Wonderful! - Wonderful! 77: Whistlin' Bulbasaur

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

Griffin's favorite open-ended dining arrangement! Rachel's new favorite pastry! Griffin's favorite form of self-awareness! Rachel's favorite personal anecdote! 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, what's up? This is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Do you like how I slipped in that casual salutation i thought maybe you were accidentally going to slide into one of your other podcasts oh sure so i could be like i'm your 30 under 30 every time rachel has never seen me do that before but every time i do a jerk off motion with my hands um because it's i don't really it's all just labels, man. But the motion he does is not the one you expect. No. It's, I do sort of a figure eight.

I make sort of a superhero mask. But anyway, this is wonderful. And this is a show where we talk about things that are good and things that we think are good and things that we like. Yes. And are good. Yes. Let's start out with some free advertising. Rachel and I are wearing matching MeUndies onesies right now, covered in some springtime strawberries.

Yeah, I got home, immediately put it on, and then we proceeded with our evening. And then when I came back from putting Henry down, Griffin was like, I'm going to put on my pajamas. Slipped right into something more comfortable. Same thing, guys. Comfortable and the erotic energy that it creates. Can we also talk about how we're both having a glass of Chardonnay? Listen, Rachel and I are going through a change, a metamorphosis that becoming 70 year old women, couples in their 30s sometimes go through and it can be very exciting for some and not exciting for pretty much everyone else. Most of them.

But for me and Rachel, it's just a lot of just kinetic. We've never been like a matchy matchy couple. No. Intentionally. Intentionally. I think sometimes we accidentally do it. Yes. But we've never like intentionally bought the same ensemble.

This is true. intentionally bought the same ensemble this is true one other thing that we do have in common right now is that we're both excited that the maximum fun drive is still kicking still rocking yes you still can't put this one back and can't put max fun drive in the corner we had to record our previous max fun drive episode before the drive had started yes and so the enthusiasm level was a little doctored well yeah and now you know the phony sort of weather works uh but this one this one's real deal holy field also in the thick of it also we haven't recorded this show in nearly three weeks as opposed to recording three episodes of this show in about one week so we're gonna get just a lot of gratitude i think um especially towards those who go to

maximumfund.org donate and help us meet our goal of 25,000 new and upgrading members. Just a couple days left until the drive is ended. And so this is the right time for you to hop on and support us in any way that you can. There's a whole bunch of different donation levels and a bunch of great rewards you can get for each one. And we're going to talk about those later, but, um, it really means the world to us. We, um, we have been getting a lot of support in this drive and we have in previous years too. And, uh, especially after we changed topics pretty drastically, uh, the support y'all have shown us has been really fantastic and, um, yeah, really, really meaningful to Rachel and I, and it's just a good way to sort of like

endorse the stuff that you want to be in the world by supporting us super directly through the Max Fund Drive. It's really validating because it's just me and Griffin talking about things we like. And so to get support for that is maybe the most rewarding thing in my professional life. Yeah, Rachel and I were both donors to the network before we even joined it. Me, a very long time ago. And Rachel, before we started doing Rose Buddies. And yeah, it just, it means a lot.

And again, it's MaximumFun.org slash donate. There's cool rewards. And we're going to talk about those later. But first, do we have any small wonders, though? I wanted to bring up the Rose Qu quartz face roller that you got me yeah several months ago yes this is a this is a an object that is heavily featured in terrace house and so i figured it would a lot of times on terrace house they're made of jade but it almost looks like like a long paint roller you would use on a wall. Yes.

Except it's about the size of your hand and you rub it on your face. Yeah. And there's supposed to be all these purported benefits to it. I don't know if any of those are true, but it's nice and cool. Yeah. And it just feels good to rub my face. Gooshes the toxins out, I think is what they are purporting. Yeah, I tried using it on my face and my stubble gets caught in the mechanisms and it hurts a lot.

So it's weird because for me it has the literal exact opposite effect where it doesn't de-stress me. It hurts me physically. I also like to just use it while I'm watching Terrace House and I just feel like I'm really tapping into the moment and the culture. Yeah. Boy, howdy. I wish we had some sort of avenue to discuss Terrace House and I just feel like I'm really really tapping into the moment and the culture. Yeah boy howdy I wish we had some sort of avenue to discuss Terrace House and the ending of Opening New Doors. We're one episode from finishing it and holy shit it is a wild ride. Maybe that should be a stretch goal.

If we get to 25,000 we will do I don't even know that I would like I would enjoy. A bonus episode where we just. We just like a support group would be a better sort of name for it um i wanted to bring the um god i just watched some old uh like late night sketches today i was inspired there i think um split cider or somebody wrote about the slip nuts sketch that conan did where three of his writers writing about it because

they're like putting all those old sketches up he just finally got like access to share all that stuff and the slipknot sketch is just three uh conan writers and it's like a classic sketch one of whom is john glazer from um parks and rec he plays uh the councilman who was jeremy jam yeah uh he also has a i think a show about tech uh he's very funny but these three writers form a comedy group called slip nuts and they just appear on the same show that slip knot is performing on and then they did a follow-up sketch where they literally actually opened for a concert for slip knot and the whole thing is just there three guys wearing red vests, slipping on nuts. I watched that.

