Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 1: Time Makes Bozos of Us All

Episode Date: September 6, 2017

Welcome to Wonderful! It's a show all about being enthusiastic about the good things in our lives, and the lives of others. In this, our maiden voyage, we're celebrating Carly Rae Jepsen's Words Of Power, baseball movies, the Grand Prize Game, and so much more. Join us, won't you? Music: "Money Won't Pay" by Bo En and Augustus: https://open.spotify.com/track/5hs2nY40aeqM0mpP8SBOon MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. It's a, I don't know what to say. It's a, in this podcast, let me start. In this new revolutionary style of podcasting, I don't know what to say at this part, because usually we talk about the Bachelor, Bachelorette franchise, but we don't, we're not going to do that so much anymore.

Yeah. So for those of you that are new to a podcast with Rachel and Griffin, you should know we used to talk about reality dating television. Almost exclusively. Yeah. Mostly the Bachelor Bachelorette franchise. But for a lot of reasons, we've decided to move away from that and talk about things that just sort of universally make us happy in this new show called Wonderful. We did a pilot episode a few weeks ago when we were kind of testing out the waters to see what we wanted to do. And the answer was, and maybe it's a lazy answer, but

wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where you could just do a podcast about mystery flavored dum-dums if you were just fucking feeling it? And I'm feeling it. I'm pretty much always feeling it. So every episode, we're just going to endeavor to sort of talk about things we're enthusiastic about. We're going to ask you to share some things that you're enthusiastic about that we will then share enthusiasm about until we're just like, come on, feel this energy. That was so loud. Are you feeling the energy in this space right now? Yeah, so we're calling it an enthusiast podcast. And we invite you

to be enthusiastic with us. We are going to keep it probably a little tighter than usual than a lot of your hour-long podcasts. Partially because, and maybe you can tell this by the fact we're whispering and grimacing at the loud hot rod

that some teen high school fucking jock is driving outside is that we almost always record when our baby's asleep yeah we have a uh a nine month old baby his name is henry and he shares a wall with our recording studio it's true but he has two pink eyes and we think an ear infection so at this point his sensory game is less than perfect so maybe we can get a little bit louder here in the studio i'd rather not just because he's operating you know not at 100 um so maybe we should just get started and start just tucking away into some things do you want to and this is important because this is gonna be our first one what are

you just like fucking feeling right now, Rachel, what are you into? And keep in mind that like the success of our podcast, either, um, it hangs in the balance here because people are going to tune out if it's not a good one, but I don't want to put too much stress on you,

but just make sure it's like really sells the concept that we've been sort of stressing about for the past few months. Just really make sure that I can't stress this enough. Splits the uprights. Perfect. Touchdown. Pressure is sky high. Okay.

You know how in a touchdown, they have to throw the ball through the uprights. So go ahead. Let's hear it. Now, I'm going to preface this. This is an expression. It is not one that I myself use, but when other people use it, I'm always delighted. Okay. So our first one is an expression. Let's hear it. No worries.

Let me give you an example. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So sometimes, for example, let's say you accidentally bump into somebody or you take the last bag of charcoal at a grocery store. It happens a lot because I'm always making just big, big charcoal fires in the yard. And you start to apologize to the person and say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I know that you were going to take this bag of charcoal.

You are assuming a lot about how I handle things socially. Because most of the time, like, I am apologetic, butetic but i'm also my need to okay let me give an example to lower myself before somebody is also sort of up against my desire to never talk to like a stranger let me give an example okay be familiar with so you're at game stop oh this is in first episode of wonderful and you to come for my games and and you go to grab i cannot wait to hear this fucking poll the new mario 40 sensory experience from nintendo you're saying 40 f-o-r-t-y or four-dimensional you're talking about some captain eo it comes with smell it comes with smell comes with smell that's the ones that got the smell. That's the tagline. What's the smell?

And don't be racist against Italians. Or I guess, he's not really Italian. I heard that he's not going to be a plumber anymore. He's done being a plumber. And you can also come to Wonder for all your just breaking video game news. But Mario, he's done being a plumber. It's wild to me that Nintendo can just say that. He's not a plumber. Why is he to me that Nintendo can just say that. He's not a plumber.

Why is he wearing overalls? It's just his clothes? So. I bump into somebody because they try to take my Mario game from me. They try to take the Mario 4D. You say, oh, I'm sorry. And they say.

