Wonderful! - Wonderful! 89: Timothy Cooljazz

Episode Date: June 26, 2019

Griffin's favorite spicy meat! Rachel's favorite cool jazz musician! Griffin's favorite moving staircase! Rachel's favorite round warm stuff! 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. This is a podcast where we talk about things we like. And this one is gonna be uh groundbreaking oh this is groundbreaking television people because first of all you can't see it uh there's no visual component to this television show it's just a podcast that you listen to the other thing that's unique about this one is as far as i know it's the first podcast episode that has like a side a and side b

like you might find on a record oh okay and what's exciting is um we have fucked up pretty bad with our dining routine for the evening we have this place we order from on tuesdays maybe i'm going a little too far behind the music for rachel right. Let me check with you before I go any further. I mean, you can share this information. It doesn't make us look particularly interesting. We order the same Chinese food basically every week before we record because it's real fast. But we did not know that they're on vacation this week and they deserve it. Holy shit, they deserve it.

Yeah, it's a family-owned business. Family-owned business, week in, week out. They deliver, let's just say, the goods. It's already late. The kiddo's in bed. No dinner in our tum-tums. But we decided to talk about things that we like as if we could even muster the enthusiasm for anything until we get other food in our guts.

We're professionals, Griffin. No. Yeah, I am a professional. But you know who else is a professional? Who? Friggin' Dave Coulier, and he doesn't go to work with an empty belly. Dave Gates. Bill Gates' brother doesn't go to work with an empty belly.

Why are your references all from 20 years ago? Because I stopped learning who people were after that. Okay. I've learned like three names since then. Uh-huh. Zendaya. Shit, that's it. That's the only name I've learned in the last 20.

Your name, Rachel, but that's easy. Yeah. So yeah, at some point, you're gonna hear just wild footsteps getting quieter as we charge the person delivering the food to our front door and then we will eat and i guess we'll be back and it'll just be a different show i feel like it will what are you most excited about to eat them oh for the eating yeah when you eat what's the thing you are like really excited about i mean the part where i chew it and then swallow

it and it smells real good oh so for so for you, it's the smell. Yeah. I like the flavor in my mouth. I mean, the flavor's good. But you prefer the smell, huh? This is when our audience finds out what I'm like when I'm hangry. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

We're going to be coming at you a little bit fucking aggressive. This one's going to be like, like you know mid-90s mtv like we're so edgy we have something to prove can we talk about our small lenders yes mine is the massage chair that we have it's like a little insert it's like a little what like a little lay a pad you lay on the chair and then it's got balls in it and they rub you all over very hard i got a i got my trick shoulder and it goes out sometimes and i need the ball chair to get deep down in my freaking grooves and it does the job really nicely i make faces that i don't think rachel likes because they are i would say i was gonna say semi-orgasmic but i'll go ahead and say orgasmic it just makes me wonder what you're like when you're

getting a massage from a professional well the ball chair don't know things the ball chair won't go home until you know their significant other like hey so when you get a massage you like hold back like you well my face is down in the little toilet seat but you're making the face oh i can make all the faces i want in the toilet seat they don't't gotta know, but I don't make the noises I make in ball chair. Okay. Like, you know, like, aww. Or like, yeah, baby. What's your small wonder?

My small wonder is like hangers that are multiple hangers. You know what I mean? Not even. Like hangers that have multiple slots on them. Like hangers for several pairs of pants you know and they have like multiple hangers in one hanger you know what i'm talking about i don't trust them i know i know what you're talking about but that's that is a that's a lot that's a lot of pants for one hanger to hang up and well see i i use it for skirts oh so it's not as much weight on the hashtag life tax it's a small wonder i didn't say it was a large one uh yeah no i like

a good hanger i remember when i got rid of like all the shitty hangers that i brought literally from my childhood home and went to target and got the like, you know, 20 pack of hangers that every college student gets. Like the dummy thick plastic ones that like just will not be knocked over. You know what a real classy person has all the wood hangers. Maybe we should, maybe we should. I don't like the wood hangers. Too hard to put in a sweater.

I stretch out my neck holes. Nice try wood hangers. I need a little bit of gift. You don't hang sweaters. You fold them up. I hang my sweaters up. I'm sorry. I don't like rankles. I go first this week.

Oh, good. My first subject is going to make me so angry because we haven't had our delicious dinner food yet because it's a food. Okay. And it's a mouthwatering food that I always crave. I actually have a food item too, but I'm saving it for second. Holy shit. I'm saving it for second. i'm too lazy to rearrange my word okay my word document um i want to talk about buffalo wings oh wow and my buffalo wing eating days are mostly behind me

at this point it's for me if i'm going to eat buffalo wings it has to be like an event it has to be like either a buffalo wing party which doesn't exist or like the super bowl or like a bunch of people are getting together and it's like oh i know let's get some wings yeah it can't just be like i show up to a party and they're like oh and by the way there's some buffalo wings in there it has to be part of the thing you know so, so I can begin preparing for it. You know what? It would work for me. So I, as Griffin knows, don't particularly like foods that are messy. Yeah. But if they had like corn cob holders, but for buffalo wings.

