Wonderful! - Wonderful! 75: Gonna Need Those Plums Back, Though

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

Griffin's favorite big wrinkly friends! Rachel's favorite eating utensil! Griffin's favorite love celebration! Rachel's favorite Imagist poet! 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.

🎵 Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Yes. Bring it on in for the big hug, big guy. Come on in. Let's get a good squeeze going. Thanks, big guy.

What about the little guy? I was talking to one specific big listener of ours. Okay. Well, hey, I've got a hug for the little guy. Come here, little guy. A little squeeze. If there's a Davis out there that says, I got a hug for you, I said, bring that. Let me get two slaps.

That's on the back. That feels good. And that's how you know it's legit. And is that everyone? Let me look at the list. I mean, there's all of women, too. All the women. Yeah.

I mean, for sure. For sure. For sure. So get on in here. Two on the back. All right. We're good to go. I think we got them all.

Oh, gender nonconforming friends. Come on in. Bring it on in here. Two on the back. All right. We're good to go. I think we got them all. Oh, gender nonconforming friends, come on in. Bring it on in. And you get three on the back. So this is wonderful. It's a podcast where we hug, I guess. We're a hugging family now. Well, we kind of hug in a way, if you think about it. I don't know, man.

I still... We talk about things that we like. Oh, I thought you meant in real life, too, we hug. I was going to say, we're not huge about it. I don't know, man. I still... We talk about things that we like. Oh, I thought you meant in real life, do we hug? I was going to say, we're not huge on it. I feel like we're pretty big on it. I like, I enjoy a hug, but when I see a group... I hug you multiple times a day, every day. You just hugged me.

Yes, like seconds before we started recording. But like when we see our friends, I never know what the protocol is. Do you want to, do you need a hug right now? We've talked about this, sweetheart. We sure have. I'm not a big hugger. Yeah yeah that's probably true but uh hopefully this podcast brings you the same comfort as a hug might do hey do you have any small wonders i do what is

it i've been sending you and i know you haven't had time i just watched one of them um john mulaney was on saturday night live and i'm a big fan of john mulaney's comedy and him on saturday night live is always a treat because he used to work there and there are some really great sketches. Did you watch the one of What's Your Name? Yeah, that is the one I watched.

So good. It's extremely good. Yeah, he's, God, he's so good. His standup special, the kid whatever. Kid Gorgeous. Yeah, it is

probably the best standup special I've seen in the last five years. And the Comeback Kid too is another one. Very good. Yeah, he's fantastic. I'm going to say Peacoats, specifically my peacoat. I had to buy a peacoat when I was in New Orleans because it was much colder than I thought

it was going to be. And I was like, well, this is a waste of money. But then it's like 30 degrees today, and it is so nice to just have a big old fashionable coat keeping me warm. I sure do appreciate it. I've always enjoyed a peacoat. I've never had one that fit me as well as this one does. So I'm very excited about pea coats. I think I go first this week. I think so. Yeah. My first thing this week is an elephant.

My first thing is elephant. My first thing is the elephant, the humble elephant. I feel like I haven't done an animal in a while. Yeah, I elephant i love the elephant elephants are big friends and i think they do a great job at fulfilling that role and i feel like also i slept on elephants for a long time because like they're big uh they're they're big safari friend and i would just see that and i felt so detached but now i love elephants i'm so glad because i've always wanted to know more about the elephant and so i'm so glad you chose the elephant. Yeah, I think specifically raising a two-year-old, like now we're seeing elephants through a child's eyes. And boy, they're just good animals, folks. Elephants are.

