Wonderful! - Wonderful! 93: The Ghost Ship McDonald

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

Griffin's favorite super hero! Rachel's favorite kind of summer shoe! Griffin's favorite new hobbyist reality competition show! Rachel's favorite defunct floating fast food! 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.

that was the deepest breath i've ever you know that's going to be the first thing people hear is you just ripping like you're vaping just God's own air. Wow, that was powerful. Takes a lot to get these pipes ready. All right, fill them up and let her rip. Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. There was no breath that time. This is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Now I don't know which way you're coming from. Do you want me to do it again, but with the breath?

I just want to make sure that you're oxygenated, okay? I don't want to see you over there turning blue because you're too busy laughing all the great jokes i'm a little bit scarred from a comment like two years ago where the listener indicated that i breathe too much oh well the person's probably a real dick fish breathing's a pretty cool thing to do it's yeah it is a thing most people do that's true yeah it puts it makes your i guess i'm not really sure of the specifics but um i guess you need it it's like food for your lung stomach yeah and that's that's the best that i've gathered uh i have lots of organs i'll be gosh dang if i know what they do heart pumps blood brain thinks thoughts anything other than that i like pancreas liver kidney you know

the skin is your largest organ uh not really oh boy too many small wonders that joke that joke was it uh comic con was fun oh I had a fun book tour

it's a very personal small wonder but I went and very star studded week for you a weirdly star studded week uh yeah

I saw weirdly a lot like more uh famous than I've like seen did anybody say oh yeah griffin mccrory from the podcast wonderful uh yes uh david duchovny oh yeah yeah which is not not david duchovny oh yeah i'm sorry to break your heart that That's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was a very fun time that was also completely bizarre and like profoundly out of my area of expertise. But gosh dang it, we got through it anyway.

I saw those pictures of you. You looked real cute. Thanks, babe. Yeah, I did a red carpet photo shoot at an Entertainment Weekly event. It was pretty wild, man. But here, I'm back. And I'm just- Which you did have to purchase a blazer i did i bought a blazer at macy's because i didn't you know i didn't pack for ew but what's your small wonder my small wonder is ice cream sandwiches and i'm glad you're doing this in a

small wonder not a big wonder because you're not a big fan don't like him it's so strange to me what don't you like about it biting ice cream don't like it but they have a little outside that's all soft and easy to bite oh but oh my god now i'm thinking about that stuff getting stuck to the roof of my mouth but i'm also have this cold ice cream up against my teeth i have sensitive teeth you know this you maybe don't know this i didn't know they were sensitive to temperature i thought they were sensitive to everything else but but I didn't know temperature, too. Yeah, much like the rest of me. Yeah, I mean, God doesn't give with both hands, you know?

What did he give with the one hand? My enormous organ, come on. It's been a hundred years. I don't know who goes first. I have a suspicion it's me. Here's a quick question. enough for you geez it's really hot in here it is yeah but i thought you were used to it by now because you like set the thermostat to do this this very thing it's hot in these rhinos ace venture uh it is my turn to go first this week okay ace ventura is my no uh my first thing is the

superhero that we call spider-man oh spider-man pound for pound spider-man's probably my favorite uh superhero uh seems about right i like him a lot i just got back from comic-con obviously and in the middle of that like book tour trip i saw uh spider-man far from home so i'm kind of just like keyed up to talk about the Spider-Man. I didn't even ask you. Did you enjoy that film? I enjoyed the ever-loving crap out of it. It was really good.

I liked it even better than Homecoming, which was fantastic. Oh, I really want to see it. Yeah, I would definitely go see that one again in a heartbeat. You should probably see Endgame first shoot. I think it's out next week. Okay, but we'll talk off air about what movies we're going to watch when.

