Wonderful! - Wonderful! 434: We're Definitely Not Tiggers

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Griffin's up-and-coming piano-gigging musical artist! Rachel's favorite purehearted advertisment lore!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaMidwest Food Bank: https://midwestfoodbank.org/disaster-relief/ Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinwonderful

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. This is wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. This is a podcast where we talk about things we like that's good that we're into. A ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. It's not the one that you do with your brothers. Nope.

It's not the one with you do your brothers and dad. Those ain't rays of sunshine. It's not the one that you do with Russ and Chris. That one's kind of a ray of sunshine. I'm telling you this because you've done a lot of podcasts today and I want to make sure that you know what you're doing right. Oh, right. Is this the one where dad asks trivia questions about Disney World? A parky barely ever, no, that's air quality from Clubhouse. You're right. That's a different thing entirely. No, this is wonderful. It's a podcast where we talk about things we like. That's good

that we're into. And I could record a million podcasts and still have room for wonderful. It's so fun to do this program. All the other ones do feel like work a little bit. And sometimes when I'm in the trenches on this one. Yeah. I'm having to learn all about the history and politics of the Teenage Ninja Turtles, for example. Yeah. I haven't done the Toidels.

But if I did, that part's work, but then this part's great. We should have done the turtles by now. It does seem like we should have done the toydoll. I do think you actually did the songs that could be sung or words that could be sung for the theme song of Teenage Genia Turtles. Yeah. I love that we've done that, but not the core group of dudes. on their own. Anyway, we talk about things we like that's good that we're into. That's my third time, I think, saying that, do you have any small wonders? I'm just going to say, and we've referenced this before, but the approximately two hours that we have together after our children go to bed.

So, choice? I look forward to it a lot. Sweet times. It is something that I think about when I am very worn down. And I think at some point, later tonight, I'm going to get to sit on the couch with Griffin, and we're going to get to watch something together. We drink a tea? We drink a cup of tea. We do drink a tea.

Got a rotation with some new exciting friends mixed in there. Got a pumpkin rubos in the mix. We would love Tiesta tea as a sponsor, by the way. Come on Testa tea. Get at us. I drink so much of your shit. It's crazy. We buy all this loose leaf tea.

So much that there are jars upon jars in our house. Eight jars. Come to my house. I'll give you a different flavor. every day of the week and then some. Yeah. And so I don't imagine they're big on podcast sponsorship. No, they don't need sponsorships because their tea tastes so GD good that everyone already

knows to get it. See, T.S. This is the fucking heat. This is the heat we can bring. We're so good at it, right? I want an award for a different, Joe. But like, together we still kick ass. Yeah.

That's selling shit. So get at us. I'm going to say specifically what we spent our two hours watching. Yesterday Eve, which was the Mexico spin-off of Physical 100, called, I believe, Physical 100, Mexico. Yeah, I was so hesitant with this one. I'm not sure why. I guess I just have such affection for the origed physical 100, that I was concerned, like there's no way another country could live up. No, but it's an incredibly faithful adaptation. Netflix added around the same time, Physical 100, Mexico, and Physical 100, Italy.

We dipped into Mexico because just doing some cursory Googling sounded like the stronger of the two adaptations. And if you haven't heard us talk about it, Physical 100 is a Korean reality competition where 100 people who are athletic in a number of different ways. There's CrossFit folks. There's weightlifters. There's athletes. There's like TikTok fitness influencers.

TikTok fitness influencers. Olympians. Now Hirox is starting to sneak in there. that's sort of a thing. But yeah, man, it's a really, really, I would say the thing, we've only watched one and a half episodes at this point, but it is from a production standpoint,

extremely faithful to the original, which is to say the production value is through the fucking roof. Absolutely. You guys built a whole ziggurat for this show. You're crazy for this one, physical one under Mexico. I love at the beginning

when they all come out and they like see each other and they just share an appreciation for the different people's forms. It just feels, like we're getting let in on a club that we would never be a part of otherwise. It's so fun. I don't really know.

And I did recognize Mistico, famous Mexican wrestler, and I believe AEW contractee for a while. But yeah, man, it's just people doing challenges and trying to outlast each other and getting eliminated. And so far it's been like almost one for one for the first season of Physical 100. They did like an endurance stare challenge And then they did a one-on-one get the ball challenge, which they do every season. That one stresses me out a bit because people do tend to balk into each other quite hard during that. But based on their previews, it also looks like they're doing, you know, move the big thing. I love move the big thing.

