Wonderful! - Wonderful! 67: A Fleet of Wienerdrones

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

Griffin's favorite fashion change-up! Rachel's favorite jazzy poem! Griffin's favorite perplexing power-song! Rachel's favorite novelty vehicle! Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, it's Griffin McElroy. I forgot which one it was, didn't I? This is wonderful. Yeah, it sure is. I forgot whichgot which one it was, didn't I? This is wonderful. Yeah, it sure is. I forgot which intro it was, though, didn't I? Yeah, I mean, I guess you could say you're Rachel's husband, Griffin. I'm the youngest husband Rachel's ever had, which is exciting for me.

She's married some real old men, huh? Who was your first very old husband that you had? Do you remember him he was 200 i got choked up because of how jealous i got but your 200 year old husband he was cool and his name was um gosh what was it it was uh pefferson yeah first name peff, Pefferson. Pefferson. Yeah. I called him Peff. Yeah. And then his last name was Julian. Do you remember the time you married an old mummy that they found in Egypt? And it was a good 3,000 years old. And his name was King, Burger King, is what it loosely translates to. I'm glad that you picked me i'm glad you ended up with me i know i'm not i don't usually bring that sort of my youngest husband aged flavor that

you prefer but this is wonderful it's a podcast where we talk about things that we are really into things that we very much like things that we're enthusiastic about that paid us to talk about them i mean oh no oh no oh man yeah shoot the cat's out of the freaking bag i guess pumpernickel the big pumpernickel is dropping big stacks on came to me and said hey we know that rye bread has been courting you but we're willing to offer you double so do you have any small wonders now that we've sort of uh revealed ourselves to be has been courting you, but we're willing to offer you double. So do you have any small wonders now that we've sort of revealed ourselves to be, you know, scammers? Double Mint gum.

Double Mint gum. Twice the freshness. Impossible. I've never seen you eat this green gum. Oh, you're- I'm kidding. I was pretending. What about our fans at home that love Double Mint

and they're like, fuck yeah, finally. I was pretending that we had sponsors. Oh, I see. Because Doublemint is really dropping stacks. I think everybody knows about the Doublemint product at this point. They kind of went hard in the paint in the 90s with all of their twin commercials. But then Mentos really ate their game up, I think, with their similarly toned commercials. Hey, do you have a real thing, though for for number onesies uh for number onesies uh i would have to say top chef top chef is a really

nice show yeah it's maybe the best cooking competition there is that is not a difficult sort of bar to clear a fair number of competitors sure i mean there's master chef which kind of stinks now i mean we watched a lot of it but it's not so good now and then there's you know the taste long live the taste one season not now to be fair oh great bitters great bitters bacon yeah i i was just gonna say bitty bitty baking is probably even better. I, that's like, that's, that's not even comparable. That's like a different category.

Yeah. Uh, I wouldn't say. Uh, this is going to be a repeat, but I feel very, very, very enthusiastic about this.

If we're talking about things we're enthusiastic about, uh, I made Rachel watch it and she lost her mind. There was a speed run last week during AGDQ of Sonic the Hedgehog 1. Yeah, unintentionally teased it uh run by oh did you well i remember i requested that you let me know when the sonic run happened it was run by a dude i think his name was dr fat body or something like that uh

and he just showcased his run with a level of excitement and he had like this whole crew on the couch behind him that was like, they were obviously like a really tight knit group of Sonic the Hedgehog runners. And the whole run was so chock full of what I would like to call just like Sega energy. It was just full of, I think Big Dick energy is like so 2018. We got to leave that behind.

And 2019 is all about raw Sega energy. He was pulsating with raw Sega energy and it was the most fucking exciting, funniest, best run of the year for me. It was very good. And so many shout outs that left us all wondering kind of what this universe is that he exists in. It's a beautiful universe I would love to exist in.

Basically every time he beat a stage, like he had a good like 10 seconds there to like give some shout outs to people. Thank his mentors. It was so incredible. It was so, so, so good. Even if you don't like stuff like this, I cannot, it's 20 minutes.

And also the glitches they show off in Sonic are like absolutely disgusting. It is hands down my favorite run of the year. And there's a lot of competition for that. I first this week okay my first thing both of mine are kind of themed my first one is trying on a new style or perhaps trying out a new style trying on makes it sound like i love to go to you know the jacru and while i'm at jacru I like to actually go in the dressing room and put on clothes. That's false. I hate that part. I don't like that part very much

because it has been difficult to find clothes that fit my bod in the past and that's always frustrating. But also the lighting that they use in dressing rooms makes me look, I feel like so terrible. I don't know if it's because I reach a point where I've just tried on these clothes and none of them fit.