Well, I'd have a nerd voice and they'd have a nerd voice in this thing that you've painted. I'm sorry, I'm trying to take away my Yoshizor. And they say, no worries. And I always kind of like it when I hear it. I'm not a confident person in the sense that I could say no worries. I don't think it's for me necessarily,

but when other people say it to me, I enjoy it. Yeah, I think it definitely fills this sort of language niche, right? Like where it says, it's always in response to I'm sorry. Because thank you has your welcome. And I'm sorry has no worries. I guess I've just never really thought about no worries. But I guess it is a nice. It's super chill.

Like it's anticipating that this inconvenience might have you worried. And they're saying, hey, hey, hey, but before you get there. That's no beef. No worries. Is there another thing? What's the closest synonym to no worries? i agree with you no worries is powerful no worries hakuna matata are you setting me up i didn't think i was setting a trap but if you had said the next sentence in there i would have sprung the hakuna matata trap on you and you would have

been you would have been in my pit for hours. So I did a little research on this expression. You want to hear about it? There's research. I just thought it was like some weird like cosmic sort of consensus of just like we need a thing to say when somebody apologizes, but it's really not a big deal. The Oxford English Dictionary said that the usage of no worries began in Sydney, Australia in 1965.

Oh, what would that sound like? Please give... Please? Come on. They gave an expression. Oh, no, I need it. I'll get there. I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do it just for you because it's our very first episode of Wonderful. But they give an expression that I will read in my Australian accent. Oh, it's going to be so good, everybody. No worry.

It's amazing what a few schooners of jolly does for a bloke. You asked for it. I was just... I know. That was a good Jesus Christ. I was thanking Jesus. Do you see how I bent my head down? It's because I was immediately sent into a prayer state,

thanking Jesus for the gift of you. So they think the article I read, which was from Quartz.com, thinks that Crocodile Dundee played a big role in the Americanization of this expression, which was Crocodile Dundee for you who probably don't remember, because it was in 1986, was a box office hit. Didn't do as much research. You can believe that. You can tell where Rachel was like, I've done enough research.

It starred Paul Hogan, was the second best grossing film behind Top Gun. Wow, okay, never mind. Take it back. That's got to be old. Yeah, that's got to be old, old info. But his catchphrase was, no worries, mate. All right. Well, I like it.

Anyway. That was a good one. I never thought about no worries, but I like it. So I was walking in the stairwell at my work. And I almost bumped into somebody because the way the stairwell, the doors open up. Yeah. You run into people constantly.

Sure. And I said, Oh, I'm sorry. And she said, no worries. And I said, it's like,

you know me because I would have worried. Yeah. Thank you. There are definitely people who would take that worry. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm sorry.

Like, Oh, well now I'm in, now I'm in charge. I'm so sorry. Yeah, you are. Now I'm in charge. Uh, you want my last, you are. Now I'm in charge. You want

my last bit of research? You've done a lot of research. I'm starting to feel very shitty. I have like five things that I have no research on. I have a thing I didn't research. I'll do that next. But this website I went to, this Quartz.com website, said that the expression

is also very popular in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, as we mentioned, New Zealand, Philippines, and then behind all those, the United States. Okay, so that's maybe why it's not. People in Malaysia are saying it constantly. It's a thing that I have probably said 100,000 times, and I've heard 100,000 times, and I would not, I would not, if this was on an ACT, ACT, ACT, TCS prep test that was like, thank you is to your welcome is to, I'm sorry, is to what? I would not know the answer to it. It's a weird alien thing to think about divorced from bumping into somebody on a staircase,

but it is a nice little turn of phrase. It's an expression I like. I don't know which one I'm going to start with. So I think I'm just going to go with the one that is the longest. And that is the six notes that Carly Rae Jepsen sings leading into the chorus of Cut to the Feeling. I could have done anything here. It's episode one. I don't want to burn all of my good CRJ material.

But Cut to the Feeling dropped earlier this year, right? And a lot of people, like, Summer hit. And I listened to it, and I was like like, oh yeah, this is fucking great. And I, again, CRJ's Emotion is unironically probably top five albums of all time for me. But I only listened to Cuts of the Feeling that one time. And then I was trying to like entertain Henry and we were bouncing around in the bed. And I just put on like, oh, there's Cuts of the Feeling. And we just had a little dance.

And then listening to that, I was like, oh, wait a sec. This song fucking owns bones. I don't think I know the six notes that you're referring to. I will play it for you in a second very quietly. But there is a buildup to the chorus and it happens twice, I think, maybe three times

where she just lets out this sort of like Xena-like battle hymn. I'm gonna cut it in here. And this is, is this fair use? I think we're probably gonna be talking about like songs on here. So I think we gotta put on like 10, five seconds of a song as long as we're, let's do a parody of it.

