Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 13: The Devil is a Barking Dog

Episode Date: November 30, 2017

Rachel's favorite career! Griffin's favorite daily surprise! Rachel's favorite mandatory night time activity! Griffin's favorite romantic movie! 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. Rachel's just cheesing right now. Rachel's just... We had like four false starts with the recording. And Rachel got fed up with all the fucking tomfoolery. I'm a professional.

You're a professional. I had to fix your boom. I had to take a drink of water. And also, I almost got sick on the burgers we just ate. And that's the real truth of it. That's a technical term, by the way. Fixing my boom is not a, it's not a euphemism. No, you can't work as a euphemism.

I don't know if your boom would be your butt. And if so, I don't know how you go about fixing a butt unless you're a... Well, mine doesn't need to be fixed. Hell no, it doesn't. Except it's got a crack in it. Oh, God.

Doof. Ooh. Anyway, thank you for listening to Wonderful House Podcast about stuff that we're just really into. I want to thank we have a new member in the studio, a new member of the production team, the wonderful crew. Couldn't do it without

them. Of course, we have Brother Printer, and Brother Printer's been doing a lot of hard work for us lately. Been putting on a lot of hours, been draining the ink. And now we have Touch Lamp. Very excited about Touch Lamp. Bought it, and it turns out it's quite dim. Can I ask you, you already have a lamp in here. What was the other one for?

Look at that. You just wanted some mood lighting? It's soft lighting. But what's fun is you can press this button, and then it's colorful lighting. Hey, look at that. Do you want to do it with, like, a blue light in here the whole time? Because we can change the hue, I think, just by touching it. Ooh.

Maybe we set it to cycle, and now it's like we're recording inside of a spencer's gifts is this like a mackleroy disease that we just like garbage yeah probably let's let's just try this out let's just unplug that okay now we just kind of have this rainbow orb in the room and who knows what kind of energy it's completely black in here pitch dark except for this rainbow or we have in the center of the room and maybe it'll allow us to channel new energies new colors right now it's a sort of fuchsia tone and i don't know how that's going to affect the the recording but now it's red and now i'm angry at you so we can do like a fun thing where when it changes maybe we have a different emotion it can be like a fun game but a horrible listening experience thank you touch lamp welcome to the team anybody else we

should thank in the studio weird smell uh weird smell you're not really i wish i could fire you weird smell but your dad owns the podcast and so nothing we can do about that i got in griffin's car the other day and he warned me first that it was messy and second that there was a smell. I'm starting to think my body just produces just a constant sort of bad smell. Most people, when they notice a smell, take action. Yeah, that's the thing. I know. Everybody smells. I tried to take action in trying to fire the bad smell from the studio, but nothing was happening. I think it's coming from from can i tell you who i think is making it long dormant exercise bike oh yeah long dormant exercise bike never does fucking anything in this or you know it could be unplugged massage chair because unplugged massage chair uh you know is a chair and so i don't want to be crude but some bad smells were probably put into

it by butts and so that's the truth of it okay this studio fucking sucks baby can we please move into a new house that's bigger so i don't have to keep working in this stinky office man i would like to i think uh so should we get started yeah who last week was our thanksgiving hunger game showdown so i don't even know who should go first this time maybe you should how gentlemanly do you want me to go first no all right let her rip my topic no notes in your hand which is terrifying i know i'm confident grant writing okay yeah this is cheating i don't i know we don't have rules established but this is your job it's what I do and I think it's wonderful

I think it's also wonderful but it's just like it feels like cheating to me you are welcome to bring what you do what I do is horrible what I do is pretty good also tell everybody at home what grant writing is

because it took me a good three years to actually understand what it is you do for work. Well, what I mean, I guess let's start. What do you think? What do you know about grants? often charitable funds that are set aside for specific causes, uh, usually sort of, uh, blocked off by, uh,

larger organizations or fundraising groups or the, or, or government to, uh, to grant for specific causes, try to further them. Yeah, no,

that's pretty good actually. Yeah. So I started grant writing about five years ago. Uh, and what that means is, uh, initially I worked for a nonprofit and then I transferred to a community college.

Uh, but the whole purpose of my job is to work with people that run programs to help them get funding to support the expansion or innovation of their program. Can you put that even simpler? This is why it took me three years. It took me a good four months to understand what nonprofit really meant. Because I thought it was like a business where you sold things, but for free. And then, obviously, incorrect.

And then you talk about raising funds to further and innovate things. And it's like, I don't know, man. Well, okay, so with a nonprofit, typically, they exist to solve some kind of issue, or at least help provide support to people or animals or, you know, any kind of noun, let's say, that could use some support. Not bears, though, right? Oh, definitely bears. It took me fucking two and a half minutes to get this jacket off.

