Wonderful! - Wonderful! 436: It's The Flavor Brick!

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Griffin's favorite globalized moistening agent! Rachel's favorite absolutely devastating poet!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaCenter for Reproductive Rights: https://reproductiverights.org/ Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinwonderful

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McRoy. And this is wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. This is a podcast where we talk about things we like. That's good. That we are into. We're Rachel and Griffin McRoy.

We've been here from the beginning. And we started at the bottom, we started at the bottom, didn't we? This felt a little bit like an answering machine message at the beginning. It did kind of have that sort of tenor. And we're Rachel and Griffin. I have a thing on my phone that I discovered recently, and it makes me uncomfortable. But it's been a real game changer here in election season, I guess, where if someone calls you, you can make it so that your phone says, like, hey, who the hell are you?

Who do you think you are? Why are you calling? And then you'll see on your phone if they bother to, like, leave a little thing, which is great because like 99 times out of 100, it is someone just spamming me. But that one out of 100 times where it's like a contractor you reached out to who now you have shunted off to your cyber assistant, man, I feel bad. I feel bad when someone gets caught in the dragnet. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I'm too nervous to do that. As much as I hate the constant text messages we're getting from Texas in particular. Yeah. But it's our fault. We live there. Jimmy, Talleyco, I get it. I'm rooting for you, pulling for you, hardcore. The 15 texts a day is a bit much, especially ones that are like, hey, what's up?

it's me for real Jimmy. You got to, you got to, I'm fucked, man. You got to help me out. And then another text two hours later, like, I can't help but notice you didn't respond to my earlier text. That's a new one. I wish, yeah, no, that one really gets me every time. I wish there was a way that we could fill out a survey that indicated just how bitter

we are about politics in Texas. Yeah. So people would see that response on a survey and be like, okay, if we're going to continue to bother them. We really need to make a case that's based more around like, hey, we know what we do. Routin for them. Don't get me wrong. Hardcore. Do not live in Texas no more. True. That's the other big one. True. How come I can't put that somewhere? I don't know, because they wouldn't believe you, I guess. Because then everyone would say they don't live in Texas. Yeah. Do you have any small wonders, my love? Oh, Annapolis. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We, uh, oh, maybe this is a good way to put our plea out into the universe. We were supposed to go to the Maryland Renaissance Fair last weekend, uh, on the day that it rained literally all day long. And we had booked a whole weekend around it. But luckily. Yeah. Luckily, Annapolis really delivered for us.

We had some great food. We went to like, shout out to third eye, man. Yeah. There's a place called ThirdEye that has three warehouses basically stacked up, next to each other. And one is just comics and stuff. And one is music and movies. And one is like tabletop games, board games.

Yeah. It's rad. It was gigonzo. Unbelievable. Unbelievable shop. Great food. Great times. Yeah.

I mean, we got to spend some time near the water. And man, I get it. I get it. It's a pretty little spot. Neat. Saw people in some neat naval uniforms. Do you know what I mean? mean, the jackets and everything, the hats and everything. I'm going to shout out the documentary

that we just watched that I believe is on Netflix called Who is Martin Mall. Yes, that was Netflix. Who is Martin Mall is the name of the documentary. It just came out this year. And it's a great question because you might not know who Martin Mall is unless you've watched any movie or television show ever because he was a dude who was on absolutely everything, man. He played Gene Parmesan on Arrested Development. That is obviously his magnum opus is Gene Parmesan. For people in our age group, like that, that was what was kind of incredible about that documentary is it showed just how, like, illustrious his career was and how relevant he made himself like decade to decade. Yeah. So he was also Colonel Mustard, I believe, in the Clue movie. He was on Roseanne. He was, he was just like he was in a ton of shit. And he had a whole career of like comedy performance. But also, he was a remarkably talented and prolific painter.

Yeah, and musician. Which I did not know about. So it was just like about a guy that never really reached huge acclaim, but was so talented in so many different ways. And like, you know, it's got interviews with all kinds of like comics of that era. It was directed by Bob Sagitt who did all of the interviews with Martin Moll before Bob Sagget passed away in 2018.

And then there's like interviews with Fred Willer before he passed away in 2020. And the whole movie is about Martin Mull who I didn't know until the end of the movie passed away in 2024. So it's like a, it's a tough, it's a tough watch in some ways, but it's also a very, I don't know,

uplifting sort of watch of a person who's like really passionate about a lot of difference. And one of the more kind of compelling documentary about somebody kind of towards the end of their life and career. Yeah. Because the way he was speaking about how he was kind of watching a lot of his, like, dear friends pass on, like really hit me kind of uniquely as like a, you know, it really shakes up your purpose and your sense of like self.