More like butt to the feeling. And now it's fair use. I went to journalism school and I know all about fair use. If we just say butt to the feeling and now it's fair use i went to journalism school and i know all about fair use if we just say butt to the feeling from now on then we're clear to play this clip well and i took one journalism class in college so and it was all about fair use and butt to the feeling so and carly ray jefferson which was weird because it was 2001 they should absolutely well i think she what was she doing then she was probably on like um kids incorporated or some

shit was that on it kids incorporated is my next pick so i'll let we can just transition right into it um so here's a clip the the those six notes powerful just let them fill you with like maybe you're you're going through something right now just let them fill you with power and light. It's very good. When's that new album dropping is what I want to know. The answer is nobody knows. I read an article that she has hundreds of songs. I read an article that the next album could be 40 songs long.

She was on tour and she was just writing. She was just writing. We got to see her live. We did. It was literally literally lifelong dream i wanted to talk about this because like carly or jeffson really does make me extremely happy and i feel like there's some parts of my online persona and this is like something that is really kind of tricky to manage is there there are things that um are kind of ironic and then but but i try to keep most of it above board right and carly

jepsen is definitely one of those things like i definitely think she fucking rules and emotion is a really really good album but to this day i'll tweet about because the feeling or a video that i made of myself messing around in some game to favorite color which is like one of my favorite songs um it's a crj track off emotion and people like oh wow i just started listening because i thought you were joking this whole time what is it you think that you like about her um i think it is like i think it's kind of the the happy poppy sensibility it is a type of like elevated pop that i'm not a music critic at all until like i super don't really want to like pretend like I know what

the fuck I'm talking about um the like the the like music is very good like there's some fucking fresh beats on on the first one um and it just represents this like uh I feel like there's a lot there's a sort of ongoing narrative thread and again I'm showing my ignorance here of just like pop star saying like well mastered pop let's try something else and it feels like uh between her her few albums kiss was the one before uh emotion that was the one that had uh call me maybe on it and that was like call me maybe is like i think a lot of people were ironically into that song but i thought it was kind of a jam and now emotion just has transcended and like been this like just really really great album but like to to finish my point i i was on youtube on one of my weird like 1am deep dives and i was just watching music videos because i never watch fucking music videos anymore yeah and i watched

a new katie perry one and a new Taylor Swift one, the new Taylor Swift one. That's the new song off of her Ed Hardy album. And they were both so bad. And it just kind of like, I don't know, it just made me appreciate like, oh, you're just like crushing pop, right? Like this is the best pop now, I feel like. Here's what I'll say about Carly Rae. Hit me. like um here's what i'll say about carly ray hit me i feel like what i like about her songs is that when there's this kind of feel of like triumph like she's just conquered something and she's

like joyous and also like she's coming out on the other side of some shit yeah you know there's like this energy to it that you only get when you like come out on the other side of some shit yeah there's there's and like a lot of the songs touch on that like boy problems is about like you hear that and you think like oh it's about her having boy problems but it's actually about a friend of hers who she is exasperated by because she only talks about her boy problems and not like forming like a deeper connection with her friends and it's like oh that's good that's really good stuff um making the most of the night you hear that and it's just, and it's just like, oh, it's just like a,

you know, Kesha-style party anthem. But by the way, don't even get me started on the new Kesha album, because I've started listening to that very recently, and holy fucking shit, it's extremely good also. But it's not. Like, it is, like, about, like, you trying to get a friend out of a funk and going on an adventure with them to try to, like, raise their spirits. Like, there's a lot. I don't know. I just really like. Yeah. and going on an adventure with them to try to like raise their spirits. Like there's a lot, I don't know.

I just really like, I just, I really, I could listen to it nonstop. We took a trip after Emotion came out. I think it was one of our tours and we like measured time by Emotion listens because we just like burned it all down. So like, I don't know, it's really good. You and your bros. Yeah, and those six notes again, just one last time.

Let them fill you with power and just take on whatever the day's got for you. You got another one? Yeah. I'll do my less specific one now. Okay. Movies about baseball. Okay. This is surprising for a few reasons. did it surprise you that you picked this

even yes okay yes one i don't really like baseball i mean i i enjoy going to a baseball game um i'll watch it on television if other people are watching it i think there's i think that's erudite i enjoy the romanticization of baseball more than I enjoy baseball. So here's the thing. And maybe it's just because of the sheer volume of baseball movies, just because we are Americans in America and it is our national pastime. Sure. But there was this quiz the other day on like how stuff works, I think, that was like 100% of Americans can't name more than 10 baseball movies. And I was like, well, I'll take this quiz. And I got, like, tons of them right just by, like, looking at one image.

