Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 15: Big Dog Don't Fall Over

Episode Date: December 13, 2017

Griffin's favorite stuff to do while traveling! Griffin's favorite kitchen tool improvement! Rachel's favorite week-long winter holiday! Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Hey, you made it on back home to us. You brought it on home. We left the light on for you. The podcast light outside of our podcast hotel. No bugs here, except for the hug bugs.

And that's what I call my arms. Two long hug bugs extending off my torso. They're ten wriggling antennae looking for meat. I gotta tell you. Yeah. Sitting in a room with a great improviser, Griffin McElroy is such an honor every week. These 10 wriggling antennae are just looking for flesh that they can wrap

themselves around for a big old embrace. It sounds like he wrote this out before we started. I did. I'm reading it off my computer right now. So welcome to our podcast hotel. And we don't change the sheets. We expect you to do that yourself. You fucking nasty,

nasty. You got to change those damn sheets yourself. What are you doing? Not changing the sheets. It's a no service hotel based on a conversation we had earlier. Griffin McElroy doesn't change the sheets very often either. I told you that in private. It was a long time ago,

but it was college and it was all of it. So this is going to be sort of a, we're doing something different this time. I think I'm going to do two, my two things. And then you have one big thing. One super size. That's going to be at the end of the episode.

So do you want me to just go ahead and get started? Because also our time has been slipping a little bit. We said when we started, this is going to be a half hour to 45 minute podcast. We're creeping towards that hour mark. And I've seen that creep happen a lot. And I don't know, I'd like to keep it tight if we can, you know? Tight, condensed, efficient. It's starting to reach like Marvel movie proportions.

And shit like this, talking about the hug arm bugs and just sort of vamping about the length of the show, it's actually not helping. Yeah, see, this is the thing. I don't think we can blame me on this one. Yeah, so my first thing is travel activities. Now, this is sort of the most abstract I think I've maybe gotten.

Yes. I am talking about you're sitting in the passenger seat of a car or a bus or the passenger seat of a train, which is most of the seats on the train. There's really only the one non-passenger seat or a plane, right? You're sitting in that seat. What are you going to do? I love that. Really? I love that. And I recognize that that is strange. Now I should put in a caveat. I don't necessarily love air travel. Specifically, train travel fucking owns bones.

I would give anything to be able to travel by train if only Texas wasn't the size of a small planet and had more shit that you could get to by train. I'm not talking about that, right? Because on an airplane, it's so expensive and inconvenient and getting through security so stressful and then they shut the doors and instantly my sinuses like grow three sizes and make me very sick and uh you know you sit next to somebody and maybe they don't respect the elbow what we like though what do you like i'm not talking about i'm not talking about the logistics of it i'm talking about i love planning out what i'm gonna be doing on a plane or in the passenger side of a car or while riding on it like a long long train thing because this is something i think about a lot because i travel a lot these days for the podcast and doing live shows and it should be

mentioned now with the baby yes you really only have the one activity. You really only have the one activity when you are traveling with the baby. And that activity is, please. Can I make a confession before we continue? I have not read a book since Henry was born. Yes. And that's largely because if I have time in which Henry's occupied or asleep, I typically also want to be asleep. Right.

I've read one, and it was while I was traveling because I planned on it. I used to really enjoy getting a book for travel. Yeah. Just like knowing this was going to be my travel book. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. There are things, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but when you think about travel activities, you think of it as being this different suite of opportunities available to you that you wouldn't normally, like, jump after on a normal non-travel day, even though I don't think that's true. And I on a non travel day, if I have free time, I might, you know, get on my phone and play like a mobile game or get on my switch and play a game on that or listen to a podcast or listen to music or read a book or something. That's all stuff I can do at home or while I'm traveling, like the lines have kind of blurred, especially with like technology becoming what it is where now you can watch whatever movie that you want on a plane on your tablet or whatever. But there's something about the like, there's something about the psychology of knowing that you're going to be sitting in a chair for a few hours. And so you try to find things to

occupy those hours. And there's something about thinking about planning a period of your day like that, that I think is really exciting for me, like I get really into it like a week in advance. I think like, okay, you know, I've got five hours of flying that day, five hours home. So I can download 10 hours of podcasts. There's a new game that just came out on the 3ds. I haven't played yet. I'm gonna pick that up. And Justin's been telling me about this mobile game for a while. So I'll grab that too. And I'm gonna read this book that I've owned for a long time. and maybe I'll crack into that finally. Like, I don't know. I love thinking about that.