I have never been like huge into comics, which you might think is a lie because we just did one with Marvel. But like it was always around me because my dad wrote comics and collected comics. Did Justin or Travis pursue comics? Not to the extent that dad did, certainly. So interesting to me how that happens when a parent so exclusively loves something, how it's hit or miss whether or not it continues. Yeah, I mean, I think they know more about comics than I do. So I have to think that they uh dive into the comic scene more than I did when I was a kid um and like for me it was just video games and that was basically it

um so like my exposure to spider-man has been mostly through movies and games I saw the first toby mcguire spider-man movie on opening night after a rehearsal for some play we were doing and it was like a midnight showing uh and we were doing. And it was like a midnight showing. And I was pretty young and it was badass. I was like, oh, so this is the Spider-Man I've heard so much about. And I think it speaks to the fact that like my only exposure is through movies and games. And there've been like a lot of good ones of both of them. And I think that's just because Spider-Man is a really good, interesting superhero. He's got like the best blend of interesting powers, but also like interesting

real life stuff as compared to like all the other superheroes. There's like a vulnerability to him that I really like. I've always thought like if people find out that Bruce Wayne is Batman, at the end of the day, he's still a kajillionaire. So he'll probably be okay. If people find out Clark Kent is Superman, he's still this invincible super god that can go up and explode the moon. But Peter Parker is just like a, you know, kind of nerdy, like kind of not clumsy he's extremely he's extremely coordinated because he has superpowers for that uh but like the the comics especially kind of the early ones deal with you know uh growing pains and that you know high school drama and also the fact that he's like living in new york and completely broke and some of the the things

that go along with that like it tackles all these subjects that make you think like oh peter parker's life is not super good and he has a lot of really great people a lot of really great characters who could and do get hurt when people find that the the truth about him uh and i've always been sort of drawn to that i feel like it gives them a lot whoever is writing spider-man whatever has like a lot to work with um and i also think that that kind of goes hand in hand with his powers right like he is agile and he's pretty strong he can shoot webs but other than that like you can you can mess spider-man up in a fight like spider-man can get hit and get like torn up in a way that that suit's pretty thin the suit's pretty thin

unless it's the awful like nanite fucking metal suit from uh infinity war no thanks no thanks no thanks put that back the web the web doesn't seem i mean it seems strong enough to support a human man but couldn't you just chainsaw right through that i think you could probably chainsaw right through it and that's why spider-man's mortal enemy the lumberjack always always manages to get him and kill him he's killed him like 12 times wasn't there a wrestler that was like hacksaw bone saw is ready yeah bone saw bone saw yeah but he beat bone saw's ass that's it. I don't think he had Bonesaw's on him. So maybe in Spider-Man 4 or 3, he'll come back and have Bonesaw's. He's also like a nerd, but not in the cool Tony Stark way. He's an absolute brilliant genius, but he is also a nerd in the cultural sense of the term and is very, very unsuccessful in social situations, despite the fact that these entities of cosmic horror.

He is still like mainly the neighborhood, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man who is just like kind of trying to keep stuff from stuff from getting bad in Queens. And so there's like an intimacy there that like, I don't, I haven't really found in any other most other superheroes, I should say. I just think like, I don't know, for a superhero who has been around as long as Spider-Man has, like it's kind of wild to me how much like staying power that he has. Like I haven't seen a Superman movie or whatever, or a Batman thing since the

first two Christopher Nolan films where I was like, ooh, this is a good story that this superhero can generate. But like most Spider-Man movies, even the Andrew Garfield ones, which I did not love, we're still like, I don't know, above the bar. Uh, Oh God, into the spider verse was like my favorite movie of last year. Uh, here's some spider facts. Uh, he first appeared in amazing fantasy number 15 in 1962 created by, uh, uh, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee. Uh, and what was really cool about the book book it came out during the silver age of comics which was like it had a pretty set uh relationship between

superheroes and teenagers which is to say like they were their their wards they were their sidekicks and flunkies and whatever and spider-man was the first like teenage main superhero despite the fact that like in every other sense of the term like he could have been a sidekick he was a dweeb and you know he was kind of he was kind of scrawny and then he got powers but instead of you know pushing him into the uh the sidekick role that you know he was the leading attraction uh and uh i don't know people just want people just went wild for it um yeah i just really like i really i enjoy spider-man i enjoy his games there was a good playstation spider-man game that came out last year swinging on webs is the coolest like way of transit any