Well, the Major League Series gets you, like, halfway there. See, I didn't even, I'm not even talking about those. Angels in the Outfield. I haven't even seen those. Can I give you my list? Yeah, sure. These are the baseball movies that I have seen. Can we play Knockout and we'll just go back and forth and whoever can't name one loses?

I love games. Well, I have mine written down. Oh, well, shoot. So it's kind of cheating, but we can, I mean, we can play if you want. You'll just crush me with your cheater list. Okay. Okay. Sandlot. Angels in the Outfield. I'm just gonna take that one. Field of Dreams. I'll take just one major league and then now we're clear

again. Eight Men Out. Um, Little Big League? Was that the name of that one with the boy through the thing the boy through the arm no rookie of the year okay uh the natural little big league was another one where the kid it was another one yeah uh league of their own you said sandlot right that was your first one oh boy uh money ball and yeah my other one was gonna to be Rookie of the Year. So you kept up with me.

You got another one? Oh, now we're in it. Now we're in the fucking game. Oh my God, I need this. I need this win. I've never seen the Mr. 3000, but that's I think is baseball with Bernie Mac. Yes. Pitch.

Pitchman. Ooh, I've got that one too pitch man no pitch man are you babe are you thinking the jimmy fallon movie oh if you're a bitch did i just give that to you you did this is not a good podcast bad news bears probably fuck this this is not good podcast content it's our pilot episode we can't sit here and just prove how much baseball movies we know all of that to say yes i just i realize a lot of those movies i listed like field of dreams for example are movies that are pretty much entirely about baseball and i love them and i don't love baseball you don't dig on baseball i think i mean i like a movie with an underdog you know anytime there's like a team or a player that has to overcome some

kind of adversity yeah and maybe the nature of having innings in a baseball game kind of sets up that drama i think that's it i think it is a game that is based around like really powerful uh like structure for fictional drama because like football is tough to get that across it's a third down and there's seven seconds left what's that i think i figured it out so when a person comes up to a plate like all eyes are on them that's it for an extended period of time here comes tony here comes tony danza he's up there he's gonna do it tony dancing Angels of the Outfield? That was who you wanted to get?

Tony Danza is the... Okay, it's 2000 and... Tony Danza. Okay, go for it. Let her rip, Tony Danza from Who's the Boss? But I think any other sport, most players only get a few seconds. Like they have the ball for a few seconds or they have the puck or whatever. Most players only get a few seconds.

Like they have the ball for a few seconds or they have the puck or whatever. Baseball, that person could be at the plate for a long time. I also think in a baseball movie, it's easy to create a lot of characters. Yeah. You know what I mean? Fucking Daniel Stern and apparently Angels in the Outfields may be the only one I've seen. Just a tall, gawky dude chewing a bunch of chaw all the time. And that's that one. And then there's Tony Danza. And Christopher Lloyd was an angel. I don't think I've seen Angels in the Outfield. It had a very good message. I saw Rookie of the Year, which came out around the same time.

Were there angels in that one? No. Then they did not screen it at my church. Did watch it there. I watched it and I was like, oh oh man so your church saw angels in the title we're like this seems good let's yeah we had we did do that i remember at my church we did a movie like it didn't last long but we had like in the summers we would do like monthly or whatever movie parties and one of the times it was angels in the outfield and folks got into that one of the times it was signs um because that had a sort of uh sort of pre-determinationary sort of message in there um and then one time it was just the fugitive and it was like yo guys we lost the

plot a little bit kind of maybe sort of good flick but well it's about a man on a journey for christ but also to exonerate himself from a murder he did not commit um hey how do we go to the ads i'm relying on you on this one oh throw me a lifeline i definitely think we can keep doing the the yeah you know what else i think is wonderful well now but i was talking about yeah oh money is wonderful that seems sort of uh antithetical to like what we're going for here like yeah baseball movies are great and carly ray jepsen's six powerful notes her foosus Ro Dah, her dragon shouts. And also the following products you can buy. And also these products. No, I don't like that.

We've got to have a separation of church and state. Can we just do, hey, babe? Yes. Can I steal you away? No. I think we can just do it. I think we can just do it. I think because I definitely want that home improvement stinger still in the mix.

