Wonderful! - Wonderful! 398: Ba-ba-ba-ba-basketball

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Griffin's favorite overseas musical voicemail! Rachel's favorite paper surprises!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaHarmony House: https://harmonyhousewv.com/

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. This is a podcast where we talk about things that we like that we are into. And we're into... I mean, The holiday spirit.

Yeah. I've been dragging, I've been dragging Griffin over this line in the sand. No, I mean, I'm definitely full of like, you know, the spirit and the holidays and all that. The extent to which you have been really, really banging that big old timpony drum, that big old holly-crusted sort of snare has been really pretty outrageous. I have been examining every quadrant of our house. and thinking about how can I infuse this quadrant with the holiday spirit. True. Sectors, you call them, you call them Joy Sectors, and I'm like, that's crazy.

Yes. Traditionally, it's just like a dining table fireplace situation. This year, I incorporated some hanging decor. Bobbles hither and yawn. Yeah. The halls have been so thoroughly decked. Yeah. You know, I just, I like things to look pretty.

Yeah, sure. For me, I told you this, and you seemed to be. very disappointed. I got to get across the candle nights finish line. You know that that is a big, you know that's the, that's, that's a big deal to me. You're a real mile marker guy. I love a mile marker. Like if you have something in front of something else, you can't think of the next thing until you finish the one in front of it. I am also an anxious stage fright guy, which explains why typically my on stage appearances must be mile markers. Can I ask you like, what shows have you seen at the Keith Alby? I mean, not a ton. So Cannellites is.

this Saturday, December 6th at the Keith Albee Theater in Huntington, West Virginia. You can still get tickets over at bit.ly slash candle nights 2025. You can also get the video on demand streaming tickets, which we're going to put up on December 19th and going to be in the live chat when that premieres on that day. But Keith Alby has been in various sort of states of use, like my entire life. And it has been undergoing renovations for a very long time. This show is going to be the first show that the Keith Albee is putting on since the renovations have completed. You did do an episode of Mbim Bam there, right?

We did do an episode of Mbim Bam there where we met up with the Blues Club and we explored. And most of that didn't make any of the episode. There was a great bit where I pretended to be, I think, Taft and I got stuck in a toilet and yelled at my brothers about my goiters. And that was good stuff and it didn't make the episode. But it was not like, it wasn't open and running stuff. This is the one where you talk about the tunnels, right? That's the tunnels are there. Yeah.

That's where the Justin McElroy meme, right? It's trash that was there too. Yeah. It's an incredible, beautiful wonder theater. One of, you know, a handful of surviving wonder theaters across the country. And I am so stoked and so scared. And also apparently nervous, too. This is your home turf, dude.

you've got this. That actually makes it worse. I can bomb in Biloxi and they won't. I did get nervous in St. Louis this last time because I casually invited every friend I had in St. Louis and literally every friend showed up. And that was not what I was expecting. No, not at all. Do you have any small wonders? I got Little Sun a squishy advent calendar. I love these Advent calendars. I had had the good thought that I almost never have, which is around. Thanksgiving, I realized, you know what, I should go ahead and get those Advent calendars now, so I get here in time. And literally both of them arrived just barely before December 1st. Yeah. And a little son wanted a squishy advent calendar where each day is a squishy. And I noticed he's already opened tomorrow's. Yeah. Oh, really? Diddy? Somebody must have gotten there. Yikes. So that might be a problem for us tomorrow. But we're just always going to be one day. These little squishy guys. Love them They're remarkable Yeah Henry got a dope

A little robot toy one Those stick bots Those are need to I can I Sorry I just want to make sure That everybody knows Henry didn't pick it out

I did the research And the work And I don't want that Oh yeah Overlooked No you crushed it You smashed it babe Yes that's why

It's my wonder What's yours I'm going to Mine is also Small Sun related He has been very into drums and drumming and I showed him garage band on the iPad and he is in love with that and was put together a song that sounded like scary monster music that was pretty convincing

and good but then also wanted me to keep adding more and more drops to it not really understanding like what that means it's such an abstract concept it's not like there's a button I can press to add a drop that is like a pretty advanced musical concept where there has to be a sort of build And there has to be a sort of break, and there has to be a sort of payoff. He was trying to explain garage band to me because before you woke up this morning, he wanted me to add a drop. And I just had to keep telling him, I understand you've shown me where all the buttons are. Yeah. I still don't know how to create a drop.