And then I put on the old clothes that I wore in there and I realized I look so raggedy, just like with my old clothes and my skin that has become nightmarish and the glaring fluorescent lights that they hang so bright above. So it's really what you like, Griffin. I like trying out new styles, by which I mean I've got the clothes and I'm like,

oh, I don't normally wear stuff like this. Let's give it a shot. And you give it a shot and you like it. That's the thing I like. That's the thing I like. I need like a concrete example. Let me give you a concrete example here. The Facebook thing, the how hard did aging hit you challenge.

Yes, yes, yes. Which, by the way, I made the point to Rachel, like, you can just post, like, I got more attractive or I used to be more attractive. Like, it's fine. I'll take your word for it. Like, for me, I got more attractive. But that's because I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. Basically up to the point where I met my wife, Rachel.

I was looking at that and it made me sort of go through my old profile pics and just sort of reflect on some of my choices. just sort of reflect on some of my choices. Yes. Reflect on some of my decisions. Your choices, can I summarize? Yeah, sure. Your choices reflected that you did not think you were an especially attractive man. And I feel like as you have gotten older, you've kind of embraced, hey.

I can, yeah. I could pull this off. This guy fucks, for sure. I can, yeah, I could pull this off. This guy fucks for sure. I don't think you can say that about yourself. Going through it, like, in hindsight, I look back and it's like, I did not post in this challenge partially because I, I am not a big social media guy anymore. But also because like, there wasn't a picture of me that I felt like even okay about. There wasn't a picture of me that I felt like even okay about. And in hindsight, right, looking back, like it's really easy to knock yourself for the choices you made.

But I think back to when I was like in middle school and like my entire childhood, like mom bought all of our clothes. She was a mother of three, very rambunctious young, young gentleman. Most of the clothes came from like consignment shops and stuff like that so like i did not have a say in the matter and when i finally did start to have like a say in the matter my like first thing that i remember really liking was like hawaiian shirts and i started to wear hawaiian shirts because i was you know sexually non-threatening and i just i felt good i like felt good about this style i finally had like a nice style and remind me what that time period was this would have been like was it like 2003 i would have been like no around 2000 around around the turn of the millennium is when i started started to yeah i mean that the thrifty look was more popular back then for sure yeah and you know

my mom had was like way ahead of the curve on that with all of our consignment pickups uh and then after that it was like i remember trying on a bowling shirt, like a polyester bowling shirt. And I was like, this is great on me. And so I bought a few of them. And then like, that was my style. And I got really excited about that. And then it was like, you know, checkered button downs.

And then, you know, I went through a few, I went through a few different phases. I mean, you're still a checkered button down guy less so these days maybe i i mess with a flannel but like i do not wear that many checkered button downs anymore recently i've been kind of a t-shirt guy i've been more into t-shirts and layering the t-shirt with a thing um i like a stri I like long sleeve non button downs which I didn't used to have that many of and now I have a lot of and they excite me so I still need I need like a so what i'm saying is every time i found one of these new styles it was really like it was really exciting for me that i had found like this new thing that maybe i didn't think or didn't even think of or specifically thought i could not pull

off and then you try it out and you're like not only can i pull this off like this could be a part of the rotation i don't really know how to categorize. I don't know how a person categorizes style. It seems like wild to me to think that a person can be like, I wear rustic clothes. I wear just flannel and corduroy and that's everything I own. Like I can't, I don't think that my like closet is that, I don't think anybody's closet is that like specific. Um, but the idea of like finding a new sort of style that you didn't think you could pull off and then trying it out and realizing like, oh, I can do this. Back in college, my senior year of college, all the way through college, basically for about a decade, I didn't actually get my hair cut. I just got it thinned out from a place in Huntington called Happy Hair Boutique that, again, our mom took us to.

There's a running narrative through this wonderful topic. And so it just got really poofy. I had these long, skinny sideburns that were pretty bad. And I just, yeah, I just didn't really think that much of myself. And then made like this new big group of friends my senior year of college one of whom was a hairstylist she was like do you want me to cut your hair i was like yeah i guess and i was scared then i got it done i was like oh this is the haircut that i will have for the rest of my life like that was a really exciting thing for me i just think the idea of like

transforming yourself in this very accessible way that isn't like it isn't necessarily obvious travis uh a couple years ago got me like a or last year got me a jean jacket and i was like i'm not a fucking jean jacket guy no i wear that jean jacket all the time because i like how i look at a jean jacket that's the kind of stuff i'm talking about like it's a way of it's a way of like it's kind of like eating a new food that you thought you didn't like and then you end up really liking it and you're excited because you know you're gonna eat that food a lot there's there's something to that for me with fashion this reminds me of of when you brought one week you're like finding your new favorite new favorite

restaurant new favorite song yeah i think that's a big thing for me just sort of in general but with fashion and what's cool about fashion is that it is i am going to like eating chicken pot pie for the rest of my life i may not like wearing jean jacket like i move i do move a lot another thing that is bringing this up is uh this past weekend i marie condo'd the fuck out of my like wardrobe oh gosh can i make a recommendation okay the show is good yeah let's say you're with a partner who you feel like has a lot of stuff they're holding on to that they aren't using in their daily life. Sit them down, watch Marie Kondo with them, and it will maybe give them the motivation they need to explore some of their less used items. Yes.