I was so entertained. And then I watched the Dave Letterman, How Many Spider-Men Can We Fit Inside a Jamba Juice, which is probably the best. If you've never seen that, just Google Spider-Man Jamba Juice. And it's my favorite, like, eight minutes of late night comedy ever. Yeah, there's a lot of folks, and it makes sense to me, in the younger generation that don't understand the appeal of David Letterman. and watching sketches like that really gives you a taste uh spoiler alert they get a lot of spider-man and jamba juice well yeah there's a lot that i

want to discuss yeah but it's it's better if you go in unspoiled um i've also been playing a switch game called baba is you that's really good and i won't go like super in depth it's just a recommendation it's like a puzzle game and you're a little dog named baba and then there's like you know walls and rocks and a flag and you have to touch the flag to win and you can push the rocks around but what uh like the puzzle mechanic is that there's also words on the screen that you can also push around to like change the rules of the game so there's one that'll say like baba is you but you can push rock into that sentence and now rock is you

and now you're the rock. Wow, that's clever. Or you can say it's like, wall is you and now you're all the walls in the level and you just have to get one of them to the flag. That's a Switch game? Yeah, it's a Switch game

and it's so fucking hard. It's so hard. It makes me feel like a total dingus. But it's really, really good. Really, really clever game. I go first this week cool my first thing is i forget i forget because my computer went to sleep the buffet oh just the concept the buffet the concept of buffet surfing i'm not talking about one specific buffet

um but i just didn't i do enjoy a buffet there was plenty of buffet opportunities for us while we were on the cruise uh which is also at disney and at disney yeah we had a we had a good old time at both places uh we so many people came up to to rachel and i uh to tell us about wonderful it was it was really really remarkable and that was that was very special but the buffet the buffet what i love about the buffet is that you can win and lose at the buffet. It's possible to do a buffet wrong. Oh, you mean like there are optimum choices and you have to seek them out? There are optimum choices both sort of like good food-wise and also feeling good afterwards-wise.

And it's actually kind of hard to split the uprights. In fact, I would say I love the buffet, but i am very bad at successfully doing kind of fascinated so do you do like a mental calculus when you look at food on the buffet no say like this is going to be beneficial for me this will not play out well no i don't do that with any food basically at all um i've gotten better at seeing foods as dangers and thinking like that will hurt me if I eat too much of that or too spicy of that or whatever. Too dairy of that. But no, when I'm at the buffet table walking down the line, it's full blown fucking muscle reflex primitive animal instinct where it's like. And that's what I like about it is that you can surprise yourself at buffet or you're walking down buffet and you're like, I did not know that I wanted rib roast.

But there's rib roast and there's something in my fucking soul and my DNA that wants that rib roast. I'll have it. That's true. Sometimes if you see something on a menu, you're like, I don't know that that's what I want. But if you can look at it and really smell it. and really smell it those like twice baked potatoes that's like half a potato skin and then they've like mulched up the potato meat inside and mixed it with stuff and then baked it back into the original skin i only fucking see those at the buffet i never see that on a menu and i'm like let me get one of the but i see that at the buffet and i'm like what's going on in that

little boat yeah and then i'll consume it yeah and that's fun too. It's, I just, I also, the desserts, I always, I am not a big dessert person, just sort of, I mean, I like sweet gummy candies, and you know this to be true. Thank you. But like, I'm not like a, I don't know, I'm 50-50 when we go to a restaurant about whether or not I actually want dessert.

But if I go down a buffet where there's 15 different desserts i'm gonna have to try pretty much all of them because i do want to know like what's going on uh with that little thing and they're usually so bite-sized that you can kind of fool yourself into thinking um just i'm pretty good i've gotten better at like dietary like moderation but when i see desserts man i just want to act right um and there's just no other experience where you get to scratch so many different food itches at the same time which i really like the buffet i don't know if this is part of your segment but i just want to give a shout out to the buffet at the crystal palace magic kingdom it was so good it was fucking great it was like 60 a person which is obviously

not ideal but you get to rub shoulders with the fucking stars by shoulders i mean elbows but i don't think eeyore has elbows and that the stars i mean are the winnie the pooh of hers i am talking specifically about the uh the items that were featured including like a jambalaya which i'd never seen in a buffet before and then like a cornbread spoon bread and a spoon bread it was fantastic thank you walt for your great breads um for me growing up we had a lot of buffet opportunities including the golden corral which i've talked about at length yeah you know i've never been to one you really have not been to a golden corral it's a trip man you've got it all i've been to a luby's like once that's all right but it's no golden corral okay uh for me it was the

place we went the most was up by the mall it was called super china buffet and it was one of like three chinese buffets in huntington which is amazing and super china buffet had uh frog legs on it whoa yeah and it also had uh crab legs so for me and what and my needs and they were not good crab legs but baby it's still crab and so i would go there and just mow down crab legs um and that explains me bad you have such a strong affection for crab legs and And I thought like, where are you getting these crab legs in Huntington, West Virginia? I looked up the origins. The origins, it's tough to say. Mostly, it's from the, you're familiar with the term smorgasbord? It's the Swedish origin, smorgasbord?

I am, but I kind of want to pretend that I'm not, so you'll say it a few more times. Okay, I'm going to say it bad, like the kid in the commercial, and embarrass myself. Oh, what about the Swedish chef? Will you say it like he does? Smorgasbord.

Oh, God, that's good. Thank you. This was a meal where folks had a pre-dinner drink uh typically uh and this is we're talking about like 1600s but as time went on especially in like the 1800s it started to sort of fall more along the lines of the modern buffet and the swedes showed off this like technique it's on a global scale in 1939 at the new york world fair uh where they showed it off as like technique on a global scale in 1939 at the New York World Fair where they showed it off as like a way to feed lots of people very quickly which I appreciate

the word buffet is French and it describes the like type of furniture that this type of food was served on and in fact the buffet sort of dining experience is like categorized as service a la Francois, which means in the French style, which could be its own thing. And it basically describes a meal where everything is served all at once. So it doesn't have to necessarily be a buffet, but a buffet is technically served in the French style. Family style. Right. As opposed to in the Russian style, which is more like just one thing at a time building.