When we talk about loving elephants, really, what are we talking about? Two main factors, size and trunk. So let's just get our hands dirty although i would argue the ears are pretty great the ears are fantastic but mostly i want to talk about size and i want to talk about trunk because folks these boys are absolute units they're the biggest land mammals that exist uh which is just uh you know laudable i feel like they've done a good job with that looking at a big elephant just like walking around lumbering around especially when you get like a sense of scale

that looks like like a like an at-at from star wars the big robots that walk around that's good and they got that little tail that disproportionately little tail that swings in like an offbeat tempo and they do have those big funnel cake ears that just wave when they need to wave and i love all that um there are two main categories of elephant african elephants are the bigger category they can grow up to 13 feet high and they can weigh up to 14 000 pounds asian elephants reach nearly 10 feet and can grow up to 11 000 pounds so a littler guy but i mean 11 000 pounds that's a lot of just pure elephant energy i don't know if i would notice you know like one sat on you you wouldn't be like that one looks 200 pounds heavier at that point you know you're kind of dealing in just uh abstractness yeah the way that they get

that big is because they eat uh up to 300 pounds of food every day that That's a good amount. I would say that's a full meal. The babies, babies, when babies are born, the babies are absolute units. First of all, they take 22 months to cook up and get out the oven. Yeah, that's going to be a rough load because when they're born, they can weigh 200 pounds. So how's your mama elephant probably not very good i bet that's funny baby elephant it's called a calf and for every day up to its first birthday it's going to be gaining two to three pounds every single day wow absolute monster i love it yeah absolute monster trucks the size is fantastic the size of these animals is very good. The trunk, though. What's it even doing with that thing?

Do you know why elephants have trunks? Oh, God, that sounds like the start of a joke. Because if they didn't, where would you put your suitcase? No. Not everything's a joke. Do you know why elephants have trunks? No. It's because they don't have glove compartments.

Oh, great. You didn't even, I can't believe you chopped my flavor like that. These trunks, they do everything. They are mostly used for like sustenance reasons, grabbing reasons. Yeah. I mean, obviously their feet aren't great at grabbing. Their feet can't grab very good. And they get the mouth is unfortunately kind of tucked behind the trunk. I didn't actually realize that the trunk is actually fused with their top lip.

Like that it's all sort of part of the same kind of mechanism and it grabs the food and it brings it back to, you know, mouth town. And that way the mouth can keep chewing and keep eating while the trunk is grabbing more food. So it's just this nonstop, it's like, what's it called? Recursive breathing. Like it's just nonstop like food assembly line. at the end of the snout they have fingers uh which i use in quotation marks because it's not fingers in the traditional sense and these fingers can actually move super precisely

the whole thing about like elephants eating peanuts they can grab and like shuck a peanut with their trunk finger and then get the sweet nut meat in right into their mouth. One way you can tell the difference between Asian elephants and African elephants is that Asian elephants just have one finger on the end of their trunk and African elephants have two. But yeah, they can do really dexterous stuff with these little nubbins at the end of their trunks. And I love it. Obviously, they can also use it to get water.

They don't drink the water straight through their trunks because that would be wild but um they just you know suck it up and then blast it right in their mouth each snortful they can get up to 14 liters of water into their mouth at one time which is very good so like that stuff i could have assumed is is true we've all seen that in action uh these big noses are good for smelling also uh a an elephant's sense of smell is approximately four times stronger than a bloodhound's and they can also kind of like fucking they can kind of periscope it right so they can like get all these tight angles why aren't there crime elephants why isn't there helping us solve crimes i know balloon boy goes missing here's a sock elephant points the trunk

up he's like there he goes do you think i'm the only one still making balloon boy references in 2019 100 yes okay um also i mean there's social functionality right you use it for uh you know the equivalent of like an elephant handshake or hold on to the you know the tail of a little elephant so you don't run off um so it's it's come to my attention that elephants are actually very cute and very very good uh it took me a while to get there because they're just so big but man those wrinkles and that big dopey face you gotta love those elephants painting uh the elephants paint oh yeah that's very good too a little brush in their trunk and that's what what makes the, like, immeasurable, unthinkable mistreatment of elephants at the hands of humanity.

This is what makes it just so horrific and unpalatable. Because elephants are big and brassy and beautiful. They deserve, you know, protection from poaching and the destruction of their habitats. Every elephant does. Every animal does, rather. and the destruction of their habitats. Every elephant does, every animal does rather. But like elephants are just kind of front of mind for me this week because of their size

and how good their trunks are. Let them roam free. Let them, you know, let them do their thing. And also how when we watch Mickey Mouse Club, there's always an elephant. There's always an elephant in the Mickey Mouse Club house. He has these things called the mousketools that he uses to solve problems.