Oh, move the big thing is so good. I mean, the teamwork is very nice. I do. I would say my favorite season, if you've never watched it, is Physical Asia, where they had eight different countries from across Asia and Australia and then they were teams competing against each other

and the challenges on that one were so fucking fun so choice so great anyway really really enjoyed the beginning of Physical 100 Mexico excited that we're going to keep watching it although hockey season's starting back up so we are not going to be hurting for TV programs

for quite a while now excited for that I go first this week I'm going to talk about a musical artist I've wanted to talk about for a while now. And today, while researching this musical artist and looking sort of into her work, had a really delightful revelation that I'll talk about. That artist is Jackie Evans. Jackie Evans, relatively new to the scene, Jackie Evans.

Does not have a full-length album out, got a bunch of singles and EPs. She is a New York City-based singer-songwriter and pianist. And like I said, she's just got the one EP out, which contains, both of the songs that I'm going to feature today. Her music is super soulful and catchy. Her voice is very bright and expressive. And when the Algo served up the song that we are about to listen to, I could not get it out of my head.

Here's a little bit of Jackie Evans Leave You. I went and let you put a ribbon on my head. You don't mean. You give me moon and stars. I just wanted to date the bar. You thought my friends loved you. They told you because I'm good to see. I'm wild about this song.

Did you recognize it when I sent it to you? Because this played in the car a whole bunch. Yeah, her voice is so lovely. It's really good. It's on like a sort of Sarah Borellis kind of Carol King kind of level. I know that it's bad form to compare people so directly. She also looks exactly like many driver. circa goodwill hunting era.

Okay, I don't know if I agree with that. But similar. But she has, you know, you know the expression clear as a bell? Sure. I feel like that's really apt for her voice. It's so just flawless. Really fantastic. Remarkable.

Her piano playing is also so good. It's very tight, but also like ragtimey, Billy Jolie, which I mean in a very complimentary way. But there was this undercurrent, listening to this song of this like, you know, funky stuff happening behind it that I couldn't quite put my finger on until I watched the YouTube, like, video performance of the song, which featured Wolfpec band leader, Jack Stratton, also known as Wolfman, uh, on the drums and legendary bassist Joe Dart on the bass. Joe Dart, maybe the most talented living musician, uh, responsible for all the insanely nasty bass riffs in

Wolfpec's, uh, music. Uh, and all of a sudden, those pieces connected and she is a, collaborator, now Jackie Evans with Wolfpec, was on with the two songs I'm talking today. She released it on this EP, but it was also on Wolfman's solo singles that he has put out. Did she play the piano for them? She does, yes. Because there was something about the piano part that once you said that, I was like, oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, so she wrote the song, right, and wrote in and performed it.

But I don't know, it felt so. Once I found out that there was this version that was on Wolfman, which is the solo Wolfpack project of Jack Stratten. It was like, oh yeah, shit, that makes sense. And now they're collaborating and touring and doing music and stuff together. Wolfpack is known for like bringing in vocalists to like participate in the songs that they do.

I can't remember any of the names of the vocalists that they've worked with. But you listen to a Wolfpack album. You hear like five different vocalists throughout the thing. And now I guess she is one of them. And it's just some of my favorite like shit. She's not just in the sort of Wolfpack orbit. but she has also toured with former wonderful featured artist Jensen McCray and Lake Street

Dive. Oh, wow. I know. I bet that's a good fucking show, man. Yeah. There's not a ton I could find about Jackie Evans online. So sort of new is her stuff. So I've had to kind of patch stuff together based off of mostly like bios on concert ticket sale pages.

So she grew up in the Hudson Valley where her mom sort of encouraged her to practice piano fairly tirelessly from age five. But then she attended Sunni New Paltz. What does SUNY stand for? State University of New York. Yes. And she got her BA in musical theater, which like that also was a piece of the puzzle that when I found that out. Like, oh, yeah. Okay. That sort of voice I could see absolutely fitting into a musical theater vibe. She performed in a bunch of different regional productions, but she was also, while doing that, a gig pianist performing in, like, piano bars and theme parks, and also for a while on the Holland America cruise line. And that amount of, like, I don't know, piano gigging, I feel like that's how you get that tight Billy Joel sound.

Yeah, man. Just play in the Ivories as much as you are required on a cruise ship, I imagine you get pretty good at it. Yeah, and having to do a bunch of different kinds of music that you might not otherwise work towards. And then as far as I can tell, she started working with Wolfman, Jack Stratton's solo project earlier this year, performing these two songs that she'd written on the album, the first being Leave You and the other I want to play a bit of now, which is called Sleep for Days, which is just this lovely, like, hypnotic soul song about like taking it easy while visiting your hometown. I'm wild about this one too. I see where the swings used to be everyone. I could not find a ton else about her online. I found exactly one interview that she had done where she talked about her mom sort of encouraging her to play piano.