superhero has the musical though the musical let's talk about turn off the dark i had never seen it uh unfortunately i wasn't it only available to the public for like a very short time it was on it was on broadway for three years oh really yeah it was on broadway for three years i read a plot synopsis because i didn't even know ain't y'all it is fucking wild there is like some figure out of like greek myth that coaches him through like the training process of his powers and uh yeah it's uh it's it's it's wild there is and there's a scene where he fights the sinister six apparently just like over the audience i read that and i was like oh that's why this thing was an engine that consumed ankles for fuel uh yeah spider-man good man superhero what's your first thing my first thing supportive sandals you always take a drink when i say what my thing is well it's because i just

talked for a long time supportive sandals though I don't know what it means But I assume it's like Rachel you had a hard day Why don't you You can have that extra dove chocolate Rachel did you lose weight? Because I'm feeling a little less pressure on me Rachel

Rachel Let me give you a massage That would be Why don't those exist? Big boots you slap on that rub you while you walk on them. While you walk on them. I think that's where the challenge is. They'd have to be pretty big to get the servos and stuff inside. Yeah, and probably very hot.

Unless they had a cooling spritz spray inside of them also. Then you're just damp down down there but then they also have a dryer function yeah but that's gonna but then there'll still be that mildewy scent good news it's got odor spray and you can customize it a lot of sprays and and yeah well then you need the secondary fan system to dry it almost seems like you'd need a pair of pants to go with the shoes and then some of the tech can go up through the pants well yeah i mean the pants are mainly going to be sort of like storage for all the fluids that these shoes consume because they are gas powered also diesel so that's good for the environment i think

so why don't these exist it seems like it seems like we need them uh well i am actually i'm referring to supportive sandals kind of in contrast to the typical shoe of the season which is the flip-flop oh i see i'm not wearing them right now i know that you just i just i just clocked your shoesies yeah you got you got a fun flirty little strappy uh brown number and i don't know what anything about shoes now i'm talking more about the sandal that is designed for summertime wear, but it has arch support and curved footbeds and a variety of things that are designed to be more supportive for the foot. I believe you got me a pair of these. I did. I bought you some. Because you almost exclusively wear sandals in the summertime and it ends up being really

harmful for your feet if they don't have support. Upgraded to boat shoes, didn't I? Thanks, Cruz. So here's the problem with foot bluffs. Yeah. Let me just put this out there. So there's no support in there. No.

And what happens is that you can get plantar fasciitis. Are you familiar with this? I've heard of it and I don't know what it is. I think fasciitis means of the skin. Maybe. Maybe. Neither of us are medical professionals. Or of the face, the skin of the face.

And then fascism is. Bad, obviously. Is when the skin is, you know, oppressive. Yeah. No, plantar fasciitis is related to the arch of your foot. So there's like a tissue, like a band of tissue in the arch of your foot. And if you don't have appropriate support, you can start to get pain in that area

because you're just putting weight over and over again on like the ball and the heel of your foot. And it's putting pressure on the tissue. And it can really hurt. I don't know if you've ever experienced this. But sometimes if I wear flip-flops all day, by the end of the day, I have a lot of pain and cramping. Well, I guess my little life hack there is to just sit at your desk for a long time. to just sit at your desk for a long time.

If you get too many bouts of plantar fasciitis, your body will start producing a new bone. What? In your foot. Cool. Which can cause a heel spur on the back or bottom of your heel. Or is evolution finally trying to get a tail up in there? A foot tail? I mean, the body is figuring it out.

It's evolution, babe. And like 20 generations, maybe it'll work its way up. Oh, did you hear they rebooted foot tails? That was nothing. Yeah. I want you to sing the whole song, but make it foot foot tails and i want you to do it right now i think life is like a walking cane here in footberg that's good enough for me thank you also if you wear a lot of flip-flops you'll notice that you start to kind of curl your toes a little bit to kind of hold them on um which can cause your toes to bend up in a fixed position and you get like

the hammer toe it also gets it in the like grundle between your big toe and second toe your pointer your pointer toe and it can just really rub you rub you raw yeah but like a supportive sandal like addresses a lot of those issues um and i think there's this whole like barefoot movement now of just like human beings don't need shoes and you can toughen your feet you know by by just then the best support for your foot is to not obstruct any cool with shoes but here's the thing like that may be true that is to not obstruct any with shoes. But here's the thing. That may be true that people didn't start out with shoes, but they were walking on soft surfaces like dirt and sand and grass.

