Wonderful! - Wonderful! 97: 12 Angry Virtual Pets

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

Griffin's favorite practical shopping! Rachel's favorite non-fiction piece! Griffin's favorite benign digital distraction! Rachel's favorite home away from home! 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- well, that's too loud. This time it's gonna be just right, baby. Don't worry, we got that perfect porridge now. I'm a little quiet. Are you too loud? Now we got that perfect porridge. Let me dip my finger in it. Ooh, that's nice. We're ready now. I'm a little hot. We're ready now.

I'm a little hot. No, we're good now. Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Could you just point the mic just a little bit further down? So now it's more of a physical. Let me see.

Oh, that looks great. Yeah, so this is wonderful. In this podcast, we talk about things that we are really into right now, like contained plosives and gain balance and, you know. Perfect porridge. Perfect porridge and all that good stuff. Listen, we're rounding 100. Yeah. And we need to talk about what we're going to do off camera, because I don't have any

fucking idea. I think we did actually talk about something. Did we? Yeah. Oh, shoot. How quickly we forget, huh? Well, I remembered. Well, how quickly we both forget an equal amount.

But anyway, you can't come into 100 sounding like complete shit, you know? There's just no excuse for it, people. Invest in some acoustics treatment, for God's sakes. Mm-hmm. I can't tell you how many 100-episode old podcasts I listen to that still sound like the butt cheeks. So I want us to sound like some real professional shit, some real Ira Glass shit.

What's the opposite of the butt cheeks um well you gotta understand the butt cheeks can be good or bad it depends on how you use it and sort of like your cadence like oh god this audio is just it's the butt cheeks or if you're talking about a song you're like oh this song is the butt cheeks is this this the new slap? I think so. I used to say, I feel like I used to say that's the butt cheeks for a brief period of my life. And I can't remember if it was the period where I was doing recorded audio entertainment for the masses or not, but I would like to bring it back. That's the butt cheeks, man.

I like it. Yeah. Do you have any small wonders? I do. What is it? cheeks man i like it yeah do you have any small wonders i do what is it uh so i was looking today and i saw that they uh posted some concert footage from lollapalooza 2019 yes in the great city of chicago oh yeah uh i used to volunteer to be um a volunteer at that festival. You didn't volunteer to perform?

Don't worry, guys. I got this. No, no. It was like 2005 to maybe 2008 I used to volunteer. Anyway, I have a real soft spot for Lollapalooza. Lollapalooza is fun. Is that what they called it for you? It's the volleyball festival they have every

year uh and i saw an incredible concert video of death cab and chance the rapper yeah performing do you remember and it was very very good chance the rapper is maybe one of the best live shows uh i would say in the nation right now have you seen him i got to see him at acl fest oh that's right uh and he just puts on such a good live show he just brings such like energy energy and enthusiasm to everything he does uh and to see him like in his home city of chicago in front of a huge ass crowd yeah it was incredible so good i want to talk about uh for my small wonder the chorus of you are my sunshine it's a sweet song i was gonna bring it as a big wonder because i sing it to henry like a few times every night and it's sweet like i just like you know you're my sunshine

my only sunshine you make me happy when skies are gray uh uh you'll never know dear how much i love you please don't take my sunshine away that's's sweet, right? And that's nice. And you sing it to your kid and it's sweet. And I was going to talk about that. I was going to look into the history of it and talk about it. And then I read the verses. Did you know about the verses? There's more, right?

Yeah. Yeah, but I feel like I knew that, but I don't remember anything about it. The verses are so creepy. The verses are so creepy and bad and unhealthy. I mean, the whole idea of please don't take my sunshine away kind of suggests a foreboding element yeah um i'll just go through some of the highlights here uh the other night dear as i lay sleeping i dreamed i held you in my arms but when i awoke dear i was mistaken and i hung my held and cried so that didn't rhyme even a little bit but

that's fine we can keep pushing through. Second verse. I'll always love you and make you happy if you will only say the same. But if you leave me to love another, you'll regret it all someday. Hey, you are my sunshine. Oh, this is not a song for kids, huh? No, it's kind of not. You told me once, dear, you really loved me and no one else could come between. But now you've left me and love another.