This song is 24 measures long. And there's about five drops in it. Quite dense with drops. But, yeah, it's been a lot of fun just messing around on there with him. And I've been busting out some of my old, like, teenage engineering sequencers. and he's been having fun with those, even though a little bit complicated. Both of our sons are, they're real makers.

They're makers. And it's one of the proudest things for us, for sure. My topic this week is also a celebration of creativity. This is one of the ones that Griffin had to send me beforehand, so he could make sure that I fully appreciate it in a case. It's a broad sort of thing, but I'm going to focus in specifically on a video. The video is three minutes and 48.

seconds long. And it is that video of John Tesh explaining how he wrote the NBA on NBC theme song, which is titled Round Ball Rock, which is one of the all-time greatest titles for, like, there's so much about it that's like amazing. There's so much about this. John Tesh's whole style on the stage. The fact that he wrote the basketball theme song is amazing. The fact that called it round ball rock like that he gave it a name is so amazing it makes me wonder if there was already a basketball rock or he didn't want a pigeonhole himself into one sport oh wow if baseball wants to use this or soccer those are also those are round balls yeah for sure uh if you don't know what the fuck i'm talking about um which is entirely likely uh if you weren't you know alive in

1990. I'll break it down sort of beat by beat. John Tesh was originally a radio and TV presenter. He was the co-host of Entertainment Tonight for a decade. With Mary Hart. From 1986 to 1996. That was his job. And he was successful at it, which evidenced by the fact that he co-hosted entertainment tonight. He also, his real passion was music, which is evidenced by the fact that he re-orchestrated the Entertainment Tonight theme song two times during his tenure there in 1990 and 1994, which is kind of amazing. So in 87, while he was fully employed by Entertainment Tonight, he had this deep desire to perform on stage with other musicians. So he went to his pal Yanni and said, hey, Yanni, I play the keyboard pretty good. Do you need a keyboardist?

And Yanni was like, hell yeah, dude, let's roll. Tell people who Yanni is. Yonnie, gosh, Yonni was a, I said Yonni was, because I don't know if Yonni's still around. Yonni is still around, 71 years old. He is a, I mean. How do you classify the type of music? New age, contemporary kind of stuff, fusion. It's kind of a big punchline for a while in the late 90s, like people love to kind

of poke fun at that like genre of music. Super duper doper, duper 90s music. using, like, instruments from all over the world and also sort of, like, keyboard synthesizers and was a sort of multicultural sort of recording artist type guy. John Tesh was like, let me get up on that. Yanni was like, yes, yes. So he went on tour, Yanni's first tour, he was the keyboardist for them, just for one short run, 12 shows across the country.

1990 was a very busy year for John Tesh. while he was still at Entertainment Tonight, where he did the fucking theme song. He also wrote the theme song to Bobby's World. And I don't know if you're familiar with that. I didn't know that. It's like this insane sort of playful circus nightmare. And it is kind of amazing that John Tesh,

host of Entertainment Tonight, wrote that. But his highest profile gig, he was asked to write the theme song for NBA on NBC. and that is round ball rock. And you might actually know the song, even if you are not a basketball fan or were not a basketball fan in the 90s. NBC stopped carrying NBA games in 2002,

but they continued to use it for their other sports coverage, specifically the Olympics. The Olympics, it got quite a bit of playtime. And I'm going to play a clip from it here in just a second when we get to the specific video I'm talking about. This video I'm discussing today. It's a clip from John Tesh's performance at the Red Rock's amphitheater, which is already fucking amazing.

He's already incredible conceptually. He is performing to a sold-out crowd at Red Rocks, and he's telling the story of Roundball Rock, and that story is he was traveling with his wife in Europe. He had been asked to write this theme song for the NBA on NBC specifically. He had no access to a piano. He was, I imagine, writing the URail backpack. a romantic voyage with his bride. Okay.

And he had the idea for the hook for Round Ball Rock. Uh-huh. And so what he did was he called his home answering machine, and he left himself a message that would change sports history forever. On stage at Red Rocks, at this show, he pulls out the answering machine, and he plays the message, which I would like to play right now. Hi. This is a message for me about the NBA theme. Here's an idea.

