Wonderful! - Wonderful! 68: Homemade Runts

Episode Date: January 23, 2019

Rachel's favorite goof appreciation! Griffin's favorite edible freebie! Rachel's favorite melty sandwich! Griffin's favorite historical videos! 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.

try it now hi this is rachel mcelroy yeah that did it oh that one plays that one's gonna play we're gonna play that one where it lies? Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. So, bad news. I hate to start things off with this. It's not really. It's floating a stinky balloon of bad news.

It's not really what we do on the show. Well, it's important because I just got back from PodCon, rubbing elbows, rubbing microphones with all the greats. I saw that the Roman Mars was there uh the roman mars was there uh just stress to the nines uh i can do like a quick style recap if you want um of course i want that well i can't i can't i don't know anything enough about style to even lie about it but anyway the monstars did show up and they did steal my podcast energy um they stole who else Roman got got pretty bad um all the Night Vale folks Night Vale's just done what how did the Monstars steal your podcast magic microphone so I went up on stage and I was like

all right I'm gonna do my podcast now and I talked into the microphone and as did it, like I felt myself doing worse and worse at podcasting. And then I looked at the microphone and it had this like blue sort of glow, like this cloud of, I guess, my podcast energy all around it. I tried to eat it back up into my body, but by that point, the monsters were so much bigger than I was. Yeah. Don't worry about it because I've got all the blue glow right over here. Yeah. No, you still have the blue glow. I don't, but you're bragging. I'm saying because I didn't go to PodCon.

Yeah. It's kind of like how, you know, you always keep somebody behind in like a national emergency. Sure, sure, sure. So like I stay here. I get that. No, I get that you weren't.

Kept all the blue glow right but this is like if two people were talking and one of them got stabbed and the other one was like i didn't get stabbed i'm saying that don't worry about it take it easy you're saying can i have some of your blue glow i wouldn't know how to transmit that to you i got some ideas this is wonderful on this podcast we talk about things that we like very much and we're gonna do just that do you have any small wonders i do i got to go see snail mail while you were at podcon yeah and it was incredible yeah i bet it was i talked to everybody who would listen to me at podcon about how sad i was to be missing that um yeah she performed pristine yeah and man i love it i imagine she did the whole the whole

album yeah i shouldn't have a lot of albums to draw from and so we got to hear all the hits and i got to hear pristine and it was so great i would very much like to go to a concert i couldn't remember the last time i've been to a concert. I am struggling. I think it was when I went to churches by myself. Yeah. Although we'll see some on the JoCo cruise. That'll be nice.

Oh, yeah. My small wonder, a good dude named Ben at PodCon hooked me up with a Loner OPZ, which is the new keyboard from Teenage Engineering. They made that OP1 synth that I talked about a lot a loaner opz which is the new uh keyboard from teenage engineering they made that op1 synth that i like talked about a lot uh a few months back this one's is that little gray guy right there you can see it it's a great it's actually sitting right next to my tv remote and they are the exact same size and yet the opz and your pill caddy i have my pill caddy don't tell people my pill caddy i'm ashamed of it I don't want people to know that I can't responsibly take two pills a day without forgetting every single time uh but it's so tiny it's so tiny

but it like can do so much stuff I literally just like sat uh on the airplane on the flight back and for all three and a half hours of that flight I just messed around with it and made like a really cool song and I did it on this really really tiny thing that like i'm going to take with me every single place it's honestly more like the um the pocket operators those little calculator like guys because it's more of a step sequencer than like a whole like uh synth like workshop but the stuff it allows you to do also you can plug it into your phone uh and so like your phone will then sort of act as like the visual component of it because it doesn't have a screen on it so it'll show you like when you press the like uh you know bass button it shows you all the parameters of the bass and like what the different knobs and stuff do and then also it has like a

music visualizer mode where like you just set that and then all of a sudden your iphone is like showing off these like crazy three-dimensional sort of scenes that run in unity a game development sort of platform it's a it's wild it is a wild piece of technology that i'm like obsessed with i think i really like like synth hardware yeah it seems like it i know i don't collect much i i don't know if you call the games i own a collection probably but like i don't know i don't have games I own a collection probably, but like, I don't know. I don't have any adult hobbies and it feels like this is becoming one. It's almost getting to the point where you need like a little shelf.

I need to clear off one of those things. I have a significant amount of hardware. I forget. I think, I think it's my turn. Can I double check? It's been so long. Yes, of course.

Yes. All right. Did you know the little animated, like the little illustrated characters of us at the top of the page change depending on whose turn it is to go first on Wonderful.fyi? No, I never noticed that. Like, you're smiling right now. Like, you look

so excited. Oh. It's really good. Well, I am excited. Okay. This is gonna sound kind of basic to you, but I did some research to make it you know, everything I want it to be. Okay. A good sense of humor.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. Like, uh, Drew Carey, um, old Tim Allen. What was peak Tim Allen to you? Ugh. A good sense of humor, is pretty great, I think. And I am getting very particular about this because I don't know a person that would say, I'm not very funny. You know? I mean, there's maybe a small percentage of people that do, but I am talking about a very specific kind of what I found out is called positive humor.

