Wonderful! - Wonderful! 90: Hot Clown Tech

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

Rachel's favorite word riddles! Griffin's favorite consistent game series! Rachel's favorite cool treat! Griffin's favorite song about aging! 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.

🎵 You ready? There's something to talk about in the beginning. I feel like we haven't had one of them spicy intros in a while. When it really gets people's wheels spinning. But we can just do it and see what comes out. Okay. All right.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Honk, honk, get in the car. No, that's not it. It's going to be like rush hour traffic thing. Like, we're stuck in a two, but, you know, we're hanging in there. We got our car snacks, but I didn't have anything past that.

Do you want to try again? Okay. Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Honk, honk, a goose. The geese are coming this summertime. They're flocking on back to us, aren't they?

Okay. One more. These have all been dry and definitely not in the show. Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Honk, honk. Thanks for listening to Wonderful.

A clown podcast. The clown show where we- Where we honk horns. Where we talk about what's new in clown technology. And Rachel, I think you're first this week. So tell me all about new clown tech. Honk, honk. I have a lapel flower.

Oh, cool. That squirts 30 yards. That's fun. What about you, honk honk? Well, honk honk, I got new big pants that when they fall down, but I'm all covered up down there. So like underwear? No, it's sort of like a second pair. It's really just kind of like a pair of khakis that I have under there. Ooh. So like underwear? No, it's sort of like a second pair.

It's really just kind of like a pair of khakis that I have under there. Pants on pants on pants. No, it stops at the khakis, but now it's just that when the big pants fall down, everybody gets a good laugh, but I am not exposed. Honk, honk.

What about pants on pants on pants? Get pretty hot. Suspenders on suspenders on suspenders. I need you to calm down. I need you to calm down. I need you to calm. There's a reason why the clowning arts haven't changed much. They don't evolve very quickly. And right now you're being a little bit heretical.

I'm new school, you know? I know you're new school. What with your big purple nose. And I'm like, what? My totally straight clown hair. We fucking found it, babe was it hong kong hey do you have any small wonders uh i do okay but i want you to go first i'm gonna say power outlets like a like surge you know what i mean like uh what is the word on power strips okay

or like little things yeah no that's like bonus outlets i get it bonus outlets what's wild in this in in my office like i have a lot of fucking clown tech that i gotta plug into stuff and i've got power strip things all over the place i got one little thing that's like a corner you can see it it turns your two things into six things but it makes them it gives it three faces kind of so that you can have the big plugs on it. That's good. Why does it work? Why aren't there just six fucking outlets there to begin with? I don't know, but these just multiply the electricity, I guess.

I love it. That is really good. Did you have time to come up with something? I did. Okay. And that thing. Oh, geez, you didn't, did you? Is bubble baths.

Okay. I love a bubble bath. For you or for a toddler son? I mean, both, both, honestly, both. I feel like it's a very low budge way to treat yourself. Oh, I see, yeah. Like when I do it, I feel like, ooh, this is decadent. Well, unless you use gold leaf bubbles like I do.

And boy, let me tell you, that sucks to get off your body at the end well yeah and clogs your drain i imagine and your pores real bad gold leaf don't breathe no i'm saying it's imperative that you don't breathe while you're in the yeah if you get some of this stuff in your lungs you're a bond villain at that point okay do you want to go first i'm not asking it is my turn you are prescribed to go first this week it's my turn yes to go first? I'm not asking. It is my turn. You are prescribed to go first this week. It is my turn to go first.

What's your first thing, my love? Crossword puzzles. Crossword puzzles are so good. They're wonderful. They're so nice. They're little noodle scooters and they take a while to figure them out. And then when you crack that one clue,

that was Pierce Brosnan. 11 across was Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan. Oh, and I misspelled Pierce. That's why. Oh, that's why it didn't work. Sometimes I worry with Wonderful that we have gotten too narrow onto our favorite thing. And I will say crossword puzzles aren't my favorite thing.

I fucking hate crossword puzzles. But they are wonderful. I recognize they're good, even though I despise them. You can't argue it. And the reason I thought of them recently is I had some like word of the day thing. I was on some site that listed some word of the day and the word of the day they listed was cruciverbalist. Oh, that's what is that? It's somebody who creates crossword puzzles. Oh, they got to come up with that themselves, I bet.

