like a lot of nerd culture stuff, a lot of Disney stuff, a lot of Star Wars stuff. So like this is, I feel like a pretty authoritative look at what went wrong and some of the more kind of like

crass decisions that were made that resulted in this thing that ended up being a failure. Does she get anybody from Disney on record in the video? Like is it journalistic in that way? Not so much as I have seen, no. Outside of like including their own marketing material. Yeah. But yeah, I will I think always be kind of fascinated

by this, it's a reason I like those like defunct land videos. I talk about like, here's a thing that Disney tried and they didn't do a good job with it and it failed. My interest in that is not in the failing as much as it is the trying part of it. That's like, what decision? Cause if you asked me like, Hey Griffin, can you come up with a two day

interactive Star Wars experience for hundreds of people at the same time? I don't know what that looks like. But I do know that like watching this video and then comparing that to like going to a Great Wolf Lodge where kids can point their, you know their $40 magic wands at shit all across the hotel and then, you know, special light flashes and talks to you and stuff.

Like that seems a bit more considered than this hotel. It is an excellent video that I have really enjoyed watching. Not my cup of tea usually, like the long form YouTube essay, but this one is top notch. Yeah, that sounds good. Can I steal you away? You didn't, I need you to. Yes.

Thank you so much. That was horrible for me. ["Sacoya Holmes, Pop Culture"] I'm Sacoya Holmes, pop culture and host of the Black People Love Paramore podcast. Contrary to the title, it is not a podcast about the band Paramore. Each episode, I, along with a special guest co-host, dissect one pop culture topic that mainstream media doesn't associate with Black people, but we know that we like. Tune in every Thursday to the podcast that's dedicated to helping black people feel more seen here on Maximum Fun.

You want to know my topic this week? I do. My topic is reserved seating. All right. Specifically, I mean, what I talk about is in a movie theater. Okay, yes. Holy crap, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, like, you know, obviously music venues, concert venues that have had seating have done this for a long time. I've only been to one or two concerts that were like sit down concerts. Oh, okay. And they are some of my favorites. Yeah, no, it's, and I don't think this is just our age.

No. I think that this is an experience that is just undeniably better for people that have anxiety of any kind. Yeah, man. Like a lot of what I read is it takes out that nervousness about showing up at the theater and wondering if you're gonna have tickets.

Yeah. Entering the theater and wondering if you're gonna be able to find good seats and seats together. Right. Yeah, and also just like, I don't know, just like being able to plan in advance. I can't tell you the number of times, and I feel like this is another kind of generational thing

because this did not exist when I was growing up. Well, I did that whole segment on movie phone. Right, yeah, exactly. But the number of times I would go, I remember when I went to see Spider-Man, the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie on the day it came out, and we raced to the theater because we had a rehearsal for a play we were doing

at the time and so we were like fairly late getting there. And it was like me and Justin and Travis and dad and some of our friends and none of us could sit together because like the crowd was already pretty full. So we'd have to like one person would be like way back there and then one person would be- No, that's true. I went to see a movie in Chicago once

and there were three of us and two of us sat together. And it's like, that's true. I went to see a movie in Chicago once and there were three of us and two of us sat together. And it's like, that's not ideal, but like if you went with kids, what are you supposed to do, man? Yeah. Yeah. So, and I didn't look to see how long the draft house has been doing this,

but what I found was a lot of information about AMC, because AMC is like the largest movie chain in the world. They started doing this in New York in 2016. It was the first major city where AMC had a reserve seating option. And then almost exactly five years ago, starting Memorial Day in 2019, they opened it up to almost all their theaters in the country.