Yeah. And now it's a lot of concrete. They hadn't invented nails and staples and Legos yet. Well, and also the dirt or the sand will kind of contour to support your heel. Right. Pavement doesn't do that. No. So this is just more, I mean, it's appreciation for the support of sandal,

like a Teva, for example. Oh, yeah. I've always said Tevas. I just don't think that's right. I don't think you think that's right. You're saying that like it is a word that exists in Spanish, and I don't think that was ever the intention. Agree to disagree.

But yeah, it's more of a PSA, really. For those of you that are exclusively wearing the flip-flop in the summertime, may I introduce you to the concept of a supportive sandal? A little more money, but greater durability and support for your feet. Yeah. And then make you sound like a duck when you walk. My professors back at college would like know when I was coming down the hallway because it was just like clap, clap. You got a loud flop.

I had a loud, heavy flop and it pretty much ended my professional assassin career. Hey, can I steal you away i wish you would are you following the arg at home hey this is a message for liz it's from patrick who says here's hoping we've made it intact to month in of our mini crutches life where in could be anywhere from minus two to four. My head is fucking reeling right now. I can even try. I just, as soon as it seemed mathy,

I just checked out. Absolutely spinning out of control wildly. Maybe more. You're wonderful. And I'm guessing the baby is wonderful too. You might not be the party's face in D&D, but you definitely are in our family. Love you through critical hits and failures alike.

Let's get square pie tonight. I believe this is a message about a baby. About a baby? Don't do it. Everyone knows. Don't do it. What? Oh, you thought I was going to do the 1-800-COLLECT?

Uh-huh. Was Jim Carrey in that commercial? No. Then it shall pass us by. Hey, did you see this next personal message is also about D&D? Oh, no, I was going to do the 1-800-COLLECT? Uh-huh. Was Jim Carrey in that commercial? No. Then it shall pass us by. Hey, did you see this next personal message is also about D&D? Oh, no, I didn't. It's for Rob. It's from Kate. Happy anniversary, Rob.

It's been 10 dang years. Holy crap. You're a great husband, a wonderful father, and a fantastic human being. I look forward to so many more years with you playing D&D, raising our three kids, and having a great time together as partners in life. I love you, Kate. Man, it's really hard to find a D&D group. So I applaud you for going above and beyond. Especially, they've got three kids.

Well, that's what I'm saying. You've made your D&D group. You have forged one from nothing. And I think that shows a lot of dedication to the game. The Greatest Generation is a Star Trek podcast that destigmatizes the very idea of having a Star Trek podcast. We're Ben and Adam, the hosts of The Greatest Generation, and the technology we've developed is that nobody knows what you're playing in your earbuds.

You know, with legalization, it's easier than ever to find out what's in your buds. But we suggest that you legally find The Greatest Generation wherever you download your podcasts. We'll send it to you in a discreet, unmarked package that nobody has to know but us. That's The Greatest Generation, the Star Trek podcast that you has to know but us that's the greatest generation the star trek podcast that you didn't know you needed yet makes you feel like you belong what's my second thing i was just wondering that my second thing came out of left field it's a new it's a new thing i generally try to touch on older subjects this is hot and fresh and really the active word here is hot because i want to talk about the netflix television program

blown away this is last week was wild it's a little amazing to me that you started watching this without me i'm just gonna say that well i didn't think that you'd be into it i thought it was gonna be a bad show uh and then me and justin watched like four episodes of it and oops it's incredible uh last week was like wild because our book launched the second graphic novel uh i went on tour had this white buck wild time at comic-con the biggest thing was when i discovered blown away on netflix it's a reality competition show about glass blowing and it's just a wild, wild ride. Every episode, start to finish, is a fucking roll, a 22-minute roller coaster. You will scream and cry and go on just an absolute, the greatest journey of your life.