Probably, yes. That's a kind of jaggy. Isn't that wonderful? It's nice. It's a great word, but they got to pick it. It's like you can't pick your own nickname, you know? Yeah, I still like it. Okay, I like it too. You know me, I'm all Bodie McBoatface over here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, like school during summer, no class. I enjoy Clever for Clever's sake. Sure, Bodie McBoatface over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, like school during summer, no class. I enjoy Clever for Clever's sake. Sure. Bodie McBoatface, man. That's some real, that's my bar. Some erudite wit right there.

So crossword puzzles started in 1913. Really? It took us that long to crack that. So what's tricky about crossword puzzles is that is a word puzzle a crossword puzzle? And that's kind of where the debate started, is that there's stuff in the 1800s that was like word puzzles, but was it similar to a crossword puzzle the way we know it today? No. I mean, it's a Venn diagram, right? Because word puzzle would include the jumble. And boy, I loved me the jumble and boy i loved me the jumble did your paper have the jumble did i what the jumble did your paper have the jumble of course it did okay did you think that was like an exclusive to huntington west virginia i thought mr dispatch of the herald dispatch that one paper could have a jumble in the country. Yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Did your paper have Family Circus too? Yes, it did. I thought that was just a guy in Huntington that made that. No, Bill Keene. I knew Bill Keene. Yeah. A Bill Keene. Actually, his name was Will Keene.

Actually, his name was Will Sutherland. But you could see how I got there. Yeah, no, I can. The reason 1913 wins generally is that Liverpool, England published a, quote, word cross puzzle. So close. And then crossword puzzles appeared in the first book published, 1924. I should say that a different way because that was a confusing way to say it. Sure was.

So the first book of Crossword Puzzles appeared in 1924. Okay. So was this... This was a book apparently that came with a pencil attached to it. That's fucking sick. I like that a lot.

That's like the kids' activity books that you'll buy at rest stations on the highway. When this book came out, was it a thing for the crossword puzzles to be in the newspaper? Yes, but the New York Times crossword puzzle, as we know it today, did not exist yet. Okay. I guess I was asking, did crossword puzzles, did they become popularized because they were a thing that they printed in the newspaper? Yes. Yes. So it was not like a thing you sought out, like, I'm going to go to the game store and buy some crossword puzzles.

No. So this is what was funny is that people, much in the way that people are resistant to new media, they were resistant to crossword puzzles because they felt like it was a waste of time. Interesting. So there's all this stuff from the New York Times before they had a puzzle themselves. So for example, in 1924, they said that crossword puzzles were, quote, a sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words, the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern. This is not a game at all, and it can hardly be called a sport.

Solvers get nothing out of it. Well, this isn't football. Solvers get nothing out of it except a primitive form of mental exercise, and success or failure in any given attempt is equally irrelevant to mental development. Well, that's not cricket. It's words.

That's not a sport. Get that out of here. I find it so interesting that, and I guess it was the time period, but this idea that it was fun was not enough. Like that it was wasteful and not productive was like outrageous. My history knowledge is, as I think we've covered on this show many times before, a garbage disposal. And so you'll forgive me if this is an unfair evaluation, but I just feel like 1909 through like 1950, things were pretty, things were tough. Yeah.

You had to be kind of, you had to kind of grit your teeth and get stuff done. That's true. So I think it's that mindset of just like, we just finished one world war. I think, I know that second one's around the corner. Don't fill these little squares up with letters, folks. I need you to buy war bonds instead. So the New York Times kind of continued on its anti-crossword streak in 1925.

They said, the craze evidently is dying out fast and in a few months it will be forgotten kind of a self-dunk there and then in 1929 said the crossword puzzle it seems has gone the way of all fads suggesting that it was like on the way out but then all of a sudden 1942 they have their own crossword puzzle and that's like the one the new york times crossword puzzle is like the gold the big one yeah in 1950 did they run one about like how print media was dead? Probably. Okay.

So have you heard of Will Shorts? Yes. I don't know if his name is pronounced Shorts or Shores, but it's spelled Shorts. Is he the one who makes the crossword puzzle for the New York Times? Yes. I don't know how to pronounce his name, but I have heard of him. So he's a super interesting guy, as I found out from researching him.

So I learned about him. He's 12 feet tall. He eats a whole can of beans every morning. Did you ever see the 2006 documentary Wordplay? No. It was all about like the crossword puzzle championships. And there were like interviews with people that were crossword puzzle enthusiasts. And they also featured Will featured will shorts i don't think i saw this one okay

so i didn't know much about him other than he had crossword puzzles but apparently he was born and raised on an arabian horse farm in indiana those are good horses folks he graduated from indiana university and is the only person known to hold a college degree in enigmatology, which is the study of puzzles. How is that? How can there be one person that holds a degree? How does that work? So somebody had to teach him, right? No.