And a little bit more history, there's a 1922 housekeeping book called How to Prepare and Serve a Meal. And it describes the concept of eating a buffet was popularized in mid 17th century France. This is from this excerpt. Gentlemen callers would arrive at the homes of ladies they wanted to woo unexpectedly.

The surprise arrival would throw the kitchen staff into a panic and the only food that could be served was a selection of what was found in the cold room. These horny dudes were just like, what's up? Hey, what's up? You up? And then the whole staff would be like,

oh shit, what do we got in the fridge? Jerry's back. Apparently the knife was taboo at the buffet lunch. You were not supposed to use a knife. So it was like food that can be eaten with a fork or a spoon or your fingers. Huh. Yes. The following dishes cover the essentials of a buffet luncheon as it was known back

then. Beverages, punch, coffee, chocolate, poured from urn or filled cups from pantry entree. Hey, what's up? Hey, 17th century france y'all just had urns of chocolate lying around i'm here for that hot entrees of various sorts served from chafing dish or platter preceded by hot bouillon cold entrees salads lobster potatoes chicken shrimp with heavy dressings hot rolls wafer cut sandwiches small cakes frozen creams and ices that's a pretty opulent buffet for this horny dude that just rolled up.

There's something really excessive and gluttonous about a buffet just in its very nature. Yes. We are going to set out more food than you could want. Yes. We're just going to leave it there. And if you don't take it, we'll probably have to throw it away. Right. Which brings us to the actual, the terminology, all you can eat, which is attributed to a guy named Herb McDonald, who was an entertainment manager in Las Vegas in the 40s.

And he sort of like introduced the idea of all you can eat. Although I'm sure that this like, he introduced the phrase, not necessarily the idea. Yeah, it makes sense that it would start in Vegas, because I feel like that's a big deal. Yeah, of course. These days, it's actually becoming more increasingly common to see the phrase, all you care to eat, which is like a way of softening the language and encouraging.

I saw that at all the places at Disney, and I think on the cruise as well, as if to say, like, listen, i don't want you to hurt yourself like eat all you want we're not trying to break any records exactly uh and in fact there's a lot of like science into like how much people decide to eat at a buffet based on certain environmental factors yeah i can imagine like the plate size for example well that's one thing but also in 2011 mit conducted a study on how the prices of buffets changed how much people ate at those buffets. This is the abstract from that study.

A field experiment at an all-you-can-eat pizza restaurant, CC's, right? Like what the fuck else is it? Yeah, that's got to be it. Shows that a 50% discount on the price of the meal led customers to consume 27.9% less pizza, 2.95 versus 4.09 slices. A second analysis indicated that individual taste ratings of this pizza tended to be inversely related to how much is consumed. This is fantastic. Yes. Basically saying if you pay less for the all-you-can-eat buffet, you will eat less.

But if you pay more yeah you will eat a lot more and then you're gonna feel like such shit at the end of it that you're gonna be like that was terrible yeah because if a buffet costs 40 i'd be like well i want to eat 40 worth of food so i feel like i really cashed in for me i paid 60 and i had an incredible rib roast and those weird potatoes and some like barbecue wings all at the same time. Thank you, Disney World. And I was like, I need to go back and eat more and more and more because it doesn't feel like I've got my money's worth. And then Piglet rolled up and I was like, never mind. Yeah. Ironically, Piglet, you have kept me from over consuming at this birthday.

Thank you for your service. What's your first thing? My first thing is also a tribute to our travels. Okay. It's my orcas. Yes. Oh, yes. Little sandwiches we had in San Juan. Oh, yes. This is a new passion of mine.

Oh, my orcas. It's fun to say, even more fun to eat. It's fun to look at and fantasize about. So we had never been to Puerto Rico. This is true. And I want to provide a small disclaimer, which is that we went there on a cruise ship and spent all of maybe four hours there. If that.

Well, you spent maybe two hours there before we had to go back and take a nap. And then we went outside for another 45 minutes where we got caught in the rain and had to go back to the boat. But we had a fucking great time in that very limited time span but i would not say i would say argue maybe that we still have not been to puerto rico so we were in old san juan and uh one of the things you can find there is mallorca's which actually so that's named after the spanish island where they originated uh in mallorca the actual region they call it uh ensamada okay uh which is a pastry product uh it is a sweet soft bun that is in a kind of uh a spiral shape yeah it's imagine sort of a laminated, almost like, what's the, like it was crispy, almost like a crispy croissant, like a thin crispy croissant with cool stuff inside.

Yeah, exactly. So the restaurant we went to was Bombanera, which there's a article in the New York Times from 2013 all about that restaurant. Oh, really? Yeah, it closed briefly. This woman wrote about it because she grew up going there. And then when it closed, she talks about trying to create her own replication of their dish. Huge thanks to Lynn for the suggestion on that, because otherwise we would not have known where to go at all.

So the coiled bun is butter uh buttered and uh pressed flat with a griddle and then sprinkled with confectioner's sugar yes uh we had them on sandwich like in a sandwich form yes yeah um but you can also get them uh filled with custard cream or almond puree or ice cream or chocolate or apricots. Yes, it's very choose-your-own-adventure. It's very much like kolaches. I mean, they are different in substance, but they are similar in freedom. So the first written reference to this pastry was back in the 17th century.