You have shattered all my dreams. Come here,'s time for our betty by song i think this is maybe a song for it for a lover and not for a child it's a song for a lover in 1939 when you thought that this was an acceptable way to talk to your lover uh when it still wasn't but yeah uh i had a i actually had a good hearty laugh maybe that's the small wonder is the big laugh i had while researching this and then you know control a deleting all of my notes about you are my sunshine who goes first this week it's the who goes first this week song i think it's you who think i was first this wink it's me yeah my first thing i like many subjects i've tried to tackle in the past couldn't think of a good way to put it in words but i what i landed on is like shopping for and like picking your everyday load out

for and like picking your everyday load out. Putting together your everyday load out. I'm sorry that I can't. Okay. To extrapolate. I think that back to school shopping is kind of like a great example of this. And the first like exposure you get to this idea. You're a kid or in high school or college or whatever you go to the store you got a budget you you want to find some cool bags

with cool characters on them maybe depending on how old you are maybe you do need a teenage mutant ninja turtles one because that's what's cool and you want people to know that you know what is up uh you want the hypest trapper keeper um and maybe when you get older, you're looking for maybe more functional stuff, a more functional trapper keeper. But you still want it to look good. But it's like a different it's a different set of priorities. And all that all that back to school shopping stuff is like a different kind of shopping from like, I'm going to go buy myself some nice things that I'm excited for. buy myself some nice things that I'm excited for because it's like an all day thing that is functional that people are going to see you with all the time. Yes.

Did you know I thought about doing back to school shopping as my topic? Wow. And I actually was curious to see what the back to school trends were for 2019. Oh, well, let me Google that after I finish. Okay. That'll be a fun little miniature segment. It's not really anything that you would hope it would be. Oh, did you already Google that after I finish. Okay. That'll be a fun little miniature segment. It's not really anything that you would hope it would be. Oh, did you already Google it?

I did, yeah. Whoa, okay. Well, then go ahead and tell me, correspondent on the field, Rachel McElroy. So I ended up on like Seventeen Magazine. Ugh, they don't know. They're Seventeen. Yeah, and it was just kind of like, hey, wear this romper and maybe put a sweater over it in case it's cold. Get the fuck out of here 17

what i wanted i wanted like real like now fashion real shit i also wanted to know like is there going to be a seventh paw patrol member that they're debuting on a jacket or something um anyway i haven't gone back to school shopping for quite some time but like to bring it forward into the adult age i get this way with some stuff. Clothes are maybe like too broad of an example, right? Because it's, fashion is like kind of its own thing, but like a jacket, I will research a jacket because a jacket, I want it to be suitable for like a few different kinds of weather,

the kinds of weather that I am likely to be exposed to. I want it to have good pockets, the right number of pockets, functional pockets. pockets i wanted to have form and function you're saying this is if you have one jacket per year and i know that that's not true i have several jackets but i don't want to just buy a fucking jacket willy-nilly when we went to new orleans to do our tour it was about 30 degrees colder than i thought it was going to be and i spent like half a day looking for a peacoat just like a nice peaco coat because i know i look good in a pea coat but i wanted one that doesn't look like and feel like and doesn't have pockets and feel like dog shit

so i spent some time on it the biggest like the biggest thing i got into was about last year i got real deep into shopping for bags shopping for backpacks because i had that swiss gear backpack that everybody has and it fell apart and i was like let me look at some other shit you say everybody but really it's just your two other brothers me and my two brothers no it's like a best seller on amazon that's why we decided to buy it okay and so like i needed a backpack that you know had the correct uh container size it had the correct number of gallons is how they measure that right and so like if it's too many gallons it's not going to fit under a plane seat and at that point like what the fuck am i even doing here but i measure backpacks and gallons