And one of them's always an elephant. And usually it's like, I need to get a glass of water and the elephant will just like blast water into the cup and it's like use a fucking faucet and let that elephant outside to go play with its family jesus mickey what's your first thing my first thing is chopsticks oh wow i prefer a chopstick to a fork i think i I've just decided. I think I am just firmly in favor of chopsticks. I want to hear the reason why, because I am too, but I think there's not a, obviously like it's culturally appropriate, but it's not. It's the shoveling of the fork, right?

It's the experience of even, so even if I have leftovers, for example, of Chinese food, for example, I will still go find some chopsticks to eat those leftovers, even though the moment of initial eating has passed. Because when you're shoveling food, I feel like you're not really appreciating it. But when I use a chopstick, I get exactly the amount of food I want, and I place it into my mouth and I chew it and it feels like I am really savoring and enjoying the experience I like that there's a mindfulness to it that I appreciate it's why I like eating crab legs so much is because there's all of this ritual to it and it takes a while and then when you finally get that sweet meat it's like I fucking worked for this yeah I feel like it's I'm mindfulness is a good is a good example because I feel like I'm not zoning out when I'm using chopsticks. You know, I'm focusing.

You got to. You got to. There's a lot of manual dexterity involved. So it's not going to surprise you that chopsticks have been around a long time. Yeah, I could have probably seen that one coming. Do they predate forks? I guess it's hard to say. They do, but not by as much as you'd think.

It's not like, yeah, because I was all excited. Like, oh, yeah, thousands of years before the fork. No, it's not that. No, I imagine somebody saw somebody using something to eat food with, except for that wasn't their hands. And they were like, there's got to be other, there's got to be lots of different sort of non-hand eating technology we could figure out. sort of non-hand eating technology we could figure out. The earliest evidence that humanity has found of chopsticks were chopsticks made of bronze that were 10 inches long and dated to 1200 BCE. It's always bronze.

It's always bronze. I know. Wood is what we use now. And that was certainly more plentiful back then. Well, bronze holds up. I'm sure there were chopsticks that were, you know, not made of bronze. But we lost those we probably termites eat those right up huh uh freaking termites how much history more history

would we know about if weren't for freaking termites probably a lot more of it sounds like you've got a prime time children's show on your hands right there it's me and carmen san diego going back in time to stop termites from eating the crucifix. What a quantum leap episode that would be, by the way. Well, yeah, it would be a little bit outside of his timeline. He leaps into a termite. Oh. Has to take out all of his brothers.

Ants too. Termites. So I didn't realize the English word chopstick may have derived from Chinese pigeon English when they first started trading with the English in the 17th century, which could mean chop chop or quickly. Another possibility is that the term is derived from chow chow, which is also a pigeon word stemming from southeast asia meaning food and this chopsticks would simply mean food sticks are pigeon words like the words that they use to like talk even though they didn't share the same language yeah yeah it was uh when they

started uh trading between the english and chinese in the 17th century okay and that was where uh pigeon english came from. So do you want to know some chopstick etiquette? Yeah. This kind of stuff like cripples me when I'm like, when we travel and I'm trying to figure out where to put my chopsticks. I feel like I purposefully learned some of this when we went to Japan and some of it I remembered and some of it, like, I know you're not supposed to rub them together.

That's like bad. Well, and there's different chopstick etiquette depending on which country you're in. Almost certainly, yeah, for sure. So this is what I found online. In China, it is poor etiquette to point rested chopsticks towards others seated at the table. Chopsticks should not be vertically stuck

into a bowl of rice because it resembles the ritual of incense burning that symbolizes feeding the dead and death in general. That's also true in South Korea and Japan. Also, just don't do that with fucking forks. Like, that's a wild, of course. If you're eating a steak, you don't fucking stab your fork into the steak and leave it there like a radio antenna or something. Here's two other things that I found interesting. So in Japan, if you are eating out, you are supposed to put disposable chopsticks back in the wrapper at the end of the meal.