At that time, although wheat flour was mainly used for making bread, there's evidence that this pastry product was made for festivals and celebrations. I imagine it's very difficult to make these. Yeah. So the article talks about this recipe you can find on a website called the Noshery tells you how to make them in your own oven. Yeah. reviews i guess are relatively positive as far as taste goes but the person that wrote the article said that they kind of ballooned into a out of control size when she made them herself well i mean any kind of like laminated pastry like this is such a pain in the ass to make and that that is why i'm i. And it's just got flour, water, sugar, eggs but

whether you use lard or vegetable shortening and how much kind of makes the difference. Yeah. I'm looking at this recipe now that you were talking about and they say just get ready to set aside your entire day for this which makes sense

because we were at the place and we kept ordering things. And they're like, we don't have that anymore. We don't have that anymore. It was 11 o'clock and they were almost entirely out of these Mayorkas. So I read that if you're going to make this like at a bakery, you get up at like 4 a.m. to do it. Just like most bakeries do with their breads and pastries. So apparently there's a place, and I didn't do a lot of research on this, but the article I read said that there's, and I apologize, I don't speak Spanish, but Panificadora Pepin is a bread company in San Juan that takes mail orders. Oh, shit.

And so apparently it arrives in a sheet of dough divided into tear-off buns and a packet of confectioner's sugar, and you can bake them in your own oven. Oh, that's very good. I know. That's very exciting for me on a personal, irresponsible level. But yeah, this was just a new exciting thing for me. Yeah. It's not anything, apparently like Starbucks sells a version of it,

but they don't heat it up, and it just kind of, it doesn't taste at all the same. We had them with egg and Serrano ham. I had mine with ham and cheese. Okay. I had mine with egg and ham and cheese. But with the confectioner's sugar, it's a very much, have you ever had a Monte Cristo? It's very much, it was reminiscent of monte cristo and the like savory and sweet

and also there's fucking powdered sugar for some reason that i'm not complaining about buttery and oh they were so good so good it was so exciting to know that i only had a few hours in a place i have to have something that was actually like traditional in that area yeah we could it was we had a great time on the cruise but that was like the most dense good two hours because we like walked around. What was it? The Fort, the San Cristobal. Yeah. And had like coconut ice cream while sitting in like a park and then went and had these tasty little sandwiches.

It was like the best time. Hey, let's talk some more about the Maximum Fund Drive and really start diving down into those donation levels. You want to start by talking about the $ dollar a month level i would like to so and as somebody has talked to done the research to how many hours of bonus content and it's well over 200 hours of bonus content it's a tremendous so if you donate five dollars a month uh you will get access to every piece of bonus content that has ever gone up on the website. For any show. And every year, shows are charged with putting at least one piece of content up there. So, again, over 200 hours.

We have our most recent episode where we did a sort of career retrospective with Will Smith. About Will Smith. Yeah, you say with Will Smith. That might be overselling it. We didn't ask. And it never hurts to ask. That's true. We need to ask

we did an episode with Jasmine Lorimer who was the Bachelorette Canada which was fantastic still miss watching that show not necessarily the American version and yeah we have a bunch of stuff that I bet you're just gonna absolutely love

and yeah it's a ton of stuff we get a lot of people like tweets from people saying like sorry i can only donate at five dollars a month but like it i mean that means a lot that that level of support um you know five bucks a month i know that's not nothing and it it is a way to directly support us whenever you donate at maximumfund.org donate you get to choose where your money uh which which shows get your your donation so uh ten dollars a month we get this pin the pin is very good the pin has a hot dog on it and it says small wonders and megan lincott designed it now wait you can pick whatever shows pin you want yes of course i made it sound

like you have to pick ours but yeah you don't but come on i think what is so perfect about it being a pin with a hot dog on it is i feel like the hot dog is so emblematic of our show. Because the hot dog is something that Griffin and I casually, like over the years of our relationship, have revealed to each other is like a genuine piece of enthusiasm for us. You don't want to show that hand day one. No. Because what if they think a hot dog is nasty? Yeah, it was just kind of casually Griffin and I realized that we were both real devotees of the hot dog is nasty yeah it was just kind of casually griffin and i realized that we were both real devotees of the hot dog um also you get a maximum fun membership card uh twenty dollars a

month you get the 550 piece maximum fun puzzle uh that uh it looks like a person with headphones looking out of the window of the max fun hq office uh it's a very nice puzzle and you can listen to our show while you do it or you can do anything else while doing the puzzle i'm not all the puzzles can guarantee you that that is true you buy a puzzle and it tells you exactly what you have to do while you're putting it together uh 35 not this puzzle 35 a month you get a glass coffee mug that is engraved with the max funRocket logo. And every time you move up a level, you get everything in the previous things. These are for new donors, but also if you're an existing member of the network, you can upgrade your membership to one of these new levels, and you will be eligible for these rewards.

And that is obviously very helpful for us too, because we're trying to get to 25 000 new and upgrading members uh as of right now i think we're a little over 12 500 or so we're over halfway which is awesome but we also know we're almost at 18 000 oh damn yeah well that's way better but we're still not at that goal and we need to get to that 25 000 um and yeah you all have been so supportive of us uh this is my full-time job it's like uh justin and travis and dads too and that's only because of uh the support you've been able to to show us over the years and the the support you've shown me and rachel has been really fantastic and can i address something that was indicated on Twitter?

Uh-oh. People started suggesting that if they gave more donations that I could get a nicer chair. And then your brother Justin was like, Rachel, I will buy you a chair with your permission. And I didn't address it because I wanted to talk it over with you. No, I want you to have a nice chair. Can I? Sorry. I didn't know the chair you had now is not nice it's just you're sitting in this really beautiful sleek this was like a 90 office depot chair how much was my folding chair 15

but listen listen here hot shot i've been at this game for a decade or so now. So you're saying after 10 years, I can get an upgrade? You're at a quarter of the podcasting experience that I bring to the table. And so you're working your way up, Hotshot. This is like Cars 3 all over again. I've not seen Cars 3. I apologize for conjuring its name. I want you to have a nice chair.