i'm pretty sure yeah unless i'm like wildly misremembering which wouldn't be the first time that's happened on the podcast but i needed to be able to fit like my backpack a small a second backpack i need to be able to fit my laptop and like uh my my big headphones and the switch is like always like those three are always coming with a third backpack a third backpack goes in there uh a stylus maybe ipad maybe pin like some sharpies this is why it's so hard to shop for you griffin is that you have opinions about a lot of things yeah you do good though like you have never gotten me something that has gotten you a bad item of clothing i'll say you've never got me a bad item clothing no and and for like other things like cooking implements like you crush it every time and i feel like that's kind of i don't know that's not something i that's not my everyday thing but i would never buy you a backpack

because what i'm saying yo you shouldn't you shouldn't you wouldn't get it i know you wouldn't get it it literally took me like two weeks to find the perfect back because they're expensive like nice backpacks are expensive but i got so fucking into it because i use it constantly and it's held up really nicely and it is perfect for me it's the perfect size it can like everything fits so neatly inside this bag that when i zip it up it's like not an inch of space is it's so so nice and i love it so much and it's just like that's part of my loadout and the stuff that i keep in there is kind of too like i always take that switch with me everywhere i go whenever i travel that laptop's always with me.

There's this concept called everyday carry that is kind of like this. I remember there was a phase where like a couple of my buddies back in Huntington were like doing this, where you just sort of lay out all the things that you carry with you and you take a nice picture of it. Like what's the gear Travis is, is more into this than I am because Travis almost always has like a bottle opener. Like that, that's what I'm talking about.

Like, you know, you got your, your phone, your wallet, your, you got your, you know,

some folks like a watch, a pocket knife, a, like a craftsman, a little comb switchblade, like whatever. I'm into it. I like that idea of just like,

here's my, your Tamagotchi here's my inventory and slap bracelet i don't have i don't have like i don't know i don't get excited to shop for i get more excited to shop for stuff like this than i do for like frivolous stuff um and i don't even leave the house all that often so it's not like the biggest thing you're the same way about travel mugs oh you've had uh many a travel mug since i've known you uh it's mostly because i keep losing the dig dang things or or you don't wash them and i don't wash them and i leave them in the back seat of a car for a month and a half and i'm like well that one's just toast that one's got amoebas in it

what's your first thing so my first thing is a non-fiction piece that was published in the paris review back in july and it was called the crane wife i saw this pop up like everywhere i feel like it kind of blew up yeah a little bit uh it was written by cj hauser uh she is a professor in Colgate University of Creative Writing. Well, and dentistry, right? And dentistry. They all have to also do, they do have to do some teeth stuff on the side. So this piece got passed around a lot because it very precisely captures the experience of many women that date somebody who makes them feel just less than, I guess.

Right. You know, just more insecure than they were when they started. So the piece begins in this really kind of compelling way. The first sentence is, 10 days after I called off my engagement, I was supposed to go on a scientific expedition to study the whooping crane on the Gulf Coast of Texas. So she has written a couple novels. And her second one is called Family of Origin. And it came out that same month in July,uly i think and i haven't read this novel but i'm assuming what she's referring to in her essay is studying for the novel that just came out is it about cranes and stuff i think it's just about just the just the natural world in many ways cool like a zoo books

nice man she wrote a zoo books i love it sometimes it's if if you've been frozen for 20 years and then your frame of references are all based on i still get zoo books dude i still get zoo books check the mailbox oh that's right i sneak them in the house as soon as they get here and i hide them in my closet because i don't want you taking my freaking zoo books i don't want our kids slobbering and blobbering all over i'm ruining my freaking zoo books there's new zoo animals all the time man um so wait are you saying that each issue has a new zoo animal or that all the time new zoo animals new zoo animals popping out man elephants too Elephants, too. The sequel to elephants. Like koalas, you know, and alligators. Super gators, man.

Just furry gators. Yeah, they're big furry gators that have two torsos, two heads, no legs, no tails. So cool these guys are. And so this story kind of goes back and forth between the end of her engagement and her previous relationship and then her experience studying, you know, the various, you know, pond life in Texas. You know, pond life. Yeah, sure, sure. I shouldn't have to go into that. Everybody knows pond life.