Like, I really do think it's a very, very enjoyable pastime. I think it's interesting knowing you personally because I think part of what I think you might like about it is that typically when you are home, you are thinking of other things that you should be doing. Whereas when you're on a plane, like your options are limited. And so you can do these things kind of guilt free. Yeah, that's definitely part of it. But I really do think like the biggest thing is just this artificial barrier that I have built between things I can do while I'm traveling and things I can do while I'm at home, because that barrier is not really there. It's the same things, essentially. And this has been since I was like a little kid, really since like the advent of the game boy, when I would just be like, Oh yeah, yeah. Cause we used to take long ass car trips. Like we'd go to,

uh, you know, the Carolinas and that's, you know, eight, nine hours or we'd go down to Florida. That's like a whole day of driving. Um, and I would just need, like, I would need a lot of stuff. I would need some comics and I would need a game or two. And then, you know, dad and mom and dad would get a book on tape that we could listen to in the car. Like there's something about it. And don't even get me started about snacks

because there are entire snacks industries that are based on, you're going to eat this in your fucking car and nowhere else. What's up combos? What was the last time you cracked into a bag of con like at home like get out the big share size bag of combos that doesn't exist you can get 30 combos in a small bag you'll eat it while you're driving and you won't know why you won't know why you're eating these little flavor barrels that for me

is checks mix checks mix maybe it's on like parties, like an office holiday party. Like they'll have some Chex Mix or some puppy chow laid out, right? But like normally, yeah, you don't fuck with Chex Mix unless you're on the road. And then you're always, always

never not fucking with Chex Mix. Swedish Fish is another one for me. Swedish Fish. Mike and Ike's for me. Like I can't explain why I eat Mike and Ike's at all, except that when I get up in the sky, I feel the call of Mike and the call of Ike, and I answer it every time. I just think it's like, I don't know, I genuinely enjoy thinking about stuff in my backpack, my Swiss gear, full of shit. I'll get my Kindle in there, my iPad, I'll get my 3DS, my Switch, just a bunch of stuff. Yeah, no, I've seen you assemble your bug-out bag of travel gear.

And it's not a very good bug-out bag. I feel like Bear Grylls would be kind of PO'd if you saw what I was bringing to the table. Yeah, it's all very electricity dependent. the the uh we went to seattle for podcon uh this past weekend and i was on those nice delta air buses that have the screens on the back of the seats with like a bunch of free movies on it and i watched like dunkirk how great would that be traveling with henry to just have a screen built in yeah we have not we've traveled with henry a couple times but we have not had the the fortune to have the screen um but i've watched like uh i've traveled a lot right since henry's been born and you and i don't get a lot of opportunities to go to the movies

and so like i watched a bunch of movies on airplane screens you're just making me jealous well no i mean these are now like uh rogue one like there was a star wars movie that was out that i hadn't seen which was buck wild but then i finally got to see it because of this this airplane um i also just love like sometimes i love i love a good like road trip i fucking love a good road trip back in the day like i used to take them all the time yeah especially when i was kind of like between cities after i'd graduated from college and uh knew i was going to be moving away from cincinnati i was like trying to find a new place to go so i just took this long road trip up to Boston where I drove and stopped in a bunch of cities

and like tried them out for a little bit. And I was like the best man getting a, oh man, getting a couple of CDs burnt. I unearthed a couple of my, I don't know how I found them, but a couple of like very old CDs from my old radio show, like today. I listening to them man i used to just burn a bunch of them and just you know drive to some other city it was so great i wish those cds came with

your dj commentary in between the tracks because i will okay well if you want i can record all of that right now uh and we can put it on this podcast and then people can layer it over the cd so i'll just like here let me just knock it out real quick yeah it was pretty sad end of commentary put that before each track and you're ready to go um or let me add something else yeah i was really inexplicably into the soundtrack to lost in space the the remake with matt leblanc and the movie if i remember correctly correctly. Yeah, I also enjoyed the film. Please do not at me on that. Travel activities. I feel like you balked at travel activities, but you get it, right?

