Wonderful! - Wonderful! 395: Swears in Lieu of Articulation

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Rachel's favorite ultra-talking poet! Griffin's audio indications of a good time!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaNative American Aid: https://nativepartnership.org/naa/

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. It's a podcast where we talk about things we like that is good that we are into. I'm excited to be here today. I'm excited to be talking to you, my wife, in this professional setting. I'm excited that you're wearing your Carly Ray Jepson Memorial hoodie.

I don't know why I said Memorial. She's still very much with us. Thank Christ. She got married recently. Did you see that? No. Yeah. I didn't sign off on this.

All of my favorite music of hers is like breakup jams. I know. We'll have to see how this evolves her incredible time. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, I obviously. want nothing but the best just pure happiness and bliss delight um but you know we need bang we need bangers yeah and i don't want it to be a transactional sort of like relationship that we have with carly ray jebson but we need bangers now more than ever even i would say yeah for sure for sure

do you haven't this a did i say what the premise of the show is i don't know we like stuff we talk about things that we like do you have uh any small wonders this is a segment we do to start things out a little conversation starter and icebreaker if you will um what do you got so this time a year a lot of times they will take like a thing and they will put some wrapping paper around it and it will be like a gift version of the thing yes you know so like you go to a store and they have like their five best items and they put it in a little box and put a bow on it and now it's a holiday treat for your friends and family yeah um i like getting those things for myself You did do this at Costco, and I was so confused.

You got like this ramen gift set with these two cute bowls and chopsticks and a bunch of toppings. And you saw the gift packaging and you thought, who would this be a gift for? And I said, me, because they're cute. Yep. And they got, I mean, you get a lot of ramen spices up in there. So we're set for. Yeah, come a little chopsticks and they got the little hole in the side of the bowl for the chopsticks, which always treats me right. Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks said the secret to life is to give yourself a little gift every day.

And you have interpreted that in the most literal fashion possible. I don't do it every day. No. Or really even every week. I'm just saying that. No, you famously actually do not splurge on yourself. Yeah, I would say once every four to five months, I will get myself something. God, this was it?

And this is five months worth of nurturing yourself is a ramen gift set. No, I'm just saying what is unique about this experience is that this time of year, stores will offer things like pre-package for delight. And I say, I'll take that delight home with me. Yeah, for sure. I'm going to say sweatpants. I realize that this is a big one. We've probably said. We've probably said sweatpants before.

We've definitely said at leisure, I feel like. It's huge for me to, I don't know, when the winter months come and all of us. sudden I have the realization when I'm like picking out the clothes I'm going to wear after taking a shower or whatever of just realizing like I could do sweatpants now because it's the temperature is suitable for that and in fact if I don't pick sweatpants it's irresponsible because I'll be cold in the legs. Griffin remarkably this still boggles my mind if he is taking a child to an appointment or to school he will take his around the house clothes and he will change them into his around the world clothes. And I think from my perspective, why not just stay and you're around the house

close? Well, because we live in Washington, D.C. and scene. And everyone's out there fucking working it and strutting and like so profession. So like together and having it together. When I take the children somewhere, I keep on my around the house clothes. And I assume that I will not see anyone or interact with anyone and it will not be an issue. And so far that has proven True. You work that look, though, right? I feel like I, if you see me and I'm out in public and I'm in my, you know, lounging around clothes, you would assume like, boy, he's in the throes of a pretty intense depressive episode, because I just kind of have that look about me. But for you, I think you just, I think you, you know, have that sort of vibrant sort of college quad sort of energy. That's like, yeah. I don't think I've possess that anymore. Uh-huh. I'm a super, super, super, super, super senior.

Yeah. Can you go first this week? Yes. I don't know why I'm asking. That is you are ordained to go first this week. All right. I thought it had been far too long and that it was time that I take us all to the Poetry Corner.

Oh, I'm gasping for a poem over here. I've been writhing on the ground gasping like a fish for poems. No, and that's part of the reason I did it. Shika-chika. boom boom oh booms when you say that word is it one syllable or two syllable i say two syllables poems poems poems poems yeah it sounds better the way you do it i think some people can get away with poems yeah um but not me no i'm hyper articulate you really are it's what makes you such an effective

podcaster. If I had your articulate nature, I would be, I mean, we would be the biggest fucking thing on the planet. That's probably true. The reviews we get is Griffin. Cool brain, the voice, it needs to be a lot more. Swears?