Okay. Yeah. Isn't that kind of clever? Well, you don't want somebody to fucking touch your mouth grime. So the person doesn't have to handle it. That's a very polite thing to do. Also, if there's no serving utensils, reversing the ends of the individual's chopsticks to the clean ends can be used huh interesting never would have thought of that we definitely fucked that up a couple times when we went to

um when we were in japan we went to a couple of uh like barbecue places and they have you know heavy metal chopsticks to put the to touch the meat and put it on the thing but then you know you have your own wood chopsticks for eating and we would definitely cross contaminate and be bad uh human beings in that situation. I also like, and this is not something I've done, but I like watching videos of people cooking with chopsticks. Yes.

So much sense to me to have that precision instead of trying to like scoop with like a big old serving spoon. I bought some. And then the first time I used them, they broke because they were cheap and shitty. And like, I was trying to like stir like a big thing of like heavy noodles and they just snap, snap. So I was put off from the idea of doing it. Yeah, I think I think, yeah, I like the precision of it.

I like the experience of really kind of thoughtfully selecting my food. And I really would like to use them for almost everything i mean also like uh i feel like eating a rice-based meal or a noodle-based meal is actually like now that i've gotten like good with using chopsticks like i feel like it is just the tool that makes more sense to use it right because with fork you have to with fork you either got to do like the spinny spin and get like a big bundle of it and then shovel that in your gob and then like with with a fork and rice you always like carefully balance it on the fork as you work your way that's your mouth good that's no good chopsticks are good i got rachel a bunch of chopsticks from a woodworking place in uh in

new orleans that uh we just beautiful they're beautiful and we have so many of them now. It's very exciting because we would have to like constantly wash ours every time we wanted to eat. I mean, we still wash them, but now we have like backup. You know what I'm saying? We're not that dirty. Or are we? Meow.

Can I steal you away? okay this first message is for jake it is from jeanette and andy jake happy approximately birthday you are a fantastic dm and you make us the coolest props we can't wait to start the next adventure that you bring for the now misnamed mouse guard between introducing us us to the McElroys and your mad DM skills, you've played a big part in keeping us sane through the first year of new parenthood. We love you. I wish I had made props for the boys for Taz. And so they stopped spending hundreds of dollars on getting their own? They really are.

They're bankrupting us. It's a really serious problem. I know I'm smiling when I say that, but it's through the tears. You want to hear the next message? Yes, please. It is for future Daria from past Daria. I love these, by the way. I know.

These are my among my favorite. Hey, future Daria. It's you past Daria. I know that those future months are kind of mysterious. So here's hoping you're doing something wonderful. You're amazing and keep on chasing the dream i love you this is so good i love this yeah you don't need somebody else to buy a jumbotron for you you can buy your own and if you invest in a dream catcher it's kind of like a trap for

your dream so it makes it easier to chase it down oh that's uh that's probably not is that your shark tank that's yes it's my it's my very appropriative Shark Tank pitch. Hi, I'm Paula Poundstone. And I'm Adam Felber. Adam, I haven't gotten one thing done today. Well, let me see your to-do list. Ah, yeah, well, here. Make 30-second promo for Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone,

so at least you're getting that done. Score! Except you haven't said what the show is about. We're like a comedy field guide to life starring me and you. I give useful advice and we have real experts to talk about things like how to keep a friend or what to do when you encounter a bear. Bully for you, but you haven't said where people can find the show. Oh, MaximumFun.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Can I tell you about my second thing? Yes second thing is weddings wow weddings are

so tight weddings are so good going to a wedding is very very good i want to focus on going to a wedding throwing a wedding was super good too because uh you know we got to throw this big righteous party uh but this is everything this week i want to talk about going to weddings i've heard people say that they love weddings and i get it i don't know why i never really think about it as a thing i like to do like i always enjoy it when i go yeah but i never think like you know what i wish i could go to a wedding well in your defense we have not been to one in a while i feel like we i feel like and this is not uncommon like we had a season for a few years there were just like most of our friends were we're getting married. And

that season has more or less passed at this point. And so we have not been to one in a while. But still, I would always enjoy going to a wedding. I didn't always enjoy like traveling with a newborn baby when we had to go to a wedding. Like that part got less than ideal. But going to the wedding itself was pretty good. Even when we were going to them all the time, I feel like I wasn't getting burnt out because weddings are so fun. It's basically, if you think about it like just a big party that your friends threw, I always get excited for those. So why wouldn't that be true for a wedding? You get to see what your friends think makes for a good time. And if their idea matches yours or it doesn't, it's still fun because it's a wedding.