I certainly had a lot of very old clothing. I certainly had some Halloweenlloween costumes in there that i was never gonna wear again um i've dropped a few lbs in the last year and so like there was just some stuff that just straight up didn't fit that i have not worn in about a year and so i just like threw all that shit out but in doing so i went through and was like looking like rachel was right like i did almost exclusively wear you know, checker pattern, long sleeve, button up shirts. And that was pretty much it. And I threw pretty much all of those not away.

We donated them. But yeah, I think that's why I sort of got like nostalgic about this exact topic. Also, because everybody is posting their old fashions. And folks, let me just say, unless one of the two pictures is completely busted, you're just showing off at that point. Maybe I should do it because I have a big selection of busted bowling shirt, long pervert sideburn picks to pick from. Yeah, that's my first topic, is trying out a new style. Congratulations, Griffin. I'm happy that you're expanding your horizons. I feel like, you know, you're worth it.

Thank you. It's my midlife crisis. 62 is all I'm planning to get to. What's your first thing? My first thing is the long-awaited return to the poetry corner. Hey, oh my God. It's been a while, hasn't it?

It's been a hundred years. I think maybe since our live show i've been crawling in the desert dying of poetry thirst drip one into my mouth drip a poem pour a poem freshly rung from the oasis directly into my mouth i i feel like we're done now with the segment i feel like that was a poem. Yeah, you just closed out the poetry corner. Wow. So play the home improvement thing and we'll move on. I should, what if there was a, I could make a home improvement remix that was sort of like kind of fresh, like kind of like poetry, kind of poetry, like jazzy.

Oh, with like some snaps and- Yeah. I won't be doing that. But what's a poem? I'm so glad that you've mentioned Jazzy. Oh, okay. Because our next poet... Is from DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Is a big jazz enthusiast. Okay. And his name is Robert Pinsky. Robert Pinsky, I didn't know that name. He was the Poet Laureate from 1997 to 2000. That's almost certainly not how I know his name. He was also in an episode of The Simpsons. Maybe that's it there's

an episode where lisa goes to college and she goes to a poetry reading that robert pinsky is reading at i may be thinking of salute your shorts i think there was a character named pinsky yes that too wasn't he like the cool kid that came in in like season three yeah he was he like had a saw i remember the his intro episode he like had a sausage that he was like really excited about like a big summer sausage yeah it was a weird show but this is a different guy huh oh yeah it is turns out all right uh so he has written 19 books most of which are poetry uh and he is a former saxophonist that says that being a musician was profoundly influential in his interest in poetry.

That makes, I mean, it makes so much sense that it's almost obvious. Like the two are so, I feel like inextricably linked. Exactly, yeah. And I read an interview with him where he talks a lot about musicality and why that's, you know, a really inspiring part of poetry for him. Part of being poet laureate, you know, we've talked about this before. no explicit requirements of the job. But he really kind of leveraged that opportunity to really expand kind of the reach of poetry. So he created an online course called The Art of Poetry,

which is available to the public and has been since 2014. Just for free? Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah, so he is a professor at Boston University. And so he used that platform to kind of share the course. But each little lecture part of it is only like two to five minutes long. Oh, wow.

Okay. So you can really kind of parcel out like, you know, little pieces of interest depending on where you are. of interest depending on where you are. The course, if you read the course description, it says the course has the underlying principle that the more you know about an art, the more pleasure you will find in it. And so you can find all these videos if you search for the art of poetry.

So what are you, which of his poems? I'll get there. I just want, I haven't had a poem in fucking six months i'm dying i also want to talk about this other great thing he did when he was poet laureate which was he started the favorite poem project which is favorite poem.org uh thousands of americans from varying backgrounds had the opportunity from every state to share their favorite poems. So more than 18,000 people responded and they selected 50 people to read and talk about their favorite poem, which I just think is really cool.

You know, I think there's this sense that poetry is not like a living, breathing thing in our daily life. And he has this idea that poetry should be as popular and as recognized as music. That's something that people are interested in. That's a really good point because I know what my favorite song is. should be as popular and as recognized as music. That's something that people are interested in. That's a really good point because I know what my favorite song is.

For the life of me, I couldn't tell you what my favorite poem is. Do you know what your favorite poem is? Oh, geez-o. There's an Anne Sexton poem I really like. Oh, okay. Well, it'll get its time in the poetry corner. We don't want to cheat on Pinsky.