Were you watching that whole process? I don't even know why you come in with a jacket. I know, I should come in here nude, apparently, because I've taken three articles of clothing off since we started. Okay, watching that whole process? I don't even know why you came in with a jacket. I know I should come in here nude apparently because I've taken three articles of clothing off since we started. Okay. So that's what grants is. And in grant writing, you... So as Griffin mentioned, there's different kinds of funding available to support programs. What you were talking about is kind of close to foundation funding. So individuals will start a foundation to award funding to causes they care about. Usually they have a board of directors, and they have a set amount of funds, and then they have an application process for organizations that match their mission statement to come in and ask for funds. Benevolent millionaires can also sort of wade into the process too, right? Yeah.

Just like I'm a benevolent millionaire and what I think we need more of is- Well, typically if you're a foundation, you have a mission and a board of directors. In order to form your own 501c3, you have to have certain things like that. Dig it. But what I do a lot of now is state and federal funding. And that is more aligned with the other thing you mentioned, which is the state and government have particular objectives they want to meet and they have money set aside for those objectives. And then they invite, uh, applicants to come forward and try and get that money.

That's tax money, though, right? That's like my money? I'm just saying this big, you know, uncle. What's the name of the guy that's on the Uncle Sam? Is that him? Yeah. You go to Uncle Sam? Is that him? Yeah. You go to Uncle Sam and you're like,

can I have a little bit of Griffin's money so that I can build a skate park? That's what I assume you're talking about. Well, a lot of times it's particular workforce goals or education goals. Skate parks. Aquariums. Department of Labor has a lot of funding available. Cold Stone Creamery. Department of Education. Health and Human Services. uh aquariums department of labor has a lot of funding available cold stone creamery department of education health and human services that kind of thing arrangements but none of this is why i like grants yeah talk about why you like grant writing because i i i get it like i understand

why it is sort of a perfect fusion and i think it's like i i feel like i don't know too many people whose careers are represent this like really nice cross section of like the stuff that they're really, really good at. Yeah, I like it because there's a lot more research and interview skills involved than I expected. Initially, I kind of thought it was just filling out applications, just having a set amount of information that you just filled lines in and sent them out. But what I'm learning more and more is that it's a lot about interviewing people. Because often people will think, oh, I want money for this. But they won't really have all the details worked out on what they're proposing and what they want to accomplish. And so you spend a lot of time working with them to design something, which I really like. And then when you look at a grant opportunity, there's points assigned to particular areas. There's specific questions and ways they want them answered.

It's like an SAT test, kind of, like there is a way to do it the best and get the best score. Yeah. So you have to think, how is what we're doing going to fit what they want to achieve with their funding? And so there's some cleverness involved in it and some creativity. There's a lot of wordsmithing, you know, thinking about what's going to be the most compelling case. Because often what I started doing when I was in non-profit is thinking about who my competition was hell yeah dude i love that cutthroat shit like how is what we're doing unique you know jokes aside i feel like the austin non-profit scene is a little bit black sales like yeah you are only one of us is gonna get this grant from yeah there are there are hundreds uh

thousands even in austin uh and so you think you get to learn the landscape a little bit and think okay what is what is unique about us what is going to separate us if i were a reviewer reading this proposal what would stand out to me uh that would make me more likely to get funding so i i like it a lot and the other thing i'll say is that it's really concrete. Like I, for years before this, did a job where there weren't particular wins. result like anything i kind of hang my hat on and with grants there's very clear deadlines there's very clear yes or no decisions made and when you're done with the project you're done with it uh which i like a lot and then you find out if you get the grant which is like because it's concrete i can say this objectively you're fucking awesome at like you're very fucking good at it rachel would not say this to toot her own horn she's more reserved than this but like

you have pulled down like a ton of super huge grants that have gone towards some really incredible causes. And I'm not just saying like, oh, you're so good at your job. I'm saying this fucking like we got receipts over here, folks. And yeah, I'm very proud of you. You're very good. Thank you for saying that. I, I, I like it a lot. you for saying that i i i like it a lot i didn't find this job until i was um already in my 30s more or less i did kind of a lot of dancing around it um and then when i found it i just felt like

oh this is everything i like in one job uh and so ever since I discovered it, it's kind of, it's felt exactly right, which is wonderful. Do you want to hear my first thing? Yes. My first thing is receiving mail. Getting mail. Do you want to put some qualifications around that? Because you get a lot of junk mail. Oh, yeah.

And that's bad. Yeah. We got to say, and I'm glad you've you've confronted this i was gonna save it till we were a little bit deeper into my segment but if you want to start out by just sort of shitting no it's fine let's just get this bullshit out of the way sometimes you get junk mail and that's bad and it's incredibly wasteful it's like the most wasteful thing i think think. I think their ranking goes diapers. Like one baby generates one small island of diapers by the time it's not wearing diapers anymore. And then just behind that is junk mail. But there's something about the junk mail you have to dig through a little bit.

You gotta dig through it to get to the gold underneath. You're looking at me incredulously. You don't get stoked when you get that good mail? I guess, just to part the curtain a little bit, we have a end table in our house that is constantly full of the bad mail. That's our fault for not doing something about the bad mail. With a stack of mail. But sometimes you get that good mail, though.