Everyone knows who ponds are and what they can do. So The Crane Wife may sound familiar to you because it's actually based on Japanese folklore. It's a story about a crane that tricks a man into thinking it is a woman so she can marry him. So she plucks out all of her feathers and continues to do so to continue to keep the man. Interesting. I didn't know that. I only knew the Decembrist album. Yeah, exactly. That may also be why it's familiar.

Maybe I knew it back when I was in college listening to that album. I've forgotten a lot of things since college. So the story is about her and her engagement to this man who is very unromantic and very emotionally unavailable. And so she gives some examples kind of of their relationship and points in which he, you know, kind of let her down or left her feeling kind of more lonely and sad than she was before. But I wanted to read this excerpt from it because I felt like this is an example of how precisely it kind of captures the experience of just generally being in a bad relationship, not necessarily gendered in any way. So I just wanted to share this.

I need you to know I hated that I needed more than this from him. There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes me hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient. I did not want to feel like the kind of nagging woman who might exist in a sitcom. These were small things and I told myself it was stupid to feel disappointed by them. I had arrived in my 30s believing that to need things from others made you weak. I think this is true for lots of people, but I think it's especially true for women. When men desire things, they are passionate. When they feel they have not

received something they need, they are deprived or even emasculated and given permission for all sorts of behaviors. But when a woman needs, she is needy. She is meant to contain within her own self everything necessary to be happy that i wanted someone to articulate that they loved me that they saw me was a personal failing and i tried to overcome it jeez i thought that was so powerful yeah i mean so so i don't talk about this a lot but before griffin and i were together i was in a relationship from when i was like 19 all the way up to 28. And I would say that both of us had a lot of trouble with being emotionally available. And it just kind of bubbled over at a certain point. And we are still on good terms today. So it wasn't as if I, you know, totally burned all

the bridges there. But I just I recognized that neither of us was getting what we needed from the relationship because both of us were just unable to communicate and unable to be vulnerable with each other. And I ended up feeling very uncomfortable, like saying what I needed in that relationship. And it really made me realize a lot of things about myself. And I think this is true for a lot of people. You know, the first time you're in a relationship, you don't really know what is just being in a relationship. Yeah, you don't have that context. Yeah, and what compromises are appropriate, you know,

and what is actually like not appropriate, you know, and what is actually like not appropriate, you know, and shouldn't be done to be in a relationship. Griffin and I have talked about this a lot because I think we were really surprised when we got together how little we felt like we had to sacrifice to be together. You know, I think we were both like, oh, you mean I get to be me all the time and I can be happy together with this person who is also being themselves? It's pretty fucking good. Yeah. I feel like it's so cliche to write off all of your past relationships as being silly or something because you've aged.

I'm thinking of high school. I know you didn't date a lot in high school or anything like that. But I look back at relationships from then, most of them anyway. And, you know, my relationships from college and thinking like how, you know, ultimately compared to our marriage, it was something that was more like immature in a way but really it's just because like now i have the context from this relationship to look back and realize like oh i didn't know that that's how it could be i didn't know that that's and and not to say that like it's a neutral thing like i didn't know that that's what i should have been doing like it's not like the other person was feeling like i feel like a jag for not you know being better about being in a relationship because now i know but like i think you have to let yourself off the hook and just say like that context is so valuable yeah

no it's completely true i think that's why a lot of people feel like you have to date a lot of individuals before you you know commit to anyone because you have to figure out what you want yeah and there is something to be said for that because you just you just don't know how to be with another person until you've done it for a while yeah um i i like this piece a lot again it's called the crane wife and it was in paris review it's pretty easy to find uh i i liked it too because you know she's she's critical of her partner but she also kind of presents it very factually of just like this is the person he was and it was completely the wrong person for me uh and i realized it slowly over time and so it doesn't feel like you're reading about this like evil villainous person it's just somebody

who just was categorically not the right person for her yeah And I just, I really, I think it's a really good piece. I'd recommend it. Yeah. Hey, before we move on, I do need to admit something to you. Yes. Oh no, Griffin's been a crane this whole time. Is that what a crane sounds like? There you go.