It goes like this. And while the audience is like cheering for that, he puts a hand up to silence them and starts air drumming a pretend basketball to like a kick drumbeat before he just dashes behind his keyboard and just fucking lays into it. Yeah. It's just a wild watch a wild watch this video, because it's just a wild watch this video because it's like a little story time. the NBA on NBC theme song Round Ball Rock with a full orchestra playing parts of the song that I've never heard before because you really pretty much only hear like the beginning. You don't hear like, you know, the entire Odyssey.

You don't see like the two dudes who come out. One is wearing like a bright red sequin vest and the other one is wearing like a Sergeant Pepper's epauletted jacket. He's playing a violin. and the other guy's playing a guitar and they're doing like dueling solos back and forth to each other. John Tesh is dressed in like

full 90s ass regalia. He looks like a blackjack dealer. And he's just like shredding on the piano just so fucking into it, kind of like guiding the band. And after the song, full standing ovation. Because how could you not?

It's just an incredible, it's an incredible little time capsule. It is, there's like a form of creative transparency. that lets you sort of feel like you have really stepped inside of the artist's mind to see like what's going on in there. And this is, I mean, what he did really is what now has become like voice memos. Right.

Like this idea of like, I have an idea for a beat. I need to record it down somewhere. I've done this. I used to do this a lot when I was, you know, making a lot of music for Taz back when I had all the time in the world. And I would leave a little voice memos like on my phone of like a melody or something, which again, Gus dug up when he. got around to making music in the voice memos app of the iPad, which he found very

enjoyable. But like, I don't know, John Tesh playing a voicemail, he left for himself scatting the NBA theme, presumably in like a European hotel room while his wife nodded approvingly, is like, primo shit that I do love to imagine. And it's like sort of the full package artistic dream of you had a notion, you captured the notion before it flitted away from your fingertips and then you created one of the most memorable sort of athletic songs of all time. I wish we had like all the other answering machine recordings where he like stumbled and was like, nope, that's not it. That's we wish you a Merry Christmas. Uh-oh. I only hear him like buzzed off his ass like got the Bobby's World Jam.

Really, really good stuff. The video is just three minutes and 48 seconds of a dude who who is very passionate about his work. And his work is New Age rock musical theme songs. And I'm just absolutely here for it. Plus, like, you get the reference to the incredible S&L sketch where John Tesh played by Jason Sadekis. And his, I imagine, fictional brother Dave Tesh, played by Tim Robinson, perform for the NBA, like, exesics while Tim Robinson's while Tim Robinson's. things, but, blah, blah, basketball, give me, give me, give me the ball, because I'm going to dunk it.

I've had that stuck in my head all day. Oh, yeah, me too, in a major way. That's very good. I don't think it's as good as John Tesh playing his voicemail for the sold-out round rock's audience. But you can find that, you can Google that clip, and you will find it, and you will be transformed by it and inspired by it. Can I steal you away?

Yes. What have you got? Okay, this is a topic that is going to evolve because as I began researching it, I became fascinated with the, like, the historical figures that were involved in it. Okay. So, like, it kind of starts out, like, this is the thing I like, but then you learn about some people associated with it, and then that's, like, all I wanted to research. Okay. So I started with paper snowflakes. Okay.

Because part of my holiday decor this year was to kind of buy large versions of these snowflakes to hang in our kitchen. Right. And there's nothing more delightful as a craft than folding up paper and then kind of making random cuts in it and then unfolding it and seeing this kind of beautiful display that is usually for me anyway, a total surprise. yeah um and or accidentally cutting the wrong spot and then having four snowflakes i would usually create a sort of septagon with a big kind of hole in the middle of it and that's not really that's not anything but it's like it's just always impressive i i can't entirely explain it i think it's the surprise element sure it's the unfolding and then seeing what you get my mind is so bad at spatial reasoning.

And I think this is the skill that is sort of mostly employed when creating paper snowflakes. I have a very difficult time sort of envisioning what this thing is going to look like when I snip into. Yeah. Oh, 100%. So there's kind of three characters I want to talk about in the story. First is Francis Chikering, who published an illustrated volume of prose and poetry that included paper cutouts of snowflakes. The book was called Cloud Crystals,

A Snowflake Album. And what happened was she accidentally got a kind of a close look at a snowflake and became totally fascinated with it. And then used dark fur cloth or dark fur or cloth to catch the snowflakes and then a strong magnifying glass. And then she would quickly cut them out of paper from memory. Whoa, that's wild. And put them in a book?