Okay. What does that mean? There's a whole group of people in psychology that have identified different types of humor. And so the Journal of Research and Personality in 2003 came up with a humor styles questionnaire that you could take to identify which type of humor you most strongly lent yourself to. Okay, what are those categories? There's affiliative humor.

Whoa. Which is when you engage in banter and otherwise use humor to make others like you. Okay. I'm trying to decide which one i have and this is a strong contender uh-huh the other is self-enhancing humor which is optimistic coping humor characterized by the ability to laugh at yourself or the absurdity of a situation and feel better as a result see

this is when i tell jokes yeah my muscles get bigger for like a little bit the blue glow from the monsters yeah and i've never watched dragon ball z but i think that's what it's mostly about now the next two are not positive humor oh do we even need to talk about this stink humor then i think we should okay there's aggressive humor which is characterized by sarcasm teasing criticism and ridicule oh i don't like this one i think and then there's self-defeating humor, which is attempting to get others to like us by putting ourselves down.

And I dabble in this. Now I do dabble a bit in this one, yeah. I dip my toe in that pool from time to time. I guess I feel like my humor has matured a lot as I've gotten older. I think I feel like my humor has matured a lot as I've gotten older. I think I really, I tended towards the aggressive humor in my youth. I can see that. Which is like the sarcasm, you know, the like, I don't care about anything.

Back when you were rolled with a dirt bike club and smoked cloves while just sort of kicking up dirt from your dirt bike in people's eyes and mouths while yelling back like you have a you have a weird butt i see i am so detached from me humor that i can't like that's the heat that i'm generating uh i think one of the things that i i really appreciate about your humor and just kind of the mcelroy philosophy around humor is, is that it tends to be more positive and it's really kind of motivated me to be less, um, negative in my humor. It's weird. Like I, uh, obviously like that's something that we strive for just because I don't know, I think it's, I think it's a good way, not because it's a virtuous way of doing it.

Although obviously it's better than the other two alternatives but just because like I think it's a fun I think it's the funniest one of the four so like it's just the one that I always lean on I also genuinely like it's hard for me to think of something funny and mean to say about somebody because a lot of the mean shit that you hear like that mean humor very very very very very few people can actually do that and have it be like funny like you can you can do humor like that and but like one out of every thousand like professional stand-ups can actually like do something new with it and not just like do the same put down i feel like it's like an older style of comedy you know like it's like like don rickles kind of like yeah old timey and and

especially like that interactive stuff like whether it's with hecklers in the audience or just sort of like good good-natured ribbing uh like yeah that's that one's that one is very hard to pull off but it is easily rewarded when people do a bad job with it yeah um and and so there's a lot of research out there to support why you know people that are funny have better lives but i thought this one was interesting so when people laugh more themselves it changes their neurobiology uh so laughter leads to brain changes which may explain the link between humor and intelligence. Neuropsychological studies have found that experiencing positive emotional states, such as joy, fun, and happiness, increase the production of dopamine. Dopamine not only makes us feel great, it also opens up the learning centers of the brain, which enable us to sustain more neural connections.

As a result, we become more flexible and creative in our thinking and better at solving problems. It also boosts our working memory. That's what I was talking about when I said my muscles get bigger. Your brain is the most important muscle that you have in your body. I think. I think. What about your tongue, though?

Yeah, I take it back. Tongue wins. That's interesting. I always knew there were positive side effects to laughing a lot, but not explicitly that your brain gets cooler. I felt like I'm starting to view our podcast as a glossary for living. Okay. And so sometimes I feel like, oh, if we don't include something,

that's a huge oversight on our part. And I feel like sense of humor is like a real big thing and it's worth mentioning. I think so too. I was thinking about this, like, um, I was having some trouble like coming up with a melody for a song for

Taz. And I was getting really frustrated because like, I haven't trained necessarily that like, uh, part of my skill set. Like I am not especially good at just like thinking, creating from nothing a thought of like what a good melody would be. So did you watch some America's Funniest Home Videos? I watched some AFV. No, I got frustrated.