Yeah. When you start to see those people leave. And so I don't know. I found it really touching. Me too. And gave me like a deep appreciation for someone who like, I don't know, man. And we were looking for something to watch and it was like the thumbnail thing that popped up on the top of Netflix. Yeah.

And we saw the title and we're like, eh? And then we saw Jean Parmesan and we were like, oh, fuck, Martin Mall. That's Martin Mall. Like I'd never known his name before. I just knew him from all the stuff he did. I go first this week. Yes. Curry.

All right. That's it. All of it. All of it. All of the different curries that there are. I would actually be curious because curry means a lot of different things. Yeah. So curry has been globalized almost, I would say, more than any,

food on the planet. And it did so through, you know, a lot of different channels, the, the Columbian exchange, obviously like the slave trade and the Caribbean sort of indentured Indian servant sort of trade. Like that, that was part of it, the British rule over India for, you know, a couple centuries there. They ended up taking it back. But it has spread and it is really everywhere. and I can't think of another food thing on the planet that has this many different, like regional variations that all absolutely slap ass in different ways. Yeah, well, and part of it, too, is a lot of the spices used in curry are kind of unfamiliar or like less common, at least in the areas that I've lived and grown up.

And so it's just so exciting to eat. It's just like, oh, my gosh, all these flavors. I am talking about this because I was struggling to come up with a topic, and we had it for dinner last night. I had it for dinner last night. And then I had it for lunch today. Yeah, me too. Shout out masala art.

I don't know the name of it, but they have this cashew, this cool cashew gravy that I'm like upset with. It's so good. I have a ton of foods that, like, I associate with the changing seasons, specifically summer to fall and fall to winter as it gets cooler. And like in my book, when the weather starts to cool down, like I always want to reach for a bowl of that, that savory stuff to spice things back up a bit. Do you do any research on kind of the different regions of curry? Yes. Okay. Yeah.

So, I mean, there's a ton of them, right? Start with Indian curry, which is kind of, you know, where everything got started. There is, man, if I'm looking at the menu of an Indian restaurant, like we were last night, like, there's a dozen different types of curry on there that I would happily, greedily slop down. For sure. I love a Mossamon curry. I got nervous because that showed up when I, like, searched curry. in our database of things we've talked about, I did a small wonder about Masamong curry,

which is like you get it with lamb and peanuts, and it's like a dark, super kind of scorched. Ooh, damn, it's good. But I also love like a quarmah and a masala and a Vindaloo. I don't know. I think Indian curries, like restaurants have the market on curry accessories absolutely sewn up. The game is so strong.

Like, give me that savory cashew gravy with saffron rice and some gnawn for the dipping, like it does not, it does not get better than that. Those are good friends to curry. I do like, though, like a Thai kind of coconut curry also. So, yeah, I mean, that is one of the sort of primary, I would say, regional offshoots that has its own identity. Like, it doesn't taste really that much like Indian curry because it usually does have a coconut milk base.

And, you know, the ingredients used in it are different because they are. Different spot. Different spot, a different place on the planet. Indian curry, you know, it originated in medieval India where they had spices like cardam and coriander and cumin and ginger, which were, you know, all mixed up to make what Wikipedia called proto curries, which is a cool. That is pretty cool. That is a cool turn.

I only eat proto curry in my cyber bowl. That does seem like someone who's like counting their macros would be concerned about their proto. Sorry, I've only, I'm trying to get to 35 protograms of proto curries. And then primarily when we got, you know, the, the Colombian exchange in the late 15th century where plants and vegetables and produce was kind of just moving all across the Atlantic, you get plants in India like spicy peppers and potatoes and tomatoes. And, you know, that's where you get sort of Anglo-Indian cuisine and where we get sort of what we get sort of what we're, we now traditionally think of as curries that you would get at an Indian takeout restaurant or something here in Washington, D.C., for example. But then, you know, it got globalized after that and spread to

Thailand and Japan and Jamaica and Vietnam has its own curry and the UK, which has like a blue million curry restaurants. And each of those different variations has like, you know, their own stuff based on cooking customs and available ingredients. Thai curry, I think. is maybe it's a runner up for me. I would say Thai curry is a runner up for me. We used to get at a farmer's market in Austin. There was a little tent you could go to and you could get like a bag that you could just heat up the ingredients and we had cow soy, which is more of a noodle soup, but it was it was flirting with curry in a lot of really exciting and fun ways. The curry I am most experienced with is Japanese curry. Yes. Because Japanese curry,

specializes in being like ridiculously easy to make like so easy to make you sear some veggies and some meat and you add water and you boil it for a while and then you toss in a pre-packaged flavor brick and then you slop that over rice and you've got like a kick-ass dinner that makes you seem like you know what you're doing because it tastes incredible it's the flavor brick and uh oh the leftover game on those is just like so good because it just gets it just gets better as it sits in your fridge. You just get spicier and better. There's a lot of options for flavor bricks for Japanese curry on your grocery store shelves.