Yeah, I'm saving it. I'm saving myself for section. So this is something he says about poetry, an interview he did in 2013 with Butler University. So in the interview, they're asking him kind of what people, librarians, instructors can do to make poetry more accessible and more available to people. And so he's giving some suggestions, but then ultimately he says, Art takes care of itself. Its appeal is endless, like the appeal of cuisine beyond nutrition, lovemaking beyond copulation, dance beyond locomotion. Poetry meets a fundamental craving, the mind meeting the body in the sound of words. I just want to apologize, but the word copulation really puts really...

It's a beautiful quote. It's a beautiful quote, and I think it's wonderful. It's just, I know he's a poet, and the whole thing is like finding pretty different words, but like copulation really gets my goose flesh going. So let me read you the poem you've been waiting for. Yes. And this isn't the entire poem. really gets my goose flesh going so let me read you the poem you've been waiting for yes and this isn't the entire poem i just want to showcase kind of the musicality of what he does in his poetry yes please what's what is the poem called the poem is appropriately called rhyme

all right i'm just saying if you if you write a song and it was called like music so here's the poem. And this is just the first two stances. You can find the whole poem if you search for Rhyme by Robert Pinsky on the internet. Air, an instrument of the tongue, the tongue, an instrument of the body, the body, an instrument of spirit, the spirit, a being of the air, a bird, the medium of its song a song a world a containment like a hotel room ready for us guests who inherit our compartment of time there that's so good it's real jazzy isn't it the way it kind of like bounces from one thing to the next and kind of

threads the previous idea through into the next thing feels very kind of improvisational yeah i tell you a lot i was like wondering like all right where's this going and then it i it was all sort of all part of the whole thing yeah so i i guess the reason i kind of talked about what he did as poet laureate and kind of what he does with his poetry is is you get kind of a unique opportunity with poet laureates where you kind of get to see what they do with the title and also kind of appreciate their work and why it was, you know,

selected. Yeah. And I just, I think almost even more than him as a poet, I like what he tried to do to kind of broaden the interest of poetry in our country. Yeah. That's really cool. And there's like tangible resources he created. like what he tried to do to kind of broaden the interest of poetry in our country yeah that's really cool and there's like tangible resources he created uh that are now accessible to everybody yeah uh and he wasn't required to do any of that so i just feel like it speaks to his real like

genuine enthusiasm and desire to like see poetry continue and, and grow. So you can get named poet laureate and then just kind of like chill. You can get named poet laureate and be like, cool, I'm going to go work at home Depot now. I never write another poem. I'm like, ah, shoot.

He's still poet laureate. I mean, you probably get asked to do various things, but there's no like, you know, job description that requires you to lift 20 pounds who picks it uh i mean it comes out of the president's office huh okay uh hey can i steal Yes. Do you want some personal messages? How personal are we talking?

I don't know who this character is. He's got his butt hanging out. Oh, the butt man. How personal. This message is for future Nate. It is from past Nate. It's crazy. That's crazy, man.

This character also marvels at time travel. Yeah, who wouldn't? Hi, future Nate. Drink some water, plan a fun workout for today, and picture a golden retriever puppy in a sky blue onesie. Thank you, Nate. Make sure you've sent in your application info for the Energy Science Master's Program and enjoy something buffalo chicken flavored. This is what self-care looks like. I'm proud of you. Annein and rachel probably are too that is correct yes for sure

specifically about i'm gonna hop in here in the middle of the show with a small wonder buffalo flavored stuff is the fucking best yeah so i didn't know that about you oh my god i mean buffalo wings i will eat like all day every day and then i'll miss i'll miss i'll skip the next day yeah i'll miss the next day but then the day after that i'll get back into buffalo wingstown uh buffalo chicken dip is like great like a pizza with like buffalo chicken that flavor that's super salty spicy flavor like there's like a like a snap kitchen dish that you like with the buffalo flavor is it's uh i haven't had it in a while but it's like a hash with like that that with that and like a faux ranch dress and like a blue cheese sauce that goes in it it's real nice anyway uh buffalo flavors is my first my

my it's uh subsection b of my things this week way to go nate thanks nate this next message is for alex and michael It is from Tasha. Dear Alex and Michael, thanks for being the best roommates and D&D squad in all of Beantown. I can't wait for your wedding this summer and to meet your future dog. Alex, soon we'll both be masters and then you'll leave me in the dust to become doctor. I'm so proud of you. I love you. You're my wonderful thing every week that is

so sweet and i also wonder if that one sentence was to meet your future dog your future dog which is maybe referring to future nate i'm wondering if they're talking about this time traveler they both mentioned like master's programs yes so I'm thinking that maybe Nate is from the future, and hear me out. He's come back because the robots took all our buffalo sauce, but anyway, they're going to all hang out. This is a real Jumbotron friend connection, and I'm ready for it.