Yeah. And there was a lot of like opinion pieces about how this was terrible. Sure. It was really interesting to see a bunch of people. A lot of it was just fear of technology. People who like found the interface of like getting online, picking your movie and picking your seats

to be like overwhelming and difficult. Okay. But if the alternative is going to the theater and rolling the dice, I guess that is easier in a way. Yeah. And I think there's also this culture in like an earlier generation of this idea of like this excitement around like showing earlier generation of this idea of like

this excitement around like showing up and deciding what movie you're going to see, you know, and like, and sitting anywhere you want. It was interesting, I was reading this interview with Patrick Corcoran of the National Association of Theater Owners. And he talked about like, if you go back far enough, he said, the theater was open all day long. You didn't have to go in at a specific showtime. You went in the middle of a movie, sat down,

then watched the beginning of the first movie you saw. It was really informal. Completely deranged, you just said, my man. And then specific showtimes were introduced and getting a good seat and then showing up early. But I think about that, cause you hear about that a lot, like in our like grandparents generation

about like going to movie theater, it was this big, exciting thing. And you would just kind of wander in and watch movies all day or, you know, like just this idea that it was like. That part's cool. That part's cool. The like Christopher Nolan wanted us to watch Oppenheimer

by getting into the theater an hour and a half into the film and starting it there and then watching the first hour and a half later. Can you imagine? Can you fucking imagine? Any director working now would not be down with that whole model. I have the kind of intensity where if Griffin and I

are watching something at home and he starts talking to me, I will pause whatever we are watching because it's like, I don't wanna miss anything in the way that it was intended to be viewed. I can't imagine just being like, oh, it started 20 minutes ago. Who gives a shit? Yeah, I'll turn around and I will go right over.

Yeah. A lot of times too, there were complaints about people sitting in the wrong seats and then having this issue of like, well, you have to get out of my seats, those are my seats. I mean, that's gonna happen with any kind of big policy change for anything on any scale. Also, when you just showed up to the theater,

you could like kind of survey the room and see like, oh, these people are gonna be loud, these people are on their phones and choose a seat kind of based on your proximity and with reserve seating, you can't do that. But obviously now it's like easy to see that the benefits outweigh the costs. But when I was looking at this beginning 2019,

it was just tons and tons of opinion pieces at like every outlet saying like, reserve seating is the worst and here's why. It is, I think more than anything, when I moved to Austin and started going to movies at the draft house, like obviously being able to order food at the movie you're watching is always great. But for me, it was the reserved seating that they offered

before anybody else, as far as I can tell, that just, I was like, oh, okay, amazing, I can go see a movie with my friends and know we'll sit together in a spot where we wanna be. That's like, that's so huge. On the aisle. And on the aisle, it's also very important.

You have really opened my eyes to on the aisle. Yeah. At first I thought like, I'm not somebody who like gets up to use the bathroom during a movie typically. So that wasn't really a concern. The thing that I don't like now, especially like post peak COVID

is just like sitting surrounded by strangers. Yeah, no. The Isle like gives you at least like one side where it is just like. You can scoot if you need to. Yeah. Get out of there. Yeah, and with young children like, like gives you at least like one side where it is just like. You can scoot if you need to. Get out of there. Yeah, and with young children like,

and we talked about this I think last episode, you know, you can't stay in a movie. The rooms start to finish. They won't let you. Yeah, so being able to sit on the aisle just seems perfect. I love this. One thing that was funny when I was searching this, 2023 AMC decided they were gonna start pricing tickets

based on where the customer chose to sit. That's not good. See, that's the slippy slope, I feel like. I found an article on NPR that said, AMC was gonna follow the pricing models of other entertainment venues, such as arenas and live theaters, and a program they called Sightline where middle seats

would be a dollar or two more while front row seats would be cheaper. That's fine, suckers. You guys can have, oh wait, middle in terms of distance from the screen, not from the aisle. Oh yeah. When I was a younger person and you walked into a theater, like you wanted to sit in the middle.

Yeah. Like back when theaters were first being designed, that was like acoustically also like the best place to sit. Now the technology is such that like any seat is fine. It's loud everywhere. It's way too loud all around the room. But yeah, they were treating this like, oh, don't you wanna sit in the middle?

They abandoned it. Like within a few months, people were so upset about this idea of like, I'm still not gonna book a front row seat, even though it's a few dollars cheaper. Like you're working against yourself here. It's so interesting. I think about that.