But then I was like thinking about it and i was like editing my bim bam later and i heard a joke and i was like that was a really weird thought that i generated not necessarily a hysterically funny one but like a weird one and that abstract comedy thought is i imagine would be tough to generate out of nothing if i didn't like have this sense of humor this is like that's not braggadocious it's me it was literally a realization I had that I possess a skill well and it's like you talking about how you're resistant to doing something like stand-up yeah because your humor is is more creative it's more like environmental and situational stand-ups extremely creative it's just a question of when the joke is made and I yeah um yeah that's a good one um both of mine are like pretty bite-sized i would say they're medium wonders more than anything uh my first one is complimentary

candy candy is good candy so candy's good but i want to talk about complimentary candy i am talking about um you know the free mints that you get at the the the front desk the like host chamber of the restaurant when you're yeah when you're leaving after a meal and there's little there's little mints there sometimes they're fun peppermints or spearmints sometimes they'll mix it up and it'll be like you'll think it's like a you know a spearmint candy but it's got some chocolate notes or some sort it's a fruit oh when it's like the fruit one like that always blows my mind back when andy's mints were a thing oh my gosh yes you used to get them with like the check at the end of a meal that was fun uh i've been to places that give you little chiclets at the end of the meal

that's fun but then you got stuff like uh you know, doctor's office, chocolate on your pillow at a nice hotel. I'm speaking specifically like from experience. They had some bomb ass chocolate at the Sheraton by the PodCon and at PodCon on every stage where you did your panels. They had bowls of candy there. It was amazing. And I have been trying to be much more thoughtful about what i eat and that has sort of um severely reduced what i will call candy opportunities for me that's very true yeah griffin used to when he would go to run some kind of errand would just pick up a little candy treat

either usually skittles or sour patch kids which i oh boy oh boy do i like those very much um so like i don't eat much candy these days unless i see some complimentary candy that i can snatch up and then i'll go for it like 10 times out of 10 um my college advisor always had candy in his room and so like i would always walk by his room and just like dip in and be like, you got some starburst. Good. You're going to teach me something today. Nope.

I bet when your college advisor made the choice for that candy, uh, the colleagues of that advisor suggested, Oh, this, no, there's no, this is not going to use you,

Dan. I know church, church, church, church, church was a candy convention. When are you talking about communion wafers? Those are, if you close your mind, close your eyes and your mind and really sort of go to

like that hook place where the food can be anything. Yeah. It was amazing. Now, what is church candy? Just candy. I don't know. Where would they place it? Everywhere.

My mom was a church secretary for many, many, many years. And, you know, she always had the hookup. But like any pastor that had an office, you could dip in there and get some. There's usually like a bowl by the front door where they had like greeters. You can snatch some up there. There was a dude who would always have gum. And if you ran into him, you could just get a stick of gum from him he was a really great dude um i just like the idea of like people in places sort of recognizing this universal truth like

it's it's hard enough as it is out there why don't you have a little bit of candy to go just have a little bit of candy to like help sort of bolster your defenses um i was also reading about office candy um and there's almost too much to like get into here because there have been so many studies done on like the psychological mechanisms behind the politics of office candy um specifically like uh why people have bowls of candy on their desk and how people's interactions with that person and their candy changes depending on the power dynamics between them and the proximity the actual physical proximity between them there's like a distance I think it's like six feet if you're within six feet of a bowl of candy and you know it's there you are going to get up and go to it like a hundred times more than you would

if you were six feet, one inches away from it. If it's in your line of sight, you're gonna be obviously way more likely to go up and just sort of idly get candy. Not even, I think, making a conscious decision, just like walking by like, ooh, candy, don't mind if I do. And then there's things like if you,

the boss's bowl of candy almost never gets touched just because of the dynamics between like the boss and subordinate, unless that sub touched just because of the the dynamics between like the boss and subordinate unless that subordinate is specifically trying to put in face time with the boss and then they will go and get candy more often than not um can i tell you uh a memory that brought up for me yeah our sixth grade principal sixth grade was kind of that bridge between middle school uh and elementary school and so they were big on bribes and the idea was that you could get neat notes which were little pieces of paper from

your teachers that you know indicated you had done something good and if you got enough neat notes you could go to the principal's office and get a scoop of runts off of his desk what a weird prize yes what a strange you would use your whole hand and it was as many as you could oh wait oh my god i know you use your your filthy child paw put them in an envelope like a letter envelope poorly thought out reward system are you kidding what what grade was this in sixth grade middle school yeah in middle school we had strides which were these little blue tickets because we went to mac we were the blue streaks and if you did good in class you got good grades you were just a good student you would get a stride and then you could trade in like five of those for like a whole ice cream bar in the like

dining area the cafeteria five yeah you only needed like five of them i remember thinking like am i the only one that doesn't like runts are there people not just runts rach you're talking about this principal's homemade runts packaging runts fulfillment operation he was operating out of his out of his office this is this is the wildest thing i've ever heard today i remember deciding like well i guess I like the lime runts. Was it just a big bowl? Nobody likes the banana runts. That's not true.