Dead Pilots Society brings you exclusive readings of comedy pilots that were never made, featuring actors like Patton Oswalt. So the vampire from the future sleeps in the dude's studio during the day and they hunt monsters at night. It's Blade meets the Odd Couple. Adam Scott and Jane Levy. Come on, Corey. She's too serious, too business-y. She doesn't know the hokey pokey. Won't you learn what it's all about?

Busy Phillips and Dave Koechner. Baby, this is family. My Uncle Tell, who showed his wiener to Cinderella at Disneyland, is family. Do you want him staying with us? He did stay with us for three months. And he was a delight. A new pilot every month, only on Dead Pilots Society for maximum fun. Can I hear your next thing?

My second thing is the most controversial pick in wonderful history. The most unexpected, even by the person who picked it, pick of the 21st century. It's a song. It is a metal song i need to step in here immediately and explain that i know nothing about metal i do not care for it very much not a judgment of people who do are they called songs i don't even know i think they're called movements okay um i think they're called smashes and i do not know anything metal, and that is how I'm prefacing this. I am going to sound like a complete goofball to the max on this one, because the song that I have picked is a song called Generation by a black metal band called Liturgy.

Had to look up what that means. I did some research on this band. Liturgy. Had to look up what that means. I did some research on this band. Black metal is, I guess, just wilder metal, just harder metal. I'm not sure if there's a threshold that you cross over. And so that is the name of this band is Liturgy. Again, I don't know anything about this stuff, but here I go. I've never owned a metal album. It's just not my genre. I'm a gentle folk boy. And yet I really think that Generation, this song by Liturgy, is the slap. Absolutely.

They are an experimental rock band from New York City that formed back in 2008. And this song, Generation, is off their second studio album called Aesthetica that came out in 2011. off their second studio album called Aesthetica that came out in 2011. And if you can't tell from the names of their songs and albums, they are very much a hipsters metal band, I think. And that's sort of the reputation they have. Apparently, a lot of people in the metal scene think that they're full of shit because of, well, specifically because their front man wrote this treatise on metal uh that was very sort of philosophical and very uh very like hoity-toity it opened up with uh i i loaded it

up to take a look at it uh it opened up with a word that they used instead of the word preface oh okay the treatise was called transcendental black metal a vision of apocalyptic humanism and it opens with a section called and i'm gonna butcher this prologue prolegomenon prolegomenon which i guess is like an uh archaic term that i guess means prologue but uh yeah so they are they are that band and i think a lot of people in the metal scene are not like so crazy about that but i don't give a shit about that because i don't know anything about that scene and i think that this song rules um i'm gonna play a little bit of it here in just a bit just to set it up i was living in chicago uh my friend jeremy who i was living with was was writing about

music uh still still does when was writing about i think was writing about this band i don't know if he was reviewing it or what uh and so I heard this song come from the other room and I was like, what's this beautiful sound? And he was like, this is, this, this is metal. And I was like, Oh shoot. Do I like metal? And I listened to other metal and I was like, I don't, I just really liked this song. Um, so here's a little bit of it. It was just full blown warning. It is very powerful metal. So be prepared for that um i i sent this to rachel earlier in the day and you made it about 30 seconds in i think because it was so intense that your you know your bones started to come out yeah and i said griffin

when do the lyrics start and i said they don't here it is Yeah, there's no vocals in this one. You may also be wondering, where's the chorus? There's not really one of those in it either. Oh, you're probably wondering, when are they going to play another chord? They really don't actually play another chord the whole song. It's really just, this is sort of a tribute to the E power chord, just like raising it up on a pedestal and offering it up to the gods of heavy metal because it's just that one E power chord for seven fucking minutes. Oh, man, seven minutes, huh?

Seven minutes, and it does not stop. The changes, it moves through like different sections that have like slightly different sort of like guitar patterns um and so you'll get like 45 seconds of like one pattern of just this fucking e power chord just like screaming into your face and then like it'll change a little bit but it's still an e power chord a lot of the work there that like sort of differentiates the different sections of the song comes from the drums. This is from a Pitchfork review of the track.

They said, the charge here comes from drummer Greg Fox, who explores the possibilities of his small kit, letting the hi-hats rest, letting them ring, limiting the action mostly to his combat-ready snares, like with a pioneer's zeal. It's like seven minutes of the introduction to the best rock and roll song you know. That's very much what this song is. Yeah, that's how I could kind of see the appeal of it because it does have that feeling. Yeah.

I just, I kept waiting for something significant to happen. Yes, I think that my introduction to this song was maybe the ideal introduction, which was I heard it playing in another room and was maybe the ideal introduction, which was I heard it playing in another room and was like, what the fuck is this? Yeah. They're just doing that one chord nonstop. And I think I was also sort of suspended in the torment of my expectations of what songs

were. But man, when I need to get more powerful, when I need to get strong, when I'm like, I listen to this song. This is weird. And it's also the truth. I listen to this song a lot in the airport on my way home from travel. I am fucking bedraggled. I am tired.