Start with this. Glass blowing, it looks really, really cool to do it. You look like a, like all they do is they like get these blobs of molten glass on these big straws or whatever and then they put them in the thing and then they can spin them and work with like tools you look like a fucking warlock of glass are the folks that compete on the show like full-time professional glass blowers they are i would love it if they were just home glass blowers who had like other jobs. That's what I was wondering.

Like, is this a hobby? Yeah. It's like, I've been blowing glass for two months. Beans. I just like, they get the little blobs in the color like pellets and they shove them in a furnace through what's called a glory hole, which is hysterical. And then they cut and shape it with all these specialized tools. and they shove them in a furnace through what's called a glory hole which is hysterical and they cut and shape it with all these specialized tools and then they put it in an annealer to slowly cool

it so it doesn't break like i've learned more about glass blowing i went from nothing to like i think i have a pretty like firm understanding of how glass blowing works uh which i didn't expect so that's that's fantastic um it's also like it's enough to make me think like i could probably blow some glass which is a new a new desire in my life like i could probably make a pretty cool looking sphere or or something classes do exist for that i remember because my friend ariel took glass blowing classes briefly i understand that but please also understand that i would be very afraid to get some of the hot glass on me because what do you do do they wear big protective gloves uh yeah they i mean they do and then they have that weird like newspaper pad that they can kind of like roll it

on i imagine that provides something but it's still the fear of me getting the hot glass on me which would kind of suck a lot of the fun out of the process um and it's just such like a visually captivating process it's like you're making process um and it's just such like a visually captivating process it's like you're making glowing candy and that's like one reason why the show works so well um but also it's because these glass blowers featured on the show are like these brilliant glass wizards who have been glass blowing for so long, they have forgotten completely how to speak and interact like human beings, which is not to like completely knock them,

but like the way they talk about glass, the way they talk about this red hot sand makes it sound like they are talking about like snakes or crocodiles or something. Like a fun drinking game would be like anytime anybody says like well that's glass for you or like well yeah glass will do that to you that's just that's just glass oh oh i know that sound that's glass it's just every every like 45 seconds somebody talks about some property of glass as if they are talking about the most precious diamonds or the most dangerous gun.

These people fucking love glass more than anything. And I have no metric for judging glass, which makes figuring out the winner kind of a shock every time. Unlike a cooking show, I feel like I can see food and be like, I bet that one's the best. This one, I'm like, I don't know. That's a pretty good cup. That's a pretty good, uh, that's a pretty good light fixture, I guess. Whoa, a chandelier. That's probably going to win. Uh, and the biggest reason, and now I'm going to show my hand that it's so watchable and this is horrible, but the glass breaks all the fucking time the glass breaks constantly not a joke every episode one or two people's glass just fucking shatters and they have to start over and the challenges

go for like five hours and they'll be like on hour four and just like oops gone and then it's like well okay i have an hour let's try and redo it in one hour uh and it's constant it's like if you were watching top chef or like it's like if you were watching Top Chef or like, it's like if you were watching Great British Bake Off and every episode, two people dropped their, you know, 14 tier cake

on the way up to the judges table. I always like, I always yearn for that when I watch those baking competitions. So I'm excited to know this exists elsewhere. And you don't want it to happen. Like you don't want these,

these wonderful sources. You want to watch it happen. Kind of though, is the problem is that you do need it and want it like you don't want these these wonderful sorcerers you want to watch it happen kind of though is the problem is that you do need it and want it because you're filthy inside um but it turns every episode into a fucking horror movie because they will like get you set up like whenever it like zooms in on somebody and they're like tapping their uh they're they're like their hose to get the the glass thing off of the end of it you know if they leave it on that shot for too long you're like that shit's about to fall to the ground and then