I prefer the extra hot golden curry, which in my experience isn't all that hot. Yeah, but maybe we just don't like the consistency we have it at is maybe not. Maybe I water it down too much and so I need that extra, extra hot. You know, you do have to dial in exactly how many. There's ingredients listed on the box, but it's like that ain't enough for me. me. I need way more chicken thigh than that. Thank you. I like that you keep calling it or keep mentioning it as a kind of gravy because I never really thought about that. Oh, sure. I was thinking like, what is our Western equivalent? And I think it probably is gravy. Probably gravy. Yeah. I think gravy as a

sort of moistening agent does does fill a similar role. I don't think you traditionally just get gravy on a menu in the way that you can get, that you can get hurry. Gravy is not curry is more of a soup than gravy is. Gravy is a condiment, and I feel like curry is a main dish. But maybe we're splitting hairs. I could probably down, you know, a bowl of gravy and rice if I was hungry enough. I wasn't really a curry person until I moved to Austin and, you know, we started, there were so many good Indian restaurants and we'd get takeout from them.

Well, I mean, not a ton. No, not a ton. Maybe not a ton, but the ones that were there were. I feel like we had maybe two choices. But then there was the clay pot also, I think, on San Marcos, which was absolutely delicious. And, you know, I started with teakamasala because I feel like that's the one you kind of ease into because it's basically like kind of buttery ketchup. It's very, very accessible curry and then try new stuff. At least here it is.

Like I don't know if this is another thing like, you know, like some Chinese food that you can get at a takeout. place where like tiga masala here is completely different than it would be yeah maybe otherwise it's you know tomatoy creamy curry that's basically all that we're talking about i had japanese for the curry for the first time it was not like a thing i'd ever eaten and then i went to japan for the tokyo game show the year before we went for our honeymoon uh and went to uh koichi banya which is a chain of curry restaurants and i had umkatsu you know pork with kore and man alive, it blew me away. I was like, this is one of the best things I've ever eaten from this Japanese chain restaurant.

It just turns out that when you put Japanese curry over a fried pork cutlet, it's like the best kind of food on earth. And then I realized how easily you can make it at home. And it was like a whole world of flavor had opened up to me. I just, I love curry because it's such a good sort of like core cooking idea. of what if we had something to bind together starches and meat and vegetable? And what if that kind of adhesive agent was like the spiciest or savouriest or most delicious flavored thing on earth? Yeah, and like a real complexity of flavor.

Like there's a lot of food that is just spicy. Yeah. It is just spicy forward. And if you had to describe it, you would say spicy. But like, I don't feel that way about curry. Yeah. No, it doesn't have to be that. I can be anything.

It can really, it can be, I mean, no, I can't, I guess it can't be anything, but it can be a lot of different. Chocolate syrup, if you think about it is a kind of curry. Sure, absolutely. It's just a, curry is just a good idea. And I think the extent to which it was globalized sort of speaks to the strength of that kind of fundamental food principle. Can I steal you away? Yes. Thanks.

Hey, Griffin. Yes. Can I tell you about my thing this week? I would love for you to tell me about the thing this week. Well, first, I'm. I'm going to need you to put on your slippers and your robe. And your beret. And join me in the poetry corner.

Maybe I have you the clues of calling to sell it and scrambling. Sort of a tom waits down a hallway, down a long haunted hallway for the season of Halloween. For a spooky season. I know you don't like that shit. I should have never said that because I really have hemmed us in. No, sometimes when you do that, I just have a moment where I step outside my body. And I'm like, it makes no sense that he uses the Frazier theme song for Polish Recorder. Baby, this is podcasting 101.

You can't second guess that shit now. We also use the Home Improvement Stinger. I think still in our episodes, right? I think so, yeah. When we go to the money song? If not, we'll bring him back. Okay. Unless it was, unless it was excellent.

sized for, I don't know, copyright strike reasons. My poet this week is Andrea Hollander. Okay. Actually, she's from, she was born in Berlin, Germany. That may indicate the appropriate way to pronounce her first name. If it's an Andrea situation, perhaps, I don't know. But she was born in Berlin, Germany of American parents raised in Colorado, Texas, New York, and New Jersey. Well, now we're back.