I don't want my brother to have to get you a nice chair. That makes me feel bad. That makes me feel bad as a husband and as a co-host and a collaborator. Anyway, help Rachel get a nice chair. Go to maximumfund.org slash donate. Support the things you care about and put good stuff back into the, into the world with your, uh, with your support.

And we thank you very much. Do you want to know about my second thing? Yes. My second thing is introspection. Oh, so this is interesting because I know that you're not a person that meditates. Or am I? Have I been secret? No, a person that meditates. Or am I? Have I been secret?

No, I'm not. Yeah. I downloaded the Headspace app, which seems good. And I did like four, like three minute long sessions. And on the fourth one, like I kept trying to do it over the course of like three days because I kept getting like distracted or bored. And that's how meditation starts though i'm sure it is yes you just you gotta get to have that disciplined and push through for sure i but the the two things

are not exactly the same right the venn diagram is i think meditation is an incredible way of of being introspective and sort of looking inward with a different perspective but it's not necessarily the only no that's true i think introspection though can also cause anxious thoughts depending on how you approach it. I think so for sure as well. But I also think that it's a tool for growth that I am kind of in, I'm in my feels right now. I'm in a period of being in my feels as they say.

I need clarification on what that means, I think. In my feelings. Okay. Sort of just taking the deep, hard look at that dark, truthful mirror. Okay. Is this like when you would sit out and look at the ocean when we were on the cruise? The cruise was vital for this movement in the era that I find myself in. I am not a very sort of introspective person

generally speaking um and it's gonna sound shitty but just because like i never really had time for it or rather i never really made time for it um yeah i think making time for it is what is worth emphasizing yeah uh because i i feel like I have always been a very introspective person, but that's kind of comes with territory where you're an only child. I guess that's true. Me, I was too busy dodging baseball bats that my brothers were throwing at me. And then more recently, you know, I, I was working a lot for the last few years and kept myself so busy during the days that I just like, you know, I wasn't really taking care of myself from a, from an introspective, uh, uh, you know,

way of, way of thinking, but going on that cruise, uh, and, and, you know, you don't have to go on a cruise to have this experience, but the only times in my life where I feel like I've gotten some perspective on how I, uh, how I think about stuff and how I actually spend my days and the patterns that I live in only came after removing myself from those patterns for a long time, right? So I don't meditate, but going out on the ocean where I don't have internet access and I am not on my phone and I'm not at work and I'm not in my office and instead I'm just like spending time with my family for two straight weeks like that's a time for me to like take a look at the way that I spend the other 50 weeks of the year and say like oh

okay this is how I'm actually living and I don't realize it when I'm like living in it yeah um and I've had a few times like that. Like our trip to Japan for our honeymoon was like similarly, like, you know, breaking me out of the patterns that I was living in. And I think that's like the only times that I really am able to, to get that perspective. I think that's kind of like a low key reason why people love travel so

much. I think it's for me, it's my favorite reason why I love travel. Because I think introspection is like a valuable activity for like uh you know improving improving yourself as a human being right like uh i think that uh i have like a lot of bad habits uh and i really it is hard for me when i'm like mired in them to like really, you know, figure out which ones are bad habits and which things like I would be happier without until I sort of take a look inward. And that is a super tough thing to do. The dictionary definition of introspection, just so like people have a specific not sort of wavery thing I'm talking about is the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes the dictionary provides a synonym which is just soul searching which is nice um but i think it can go further than that like i think

it can be about your behaviors and habits and your actions and the way that you like spend your time and i think any time where you are able to see a clear picture, a holistic picture of how you live from the outside in is a really, really valuable moment. And I feel like I just got a nice glimpse of that while we were on the cruise. And it made me think about how grateful I was that we were able to do that. we were able to do that uh obviously it's like an important concept across like all kinds of different philosophical and uh religious practices but i also think it's just like a a good thing to try and do for yourself like during everyday living i think we've talked about journaling before which i think is another great way to to handle this uh and i fell off we were i was doing some journaling like actually around the time when we started doing this show and i fell off and then i just started again because i was like you know this is valuable this is a valuable way for me to like categorize how i'm how i'm actually thinking and

doing and then i went back and read like what i wrote back in late 2017 and i was like oh shit i was like a different person like a year and a half ago like i the things i was really worried about and the things that i was like like i spent all of my time thinking about are nothing to me now and it's nice to be able to like get that sort of perspective also on your past self and say like oh well if i wasn't if i'm not worried about that shit anymore then like why am i so bogged down with the stuff it is interesting to journal because part of you like it's inevitable that part of you is thinking about future you as you're writing it. You know,

like I feel like anytime I've journaled, I've always thought like this is going to be a little time capsule for me. Yeah. And, and so it's what you're, you're writing to yourself a little bit as an audience. And it's like, it's a very like wild experience to do that. I'm bad about when I'm journaling, like writing to an audience and it's like it's a very like wild experience to do that i'm bad about when

i'm journaling like writing to an audience i can literally like i don't and maybe this is like a good sort of mcelroy observation but like i can't not i find myself like not being able to just like write without thinking about syntax and like uh wit and stuff like that and i feel so self-conscious about that but then going back and reading what i wrote in 2017 being like ah i appreciate that this is just readable in some way yeah uh if not like weirdly harsh like what were you what was up back that geez bud um yeah i don't know i i i realize this is like a strange thing to talk about on the show but i it is a it's a really rare thing for me and i it shouldn't be

right like i should be more sort of keyed into what i'm what i'm feeling when i think about it's interesting it surprises me that you you haven't identified as being an introspective person because i see you as like a very sensitive thoughtful person but so if you're not being introspective what do you what's going on in there? I mean, I'm a thoughtful person in like the things that I make and the the the. Is that what your brain spinning around most of the time? Most of the time, like it's about getting getting stuff done. Right. It's about getting stuff done and it's about getting it done well. And it's about trying to be a good husband and dad and, and you know brother and son and all that stuff but