Oh, wow. I mean, it'd be a lot of fuss for a small item, but I think that would make the difference for me. There's something there. There's something there. I guess if you have like a boneless wing, then you could i don't i don't even want to hear about boneless wings during this segment i don't even want to hear about boneless wings those are chicken tenders those are chicken tenders with buffalo no no because they're juicy like a wing

hamburgers juicy like a wing you don't look at that and say cow wing so all right continue with your segment i'm not gonna go down this rabbit hole with you it's part of the visceral experience it's the same reason i like crab legs i like the work i enjoy the work i know that's so strange i enjoy looking at the clean bone and knowing i did that okay and now it's in me giving me strength and power i mean i definitely like the flavor the flavor you cannot debate it's so good yeah it also hurts me so bad and that's why it's only like a once a year the super bowl for me is basically like spicy meat christmas and i can't

celebrate that day any other time of year i went to applebee's on my birthday when i was like shit man 14, 13 maybe. And I was in the Play Charlotte's web and I ate too many buffalo wings and I ate an ice cream sundae because it was my birthday. I think I got Yoshi's Island for – or whatever the Nintendo 64 Yoshi game was. Yoshi's Story. And I ate all that food and then I did have a throw up on the stage. This is Templeton the Rat. And I'm barely – I made it off the stage, but right, right

off the wings, a yard right there. And so I think that's probably the turning point for me. That's probably when the flow of Buffalo wings came to a quick end. You don't think it was the ice cream sundae in combination with the Buffalo wings? Yeah. I think that ice cream sundaes didn't come out of that one unscathed as well. The spice factor, it's out of this world. Buffalo sauce, it's not just hot sauce. A lot of people think that. There's usually, I mean, there's always some sort of butteriness component in it, usually a vinegary-ness component in there, along with the spicy sauce. It's,

you know, it's creamier than a lot of people give it credit for. And when it is liberally applied and correctly applied to a chicken wing, it is glorious. I will say this about just the sauce. The sauce is good. I'll eat it on anything. I like the sauce a lot. So if there's a buffalo chicken sandwich, and obviously I don't want bones in there because that would be something, wouldn't it?

A sandwich with bones in it? What if? I'm not going to kick just like buffalo sauce, whatever out of bed because I think the sauce is good, but I just like, I like the wings. I like the wings. I like the lollipop shaped one.

I like the two boner. That's not what you would call it. What do you call that one? The one that's a what you would call it what do you call that one the one that's a two-boner wasn't your nickname in high school two-boner it was yeah it was and um i think everybody knows why um did you do i popped two boners in one gym class did you do research on the history of buffalo wings because i'm very curious i did i did i wasn't done praising their their greatness but i think people get the point buffalo sauce is great buffalo chicken sometimes i'll have a bbq wing right that's my confession if i'm at a

restaurant and they have them sometimes if i'm being a good boy i'll have a bbq wing you get this sort of experience not the spicy whatever um You know I want that Buffalo stuff, though. If you see me eating a BBQ wing, just know that I have quiet tears that I'm pushing down inside because I wish it was Buffalo flavored. Oh my God, the food's almost here. I'm going to hurry with this segment and see if I can beat the guy to the door. So there's disputes, as there are for the origins of many great things in this country. One of the earliest claims is that buffalo wings were first prepared at the anchor bar in buffalo new york by teresa bellissimo who owned the bar with her husband frank in 1964 this was a an institution uh in in buffalo and at that time like buffalo wings nobody wanted them or chicken wings nobody

wanted them they were an undesirable cut of the chicken they were mostly used for stocks or soups yeah and so they just started putting this good spicy sauce on it and there are several stories uh about where it came from uh here are just a few um upon the unannounced late night arrival of their son dominic with several friends from college theresa needed a fast and easy snack to present to her guests it was then she came up with the idea of deep frying chicken wings and tossing them with cayenne hot sauce. Was that the doorbell? Bye, everybody! Where were we?

You were talking about somebody named Teresa. Ah, yes. And wings for her, because they had a kid or something. Ah, the buffalo wing. It seems so childish now, doesn't it? The meat of the chicken. The meat of the spicy meat of the chicken.

I've just tasted the Mazaman curry and had it for dinner, and just thinking about the child's meat, chicken, spicy meat, it just seems so foolish now, doesn't it, Rachel? I suppose I can continue. Yes, the Bellissimo family, there's a bunch of stories. None of them are particularly interesting. It's variations on like, we had this chicken. I don't know, man.

And somebody needed to eat. And I thought, hey, what about spicy meat? And everybody seemed to really like it. Did we have a time frame for this? This was 1964. Okay. And then shortly thereafter, there were a lot of other sort of conflicting reports from other buffalo wing based restaurants. Very quickly, people realized like, hey, we can do a whole freaking restaurant about this.