Maybe it's Andrea. Or Andrea. Dang it. and went to Boston University and the University of Colorado. She has six full-length poetry collections. Wow. The most recent one, I believe, came out in 2018. Okay.

Waiting on that comeback. Well, she was born in 1947, so she, I think, has earned a retirement, if that is what she has so chosen. Fair. She's won a bunch of push-cart prizes and got to. a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Damn. For more than 22 years, she was a writer and residence at Lyon College. Are you familiar with writer and residence?

Is that Leon? L-Y-O-N? Yes, is it Leon? I think it's Leon. Leon? I think it's Leon. Okay. I don't know.

There's a game developer that was Arcane Leon. In France? It's not in France, no. Oh, maybe I'm thinking of something else. Are you familiar with writer in residence? The words. Not the ideas. This is a cool thing that happens at a lot of universities where they will bring in like a professional, like writer of fiction or poetry.

And they just have them teach while they're there. And it's kind of a great deal because the understanding is that you are a creative person and that you are working on your, you know, manuscripts or not. novels or whatever. Yeah. But you're also kind of teaching potentially like writing workshops or literature courses. Is this the college in Arkansas? Yes. Okay.

Yes. That's why I said Lyon because I thought like I don't know that they're going to lean into French. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know that there's a big French population in Arkansas, but it's been a long time. I don't know much. I haven't been to Arkansas. It's been a long time since I've been there. Yeah.

So yeah. So for 22 years she did that in Arkansas. That's crazy. Which speaks to, I think probably her talent. she won a prize for excellence in teaching while she was there. Damn. So I am talking about her. Now, here's the thing that was tricky for me.

So she has written a lot of devastating poems. Oh, okay. For a number of reasons. One is that her marriage ended kind of abruptly when her husband left her for somebody else. She wrote a whole book, basically dedicated to that experience. She also was kind of present for the end of her mom's life, which was, I think, due to illness. And she's written a lot about that. So when I bring that to the poetry corner, I try to be thoughtful because it's a lot out of context and pretty intense.

But I found what I think is a good option. Okay. I can handle the tough stuff, babe. I know. I know. I know. I know, and there's definitely a poem that I really debated on that is really, really rich that is about her experience of being with her grandparents while her mom is in the hospital.

Never mind. I actually just changed my mind. I actually just changed my mind, which I'm allowed to do. I'm allowed to have a think and say, actually, no thanks. It's really powerful. It's really stuck with me. But you'll just have to trust on this one audience that it's a kick-ass poem. Yeah, and let me share the name of that poem just in case you're looking. It was published by the New York Times. It was actually selected by Rita Dove, who is a famous poet that I believe I've talked about, for publication in that magazine. The poem is 636 Lyons Avenue, Apartment 1A.

And that was published in 2019. That sounds like a Bonie Vair song. But it just speaks to this very specific experience, which is what a lot of her poems do. She feels really strongly that kind of the senses is how you connect to memories and is kind of really powerful places for poetry. So the poem I wanted to read is from her book, Blue Mistaken for Sky, which was a finalist for the 2018 Best Book Award in Poetry from the American Poetry Fest. And the poem is called First Snow. My friend said the first snow always felt immaculate, and she couldn't wait to play in it. But she didn't grow up near a highway where any accumulation turned gray before your eyes.

And she didn't have a father like mine, a man raised by his mother's images of the worst catastrophes. How can I forget those warnings he gave me throughout my childhood, never to eat it, the way he forbade me to play in anyone else's yard, told me that snow, no matter how inviting, could be hiding something, a broken beer bottle, a rake left on the lawn, a sinkhole.

Like those irresistible phrases my ex piled on, on how beautiful my eyes, my hair, how much he loved, he said, to contemplate my body. I should have suspected something sharp and dangerous below that gleaming landscape. Isn't that incredible? That is really good stuff.

Her poems are really kind of deceptively simple. You know, they're very straightforward. The experience she's speaking of of kind of like losing the person that you were in love with and you feel kind of, you know, surprised or tricked or deceived in some way is a poem that's been written like a hundred times or a thousand times or, you know, like a lot. But there's something about the way that she writes that is so precise. and so focused on that kind of imagery of like rooting you in a place that I just find them very memorable. And I just like when I was choosing a poem to talk about today, it was just like everything is

sticking with me like so firmly. And I think that just speaks a lot to kind of how good she is at recalling a very specific moment. And in an interview that she did with the Arkansas time, in 2018. She said, I believe that a poem is an act of discovery and that such discovery occurs mainly through the senses. This is also the way memory is evoked.