That sounds right. Do you read about this in your zoo books? Hey, crane. Can I steal you away? Okay. got a message here for jessica aka spooky and it's from kevin jessica you're a wonderful person here's a list of my small wonders about you your artistic ability your eye for fabric and color your fashion sense your empathy and kindness also you have really cool hair my wonderful thing is our love i

love you a bunch and wanted to commemorate it through our favorite podcast love you forever kevin it's self-love is also so important um i think that that is really special has anyone ever told you you have cool hair me yeah no we've talked about this me neither i have the most base ass hair ever. I just, I think that's maybe one of the best compliments I've ever heard. Rachel gets pretty upset if you don't tell her how soft her hair is when you're touching it. There's sometimes. Go ahead and explain.

I think I have really soft hair. You do. Oh my God, you do. Please. And there's been many points in my life where I've just kind of, you know, touched my own hair and thought, how has nobody ever told me how soft my hair is? Yeah. So I casually mentioned it to Griffin. Casually. And by casually, I mean that I recommended he compliment me on my soft hair.

Once? The one time? Now it's pretty frequent. I'd say it's almost daily. The demands. Yes, the demands. The requests. This is what I need, Griffin. Yes, and I'd say it's almost daily. The demands. Yes, the demands. The requests. This is what I need, Griffin. Yes, and I give it to you.

You do. Do you want to hear this next message? Yes, I do. It is for Amy and it is from past Amy. What a coincidence. Dear Amy, right now you're probably working super hard, getting used to living on your own and having an amazing time in Portland. It's hard to tell yourself this, so I'll do it for you. I'm so proud of you for getting into art school and taking this huge leap out of your comfort zone.

You're doing great and I can't wait to be where you are. Oh, shit. Then this is the moment of singularity. This is the time where Amy leaps into Amy in the future. Oh, see, I was thinking this is where Marty McFly sees himself performing at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. Oh my God, then there's another Amy. A future past Amy. Past Amy, don't do anything to do not

mess with future Amy and vice versa this message alone is probably a huge violation of the the time scanner rules

uh that said thank you for thank you for the buying this message I'm Riley Smurl I'm Sydney McElroy and I'm Taylor Smurl and together we host a podcast called Still Buffering, where we answer questions like...

Why should I not fall asleep first at a slumber party? How do I be fleek? Is it okay to break up with someone using emojis? And sometimes we talk about bugs. No, we don't. Nope. Find out the answers to these important questions and many more on Still Buffering, a sister's guide to teens through the ages. I am a teenager.

And I was too. Butts, butts, butts, butts, butts. No. I want to tell you about my second thing. I am about, have you ever watched 12 Angry Men? Yes. Do you know the scene where the guy's talking about like the knife and he's like, this is a tortoiseshell knife with this pattern, with this inch blade.

What are the odds that somebody else would just like have one of those knives? And then one of the other guys stands up and pulls one out of his pocket and stabs it into the table and it's like what's up i have one i didn't remember that until you just described it in detail but you remember that now that i've described it in detail okay i'm about to do that okay is that why your eyes got real big yeah explain to everybody what you're holding earlier when griffin's was referencing um the type of items one might keep in their pocket uh and he said things like um gosh i don't even remember now i'm so flustered i know wallet keys whatever wallet keys yeah and i made the joke that it would be a tamagotchi and he just reached in his pocket and handed me a tamagotchi hell yeah i did that's a tamagotchi on that's the new shit just came out last month oh yeah this is the new this is all new stuff okay okay all right

it takes two double a triple a batteries which i haven't put in there yet so i haven't brought my child to life maybe i'll do it later on in the show and we'll do like a live hatching i see i that would be exciting for people don't you think i never had one you got the back off nice could you not figure that out before no i loosened the screw while i was in the closet earlier i didn't want you to see that i had it i wanted this amazing reveal moment so i never had one of these oh yeah um but i remember a friend did uh and this one is pretty large it's larger than it's big well it's like full color it's like a full color lcd screen full color it's pretty technologically advanced uh i am talking about tamagotchi