Can you imagine being alive in a time where buffalo wings were invented? It must have been very exciting. And also, it was probably a very good year for Pepto-Bismol and Imodium. I think that they were big, big boosters for the buffalo wing industry. Because Lord knows they've gotten plenty of money from me. You know, speaking of restaurants based around buffalo wings, gotta talk about B-dubs, don't we? Yeah.

Was that a thing in St. Louis or what's up? Buffalo Wild Wings was a thing that I didn't know about until college. And I went maybe once and they were having a karaoke night. Oh. And it was very bad. And I don't know that I ever went back. God knows what I like is filling my body with spicy meats and then getting up there and crooning while being very nervous.

That all sounds really, really good to me. BW3s was an institution in Huntington. It was a big deal. Go to BW3s, do some trivia. They had like $2 picture night or something completely wild like that and you would just go and just get torn up in multiple different ways.

To you, there are three Ws. Well, yes. I only grew up with two. They call it BW2s? They just called it Buffalo Wild Wings because that's the name of the restaurant. BW3s can't just be a Huntington thing. That cannot just be an Appalachian.

No, it's not. I've heard other people refer to the third W. WEC. It is not what I grew up with. It's Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck. It was founded in 1982 by one Jim Disbrow and one Scott Lowry. Weck, by the way, is like a, I think it's German, shortened German word for like a Kaiser roll, like a roll. Or it's just like the sound that you make

when you eat a buffalo wing? Yeah, let me see. Here's a very uninteresting story about where buffalo wild wings came from. I think this whole topic is plagued with really bad origin stories. I'm going to read verbatim what I found on

Wikipedia. Lowry's parents had become Disbrow's guardians as they were his ice skating coaches. After Disbrow had finished judging an amateur figure skating competition at Kent State University, the pair met up to get some buffalo-style chicken wings to eat. Failing to find any restaurant serving them, they decided to open their own restaurant serving wings. Why does ice skating have anything to do with this? Why do we need to know the ice skating? And also, that's the origin story of every restaurant ever, I hope. I don't think anybody's ever like, there's a thousand very, very profitable hamburger

restaurants in this city. What about just one more? Let's just throw our hat in the competition. Anyway, buffalo wings are dope as hell, and I eating them and i miss them very badly i miss them more than any friend i've ever sort of uh lost from my life um they are my spicy friend and uh that's all i'm gonna say about it can i destroy a long held mcelroy belief sure there is this sensibility that the food itself is the problem and not that you have eaten too much of it. And that perhaps you could have the food, but in a smaller amount. Wow, I guess you're like, wow, I guess you're one of those tummy doctors now.

Wow. I'm just saying. I didn't know you knew about the insides of my body. Hey, when did you put a little camera up there? Hey, did you ever do an inner space to go inside my body and see what's going on in there? In moderation. Most foods can be consumed, I believe. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. So tell that to a kid with a peanut allergy. Okay. No, no, you just ate too many peanuts, interesting. Yeah. So tell that to a kid with a peanut allergy. Okay. No, no, you just ate too many peanuts, Dorfie. Sorry. You're not allergic to buffalo wild wings. Am I? Because I have a lot of circumstantial evidence to prove otherwise.

Okay. By which I mean every time I eat them, my body hurts. All over. Inside, outside, bones and all. We'll agree to disagree on this. All right. Hey, what's your first thing? My first thing is Jerry Mulligan.

Yeah. Are you familiar with cool jazz? Is there such a thing as hugely uncool jazz let me take you to the jazz corner okay well this one i do a jazz song for poet okay yeah it seems like no it seemed like you were about to throw your throw your lot in for the theme song i saw you start to i saw you start to do a bass noise with your mouth damn it, well, I've lost my nerve now. God damn it. Cool jazz is actually a style of modern jazz music that arose in the United States after World War II. It is characterized by relaxed tempos and lighter tone.

In contrast to the fast and complex bebop style. Okay, so smooth jazz is maybe the cousin, the even smoother version of cool jazz. Cool jazz often uses formal arrangements and incorporates elements of classical music. Okay. So it's more like melodic and more in what I would consider pleasing to the ear if you are, you know, just trying to enjoy music while you do something else. Not me, man. I want my jazz fast and terrible.

Fast, unlistenable, just sort of, you know, a hammer scraping against a tin roof, but at 160 BPM. That's my shit right there. but at 160 BPM. That's my shit right there. Just upending a big old toolbox down a spiral staircase at 199 beats per minute. Just throwing a whole drum set over a cliff. Yeah. And this man is a cool jazz legend?

Yes. Jerry Mulligan was a jazz saxophonist, but he also played the piano, the clarinet. He was a band leader, a composer, and an arranger. And he is considered one of the kind of cool jazz founding fathers. Damn, that's a cool thing to be a founding father of. Yeah, he literally played on the Miles Davis album, Birth of the Cool. So that's a, I mean, it's right there on the tin.

Yeah. He has also played with greats like Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, and the New York Philharmonic. Yeah, he is the real deal. Parker, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, and the New York Philharmonic. Yeah. He is the real deal. When I was doing some research on him, he has been a part of like over 40 albums, I believe. Oh, jeez.