I like the flavor of them, but the shape makes them very difficult to eat. I actually prefer the little heart, the little pink heart ones. The strawberries. I think they're strawberry. But he had like a box or a bowl of them. It was like a glass jar and you'd stick your whole hand in there and pull them out so in the summer i imagine there was a stick and stickiness element and then he gives you an envelope to put them in does he write runts on the envelope so you don't get confused and mail them off this principal was a psychopath yeah a little bit uh anyway the

washington post did a huge feature story on office candy where they like talked to psychologists and tried to recreate it in the Washington Post office that I read all of and thought was very fascinating. So, yeah, free candy is good. You didn't need me to fucking tell you that, though. Can I steal you away? I got some Jumbotrons here. You want to hear them? Yes. This one is for Hannah, and it's from Jordan, who says,

Hannah Banana? I like that. I cannot adequately convey to you how much I love you. It's okay. We got this. That's what Rachel and I are here for. I'm so excited for our new apartment, our post-wedding pizza party, and getting to spend the rest of my life with you.

You are the light of my world, my moon and stars my wonderful your spookums jordan p.s this is also a formal request for you to make your good good lasagna this is the densest and so dense with flavor this message is they talk about pizza and lasagna in one message it's not just pizza but post wedding pizza party is an incredibly powerful concept. I would have been all over that. I would have been all over that too. Although I would have yartzed for sure.

I had a lot of stuff in there. People tell you you don't eat at your wedding. We ate at our wedding. We ate the fucking lot and drank much. Yes. What a hoot. Here's one for Joe and Katie, and it's from Laura, who says,

thank you for being my two favorite podcast pals. I'm so happy to share all of the wonderful McElroy content with both of you. Joe, I love you so much, and I'm so thankful you introduced me to this good, good family last year. Katie, I'm excited you decided

to share this awesome content with me. Thank you for both being so wonderful. I love you. There's so much crediting that happens in this one. There's so much attribution. And I find it very refreshing. I know exactly who turned who onto what in this message. It's like the first chapter of the Bible

where it's like Joe introduced it to Katie who introduced Laura did the both of them. You've never read the Bible where it's like Joe introduced it to Katie who introduced Laura did the both of them. You've never read the Bible. I didn't. Is that what this whole thing has been leading up to? Are you going to school me right now? Wouldn't it be wild if we changed once again and it became Griffin teaches Rachel about the Bible?

Are you ready for that? I mean, sure. Here we go. So once upon a time, there's this guy named Moses. I would say all right. Hi, I am Lori Kilmartin.

And I'm Jackie Kish. Together, we host a podcast called The Jackie and Lori Show. We're both stand up comics. We recently met each other because women weren't allowed to work together on the road or in gigs for a long, long time. And so our friendship has been unfolding on this podcast for a couple of years. Jackie constantly works the road. I write for Conan and then I worked the road in between.

We do a lot of stand up comedy. And so we celebrate stand-up. And we also bitch about it. We keep it to an hour. We don't have any guests. We somehow find enough to talk about every single week. So find us. You can subscribe to The Jackie and Laurie Show at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, bye. You want to hear my second thing? I would love to hear your second thing. It's a shame we just ate dinner because I guarantee you, as I'm talking about this, you are going to get hungry again. That could have gone either direction.

I'm glad it went in the hungry direction. What's up? Grilled cheese. Oh, grilled cheese. Grilled cheese is one of those things. Typically, when I go to a restaurant, I will order that like i know that i can't make at home but if grilled cheese is on a menu like a hundred percent of the time i will give it a good long thought even though i know i could probably recreate it in my own home because i just a good grilled cheese is always a pleasure how pure are we talking about here

how pure are we talking about here because there's so many gradients right like there's the classic classic grilled cheese craft singles can't fuck that up but then you can start putting gruyere on there and then you can start putting like bacon jam and sauteed onions on there and then i would eat either that's the thing i i think i think that i will always i will always give it a thought. Unlike most food items at a restaurant, if there is grilled cheese on there, I will always think, should I get that grilled cheese? You know what's funny is that

if I see grilled cheese on a menu, I won't leap for it unless there is also like a tomato basil bisque on the menu that I can make his best friend. And if I see that, I throw the rest of the fucking menu into oncoming traffic because I'm going to eat the Dippums.

Dippums and Crunchums is all Rachel needs. That's so true. Did we just come up with our first t-shirt? Or each other's new pet names. Which one would you be? I would clearly be Crunchums. See, I was going to say Dippums. No.

No. be crunchums? See, I was gonna say dipums. No! Do you wanna hear about the history of American grilled cheese? Yeah. Are we being very quiet, by the way? I feel like we're being accidentally ASMR. I think we're just super chill this week. Ah, okay. So I'm not

gonna talk about the croque monsieur from the French folk. I'm gonna talk about American grilled cheese. Okay. You ready? Is a croque monsieur from the from the french folk i'm going to talk about american grilled cheese okay you ready is a croque monsieur basically for grilled cheese though you can't leave me hanging for the french folk yes okay uh so american grilled cheese can be traced back to the 1920s when the uh man from iowa invented a bread slicer that made distributing white bread easy and affordable. The man from Iowa? For some reason, I couldn't get his name.