This was something we did on Rose Buddies for many years, too, was all that Rose Buddies ran. And I think it can stay in the picture. Okay, so the way it would work is that Griffin would ask if he could steal me away. And then inexplicably, I would go. See, that was a very, that was a pretty good stand stand that was more of a getting back to basics sort of a vanilla swirl yeah we don't want people to feel lost when you sing the home improvement commercial break music you want it to sound like the home improvement commercial break music so people aren't confused exactly um i have missed four picks in my fantasy football draft i don't know i i thought i could do this in podcast at the same time hey here's a jumbotron

message this one is for sasha and it's from lapis who says happy birthday dear sister through my transition and life you've been the most supportive and loving sister and i'm so proud you've finished your education degree and are now a real teacher. I couldn't think of a better way to thank you than having Griffin and Rachel wish you a happy birthday. Here's to another year of adventures, lunches, and love. Wanted this one in July. Hopefully you still

love teaching. Hopefully you still love teaching. These fucking kids. New school year. They come to my classroom, they steal all my Kleenex boxes. Got mad bugs, can't do nothing because these freaking kids. It's only been two months, but I'm so sick of their BS. Because of my bugs. All right.

I didn't know what, that was, I was trying to, I was role playing. You know how I like to do. Just exclusively around Kleenex. We were talking yesterday when we were buying Kleenex. It's about like every time you buy school supplies, you'd have to get Kleenexes for the teachers and how bogus that was that we had to supply those. Bogus in the sense like we're happy to do it, but also like, boy, you need me to get you these tissues?

That's no good. Ridiculous. This next message is urging you to go out and grab Supernatural Attraction Issue 1 at kelmcdonald.com. That's K-E-L-M-C-D-O-N-A-L-D dot com. And here's a little bit about that issue. Persephone was killed in a hit-and-run, but her roommate fixed her.

She has now returned from the dead with only a few scars as proof of the incident. from the dead with only a few scars as proof of the incident. Her unique situation allows her to find out her school is full of all kinds of supernaturals, and she's the focus of this community's attention. The first issue of this digital comic is up for sale at kelmcdonald.com. Listeners looking for some supernatural comedy mixed with romance will get 40% off with the code WHENYOUREADY. It looks like WHENYOUREADY is spelled W-H-E-N-Y-O-U-R-R-E-A-D-Y. So you may want to try that. So supernatural, romance, comedy, those are all things we like. Yes.

I mean, God, I have my supernatural. I mean, just breaking it downward forward those two brothers what won't they shoot demons and then comedy i mean that's my whole life blood and then romance a little bit of this right here a little bit of that a little bit of this gesturing to me a little bit of this oh and then there's some there's some obscene gestures um so yeah go check out that thing hey londoners do not miss out on your chance to see the beef and dairy network jordan jesse go and judge john hodgman live at the london podcast festival from sept September 13th through 17th. Tickets are still available.

So realize what you've done wrong and fix it. Get those tickets. For more information, go to MaximumFun.org and check out the live shows on the right side of the page. Go. Do it. I want to tell you about a thing I've been railing to lately. And you and you, the listeners, just strap in. I want to talk you about a thing I've been railing to lately. And you and you, the listeners, to strap in. I want to talk about virtual reality.

Uh-oh. Expand your mind. Broaden your horizons. Why'd you say uh-oh? Uh-oh. Why did you say uh-oh? Because I'm thinking of the arcades where you stand on the platform and everybody watches you. They have one of those at my mall that you would like fucking jam your entire child skull

into and if you didn't possess a child skull which sadly i didn't as a child i had a 45 year old man's skull when i was 10 and i still do to this day um and you would look around and you'd be like a little laser tank but like it was such garbage um what are you talking about i am talking about the thing that's like your your foot is literally touching a headset oh no it's about six inches away um i'm just talking about virtual reality and like this is i i don't want to like geek out too much i mostly want to talk about the fact that like um i dipped out for a bit i've had this the oculus rift and we have Vive also. These are two different types of like virtual reality headsets that are out right now. We've had them for a while and I got them last year and like messed around with them for a while. And it's really neat.

And then I stopped doing it. And in the span of time in like the last like eight months or so, some really cool stuff has come out. And so recently I've been getting back into it and checking stuff out. And like the experiences have evolved to be like really, really cool. Very, very quickly. Um, and so I referenced that like game that I did the Carly Rae Jepsen thing in,

there's just a game called Chroma Lab where you're just in a thing. This is the square space. Squarespace is not a sponsor this week, but hit us up, uh, with these little color balls that you can move around and it's just really trippy. And then there's one where you're on a spaceship and you're just pulling

yourself through the spaceship and flying around um and instead of like sort of dipping into any sort of individual experience the reason i'm enthusiastic about it is because i can't think of any other thing in my lifetime that has gone so quickly from like sci-fi like ergonomically impossible bullshit to like i own two of them and they're pretty good yeah so this this just works with your computer right yeah so there's a there's a few that i when a lot of people talk about like vr becoming like accessible to everybody like that's the big stumbling block is just having it be this self-contained thing you just put on your head and no wires no nothing uh and there is the gear vr you can slot your like samsung phone into