You get a bunch of the bad mail. With the good mail, here's the thing about it. What's even in there? I'm not talking about email either because like i have here let's play a game guess how many unread emails i have in my email box right now guess how many emails guess how bad a correspondent i am online on the internet where nothing even matters at all. I'm going to say 4,000. Oh, more than that, babe. Oh, my God.

Oh, no. 13,368 unread emails people worked on and sent me. And I said, no, thanks. I'm good. Without even clicking the email you worked on. That's the song I wrote about. But that real mail, what's even in there, babe? Because you don't know unless you open it.

Only I can open it or it's a fucking crime. This is like my mystery dum-dums. It's like the mystery dum-dums, which we have a big bowl of dum-dums since Halloween and it has been an honor and a privilege digging through those. Anyway, most mail is trash and that's wasteful and that's bad but you get that good mail maybe it's a nicely printed piece of paper like a wedding invitation or a christmas card someone like some some emotion

built into it maybe it's a postcard and it's like hey little postcard how did you get here postcard from fucking greece i got a postcard from greece once and it's like, hey little postcard, how did you get here? Postcard from fucking Greece? I got a postcard from Greece once and it's like, you were in Greece earlier and now I'm holding you. Do you think about the whole little travel process for this piece of mail? It's unbelievable. Is this part of what delights you?

We have a PO box and we got a postcard from Japan and it's like, you crossed the ocean to get to me and several States. You sweet little, you sweet little postcard. How wonderful. What a great little adventure you went on my small friend.

Um, I also, we get a lot of packages. We do some Amazon, Amazon shopping. Uh, we are, we're prime members.

We're members of Bezos. You could probably tell just just you know from just the way that we sort of carry ourselves that we're members of bezos's special circle and they won't let it just anybody be prime members but we do get packages delivered in just two days because one time i saved jeff bezos from a burning building save him from a burning building and he was shrieking and shrieking and so scared. But I jumped through the flames and I lifted up the big piece of building on him. He said, for you, Griffin. Now you're prime.

Two days. You're prime, my son. And he adopted me. Thank you, Jeff. I love you, Dad. So, yeah, we get packages. And every time a package gets delivered, it's like the perfect amount of time from when you ordered the package to when it's delivered that you could have conceivably forgotten that you ordered it or maybe that's just me or maybe you didn't forget and you've been looking

forward to it and then here's the truck yes it's here my thing is here you know this is an interesting point um my my dad as you know is an eBay enthusiast because he likes to collect a lot of well collectibles Rachel's dad has like 75 big if you knew my dad that would be very funny

yeah that was a pretty narrow market I was going after that your dad owns movie props some movie props and I've talked about this on the blues i know but it's the best shit ever um oh we got to tell him the gift that he came in town he came in town with the dopest slate of shit some some birthday gifts for henry which was awesome for rachel a st louis blues towel sound is signed by the towel man. Very, very good. In a commemorative case with a label indicating what it was. And for me, a book and DVD set on how to do card tricks.

My dad listens to the podcast. It's fantastic. Thank you, David. These were slam dunk gifts. The whole reason I brought him up was to say that I always thought it was the collectible that was motivating his purchases but maybe he just likes the excitement of the delivery here's what i'm saying and that's that's wasteful too and um support local business we do that also um but

i can't get a multi-colored touch lamp out of small business i probably could probably i did not put in the effort on that one. But I just love that you have this little treasure chest on the front of your house, and every day there's new stuff that gets put in there. And the fact that there's a bunch of different ways to get an object from one end of this planet to another end of this planet reliably

is like, I don't know, I'm still kind of like mystified by that. And I think it's a special thing. Also, we do have the P.O. Box, which means we basically have two treasure chests. Do you remember when you were a kid and you did a little mailbox for Valentine's Day? Oh, this is not going to be fun for me to talk about. But if you want, yeah.

That's kind of every child's introduction to getting mail. Yeah, I just, that's kind of, that's kind of every child's introduction to, to getting mail. Yeah, I got a couple. Well, I mean, in my school, there was a rule that everybody had to get one. Oh, that sounds like it was nice. Was it a nice school, babe, that you went to? Was it a nice school? Did you feel fulfilled by the holiday that you celebrated there?

Was it fulfilling for you? And not a fucking horrible blood sport. I would have given you a Valentine, Griffin. I know you would have because you're a very sweet person. But two. Oh. One was from the teacher.