sometimes it doesn't happen and you're like well now i don't know it it's like it was it's like like it was paced by a master horror director because it sets you up to have these expectations and then uh swerves on them constantly uh i just like, I need this to become a genre. What's the name of the show again? Blown Away. Blown Away. And you know they're going to use that pun a great deal in this show. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think at the end when they judge, like the artist who really blew us away was blank. And then they'll be like, the artist who failed to blow us away. It's like, wow, this is a good show. What are the judges like? I feel like the expertise in this area would be very limited and that by like the third season,

you would literally have run out of people that could do it. So there's one like master glass worker who is like the artist in residence judge. And then there is, they will bring in a guest judge who like paul abdul like paul abdul no it'll be like um either a glass blower or like they will have a they did one for um uh why they wanted a goblet like a they wanted a wine glass and a

decanter and they had like some wine expert come in who could like judge the like physical properties of it but then there's also the host of the show who's like in the judging room with them and this guy is a total idiot he doesn't know anything about glass so he'll point at something he'll be like that one is uh nice and red yes is he like a comedian type uh he's like a host type okay he is the audience surrogate i don't know what that is he will say proudly uh yeah blown away watch it just cram it you're gonna just absolutely love it can i say my second thing yeah please i'm trying to think of how to describe this and the best thing i can say is the story that is floating mcdonald's yeah i mean i think you could even describe it more than that um are you familiar

with the concept of a like a floating restaurant like a restaurant that that is on a a boat or barge yes so there there was one in huntington that did sink yes so that's the thing they almost always do oh do they oh man so i i the reason i got connected to this was last week on Stop Podcasting Yourself, they had a woman who was a writer and apparently she did a big story on the floating McDonald's that was in Vancouver. And I was like, how funny St. Louis had a floating McDonald's. Was this like a thing? Only in those two cities. Okay, I was about to say, I've never heard of this in my life. And it kind of makes sense. So St. Louis is right on the Mississippi River, which runs between Missouri and Illinois. The Mississippi floods a lot.

Yeah. Less so lately because of climate change. There, I said it. And for a while in the 80s and 90s, they used that river a lot for like floating casinos for example and floating restaurants was kind of the other thing and they still apparently do like riverboat cruises mississippi is not a particularly pretty river it is literally very muddy yeah uh so i imagine that was a little difficult to sell um unlike the proud Ohio River, where it's crystal clear waters. You can see the healthy catfish through.

That will eat you, healthy catfish, and they'll jump right up in your arms, ready to go. So the floating McDonald's in St. Louis opened in 1980, closed in 2000, could seat 375 people and was open year round. Why? Why? Why did they need a boat one? Why did they need a boat one, baby? Tell me. So I was reading about it a little bit. I think initially, the person that was responsible, I don't know if it was a franchisee or whoever it was, but the person was actually trying to get the McDonald's into the visitor center below the Gateway Arch. Okay. And it was just impossibly expensive. And so they were like, oh, well, what if we take this barge, we make it look like a riverboat because St. Louis has a big history of riverboats because of the Mississippi.

And then we crash it right into the fucking gateway arch now our mcdonald's is in there uh so they so yeah so it lasted 20 years i went to this barge i remember i have very strong memories of it as a child how's the food i mean it's you know mcdonald's so incredible they designed it to look like a stern wheel paddle boat so it had this kind of like touristy quality to it okay and it was right next to the arch so you'd like go up in the arch and then you'd go get mcdonald's on the yeah that's what it is you look out those weird observation windows from the top of the arch you're like i'm gonna eat at that mcdonald's boat cool i can see oh look at the beautiful river yeah look at the beautiful mcdonald's boat in it uh so it closed in 2000 i don't think for

lack of business but because it needed extensive renovation and which it just like didn't make sense to do that yeah actually you can't pull it into a like a mcdonald's dry dock uh the one i just pictured like grimace out on the side with like a little like wash rag just trying to do some of the work i mean that's that's the that's the question which of the mcdonald land peoples was the captain because you know it ain't ronald you know ronald's not out there you think he's the face he's the face but like he's not putting in the work but i think somebody they needed a trusted hand on the rudder who was the lady duck creature uh birdie yeah yeah she seemed to have leadership potential i think yeah i don't think i don't think they would let mary mccheese be in charge of anything

ever no and i mean obviously not the hamburglar, not the Hamburglar. Are you kidding me? Is that all of them? This is the Hamburglar's perfect fucking crime. Is to drive it away? All he's got to do is jack this boat. And then like the keys to the kingdom are his. He can not only steal as many burgers as he wants, he can make them. He has obtained the means of production. Well, eventually he'll run out though. Will he?