I became familiar with him because we have one of his records. I guess Miles Davis gave him the nickname, I'm assuming is Jeru. It's spelled J-E-R-U. Now, that's fine. But he's one of the founding fathers of Cool Jazz. And I feel like you could have really worked that into it. Something like Timothy Cool Jazz or Raphael Cool Jazz or something like that. Do you know what I mean?

Well, you don't get to choose your own nickname. No, that's what I'm saying. Miles should have done a better job. Oh, yeah? You think so? Yeah. He has also played for presidents such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Oh, I bet Bill enjoyed the shit out of that show. Holy shit.

I bet you Bill was just... He was at the inauguration that he played oh damn i bet he was front row center like oh look at him tickle those he's so he's a baritone saxophonist and as you may remember bill clinton also played the saxophone that's why i've been saying the things i've been saying the last 10 seconds i'm speaking directly to our listeners oh yeah he's the sax man sex man this accident s-a-x accident sounds like sax it sounds like hoodie it happens when you go to your band meet after going to applebee's and eating too many buffalo wings and then you have a sax right there on the risers

i can't remember if i said this a minute ago jay rue is the last. Yes. So I have, I have that album. My dad donated a series of jazz records to me from his own collection. And this was the 1962 album, Jeru. And I wanted to play a little bit from the song. You've come home, which is the first track on that album. Now that's what I call cool jazz. Uh-huh.

I really like cool jazz. I don't think I realized that was the genre I liked until I started reading who it was. And when I read Miles Davis and Jerry Mulligan, I was like, oh, I like cool jazz. So his story is kind of interesting. Mulligan, as I will call him from here on out. Oh, you don't want to do Jer? Nah. All right.

He dropped out of high school during his senior year to pursue work with a touring band. So when he was 17, he was already arranging and playing music uh he went to new york city in 1946 uh and became the arranging staff for gene krupa you know if you heard of gene yes he's like a famous like big band yeah sure yeah and this this time period there were like a lot of like band leaders i remember that i think cannonball adderley was wasn't he no he was a band teacher i think like a high school who moved to new york and became it yeah uh but the when he was playing with miles davis in 1948 he was one of a nine-piece band uh and mulligan was on the baritone saxophone

so that's when he kind of got his reputation although he initially started playing the clarinet um you don't see a lot of i mean i know it's a thing but you don't it's definitely a thing it's definitely a thing but i don't i can't think of like a jazz clarinetist do you know what i mean i feel like the brass gets all the attention. Oh, there's somebody in my mind and I can't remember who it is. Oh, was it Derek Kooljazz? Sure. So now the Library of Congress serves as the repository for the Jerry Mulligan collection, which they obtained when he passed

in the late 90s and it consists of approximately 700 items including original scores sketches arrangements photographs sound recordings correspondence and an oral autobiography recorded before he died holy shit so that's all available online then right and then how like the multimedia stuff that the library of Congress has worked? I believe so, although I didn't look into it. What I did do is watch part of a documentary that was created about his life. It's an hour and a half long.

It's on YouTube. It's called Listen. And it's just all about his origin. And it's a lot of... Sorry, sorry. I just remembered something that happened i didn't mean to interrupt your bit you sent me a link to the song that we just played on this show today and i listened to it and then another video documentary was like next up on the youtube channel and i

thought when you said that about oh and there's this documentary on youtube it's an hour and a half long i thought for a second like was, was that what I watched? And then I remembered, no, what instantly loaded after this was a behind the scenes about the making of the song Pam. And I was like, or Peg, sorry, Peg. And I was like, oh, that's a different thing. There's like a guy that bassist for the band was like, I was slapping the bass really hard. And they said, don't slap the bass. That's too funky a sound for what we're going for for Peg. But I was like, no, guys, this is the hot sound right now i know a lot about peg okay uh no i'm referring to the documentary listen yes uh that is all about his life and kind of his coming up on the jazz scene uh and it was executive produced by his wife oh that was sweet. But yeah, I would recommend for people

that aren't sure if they like jazz or if they want to like jazz, but they're intimidated by the expansive number of musicians. There's a lot of jazz. I feel like you could start with Jerry Mulligan pretty comfortably. Yeah. And then you move on to the hard shit,

that Dave Brubeck shit. Oh, really cut your teeth on that. Oh, that's cerebral stuff. Hey, can I steal you away? Yeah. Can I read you a personal message? Yup. This message is for Cutes.

It is from Boots. Just wanted to say that I think you're wonderful and I'm totally stoked about the new journey we've embarked on. I love you more than a ghost loves toast. Thanks for always vibing and keeping it tight. If you need me, I'm on my mobile. P.S., want to go to barbecue stop next Tuesday? P.P.S., I'm really freaking excited for Kung Fu Panda 3. Aren't we all?