Oh, shoot. One was from the teacher. Yeah, I also like mail. It is exciting when you have a big pile of junk mail i'm sorry griffin that i brought this up um to see a little hand handwritten envelope so much so that now junk mail is using like fake handwriting font i am so fucking over that shit first of all i can always tell because they like put the address of the business on the back of the letter and so you look at that and you're like hey great dupe gang direct mail advertisement is uh i learned this in college i

don't know if it's necessarily still true but it's the biggest marketing expenditure in the country by an enormous margin like over print over uh internet advertisements over tv advertisements over everything direct mail advertisements represent the the biggest portion of the like national marketing spend and that's buck wild to me because in my mind it is the least effective form of advertising i can fucking imagine i've never gotten a thing in the mail and been like oh they're having a sale on oranges at kroger got a jet and i understand that like there are probably lots of people who say oh dope there's a sale on oranges at kroger let's get down there but i mean mostly i also get shit from

the local honda dealership and it's like i'm good yeah it's weird it's just this like it's this carryover from an earlier time uh when that was how people received information and i feel like a lot of businesses just don't haven't changed it since 1960 fucking one. I get a fucking car dealership thing in the mail every single day. I buy one car a decade. Like that's wild, gang. Yeah. But the rest of the mail is so good.

It's like a little secret loot box on the front of my house every day. What's in it? Today, what was in it? A bunch of bullshit. Maybe tomorrow. box on the front of my house every day what's in it today what was in it a bunch of bullshit maybe tomorrow so uh should we do can i see you can we talk can we talk about yes the mood lighting in here and what it's doing for the space i mean i kind of like it you kind of like it feels like we're doing like a late night radio show. It kind of feels like my first apartment room. Right.

I'm not joking. Like I did have like plasma ball. I did have like a. Do you have a lava lamp? Oh, yeah. Oh, man, Griff. I had a lava lamp. I had like all that shit.

I had I had like a small disco ball and we used to go in there after definitely not doing drugs and listen to the soft bullets in by flaming lips and just turn them all on at once do you have any glow-in-the-dark items no no no because those are don't put those in your bedroom i don't want anything glowing in there that was exactly what i did the glow-in-the-dark stars is a teen well that's fine yeah no that's romantic. But anyway, hey. So what did you want to talk about? The moonlighting. Oh, okay.

I thought you wanted to talk about the stinger and maybe not doing it anymore. Oh. Do you not want to do the stinger anymore, babe? I'm out of ideas. Should we not do it this time and say, Jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, Hey babe, since I goofed up my answer to your beautiful proposal in Prague by trying to make a dumb joke, here's a do-over. Yes, yes, of course, yes. You're the best human and by now we're blissfully married. It's you and me against the world from now on.

Let's spend the rest of our lives fighting the good fight and snugging our terrible perfect animals. Congratulations, Ryan and Brianne. Yeah, it's too bad you both have to fight the whole world. Because we're coming for the two of you. Are you ready? Have you set the traps? I don't think you've set all the traps. Have you bought the seeds you'll need to create your own agriculture?

I bet you didn't think about that. I'm in your garden eating all your seeds. Are you making another board game right now? I might be making a new board game. It's called Settlers of Ryan and Breanne. And it's them two against the world. And it's like hard target. Anyway, here's another message. This one's for Rose.

And it's from Rose who says, Hi, Rose. Future Rose says, I love you. And I know things aren't easy right now, but it's going to be awesome. Can't give details or the universe will explode. But a wife, a cat, your very own spaceship? Who knows? Thanks, Rachel, Griffin, and all the good McElroys for wonderful podcasts that brighten my life. You've all helped me more than I can say. Okay, we're speaking to past Rose now. Through the time rift, it up over the george washington bridge i think that's

a kate and leopold joke oh man i never saw that that's okay i should have known um i wanted to thank future rose for buying this message for past rose yeah it's weird that you had to spend the new currency space bucks on it uh space bucks are of course money that is made out of astronaut toilet paper oh yeah i don't know why we decided to change it up like that but i feel like future rachel never does anything good for past rachel i feel like current rachel i feel like current griffin never does anything good for future griffin as evidenced by the big big sweaty hamburger that we ate just before we recorded that has been trying to punch its way out of me like gulliver's travels sort of uh sort of pinocchio fighting the inside of the whale how's it going everyone i'm oliver wang and i'm morgan

roads we have a brand new show on the maximum Fun Network that we'd love to share with you. It's called Heat Rocks. Morgan, we should probably explain what a heat rock is. It is a banger, a fire track, true fire. Right. Dope album. Each episode, we will bring on a special guest to join us to talk about one of their heat rocks. It might be a musician. A writer.

Maybe a scholar. I mean, I would have been happy to just talk to you about your heat rocks but this is a different show yeah i think people might enjoy hearing maybe the guests instead to do that you'll have to go to maximumfund.org so if you want to talk about hot music you should check us out heat rocks hey what's your second thing my second thing will not surprise you it is sleep to frame this to frame this rachel goes to sleep if it's if if rachel is awake and there are four digits on the clock it is a fucking miracle it is if there's four digits on the clock and rachel is awake then she is on trucker speed well excluding the ams

yes 10 11 yes the 10 11 12 am yes those are the only four four digit hours 12 am i'm asleep yes yes sorry i forgot how the clock works uh i try to read it like a big boy sometimes but it's confusing. I have always valued my sleep very much. This has reached obsessive proportions now that we have an infant. And so I decided to do a little research on all the great things about sleep. There's a lot to talk about. Now, this is different. We should talk. We should mention I have done naps before on this show. Griffin is a champion napper. I took an hour and a half nap today accidentally. My alarm went off and I said, oops, time to go. And then I slept for another fucking hour. Griffin stumbled out of the bedroom like, what day is it?