We walk through an unfamiliar neighborhood, for example, and spot a mimosa tree in someone's yard. Immediately we are reminded of a childhood visit to a beloved relative who had such a tree in her yard. So yeah, it's just that like special poetry sense where it's like, I have a very specific memory. I recognize that it would be a great poem. Yeah.

I have enough details to pull from that I can really kind of set you in that place and then kind of speak to a realization I have had since or some kind of new awareness. It's not as universal. I feel like as she makes it sound like it's not something that I feel like my brain offers up a lot. I do feel like it requires a kind of poetic outlook or like a lens through which to view the world. And to know what's kind of significant about it, right?

Like if we walk into an elementary school building, that smell... Oh, every time. Is very likely to take you right back to your elementary school. And you can't exactly speak to what that is or why or what specific memory you might be having. And that's where I feel like the poetry magic is. Yeah. Is if you're able to kind of identify that sense that brought you there and then speak to kind of the feeling and maybe a specific place or time that it evokes. like that's a poem right there that's a recipe that's a recipe for a poem i love it i never knew where

it came from but that makes a lot of sense uh so yeah so that's uh Andrea or Andrea uh hollander and you can find her books in a lot of places uh and I would really recommend her sick yeah do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about yes max says my small wonder is seeing patients gradually or drastically improve between appointments I was a dermatology medical assistant for a while and I truly loved when a patient who has been suffering for years comes to their follow-up with the light return to their eyes. The biologic Griffin's On can be so life-changing for people with psoriasis, despite its goofy-ass name. That's Sky Rizzy. And this is not a paid advertisement for Sky Rizzi, but it turned my shit right around.

Yeah, for sure. You were really uncomfortable and miserable for a long time. For like eight months last year. And you had to try so many things. I had to try a lot of things. because they wouldn't give me Sky Rizzy until I tried every other medicine because they know how good it is. They know how good it is. And it's so good that they still make you jump through nine hoops before you take it every time. I mean, it's a, it's a, I don't think there's a generic of it, right? Like you're getting that name brand stuff. And name brand stuff. And it's fixing my Crohn's disease. Apparently it does Crohn's stuff too, which I don't think I have. But now I definitely don't have it. Thanks, Sky Rizzi. I feel like there was another one. Eritle a little about. I think is listed on there. Probably that I definitely have.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's better. Maybe it's better. I don't know. It's still irritable, but like perturbed. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, frustrated bowel. Yeah. Katie says, My Small Wonder is when you sort your laundry by colors and the dryer lint is a different color after each load. I do a big batch of laundry every Saturday and enjoy seeing the link color change over the course of the day. I like this a lot.

That is fun. You don't do this, though, right? Yeah. So, all right. I'm not putting you on. last, I think it's purely superstition at this point. I used to, when I learned how to

do laundry from my mother as a person when I was going to go off to college, she talked to me about sorting and lights and darks, and I learned the proper way to do it. And then I realized that I was washing most of my clothes in cold water and that nothing bad was going to happen

if I mixed them all together. And I've just kind of continued to live that way. Sure. And I, I don't know if that's okay or not. Is it okay? Do you think?

Probably. I wash all my clothes in cold water and do sort them. I do like light, light and dark clothes. That's like it, though. I'm still nervous. I have like two pink shirts and I still think like, like where do you put it? Cicoms have, no, I put it in the dark because sitcoms have told me time and time again, like you'll ruin all of your light clothes.

Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. Thank you 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 thanks to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go over to MaximumFund.org. Check out all the great stuff they've got popping. Over there, you're going to find a new favorite show, I bet.

Not a new favorite. Hopefully this one's, I don't know. If this one's already your favorite, I don't know if I want you to find a new favorite. Yeah, please stick around. Please stick around. We've got some really exciting stuff planned. We'll get better, I promise. We'll get better.

I'm so sorry. Macquariemerch.com is where you can go to get merch from this and all of our shows. Please consider checking that out. and I think that's just about it. Thank you so much for listening. And we'll be back with a new episode next Wednesday. Sorry, this one's late. It was like an insane four-day weekend.

And we're coming in real hot. And now I think this one's probably coming out on Friday. So have a great freaking weekend, you guys. Let's get things started off with... Tiesto? Tiesto. Is he still? Yeah.

Take it away. Tiesto. Maximum Fun. A Worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.