Didn't that come out already? I mean, if it had come out, I would have gotten a notification on my phone. It's true. And then I would have gotten the email and then I would have gotten the carrier pigeon. Yeah. You know, I would have seen it

on my Kung Fu Panda countdown clock. See, that's the thing. I remember we went to the midnight launch for Kung Fu. And, yeah, I don't think we've done that. I don't know if Three's here is with us or not. I heard in the third one, the panda is actually a koala. Oh, whoa. He learns about his. Interesting. interesting yeah that's a whole switch around

got a whole australian thing is it still jack black uh no oh who is it no i think it's uh gosh what's his name clint black okay the country music star the country music star oh that's fun. Yeah. They wanted to keep, you know, with the last name. Yeah, sure. It's easier on the posters just to take off the jacket. Now, can Clint Black do a great, like, Australian accent? Probably not.

We don't know, though. Here's another Jumbotron. This one's for oldest sister Tess. It's from your middle-est sister, Kat, who says, Tess, also, hi, Ruth. You'll probably hear this first because you're not perpetually two weeks behind on podcasts. Happy whatever day you get this. I love you a lot

and I hope to play games with you soon, whether in person or over Discord. While writing this, you're in the room, but when you hear this, I probably miss you. Hope your day is wonderful. Love, Kat. What you don't know is Tess is in the room. Look behind the coat know is Tess is in the room look behind the coat rack Tess is in the coat rack hanging out the coat is Tess look inside open it what's in the pocket Tess I like that they got

um Ruth in here too like it's technically a message for Tess but Ruth gets a little it's a slice yeah Ruth gets a little Ruth. Hey, if you like your podcast to be focused and well-researched and your podcast hosts to be uncharismatic, unhorny strangers who have no interest in horses, then this is not the podcast for you. Yeah, and what's your deal? I'm Emily. I'm Lisa. Our show's called Baby Geniuses. And its hosts are horny adult idiots. We discover weird Wikipedia pages every episode. We discuss institutional misogyny. We ask each other the dumbest questions and our listeners won't stop sending us pictures of their butts. We haven't asked them to stop, but they also aren't stopping.

Join us on Baby Geniuses. Every other week on MaximumFun.org. Can I tell you about my second thing please do escalators the moving staircases i like it up down side to side whichever way these things are moving i want to be standing on them and going with them can i confess something to you are you afraid that sometimes they'll break and chew you up not exactly no okay uh apparently and and this may be a a hearsay but i have heard stories yeah one particularly involving my uh aunt kathy as a young child getting like a shoelace stuck oh yeah escalator i'll tear you clean apart i don't know if that's a true story, but now I always get nervous. Like I get a little trepidatious anytime I'm about to step on it.

Cool. You know, I mean, let's definitely in the future, whenever we do these segments and immediately jump to historical fatalities involved. OK, so Buffalo Wild Wings. You're right. I didn't do my due diligence. Somebody definitely choked on chicken bone died probably hundreds maybe even tens of thousands of people i love an escalator i'm just a little scared of them too and that's what i'm saying

like buffalo wings have made me very happy throughout my life and does that outweigh the tens the hundreds of thousands of people who've choked on chicken bones throughout the fullness of time yeah i think so well okay please convince me as to why escalators are not a thing to be feared because it's it's there i mean there've probably been some escalate there've definitely Okay, please convince me as to why escalators are not a thing to be feared. Because it's there. I mean, there've probably been some escalator. There've definitely been some escalator fatalities. But what do you want?

They get you up and down and side to side much faster. And sometimes you just got to roll the hard six in this life because YOLO. I rest my case, Your Honor. I'm inspired, Griffin. Please continue. Thank you. There is a deep and primal part of my inner being my core being that gets excited anytime i see an escalator partly because of just like

straight up childlike glee but also because hey less walking and that's very exciting too airports are basically escalator museums that whoa i just said deja vu have i said that sentence out loud before oh damn i haven't i definitely haven't talked i went to the wiki i have not talked about escalators before but holy shit only only in your life and line of work would you think you had said that sentence before it's like a big amusement park the the the airports are i've been to like every fucking airport in this country at this point and they are all over and they're so fun when they're working that oh my god the chicago tunnel with the escalators down below that goes through like the light installation on the ceiling that's my favorite ride on the planet that's a good one i like them in a shopping mall a shopping mall is

good too when they work which a lot of shopping malls are in a state of disrepair um i watched an episode of how it's made about escalators and it was um i swear to god it was like a christopher nolan film like i really had to pay attention the whole time because i it was very taxing for me to watch they put these whole things together like in the factory before they they're like assembled at the factory and just moved you know whole to their final destination that's wild that's a big truck that's got to move these big escalators huh if you think about the size of those trucks just for a second while i scratch my eyeball oh it itched so bad um it was cool they had these little robots that like you know make

die a big cast aluminum casts of the steps and then the, you know, trim them up, put them into the roller chain on the frame. And, you know, it's got to go all the way around. It's got to go all the way around the frame because they got them on the bottom too. When you're standing on them on top, there's a secret staircase on the underneath and that's where the Demogorgon is riding.

