Wonderful! - Wonderful! 88: Blast Off Boy

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

Rachel's favorite boat naming convention! Griffin's favorite handheld cleaning friend! Rachel's favorite place where art lives! Griffin's favorite prolific songwriter! 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. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. 3, 2, 1, blast off. Where are we going? Planet? Thankfulness. Oh.

Come with me and Rachel, Captain Rachel, and put on the astronaut helmet and get in the big ship and we're going to blast off and we're going to go to- That's my favorite Elton John song. The Planet of Thankfulness or- No, the lyrics you were just saying. Oh, right, right, right. And it's like, I think we're blasting off to new, new lands. So hold my hand and hold my other hand.

I don't think that you're holding hands at all. No, no, no, no. I'm a blast off boy. Yeah. Blast off boy. That's a pretty good one. What's great is we already have the episode title. Yeah, it really can. And that's why we wrote one. What's great is we already have the episode title. Yeah, it really,

and that's why we wrote this bit ahead of time. So here's how this whole thing came together. Rachel and I around, what do you think, like six o'clock, Henry was eating dinner. We were like, we have a little bit of time. We got in the writer's room. We sat down with Stefan. We sat down with Daisy.

And we were like, guys, put our heads together. We got to come up with a good bit that's going to have a good name for it in the beginning of the episode. And they were like, what if you did like an Elton John thing, but you called it Blast Off Boy? And Rachel was like, that's not going to work. But then she didn't come up with anything better. Yeah. No, that's usually how it goes down. Yeah. You got any small wonders? Your 2019 Stanley Cup champion, St. Louis Blues.

That's not even a small wonder, though. We need a new, like, we have wonders, and we have small wonders. We need, like, macro wonders. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That can, like, last several. Eternal wonders. An eternal wonder. Holy crap, guys. This was the most exciting, like, sports thing I think I've ever witnessed.

It was incredible. Game seven. Game seven. Game seven. Against the Bruins. Took it to the limit. In Boston. Really rubbed their noses in. I know for a fact we have some Boston fans in the group.

Yes. So I don't want to rub your specific noses in it, but boy, howdy, it felt good to just get one dunked right in there, huh? Yeah, that last game was incredible. It was just like everything was firing on all of the cylinders that there were. There were noose. They found new cylinders. They found new cylinders.

They fired on them shits. Yeah, that was really good. I want to do Thai fish cakes. I think it's called, I'm going to butcher this, but it's Thad Mun Pla. And I get them every time that we have well a thai restaurant that has them uh i don't know how you feel about these little bad boys but i think they're real good i do like them i mean do i like them as much as the 2019 stanley cup champion saint louis blues no no but what if they did fill the stanley cup up with that like dope dipping sauce that has all

that spicy sediment sort of floating on the top of it. And then you could dip your tadmanpla right in there. Yeah. That's fun. That is fun. I love all the cussing that the boys did when they won the trophy. These boys got very excited when they won the trophy. They did a lot of cusses. Yeah.

And that did get on TV. So that's a shame. They hate that. They were just real excited. And can you blame them? They won the Stanley Cup for the first time ever hey guess what what you go first this week hit me with it okay should i start out with my my jammer or should i start out with my slammer well i have a jammer that i'm gonna do second So maybe save your jammer for second too and we can have our own little DJ block.

Oh, it's not music. It's just like kind of the jam. Okay. You know? Okay. Like a slammer is like... This is a dichotomy that I did not know existed in this show. Yeah, no.

So a slammer is just like, it's like a slam dunk. It's like impressive from minute one. And then a jammer is just a really good one. Got a long tail, the jammer does, you're saying. No. Baby, I'm still having trouble grasping this. A slammer is-

A slammer, it's like a fireworks display. Okay. And a jammer is- A jammer is just a really good, solid- It sounds to me that a slammer is better than a jammer. On the front end, yeah. But you would say that the... The jammer has more substance.

And it has a long tail, you would say. It's more enjoyable. A long tail you're losing me with a little bit. Like it's enjoyable for longer. Like it sustains a little bit better. Okay, all right. So which one? Wow.