this little headset and it works fairly well it's still just like a like a one phone so it's not like super powerful um but yeah it does plug into your computer and computer like handles all the processing of it so like it's really inaccessible i saw my uncle on facebook like saying like i want to get into vr and i was like, I can help you with that. But it'll probably be about $1,500. And so I understand that that sucks. And I think you have to be coming at it from a place of privilege

to even have access to this stuff right now. But the dream of, if you had told me in 2008, like, hey, VR is going to be here and like you'll have one and it'll work like better than I think you thought it would work in your lifetime. I'd say like, go. No, you're telling tales out of school. And it like totally does exist. And I never I guess I just like this is the thing everybody talks about, right? When they talk like, well, when I thought by the time i got to be 30 we'd have jet packs and flying cars exactly

i would comfortably have included that when i was a teenager i would have comfortably included like virtual reality in that because you read like snow crash and you're like or you see the matrix and you're like oh fuck yeah that looks cool but not in my lifetime but it is like it's here and i guess like self-driving cars are getting there too too, which is, like, kind of wild. But, like, this is the most tangible thing. And I don't know. I just really, I played that, the game I referenced earlier. You're this, like, robot on a spaceship.

And you have an astronaut there with you who's, like, a human being. And you're just, like, alone on this ship with them trying to go around and fix stuff and it's this like quiet very like character driven vr experience that felt like extremely real and like the whole time i was playing i was like i can't believe i'm 30 and have this like and not like 90 like i can't believe it or dead like i i'm just like blown away that this stuff exists and even though it's like still really expensive and not, like, perfect or accessible to everybody, like, by the time it is, which I still think could be in my lifetime, like, can you imagine being in school and, like, strapping on a headset and then, like, all of a sudden you're on this magic school bus adventure to, like, the prehistoric ages? You know what it reminds me of? You know what it reminds me of is like, you know, when people listen to like audio books, and so sometimes you'll be talking to somebody and they'll say like, oh, yeah, I've read Grapes of Wrath. And it's like, well, no, actually, I listened to it, an audio book. Like, it'll kind of be like that with VR of like, oh, I've been to the Louvre.

Yeah, actually, just through virtual reality. But I think we'll hit a point where it's like, that's not that big a distinction. Yeah. virtual reality but i think we'll hit a point where it's like that's not that big a distinction yeah um i i think one of the reasons like i am excited to do this podcast is because i think i am in general a very enthusiastic person and i like sharing that like when i'm into something it is hard for me not to talk about it with people and i feel like i butt heads with folks in i don't butt heads because i don't fucking say anything but i don't like getting fights with my my peers about this but like i see people who like get a headset and then they do it and they're like this sucks the cord's too thick and it's like you can put on a helmet and be on

a spaceship and it works really good like i feel like there's a lot of people whenever anytime i say anything about vr like i get dunked on pretty quickly by a lot of people who, like, want to talk about the, you know, the logistical problems with it or the price problems with it or, like, oh, is that the only thing you've played? How's your $1,500 rig doing for you? When, like, I think it's just fucking incredible that this thing's here. Like, I can't believe it's here and that it's like sitting on top of my computer right now. And if I wanted, when we're done with this podcast, I could go, you know, to the wild, wild west or whatever.

I'm just blown away by that. No, it is pretty incredible, actually, because I know I've gotten to use your VR headset a couple times. And it's just totally immersive. Like you really, you lose kind of all awareness of your actual settings and the other people that might be in the room with you. And that's, that's something I didn't really expect from virtual reality in our lifetime.

I thought it would be like platforms and arcades, not like suddenly I'm in a totally different world. And I'm wondering like, I'm wondering if there is this like a way that those sort of revelations like build in life like i'm wondering like now that virtual reality is a thing that i have and it went from this thing that i never thought existed to a thing that like does exist all of a sudden i see fucking elon musk like yeah you're gonna go to space you know whenever you want by 2040. And like, maybe like five years ago, I would see that and be like, oh, bullshit. But I do have this virtual reality headset that works.

So like, maybe my dude's going to get me up there. Like, maybe my dude is going to be able to ship me from LA to San Francisco in like eight minutes in like some sort of human blender. Like, okay, yeah, go for it. Let's do it. Let's go wild, Elon. Ship my particles, dog. What's your third thing? My third thing? human blender like okay yeah go for it let's let's do it let's go wild elon ship ship my particles dog um what's your third thing my third thing is the grand prize game the bozo show yes oh my god wait was the grand prize game a segment in the bozo show okay but it wasn't the whole

bozo show no it's the only thing anybody remembers, that what the fuck else was Bozo and Spifford like? What were they doing? Like hijinks. Clown hijinks, mostly? Just like pouring cups of water on children or something? Yeah, there was a little of that. Sketches. Sketches, sketches.