Don't worry, folks. It's me, Iowa man. I got this. I made cheese get melty on bread, and the bread is crunchy. You're welcome. I went to HowStuffWorks, and for some reason, I guess they assumed that you had read a previous article that told you all about this Iowa man. HowStuffWorks, you usually have a much article that told you all about this. How stuff works. You usually have a much better batting average than that.

The Iowa man. Shortly before. This is what's crazy to me. Shortly before there was sliced bread, there was Kraft Singles. Isn't that weird? You are fucking kidding me. Well, so processed cheese, I should say. Not the Singles.

But the Kraft processed cheese was in existence before the sliced bread. I still like the saying best thing since sliced bread. I always thought was like archaic bullshit. Well, so this I'm talking about like mass produced sliced bread. I know that's what I'm saying. I can't believe it took them that fucking long to figure it out. Is it a preservatives thing? Like the crust would keep the inner bread sort of more i think about a bread slicer that was like you know mechanized and efficient in a way that they could really get

that bread out the door okay so this is james l craft who developed a pasteurizing process that ensured that cheese wouldn't spoil even when transported long distances. I'm pretty sure that cheese would never spoil. This, quote, factory cheese was disparagingly termed rat trap cheese or rat cheese by the English because, you know. Nothing's ever good enough for them. Well, I mean, this is, you know, an age of fine cheddars and and people that took great pride for the the great reaping and now there's no cheese anywhere except craft uh so in world war ii navy cooks began preparing american cheese filling sandwiches which was a government issued

recipe in ships kitchens i needed a recipe for that one, huh, government? You're gonna love it. You're gonna love it, boat chefs. Check it. Cheese, bread, butter. Hot it, go. Hot it. Hot it, go, fight, win.

Yes. I like hot it as a direction. Hot it, hot it. I took that from Blue Apron. In the 1940s and 50s, these cheese filling sandwiches were traditionally served open faced and consisted of one slice of bread topped with cheese. Okay, take it back. They clearly needed the Lord's guiding hand to get them across the great muse of inspiration

to get them across the finish line on this one. A second piece of bread. You them across the finish line on this one a second piece of bread you must consider the possibilities so in the uh in the early 50s craft foods introduced craft singles which were the individually wrapped slices and supermarkets began stocking them in 1965 so for some reason between the early 1950s and 1965 you had to send a letter to craft like can i get some of those singles please i'd like three singles like three singles he said well after postage there'll be 25 so enjoy it so the second piece of bread was added to the uh grilled cheese around then in the 1960s when did did the open-faced sandwich get invented?

What's the gap there? How long did it take them to really? It says in the 40s and 50s, they were served open-faced. And then in the 1960s. So possibly two decades passed. For two decades, people were eating these wrong pizzas. And then like somebody dropped a wrong pizza face down

on another wrong pizza and like, oh wait, this is a million times better. Times are tough. Maybe people didn't want to use two pieces of bread for a sandwich. You know, now I'm the asshole, I guess, because I forgot that people didn't have infinite cheese and bread back then. So a lot of times, if you look at early recipe books, you see a lot of toasted cheese and toasted sandwich. You don't see a lot of grilled cheese in the common vernacular.

I can't believe I said that thing about this not needing a recipe. Even if we look at 1953, we're talking joy of cooking, which is like, you know, foundational. Sure. if we look at 1953 we're talking joy of cooking which is like you know foundational sure irma s rombauer wrote that bread and cheese should be heated in a commercial waffle iron as an easy meal for even quote the madeless host to prepare i don't the ramifications of that are really weird and also i don't hate that uh an open waffle iron, did it say? Commercial waffle iron. Oh, commercial waffle iron. So do you actually close it?

Do you waffle that shit up? Because if so, I'm into that. I guess so, yeah. I'm into that. I like that. I like that little cheese pockets, little cheese crannies. Just a bunch of hot pockets put together in one. Now, oh my God.

You could dice up some pepi and splash a little bit of that red sauce on top of it. Then I think we got something going here. Are we calling it pepi now? So what else did they fuck up for the cheese sandwich? So this is what I found interesting. You don't have to sell me heart on a grilled cheese, you know, but apparently in 2007, Kraft Foods budgeted a record $1.4 billion to its marketing to get grilled cheese back onto the list of quick menu options and revitalize Kraft singles.