You know, I would love to finish with the jammer. So let's give me that slammer get things this is wild that you have categorized these this way but let's hear the slammer bode mcboat face oh man i wish i could go with you boy i wish i could go with you i love you more than anything in the whole world and i wish i could go with you but that but how about how about i make it more broad okay what i'm really talking about is when uh the names of things get crowdsourced and then they come up with amusing names yes but is this because of the news story that came out today yeah okay i saw the news story and it was like well that's great we're making leaps and

bounds in science but when history writes about this great discovery it's gonna remember internet irony and that's a thing that i would love to leave leave behind and like the odds and ten hey what are we calling this decade the tens the teens it's not the teens because 2012 wasn't a teen what do him this year? Isn't that what you do on your other show? No, no, no, no. No, we do years. I'm talking about the decade. What do we call the 10s?

When you say like, oh, it was 1914. Do you say the roaring 10s? What is it? Teens. I feel like teens. But 11's not a teen. No, that's true. Yeah.

What the beans? Bodie McBoatface. So it's March 2016 and there is an online poll to name a ship. This is an autonomous underwater vehicle used for scientific research. Somebody apparently on a BBC radio station jokingly suggested Boaty McBoatface. A BBC person suggested this? Yes. Okay. And the name apparently was an homage

to Hootie McOwlface, an owl named through an adopted bird program in 2012. Okay, I never knew that. Yeah. And so it has the official name is the RRS Sir David Attenborough. No.

But colloquially, it's called Boaty McBoatface. What's printed on the side of the fucking boat? Boaty McBoatface is, because I saw a picture of it today. Sorry, Sir Attenborough, but... So this spurred a naming convention that has since taken on new life. Right. A team at Sydney's Warwick Farm Race course paid homage with horsey mchorse face fantastic which got attention because it won a race in australia okay that one's in the history

books too cool the swedish transport company mtr express conducted an online poll to name a new train on the stockholm gothenburg line can i guess? Yes. Trainy McTrainface? Yes. All right, I've gotten. Yes, yes, yes. Sydney Ferries. A lot of this happens in Australia. Oh, wait, there already is a Boaty McBoatface.

I know, that's how, buckle up. Sydney Ferries allowed the public to name its fleet of Emerald Class Ferries. The most popular name was Boaty McBoatface, but as it had already been taken, the judges opted to go instead for the second place, Ferry McFerryface. Here's what's interesting. So the Maritime Union of Australia refused to work on the vehicle if it was called Ferry McFerryface. Jeez. And then it later emerged that the name actually had fewer than 200 votes, but that the new South Wales transport minister just declared that it won out of his own preference for it. I mean, I guess that's the power you get.

That's why you reach for those political stars, you know? Would you like me to keep going? Yeah. Megabus United Kingdom hosted a Twitter poll in 2017 to name some of their new coaches. Mega McMegaface. In March 2017, the Isle of Wight Council, which operates a floating bridge, asked for suggestions. Despite council officials ruling out Floaty McFloatface, there was a petition that attracted over 2,000 signatures and the council had to rescind and agree to name it that. Can I ask you something?

How the fuck are people still falling for this? You can't let this happen. I don't know. If that is the one blessed thing about Booty McBoatface is that when it saves all of us from climate change, people will be like, wow. And what was the boat's name again? We did it because the internet decided what the name was. Oh, shit. I was about to open up a new store for men's erotic wear. And I was going to have the internet name.

No, no, no, no, no. Do not. Do not do that. I've got a few more. In December 2018, now this was a choice. The Formula E team announced the name of their new car,

which was called Electro-Mick Electro-Face. That sucks. For their electricface. Oh, that sucks. For their electric car. God, that sucks. In 2018, there was a naming contest for a sculpture of a muskox in Canada. Musky McMuskoxface was in the running, but instead, Elon Muskox won. I take it back. The internet can name some things.

San Diego was organizing people to bring a major league soccer team to the city, and they invited people to name the team. Yowza. Footy McFootyface, uh, received more votes. Uh, as of the time I read the article, I'm not sure if it ended up winning. I think they disallowed that one. Footy is probably my least favorite name for, um, football or soccer. When I hear people say footy, it makes me so uncomfortable because it's such a sweet little pet name.