So the grand prize game that Griffin and I know and love. I'm so in love with you. I love you so much. I'm so glad that this is a thing we're talking about up to millions of listeners on the internet right now it's the grand prize game so in the run of the bozo show there were like two bozos what what the show started in 1960 oh i guess you need two bozos then because of the cruel machinations of time. Time makes bozos of us all. There's the title of our episode.

So Bob Bell was bozo from 1960 to 1984. So 24 years of bozo. And then he got his little squirting water pin. He got bozoed. Oh, I thought you were going to say he passed away. He got his squirting water pin and his bronze clown shoes and packed up for retirement. But he's okay, right? I'm sure he's fine.

And then the Bozo that you and I are familiar with is Joey Doria. And he was Bozo from 1984 to 2001. 2001. I went on YouTube to watch a little clips because I had a very distinct memory of what he sounded like. Yeah. And then he was like actually a very funny man. And I think he was like he had like a real good.

Gotta be man. If you're on the air for fucking 50 years, you gotta be you gotta have a little bit of you gotta have some pith in there. So the grand prize game was on every Bozo show. And I think I just kind of love game shows. And this was like a game show element to a largely clown-focused show. Yeah. Six buckets in a row vertically.

Are they different sizes? Do they get smaller? No. No. Interesting. Same size. The first bucket is basically right where your toes are. You stand behind this blue line. I've definitely

seen kids beef that bucket, though. Well, you can never lose the first bucket. Bozo would always pick up the ball and let you have another try. But you know Bozo would, like, talk some shit about you when he went backstage. Beef the first one again. Good work, Dougie. A lot of the kids that go on the show are, like, four or five years old.

They should be able to drop a ball in a bucket. One of my brothers had a McDonald's birthday party, and we have a home video of it, and they play a game where you have to hold a straw up to your nose and drop it in a cup. And is that a thing people did? I don't know. Okay. They had one where they had to stack up all of the styrofoam burger boxes and see who could stack up the most. A lot of games in the McDonald's.

It's weird to you. It's such a strong memory. I can remember literally everything from every second of my home videos. I haven't. I have it. It is the only thing. Oh, you've watched them a lot. Oh, a hundred thousand times.

Yeah. So by the time we were watching, so apparently this game used to just feature silver dollars, and that used to be a prize that you could get. But by the time we were watching, he would put a $100 bill in six buckets. So the sixth bucket is the furthest away. You have to get all five buckets and then the sixth to get the $100 and the bicycle. And by the time we were watching you would get a trip to disney world and that is the most for like four days a five-year-old can't handle that fucking stress are you kidding me like you know it's kind of like carmen san

diego like very few people you know joey was putting that hundo in there himself like no way i gotta make it interesting for me. Is that what he sounded like? It's been a while. No. A bozo spiff and get over here. What I also remember very strongly. So the bozo show was on WGN, which is located in Chicago. Archway Cookies.

You remember that? No. It used to be a big giveaway. On the bozo Show? Yes. There was always an at-home player that was playing along with the kid. I remember safety pops. They were dishing out safety pops like, man.

I don't remember that. There were suckers that had the little loop at the bottom. I remember safety pops. I just don't remember that as a feature on the Bozo Show. I think that was a big feature on the Bozo Show. What I remember is that, um, anytime someone gets the first bucket,

everybody in the studio audience gets a little something to the kid that is played. And it was almost always our toy cookies. Okay. Our toy cookies, I think had like the little windmill cookies. I remember they were very tasty. I remember.

Anyway, the reason I bring that up is that I remember nothing else about the Bozo show. It's like you mentioned. Yeah. Nothing. I used to watch that show all the time. And I think I was exclusively watching it for the grand prize game. I have a theory about why even we are talking about the grand prize game right now. And it is that I remember, I was in college, and I was fresh out of a long termterm relationship and I got invited over to my friend Michael Bradbury's house and he was like you gotta play this game and get drunk with us and just like hang out and drink and play this drinking game and I rolled up and I was like all right let's

see what everybody's talking about I was nervous you know because I've been in a long-term relationship hadn't been like partying much hadn't had much of a big social life and so I wanted to like hang then I rolled up and they had beer pong set up and i was like oh i know this motherfucker i know oh this motherfucker right here i know him yeah that's the grand prize game except at waist level except at waist level and you get drunk not that bozo wasn't but um yeah and i think i think everybody has that moment or the first time they played be a pony like i mean the grand prize game okay i've always wanted to these are in a triangle that almost makes it easier than if they're in a line um hey we're about to wrap up but before we do we got a few

great submissions if you want to send in a good thing that you're into right now you can go to wonderful podcast at gmail.com and just drop us a line keep it fairly short uh just like a sentence or two about this thing that you're into and maybe we'll talk about it on the show uh the first one here is from the first one here is from rebecca who just says haruki murakami thai street food new floors cooking with bacon fat that's great that's great especially i love cooking with bacon fat oh yeah i especially love haruki murakami but yes Anti-street food. And you know what else? New floors.