Swears? In lieu of articulation? I don't think so. Four stars. Here's the thing, though, you can project. You have a volume and a cadence for radio that I is that I'm fucking loud. All that means is that I'm a loud man.

I'm worried that sometimes I bring the party down. No, no. With my kind of slow, deliberate speech. No, but that's like a, you make people hear you. You make people get in there and like hear you, you know? Okay. Just like they said in ragtime, the musical, an American musical. Okay.

My poet this week is Mark Holliday. Cool name. Spelled H-A-L-L-I. Still cool. Still cool. Yeah. I assume that is how I can't imagine any other way of pronouncing it. Halliday?

Maybe holiday and not holiday. It's possible. There's no way to know. There's no way to know. No one could ever know. This is the problem with books people is that they're not out there saying their name. They're writing it. And we don't get the pronunciation from that.

He is, from what I can tell still, teaching at Ohio University, but he was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Oh, wow. Wow. Don't those two usually not get a long? I guess maybe if you're in the poetry track, some of the like sports rivalries are a little bit, I don't know, adult. Yeah. And I mean, here's the thing.

Like if you are a poet and you have an opportunity to teach you to university. I think before you even know what the university is, typically you say yes. Yeah, that's a good point. You can't be like, you know, snobby because of where you were born. I'm projecting a lot onto Mark Halliday right now. Yes. So he got his bachelor's and masters from Brown University and his Ph.D. in English literature from Brandeis in 1983. he has developed a kind of poetry that is often referred to as ultra-talking. Whoa, fuck yeah. Which is something that I think from what I can tell that him and some of his colleagues coined,

which is this idea of kind of heightened speech, that it's like anecdotal. but there's a way to move from anecdote to meditation to comic speculation and then to a joke. So it's conversational, but like the tone is not necessarily conversational, if that makes sense. It doesn't, but I'm excited to hear what one of these sounds like. It is heightened. It's kind of the way of referring to it. Anyway, I wanted to read a poem that was published in 1992 in poetry magazine called Catchup and heaven.

Hell yeah. When you want ketchup on your French fries and you upend the new bottle and nothing comes out and you begin thumping the bottom of the bottle with the heel of your palm till it hurts and the restaurant staff and clientele glance at you with mild disdain for your vulgar and ineffectual stone age behavior, you know that you are not in heaven. Heaven is going to be a place where the ketchup flows freely like milk and and honey in the rivers, and you won't have to stick your knife in and wiggle it vigorously till at last the seduced ketchup consents to blurt out in gobbots much larger than you

intended on the lip of your plate. Heaven will in fact be a place where you don't even need ketchup because the French fries will already be somehow sufficiently flavorful and interesting in their own right. Or come to think of it, you won't even want French fries at all. In fact, you won't even remember what a French fry was because you'll be so happy eating just ice cream with angels who kiss you so gently and humorously but also intensely till your whole body becomes a pure violin of pleasure. Another thing about heaven, it will be a place where you only need to give one example to make a point. One example will be plenty if it is a good, vivid example, a bright sanguine example. And if some other angel provides two examples or ten, it won't be any kind of victory for him or her.

Because all heaven will know that your one example said all there really was to say. As a result, heaven will be a bit quieter than here, and the books will be shorter. That's one of the funnier poems you've ever read on this show. Isn't that delightful? It's really delightful. Do you know what it reminds? First of all, yes, okay, that is indeed ultra-turbo. ultra turbo talking

talking turbo tournament edition also it kind of reminded me of deep thoughts a little bit some of that was maybe the way I was reading it too maybe a little bit Jack Handy

like I enjoyed that quite a bit yeah he was influenced by New York school poets which I talked about on The Poetry Corner like years and years ago but like Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara used to tell kind of like story with their poetry written in very plain English but like in this kind of heightened way

where I felt very vivid and it felt artistic and that and that is kind of that is kind of his whole jam I love that I read this interview with him that he did in 2012 with a W-O-U-B news station the wow They asked him why write poetry. And he said one reason people write poems is the sense that there's something interesting and important going on inside a person that isn't visible or in any way apparent from the outside. Poets have a sense that something is missing and believe a poem might speak to what's missing. Which I like. That's right over the plate, man.

And what I like about that poem is like it's a very real experience. and you kind of follow this thought pattern that he must be having as he is putting the poem together. Yeah. It is just delightful and like very easy to picture and connect to

and a lot of his poems are that way. I think there's also something to be said for a poem or style of poetry that is that like accessible. Yeah. Like I feel like even if you don't have a podcast where your wife comes and teaches you about poets and poetry frequently.