It'd be like, if I called baseball, like base B, b i'm gonna go down to the red state uh field because i'm gonna watch them play base b base b i take it back that's wonderful that's very good it's like people saying hockey oh well well shoot do you think it's actually called like hawkins suckin' off but we shortened it hogandas is actually what it's called yeah there was some copyright issues. I think it's wonderful. I recognize that it may be, for posterity's sake, it's not great to give something an ironic, jokey name,

but I really, I like the people coming together across, you know, a large amount of communities to say, yes, Boney McBoatface. It is innocuous enough. Do you remember the time that the NHL allowed viewers to vote on a player that could get

added to the All-Star game? And they added, oh, God, I can't remember his name. Rory something or other. And he was not like an All-Star player. He was not a very good player. They like added him to the roster to like troll him and troll the NHL by saying like,

all right, you let us put him. And then he actually like held his own and he did all right. I don't know this story. Oh, okay. Well, I clearly don't either. But do you want to know

my first thing? Yes. My first thing is the Dustbuster or Hand Vacuum. I did not know this, but although I really should have, Dustbuster is of course a brand name from Black & Decker.

The little device, the cordless handheld vacuum is not called a Dustbuster. But much like Kleenex, Band-Aid, you know, whatever, I just call it Dustbuster. Because cordless hand vacuum does not work for me. We have one of these. We live in the wilds of Austinin texas and that means we get bugs yeah we have lots of bugs we have so many freaking bugs and i don't like them rachel loves these things she hakuna matata eats them all up but i don't like them uh griffin and i play this

game that we haven't talked about and maybe griffin doesn't realize he's playing where i will see a bug corpse oh in the morning when you get up and i'll just kind of leave it there yeah yeah yeah because griffin will take care of it if it makes it sound like me and rachel are complete nastoids i need you to understand that we've just grown so accustomed to having a dead bug somewhere uh because they just crawl in our house like sweet is this air conditioning let me get out of the it It's a problem in Texas generally. Yeah. Just because of the hot temperatures.

Yeah. But. Little cockroaches like, I'm not just chilling here for. Oops, I died. And then. We've got like millipedes, which is not something that has ever happened to me before. Millipedes is just not great. Anyway, goosh in them is not great.

Whatever. Especially the cockroaches. They're so big. There's a lot of goosh material in there. They're very. Guys, they They're so big. There's a lot of goosh material in there. They're very big. Guys, they're so fucking big. But scoop in there with a dusty bust. You suck them right up.

Don't call it dusty bust. Yeah, that's not great. You suck it up and then you take them outside and dump it. And then you're, you know, it's like they were never there. And you don't have to touch a bug. And that's my favorite thing about it. Yeah. But there's all, I mean, this is our most common usage of it now we literally just have

it out of the cradle like chilling in the dining room because it's so centrally located so we can just like rush and grab it um and you know we use it for messes too henry generates a lot of uh muffin muffin crumbles let's call them uh which you you just gotta suck up and i don't want to go lug the big vacuum cleaner out every time I do that. I want my little dust buster. I've always been a fan of these. We had a dust devil growing up. Oh.

Slick little red number that we- Dirt devil? Was it dirt devil or dust devil? Wait, a dust devil is like a small tornado, isn't it? Wait, hold on. I just searched a dirt Devin. Now, hold on. me i just searched a dirt devon now hold on who did you find well there's a guy named devon dirt and he makes music he's got a little uh looks like a little npc maybe a little launch pad i bet he does some electronic stuff uh okay i'm gonna have to i'll

check that out later dirt devon is it dirt devil it is dirt devil a dust devil is a small tornado we have a dirt devil we had one growing up i think they're all red actually maybe that's like yeah they were like little corvettes they were sleek and we used it around the house there were three you know rambunctious young boys we made a lot of muffin crumbles as well don't want to touch a yucky yucky mess busting makes you feel good just get it right up in there uh it's like a cool gun that you use to shoot messes but the stuff goes inside of it and it doesn't kill it kills messes i guess and some bugs that are too small to survive the transportation process um and i did not know this but but, um, uh, it started life, not as like a household product. Like we use it today.