Yes. So this book that she created has just dozens of different kinds of snowflakes in it. She shared them with a scientist at Harvard University who advised her to measure the air temperature and other conditions as she examined the snowflakes. And that she found that snowflakes that fall on warmer humid days have more rounded angles than snowflakes that fall on cooler dry days. That's great. So she published her observations, a copy of this is apparently at the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Maryland. That's amazing. Okay.

So that's how, like somebody said, like, I'm going to turn a piece of paper into a snowflake. Right. How it really became popularized is two women that really were kind of instrumental in bringing origami to the United States. Okay. Um, first is, uh, Lillian Vorehouse, um, who, uh, became Lillian Vorhaus Oppenheimer, no relation. Okay. Um, gonna say that is a wild dynamic. I checked on that one.

What did you do today? Well, we cracked the paper snowplake thing. What about you? Well, made a, made a, made a, made a monster out of men with the bomb. Uh, so she became interested in. this kind of recreationally, and then had a friend who was a therapist at Bellevue Hospital who learned from Lillian and started teaching origami to those who were interested from groups of the Red Cross, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Nursing Home Residence.

Oppenheimer was friends with a concert pianist at the time who knew a journalist at the New York Times. And so Oppenheimer had kind of sent some articles and crafts that she had developed around paper folding. And then the New York Times printed a column on her. Okay. Which outlined the history of origami and describes some of her favorite action models, including the flapping bird, which is the one I love flapping bird. God, I'd love to know how to do one origami. I know that there's probably people who are like... I know, we've got to get in there. Again, the spatial sort of...

My dad used to know how to make the crane, the flapping bird, and then a little balloon out of paper. Oh, wow. And I just, as a kid, it was just like totally fascinating. Absolutely. So, because of that article, she was interviewed on the Tonight Show with Jack Parr at the time, which really popularized it. And then all of a sudden, they're getting all these demands.

from people who want to have lessons. And she is informing an instruction group that she calls the origami center. The first meeting took place at the Japan Society in New York in 1958, which is where Florence Temko learned all about origami and origami instruction. Apparently, she had met Oppenheimer in the hospital while their husbands were both there and they became friends. And so then she went to Oppenheimer's class and became kind of another origami pioneer. That's great. I will say another interesting thing before we move away from Oppenheimer. As she became older and was in her second marriage, she became friend with the

puppeteer Sherry Lewis, who inspired her to take up amateur ventriloquism and puppetry. Oppenheimer went on to hold frequent puppetry meetings in her apartment where she built a puppet theater. She was a founding member of the Puppetry Guild of Greater New York. Just like a lot of interest, it sounds like, a person with a lot of stuff going on. You can see how like at first I was like, oh, cool, folding paper and snowflakes. And then I was like, wait, tell me more about these ladies. Yeah.

Okay, so Florence Temko learns origami offers to give a talk in New York. Jersey, she only expected six to eight people, but 48 showed up. And so she's like building kind of her reputation while deciding to take a job as a travel agent. So this opened up the possibility of her visiting other countries at 75% discount. And she went on to go to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bangkok, Bangkok, Singapore, Switzerland, Spain. And on all those trips, she is

like visiting with paper folding experts. That's amazing. Yeah. She first went to Japan in 1964, and then again in 1977. And she was kind of the first person for the purposes of paper folding to visit Japan since Lillian Oppenheimer visited

in 1959. Carrying the torch. Carrying the torch. So she decides, I'm going to do a book on paper folding. She submits it to 30 different publishers. Platt and Monk, which was one of the publishers, didn't want to publish that book, but asked her to publish a book on paper cutting. Okay.

Which she... A related discipline. Yeah, which she decided to call Kirogami, not realizing that Kirogami was already a Japanese word. Curie is to cut and Kami is from paper. Anyway, so she creates this book that sold 600,000 copies, but unfortunately she had transferred the copyright to the publishers for a fixed payment and did not receive any royalties from this book. She goes on to write a bunch of other books, party fun with origami. Yes. Ultimately publishing 80 books.