like i'm not really thinking about like uh like my own why do i do the things i do right i'm not even this isn't necessarily explicitly mental health stuff because you know i'm i'm and see a therapist and i'm doing all kinds of stuff for that it's like a it's like a more holistic like what am i do like what am i doing what am i really doing and this ties back into like um there are times where i feel like i am bad at actually knowing how hard i'm working so i'll be like oh god i'm really putting my nose to the grindstone i'm so beat down and it's like you played baba is you for three hours today like you're not or it can be like oh man i need to really put put put

my nose to the grindstone and really grind this out and it's like you stayed up until one last night like writing music like you are already working and it's that kind of stuff when you're like in it that it's really hard to like take a look at the 24 hours that you just had and say like oh this is this is the way i was yeah Yeah, you know what? It does seem like journaling would be good for you. Yeah, that's why I'm doing it. Thanks, pal. So yeah, introspection, you know? Take a breath, diffuse some fucking oils, you know?

In the whole meditation culture, they call that mindfulness. Sure, there's a lot of different wonderful synonyms for it. Whatever you gotta do, contemplate your shit and just take a look a look take a look and it's in a book it's in a book it's not no stop it's not in a book it's in you if you read a book you're not unless it's a book about introspection if you wrote that book would it just be like hey put this down put this down it'll be one just be like, hey, put this down. Put this down. It would be one page. Put this down.

Hey. Hey. Put this down. Put this down. Think about yourself. Think about. Pick it up. Pick it up.

Nope. Put it back down. Wait. Pick it up. Pick it up. Think about yourself. Okay. Put it back down.

I'll see you in the sequel. For real. Think about yourself. What's your second thing? My second thing. what's your second thing my second thing it's difficult to like fully articulate but the best way i can think to do it is the rite of passage that is the first kiss oh my god not the first kiss typically is not a first kisses are not typically wonderful do you remember yours yes and that's the thing this is this is where this is what occurred to me is that i feel

like everybody has a first kiss story and it is always delightful to hear oh is it is it delightful i just is it delightful i i feel like it's a really it's a story that i always enjoy hearing from somebody because it is almost always terrible but in a very entertaining detailed way like people that are not storytellers people that are like oh i can't tell jokes or oh i'm a horrible storyteller are usually pretty good at telling their first kiss story. Okay. And I love that. We can't not, you know, we can't not tell ours. I know.

Mine's kind of a bummer. I don't know. When I was writing this, I don't know that I, you have told me stories about your- I don't think I've told you this story. Your youthful dating, but I don't know if I know your first kiss story. But this isn't dating, right? This isn't my first like girlfriend or whatever was probably like high school, right? Or middle school going into high school.

And I think I've talked about that. Oh, is this the like the party game story? There was a, yeah. Okay. So we were playing, this was like fifth grade though. This was like fifth grade and we were playing truth or dare and i was about to say her name and i'm almost certain she doesn't listen to this show but just in case i don't want to uh put her on blast but it was like um she was uh cool she was like on the on the i think i do know the basketball team and there

were like a bunch of cool kids at this party but it's still like it's like fifth grade right so you're about to hit that middle school divide where everybody gets separated off and a lot of your friends in elementary school are now cool and you are not so you'll never talk to them again uh and this was like the last party before that happened and we were in her basement playing truth or dare i think it was her birthday party uh and uh or spin the bottle it was one of those two but anyway we were supposed to kiss in fifth grade you're playing spin the bottle listen we're advanced in west virginia we're we're a loving people and she super didn't want she was like embarrassed but everybody was like goading her on and i was like wicked uncomfortable too uh so we were in our basement and like we walked behind a sheet

that like separated the party room from the washer and dryer and she kissed me back there and it's just like a quick peck and then everybody back out at the party was like looking through the sheets and started laughing at us, like laughing at me

and I was like, oh, cool. It was like a gross dare. Anyway, see you guys. See you guys. Maybe we'll meet back up in high school and when like everybody kind of like gets, oh no, not in high school either. Okay, it's been fun.

It's been fun. Let's all think about the good four square we played on the fifth grade playground. All right, bye forever. I researched Spin the Bottle because I figured that was when a lot of people got their first kisses. And the earliest like notation of Spin the Bottle because I figured that was when a lot of people got their first kisses. And the earliest notation of Spin the Bottle as a concept was like 1925.

Wow. It was not in the kissing sense, though. It was a game that involved spinning a bottle, and it was the first time the phrase had been in print. But it wasn't like a kissing thing. It was just like a game thing. You had to say a fun limerick about the governor the chant if i remember was something like spin the bottle to find who likes butter better that's way sexier than what was your first kiss story my first kiss i believe i've told you i was in seventh grade our wedding night what i was in seventh grade at a ymc 18 night whoa uh my friend was dating the twin of the guy that i

kissed you know this is real i'm not making this up it was it was twin boys they were a year younger so i was in seventh grade. They were in sixth grade. One of them had long hair. One of them had short hair. The long hair one was set up with me by my friend. She's like, oh, you should date my best friend. So we were at a YMCAT night. The whole night we were like around each other, not really you know like interacting much and then it like the end of the night was coming and i realized like i'm supposed to kiss this guy

so we go up to the track and we're sitting on the track and i i like don't know how to do anything you know and and he apparently had dated people already he was like hot stuff and he goes you're not prude are you cool i know right and i was like no uh and then it's like time to go and my friend is like leaving and we get to the stairwell and i just like close my eyes and start walking towards him. And we kiss. I'm gonna have to kick this dude's ass. No, the tragic part, here's the sad part of that story, is that years and years later, like in high school, him and his brother were like in our friend group again.