Uh, Black & Decker made it, made the original. Uh, they released it on the market in 1979. It became like a household name, but it wasn't the first time that they kind of took a swing at the cordless, uh, handheld vacuum cleaner. I thought this was interesting. So the cordless handheld vacuum cleaner was invented by Mark Prowitt and Carol Gantz. And it was part of this series of battery-powered handheld tools

called the Mod 4 series, which also included a shrub trimmer, a lantern, grass shear, drill, and what they called the Spot Vac, which was the original name for it. And all of it shared like one single universal rechargeable battery, which I think is interesting because that's how if you have a yard or whatever that needs tended and you have electric tools to do so, it follows the same thing, right? Like we have a little leaf blower and hedge

trimmer and lawnmower and weed whacker all that used the same sort of universal battery and they were doing this back in like 1975 or something like that and so this project came out of the apollo space mission because nasa wanted a portable cordless drill that they could use to get core samples off the lunar surface without having a bunch of you know wires which makes sense so black and decker took that contract and worked on it and came up with this mod 4 series with the spot vac uh and so it was like framed as like a power tool that you could have at your workbench and suck up i don't know sawdust small bolts or whatever the fuck now people use it to suck up kitty litter yeah and big old cockroaches um it was a flop when it first hit the market like nobody bought the thing but after doing some market research they found uh that the this is a quote the spot vac was

popular with women who use it to clean up uh like spills and messes from around the house they would yoink it and just like use it to clean up messes because it's a fucking vacuum i don't know how they whiffed so hard on this uh and so they redesigned it to make it look like less like a power tool and more like a like an inviting uh you know home cleaning product they called it the dust buster and then it sold over a million units in the first year booyah yeah because those old vacuums used to be really heavy it was so freaking big this is like a nice option if you don't want to do a whole room i can't imagine my life without it. Literally can't. Wow. I can't. I use it every day to get bugs out of the house.

If you and I, I'm worried if you and I like ever leave the house for like two weeks, we would come back and it would be like that scene in Temple of Doom when they find the secret passage and they're walking and they're like, oh, it sounds like we're stepping on fortune cookies. And then they turn a light on, it's bugs. I think about that scene all the freaking time. When I found out we had had millipedes i thought of that scene and i didn't sleep that night i'm sorry anyway every time you use a dust buster from now on just think about the fact that you're using like a moon mining instrument yeah you're sucking up muffin jumbles well guess what neil

armstrong was using that to get the precious lunar diamonds off the surface of the moon and then he used it oh that'd be a great new oceans 11 oh going to moon let's call it oceans 11 again that's fun oceans apollo 13 apollo ocean oh that's freaking good i'm working on it. We could also do Apollo Oceans 9 and get Sandy B and the rest of them in the mix. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Oceans 10. Here's the problem with Oceans 8, the Sandy B one. They can only make 10.

They can only make three of those because then it gets back to 11, doesn't it? Right. You're right. Well, they could reduce. They could go make three of those. Because then it gets back to 11, doesn't it? Right. You're right. Well, they could reduce. They could go backwards. Ocean seven. Ocean seven. Start cutting some mattresses.

That's great. Sorry, Mindy Kaling. You're done. You're cut. We don't need a jewel maker for this one. Bye. Hey, can I steal you away? Yes. maker for this one bye hey can i steal you away yes i have a personal message here this one's for marlo and it's from uh nissa or nice nice

nice have i shown you that video no i haven't shown you hot food no oh man hot food's my small wonder i'll show you later uh anyway marlo you are sort of a little cool thank you for getting me into making video games buying junk from old and or dead people and slowly becoming dnd shopkeepers together although i love you deeply i must now put you on blast for not liking Shrek, you unculture fool. I hope we are friends forever, or rivals, if that doesn't pan out. You know, I think it's okay not to like Shrek. No, it's not. I said it out loud

and it felt so filthy coming out of my mouth. We watched it not long ago and I thought this was a pretty good film. A listener, whose name I do not have on hand, sent us the children's book, Shrek. Oh, that's true. Which predates the movie.

Did not know this. Henry loves it. And Henry's a big fan. He calls it Mancha Book, which is very, very, very good. Can I read the next one? Yep, yep, yep. It is a message for Ian. It is from Kristen.