I said, what happened? Because I legit didn't know what it was that I was living right now. Okay, so sleep. Sleep. didn't know like what it was that i was like living right now okay so sleep sleep okay so this is from a mental floss article uh that lists uh seven reasons sleep makes you better seven so many i'll go through them quickly i guess tap in if you want more details well i might just fucking fall asleep if it gets too boring uh people recall information better after they sleep wow that actually explains a lot why my memory sucks so bad uh sleep helps you remember things um so you can hear or smell something uh during your sleep which i think is interesting wait what you can hear or smell something you can

hear and smell during your sleep wait so if i wait okay no that makes sense like obviously you can hear and smell during your sleep. Wait, so if I, wait, okay. No, that makes sense. Like, obviously you can hear during your sleep, because if somebody like shoots a gun or something right next to you, then you'd hear that. But the smell is weird to me. Yeah, I don't know. You're asleep and you smell like smoke from a fire.

It would wake you up so you'd know to get out of the house. In a 2007 study, volunteers learned the locations of picture cards in a game similar to concentration. While they learned, they smelled the scent of a rose. Those who were exposed to the odor again while they slept that night remembered 97% of the location. What the fuck? Compared to only 86% of the people who didn't stop to smell the roses as they slept. That's wild. But I mean, it makes sense, right? It's like an evolutionary, like, you have these senses that have to be active while you're asleep so that you don't get eaten by a big stinky mammoth or something.

You know, they love to eat people. They used to. Old stinky elephants. Big hairy stinky guys just coming around eating all the cavemen up. What's happened next? Okay. It's fun to think about. Elephants? what's happened next okay it's fun to think about elephants i just love thinking about like the old the prehistoric ages brontosaurus burgers and all that oh that's nice um

what else sleep improves motor skills uh so for example a specific brainwave that occurs during sleep seems to be vital to learning motor tasks like playing the piano. Sleep can help you navigate. So when people dream, they work out problems relevant to their waking lives. When almost 100 people were taught to navigate a virtual maze as part of a Harvard Medical School study. Some of them had maze-related dreams. Those who did performed better on the maze later that day. That is wild. I bet hero Captain Sully Sullenberger gets lots of sleep, and that's what helped him navigate his way through those ducks

and land his plane heroically in the Hudson. Thank you so much. We don't think of enough. That's so much. We don't think of enough. That's very true. We don't think of enough. We talk about him as a joke, and we talk about the great movie, but we don't talk about him and his achievement.

Well, there's Sully's Giving, where we do. That's the whole point. Sully's Giving is coming up very soon. It's tomorrow. Oh, no, already? Did you get him anything I forgot, too? This is exactly what I'm talking about. We never celebrate hero Captain Sully Sullenberger

who obliterated those ducks so intensely. We don't. Thank you, Captain. My Captain. Okay, here's another thing that'll be relevant to you about sleep. Sleep improves your immune system. I never get sick. I have never. Rachel,

look at me. I have never been sick. There was a study that people who slept fewer than six hours a night were 11 times more likely to be unprotected from hepatitis B after getting the vaccine compared to people who slept more than seven hours because their immune systems didn't create antibodies to fight the virus. I mean, that'd be interesting to me if I've ever been sick but i've never been sick and uh i saw that movie contagion in theaters and the whole time i was like i don't understand is this sci-fi like what's even why what was that weird kind of sci-fi what was that like why is everybody sneezing and he sneezed on him and now he's got it this is this is too much for me so here's so

here's the bottom line i should get more sleep is this an is this an intervention now well no no i'm talking about why i think it's wonderful uh and why i'm so intense about it lately um i have not had two nights in a row of just a full night of sleep in... I mean, one year and four days? Well, no, more than that. Because while I was pregnant, I wasn't sleeping especially good either. Oh, yeah.

So this is why I go to bed at 9.30. I'm not judging you for it. I think you should absolutely stand in your truth. I think that people should be allowed to go to sleep at the time that they want to go to sleep at. I will say I went to sleep at the same time as you, a couple nights ago and i woke up and i was i was it was literally like hero captain sully sullenberger had landed a plane on me i was so fucking tired because my body's like attuned like a hot rod to getting like six and a half hours of sleep um yeah i i get excited when it's time to go to sleep uh i get excited when i wake up and

realize there's more time left to sleep um and i get excited i'm putting on sleep clothes oh i get that too and getting in bed for me it's also work clothes and all my clothes um i i love it i i love it very very much uh and i think it's maybe the most important resource available to us all i'm gonna go with bricks because you can use them to build roads but you also need them for cities. So I want to talk about a movie. Have we talked about, I guess I did Evil Dead that one time, but we don't, I feel like we don't talk about a lot of movies here. This is a movie that I found out about after I graduated college, but it is my sort of favorite movie in this specific genre.