Like anyone could hear that poem and be a little bit delighted by it and get it and understand it. And I think that that is, I think it's really rad to have a poem like that, that hits that, that humorously. So his last book of poetry actually came out in 2018. It was called Losers Dream On. But he has a book that just came out in 2025 called Living Name, which is, essays on American poets.

Hell yeah. So if you're somebody that's like, I liked that man, and I would like to hear what he thinks about poetry, that is a place that you can go to hear him talk about different poets. He talks about Kenneth Koch, as I mentioned. Robert Pinsky is another person I've talked about. Tony Hoagland is another poet I've talked about on this show. He's hit a lot of my favorite poems in this book of essays. So yeah, I would recommend check him out.

He's got a lot of work on there. He's been publishing books since 1987, so there's a lot out there for you to find Mark Holiday. Or Halliday. Or Halliday. I mean, in Ohio, it's probably Halliday, right? That was offensive. What you just did?

I actually can't do the... I mean, you're from Missouri. I'm from Missouri. Okay, fine. Yeah, you can do that. I don't know that Ohio has that voice, though. like Ohio is I don't know I can't describe Ohio if I'm honest yeah what is the accent I don't know I don't really think there's a I don't think that they have a just sort of like they definitely do everybody does I'm so inoculated to like I don't know I hear so many oh I lived in Ohio for a while I didn't really there's like the the Wisconsin accent and the kind of like you know upper Michigany accent I don't know about Ohio though I'm too close I'm into too deep. Can I steal you away? Yes.

I've just realized that my segment is going to require a lot of media to be played alongside it during the segment that I'm going to have to hunt down and download and it's going to take a while. But I think it will have been worth it. What are you looking at? Your right foot looks kind of purple and maybe it's because you've been sitting on it. Okay. I'll put my I'll put my nasty feet. I was worried about your foot. It looked like it had lost circulation for a long time. I mean, maybe it has.

It's cold in here. Sometimes my feet turn purple. It's not like, you don't have to get all Dr. House on me. You know what I mean? Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Some people in history thought purple was a very noble color. And they would look at the feet of someone who would turn purple because he was sitting on his feet and it was cold in his office. And they would say, that man must be the king or emperor. I want to talk about startup sounds. Oh. Gus is the inspiration for this. He watches a lot of videos of memes. Folks, you've never met a four-year-old who thinks 6-7 is as delightful as our 4-year-old.

He just really discovered it this week. He's kind of danced around 6-7, but this is the week where he really delights in it. Yes. But another thing that he gets into, I would say maybe every 15 minutes or so. when he is on his iPad watching YouTube kid's stuff is the GameCube startup sound effect

and the internet really really super duper loves that track and every time I hear about it I don't know it's gotten me thinking about how much of my brain real estate is occupied by startup sounds for different video game consoles

and computers and other like kind of pieces of electronics and how like wild it is that it's still pretty standard for these consumer electronics products to have like a little jingle that they play every time you turn on. Yeah, I never thought about that. But it's true. And it's the kind of thing that if I had to like play a game and identify different startup sounds from the 90s, I could probably do a pretty good job. Absolutely.

I think I think anyone could. Even if you, you didn't like grow up playing a bunch of video game stuff. But like there's certain ones, I think maybe the most iconic video game startup sounds. of all time is just the original Game Boy. You turn it on, that Nintendo logo scrolls down from the top. And when it hits the middle of the screen, it plays this like C-to-C octave step of

and that's all you get. The Game Boy Advance has this jazzy little B-flat Major 13 sort of like, that feels like, oh, you're opening a magic portal into Game Boy Land. I don't think

the Sega Genesis had a, like, console-level startup sound, but every Sega game obviously had the... Sega! That's really, really good. And perfectly in key. Thank you. That's an E-flat major to C major step. It's just a classic sort of funky little transition.