Ian, thank you for introducing me to the best family in podcasting, those good, good McElroys, and for being my wonderful thing every week. Here's to many more years of goofs, travels, less frequent moves, and those stupid but adorable kitties. Love you always, Kristen. I usually look at these messages like a little riddle box of how can I get in there and, you know, poke a little, do some of my japes. Well, it's hard when it's so complimentary of us, right? I know, that's it. I can't really bust out my kind of South Park humor on this one. It's about me, you know? It's just too sweet. And I don't want to turn that South Park humor back inward towards myself

because I may not like what I see in there. Hey, MaxFun listeners. Have you been listening to MaxFun for a while and you've just been wondering, where's the new Flat Earth podcast I keep hearing about? Well, hereFun listeners. Have you been listening to MaxFun for a while and you've just been wondering, where's the new Flat Earth podcast I keep hearing about? Well, here it is. We give you all the facts on NASA's lies and how we know that the Earth is actually flat. Just kidding.

This is Ono, Ross, and Keri, and we join fringe religious groups. We undergo alternative medical treatments. And we hang out with people like 9-11 truthers, flat earthers. We find out why do people believe strange things. We join them and we tell you all about it. We have a lot of fun. We make a lot of friends. Yeah, we do.

We joined the Mormons. We joined the Scientologists. We got acupunctured. We got fire cupped. We got ear kindled. We've done it all and we're going to keep doing it all. Why don't you check out Ono, Ross, and Carrie at MaximumFun.org. Hey, what's your second thing?

Oh, this is going to be the slammer, isn't it? Oh, I'm ready. No, this is the jammer. Oh, all right. You had me start with the slammer, which was Bodie McBoseface. Can I say something? It's a little anticlimactic. I should have saved the slammer which was bode mcboth face can i say something it's gonna it's a little anticlimactic i i should have always saved the slammer oh well let's hear your jammer art museums come on and slam and welcome to the jam hell yeah what's the best art museum

wow you just went straight i mean the louvre of course okay but not that everybody says that one because they like to be cool what's the best one the best one i mean the art institute in chicago yeah baby that's right i figured that was the one you wanted me to say oh okay follow your heart don't let me steer the conversation uh so i love an art museum i really do oh yeah i i mean not only do i like art but a lot of what i like is just kind of the presence of being in this like big temple like museum you know and like kind of feeling this voyeuristic feeling of like you're in somebody's really fancy house yeah it's like walking around looking at their stuff uh yeah i mean it took me a while

to get there i never liked art museums and we grew up with one in huntington that was actually pretty nice i took you to it it's like mostly local art and i we did shows there but it never like really resonated with me and it really was not until the art institute and i saw night hawks up on the wall and I was like, oh shit, like that's the, that's that one painting. And then I realized like, wait a minute, all these paintings are old. And now I really like art museums. Thanks Nighthawks. So scholars generally place the earliest museum in the 17th or 18th century europe prior to museums as we know them today there were places called wonder commons or cabinets of

wonders okay and so basically rich people would get together uh and sometimes they were literal cabinets fitted with cupboards and drawers, and other rooms were stuffed with animal, mineral, vegetable, and artistic treasures. Come on in. Come on in. I've got a new delectable Monet that you guys simply must see. And then you must see my vegetables. It's vegetal. I mispronounced it.

Still, it's pretty good. Look at this eggplant. You must look at this eggplant. It's vegetal. I mispronounced it. Still, it's pretty good. Look at this eggplant. You must look at this eggplant. It's so round and purple. It's like the most It's the most supple eggplant. It's so supple. The hue is so deep and dark, like the night sky.

Look at my big aesopon, my celery. I've hung it in front of the new Matisse. Have you seen? Don't even get me started on the minerals. So the problem with Wunderkommens was that they were mostly for the wealthy. Yeah.