Correct. Henry's a big fan of these as well, which helps us uh keep him occupied when we are stuck at airports he loves the side to side ones um and it's a fun social experience to ride by somebody going the opposite way on an escalator because like what's their day like what are they doing i don't know i like to put my feet up against the brushy stuff on either side of the escalator because i used to think that it was for shoeshine yeah what is it for though do you know it's just to alert people maybe that they're like too close that is possible i don't know well i don't know it's it's possible maybe

an accessibility thing i like i like your idea better it kind of works it's for shoe brushing uh yeah so history of escalators i think since the dawn of man i like i really should have done some more research on stairs who invented those who was the first person who was like this floor is great and i'm glad your house has a second floor but i can't jump that high what if there were like 30 little floors going up there that I could easily sort of go? Yeah. That was probably a pretty heady concept for, you know, ancient Greece or whatever. I appreciate that last week was the dust buster.

And this week is the stair because the stairs are difficult to vacuum. Oh, interesting. And the dust buster really, really helps with that. It helps you a lot, yeah. Especially if there's a, you know, 30 to 40 millipedes on your staircase. I'm super paranoid that every episode, it builds on the one before it in some way.

And you've been spending all this time putting together this intricate puzzle of things you like. You've pieced together my Da Vinci code. No, I just like escalators, man. I don't know what to tell you. The History of Escalators is a series of folks who have the idea of, wouldn't it be cool if stairs moved? And then they file a patent and then don't do anything with that patent

because they can't really, they'll file a patent and the patent will literally just be a drawing on an old soup recipe of stairs with an arrow pointing up and they file that with the patent office and the clerk is probably like is this a new way to go upstairs they're like no no no the stairs themselves are the ones that go up and the clerk is like how does it work and he's like i don't know man that's your job and then the patent clerk is like actually it's not i'm a patent clerk i just want you to know i had this idea i had this idea i want ownership of it if anybody ever makes stairs go up that's mine no that's not how any of this works uh so there was um the the first sort of patent filed for this was by a patent attorney named n Ames.

He filed the patent for the first escalator in 1859, but he didn't make them. In his mind, they could be made out of wood, which I believe there are some like old wood escalators, which, hey, folks, don't ride those. That seems like a bad idea. He also thought that, and this is the best mental image I've had all day when I read this. He thought that the stairs could just go ahead and just be upholstered and you can have them in your house. Upholstered escalator is pretty hot, actually. I'm actually really, I don't really know how that would work, but I'm very attracted to the idea. It's very, very my aesthetic.

And then, yeah, just a bunch of people tried it and struck out. 1889, Lehmann Sauter patented his quote. It was called, he called it, get this, stairway. Never made it. Never made his upwards moving stairway. Oh, I like what he was trying to do there. Just kind of claiming the whole idea. Sauter did make a spiral design for his escalator. And I laughed when I saw that. I was like, oh, that's also like a wild idea. They actually exist. There's one at Caesar's Palace. There is a huge like four story tall spiral escalator. And it's, you know, a pretty wide spiral, like the stairs themselves don't bend as they go around the curves, because that would be probably pretty scary to stand on but i i watched a video of it there's a lot of escalator culture

on youtube that i got to catch up on are there any escalator vloggers i mean they don't sort of uh it's mostly sort of an asmr thing there's very little commentary it's not like hey this is tiffany and i'm at the escalator at the Galleria. Nine out of ten. Mostly, no. It's just videos of escalators running. 1892, Jesse W. Reno patented the, quote, endless conveyor or elevator. Those are, I guess, we hadn't really figured out escalator yet. A few months after that, George A. Wheeler patented nearly basically the same idea, but it was never built. However, his patent was bought by one Charles Seerberger, who eventually made it into a prototype working with the Otis Elevator Company in 1899.

Otis Elevator Company being like one of the OG elevator. If you ride in an elevator, look for the little plaque. It's probably an Otis joint, but it was Jesse W. Reno who got the first escalator out at the old Iron Pier on Coney Island. It wasn't an escalator as we traditionally know it. It was kind of just a diagonal, 20 degree incline conveyor belt with little numps on them that you could stand on. But hey, it counts. Today, the world's got some long ass escalators the longest in the world are part of the saint petersburg metro uh way deep underground

it has escalators that are over 450 feet long the longest escalator system though is it's we've been to it it was on it was in hong kong that's right we wrote it when we visited it in what like 2015 something like that hong kong is basically like um uh one of the islands is basically like tiered kind of and one way to get between like the central and mid levels is you can ride this long series of escalators just this long corridor it is uh 2,600 feet long uh moving uphill and tens of thousands of people ride it every day it is a huge commuter attraction uh it only goes one way at a time depending on like which way rush hour traffic is moving there are stairs that flank it so you can you know go you know use the stairs if you want to well there's breaks too

it's there are breaks between the system right correct although there's some pretty long sort of uh individual tracks what's really cool about it is and these exist actually in a few like heavy foot traffic commuter areas in hong kong right at the center of this escalator system there is a scanner that you can swipe your octopus card in the octopus card they have some of these in in you know major metropolitan areas where this is like your digital card where you can store you know hong kong dollars on it and you know use it for fair or use it at vending machines or or what have you at the very center of the the escalator system you can swipe your card and you get a fair

saver bonus so that the next time you use the train you save like two bucks off of it and it's a way to like encourage people to you know not use your car to to find uh you know to find means of of conveyance that uh you know that that helps helps the environment or whatever uh provided that of course that you know that means of conveyance is accessible to you. I thought that was really neat. But yeah, that's a cool-ass escalator, man. That is a cool, cool. It's a mix of the stairs one and the sides to sides ones.