So Indiana has a individualized major program where you can design your own curriculum. What? So I could go there and major in potions? Potentially, yeah. Fuck yeah. This is the last episode of this podcast. He also got a law degree, but never took the bar. He's been the crossword puzzle editor for New York Times since 1993.

He founded and directed the Crossword Puzzle Tournament and founded the World P world puzzle championship in 1992. Interesting. The big old puzzle guy. It sounds like it. And he's like, he's like the guy now. Do you think he's who the Riddler is based on?

Oh, by which I mean, do you think he's tried to kill the Batman? And if so, how many times? So now I only really do crossword puzzles when I'm on a plane and it's in the back of the in-flight magazine yeah i uh for a while but you can find a lot of them online yeah that's my jam is like ipad apps with crossword puzzles it's very rare but i will get on like a crossword puzzle

kick there was a while living in chicago where i fancied myself a a hard copy paperback paper reader. I just sit on the porch in the fall and just read my paper and drink my coffee. Like a real newsman. Like a real hardened newsman. But really, I was just trying to get to that crossword, which I would probably give up on in about 20 minutes if I didn't manage to just pound straight through it.

Fuck Sudoku though, right? Oh, God. It's just numb. I was into it for a little Sudoku though, right? Oh God. It's just numb. I was into it for a little bit and like the great blossoming of Sudoku, but now I just. Has the New York Times ever dragged Sudoku before? Probably.

Can I talk about my first thing? Yes. So I've been watching a bunch of, or last week was Summer Games Done Quick. I feel bad for not mentioning it. I feel like I try to keep the wonderful audience abreast of the video game speed running marathon scene. It was, from what I've watched, pretty rad.

They raised over $3 million, which is by far like the most they've ever raised for Doctors Without Borders, which kicks ass. Watching what I watched though, it inspired me to talk about another game franchise that is called Zelda. It's called, well, it's called, Zelda is in the title most of the time.

Most of the time it's about Zelda. You were a Sega household. And I feel like one of these days I need to bring like fucking, you know, Vector Man or something, you know, Vector. I had a friend that had the Nintendo, but we only ever did Mario. Well, interestingly,

like there are a few core Nintendo franchises, right? And you can probably like name them even though you're not big into the scene like Mario, Zelda, the Pink Man Kirby. I know you're a fan. I know you're a fan of his work. Maybe I should bring the Pink Man Kirby to the show at some point. Well, I mean, my knowledge of Kirby is just that he is a pink man. And he likes to eat. It's not like I could really participate in a spirited conversation. That's fair. What's interesting is that Zelda and Mario were being developed actually at the same time. There's a lot about Zelda's history that I didn't really quite appreciate,

even though I have a tattoo of the thing on my left wrist. I also feel a little bit basic talking about this, because I feel like Zelda is the gaming equivalent of pizza. Like, of course, it's very uh and and most people really like it uh but I think that position kind of takes for granted what a transformative game it was when it first came out uh if you've never played one before there's been like nearly 20 of them across the different like gaming console uh generations and they you know usually all have recurring themes where you're this hero of time named Link and you got

to collect some mcguffins until you have to collect the triforce which is like the big mcguffin mcguffin a mcguffin is like a a object that you need in order to finish your you know your quest it's the thing that moves the plot along right okay so in zelda the mcguffin is the triforce most of the time you got to collect the pieces of it and begin and save zelda whatever um and that format has been like really really static throughout the uh 33 years that the franchise has been around with like little tweaks on it but it's always like so exciting to see uh familiar things like familiar components there's a there's a town in nearly every zelda game called kakariko village and just like playing a new zelda game for the first time and running across it and

being like oh i know this place but it's different in this game is like uh in a way i guess it's cashing in on nostalgia but there's something that is really refreshing about having that like coherent a a world even though all the games are different and technically take place in like different sort of spots on the very complicated timeline which i'm not even going to get into watch david bryan gilbert's video that he did for polygon on it brian david gilbert what we both said it really gilbert david brian gorman brian david gilman brim and givey uh and yeah there's a few components of it that I think make the games really successful.