was that they were mostly for the wealthy. So it wasn't until the Enlightenment happened that we started seeing museums open to the public. So the first museum, as we understand them today, is the British Museum in London. It was founded in 1750 as a gift to the British nation. Its core collection consisted of specimens. He acquired this uh sir hans sloan when he was a medical doctor in west indian colonies so there were plants birds seashells and objects he

purchased from other explorers uh so when they started making these museum the architectural reference to temples was intentional symbolizing a space of protection and prestige uh so most of the art museums you see like still have that look and that was like a very european thing to do of like signifying like this is a great important space yeah sure make it look like a you know antique nobody touched the it's basically that it's the defining characteristic. Well, one thing I thought about too is interesting. So there's something called the white cube approach, which is kind of what you see in museums

where they minimize visual distractions. So it's like white walls, you know, solid floors. That was like something actually started in the 1930s under the direction of alfred barr uh it was this idea of like minimizing distractions and that's at the museum of modern art in new york before that they just had like wallpaper with like wild neon lasers like those old school photo backgrounds look at some of the older galleries they used to put like 50 paintings on a wall and they were just all right next to each other and like it was less about like zeroing in on like one distinct piece it's more like a whole wall

packed in and you got to throw a golf ball and whichever one you hit you took home they had so much more fun back then well what if you damaged the painting why would you want it when you threw the ball no you have to take it if you damn it you don't understand yeah okay so the ball throwing is for what then fun okay so are you it was the great thinking of the circus i'm thinking of the goldfish game at the circus thank you baby okay uh i grew up with the st louis art museum which is really really incredible they have more than 30 000 works uh and the building they currently use was from the louisiana purchase in 1904 so the world's fair uh and so it's like a super old incredible building that's been around since the world's fair i like and i don't know that i've

ever really been the one that i would classify as this i really want to like those more modern like uh interactive especially digital art museum what is the name of the one in new mexico that you like climbed down a washing machine to get to you were the one that told me about it oh shit okay never mind i'm gonna do a wonderful segment on this maybe next week okay but the ones where i see pictures especially my friends who go to japan i feel like they have a lot of art exhibits like this where you like go into the rooms that are like either mirrors like everywhere with lights and you know organized in a specific way to create these like incredible patterns like the shit you can get into that looks really neat that looks really nice yeah i i it's just it can

be such a like a contemplative like calm space you know or it can be like really super engaging if you go like i got to see a really great uh museum when i was in atlanta i went to the high museum i believe it's called uh and it was so awesome um i also like a history museum i know it's a different thing but like a look especially like a local history museum where you can learn about like where you are we did the one in hong kong and it was like oh okay yeah that was really cool that was something that we started doing when we went to japan that's right yeah we went to the we did it and we went to Japan. That's right. Yeah, we went to the Ueno. And then we did it and we went to Hong Kong, too. The Ueno Museum.

And, you know, we didn't really know anything about the local history. And so, like, doing that on your first day really helps you get a feel for, you know, what the place is. I've got to find the name of this museum. It's something cat? Wolf. It's called Meow Wolf, the New Mexico one. Oh. It's so wild. This is a sneak preview i'm totally gonna do this it's there i think there's a refrigerator door you can go into i want to go there so bad

anyway i think let's take a trip okay right now uh not right now okay let's go i bet henry would love it we could make a trip up to New Mexico. Yeah. That's not too far, right? No. Okay. All right. It's a date. Let's do it.

I want to talk about my second thing. Yes. It's Elvis Costello, Rachel's very favorite musical artist. Here's what I'll say about Elvis Costello. Okay. You know when you're listening to an Elvis Costello song. to an almost costello song he was very uh skillful at creating a sound uh that was very easily identifiable in terms of his voice yes okay not necessarily so much the song because i would argue that he has like gone through a few different genres at this point uh it's not that i i dislike

him i just don't revere him it's an acquired taste i will give you that uh i enjoy his like music right like i think he has several songs that are both slammers and jammers uh but i like what i revere is his songwriting ability i think he's like probably the best living songwriter uh i yeah here's the. Like, I know you're not a fan. I also like only ever sort of get in moods where I really want to listen to Elvis Costello and the rest of the time I could take or leave him. Cause the truth about him is like, he has a lot of songs that I do not think are very good. Uh, but that's because just sort of law of large numbers. He has so many songs. He has the most songs. What is it?

So in 2013, ASCAP, which is the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, said that he had written 566 songs. Some of them are for other people and a couple of them are like translations and stuff. Also, that was six years ago and he's released more music since then that is a truly like preposterous number of songs when you think about like how many songs the beatles put out how many songs you know eric clapton put out 566 is like a wild wild wild amount he has 33 studio albums 33 studio albums he has six live albums and 16 compilation albums. So like he writes a ton of music and some it's like brilliant, beautiful, awesome music. And some of it I could take or leave.