And that's my shit. What's your second thing? All right, my second thing. I don't want to double check this with you. Uh-oh. I didn't see it on our index. But it seems kind of incredible that we haven't talked about it. Let's see. Pizza.

Can I say something? I thought about doing pizza and I didn't. I didn't. Well, here I am doing pizza. I don't think we've done a pizza. No. I feel like we've talked a lot about pizza. We have an episode called Pizza Time, dudes, but we didn't do one on pizza.

I think that was the one where we were waiting on pizza delivery. Oh, shit. Wow, yeah. It's all full circle, isn't it? It's kind of incredible we haven't talked about this. This is the round one, guys. This is the cheese. Should I describe what a pizza is?

Yeah. Well, it's the round one. Actually, it can be square. We had a place that did square pizza in Huntington. Yeah, I mean, maybe we can skip over some of the pleasantries here. Typically, there's dough, there's sauce of some kind, and there's cheese. And then any number of toppings. Oh, whatever you want on it pepperoni sausage mushrooms ham pineapple potato flakes oh jolly ranchers

chewy jolly ranchers smaller pizzas pictures Smaller pizzas. Pictures. Symphonies. Symphonies. Who made pizza? Well, that's not actually the angle I'm coming at. It's because it was Papa John, wasn't it? And you don't want to...

I want to talk about why pizza is so great. All right. Not really the history of pizza. That's fine. I don't really care about the history of pizza. Yeah, I mean, I feel like... I care about the future of pizza. Hello, I'm Griffin McElroy, and this is my TED Talk.

Octagonal pizzas. Escalator pizza. Escalator pizza escalator pizza why eat pizza on one level when you could take pizza with you why use your next one to bring your pizza to your mouth when a very small food staircase can bring it up there for you in a recent study in 2015 pizza was ranked as the food most associated with symptoms of addiction, according to a Yale food addiction scale. Now, you just, you have done it again, where you have just introduced us to a fun party, and then like, but the party has consequences. No, see, that's one way to interpret what I'm saying.

What instead I'm doing is i'm giving everyone a pass for loving pizza so much because i'm saying it is out of your control okay okay i'm back with you you are predisposed to be addicted to pizza just minute one okay so you know go easy on yourself america that's a fun way to frame the thing that you just said on our podcast. Part of it is also our friend glutamate, which we talked about when we talked about umami. Yes. Because it is MSG. The monosodium variety. The combination of tomato sauce and cheese and pizza crust are all huge amounts of glutamate. So three tablespoons of tomato sauce can provide 140 milligrams of glutamate. Parmesan cheese could provide 75 milligrams of glutamate. Is that a lot? Seems like a lot. Doesn't that seem like a lot?

Yeah, I mean, sure. A lot? How big's a milligram? Nobody knows. Well, okay, let's think about, so for a second, so those little kid cliff bars that we give Henry, they have 11 grams of sugar. That's a lot. And I don't know exactly what my point is.

Okay, I bet it's a lot. But that seems like a lot. Everything that you have on pizza, now that I'm thinking about it, has umami flavor. Yeah, if you add mushrooms. Got you, got you. That's even more. I will just give an example of one more study. And I don't want to be a downer.

Now you're making me self-conscious about being a downer. It's just you were like, hey, don't you love pizza? And I was like, fuck yeah, I love pizza. And you were like, it's beyond your control. The die have been cast, and you have been predestined. It's a very Calvinist way of looking at my love for pizza. I'll just say that there was another recent study that found that the combination of fat and carbohydrates seems to elevate the reward potential of highly processed foods. Yeah.

More than either alone. Yeah. I would say so. When I look at a pizza, I think eating that will be a rewarding experience for me because of all the dope stuff on it. I don't need science to tell me that is what I'm saying. And you don't either. Start this segment over and you're going to you could just be like, here's what's so good. Cheese, bread, sauce.

Love it. Love it. Love it. It's warm, too, which is nice. Warm, Circle. You can eat it cold which i like i like it cold it can be cold as well i like i mean i even like you know frozen pizza delivered pizza homemade pizza we have been having some good frozen pizza we have once you grow up yeah and age out of sort of the tombstone out of the di giorno did i say that right and you get to like the frozen you know california pizza kitchen

oh that's where it is maybe this is why we haven't talked about pizza before it's difficult it's a little basic i'll say because everybody loves it yeah um except for our son lately which is troubling hates pizza he's just not into pizza just doesn't like the the warm circle but it's a complex combination of textures oh we gotta talk about the potatinos party pizza though yeah so that that was how we got hen Henry into pizza because we could cut it into very small cracker pizzas. I call them pizza nuggets

and it was my greatest innovation because he would only eat things that were one centimeter by one centimeter. And again, obviously, we've shown our hand that we don't really understand the metric system.