It's like the games are really vibrant and the worlds are very inviting. A lot of the time you spend your time sort of going through these different dungeons, which are usually based around like one kind of core puzzle mechanic or new special tool that you'll find that'll just add something new to the gameplay. And it like squeezes every drop out of every gameplay idea that it introduces all the

way up to these like really great exciting boss fights that are kind of like a like a finals like a hard test for all the studying you just did while going through the dungeon like that format is literally they've used hundreds of times now throughout the games and it's still really exciting each time um so like all this stuff is great it's why i've like always really loved the games it's i can't think of another game franchise that is just consistently as good as this like every game that comes out you can probably count on it being like really really good um and all that stuff like the exploration that you do in these games and the polish the way that everything has been so thoroughly uh thought out and the way that the world feels all that stuff like that was not the

norm for video games when this came out in 1986 uh it was originally alongside mario was supposed to come out for the famicom disc system which was the console that came right before the nes and these two games were being designed at the same time uh produced by shigeru miyamoto who is uh like the the the uh creator of a lot of like beloved nintendo franchises uh and it was written by uh uh takashi tezuka uh and together they were they were working on zelda while mario brothers was being designed simultaneously and what was really neat and i never really understood is that these two games were kind of a foil for each other while they were being developed because Mario is very much about like linear yeah going to start to and Mario was revolutionary in a way too because uh there weren't that many

games that weren't just like score chase arcade games yeah Mario like compelled you to play until you got to the end of it, which is like in PC gaming, a thing that, you know, had been a thing for a while, but in console terms was like kind of unheard of. But Zelda was the opposite. It was not linear. You could go wherever you want and do whatever you want and sometimes in like whatever order that you wanted.

And what is interesting about that is like when early play testers tried to play Zelda, like they all catastrophically just fucking fail. Yeah, it makes sense. Because it's like, well, I don't, they would all get lost and like, didn't even know like what they were supposed to be doing in the game. Because from the very start, there's, you know, three different screens you can exit onto and a cave that you can go explore. Like, oh shit.

That's the way I felt about Myst. Oh my God, Myst. Yeah. I was like, what am I supposed to be doing right now? I've never beaten, I've played, I think most of the Myst games, I don't think I've ever beaten. But that's a great example of like,

well, here's an orb that looks like it's got a picture of a boat on it. I guess I'll go that way. I'm gonna write down in my real notebook, remember the boat orb and go back there and check it out. Miyamoto described wanting to make zelda a special game there was a quote where he wanted it to be a miniature garden that players can put inside their drawer that's so good that is really good and he used his time like exploring

uh kyoto as a child like the the the wilderness around surrounding kyoto as a child he tells this story about how he's just like got lost in the woods one day and kept walking and one day he just found a lake he didn't know was there and that feeling of exploration was something that like could i get that across in a video game which given the limitations of the hardware at the time like it's kind of incredible that they did manage to do that although it required a lot of onboarding for players who you know had not heard of of not heard of Zelda and how to play it. And that game introduced a lot of people to the concept of like talking to other people

who are playing the game and forming these info sharing networks, which I wouldn't be surprised if that led to the Nintendo tips hotline or whatever it was called that you see in the wizard movie. Yeah. But yeah, like it introduced all of these incredible things to especially to like console gaming that i think i just kind of took for granted that like it wasn't a thing before and zelda was the thing that kind of made it made it a staple um the name link and zelda uh i i think i knew at some point uh link is referring to the fact that he is a connected part of the world that players use as their interactive role in the game.

Literally a link into the game, which is wild. Also because the game was supposed to be slightly futuristic when they were first designing it, although that got pretty much all scrapped out. And Zelda, can you take a guess at where Zelda came from? I mean, there's Zelda Fitzgerald. That's right. It's Zelda. It's named after Zelda Fitzgerald. That's kind of the only other Zelda.

It's kind of the only other Zelda. There's a quote where Miyamoto explained, Zelda was the wife of famous novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts. And I liked the sound of her name. So I took the liberty of using it for the very first title. That's a slam dunk attribution i think um yeah i just i i i've always loved this series and 1986 was a year before i was born so i don't think i had a good grasp of what the gaming landscape was like then but

uh i don't think i ever i don't think i ever really appreciated what a like actual landmark sort of thing it was until uh i studied for this you know my only i mean i feel like i've seen people play zelda but my only real familiarity came from when you were playing that version on the wii oh my god you were still living with justin yeah i had to uh play skyward sword for a review where i think i had like a three or four day turnaround and i had to do what we in the industry call and i don't't think Rachel likes this term. Oh, I don't. But I had to poop sock Zelda Skyward Sword.