Or can he just fish up some river beef? Do you want to hear about the other one? The one in Vancouver? Yeah, I do. So the McBarge, officially named the Friendship 500, was a McDonald's restaurant built on an 187-foot barge for Expo 86 in Vancouver. So this was like the World's Fair in 1986. It could serve up to 1,400 people. Holy shit.

Built at cost in today's dollars, it would have been $26 million. Holy shit. The staff had little sailor's uniforms, and the dining room had panoramic views of Vancouver. Well, that sounds nice. It was intended to be a McDonald's restaurant long after Expo 86, but apparently the barge was vacated and remained empty on the Expo grounds until 1991.

What happened? So they just, it's kind of like a World's Fair or like the Olympics where people do these big showcase pieces and then they just leave them atrophy yeah uh in 91 the new owner uh removed it because they were forced to um it had been anchored derelict in the bird inlet um until 2015 when a individual named howard meakin removed it to Maple Ridge in the northeastern section of Vancouver. Is it still a McDonald's

or is it just a big boat now? No, at this point it is nothing. It's just a big empty boat. Okay. There's got to be some McDonald's brand signage on the boat still though, right? Well, so here's what happened. So he was going to spend $4.5 million

to renovate the barge and turn it into a deep sea museum. To be named Deep Ocean Discovery Center. But then he realized how expensive that was. $4.5 million is a lot of money. And he thought, oh, hey, Vancouver City Council, give this a historic place status. And then I can get more funding from government grants. This McDonald's, this derelictald's is a fucking institution from ye olden days of 1986 right um he did not

get enough petition signatures uh and so then they planned a crowdfunding campaign, but had canceled the event they were planning to hold in October due to bad weather. Okay, so it sounds like God doesn't want this beautiful boat McDonald's. And apparently that was just kind of the end of it, at least as far as we know. I mean, it's been two years now. Yeah. Nothing's happened. When they decommissioned the St. Louis one, do you think they just cut the rope anchoring it and just let it float down the river

and now it's somebody else's problem here's another interesting thing so uh nobody really knows exactly what happened to the mcdonald's thing or at least i couldn't find it online but there was a burger king floating restaurant in st louis built in like opposition to the mcdonald's floating restaurant. Yes. So I could not find a lot of details on this Burger King barge. But in 93, during this huge flood, it got swept away and headed straight for the popular street bridge and rammed into it. Holy shit. So they were able to rescue it. But then it rolled over two months later and sank

oh no apparently when the river goes lower in periods of drought you can see it so in 2012 when the mississippi hit all-time lows like the burger king barge like rose out of the ashes you see the grim skeleton of Vid Kid. If you read about other floating restaurants across the country, almost every story is it broke loose during a flood and ran into some bridge every time. Naval warfare. The ghost ship McDonald.

The ghost ship McDonald and its spectral crew came in, unmoored their rivals, and sent them to their own watery fate. God, that was good. Tell me about the floating restaurant in Huntington. I cannot remember what it was called. It was not, we had two, actually. One of which was like a restaurant and bar that I did not frequent very often. So I do not remember what it was.