I love it. I just love it. I just, I i always want it i could eat it every day can you remember the best pizza you've ever eaten in your life uh i mean i went to italy so yes i was sitting on the when i was in uh. Oh, overlooking the cape. We don't know the metric system or geography on this podcast. No, we don't. They probably got capes there, though. Both the water kind and the clothes accessory. Just a lot of people wear capes in Italy and all over Europe. It's good because then if you get pizza sauce somewhere, you just cape it up.

All I'm saying is pizza is great and it's unstoppable and you shouldn't try to stop it because you can't. You can't. Your brain won't let you. Okay. So we got some submissions from our friends. Got one. What is the link that people can see?

I believe it's wonderfulpodcast at gmail.com. Send in your submissions. They've slowed down because I don't think we get that link out. Just one very quick sentence or two about the thing that you like. Aaron says, hi, friends. Hi, Aaron. My little wonder this week is the youtube channel socal attractions 360 they do the highest quality videos of theme parks from disney world to tiny

parks in dubai uh riding rides and walking through the parks no commentary or editing just peaceful footage and ambient audio it's incredibly it's an incredibly relaxing channel to put on while cooking, dinner, or decompressing after a stressful day. Yes. Yeah, that's great. We started to do this with Henry. Yeah, this is something that didn't really occur to me until very recently, that if there are particular places in the world that you like to go, you can just watch videos of them. You can just watch a video of it. Yeah, like, you know, here what the mickey castle looks like when they shoot all the cool lights on it yeah there's a name for that probably but for me it's just a magical transformation out of the mind of walt disney and his good friend tinkerbell here's one uh from

jenna who says my wonderful thing is the heritage potlucks my friend hosts everyone brings a food item of their heritage to share. I went to one recently, and we had everything from pierogies to empanadas to shortbread to paneer. Everyone gets to talk about their dish and why it's meaningful to them, and then we eat.

That sounds real nice. That does sound real nice. Potlucks in general are very good. We have not done one or been to one in forever. But it's very exciting to just see what kind of heat your friends can bring because it's really a quietly it's a competition quietly you're playing chopped home edition you definitely take that very seriously i have noticed that especially when it comes to the dessert i want my friends to be happy i want to show my love to them through food

and I want to win the secret game of Chopped that I'm playing in my mind and nobody else's and subvert expectations a lot of times people are like oh Rachel that was really good

and I'm like oh that's sexist and then we high five gotcha again thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song Money Won't Pay you can find a link Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay.

You can find a link to that in the episode description. And I mean, where would we be without Maximum Fun is the question I ask myself every day. It's an incredible network and they are always adding new shows. And I would really recommend you go to, you know, a lot of people, they don't even go to the website. And I would recommend that you do. You go to MaximumFun.org, you can see all the shows they have. Yeah, they got all kinds of stuff. You're going to just love the hell out of it.

We got stuff at McElroy.family. You can find merch and tickets for, I think there's some for the book tour, for book two of the Adventure Zone graphic novel adaptation. That's just coming up in a couple weeks now, so come out and see us. We're going to be in New Yorkork austin uh portland la and then san diego and uh we also just announced that we're doing a very special adventure zone show in san diego during comic-con all those are at mackroy.family and is that it i believe that's it okay well um oh we'll see some folks this week potentially potentially, at the Jordan Jesse Go Show. Oh, shit.

Is that this week? I believe it's this Friday. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Oh, no. Are you double booked? Oh, my lodge is doing the big bowling tournament. It might be this Saturday.

It's this weekend. I got a bowling tournament on Saturday, too. Looks like I'm going to have to try and do both. What's your bowling nickname? Steuben. Steuben Ruddard. I thought you... That's really good.

I just hope I don't wear my fucking bowling hat to the show, you know, because when I run in and try to, you know, make it pretend like I've been there the whole time, I'll tell a funny joke, everybody will laugh, and I'll run off the stage and go get a big strike and win one for the team, including the captain, Robert, who is very sick. You're incredible. Thank you. Bye. Hey! Hey! Hey! MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

Listener supported. Hi, I'm Biz. And I'm Teresa. And we host One Bad Mother, a comedy podcast about parenting. Whether you are a parent or just know kids exist in the world, join us each week as we honestly share what it's like to be a parent. And then that's how my day starts. Yeah. Come on. I'm so sick of it. When is that going to be over? Like, I want it to stop. Teresa, you're hurting my ears. I mean, that's it.

Yeah, no. I just hate it. Yeah, I don't blame you. It sucks. It really sucks. So join us each week as we judge less, laugh more, and remind you that you are doing a great job. Find us on MaximumFun.org, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.