And that was just about it. So this is real ground floor shit gang. She's got a solo tour coming up starting next month, which I bet is a killer show. It is sold out here in D.C. and in a few other cities as well. So maybe not super ground floor, but pretty close, I will say. But I feel like she's just, she's going to pop off because she's just got a really, really incredible voice and like soulful piano ability and very adept, like, songwriter. I really hope she continues collaborating with Wolfpack because I think that their sounds like a line so, so beautifully.

And yeah, just had to talk about these tracks because they've been getting a lot of playtime. So does she have an album? No, she's got an EP, which has, I think, nine songs on it. The EP is called Most of the Time, dropped earlier this year, I think, in June. So this is fairly recent stuff. And it's important to note there are two versions of both Sleep for Days and Leave You on that album. One is like a more studio cut, and one is her performing with Joe Dart and Wolfman. So you can take your pick and get whatever version of the song you want.

I'd love to hear Joe Dart play the bass guitar. So that's the version I'm going to go with. But they're all great. Anyway, that's it. Can I steal you away? Yes. Okay. I'm so.

Sometimes you send me a video of like the thing you're going to talk about. And then I just look forward to hearing you talk about it so I can learn about it. And I'm so stoked for this one. I want to talk about Tommy Lee Jones reoccur. role as Alien Jones in boss coffee commercials in Japan. Okay, this is interesting. I've never thought it as like a connected universe of him being Alien Jones. Yeah, I mean, there's, from what I can tell, there's like a hundred commercials.

There's like a hundred Tommy Lee Jones boss coffee commercials in Japan. He's been doing this since 2006. Like, it is 20 years of Tommy Lee Jones doing these commercials. Incredible. They're so good. They're so good. I, so I happened upon this because I was thinking about celebrities doing commercials in other countries. Right.

And how delightful it is anytime you discover it because you just feel like this person has been so overexposed. I know everything they've done. And then you get to see this like little bright spot totally out of context in a place you'd never expect it. Right. And you also get to learn like, what does John Sina mean to a different culture? That's exciting for me. I always get excited to learn about that shit. That's a good point. That's a good point.

Why is Tommy Lee Jones so austere in Japan that he can fill this role? He's a great actor. No country for old men, fucking forget about it. Yeah, so I got really curious because when I was researching this, as I mentioned, the commercial started in 2006. And I read an article with kind of the ad man behind Tommy Lee Jones participation in the ads. And I was like wondering kind of how he got picked. And I'll talk about that in a minute.

But he does suggest like Tommy Lee Jones was not particularly well known in Japan in 2006. And I was like, well then why on God's green earth? But he's done a bunch of stuff. And then I had to like kind of ground myself and like what years things came out. Of course, the fugitive was 1993. A while before then. Natural born killers, 1994. And then the Men and Black movies started in 1997.

So I was like, oh, okay. Well, I mean, he's been around. That's like nine years before these commercials. For a while. But apparently, like, he was familiar, but not so recognizable that that would become, like, the whole commercial. Okay. Sure. But I found an interview with Fukasato Shinichi from the Nippon website from 2020.

Fukasato is the man responsible for the series and he has also done commercials for Toyota Georgia coffee which I was not familiar with. No, I don't know that one. Love boss. Holy shit. We could just do a segment on boss coffee. That is my favorite canned coffee on earth.

I know. On a hot day on the streets of Tokyo, you get one out of a machine. God dang. Just make sure you put it in the right trash can. You're going to get it wrong your first few times. That's okay. It's made of a special.

You can find it here. You can. I mean, it has to be kind of like a... And they don't care which trash can you put it in here, baby. I'm just saying, I don't want people to think, like, this doesn't concern me. Because if you have a, like, any kind of Japanese import store in your area, they will most likely have this. Shout out to Tesso Life.

Thank you for your contributions to our family. So the information about this creator is so fascinating in this interview. He talks about kind of his perspective generally, which is like that of an outsider. He said when he did his interview with the agency for this commercial, he said, quote, they asked me why I had applied for the job. So I said, well, I don't really have any friends. So I never know what people around me are thinking. So that's the work I'd like to do at your company, research on what people are really thinking.