God, that's my, I'm going to change my second wonderful thing to the term poop sock. Oh, God. Oh, she really, gosh, you really don't like it. I really don't. I just can't hear it

and not think about what it means. Because of the visual. Well, can I steal you away? Yes, please. because of the visual well can i steal you away yes please got a jumbotron here this one's for amy and it's from declan dear amy thank you for everything you do for me you are the light of my life you me going, and I treasure the nearly four years we have spent together. I love you so, so much, and I hope I can travel to Brisbane to see you soon. See, I tried to put that sort of, you know, authentic stank on. Gonna go to Brisbane.

Brisbane. Zip it. Oh, how fun. He doesn't really do the, he's not the British one. The other Mike Myers does the British, but Brisbane's in Australia, I think. Yeah, I think so too. I am an unintelligent man. Can I read this next one?

Did Mike Myers ever play an Australian character? Not that I know of. That's why you don't know about Australia. I haven't seen Love Guru, but I of that's why you don't know about australia i haven't seen love guru but i don't i think that's one's more racist can i read the next one sure this message is for elizabeth it is from jackie hey elizabeth congrats on getting that good good master's degree you're one of the most wonderful people i know, and you're going to be an amazing disaster management specialist. Your pal, Jackie.

So an amazing disaster management specialist, I would think, would use their superpowers to stop the, you know, tornado, punch it, punch it apart. Or is the disaster itself amazing? Oh, yeah. Wow. Cool tornado. Now I'm going to manage. And then you just specialize gonna manage yeah this way this way tornado this way away from the people you're amazing listen tornado you're beautiful you're beautiful you remind me of i and i don't mean to brag and i don't like to drop names but i knew the tornado from the

twister movie the big one the main one i met the cow twister once too he's kind of a dick the main one is a is really cool really cool to his fans that sounds like a disaster agent like you are out there promoting your disaster i listen to reading glasses because bria and mallory have great tips you're a comics reader and you want to use a library connected app you can try out hoopla i listen for the author interviews i'm mad at myself that i waited as long as i did to start reading joan didion If you're a comics reader and you want to use a library-connected app, you can try out Hoopla. I listen for the author interviews. I'm mad at myself that I waited as long as I did to start reading Joan Didion. They give me reading advice I didn't even know I needed. If you go in person to an event and go up to an author or a filmmaker or anybody and tell them what you don't like about their work, you're a trash baby.

Look, I understand you didn't like Heroes Season 3. That's fine. I don't actually need to know that information. I'm Brea Grant. And I'm Mallory O'Meara. We're Reading Glasses, and we solve all your bookish problems every Thursday on Maximum Fun. What's your second thing?

The frozen summer treat that is Snowballs. Snowballs, thank God. I thought you were about to talk about the movie Frozen. The Frozen film. It's not a good film. It's a good film. It is a good film. Fine film. Frozen 2 looks wild. I really like, I literally didn't see it until like three or four months ago.

Yeah, Rachel's pretty new to the scene. You rode the Frozen ride before you saw the Frozen movie. That Frozen ride is legit though. Oh my God, it's my favorite. It makes me, at Disney World it makes me at disney world nepal it makes me cry every time and i don't know why do not have a particularly deep emotional connection to the film but the ride makes me tear up yeah explain that shit science you can't the imagineers got me now i am talking about the uh new orleans confection made with shaved ice and flavored cane sugar syrup.

Have we not talked about tasty flavored ice? It seems familiar to me, but it could just be because we both like it so much that we talk to each other about it without recording. Well, and here's the thing I want to say right at the top. Yeah. I don't like snow cones. I've never been a fan of snow cones. They do nothing for me.

Gross. A snow cone, the difference between a snow cone and a snowball. So a snow cone is like more of a, like a cubed ice, like a crunchy ice. Right. And then like a syrup that you pour over the top that inevitably just sinks to the bottom. Sinks to the bottom. And they give you a little straw spoon. And usually what you end up doing is just drinking up that syrup and then

throwing half the ice away right a snow ball is where the ice is shaved so fine that it actually resembles like snow it's fluffy uh it's not coarse and crunchy the way that a uh snow cone is it's a question of how fine you grate that shit. I don't think I ever appreciated the distinction. So I did a lot of research. Okay. The reason I'm talking about this is that Austin is lucky to have a place called Casey's.