There's free food. There's usually free drinks. I like what I'm hearing so far. Can I ask you a question? Did you ever go to weddings as a kid? Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, I didn't really go to that. I think I remember maybe one as a kid.

I imagine as a kid, it's like maybe not as fun. Probably not as fun. Yes. I went to a couple of them and i mean the big thing is if you're a kid and you're going to like a family wedding of like an older family member or something like that you're not going to know most of the people there i feel like that was true for a lot of the weddings that i went to um and most of the entertainment is designed for adults there's usually not a you know a play place were you ever a little ring bearer was i ever a little ring bearer no i don't think so i don't think i could

be trusted with that um with that level of uh yeah i could i could keep a gigapet alive for a little bit but i couldn't uh i couldn't hold this this relic of matrimony uh for 10 minutes without losing it um there's a quiet uh There's a quiet kind of competition that happens also when your friends are all getting married around the same period of time. And nobody would admit to it, but you feel like you as an attendee are part of like an unfilmed reality show that is happening all around you all the time. Like there's an invisible David Teterra just like watching from the wings like, this is better than, you know, Melissa's wedding, don't you think? Ooh, the canapes are so much better than Brian's wedding, don't you think?

Yeah, I mean, it's true. If you are in a relationship and you are planning a wedding, every wedding you go to from there on out, you are watching and you are silently taking notes. But not in a shitty way, right? I had fun at every wedding i ever went to for for our friends except for the one where i was horrifically horrifically sick and even that one i had a good time at um but you are sort of mentally taking notes on like how it compares to the other weddings that you've gone to um and that can be fun like who had the best venue who had the best ceremony who had the best dj who had the best speeches who had the best food

and drinks let's go to the judges and find out and then there's david tatera that show for weddings you remember that show oh that show is so uh people would judge each other's weddings like incredibly harshly in the hopes that they would win we watched a lot of wedding television programming funnily enough like that is the one genre that i feel like is designed for you to watch for like a year and then never fucking watch it ever. I have no interest in watching other people planning their weddings ever, ever, ever again. Sometimes they have you do like an organized choreographed dance, and that's the toll that you pay for going to the wedding. And that's fun. That's fine. There's certain things that weddings bring to the table that like, I only kind of got to

experience going to weddings. I don't go to dancing events anymore. But dancing with you at weddings is very good. I know. I was just thinking about that the other day. I was thinking about how I can't remember the last time you and I danced together. Oh, you know what it may have been was Max FunCon. It may have been Max FunCon.

And we have not been to Max FunCon in a bit when you were pregnant. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got the romance in the air during the dance part, you know, and that can be just nice, just like siphoning off some of the latent love energies that are just kind of floating around in the air. And like also, if you're close to the people who are getting

married, it's nice to see this little encapsulation of all the different people that they've meant something to along the time time that they've been with us yeah those like elementary school friends that you've never met before and distant family members and and then hearing all of those people talk about how great your friends are from a perspective that you've never had is like so so wonderful um and if the ceremony's like you know poignant enough you might get a good cry going and that's always good oh man that's good stuff um and sometimes like one of your friends will go like way outside the box we've described i feel like this whole segment like the pretty

traditional wedding you know ceremony then uh reception structure like obviously it doesn't have to be like that anytime anytime that you just get a bunch of people together to celebrate two people and their love and then you know the whole event is designed to have fun around that love like that's good stuff it doesn't matter what shape you do it in but when your friends do like a really outside the box idea for their wedding and it pays off like that's fucking super exciting yeah that's always really exciting because you know that they took a gamble for this thing and it's great uh and you just get to see all of this like important stuff in your life through this new lens for one night only um like i feel like we have made memories with our friends at weddings that like no other sort of events that we have done with them have ever really been able

to capture and that might just be because we had one wedding where everybody was the drunkest I've ever seen them before. And also you get dressed up happy grandparents. Oh, forget about it. Dressed up happy grandparents is the best shit. See my nanny at our wedding? That was the best. That's good stuff. Anytime you see a dressed up happy grandparent, I'm here for it.