It is early. I'm at the airport. And I put this song on. And for seven minutes, I just get psyched out of my mind because this aggressive song is just like being just blasted at me uh and it gets me so psyched and it's so weird because it's again it is not the kind of thing i usually go for uh but i think i think the song is like i think the song is exciting i think it is uh sonically cool and i also think it is, uh, sonically cool. And I also think it is mathematical in a way that I find very interesting.

Yeah. I can see that. Uh, yeah, there's so much stuff that I really like about this song that I, again, like I do not have the words to, I don't,

I don't feel confident in my ability to talk about music on this show at all, despite the fact that we do it a lot. I do not like, I don't know anything about this stuff. I just think that, uh, I think the song is really really really cool so that's generation by liturgy you know it's exciting to appreciate

across genres of music yeah trying out a new music style kind of yeah i mean i support you in that thank you i support whatever your next thing's gonna be so don't fuck it up oh you'll support this griffin uh- oh do you want to take a drink while i tell you what it is am i gonna spit stuff everywhere probably it's the wienermobile yeah yeah yeah yeah uh okay just as a really quick aside in the latest adventure zone i don't know if you're listening to it but dad plays this character who's like a driver of a car and he lost his car and wanted to get a new one he sent me a text the morning we were going to record and he was like what if my new car is the wienermobile and i was like mac you

do some stuff to like really stretch the old like narrative like logical leaps but like that seems like a lot sometimes i think he thinks of the potential resulting animations as he like sits down yeah brainstorms oh the wienermobile the wienermobile what a treat i have so many fucking questions about the wienermobile what a treat it is to see this thing out in the wild have you had that experience oh my god yes are you kidding me huntington west virginia which has a literal hot dog festival oh good point yeah like the Wienermobile got action out there. Is there just the one? Oh, Griffin, I have so much to share.

That's what I'm like, start talking. Okay. Do you want to know the history of the Wienermobile or are you just too anxious to get to today's Wienermobile? Give me a history. Because I don't know why this Wiener company had their own car. In 1936, Carl Meyer, the nephew of Oscar Meyer, suggested a marketing idea to his uncle.

Build a 13-foot long mobile hot dog and cruise around the Chicago area. He was high on whatever people were getting high on in the 1930s. And, you know, obviously took off from there yeah uh just recently in 2016 they celebrated the 80th anniversary of the wienermobile we gotta we gotta go back we gotta stop we gotta rewind can you i want you to put your shoes in the closet and then put on the shoes of a person living in the 1930s and you're standing on the street things are probably pretty tough yeah i don't remember exactly when world war ii happened but i feel like it was sort of around then it's probably coming off the heels of the depression well and so there was a time period yeah where the wienermobile went away yeah they

scrapped it just because it wasn't economical for the time period for metal that they turned into a like a fighter plane or something uh but then okay you're on the streets and you're a 1930s person and a big 13 foot hot dog car drives by i want to hear your what's the what's your how many people just straight up died on their feet looking like oh uh is the crossing guard telling us to go okay hey what's that over there just dead because you just saw a big 13 foot hot dog car yeah i mean there's nothing in your life to prepare you for that my my my brain would the lobes would separate and i would just have full instantly experience full body death uh so the reason that I'm familiar with the Wienermobile is.

Can I guess? Well, it's twofold. Yeah. One, my maiden name is Weiner, W-E-I. I like to distinguish. Yeah. Often it was pronounced incorrectly. Uh-huh.

Associated with this hot dog opportunity probably actually i'm gonna guess that a lot of times when people mispronounced it the thing they associated with wasn't a hot dog i imagine it was like a mean like a mean p like a pp thing like a pp thing yes uh kids are disgusting you know they called me? Griffin Macaroni. Oh, God. That must have been so terrible for you, Griffin. Griffin Door Macaroni. Oh. Put yourself in the fucking garbage can with that shit.

Can I tell you something? That is an adorable nickname, and I love it. Uh-huh. Wiener did not serve me in quite such an adorable way. Yeah. But there was a period of time in my late teens when i kind of reclaimed it yeah let's say sure uh and i kind of got excited about the opportunity to be around the wienermobile because i i always wanted to have like a picture in front of it like my mom and i used to talk about

how we get like a family christmas card in front of the Wienermobile. And it never happened, unfortunately. But part of the reason that I got to see it more frequently is the whole driver program for the Wienermobile really circulates around college campuses. So in 1988, Oscar Mayer launched what they call the Hot Dogger program, where they encourage recent college graduates to drive the Wienermobile. And so the company receives between 1,000 and 1,500 applications for the 12 available positions annually. And it's mostly recent college graduates who are looking for a road trip opportunity. That's amazing. That's very cool.