It is my favorite romance movie ever made, and it's Before Sunrise. Oh, sweet Griffin. Before Sunrise is a film, the first in the before blank trilogy, I guess, from Richard Linklater, who made Slackers and Dazed and Confused and more recently Boyhood, which I also enjoyed quite a bit.

It features Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who are really the only two featured actors in the whole movie because the films, and I want to try to stay specific to Before Sunrise, the film is almost entirely just them walking around and having conversations in different places, and that's pretty much it.

Well, and Richard Linklater, he's known for that. I mean, boyhood also kind of follows that example life is like that waking life yeah um so before sunrise came out in 1995 um and one of the first like kind of wild things about this series is that the second film in the series came out in 2004 nine years later and then the third film in the series uh the in 2004, nine years later. And then the third film in the series, the second is before sunset, the second is before midnight, or the third is before midnight. The third movie came out in 2013. So another nine year gap is a movie series that wasn't like rebooted. It's a trilogy that was released over the course of 18 years, which is already kind of wild. And the premise of Before Sunrise is really simple.

Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke, meets Celine, played by Julie Delpy, who's a French actress, while they are on this train through Europe. And they have this very quick connection with each other after having this very serious conversation. And they decide to disembark in Vienna, just sort of on a whim to spend the day exploring the city before jesse has to fly out the next day uh and before celine has to get back on the train to continue her trip back home and so they do just that and then they spend one night one like 12 hour period walking around vienna just sort of talking about life and love. And it's a

it's a very well written movie. But what's really powerful about it is that there is this sense of constant bittersweetness about the fact that they are forging this very powerful connection, this very like real feeling romance, that in 12 hours is going to essentially expire when they have to go their their separate their separate ways jesse lives in america and i believe celine lives in in in france and so they are you know separated by an ocean so it's not like long distance dating after meeting somebody when this came out it wasn't like you know social media was really a thing so it wasn't like they were exchanging any kind of information yeah there was this idea of like we're never going to see each other again and so it does this really great job of the first half of the film building this this

romance between the two of them as they talk about uh their their sort of past loves and what is important to them about life and how they um try to find fulfillment through through love like self-fulfillment and self-improvement with another person. And then the second half of the film is all about like, oh no, I'm in love with you. And we have to leave tomorrow. And it does not pull any, it doesn't really pull any punches in that regard. Like there is no sense of like real relief that you get where it's like, oh, we're going to work this thing out. They touch at it sometimes, but really like the whole last half of the film is all about this feeling of like, oh man, this is going to work this thing out. They touch at it sometimes, but really like the, the whole last half of the film is all about this feeling of like,

oh man, this is going to be really fucking rough when, when we have to, when we have to go our separate ways. It was co-written by Richard Linklater and Kim Krasan, who had worked on some of the, the, his other films.

Like I think she worked on slackers and dazed and confused. And when Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke were brought in, they actually flew down to Austin and all of them stayed together for a while. And they all rewrote the entire script again, because according to Julie Delpy, they didn't think the movie was romantic enough. And so they turned up the romance a bit. So why do you like it, Griffin? It's a very like, it has constant, these constant moments that are just so memorable.

You've seen it, right? We watched it together. Oh my gosh, yes, of course. Okay. Multiple times. It has these moments, and I can recall so many of them, that all take place, and I'll talk about a couple of those moments, but they all take place inside of this experience that feels, for lack of a better term, kind of dreamlike.

There is this sense that what they did in getting off the train, it felt like such a real decision. These feel like two very real characters who just made this irresponsible, spontaneous decision to get off a train. And because they did that, it kind of feels like nothing in the movie should actually be happening like it feels like the movie should not exist because these two characters made this this kind of like random decision to do it and because of that like all

of these moments that they share together uh take place in this this framework where it's like none of this it it feels like a dream like it feels like none of this should be real because who does this like who would get off a train with a stranger just to spend the half a day with them walking around the city and talking about stuff. Some of those moments are just like really memorable. And I do want you to watch the movie. And so like, I don't want to spoil anything,

but the, their first sort of like connection in this record store is they go into like a listening booth together. And there's just this romantic song playing as the two of them sort of avoid each other's gaze for no joke, three uninterrupted minutes. And you would think that that would get a little bit long in the tooth, but it super doesn't.

There is probably my favorite scene in any romantic film ever where they pretend to be their friends who are like wondering where the fuck they are because they got off this train. And so they pretend to call each other and they pretend to be their friends who are like wondering where the fuck they are because they got off this train and so they pretend to call each other and they pretend to be their friends and they talk about this night they've had getting to know each other holy shit it's so so good um and it feels if you know you watch a lot of romantic movies and there are a lot of them that I love, even if they don't seem particularly realistic.