And I'd always kind of like joked around with him thinking like he was aware of our shared history. And then finally, he was just like, why are you always like teasing me or whatever? And he did not remember that we had kissed. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did you get parent trapped? You gotta always keep your head on a fucking swivel.

No, no. I was like, do you not remember that we dated briefly? And he. No, no. I was like, do you not remember that we dated briefly? And he's like, no. And I was like, you were my first kiss. And he's like, oh my God. He's like, I do not remember this.

That is rough. That is rough stuff. So everybody's is probably pretty bad, huh? It is, it is. But there's such like tremendous detail associated with those stories. You didn't provide as much detail, I think, as I was hoping for. I don't know how much.

I mean, I didn't want to say the person's name. I got laughed out of the room. Like what you were wearing. Who else was there? I mean, it was fifth grade. So it was almost certainly a windbreaker suit. It was almost definitely a windbreaker suit with a turtleneck on underneath of course what else would it have been um so so here's the thing uh so there is an author of a

book the science of kissing named cheryl uh kirshenbaum she said anticipating a kiss can fire up your brain's reward pathways the more anticipation you feel leading up to a kiss the greater the dopamine spike. Referring to the pleasure hormone your brain produces, dopamine energizes your brain and senses and prepares them to fully absorb new experiences and sensory information. Dopamine is also associated with addiction and habit-forming behaviors. Dopamine can also wipe out your appetite and make it hard to sleep research shows uh studies have shown that kissing triggers the release of the neurotransmitter serotonin which causes feelings

of obsession another hormone oxytocin also spikes during and after your kiss this fosters feeling affection and closeness so it keeps you coming back for more even after the initial high has worn off uh so all that kind of explains to me like why people remember it, you know, is the anticipation. Like you spend all this time thinking like, what's my first kiss gonna be like? Who's this gonna be with? You know, like, am I gonna do it right?

Are they gonna do it right? And then like the experience of that like releases so many hormones and like makes your senses so heightened. I feel like everybody has these great first kiss stories but i feel like we are reaching an age where just none of them are going to be like i was in love with this boy in third grade and we had a beautiful uh beautiful romance and he walked me through a path of roses it's always going to be like somebody dared me to do it. The whims of fate brought me to kiss him.

And then a thousand people laughed at me. So there is a recent study done at the University of Connecticut. And when I say recent, I mean 2018. That decided to explore kissing as a reflection of personality. as a reflection of personality. The researchers wanted to determine the motivational and demographic predictors of the age of first kiss. Using a sample of 738 undergraduates

who agreed to participate, the researchers asked participants to complete measures of religiosity, academic performance, closeness and autonomy in their relationships with their mothers, use of alcohol, body mass index, and self-esteem. The usual stuff.

As of these, undergraduates, only 14% had never kissed a partner on the lips. In college? Yeah. Okay. Compared to their peers. I did not mean to sound judgmental when I said that. That was unintentional. Compared to their peers, adults who had never kissed were more likely to be in the honors college.

Sure. None of this is going to be a surprise. Less likely to be in a romantic relationship, less extroverted, drank alcohol less frequently. So not any groundbreaking information in that study. But I think it's interesting. I couldn't find what the average age was in the study without downloading the whole thing. Nice try Nexus Lexus.

We're not gonna fucking pay for a subscription. What are we, in college? But I think it's interesting that just as of 2018, people are just like starting to study, like what does this mean exactly about people and and why do some people get that experience earlier than others yeah why is it always so terrible it's not it's because of it is because of there was so much pressure around that age to to kiss i like i thinking about Spin the Bottle.

So I actually did play Spin the Bottle when I was in sixth grade. But at that age, I just had to kiss somebody on the cheek. But the thought of kissing anybody made me so uncomfortable for a very, very long time. Yeah. Well into my teens. Yeah. Because you're not going to be good at it no and then they can tell people that's what i was always so nervous about yeah they could say like but here's

terrible you were they're also going to be quite bad it's like a new mouth activity i didn't start the first time somebody was like hey whistle it wasn't like i was like no it's a new mouth thing i had never done before you know and i hadn't thought about this and it's obvious when i'm saying it but humans are the only species that have protruding lips hmm hmm all right maybe i don't know if that explains why we kiss or not but i find that interesting well i mean most most of the other ones just nuzzle which i'll enjoy that as well do you think the problem with my first kiss is that i did try to whistle into her mouth i thought that that was an element of it i thought you were supposed to make a musical sound inside of the mouth of your partner no what was the what was the musical sound do you remember

it was the pokemon theme song yes that's a long song yeah i mean and she was paid she stood there while i did the whole thing that was nice yeah i did the whole theme song and then's a long song yeah i mean she and she was paid she stood there while i did the whole thing that was nice yeah i did the whole theme song and then i did the poker rap that's probably why they were laughing griffin maybe because whistling the poker rap is tough because it's mostly sort of uh you know not not musical it's just how would you whistle bulbasaur pikachu you're really good at this thanks yeah um real andrew bird over there well you know i've had lots of practice a lot of whistling into your mouth over these wonderful years we've spent together uh hey hey let's talk about the max funDrive just one last time, and then we'll let you get back to it.

Are we going to read listeners? We will, but maybe we'll do that after if they stick around. You know, we got to give them something to stick around for. Maybe your submission. Let me guarantee your submission made it on this time. So listen to us ask you for your support one last time go to maximum fun.org donate um become a member of the network and uh choose to support the shows that you want to listen to which if you're listening to this i i hope includes us um and tweet about it using the hashtag max fun drive yeah um we we are honored to be a part of

this network it is such an incredible community uh so much so that i talked about them during a break did i do it during last max fun drive i don't remember uh that would have been awfully sycophantic okay yeah uh and uh yeah the because of the max fun network we've been able to turn this into a career uh they they they support us in in a bunch of ways uh, you can show your support too, by going to maximumfund.org slash donate. I would encourage people that, that donate, uh, to really, um, share, share their enthusiasm with other people and, and encourage other people to donate too. I think a lot of times Pudge Drives become kind of something that, that you share accountability with others.