I didn't really get into Elvis Costello until I was in college. Justin's always been a pretty big fan of his. College seems like about the right time to start enjoying Elvis Costello's music because it can be kind of intimidating to like know where to jump in. Like, how do you get into somebody who has 566 songs? Um, and I mean, I found, I found a way, I think the compilation albums are usually a pretty good bet that if you find an album called the best of Elvis Costello, then that's probably a pretty good like roadmap for, for how to get started. Um, and once you get into a man i think his lyrics are so like clever and playful uh and really subtle sometimes uh his like one of his

best known songs is radio radio it is like this like brutal takedown of the music industry when he uh when he first wrote it i think it was late 70s or something like that uh and it's about like the the the commercialization of radio um and this is like one of his most infamous stories is during uh saturday night live he was the musical guest on saturday night live back in the 70s and um he was playing one of his songs called Less Than Zero. And in the middle of it, he stopped doing that song and he debuted Radio Radio, which is just like dragging the radio industry. And they banned him from being on Saturday Night Live for 12 years. The song rules. And there's a lyric that goes, radio is a sound salvation. Radio is cleaning up the nation.

They say you better listen to the voice of reason, but they don't give you any choice because they think that it's treason. So you better do as you are told. You better listen to the voice of reason, but they don't give you any choice because they think that it's treason. So you better do as you are told. You better listen to the radio. One of his most famous songs, one of his rare actual pop hits is Every Day I Write the Book. And it's about a relationship framed as a fiction novel. And I think it's the second verse that goes, chapter one, we didn't really get along. Chapter two, I think I fell in love with you. You said you'd stand by me in the middle of chapter three, but you were up to your old

tricks in chapters four, five, and six. Like the first time I heard that, I was like, oh, that's really freaking good. And like, there's so many songs that have so many like great moments in it like that. Sometimes like they reach into being like kind of full-blown corny because he kind of just puts it puts it all out there um but i don't know it's it's the fun thing about him is that there's just so much some of it i don't like some of it i love but also like i've been listening to his music for you know a decade now and there's still songs of his i haven't heard like today when i was prepping this segment i heard new songs of his i had never heard and i was like oh that's actually

really good too you want to play one of those new songs of his I had never heard and I was like, oh, that's actually really good too. Do you want to play one of those new songs? I'm actually going to start off with Veronica because Veronica is maybe his, you don't know Veronica? No, I know that one.

Okay, I was about to say. It's off of his album Spike. I forget when that one came out and it's one of his best known albums. Spike has a bunch of jammers on it, but this is Veronica Veronica This is like, this is the beauty of Elvis Costello. This song rules. It's like this epic, upbeat rock song.

And it's really catchy. It's his highest charting song in the US ever. And also it's a song about an older woman living with Alzheimer's. Didn't realize that. yeah yeah uh veronica sits in her favorite chair and she sits very quiet and still and they call her a name that they never get right and they and if they don't nobody else will but she used to have a carefree mind of her own with a devilish look in her eyes saying you can call me anything you like but my name is ver. Oh my God, it's so fucking good. It's like a classic.

And there's any number of other like classic Elvis Costello songs that I could play here. But what I also like about him is it's over, it's been almost two decades between Veronica and the next song I want to play. It's called Bedlam. And I came off a more recent album, I think 2005 or so. It's called The Delivery Man. It came out my freshman year of college

and it was like a big gateway for me. And it still sounds like classic Elvis Costello, but it also just fucking rules. This is Bedlam. And they were surprised to see you So they greeted us with palms They asked for ammunition Asked for contr, and small arms.