because uh you say tamagotchi uh it's t-a-m-a-g-o-t-c-h-i i said tamagotchi well it's a tamagotchi is right it's i i guess i was putting a little bit of appalachian stink on it because it is a portmanteau of the word tamago which is japanese for egg did you have one of these uh yes i did uh i had an earlier generation one which is the one that got school kids in trouble because like if you didn't interact with it for like like 10 hours then it would just fucking die like that was the time limit that you were on which is fair like if we didn't interact with like our infant child for 10 hours he probably wouldn't be in a very good place um but uh yeah i want to talk about tamagotchi

because i got one for christmas when i was younger and that little dude was just my whole life i loved i loved that sweet little egg boy um what did they look like like the little digital screen would show what exactly i don't remember well it would depend on what stage of life they were at right like most pretty much all the versions of tamagotchi you would hatch the egg inside of the egg uh and there was all this lore about like how the physical egg you were holding was like the containment unit for it so it could survive uh and then when it was uh like an infant then it was just like a little blob but then like as it grew up to be like a child it would grow ears and then like as it was a teen and then an adult and later ones you could grow it into a senior you know it would just get bigger and get like more stuff and like

what did it look like though uh like bunny ears sometimes it would grow uh would it like grow like legs and arms like a human being or no i think so yeah i think i think it can get there it's been a long time since i've seen any of the old crew. Can I give this back to you? Yeah, please. Tamagotchi. Obviously, lots of competitors came after Tamagotchi because it was hugely successful.

Then you had your, like, Giga Pets, which I had one of. Did you think about this? Because I was talking about little computer people. And probably was, that probably was what got me there. So it was invented, Tamagotchi was invented by a woman named akimaita who was an office worker working at bandai uh which is a toy company and an entertainment company that has merged to become bandai namco um and she was 30 years old she had this idea of just like a pet that you could take anywhere uh that like anyone could take care of a kid could take care of and it would not have like the downsides of owning a pet

which is to say like poop everywhere uh and so she teamed up with a toy designer named akihiro yakoi um and they put together this concept and they made hundreds of prototypes and they would just pass them out to like school girls in shibibuya and just say like, what do you think? What do you think of this little egg? And did all their QA testing there. Well, not QA testing, but like R&D stuff there. And then they released it in November 1996. And by the end of the year, it was being sold in over 30 countries and was like wildly, profoundly the biggest thing ever.

Isn't it kind of fascinating that somebody came up with the idea of this little device that had a screen on it that you carried around with you all the time, like before there were smartphones? Like somebody just had that idea of like, you know know what i don't think this is going to be too much to ask i think people will be willing to look at a screen on and off all day yeah they were certainly right about that one um so since then since november 1996 which is when the first one dropped uh over 44 different versions of tamagotchi tamagotchi have been released uh and they've gotten more sophisticated as time uh went on as of 2017 82 million tamagotchi units have been sold worldwide um and then this past summer the new shit dropped tamagotchi on uh i actually saw some people tweeting pictures of their tamagotchi on and it reminded me like hey

i could do a wonderful segment about this and buy it and I can expense it. I'm going to expense this purchase. And so the gameplay, it like changed and got more sophisticated. They became less quick to die. Starting like generation three, you could let them go a little bit longer and the penalties wouldn't be quite as severe. They would include newer like age ranges

that they could age up through. Uh, you could play games with them and like get points that you could use to unlock stuff. Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask was like, at its core, was it just like feeding a thing and like cleaning it or something? Like, what did you do with these things? I mean, yeah, you fed it and you cleaned it you hear him he's coming to life i don't know how to turn the sound off oh well we'll figure it out as we go uh anyway yeah you would feed it you could play games with it you would have to um you you would have to what's the word i'm looking for not punish but if it like acted up

discipline yeah discipline is really what would you do uh i don't remember i think you would just i it's probably in this version so i'll tell you once i get up and running yeah put them in time out i don't think you did you know used corporal punishment or anything horrible like that um but yeah you had to do a few things that had all these different meters. So there was like a happy meter and a health meter and a discipline meter. And, you know, you had to keep them balanced. And if you did, they would get older and, you know, do more stuff. And then you could play games with them and, you know, add stuff to their environment. Or later versions had like full blown, like kind of games going on in them where you could develop skills with them,