Yeah, I just like it. I like everything that it kind of like stands for, celebrating people you love and their love and then like literally celebrating with whatever you wanna celebrate with. It is good. I also like being in a wedding. I feel like I'm kind of like, I'm part of the crew, you know?

Like I know the behind the scenes, which is fun. Yeah. And you get all those nice pictures. The pictures are good also. And sometimes you get to do the, you get party favors, like some Jordan almonds. When the fuck else are you going to eat Jordan almonds? This is my only Jordan almond hookup. That's true.

I wouldn't even know where to buy them. I don't know where you get it. Like a wedding supply store. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, hey, what's your second thing? My second thing is a return to the poetry corner. Let's strap on in and put on our hats. The hat is a beret and what's inside?

It's a poem. In case you forget, the poem is written inside the hat don't let the teacher see it's time for the poetry corner that may be my favorite one yet yeah because it encouraged you to cheat in poetry class well it's like it's adventurous it feels like i'm about to watch a detective thriller poetry only he takes his uh you know fedora off and what's inside there it's like it's adventurous. It feels like I'm about to watch a detective thriller about poetry. Only he takes his fedora off and what's inside there, it's the poem in case he forgets it. Who are we dealing with this time?

We are going to go like classic founding fathers of Rachel's interest in poetry. Okay. William Carlos Williams. Oh, yeah. I'm talking about Billy Will. Billy Will, yeah. What's he bring to the table? You heard of some plums?

Oh, those freaking plums, though. Yeah, of course. You heard of a wheelbarrow? I don't think I've heard about the wheelbarrow. All right, I'll do the wheelbarrow for you. I'm uncultured. Oh, you're going to... Okay, so Rachel...

Okay, she's kicked her feet up. She wants me to hold the feet. She's running around and... Oh, she's jumping up with her arms and wants me to hold the feet she's running around and oh she's she's jumping up with her arms and clapping in midair this is incredible and she's still got her microphone she's laughing into it okay so everyone is more familiar with william carlis williams lately because there's that meme the plums meme i eat your plums i eat your plums i'm so sorry they were really good though well but you see people like recrafting it for like their own purposes. Yeah.

But they'll do a meme in it. So be like, I did your Fortnite dance. And so. This is just to say I did your Fortnite dance. Yeah. And so like. It was so great. It was so delicious.

And so hot. Yeah. Let me give you some source material for that one. Okay. This is just to say written in 1934. I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me. They were delicious, so sweet, and so cold.

That's really good. Isn't that nice? It's really nice. Is it supposed to be like deeply sexual? I don't think so. No, okay, yeah. I mean, maybe, sure. No, maybe not.

You know, I could eat a plum for hours i could eat a plum for hours be real real messy that's the idea okay so william carlos williams grew up in rutherford new jersey uh and he was a doctor for more than 40 years the uh the poem the um the red wheelbarrow the one i'm gonna read next he wrote when he was 60 years old holy shit yeah um he wrote his poems this is what i remember about him and i couldn't find this but i had an instructor tell me this that he used to write his little poems on little prescription pads in between clients i like that so he'd be like here's 10 cc's of i ate your plums deal with it um he i thought this was a really good description for

him so he wrote these poems that um feel very simplistic but very very like visceral. Yeah, the imagery is very powerful. Randall Jarrell, who was also a poet, said that his poems were often domestic in focus and quote, remarkable for their empathy, sympathy, muscular and emotional identification with its subject.