By quick menu options in what? I guess just get it back in regular circulation for folks get people making grilled cheese again okay uh so this is from the how stuff works article a contest held on the now obsolete social network myspace asked users to create and upload home videos celebrating grilled cheese for a chance to win fifty thousand dollars And a craft executive said the goal was to, quote, get people to make just one more grilled cheese sandwich a year. We're going to give you $50,000. And then they'll tell two friends, and then they'll tell two friends.

And then Tom on MySpace changed his profile pic to a grilled cheese sandwich. That's not true. I'm kidding. No. In craft's defense defense what if tom changed his fucking profile image one day what if he changed it i have a beard now no tom get back behind your school desk you child um i'm singles 90s kids will love that joke craft um i think In Kraft's defense, for their weird marketing ploy there, I did go maybe 14 years without eating a grilled cheese sandwich. I did nonstop when I was a kid.

I thought you were going to talk about a Kraft single grilled cheese. I definitely had grilled cheese that were not Kraft singles. I mean, I don't know. I feel like I had a Monte Cristo sandwich once and I was like, well, this is the better version of this, I feel like. And then I had three of those and i um almost died i aged 20 years like i had drank from the wrong chalice and i was like whoa i need to slow my roll on those and now i think it's maybe because i'm only recently getting into soup and god the dipums oh the dipums so the following year so we're talking 2008 craft asked fans to write about their favorite grilled cheese memory

for a chance to win a free pack of craft singles that's that's the prize that's worse than the runts envelope it's like what like a dollar 75 i guess yeah that was it was not worse than the runts envelope that's uh that's a great man crushing it over their craft you're lucky you invented fast cheese because otherwise i used to when i was a kid i think and i had a a maybe less refined palette i used to just take a craft single just fold it up and eat it absolutely yeah you can make it thicker and that would sort of trick you into thinking it's fancier but we know we know what's up but yeah so i i i have a longing for grilled cheese in my daily life i don't usually indulge in it because i feel like i don't know it's not filling enough you know these days but oh i still love it i still love it so much

i have been thinking a lot and rachel can attest to this because i've had conversations with her about it about craft macaroni and cheese yeah i've wanted to eat that extraordinarily badly like i've had the craziest craving for it um and it seems like a weird that one seems like a weird one to fulfill for me not easy mac because i want it to be good if i'm gonna eat it so i want the box with the dinosaur on it um like for me to go through the effort of making making that when like i don't know we've had like amy's macaroni and cheese and like you know nice nice four cheese macaroni and cheese with like a baked crust on it like really good stuff i want that dirty that dirty box dinosaur shit we can do that griffin we're adults we We can't tell anyone, though. Okay. No one can see us. Draw the blinds.

It's dinosaur time. What's your second thing? My second thing is a YouTube series that I've recently discovered that I've seen ads for like constantly, which I think is YouTube's way of saying you like everything around this. You should be watching this. And it was proven right today. Or actually, it was last week I started watching. It's called defunct land

uh and it is a long-running youtube series i don't know about long running but there's a lot of episodes about it and the entire premise of the show is that the host uh is a guy named kevin perjurer which is a cool name uh and he is essentially an amusement park historian. He takes a look at the histories of shuttered amusement parks, closed down attractions, and also sort of like amusement park adjacent things. And sort of explores the flawed history behind each one of them. That sounds incredible. And a lot of them are like Disney history stuff, which like, I don't know, I feel like I didn't really care about Disney World,

Disneyland, like Disney parks until we went to it last year. And I had like this incredible time and have basically been looking forward to our next time going to it since. And watching some of the stuff that like Disney has gotten up to was really, really, really fascinating for me.

I feel like he doesn doesn't like there's something like mythical about the idea of like an abandoned amusement park like it's the setting for like a fiction like a scooby-doo mystery like something out of fiction but like looking at the defunct land like youtube channel there's a lot of there's a lot of real estate sitting out there just waiting for old man crothers to you, you know, steal the jewels or whatever. So the show, like, it doesn't revel in delight. Like, look at them. Look at them fail.

Look at them try and fail. It's instead kind of like looking at the reasoning for why they did what they did and failed so spectacularly at what they did. Which, I don't know, I feel like this show could also be like mean spirited like what the fuck were you doing walt um instead it's like here's a weird thing that happened uh they didn't keep it around for very long um there is some oh so like they have other stuff too not just amusement parks uh disney i did some of the stuff i didn't even know about so like that's the coolest shit like um it's a place called action park in new jersey which was like this uh deathly water park uh that had to be shut down because of the body count of it uh and a lot of disney stuff so there's a place called club disney where they basically tried to make their own

chucky cheese do you remember this oh no yeah that one didn't last very long and then there was disney quest which was much more recent uh which is essentially do you remember the sega amusement park we went to in odaibo when we were in tokyo uh basically like sega built this sort of super arcade this like four story tall super arcade uh that uh had you know sega games in it and a bunch of like arcade stuff but then it also had like sega based amusement attractions disney basically did that uh and it was called disney quest and i think it was like in time square or close to it and it didn't last long either so like these big things i didn't even know existed but then like the the historical stuff about um like parks that have shuttered and especially like Disney rides I found so fascinating.