We've never gotten new floors, but when you go into a place that has new floors, it's like, oh, hell yes. We got new windows, though, and it changed our life. Windows are just floors for the walls, baby. Ooh, it's beautiful. Anyway, here's another one from C, who says, hi, Griffin and Rachel. I'm excited to say I just got my first job. I currently work at an ice cream shop which is

great as i get to eat ice cream while i'm on break i also made a hundred dollars last week and i was finally able to buy myself breath of the wild the new zelda game uh on the nintendo switch hopefully my job keeps being fun and i don't get sick of the ice cream soon i hope you two are having a good day this was maybe the greatest email i've ever received in my entire life thank you so much see it's lovely also i mean you're familiar with that kind of gig because you used to work at the... That was my first job, was working at TCBY. And I would be lying if I said that the reason I got

that job wasn't so that I could have money to afford video games. Then I got a job at GameStop and I just, like, you know, cut out the middleman. Thank you, C. Here's one more from Bodhi who says, Over the Garden Wall, a 10-part cartoon miniseries that takes about an hour and a half to watch through, absolutely dripping with cool autumn vibes.

It's got a great voice cast, too, and the soundtrack is unbelievable. I even bought a copy of the soundtrack on vinyl, and with New Zealand shipping costs being what they are, it was a pretty big purchase, still worth every cent. We've seen that. We've watched a couple episodes of this. Yeah, Justin McElroy turned us on to that. Yeah. If you want to get a message on the show, again, just shoot it to wonderfulpodcasts.gmail.com.

And I think that's probably going to do it for us. Thank you so much for listening to this pilot of our show. Thanks to the Maximum Fun Network for supporting our transition into this new program. Yeah, it's been sort of a scary thing that we've been sort of struggling with for a little while. And also, thank you for listening. Like, this was a big thing was like for your grant logistics of like the backend stuff. But a big thing is like, we know that you have listened to this other podcast for a long time. And we have sort of lost interest in doing that podcast. And we have appreciated all of the support we've gotten from folks who just like want us to make

things that we're enthusiastic about. And that's really cool. Oh, I also wanted to thank you may have noticed our super great art that we have now for our new show. And, uh, that is a big thank you to Louie Zong who did a incredible job. Uh, he is a very accomplished, uh,

animator and artist. And we were very lucky to have him do that for us. He works on We Bare Bears, which we've been very, very into lately. Um, thank you very much, Louie.

And thank you to Bowen and, uh, Augustus for letting us use the song money won't pay. It's like, very very into lately um thank you very much louis and thank you to bowen and uh augustus for letting us use the song money won't pay it's like i've been obsessed with money won't pay for forever and yeah griffin played it for me and we both are like that immediately like instantly i've wanted to like use it as a theme song for something for so long and so when we talked about doing wonderful i was like oh it's gonna be money won't pay uh it's gonna be our outro too which you're gonna hear here in just a few seconds.

Thanks again to MaxFun. Go check out these shows there on MaxFunFun.org, like One Bad Mother and Stop Podcasting Yourself and Tyson Fights and Dead Pilot Society. All great shows there. And we have other podcasts and videos you can find at McElroyShows.com. Is that it? That is. What are we going to do for our outro? Let's not.

Let's not. We don't got to settle On that one Episode one Okay I don't wanna get Into a bad funk Cause I wanna say like No See that's what I'm saying

I'm overthinking it Let's just say Thanks for listening Thank you for listening And We'll be back next week With a new episode Of Wonderful

On Wednesday So see you then Thanks bye Bye Money won't pay What can I pay Money won't pay What can I pay Thanks. Bye. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported.

Going into a bullseye interview, I know it's somebody who does amazing work, but it's an actual conversation. I don't know where it's headed. Absolutely. You're absolutely right. You said it actually better than I did, so I have to think about what that means. Hey, this is the straight talk that you're going to get on this show bullseye creators you know creators you need to know find it at maximumfund.org or wherever you get podcasts