which they would use to get careers. And then, which seems a little bit like my escapist fantasy of having a little egg child. Now I have to worry about their job also is too stressful. I'm so confused because the screen on these things is the size of a quarter like how do they indicate that your little tamagotchi has a job yeah that's a good question uh there was also an

ios game that came out uh that i think probably had a little bit more screen real estate to work with they included wireless functionality after a while so your tamagotchi could go hang out with somebody else's and then they also added marriage and mating where you could like mix two Tamagotchis together to have like a little baby. That's pretty cool. Yeah. They just, they just got bigger and bigger and I don't know.

I just like the, it's just this benign little distraction. I like, I like benign distractions for kids. It's something where, you know, it became so important to me and my cohorts who had one. And as for kids it's something where uh you know it became so important to me and my cohorts who had one and as adults it's just like i don't know did you ever know

anybody that had more than one yeah yeah yeah yeah like was juggling like several well no you wouldn't juggle with them because if you drop them then that's it they know if you drop them they get really really angry and they tell you to do bad stuff if you drop them. You can go to jail. You can go to jail. You can go to Tamagotchi jail. What's your second thing? I'm going to be playing

with my Tamagotchi the whole time. I know, I figured as much. My second thing. I'm setting him down. No, you can play with it if you want. No, baby. I think that'd be like a little fun spice to my segment.

Well, you're going to say my second thing is a really serious and dramatic thing no it's not oh okay it's vacation rentals yeah okay we just got back from a weekend kind of a staycation because we were literally only like 15 minutes away from our house now uh we rented a big old house with a pool and had a bunch of our friends get together and it was super awesome and it's something we've been doing for years now yeah it's a rachel and my birthdays are like three weeks away so we usually try to split the uprights and like do it then but uh

all of our friends are old and have kids and so that's harder to do yeah yeah so we um we started doing this when griffin and i had just been dating. I think it was maybe for my 30th birthday was when we started. And, you know, now I'm 37. So we've been doing this on and off for a long time. Yeah, sure. We used to go a little bit further out from Austin and we'd find like an actual lake house. It was usually a shithole, which is the most fun kind. Yeah, we started on a real shoestring.

We would ask our friends to kind of split the cost with us. And so we try and keep the price real low. And so we would end up with these weird houses that had been kind of added on to and like thrown bunk beds on top of bunk beds in like bedrooms that maybe used to not be bedrooms. So these like Winchester mystery house ass houses uh and that's that's part of what i love about vacation rentals like it it really reminds me of like playing in a dollhouse as a kid of like you go into this space that is for all purposes yours for you know 48 hours or however long you're there. And you get to kind of live this other existence. Yeah.

And most often like with a bunch of people around you, you know, having this kind of new experience together. And it's so much better than just like, you know, a hotel or something where you don't feel that kind of personal experience with the space. You know, it's like designed to not be personal. It's like going to an open house and then sleeping there. Yeah, exactly. So the whole vacation rental concept really began in the 50s with this idea of timeshares. What? Oh, okay. You know, of people having beach houses that would like share with other people throughout the year.

Right. But the Vacation Rental Managers Association was founded in 1985. And vacation rentals by owner or Vrbo, as it is sometimes called, started in 1995. Never knew that that's what that stood for. And it initially just listed one property in Breckenridge, Colorado. Which I kind of love. Yeah, I love Breckenridge, though. It's a nice place.

2005 is when we got VRBO and HomeAway joined together. And then in 2007, 2008 is when we got airbnb okay so the story of airbnb is like much more scrappy so i thought i would share it uh these friends that had grown up together named uh brian chesky and joe gebbia moved to san francisco in 2007 and could not afford their apartment. So they came up with the idea of putting an air mattress in their living room and turning it into a bed and breakfast. So in 2008, they had another roommate join them, or a former roommate, not like they

had three people living in this apartment. But this person brought a chief technology officer experience and they founded their new venture which they called air bed and breakfast is that whether it is because they put a fucking air mattress in their living room yeah exactly and you can still do that like you can rent a room in somebody's house yeah like when you're going through the listings and trying to specify what you want there is an option of just like choosing a bedroom in somebody's house. In 2015, Expedia bought HomeAway, which was also with VRBO, to join together to try and compete with Airbnb because Airbnb is kind of like, you know, it's kind of the big thing now.