I almost don't want you to tell people about Casey's because there's always a line and I love it so much. But a snowball is right on the periphery of like food I will wait 30 minutes for. Yeah. Because it is still ice with syrup on it. So they had a sign saying that this was like a New Orleans thing on the side. Right. And I thought like, oh, interesting.

I'd never really heard of that as a New Orleans thing before. And then I did some research. It most definitely is. Yeah, I wouldn't think that they're. Before this, you were going to go right up to their booth and say hey you're fucking lying so new orleans looked at the regular crumbly ice snow cone and said this is wait this sucks crunch it up more do it again so it started in 1933 ernest Hansen started working on an ice shaving machine. He invented the first motor-driven ice shaving machine. So he kept the machine in the family, and you can still go to Hansen Snow Blizz in New Orleans, but there are like a dozen other places in New Orleans that do

this, because there was a gentleman that invented his own ice shaving machine he called the snow wizard and he made it because people had started requesting you know that they have a version of it for their own business and so he started sending them out you can still buy them these snow wizards I went online they're less than 2,000 bucks they are 100 pounds. Are these antique Snow Wizards? Are they still making new Snow Wizards? New Snow Wizards.

That's what Casey uses. Casey uses the Snow Wizard. And they're how much dollars? 1,974. That's not much less than 2,000, is it? No. We could probably comfortably round that up to $2,000. It is 100 pounds, though, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend putting it like in your kitchen why not i've got strong countertops uh so uh they're the primary snowball machines used in louisiana and like throughout the country okay i find snowballs

now hold on if i buy one of these two thousand dollar machines and some of the juice i get on my own snowball making business yeah uh-huh uh so the that is here in Austin was actually started by people who were from New Orleans. And it was a kind of a family business. Susie Casey Callagher and Kit Thompson started it in 1996 in Austin. And they just bought a little house that was near an elementary school. and it was at like a four-way stoplight and they're like here we go that intersection is wild it is everybody's gonna drive past it everyone's gonna have to stop at this stoplight and see it it's one of those broken up intersections and also there's a train track that it crosses it's it is wild but also you know the best snowball i've ever tasted is there so this is this is old data but um and when i say old data it's like from like 2002 an article i found um hey straight up that was 17 years ago at that time they were consuming anywhere between 16 and 33 blocks of ice who was who was casey's oh they were selling

yeah you said consuming which made me think this family was like... Just nodding on it. Like Bumbles from the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sort of universe, just like honking down huge cubes. They also produce their own chocolate syrup. And so they'll make 10 to 25 gallons of chocolate syrup a day. Okay, that is impressive yes that's quite a bit they have 70 different flavors uh one of their most popular is boston

cream pie which apparently tastes like a donut yeah uh i am partial to the mounds bar which is like chocolate and coconut and it's so creamy you guys you just don't even know let's talk about this creaminess because i feel like people don't quite understand it when you've graded down that fine it really is like eating ice cream they also do certain flavor combinations where you can get a scoop of snowball with a scoop of ice cream they do an orange creamsicle one that is like the tastiest orange syrup in a snowball on a like scoop of vanilla ice cream and it is fucking amazing and they have all the like wild cherry kind of. Yeah, they'll let you make your own shit. Yeah.

But yeah, and then the smallest size is just $3. Like it's not like, I mean, Austin is like kind of known for these super fancy, high priced restaurants. But Casey's is nice. It's like very unassuming and very affordable. Yeah. Like the most expensive thing on their menu is $6.50. Yeah, it's too bad it's all gross so don't go there.

They're open seasonally though so they're only open until October. Only in the winter. Yeah. December to the end of December. It's weird. I tell them not to do it that way but they say we don't want people

to come here. I loved it. It changed my life. There were several places in St. Louis when I was growing up that sold snow cones and I would have friends that were like, oh, let's go to that snow cone and I'd be like, oh, okay, cool and then I'd be like, I hate this. It changed my life. There were several places in St. Louis when I was growing up that sold snow cones and I would have friends that were like, oh, let's go to that snow cone. And I'd be like, oh, okay, cool.

And then I'd be like, I hate this. Yeah, it sucks. I'm not enjoying this and I don't want it like three minutes in. Yeah. Snowball, totally different story. It's way better, yeah. It's too bad about all the beehives though. And the landmines.