Does the car have hot dogs in it? Do they give out hot dogs? Yes. Okay. Yes. I mean, that's how it started. I don't know if they do it today. Today, it's like typically focused on what they call wiener whistles, which are like

those little plastic whistles. Right, I had one of those. Yeah. Okay. I definitely had some face time with this thing because I definitely had a wiener whistle growing up. So the drivers are called hot doggers. Okay.

definitely had a wiener whistle growing up so the drivers are called hot doggers okay uh and those selected are given 40 hours of instruction and assigned a different u.s region like was there probably an appalachian one is that the one that i experienced how big is the region i mean i don't know the size of the region i feel like i saw this thing a lot so if it was just like east coast and like a map of the territories in my hand right now so there's some vernacular associated with the wienermobile that i really appreciate it and i think you might enjoy i already mentioned the hot dogger right people uh travel in pairs when they do the wienermobile uh and they and they do that because they want somebody to obviously drive the vehicle and they want somebody to you know keep an eye on the road and wave a passenger

to man the turret on top of the hot dog wave it passerbys this position is known as riding shot bun not the best oh damn it isn't that the absolute best man that's good and people in that position are like required to wave the idea is that their role is to be like an ambassador as they're like driving around i like that less well i still enjoy it um now this i don't know if this is just taking liberties in the article that i was reading uh they talk about uh fans who are invited to board are encouraged to fasten their meat belts okay i feel like this article is starting to just make shit up uh the decor though is is decorated as if the upholstery looks as if it has ketchup and mustard all over it. Okay. Well, that's good if you do make a mess. There are six seats inside and occupants are invited to wave from the bun roof.

Well, hold on. There's six seats inside? Are people... I think it's set up kind of like a limousine. Sure. Are people being... I thought of it being sort of like the bookmobile or the bloodmobile no if you think about it as a recruiting tool like when it went to campuses

they would like set up shop and invite well this sounds very cult-like now like come and learn jump in the 13-foot hot dog and we're going to take you i don't like the idea of getting in the wienermobile and being taken somewhere else sweetheart it's bigger than 13 feet now oh damn in 1995 the wienermobile grew in size to 27 feet long and 11 feet high oh shit today's wienermobile has a voice activated gps a audio center with a wireless mic, and a horn that plays the wiener jingle in 21 different genres from Cajun to rap to bossa nova. I bet that rap version's really good.

I bet it's really very good, huh? So let me tell you about the fleet. You asked if there were multiple vehicles. I mentioned there are multiple regions. The fleet is six wienermobiles. Okay. All right. So these territories are quite large then.

Okay. In 2017, they added additional vehicles, including a Wiener Rover, a Wiener Mini, a Wiener Cycle, which is like a motorcycle. Stop. And a Wiener Drone. A Wiener drone a wiener stop stop i don't want any throw those away mulch those i don't want to see a fucking if i see a hot dog motorcycle drive by me like i'll i won't even think twice it won't even register to me that it's something uncommon i need to see that proud 27 foot 27 feet feet. That is such a big fucking car. That is a big boy car for big boys.

I feel like. See, that is I feel like that is the one that I am familiar with. Like, that's the one I think of is the 27 foot long. Not the wiener drone. You don't think of the wiener drone and think back fondly. Not yet. But who knows, man? Who knows knows 80 years this has been around who knows what innovations are to come i only the only innovations i'm interested in is a bigger wiener mobile i don't want fucking a fleet of wiener drones flying through unless it's at a ballpark and each one contains five

hot dogs that it would drop down neither my awaiting hands god i love hot dogs i know i would eat a hot dog right we just ate dinner i would eat a hot dog right now i know me too no i was thinking about the other day i was thinking about mcdonald's hot dog like mcdonald's bratwurst when they did that oh i don't remember that at all i watched a youtube video about like things mcdonald's tried and immediately like canceled including their their beloved pizzas and their weird Philly cheesesteak rectangular sandwich. I don't remember any of this. I'm pretty sure this may have been a Huntington-specific opportunity.

I think we got a lot of test market stuff, but they had bratwurst, and I swear to God, it was really good. It was really good. It's probably something like Johnsonville. I doubt that they were encasing their own meats, but I got the craziest craving for those i would eat any hot dog right now i want the wienermobile to smash in through that fucking through the wall of our house i would pay for the i would pay for repairs if the if the wienermobile just smashed into our front our front door so hey those of you that are graduating this spring and are looking for a really awesome road trip.

Yeah. Come smash in my house. Yeah. With your 27-foot Proud Wiener car. That's so big. Uh-huh. If that thing like. That's why they get 40 hours of instruction to drive this thing.

Like I can't imagine. I would want actually, I need them to have more. That is almost a three-story long hot dog car. I don't want them making a fucking right turn until they've had 80 hours. Hey, can I tell you what our friends at home are excited about this week? Yes. Oh, and hey, by the way, if you want to email us with things you're excited about, what's that email address?