But this one just, it captures that kind of momentum of meeting somebody and feeling that instant connection. Like watching this movie, you know, it's almost like your pulse kind of quickens while you're watching it, because it just feels like you're really witnessing this couple like experience this very real like new spontaneous connection yeah that had that happened just so that that happened in a way that should not the the movie constantly kind of like reaffirms the fact that like none of this should exist uh so much so that at the end of the one of the last like scenes that they have they're talking and jesse starts to get kind of uh kind of sad and he says that we're entering real time again and that's such a like perfect way to like kind of summarize that the rest of the movie just felt like this felt like this this fantasy in a way because it's not like they're like they're not they're not like saying like oh that's my favorite food too

or like oh yeah no i i'm also a middle child yeah like they're having literally none of that big philosophical discussion because it's a richard linklater movie like of course those are the only conversations that take place and aside from the romance like it is also a movie about being in unfamiliar territory and exploring that and the excitement and really like the unpredictability of it. And I really love this in movies. Lost in Translation, I think, has some flaws, especially regarding like representation and stuff. But it does get that feeling of being like lost in this big, exciting place and anything can happen while we're here, which is like, I love that in movies because like I want that to be sort of the real travel experience that I have whenever I go abroad. You know what I'm going to say?

And please don't think this is terrible. But back when we were watching a lot of those reality TV shows where people would meet and fall in love on camera, i think that was part of why we liked it is that when it felt real it was when it felt real yeah uh it felt like that before sunrise moment where you're watching these people connect in a totally unexpected exciting way and this would have absolutely literally what i'm just now realizing is that before sunrise is that reality dating show that you and i conceived of in our last episode of Rose Buddies. You're right. Of two people going somewhere they've never been

and just sort of like getting to know each other and then traveling home whenever they want to. We need to get in touch with Richard and just see if he'll produce this thing. It all ends in a cliffhanger ending where you don't know whether or not they ever meet again. And that question was left unresolved for nine years and that is buck wild to me and i don't i i was not i don't think i had seen the first film by the time the second one came out and so i wasn't a

part of the zeitgeist of people like demanding a second movie in this franchise nine years after the first one came out um but it's it is in my opinion his best movie uh the this the series is the other two films are good they're they're very good but this the first one i think is absolutely his best movie richard linklater's best movie and it's such a small scale film it had such a like hyper modest budget but it tells such a huge and it tells such a huge story that is it it it threads this needle that i think the best stories tell where it feels relatable this story of getting off a train with somebody in a country you've in a city or a country you've never been to before and getting to know them and fall in love with them it feels relatable even if you haven't done

that before even if you've never gotten off a train with a stranger in Vienna and walked around for 12 hours. No, I had never seen it before we met. And you had mentioned that it was one of your favorite movies, and I think we watched it together. And I just found it so charming because it's such a realistic but also incredibly romantic and like adventurous movie like there's something adventurous about the way that they fall in love um it's fantastic

should we do audience submissions yes i have one here from dana who says i think spotify's discover weekly playlists are wonderful i tend to listen to the same stuff over and over again so i love having new music to listen to every week that's tailored to my tastes much easier than trying to find new stuff on your own it's so nifty oh griffin loves this i don't know if you mess with this at all i don't know what um i don't i think most like computer algorithms that try to guess what kind of shit you like and then suggest other shit you may like are pretty much 100 bogus. More or less like half this stuff on one of these playlists,

which is fucking a remarkable accomplishment, is like really good. And most of the new music that I'm listening to today I have found through these playlists. I don't know how they managed to run the calculations on that to really get it so perfect. Oh, and by the way, didn't you tell me that Wonderful's gonna be be on yes if you like spotify we're going to be on spotify now we'll probably put out like an announcement tweet or something like that but we just got the email

yesterday that we're going to be we were picked to be on spotify which is cool super cool it's how i listen to most of my podcasts these days so i i'm hoping that there are people out there who are also excited about that so uh here is another one who says, David, bear with me on this one. Hey, guys, I just want to share how much I love one specific episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. It's season seven, episode four. Take me out to the hollow suite. In this episode, the DS9 crew are challenged to a baseball game by a group of visiting Vulcans. ball game by a group of visiting Vulcans.

The whole episode is basically Captain Sisko trying to teach a bunch of aliens how to play this ancient Earth game and has a really genuine and sweet Sandlot, League of Their Own, ETC, oh, etc. feel. This was the last season of DS9, and it feels like a victory lap for a show that a lot of fans initially dismissed as it faced the impossible task of

following up the next generation. This episode shows off how wonderful and lovable all these wacky characters are. That's so great. That episode sounds fucking awesome wonderful and lovable all these wacky characters are. That's so great. That episode, that's fucking awesome. I know, it does. I love that. We just watched

Field of Dreams. I had never seen it. Yes. It's on Netflix. I convinced Griffin to watch it with me. There is something just so lovable

about people that are excited about baseball. I don't know what it is. Yes, it was a good movie. I enjoyed it in the wrong way in that I have been obsessed with trying to answer the question of whether or not

James Earl Jones died in the movie or not. That's not a spoiler. I literally don't know. I literally don't know if James Earl Jones dies in the movie or not. I swear you could argue either way and I would be 100% absolutely convinced. Please let me know. It's driving me mad.