The other one was just kind of like a, it was well outside of Huntington. My dad's going to kill me that I don't remember because we actually went to this one quite a few times. And it just, it was just kind of a restaurant that you would walk down a pier to get to. It wasn't necessarily a full-blown boat uh and it sank like while i was still living in huntington yeah like it like went under i think the the barge bar ended up being okay yeah but um okay in the sense that it didn't float it was not a very fun place to be if memory yeah it's hard to say it's not like the food is particularly good

on these floating restaurants but the concept of it is very charming and very problematic and kind of delightful yeah there's one uh there's but there is one in hong kong remember that like we tried to get into and it's like it's like a really fancy roast duck restaurant but like it takes a bit because you have to take a ferry out to it it is just like this huge hyper colorful boat uh i would love to check that out i think a lot of times people assume the novelty is enough and they don't work too hard on the food yeah apparently and also it's it sounds like it's not a great investment so why would you put a lot of money behind great cuisine if you're probably going to lose it in a few years anyway like they always say the two best days your life for when you buy your boat, and then when the GoShip McDonald comes and sinks it, and you collect the insurance money, which you split with the GoShip McDonald because you had a whole racket.

You had a whole racket going, didn't you? James. Crack the case. Hey, here's what our friends at home are talking about. Katie says, my small wonder is vacuum cleaners that have a self-winding electrical cord. The fact that it saves time by just pressing a little lever with your foot and makes a satisfying zoob sound as it winds up. Perfection. The one we have at work always reminds me of a robot slurping up spaghetti and makes vacuuming the lobby bearable each night.

makes vacuuming the lobby bearable each night this is like one of those ideas that if shark tank had existed would have shown up on shark tank and would have been incredible because it's such a like brilliant innovation it is but i'm pretty sure if they did that on shark tank like none of the sharks would do it and then like when the episode aired hoover would just be like yoink yeah don't mind if i do henry loves this, by the way. It like always makes him laugh. Scares the shit out of me. I'm afraid it's going to whip back and get me and plug into my leg and electrocute me. Even though I know that's not how any of it works. Rebecca says, I love when you take Friday off at work for whatever reason, maybe just to get an extra long weekend.

And the Thursday before feels like your own secret Friday. TGIT? Why don't you talk about this, Griffin? Why? Because I don't think this has affected you in a very long time. TGI taking a Friday off work and then having a secret TGIT?

Yeah, I mean, when I look around at my chums at the office and know that these suckers are going to be here, you know, scribbling the ink and dipping the pins and filing these paper clips all day. And Timothy didn't make the coffee again. And I look at them and I'm like, oh, thank God it's Thursday. Because I hate them. I should take you to work with me one time.

Please do. Like a take your husband to work day. I've forgotten, although you don't have any co-workers now either. That's true. Heads have rolled. But I do have to go sit in an office space for 40 hours a week. Alone. Which comes with its own challenges.

Yeah, like the sex doll that you talk to while you're there just to keep the loneliness from setting in. Sort of a Lars and the Real Girl situation happening there. All the comedic choices you could have made. You had to go with sex doll. Yeah. Unlike the potted plant that you kiss. There you go. When you get lonely.

Do you at least call the plant Griffin? That's our friends at home. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. Find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you for listening. Thanks to Maximum Fun. If you are not familiar with the other shows on the network,

I would recommend you go to maximumfund.org and look through the huge list of podcasts every day there are different podcasts that go up on that site and it continues to be incredible yeah and um yeah we have shows on there you can go to macroy.family if you want to see all this stuff we do uh gonna have new merch up in august uh i think that's it gosh i'm so tired i can't think of a joke because i'm so tired babe baby end it in the episode please in the episode please i had an idea and i shared it with griffin and i think it would be a great bonus episode where we just spend the whole episode just bouncing ideas off each other on what our sign off should be. How about none of your beeswax?

It doesn't really fit with the tone. Don't have a cow, man. That's a wonderful pizza pie. Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that? Did we do that? Did I do that? Did we do that?

Did we do it? Jeez, please. Did we do that? Bye. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Alright! This one is about some books! One, two, one, two, three, four.

Hi, everybody. My name is Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. And together we're the hosts of Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. What does that mean for you, the podcast consumer? Well, it means that you're going to get a lot of stories about how we used to do weird stuff to people in order to try to fix them. Do you know that we used to think diseases were caused by bad smells and that we used to eat mummies for medicine?

That's super funny. I kind of like it. Well, thanks. And we hope you'll kind of like our show, Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. It's available every Friday wherever fine podcasts are sold or at beautiful, picturesque home at MaximumFun.org. All right! Yeah!