Yeah. It's really too bad. Can I tell you about my second thing? Yes. My second thing is a song by lcd sound system called all my friends oh i love this freaking song man i love this freaking song it like it floored me the first time i heard it and now 12 years after it came out like it still just knocks me down every time i i hear it come on um it is if you're not familiar

it's a track off l Sound System's second album, which is called Sound of Silver, which came out in 2007. And that album is so fucking good. It's like their first album was self-titled and it was a just like instant critical success. It had all of these just like powerful dance jams on it. The most probably well- known of which being uh

daft punk is playing at my house that so that that was my only exposure to them and actually i went to lollapalooza and it was funny because they were on the same day as daft punk yeah and they were right before daft punk and so it was fun to like see them perform that song and then like immediately after i have daft punk come Yeah. So that first album like kicks ass. And it was this like great fusion of, you know, all indie rock stuff with also just a lot of really fresh electronic loops and stuff like that. And it was this huge critical success. And so for their follow up album, like there was some concern that they wouldn't be able to follow it up. But Sounds of Silver sort of evolved on it with like a lot more interesting sounds and sort of weirder hooks for the songs that are on it.

And All My Friends is kind of like perfectly emblematic about that. First of all, it's not necessarily a dance jam. It's a song about like aging, which it kind of tackles in a fairly abstract way uh that makes it kind of more accessible uh the front man for the band james murphy kind of like based the song on his own experience but you you know you don't have to have lived his life necessarily i feel like the lyrics are sort of uh generic isn't a flattering term but i think maybe it fits where you can kind of find something in there so universal is maybe the word thank you about like especially going over that like late 20s to early 30s hump um

and i'm gonna play a bit of it now in case you've never heard it before because it's it's just it's great Five years trying to be with your friends again So you're talking 45 turns Yes, as fast as you can Yeah, I know it gets tired But it's better when it's 10 to 10 It comes apart So it's got that piano loop that goes through the whole thing. And it's like this wild, at times seemingly unsyncopated piano,

like clumsy piano loop that somebody is trying to play live and maybe they just went with the first take and it wasn't so great. And you hear that when the song starts. You're like, oh shit, is this going to be the whole song? Yeah, it's all seven minutes you hear that when the song starts you're like oh shit like is this gonna be the whole song yeah it's all seven minutes and 47 seconds of the song but it's the way that the song builds on it and uh you know builds on every other element that they layer on top of it vocals don't even start until a minute 20 in uh and so like they take their time in sort of building this song over these lyrics that are like very uh very wistful and uh evocative i think uh and it

builds and builds but instead of building to like this dance climax it builds to more of like an emotional climax and now i've said the word climax too many times in a short span um and i just love it man like i loved it when i first heard it in college because it was like i recognized like oh this is some of the best music i've ever listened to because I've just come off the streak of only listening to three bands my entire life um but also like you know this this idea of treasuring your time with your friends and and struggling with that as you get older like when I was in college I was like yeah man that's important and now that I'm 32 it's like yeah man yeah man that's important. And now that I'm 32, it's like, yeah, man, yeah, man, that's important, bud. And I remember my last night that I spent in Chicago, the night before I moved here to Austin, I went with my roommates and some of my buddies to Pitchfork Fest in Chicago. And I saw LCD Sound

System. It was my first time seeing them. And they played like everything off Songs of Silver. And when they did All My Friends, like friends like man i was just like bouncing up and down with all my friends in chicago and just like i i cried like i literally cried because i was sad i was leaving all of them tomorrow and here was a song that could not be more like fitting for that moment uh and i don't know when i hear it i still get i still get uh not choked up or or whatever but it still impacts me, I think, in an emotional way that very few songs that I can think of are capable of doing. I love that.

Like when a song becomes so emblematic of a time in your life and then you can like hear it and be transported back instantly, instantly back at the Pitchfork Fest. Yeah. And I legitimately think it's one of the best songs written in my lifetime. And I'm kind of not alone in that because it became sort of the biggest critical hit off of Songs of Silver, which was a Sound of Silver, sorry, that already was like a big successful album. Pitchfork named it the number one song of 2007. And then in 2009 2009 they did a list of the top 500 tracks of the 2000s and uh all my friends was number two it it ranked uh just below i believe uh bob by outcast which yeah that's that

was fucking that was fucking fair uh and in the uh write-up for this where it got the number two spot rob mitchum wrote uh by the end the piano has become euphoric and confident without changing a lick a neat thematic trick to accompany murphy's bittersweet lyrical acceptance of growing old all my friends survives the high wire act of growing mature without getting boring which just might be professor what uh which might just be the lesson professor murphy can teach his peers in the next decade. It has received similar sort of praise across the board. And I don't know, that makes me really happy because I would certainly rank it in like top five,

like best songs I think ever that I've ever heard. It's just a good one, man. Just a good one. It's tough. That whole album is really good though. Well, speaking of good songs, how about Money Won't Pay by Bowen and Augustus? You can find a link to that in our episode description.