Okay. Then he goes on in his book to talk about his childhood. saying, quote, I would stand apart at the park looking on from behind a utility pole, watching the other kids as they galloped in circles around a wisteria trellis or screamed with excitements on the swings. I didn't dislike being an outsider. I never felt lonely. In fact, it was a contented and comfortable time in my life.

Okay. It's just a real pure heart on this man. Yeah, a very, very pure heart. And I can kind of see how this would get you to inventing the Tommy Lee Jones Boss Coffee commercials. He's a lonely character in most out of sorts, I'll say, in most of these advertisements. Yeah. And I mean, Tommy Lee Jones is an actor. Like, you never really think of him as an insider.

Like, he's one of the great, like, character actors, but you don't think, like, oh, this man lives the Hollywood lifestyle. Yeah, sure. Can you explain, like, the tenor of one of these commercials for people who have not seen that? Yeah. So you can find some of these translated on YouTube. So I only had a short assortment to look through. but his character is Alien Jones and he is, the idea is that he is from another planet.

Right. And that he is observing culture and trying to understand the human race through a variety of jobs, like kind of working class jobs. The commercials are like a minute long. 30 seconds. The ones I watched today were half a minute. Yeah. And it's just him doing some kind of task associated with the job and then making some kind of

observation and then at the end he drinks a cup of boss coffee. Sometimes it's so subtle. There's one where he's like a dock worker and someone shows him how to pick up a big heavy box. Yeah. Then he leans down to pick up a similar big heavy box. But then when he stands up, his back leans 180 degrees all the way around back to the floor and then back up real quick. And that's the only supernatural Tommy Lee Jones element of the whole commercial. Yeah.

They make it, they make like he's not wearing any kind of makeup or any kind of. He doesn't have an antennae. Yeah. And he speaks, you know, Japanese. in the commercials, if at all. Sometimes he doesn't speak at all. There's one where he's a stern high school teacher. Yes.

And that's probably my favorite one where he uses his alien powers to, like, create a force field outside the school for the kids who are late or throwing a piece of chalk, like, almost through a kid's head for talking in the middle of class. Yeah, there's one commercial I saw where his neck just gets really long. That's it. And then it goes back to normal size. It's an absurdist, like, vibe that I know, like, I don't know. Japanese commercials tend to get a rap for following. It reminds me very much of like, I don't know, you remember those Skittles commercials where they just like got fucking weird?

Like there was a while where Skittles just got fucking weird. It's like that vibe where it's not played for like, hey, I'm being crazy over here. It's just like, did he just for just like a second? He just shot a laser out of his head. What? One of my favorite ones, I don't know if you watch the one, but he's like member of a crew building a bridge. I didn't see that one now.

And the voiceover says, when the inhabitants of this planet see a river, they build a bridge. When they see a mountain, they dig a tunnel. Where could they be in such a hurry to get to? And then after like Tommy Lee Jones, like experiences the like blasting away the rock to join two sides of the tunnel, the voiceover says, it must be admitted that the sense of accomplishment you get from work on this planet can be habit forming. And he just drink some coffee. That's fucking great boss coffee. But they like show like little tears in his eyes.

When they like when they blast through the hole like they cut to Tommy Lee Jones and his his eyes are wet. But the idea behind casting him. I just had to Google what your lost in translation came out. Yeah. I know that there's a thing of like American superstars starting in Japanese that far outdates Sophia Coppola's work. Yes. I don't know, he fills a space in my mind that I think Bill Murray's character kind of occupied in that film. Oh yeah, definitely.

But it was 2003. It was before these. Yeah, so the creator, Fukasato said, I asked myself a question, what's the most depressing thing you see on television? The answer was obvious. The news, I mean, it's just bad news everywhere you look. Politics is hopeless. The environment's a mess. They collect all these bleak, depressing items.

And then he said, so I asked myself, what's the opposite? of that, what would make people feel better about their lives, which is he came up with this idea of an alien, kind of observing and making people, you know, feel more admiration for the work that is happening around them. That's so beautiful. I know. I know. And so Tommy Lee Jones, you know, they make it sound in the article like he was just approached directly. Yeah. because there was just this suggestion that he could kind of represent this like alien character and that he would be in a culture outside of his own, but that he has this very kind of like stoic, kind of like straight face that he's known for.