Yeah. But I think what really makes a difference is those people that want to put their dollars towards something they believe in. Yeah. And again, it's super direct. You pick the shows that you want to support and a small chunk of that goes to Maximum Fun

to help us out with the things they help us out with and the rest just goes directly to the shows that you pick. You get the great pledge gifts. You get all the bonus content at $5 a month. You get the pin of your choice, as well as the membership card at $10 a month. You get the puzzle and everything that comes before it at $20 a month.

There's a bunch of different donation levels, whatever you are comfortable with, whatever your means will allow. We just really appreciate you showing your support in such a direct and genuinely life-changing way. My life has changed because of this network and because of the people who have come out to say that they like the stuff that we make. And we will forever be indebted to you. If you're already a member and you're listening to more shows and, you know, you have more means this year, maybe think about bumping up your donation.

In any regards, maybe take a look at your donation information and make sure that your credit cards haven't expired because that's actually a huge thing for a network like ours, depends on those recurring sort of donations. Yeah, whatever you can do. Maximumfun.org slash donate. This is the last time we're going to ask you about it. The next episode you hear of this show will not be in the drive anymore. So just do it now. If you're thinking about it,

don't, you know, give yourself time to forget. Maximumfun.org slash donate. And what date is the drive-in? Well, the finale is going to be on the 29th, which is going to be Rachel's birthday. That is true, guys. I am not shy about saying that I am turning 37 on Wednesday. It is not an easy age to turn,

so it would be helpful to me, in addition to Griffin's air horn noise, if you would donate. That was not an easy age to turn, so it would be helpful to me. In addition to Griffin's air horn noise, if you would donate. That was not an air horn. That was a flugelhorn. Flugelhorn? A flugelhorn. Can you spell that for me?

Flugel? H-O-R-N. Okay. Hey, can I tell you what our friends at home are very, very excited about these days? Yes, please. Lucy says, I think stale marshmallows are wonderful peep season is here again but peep season is here again how's the harvest this year but i personally find that marshmallows are not ripe until they've sat out for a bit and gotten a nice crust on their outside the added texture makes them even more delicious oh my gosh i love the idea of walking into a house and there's

like a like a cooling rack just with peeps lined up on it getting that nice crisp nice crispy barrel aged barrel aged marshmallow peeps michael says something i find wonderful and he's bolded wonderful to show us that's the name of the show oh hey good is storing the score sheets of old tabletop or board game experiences along with their box it makes for a heartwarming reminder of those past games with family and friends every time you open it up and it can even be a fun conversation starter with those you play with next i like this we used to do this uh with balderdash whenever we would we play balderdash like once a year. And so every time we opened up the box,

we would like look at our stupid jokes from the previous year that we had played it. And usually we do this a lot with the game things. Oh, things. Holy shit. Yeah. I still remember some of like the really,

really funny answer. Yeah. Things is a game where you get a prompt and it's like things you, the one I will never forget was when I was playing things with, i think this is it was uh my friends in chicago who like introduced me to it and one of the prompts was things uh you'd like to do with chocolate and somebody wrote kick its ass and i always thought that was the funniest thing i'd ever heard and and uh yeah i love looking back through stuff like that as well uh as well as like old HeroQuest character sheets. If we still had our like childhood copy,

God, I would kill for that just to see what kind of like cool names I gave the barbarians back then. Alex says something I think is wonderful is the small fences they put around individual trees to keep them safe and help them grow. It always makes me laugh a little. That is nice. It's nice. It's a little prison for

this nasty tree this nasty tree we can't it's not ready to be back out in the the general sort of i wonder if dogs respect that if they're like oh you know what guys don't pee on this one it's a keeper there's a fence there there's a fence there fences are here for a reason. You know, dogs are like, I bet I can still get it. I can still get on that. No problem. Birds are like, whatever. We're up. Fence don't go up.

Thank you all so much for listening to all of our shenanigans these past two weeks. Thank you. Oh, and thanks to those of you that uh watch the live poetry corner i did in the facebook group yes uh you did such a good job the facebook platform was not especially conducive to your art i apologize i never used before i didn't realize how um twitchy it was yes but uh still a few days left we could hop on youtube and yeah let's say if if we get to 20 000 i'll do i'll do one on the youtube okay do you have enough poems for that i don't know how many poems there are i have enough oh shit okay yes yes i do

okay good um so yes that's our show maximumfund.org donate one last time is the link to uh go support us uh thank you to bowen and augustus the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And again, thanks to everybody at the Joko Cruise who came up and said hi. It was really, really great getting to meet y'all. We had a great time and hopefully we'll see you there same time next year.

Anything else we should say? Guess not. What about tomorrow's lotto numbers? Just let everybody know that. Use our psychic powers to provide money for our friends. All right, I'm going to start. But then you give us some of it in the maximum contract. I'll do one and then you'll do one.

Okay, okay. Four. Four. Can they do the same number twice? Probably not. I don't think they have infinite balls bouncing around. I can't believe I said four and you didn't say. yes or wait what was the last shit gosh i'm never gonna remember that 4 8 15 16 32 shit i almost had it did that end up meaning anything did anything on that show

mean anything please don't go buy lottery tickets because of us bye Hey! Money won't Hey! Work it off Hey! Money won't Hey! Work it off Hey! Money won't Hey! Work it off Hey! Hey! Maximumfun.org Comedy and culture.

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