The PlayStation era, I think you completely missed out on. Yeah, but they have these insane sort of cinematic... It almost reminds me of the... the Dolby kind of like like it comes at you with this like fourth interval chords that are just sort of like huge and symphonic

and both the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 they would play these huge symphonic chords that would just come at you and then this thing would just come at you and then this thing would pause. and then it would play a little resolving chord when the disc loaded. But a lot of the times,

if the disc got too scratched up, it wouldn't load. And so you wouldn't hear that second sort of resolution chord that's so, like, pleasant. So it forms this weird Pavlov's dog effect in your head where you hear this little music thing resolve and you're like, oh, thank Christ,

my copy of Burnout Three takedown still works even though, you know, I let my cousin borrow it and he scratched the shit out of it. The GameCube sound really stands out in a crowded field of video game startout sounds because it's just fucking insane. Do you know the one that I'm talking about? I mean, I would if I heard it because I know Gus has definitely watched versions of that intro a lot of times. Just going to play it for you because you'll know it, absolutely. I did not know that until he started watching those videos.

Of course, but man, they really take it. on a fucking walk with the GameCube startup sound. It's so confusing. I found a YouTube creator who does, like, piano sort of, you know, translations of weird stuff. It is five segments, this little startup sound for the GameCube. There's this run of fourth intervals, which is, like, kind of, like, weird and unsatisfying. And then there's another one that has, like, a little Suss 4 sound. And then there's one where all the notes are like,

a semi-tone apart, so it sounds really discordant and, like, bad. And then it has this little chromatic walkdown, like, be-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-b-b-b-b-b-b-b. And then it hits you with this weird C-major over B-flat sound that's just like nothing. Like, it's not like how you end the, it's not, say, G-Gh. And you're like, oh, thank God, they got me home on the G. GameCube ends on a, boh! Like this fucking really super duper-duper-duber-confusing sound.

It's so insane. And a fun fact, I didn't know this. actually, until I was researching this, when you start up the GameCube, if you hold in one of the triggers on the controller, when you turn it on, it plays this weird, squeaky sound effect variation on it. And then if you have four controllers

and hold in all the triggers, it plays this, like, Tycho drumbeat version of it, like little Easter eggs. I love that. shit um one of my favorite sort of like not video game startup sounds is the mac startup sound are you familiar with that one with the the chime or bong yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah boom that's all it is is it a it's a single right now it's a deep f major chord uh it has been other things over they've sort of like tweaked it and modulated it over like different

mac updates uh it was originally made on an old core Forg synthesizer, there's a bit of a fun history to it. On older Macs, the chime that would play on startup was like really high. It was like this really tinny tritone C chord that was like a little bit grading. And because people would usually hear that sound after their computer crashed and they restarted it, it formed this like loop of people hating that sound a lot because it meant like, oh, you've just lost progress on whatever thing you were just working on. But... And so there was a sound designer at Apple named Jim Reeks, who, I think in, like, the late 80s

was coming up with a replacement sound, put it in late in development, so it couldn't be, like, reviewed and, like, marked up, just kind of, like, snuck it in at the last moment. And what he created was this, what we know is, like, the modern Mac startup sound. It was a C chord back then. And the inspiration for it, it's fun if you ever go back and listen to it. Are you familiar with the Beatles song A Day in the Life? Yeah. It's insane.

Like it's a weird, wild, really, really chaotic, like build up, build up, build up, build up. And then it ends with this single sort of nice resolving court. It's almost exactly, like it's almost exactly the Mac startups. I can hear it now that you're saying that. I just like how that kind of like snuck into the Mac legacy because of this dude who just thought that the other sound was annoying. With Big Sur, I believe, is the most recent Mac patch. Now it's a F-sharp.

I just, there's nothing I don't love about this concept of the startup sound. First of all, like, the nostalgia is pretty rich for me just because the number of times I turned on a game console in my youth and heard one of these sounds. It's like, it's quite potent, this nostalgia play. But also, like, I'm obsessed with this idea that, like, this was someone. It was someone's job. It was some composer's job to make this. And most of the time, it probably went through a lot of testing and feedback. And it's a thing that the user is going to like experience a lot. So they want to make sure that it hits just right. And even though that's true, the person who made the GameCube startup sound like still got that in there. Like no, no, no, trust me. I know it sounds fucking insane. But like people are really going to vibe on this. I like to think there was a bunch of options on that one. And they were all very simple, like one. Yeah, yeah.

And then there was this decision of like, I'm going to put in this really crazy option. Yeah. And they're going to be so entranced by it. Yeah. That they will choose it immediately. When we had finished filming the Mbim Bam TV show, we needed a, like a, I forget the name for it, like a tag for the, you know, for your production company. And for us, you know, we put big giant head on there. So there's just a simple BGH, like animation logo.