I mean, what else do we usually do here? I mean, Maximum fucking Fun, though. Are we going to read listener submissions? I forget to, don't I? Jesse says, something I find wonderful is cutting vegetables. My Beyonce is the much, and I don't know if that's a flub or if it's Beyonce, and it says Beyonce, but I like it nonetheless.

My Beyonce is the much better cook, so I do all the prep and I love a good chopping session. There's something so relaxing about chopping tons of vegetables as long as I've got a good sharp knife and a big clean cutting board, right? Gotta have it, gotta have it.

Big board. Big clean cutting board, gotta get it. Gotta have it. Big board. Big, clean cutting board. Gotta get it. Gotta have that mise en place. God, I love a good mise en place. I wish I had thought of that Beyonce line when we were engaged. That's a good one. I know, but that's 2019 thinking, you know?

It's true. Don't kick yourself. Laura says, something I find wonderful is taking a shower after swimming or other watery activities. The feeling of a hot shower after being in a cold, damp swimsuit slash clothes is just unbeatable. That's so true. You know what I was thinking of the other day? What's that? I love the feeling when you're still kind of in a wet swimsuit and you get in a hot car to like drive away from the pool. That is summertime to me.

Yeah. If you got a towel under your butt, I don't want to ruin. I don't want to ruin. I got leather in the Miata. i'm not trying to fuck that i also just kind of like driving in a swimsuit yeah it just feels like this is summer jerks yeah but i'm not trying to fuck up the bugatti you know okay god i have my liners in there okay uh rebecca says the new cigarette music video is wonderful not least because when i saw it pop up on my screen, I 100% thought it was Griffin in the starring role. Thank you very much. It's actually the director who stepped in for Sigrid after a series of technical difficulties. And it's a wonderful example of creative people coming together to make something silly and

fun. Also, Griffin, you should ask Sigrid to be in her next video. I'll do that. I'll get right on that. That is a great video. Griffin, you showed that to me not long ago, and I absolutely loved it. Yeah, I've sort of become a diehard Sigrid stan since Rachel covered that as a segment on the show. It has brought so much joy into my life.

That album is fucking great. You know, speaking of great albums, Money Won't Pay by Bowen and Augustus. You can find a link to that in our episode description. Thanks for letting us use that one. And Maximum Freaking Fun. Like, what more can you even say at this point? Maximum Fun is a great place to find both funny podcasts and narrative podcasts and culture podcasts and music podcasts.

Fresh baked breads. Pet podcasts. Soups. Hot soups. Yoo-hoo. Sandwiches, if you need them. I'm thinking of Panera Bread again, aren't I? I get Maximum Fun and Panera Bread mixed up a lot.

I know. They're both wonderful. They're both warm and toasty, I think. I don't know anything about Panera Bread. They may have. That started in St. Louis, by the way. Oh, did it? In St. Louis, it's still called St. Louis Bread Company because that's how it started.

I remember being very confused by that. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think? In St. Louis, it's still called St. Louis Bread Company because that's how it started. I remember being very confused by that. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think that's it. We have stuff at McElroy.family. You can send in your submissions at wonderfulpodcast.gmail.com. And yeah, I think that's about it. Let's round her up.

Yeehaw. That's the little, oh my God, it's the littlest cowboy ever. Get over here, littlest cowboy ever. Howdy, y'all. Hey, does your little horse need some little water? Oh, well, he might like it. Okay, okay. I wonder if this bit's going to go anywhere.

What do you think, little cowboy? Nope. Maximumfun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. If you're looking for a new comedy podcast, why not try the Beef and Dairy Network? It won Best Comedy at the British Podcast Awards in 2017 and 2018. Also, I'm on.

There were no horses in this country until the mid to late 60s. Specialist bovine arse vet. Both of his eyes are squid's eyes. Yogurt buffet. She was married to a bacon farmer who saved her life. Farm raised snow leopard. Download it today. That's the Beef and Dairy Network podcast from MaximumFun.org.

Also, maybe start at episode one or weirdly episode 36, which for some reason requires no knowledge of the rest of the show.