As of 2015, the vacation industry uh is worth an estimated 85 billion home away alone has more than 2.8 million rooms which is more rooms than the four largest hotel chains in the world wow um way to boy to brag home away i think i think this is great especially because a lot of times you'll be visiting a person and they live in a location where there aren't a lot of hotels to choose from. Right. And you want to be close by. And so you'll just go on one of these sites and kind of, you know, look at a zip code or look at a particular community and see what your options are. And you get the kind of convenience of, you know, potentially having a kitchen or,

you know, like having a nice like living room, dining room set up so that you can like buy your own food make your own meals and really kind of feel like a local when you're visiting a place yeah that luxury is obviously like just that a luxury and it is nice for me it is always just like boy i'm gonna get some stories out of this house like i feel like I remember we stayed at like a really wild apartment in Hong Kong when we went there a few years ago. And I feel like I remember so many things about that apartment. Me too. We had this huge living room lined with all of these books. And then the bedroom was like the size of a shoebox.

And it was just floor to like wall to wall to wall just bed and the windows looked out on a tennis court where people were doing tai chi in the line like i remember that i remember that i remember everything about the weird winchester mystery house that we used to stay at that had like 2000 vhs tapes where that we would like watch. I watched so many. Seven huge projection TVs. Yeah, like old CRT, like four foot deep projection TVs. And like eight copies of Jaws. And that, yeah, I mean, that's where I watched a lot of, that's where I got turned on to like classic horror movies. Like that's where I watched Terminator and Predator and The Thing

for the first time. It's just because they all, like, I remember that shit. That's the stuff I remember. And the place we stayed in New Orleans that had all the the nudes it had a lot of wild nudes every room had several nudes on the and not tasteful i remember some of them being some of them were tasteful uh yeah yeah i i think it like if you can swing it i think it's it's a great option um and i i just i love that it exists i love that like anytime we're traveling somewhere i can be like oh you know what i wonder if i could find a place to stay that you know had like access to yeah some really cool thing especially for if you're traveling with a big group of buddies it's really nice yeah yeah the place that we

stayed had a whole bunch of bedrooms yeah so it's. Like you get to have a big old sleepover with your friends. I love it. I also love the song Money Won't Pay from Bowen and Augustus. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Rachel's going to tell you about Maximum Fun while I bring my Tamagotchi to life. Maximumfun.org is the website that hosts our lovely podcasts. It hosts our podcasts and other podcasts, podcasts that are focused on culture and on comedy. And you can listen to some narrative podcasts like Mission to Zix and Bubble, or you can listen to some interview podcasts like Bullseye.

Keep going. You have to set the time and date. I would recommend if you are not familiar with the other shows in the network to go to maximumfund.org and check them out they are all winners uh and uh fuck baby i can't figure it out um for those of you that ordered uh pins uh back when the max fundDrive had their pin sale, you should be receiving those shortly. And for those of you that are interested in checking out other McElroy programming. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tell them about the merch. You can go to McElroy.family. There's all sorts of cool merch on there. Backpacks, fanny packs, shirts, mugs, pins. This takes so long. Did it. I put in my name. Here we go, miracle of life.

Oh, okay, here he is. Wake up. He's not even doing anything. He's still just an egg. Baby, make him wake up. Oh, so it's a little egg rolling around in what appears to be a very nice living room. Crack him, smash him open.

I'm pushing some buttons. Oh, that shows the time. You can look at it in military time, too. That's fun. Smash him open. I want to play with him. I don't know which... There's three buttons on here which you push to smash.

He's just rolling around. Well, this was a big fucking waste of time. Money won't pay What can I pay? Money won't pay What can I pay? Money won't pay What can I pay? Money won't pay

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