So I watched one today about a ride called Superstar Limos. And I feel like it provides a really good cross section of like the tone of the show and what I think is so fascinating about it. This was in California Adventure, which was fairly recent at the time. I think the ride was built in like 2001. And the idea behind the ride, it was like it at the time. I think the ride was built in like 2001. And the idea behind the ride, it was like, it was simple enough. The premise was simple.

Like you were basically a new Hollywood star arriving at LAX and you would like get chased by paparazzi and see like the sights and sounds of, of, of, of Hollywood while you're on your way. Yes. While you were on your way to this like movie premiere, it was basically like a dark ride.

Right. But with some like action elements, because like the paparazzi would chase you down and you had to get away okay so like that was the pitch for the ride uh and then princess diana died oh no in a like like very similar sort of fashion to what the ride depicted so like they were like well we can either shutter this the the the ride and park were supposed to be opening very very soon and so they were like well we can either shutter this and figure out something else to do so they removed all the paparazzi got rid of all the like fast segments and like well we need something to put in there and so like at that point also the budget had been like just it was 15 so everything looked really bad like Like it looked very, it looked very, very poorly made.

I think they described it as like a cheaply made pop-up book with like illustrations of like big crowds of people on one single huge panel of wood that would just kind of bounce up and down. And then they would have these semi animatronic celebrities, but they had to be celebrities that like Disney already had sort of on contract to do. And so like there's there's drew carey with like tickets to or like star maps that he's waving around his hand and like jackie chan doing a high flying kick out of the ceiling and uh antonio banderas and

melanie griffith like posing for photos look kids it's antonio banderas and melanie griffith like and you're going through in this like gaudy purple like uh limousine and it was short and terrible and it would and they have like footage of they not only have footage of like people filming their ride when they were you know riding it in 2001 so you can like see what everything looks like which is like incredible after going to Disney and seeing like the quality bar of the things they make, seeing this complete fart was mind-boggling. You also got promotional footage of the cast of the Drew Carey show going on the ride and feigning delight

at the things they were doing. It was them and Rosie O'Donnell like, look, there's Drew Carey. And that was the end of their commentary because it was so rough um and the whole video like it outlines this stuff and i think very rightly criticizes it uh but it also just kind of like opens this window into like disney makes like we talked about it when we did our disney trip and then like sort of uh addressed it in the following episode wonderful like it's so polished it is so fine-tuned the whole experience is like so meticulously designed from the second you you you know drive onto the park and to see something so poorly like conceived that was also sort of had dealt a bad hand by just

sort of the twists of fate uh was really interesting also then it goes into how that ride became a monster's ink ride and all of the semi-animatronic celebrities they like slapped hazmat suits on them and so now they're like you know the the monster cleanup crew or whatever and they still so you still have like a guy in a hazmat suit doing like a high-flying kick it's just it's just jackie chan wearing a suit uh like the whole front facade of the building like they just sort of slapped some like Monsters, Inc. doors all over it. Like there's so much of the DNA of the original ride that turned into this like, you know, better ride.

It sounds like kind of the thrill of seeing like a really bad movie, like watching a bad movie with your friends. It's like seeing this like i don't know this urgency put behind something that is just never going to be good yeah it's i think it's interesting in that regard and i also think it's interesting especially the disney ones because you you i don't think you get to the point where disney's at now where you know pretty much all the things they make are are are right on point like they are are all leading towards you having this perfect experience while you're at the parks where your every need is being catered to and you see stuff

like this and it's like this is kind of how they got there right like you don't you don't get to that perfect park without having a few superstar limos along the way and it's fascinating too because so you know we took henry and we went to epcot and we, you know, Epcot has like the different countries with the different rides associated with that country. And there is a ride in Mexico that maybe has existed in that country for years and years and years. It's all like. The three caballeros? Yeah. It's all like Donald Duck adjacent.

And it's a very simple ride there. You know, it must have been around for a very long time it was definitely like all of the kids loved it the absolute most it was just a lot of bright colors and videos and music and music and like not you know they liked like the more technical like the frozen ride like they obviously had a really good time but like there was no real wait to get on three caballeros because it was super old and yet they still really like kind of the science behind it and how like it isn't necessarily technology that makes a ride great.

Right. I think it's this, I think Disney has this mystique about them, like the, you know, the Imagineers doing the work behind the scenes to like make, make these, make these flawless experiences. And it's kind of like, there is something that makes that work seem even more impressive when you see when it doesn't work out. Yeah, of course. works seem even more impressive when you see when it doesn't work out yeah of course uh and yeah i i also just am excited about this about defunct land because there's so many episodes and the

episodes are really in depth and they are really long and uh yeah it's just a new thing that i've discovered i think it's been running for a long time um and uh yeah i'm excited to dip into it me too i feel like we have a lot of nice YouTube series to get into. I don't know why. That's one of my favorite parts of our day. I know. The very last moments before I pass out.