There is no optimistic blindness, though there is a fresh gaiety, a stubborn or invincible joyousness which i love i love thinking about that it's not like he is like all like raindrops and and whiskers on kittens but he's like he's very like tuned in to what is interesting about something uh and joyous about it uh so let me hear this. Lay this wheelbarrow on me. Okay, so the red wheelbarrow. So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater besides the white chickens.

I have heard that before. Yeah. That's nice. It's like, it's the kind of thing where people would be like, oh, I don't know, maybe your brothers would say, oh, everything's a poem. But I would say.

That doesn't sound like my brothers. They're way more respectful of the arts than that. Except for your segment, I'm a bim bam that is always like, is this a poem? I know, I was goofing. Of course, they're fucking goblins. But to just like, it creates such a picture, you know, and it makes it so accessible. I think for me, that was one of the exciting things. Like, when I was in high school and thinking like, I'm going to write poems,

people like William Carlos Williams made it seem like, yeah, go for it. Like, if you are able to capture something in a way that feels very precise and beautiful, you can do it too. You don't have to like, know all the, you know, forefathers of poetry to do it too. You don't have to like know all the forefathers of poetry to do it. You just have to describe something in a new and cool way. So he was part of what was called the imagist movement, which was a reaction against the romantic or Victorian poetry. Imagists emphasize simplicity, clarity of expression, and precision through the use of exacting visual images.

The forefather of this movement was Ezra Pound, who actually went to college with William Carlos Williams. William Carlos Williams was there for medical school. Ezra Pound was pursuing a more like liberal arts background, but they were buds. Ezra Pound's poem in 1913, so this is like 10, 20 years before William Carlos Williams is publishing.

He wrote a poem called In a Station of the Metro. The apparition of these faces in a crowd petals on a wet black bough bow that's a tongue twister huh uh-huh he'll tie you up but you can see how that inspired william carlos williams yeah sure i mean the image this movement that i just learned about 45 seconds ago is very aptly named and this was rooted in ideas developed by a philosopher and poet t.E. Hume, who in as early as 1908 spoke of poetry based on an absolutely accurate presentation of its subject with no excess verbiage. I think when I first started writing poetry, I was very tapped into this. Like the more time I spent in academia,

like in graduate school, like I started to get like a lot more complex, which William Carlos Williams did too. His whole series of poems through spring and all, there's a lot of lengthier, more complicated poetry. But like the stuff that really drew me in was those really like little snapshot poems. I can see. I mean, that sounds appealing to me too. I can see why it would be appealing to somebody who's like, you know, learning about writing poetry. Yeah. Because it's shorter. I

mean, you can get in there and do it and then go smoke weed and play Star Fox 64 or whatever. Or you can fit it on the inside of a hat. Or yeah, of course. So William Carlos Williams kind of experienced a resurgence. He died in 1963. And right around then was when beat poetry was becoming a big thing so a lot of the beat poets were really inspired by william carlos williams because of that really like precise like emotional focus yeah so that's my that's my guy that's a good one has anybody ever written a sequel to the plume the plum poem the plumb the plum poem i think that's what everybody's trying to do with their meme well no but i mean from the perspective of the person who

bought the plums i came home i came the plums were gone yeah or just like i i saw your poem and thank you for your honesty but like the grocery store is around the corner and i expect you to put two new delicious. I know they were delicious and cold because they were delicious when I bought them. And then I put them in the box that makes things cold. So just go to the grocery store and get me two new plums, I guess, whenever it's convenient for you. But ideally soon, because I would like to enjoy some plums. And make them cold again, because that was the thing I was looking forward to.

Right. Even when you bring them home, I'm not going to be able to enjoy them straight away they're going to need to sit in the icebox for a couple hours hello why would they call you to put you on hold why would somebody call me to put me on hold this is my new small wonder is this tune if i were you i would just hang up i think no somebody decided that i needed to hear this song oh are you hearing this pre-chorus? It's very lovely. Yeah. What a treat. I wish most phone calls were like this. Let's do our wrap-up

as we listen to this great tune. Do you think the end of the music will just be like, bye, Geico. So let's see. We got a... Hang on.