I think about like surge pricing Wendy's, I think, cause Wendy's is the one that was like the most experiment with surge pricing, but they dropped it immediately. This idea of like, let's try, let's dip our toes into the waters of these historically reviled business practices that our good friends over at airplanes work with.

Yeah. Is like, it's not, no one's ever gonna be stoked for that guys. I will also say now, and this is probably again, like a result of kind of, well, it's probably largely when we go to see movies, like the time of day. But like also when you purchase your seats,

you can kind of build in a buffer. Oh yeah. You know? But I imagine if you were going to a sold out show, that is not an option. But we never, we never take that in. I can't remember the last time I went to a film. I think it was a Star Wars.

It was probably one of the Star Wars, it was probably the first of the new Star Wars. Yeah, like before we had kids. Or maybe one of the Avengers is, I went to, no, cause I went to like a press screening of the second one with folks, that was empty too. Yeah, I don't know, it doesn't happen often. But when we get to fucking Kung Fu fan,

I said Kung Fu Fand of Four again. Why can't I not say the name of this God dang flip? Why not the Kung Fu Panda 4, four weeks after it came out? It's chill as hell in that room. Yeah, I mean, usually what we go see now is like a middle of the day kind of film or like early. So we're not dealing with crowds anyway,

but just the comfort of having a seat worked out, it's changed the whole experience for me. I can't imagine with children trying to live a life where I'm like, yeah, let's go see the new Garfield movie. Let's show up at the theater. And roll the dice. I just wouldn't go. I just wouldn't go to the movies ever.

I know, like with kids, I mean, you know how it is. You get them like super hype and they're like, all right, we're doing this thing. And then you get there and there's no seats or you can't sit together. And it's like, well, nevermind. And then they're like, all right, we're doing this thing. And then you get there and there's no seats or you can't sit together. And it's like, well, nevermind. And then you're like dealing with a fallout from that all day.

Yeah, not no more. Thanks assigned seating. Yeah. Do you wanna know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Got one from Alex here who says, my small wonder is the first sign of life

after propagating a plant. My boss gave me a dried out cactus clipping a few weeks ago that I didn't think would make it, but I still potted it and this morning I saw two beautiful yellow flower buds. This is an experience I've never had before, but that's not true. We actually had a little box garden

in the first house that we lived in together. And I remember when we started to get like little guys growing out of there. Yeah, but we didn't like propagate anything. Like that's like- We grew, it's like from- No, but the thing he's talking about is when you take a piece of a plant

and try and create a whole plant from that. That's fucking crazy. And I don't entirely know how to do that, but it is obviously very impressive and exciting. Yeah. Brighton says, my small wonder is when you get a new board game with lots of little cardboard pieces that you get to punch out of their perforated sheets.

I love the feel and sound of the pieces popping out and it's so satisfying to set aside the empty sheets as you watch your collection of gameplay bits amass in front of you." Yes. Oh my god, yes. So good. I like it from a place of like now I get to throw all away this excess material. That's rewarding to me. I just like having a bunch of little things.

I noticed that Gus has one of those like card matching games and I saw all the little like remainders of where the little squares have been popped out and I felt like, oh, that must've been nice. Hey, thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description and thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network.

Hey, if you wanna send us your small wonders so we can read them at the end of the show, send us an email at wonderfulpodcasts.gmail.com. Keep it short, we like it to be like one or two sentences about just something you're into and we'll talk about it on the show. We've talked about doing like a all listener submissions episode sometime soon,

but in order to do that, we would need way more of those. So again, wonderfulpodcast at gmail.com. That's gonna do it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening. And I wanna go to sleep. So this curry and just sort of like beer potion I've been brewing in my tummy cauldron has reached maximum potency.

And I'm ready to just tuck in for a nice one. Your tummy cauldron has reached maximo potency and I'm ready to just tuck in for a massive... Your tummy cauldron! It's a double double toil and trouble basically always. Money won't pay, working on things. Money won't pay, working on things. Money won't pay, working on things. Money won't pay, working on things. Money won't pay, working on things. Music Maximum Fun, a workaround network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.