And I might recite a small prayer if I ever said that. I lay down on an iron frame and found myself in midland. I wish that I could take something for drowning out the noise. Wailing echoes down the corridors. I don't have much analysis for that song. I just think it rocks. I think it's a really good song. I think even if you are not a fan of his voice or a fan of his music,

like I think it is worth listening to some Elvis Costello just to realize what a tremendous impact he has had on like so many artists throughout history. Some artists that like quote him as being uh an influence obviously they might be giants i think if you are a fan of they might be giants and you listen to elvis costello for the first time you're like oh shit that's where a lot of this sort of wry sad song disguised as an upbeat pop song comes from uh also though foo fighters radiohead green day uh and prince always cited elvis costello as a big inspiration uh so many artists i think when you when you listen to how elvis

costello writes songs you will see traces of like his influence just just everywhere it's so interesting because like i the music is always so solid that i know i've never really paid that much attention to the lyrics before um there are some there's there's some songs that don't have very solid music I mean it was the 80s and like I feel like everybody who made music in the 70s and then the 80s and then continued making music in the 90s had one album in the 80s where they discovered like synthesizers and you know like FM keyboards and they're like oh this is gonna this is the fucking future pal and then you listen to those albums back and it sounds like a fucking sega

genesis game and you're like oof oofa doofa um but yeah i mean his he is he is uh i think the best living lyricist uh these these days i would recommend going into his music and bold claim yeah well i mean if you look at just raw sheer tonnage of music written i think he i think he takes the cake well i'll tell paul mccartney and bob dylan that you say no thanks i think i think paul mccartney and bob dylan's hit rate is maybe even lower than elvis costello's and maybe they're gonna put me in jail for saying that out loud. You want to hear what our friends at home are excited about? Yes. Sarah says, I love eating fruits and vegetables right out of the garden in the summer.

My sister has a small garden and every time I visit, I'm met with tomatoes and strawberries that are perfectly ripe and very good. Oh, that's so nice. I miss when we had, well, you had a garden. I did. You had a little square foot garden. It is a lot of work. I got these three succulents on my desk and they're already dying. Oh, no.

Griffin. No, they're doing all right. They're just not going to get any sun there. It's fine. I'll vacuum them up when they go. Here's one from Isabel who says, my small wonder is that point in the summer where it's hot enough to wear a big shirt to bed as pajamas it's easy and it keeps you downstairs breezy oh this was my shit like in like growing up up to

like high school every night regardless of just a big shirt just a big old shirt my dad got these like shitty big shirts from the radio station you bring them home and i would be like well i don't care too much about travis tritt i guess but i will wear his big shirt to sleep thank you dad you still you'll still do this sometimes yeah i know i love it i love it not as much as i used to i mean they used to design i guess they were nightgowns i guess when i think about it they were nightgowns alex says i really enjoy it when you're driving on a dark country road and you see an oncoming driver switch off their brights in the distance. I like that too.

That is nice. That's very courteous. Somebody's thinking of me. Somebody's thinking about me and my eyes and my driving. Somebody knows the rules too, right? Yeah. It's like when it's raining out and you see people that don't turn their headlights on and you're like, you don't know the rules.

You don't know the rules. Unsafe. I'll point at them. Unsafe. Unsafe. Everybody else rolls their windows down and points. Unsafe. Hey, thank you so much to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay.

You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to Maximum Fun. I mean, Maximum Fun. Freaking Fun, dude. It's a great network that hosts a lot of great shows. Been trying to tell you. thank you to maximum maximum fun maximum freaking fun dude it's a great network that hosts a lot of great shows

been trying to tell you stop podcasting yourself there's a very good one also yes bullseye with jesse thorne can i pet your dog

friendly fire bobble floppos beef and dairy milk and so many more at MaximumFun.org we got other stuff at McElroy.Family

we're gonna guest on Jordan and Jessie Go here in a couple weeks here in Austin so come see that I think that's about it I think that's gonna wrap it on up for us

tie it up with a nice little bow and get it back to the barn before the hailstorm starts. Brown paper packages, you know, tied up. Tessie, did you get the hogs in before a hailstorm starts? Yes. Slop them and flop them, Tessie.

The hails are coming. Yes. Play with me. No. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Dead Pilot Society brings you exclusive readings of comedy pilots that were never made, featuring actors like Patton Oswalt. So the vampire from the future sleeps in the dude's studio during the day and they hunt monsters at night. It's Blade meets the

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My Uncle Tell, who showed his wiener to Cinderella at Disneyland, is family. Do you want him staying with us? He did stay with us for three months. And he was a delight. A new pilot every month, only on Dead Pilots Society for maximum fun.