And I was asked to like write the. sound behind it and it was very fun uh doing that not obviously on the level of something where you know they're going to hear it at the start of every time they sorry i put my purple foot um i just i don't know i think it's really really this interesting sort of uh use case for music composition skills uh and obviously there's a lot of other disciplines that go into it but um yeah just the game queue one really really got me thinking because can you remind me and or tell me for the first time what like the GameCube was when and what was on it so the GameCube would have been early 2000s uh it didn't really make a splash the GameCube was the last Nintendo console

before the Wii which like really fucking set there like they had handheld shit obviously the Game Boy Advance and DS and stuff um I think the DS was 2006 Game Boy Advance would have been earlier than that I'm not exactly sure it was a short generation there were not a ton games for it. Probably none that you would actually know by out of hand, which is probably wedding. So they put all that work into that like little startup sound. Yes, but there's a lot of nostalgia for the GameCube.

I've been messing around with these retro handhelds a lot lately. And Gabe UGabes are something that I've been coming back to a lot because I didn't play a ton of them because it was sort of a, I don't know, it sort of petered out kind of fast. I realize there's probably a lot of GameCube heads out there that are going to be set. Yeah, I just have to imagine that like when they put that together, it was supposed to be representative of this like complicated, advanced gaming system. The opposite, the complete polar opposite. It was going up against like the PS2 and the Xbox, which were very much more like, you know, the appearance of being the more powerful, more adult consoles. Most like third party developers were not releasing their games on GameCube just because it was like a different standard than. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of history there.

But no, I think GameCube, it was a cube. So it was like whimsical. It was a tiny little cube with a handle, as if to say, like, you take it with you wherever you want to go, which obviously. Like a little briefcase. Yeah, which is, you know, they got back there eventually. But, yeah, that's the. That is whimsical. Okay.

So now I'm seeing it more as whimsical and less is, like, dramatic. No, it's extremely whimsical. If you could hear these bonus versions, you'd be like, wow, that's whimsical as hell. Do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Amity says, My Small Wonder is getting to share my special interest game with my partner. We moved in together, and I love collecting magic cards and building commander decks.

My partner was interested, and over the last year, I've been teaching them. Now we collect trade and play nerd cards together in our free time, and it's magical to share a hobby with them in this forever slumber party life we live. That is obviously the most beautiful love of all, and it's happening to you, and congratulations. This is not my way of sort of back. You're giving me a phase, like, are you trying to backdoor, like, get you into getting, like, super into magic cards? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I was waiting, honestly.

I don't have it. I don't think I have it in me to do that. I don't think I have it in me to. Because you have purchased some. I purchased them as sort of collector. I mean, there's the Final Fantasy Magic, the Gathering set. And, like, that's crazy that those two brands are doing fucking anything together. But it's still in the box.

I don't, I don't know that I could. I don't know that I could. part of my lifestyle. I do like playing it occasionally. Yeah, I like thinking about a future time when we have a lot of availability in our lives. Hell yeah. And we decide this is something we're going to do together. Yes. This is unconventional, but I just want to say a blanket, huge thanks to all the small wonder submissions we got from everyone. Again, it's wonderful podcast at gmail.com. Just a lot of people sending in their tips on how to crack open a hard boiled egg. No joke, 30 emails. emails from people. I should have known. I should have known when I introduced that idea as a small wonder. Yeah. That I was going to get a lot of pro tips. Yeah. And they did. They came through in a major way. I learned a lot. Yeah. So thank you everyone. Thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use 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. Go to Maximumfund.

Orr, check out all the great stuff. They've got going on over there. We got some merch over in the Macroy merch store, a new Death Blart poster, some Candle Nights stuff. up in there. And speaking of candle nights, if you want to come see us in Huntington doing our candle nights spectacular to benefit Harmony House, that's going to be on December 6th,

and you can get tickets at bit.ly slash candle nights 2025. We're all going to be there. We're all going to be there. And all our stuff is over at mackroydot family. We got the pre-order links for the last task graphic novel there and for my Choose Your Own Adventure book. which comes out in March.

So Macroydot family is your destination for all that shit. That's it. Thank you so much for listening. And I'm going to go do my foot soak and get these puppies back in a more neutral, warm hue. Yeah, just like a color that matches the rest of your body. Yeah, no. I think that's totally reasonable and probably good for me. Bye, everyone.

Bye. Please don't send me emails about my feet. Working all day, money won't. Working on. Money won't. Working all. Money won't. Money won't.

Money home. Money home. Working on. Working on. Money home. Hey. Maximum Fun A Worker Own Network

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