Yeah. But also very expressive that brings this kind of like, I don't know, serious energy to it, which makes it less goofy and more like, like, oh, wow, this alien guy is really, he's learning a lot. about the human race right now. I truly thought it was because his kind of like stoic, where he's got, he just kind of seems like he's lost in thought, does kind of look like the boss coffee logo guy. Like I thought for a second that he was supposed to be playing the boss coffee logo guy. In the interview, Fukasato said, when this started, he was not yet a universally recognizable

will figure in Japan and that he was impressed with the ability to present a straight face and convincingly alien expression of bemusement. He was hired almost immediately and soon his face was familiar to millions of people. Do they batch shoot these things or is he going to Japan like every few weeks it seems like with the number of these commercials that have been created since 2006? Yeah. I mean, they make it sound like he goes to Japan all the time. I was reading some, I mean, kind of unsubstantiated articles suggesting, like, that when he does press tours, like Japan is the only international country he goes to anymore.

I bet you he knows all the spots. I bet you he's got a place outside the city that you can, I would love to go. Yeah, I mean, he's spoken very favorably about Japan and really enjoys being there. And then, yeah, he plays a taxi driver, a construction worker, a sumo referee. You know, he works at restaurants and as a florist and you just see him kind of doing all these different jobs. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. You can find some of them on YouTube.

Not all of them are translated. But they're very, very short and they're just kind of delightful. It just feels like a very understated way to present, you know, a product that isn't like. Isn't advertising the like beverage itself? Yeah. Yeah, that was kind of the suggestion in this interview I read of like usually when advertisers promote a product, they talk about what problem the product is solving. And this is just like a like, hey, this is going to be part of your life.

This is just a thing that you're going to do. And it doesn't necessarily change anything or do anything different than any other thing. I love it. The vibe is the vibes off the charts. You got to watch these commercials. Do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Stephanie says my small wonder is table pancakes. I always want a sweet brunch time plate, whether a pancake or french toast or waffle, but I know I'll feel sick if I only eat a pancake, etc. I love when I go out for brunch with like-minded friends and we can share a pancake for the perfect amount of desserty breakfast food while also eating responsibly filling savory meal beforehand. Oh, that's so smart. That's really smart table pancakes. Because I don't know that I've ever finished a plate of pancakes. At a restaurant, especially when they give you three, a stack of three. And they're giant. They're like the size of the plate. What am I going to do with that?

Yeah, no, the idea of like pancakes for the table, please. Like they're chips or something. You're a revolutionary, Stephanie. You and your friends. You're on a whole other level. Peter says, My Small Wonder is tracking a set of albino squirrels that lived in the tree of my new house. There were three siblings. and now whenever I'm walking my dog around the neighborhoods,

I can spot them where they made new homes. Whenever I find one, I feel like I found a legendary Pokemon in the wild. Wow. That must be cool. Sometimes I'll see a rabbit, and I'll be like, I'll pretend like it's one of the rabbits

that lived under our deck for a while. But it probably isn't, because there's a lot of brown rabbits in our neighborhood, but there's probably not a lot of albino squirrels. Yeah, I know. You could be relatively confident that you are seeing one of the ones that you have seen before, which is nice.

That is nice. Always got a little graduation cap, on. Congratulations, squirrel. That's going to do it for us this week. Thank you so much 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.

Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go over to maximum fun.org and check out all the great stuff they've got going on over there. You're going to find a show that you're just going to become such a huge fan of, I bet, because they've got shows for just like everything, man. We got merch in the merch store over at Macquariemerch.com. stuff coming first day of October. So go check out Macroymerch.com. And the Besties live show is coming up very soon, I think, next week.

So you can still get tickets for that at bit.ly slash besties on Broadway. We're going to be in New York City performing at the town hall on October 9th. So get there. I think that's going to do it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for the good times and the bad times. Whoa, okay. Thanks for the best.

The audience doesn't ever give us bad times, but hypothetically, thank you for them. Anytime that you give us as good in my book, I don't care what Rachel says. Rachel's always over here talking about the bad times you give us, and I'm like, whoa, pump the brakes. I'm a real Eeyore. You're a real. Eeyore is definite. I don't think Eeyore is the character I would give you. Okay.

I think we both have big owl energy. Oh. Don't you think? From Winnie the Pooh? If we're going to be poo character. I don't want to be E. Or, like, I know I'm... Well, nobody wants to be Eeyore.

But he's, he isn't, I'm worried taking the steps to overcome his depression. What do you know about Al other than he's kind of a know-it-all? Yeah, I guess that's it. It's not a really flattering one either. We're definitely not Tiggers. We're definitely not Tiggers for sure. Piglet's not great. No.

I guess we're poo. Oh. Huh. Or Christopher Robin. Yeah, we're the, You're humans. That's right. We're humans.

Oh, yeah. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.