Jesus Christ. She demonstrates origami with Steve Allen on television. She goes on to publish a book in 1977 called The Magic of Kirogami, which she wrote jointly with Toshi Takahama, which they collaborated on 10,000 miles apart via mail. Yeah, I was going to say, this is presumed. And that's, I mean, that's like, that's incredible. Those, like, those ladies are kind of the big reason,

not only that we like know a lot about snowflakes, but also that we know a lot about paper folding and paper cutting. So yeah, so like cool paper snowflakes, but all of a sudden I found like these incredible people who had like really invested spirit and like enthusiasm for future. Yeah, that's super neat. I love that. Hey, do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Ash says, my small wonder is that my neighbors are selling local honey out of a cute little wooden box they mounted on the tree in their front yard. It's got a slot to deposit. closet cash and a QR code to use Venmo to pay all on an honor system. I bought a mason jar's worth of honey the day it went up.

It feels so quaint and idyllic and it makes me smile every time I see it. And they sent a picture of the little honey box. I love that so much. It's so cute. It's like a tiny library, but for honey and you pay for the honey and you buy the honey. Look at this big, beautiful mason jar. Oh, that's a lot of honey. You say that.

We'd go through one of those. Yeah, we're railing a honey these days. Yeah, I'm a real honey boy. I drink so much tea. I put honey and our boys need it for their poor, you know, bronchitis and what have you. How about this one from Erica, who says, my small wonder this week and for all the cold snowy weather months is getting to end conversations with the phrase, stay warm out there. You can say it to pretty much anyone because we all know it's cold and it feels like sending someone a little wish for their comfort and happiness. The same with its variations, stay safe, stay warm, when roads get icy and travel can get treacherous. It's just a nice little seasonal way of showing others you care. Stay warm out there.

Thanks, Erica. You too. I do love that. It feels like a little bit more personal, I guess, than like, you know, see. It's a good well wish that isn't like, you know, nosy or infantilizing. It makes me like envision like somebody bundled up going into like a nice coffee shop. Oh, yeah. And like purchasing a cup of coffee and then on their way out the door.

or hearing stay warm out there. It feels very charming. Make me think of the Campbell soup where the snowman melts. Oh, God, I love that one. Didn't you do that as a segment for this show? I feel like I've heard you talk at length about the Campbell soup commercial.

No, I don't think so. Where the kid starts as a snowman and then drinks the soup and then turns into a video. I mean, I've definitely, I talked about like the tasters choice and like the folder's commercials. The weird Folgers ad.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, thanks for listening to our show. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for our things. song Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that song in the episode description. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go to maximum fun.org. Check out all the stuff they've got going on over there. No matter what you're into, they'll have something for you.

I guarantee it. Again, one last time, we are performing the Candle Nights Live Spectacular in my hometown of Huntington, West Virginia on Saturday, December 6th. We hope you will come out and see us. It's going to be... It's going to be games and skits. Special appearances. We're doing bits from, from Clubhouse. We'll do a little bit of a bim-bam stuff. There's a lot of, there's music and there's a whole bunch of stuff. And all of the proceeds for that go to Harmony House, which is an amazing organization in Huntington that's working to end homelessness in the area with a bunch of supportive services.

And they, you know, they really need the help. If you can't come to the show, we're going to be putting up a video of it on December 19th. that'll be available on demand for a while. You can get tickets for that too, all over at bit.ly slash candle nights 2025. A new merch up in the merch store at mackroymerch.com, including candle knight's ornaments, some new stuff for Tell Death Dew Us Blart,

which has also gone up recently. And if you are a Monster Factory fan, we've also put up the final episode of our return to the Final Pam mini series that is available now. YouTube channel. It makes me feel like it's like a PBS, like masterpiece theater. It is very much. We did get Laura Lenny to introduce every episode. And it was very, very expensive. So check all that stuff out. And stay warm out there. We'll check you next time. But maybe that could be your new sign off. But then like in the summer, in the summertime, we'd be like stay. I mean, it would have to be cool, right? Yeah. And that's like, I don't know. I don't want to be responsible for people's sort of body temperature regulation. You know, we can. never find a sign off right you're right this the show is too general purpose sort of with the topics there's it's impossible to really dial in on something so stay warm out there bye

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