I would love it if somebody worked this out in the facebook group for us uh here's one from griffin but g-r-y-p-h-o-n which is choice uh i work at trader joe's and while that could be my wonderful thing i'd like to talk about the cardboard baler i love that we have such a huge machine whose only purpose is to make cardboard really flat it's super relaxing to watch and it makes a great hum also might i add that it's also just a big wally oh that's nice that's very nice you ever fuck with cardboard baylor i'm trying to think because we had one at the pullman square where i worked at the game stop where we had a lot of cardboard yes i did when i worked at world market we had one it's so very i can't believe it exists and that they just let anybody use it without a license

because you could for sure for sure for sure yeah it would not be hard to how is you know how is it not on the news more i feel like we should hear about people just getting christian bailed yeah it's rough but i'm glad i mean i'm happy that there's not constant bailing accidents uh and not only are they're not bailing accidents there's bailing miracles because the boxes are so big and it gets them so freaking small that was my last one if you want to send some in uh we didn't get very many in this week because we do not do a good job of telling people how to get them into us it's wonderful podcast at gmail.com uh hey thanks to bowen and augustus for these for our theme song money won't pay You can find a link to the song in our episode description.

We should thank. We should thank people. We've gotten some really great stuff in the PO Box, and we have been bad denizens of that task. We should say that this is not a comprehensive list. We get a ton of stuff in the PO Box, and so we're just kind of thanking a random smattering of people who have sent stuff in. It's PO Box 66639 Austin, Texas 78766.

But thank you to everybody who sent stuff in. It's PO Box 66639 Austin, Texas 78766. But thank you to everybody who sent stuff in. It is seriously a joy. We go to it about every week and a half or so, and there's always a bunch of really cool stuff waiting for us, and we sure do appreciate it. Let's see. Katrina sent us some spices, including some sweet curry powder that I use in all the curry. We have

meal prep, kind of, that we do now, and I make curry every week, and I'll probably end up talking about that in a later episode, that that spice helps to to keep it tasty uh on a related note i got some pumpkin pie syrup for drinks and stuff from patrick thank you patrick uh we got some tasty tea in from cassie and leah thank you cassie and leah uh savannah wallace sent us some lovely candles with some fall scents yes those candles those candles, we have them going. There's one, I think, called December Morning, which we're very excited about.

I don't know if this was a wonderful gift or just one of the other products, but Stephanie and Dana sent a Lucio onesie from Overwatch that is very, very, very good. Jess sent us an I Do Love You cross stitch. That I think that's in our bedroom. We have that in our bedroom. It's very sweet. Sasha sent us a taper, like a stuffed taper for Henry. Not an actual taper, but yeah, it was like knit to his hand knit. It was wonderful. And thank you to Anne who sent us this

really rad box of stuff from Japan japan including some matcha and some like little candy stationery really good stationery wonderful a stamp book like some really really cool stuff uh thank you very much ann uh yeah so anything else that we need to talk about thank you to maximum fun for having us check out all the great shows on MaximumFun.org. Shows like Stop Podcasting Yourself and Lady to Lady and Minority Corner and Heat Rocks and all the great shows all at MaximumFun.org. And if you want to hear our other podcasts, it's at McElroyShows.com. Thank you to Glow Lamp. You really don't provide a whole lot of illumination.

This is a very unintentionally spooky recording. Thank you to the Bad Stink and the spooky recording. Thank you to the bad stink in the exercise chair. Thank you for being patient. I know this episode's a little late. I'm not sorry. Henry's got fucking croup. Deal with it. It's been the worst fucking three days ever. Henry has

a really terrible cough that is getting better but has made our nights a little crazy. Sound like the devil. I don't want to be overdramatic, but I'm worried the devil is in there somehow. If the devil is a barking dog. The devil's a barking dog is my favorite Iron and Wine album. That's the end of the show.

Money won't pay. Baskin' on me. Money won't pay. Baskin' on me. Money won't pay. Baskin money on it. Hey! listener supported. Hey, MaxFun fans. It's me, Jesse, the owner of MaxFun. I've got a question for you. Will you help us make our shows better? We wanted to find a way to find out what the MaxFun community thinks about our shows. So we started something called the MaxFun listener panel. Basically, you subscribe to a podcast feed and twice a month or so, roughly speaking, we'll send you an episode of a show and instructions on how to

fill out a quick survey about what you think about that show. 10 questions, nothing too crazy. You'll be hearing existing shows that we're thinking about making changes to, secret pilots of shows that we're developing that you'll only hear this way,ows we're considering adding to the network and what you think about them really matters to us. So to join the panel, it's easy. Just go to MaximumFun.org slash listener panel. That's MaximumFun.org slash listener panel. Thanks for helping make MaxFun better.