We got a new Kiwami Japan knife, and we have a new Bon Appetit video. Yeah, there's a Pringles Bon Appetit, guys. There's so many people I talk to about that series at PodCon for some reason, and every single one of them just wants Brad and Claire to get together. I know that we showed it to your brother, Justin and Sydney, and we were just very aggressive about their romance, about our OTP.

Hey, I got some submissions from our friends at home. Chad says, I live down the road from a lumber mill, and large flatbed trucks carrying lumber occasionally pass by me when I'm on the sidewalk. I love catching the huge whiff of fresh- cut wood smell that blasts me in the face from the open sides. Puts me right in the mood to settle down by the hearth. Oh, what a world that is. You know what's a good smell? We're getting some work done.

We have like this weird sort of out of the place fireplace in the house we live in and we're getting some work done to like renovate it i like this i don't know what it is i don't know if it's like drywall like new drywall smell but like there's a smell that comes alongside it kind of feel like a home depot when i walked in and i liked it i did i dig that scent uh here's one from william who says my personal wonder is downing a big glass of room temperature water that has just been poured over ice bonus wonder points if you're really thirsty as you drink the temperature of the water fluctuates between warm and cold and i find it super satisfying wow i know that's i know that i would never have thought about that as a thing when you pour like a room temperature thing into some ice and you get like

little currents of of different temperatures in it yeah sometimes i tell griffin that i have a real hard time coming up with topics. And he says, you know, Rachel, just keep it simple. And that is a perfect example. Yeah. I mean, I did complimentary candy. I mean, you also did sense of humor. I feel like this has been a real nice acoustic episode.

And one last one from Sophia says, I love hubba bubba bubba. Hubba bubba bubba. I love hubba bubba bubble tape. Everything about the experience of this good gum is fun and satisfying from the packaging to the taste to having the ability to bite off as much as you want and blowing giant bubbles. You can even have my mouth is watering so fucking much. I'm having trouble getting through this. You can even have a bubble tape race to see who can eat the whole roll fastest. You said eat and I don't love that because now i'm worried about

you sophie and sort of your track buy bubble tape yeah i think i feel like i only see it at like the grocery store and like the checkout lane this is a good vocal exercise bubble tape you don't even know you don't even i mean you never did like choir or anything like that so you don't know about red leather yellow leather red leather red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, red. That one. Aluminum linoleum. You know that jam? I knew red leather, yellow leather.

I didn't know aluminum linoleum. Hubba bubba bubble tape. You did it. I'm very talented, Griffin. You are very much. The thought of having a lot of bubble gum in my mouth, though, that didn't do it for me. But the idea of having some. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast.

Thank you so much to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to everybody who was very patient in the comments of our last episode where I talked about black metal. You all are very kind, too kind. Thank you to MaximumFun.org for hosting our podcast they are adding a lot of new shows lately have you seen this yes there's um there's the jackie and laurie show which you will be you've probably already heard a promo for in this episode and then there's a new one that's just announced today we're recording this with amy man and ted leo fuck yes that's so good uh

yes we are very lucky to be on max fun uh and uh thank you all thank you all if i met you at podcon we got a lot of people saying really wonderful things about our about wonderful um a lot of people missed you i missed you more than them um did people did people really did they say things about wonderful they did did, yeah. Like nonstop. So many people came up. I heard more about Wonderful than any of the other shows that we did. People saying, I love that show. And Rachel is so talented and great.

And hold on to this microphone for me. Oh, no. I dried up like a little dried shrimp. And that's why there were no jokes in this one. Do you think I brought enough blue glow? You always bring enough blue glow. Wait a minute. The glow is green this one. Do you think I brought enough blue glow? You always bring enough blue glow. Wait a minute. The glow is green this time. What's it mean? Are you sick?

I don't know how to keep up with this. Play with me. Can that be the end? Yeah, it can be the end. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Hi, I'm Allie Gertz.

And I'm Julia Prescott, and we're the hosts of Everything's Coming Up Simpsons. Every episode we cover a different episode of The Simpsons that is a favorite of our special guests. We've had guests that are showrunners and writers and voice actors like Nancy Cartwright. I got a D-minus, I passed! And we've also had people that are on the Maximum Fun Network already. We've had Weird Al Yankovic on the show.

I was just struck by how sharp the writing is. I mean, that's no surprise because it's The Simpsons, but I mean, you can't say that about a lot of TV shows, particularly ones that at that point had been on the air for 14 years. Find us on MaximumFun.org, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Smell you later.