It's wonderfulpodcast at gmail.com. Do you remember what our PO box is? I do not know. Well, then I'm going to read the submissions. And then while you talk about other stuff after that, I'm going to find what our PO box is. So hang in there, everybody. First submission is from Ashley, who says,

I open a lot of tabs in Google Chrome while I'm at work. It's a web browser, my preferred web browser. And it's incredibly satisfying to say, I no longer need this tab and close it, making all the other tabs bigger in the bar at the top of the screen. It feels like I'm decluttering my brain as I close the information pathways I no longer need open.

This is just Marie Kondo for your web browser. I love this. I actually never have more than like four or five tabs open at a time. I know that you really go for it. I try to my problem is i have multiple windows open because i have a dual monitor set up so i will have like unconsciously like five different like instances of google chrome being open it's not ideal here's one from robin who says i love my job i'm a blacksmith i get paid to burn things and swing heavy hammers it fucking rules i can't help but

agree on that one that is a good that's a good job i feel like the only time i ever had like face-to-face time with a blacksmith was at the old uh universal studios islands of adventure like fantasy not fantasy town like yeah i guess kind of like medieval town uh and there was a blacksmith there who was like making like armor but he was also making coins and i got one of the coins and i thought it was the coolest shit ever that park is cool as shit i want to go back there but and go to the harry potter one i want to get the wand from all of and i want to be the little boy who gets picked for that experience? Charlie got to do that experience. And she's 27 years younger than me.

That doesn't seem fair, does it? Here's one from Lena who says, I love using wooden utensils while I'm cooking. They can't melt on hot pans. This is a very good one that I wish I'd been keyed into a little bit earlier in my cooking career. I got Griffin a set of wood utensils for this reason. It's true. They have a strange flavor to them that I'm still trying to wash out.

I'm very excited to use them once they start out very spicy. They have like a spice. It tastes like cinnamon almost. I'm trying to get rid of that because it's hard to taste the food that I'm cooking and get that powerful cinnamon, but they're beautiful tools. But I used to cook everything with a fucking metal spatula.

And now I realize how very foolish that was. Yeah. Get you some good wooden utensils. Hey, thank you so much for listening. Thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song. Money won't pay. You'll find a link to that in the episode description.

Rachel's going to talk about maximum fun at length right now. So if you like our podcast, there is a good chance you will like other podcasts on the Maximum Fun Network. If you go to MaximumFun.org, you can see all sorts of great podcasts, comedy podcasts, podcasts about movies, about dogs, about parenting. There's a tremendous amount of opportunities. I found it. Maximum Fun's great. I found it. Okay. about dogs, about parenting. There's a tremendous amount of opportunities. I found it. MaxFun's great. I found it.

Okay, go ahead. Thanks, MaxFun. MaxFunFun.org. Check it all out. We have a website. It's McElroy.family. Anyway, if you want to send us stuff, it's P.O. Box 26038, Austin, Texas, 78755. We should mention that we are really only going to check that

about once a month, so please don't send anything perishable. Yeah, please don't. And also don't send any trash or horse magazines. I swear to God. Wickhabit. Oh, yes. So Erica Huff is a listener of the show.

Occasionally she will create show inspired candles and then sell them and give some of the proceeds to charity uh right now if you search for wick habit uh you will find her shop and she has a candle called rachel's poetry corner it's very and she is giving 50 to book spring which is a austin-based non-profit that provides different programs and books to young children. I was about to jump in and say, it smells very good. I don't know. It's a web. It's on a picture.

I saw a picture on a website. We have not smelled it yet, but the, the sense in the description are all things that we like. Yeah. The, the ingredients. Are they called ingredients?

If it's a candle, no one's quite sure. So that's going to do it for this episode. I thought it might be fun to like wrap up if the two of us did like an acapella version of the heavy metal song that I brought earlier. So I'll count us in. You ready? One, two, three, four. Transcendental. transcendental i just got asmr we gotta go

money Moneyball, working on it. Moneyball, working on it. Moneyball, working on it. Moneyball, working on it. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Hey, it's Jesse, the host of Bullseye with Jesse Thorne. I'm coming to Portland, Oregon. We're going to be doing a very special live episode of Bullseye, my NPR interview show.

It's taking place Friday, February 15th at Revolution Hall. What are you going to see? If you go to Portland, Oregon to see this show, you will see me live on stage talking with folks like Corin Tucker from Slater Kinney, director Lance Bangs, writer Bill Oakley, Simpsons legend. We will also have live music from Roseblood and live comedy from Katie Nguyen. It's going to be a blast and a half. It's also part of a big podcast festival called Listen Up Portland. Tons of other great podcasts are playing at it, too. Our pals the Doughboys, among others.

So, again, that's Friday, February 15th at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon, 7 p.m. Tickets are on sale now. Get them at listenupportland.com. And thanks.