We got some submissions from our friends at home. Do you want to hear them? Yes, please. We have one here from Coral who says, I'm drinking cold blueberry milk out of a glass bottle and it's the most wonderful thing. Yum. Whoa, blueberry milk. I've never heard of this.

And also, I didn't know what your second thing was going to be when I picked this for our submissions. It sounds very much like another... I've heard of strawberry milk, though. So blueberry milk seems possible. Yeah, it's exciting. I enjoy both those things. Here's one from Bird who says my own personal wonder is a nice warm steamed bun biting into a steamed bun with its yeasty bread and the even warmer gooey center with some nice savory pork or whatever other filling is the absolute slap. It's one of the world's most perfect snacks and always puts a huge smile on my face.

Oh, I'm so hungry. Oh, did you not lunch before? Oh, that's too bad. Oh, but man, that sounds good. Steam buns are so freaking good. They're so good. They're everywhere in like Tokyo. Every 7-Eleven you walk by,

you're like, let me just dip in there. Let me just hit up this loss and grab a couple of steamies. Incredible steam buns in Hong Kong. We did. We did. Man, steam buns are very good. Jess says, one very wonderful thing is when a character in a movie says the movie title.

My husband and I always clap when we hear it when we're watching movies alone. And also one time when we saw Aquaman at one of those theaters where they serve you booze. I kind of love that. I did too. They, just also sent along a compilation video that is just four minutes of exactly this and it's a sort of wild how it's in every movie

i would love to watch that video uh yeah i forget what it's called google it folks you'll you'll get there uh hey thanks for listening to uh to our show we we really do appreciate it uh we're getting we're pretty far ahead of the curve on this one this one episode we're like it's not going to come out for like two weeks or something like that um we're gonna like a couple weeks from now we're gonna have people tweeting at us about wheelbarrows and we'll be like why why what's going on um yeah thank you all so much uh thank you to bowen and augustus for these for our theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description thank you to maximum fun hey next week the maximum fun drive is going to kick off yeah and hey um you may have heard rumors of

this but uh donors get access to some exclusive content yes we recorded a sort of celebration of Will Smith's career that you can listen to. And one of the donation levels, also a reward that you can get is a drive exclusive enamel pin from Megan Lynn Cott. Ours is a little hot dog and it says Small Wonders on it. See, we talk about hot dogs a lot. We do. Max Fun, the folks at MaxFun reached out and said, what should your pin be? Do you have any ideas? And I literally just responded, we talk about hot dogs a lot. And so here we are. So yeah, that's next week.

It really helps us out. You can support the other shows on the network. If the work we do, you know, is meaningful to you in any way, this is like the time of year to pay it forward or backward. Pay it, just pay it, I guess. Yeah, so thank you all so much in advance. I also wanted to mention for those of you that may not be familiar with the bonus content

of me, Teresa, and Sydney, we have recorded a second episode together just the three of us and I think it would be exciting for you to listen to it and enjoy it I have not listened to it I am excited to tune into that one that is the mabim bam bonus episode but you get all of them when you donate uh even at like the lowest level at five dollars a month um so yeah that is going to be next week and is that it I think that's it i think that's it well round round of a round of applause they did it again Money won't pay, workin' on pay. I am ready. I am ready.

Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Welcome back and thank you, Dan, for that scathing report. As you know, Max Fun Drive is coming up March 18th to March 29th, which has some folks pretty excited. But as families around the world get ready to celebrate this season of giving, community, and quality podcasts, some are wondering if it's just too much. Are they, though?

They are. podcasts, some are wondering if it's just too much. Are they though? They are. Some people are all for comedy and culture, but with 45 shows offering hundreds of hours of bonus content, plus all the MaxFun meetups taking place around the world, some people think it's too much. While other people think it sounds totally awesome. I took my granddaughter to the mall to get her picture taken and the mall pod fairy was short. And I, you know, I'm just going to say it. I'm sorry, but everyone knows

the pod fairy is tall. Well, I think we should just leave it there. Until next time, here's the news you need to know. Max Fun Drive runs from March 18th through 29th. Be sure to listen to all of your favorite podcasts. I know I will.