I get it. I will say there's part of it for me where as soon as I get on there and I realize I have to be there, I start to get real antsy. I start to get real antsy. It's kind of the same way I feel like when the cat lays on top of me and I instantly start thinking, how long can I do this before I lose my mind? And I kind of feel that way on a plane too, like on our international flight. That's the only time when I actually get, yeah. Like an hour and a half in, I start thinking like, I got so much ahead of me. How am I going to do this? Well, that's why you got to have more travel activities so you'd never have that to feel really small oh you can't do that and i can't like sleep

on a plane look at dunkirk baby just look right into look to stare deep into dunkirk there's like no dialogue in that fucking movie basically at all i don't know sometimes kenneth bran i knew nothing about it either until i watched it except except that it was the, you know, Inception Man. And there's like just no dialogue, just a lot of shooting, a lot of people getting shooted. Yeah. Very scary. Is there like a guy named Dunkirk?

There's a guy named Mark Dunkirk. Is he a realtor? He's a realtor. He's a realtor on that beach in Dunkirk. And he's like, we got to get all these British and French soldiers off my beach so I can sell my house. There's a place called Dunkirk? Yeah. But it's fine.

Okay. I want to do my second thing real quick. Okay. And then again, we're going to get to Rachel's super block after the ad block probably. My second thing is having a nice sharp kitchen knife the feeling of a nice sharp kitchen knife is like if you're looking for ways to like step up your kitchen game which is not like a thing that has been a major consideration in my life until very recently having a nice sharp kitchen knife i remember the first time sharpened a kitchen knife and i cut something with it and i was like oh this is why it

takes me fucking three hours to like make anything yeah is because i didn't have a nice sharp kitchen knife and it's not just faster it's way way safer and i learned this in cooking class i took a cooking class in high school that was like one of the electives we could take was cooking but like every high school cooking class it was mostly nachos um but yeah we learned that a dull knife is like way way more dangerous than a sharp knife is i believe it because with a dull knife then you can slip or uh miss the mark in some way and that's when you're gonna that's when you're gonna cut yourself which is what happened to me over thanksgiving horrible injury horrible sweet potato-based injury.

These sweet potatoes, these yams were motherfuckers. They were some real stiff customers. Let me tell you what. A lot of hard meat in there. So yeah, a sharp knife, though, you don't have that problem. It just goes right through it. So they recommend, and by they, I mean some website I found, to use a honing rod, which is what we have.

Yeah. That's part of most standard knife blocks. It's just like a big metal rod, the long end of which is kind of textured in a way that you drag your knife across it. I forget what the exact angle you're supposed to do. And it'll make it a little bit sharper, right? And that's like your go to technique for for sharpening the knife. And if you're like a professional chef, you'll probably do it every day for most people probably once or maybe even twice a week if you go at it a lot. But then I didn't really respect this part of the knife

sharpening game. But it makes sense because I see ads for stuff like this in Austin all the time. You're supposed to go to somebody with a whetstone after a year or so and get it sharpened. They have those at the farmer's market. I've always wondered, why the fuck would you do this? Why not just use the honing rod at home? It's because the honing rod can only get your knife's edge sharp to a certain degree. And then at a certain point, you cannot get that edge any sharper.

You cannot refine that edge anymore. So you have to go to a whetstone where they literally grind the edge away until it reveals a new edge that then can be honed. I didn't know this, but I'm very excited. And also, I'm going to take our fucking knives to the farmer's market with me next time and get those things sharpened. There's a good analogy there, right? For what? The whetstone is Jesus, and the honing rod is drugs. And you use the honing rod, and you think, like, I've got it all figured out.

But eventually, the drugs aren't going to get you any sharper. You've got to go to the Jesus whetstone. He'll help you find a new edge, a straight edge. It's a perfect analogy. Yeah, no, that's better than I guess what I was thinking of. No, what were you thinking of? Now I don't know. I guess just when you And I enjoy like getting that mise en place shit like ready to go. A lot of like the recipes that we use just require you to like, okay, cut this, cut this, cut this, cut this, cut this. Okay, now cook it all together. And I fucking love that. And like step one in that for me always is getting the knife sharp and cleaning off the cutting board because that's like the zone

and it's it's so like uh i don't know it's just so much more fun to cook when you know that like your tools are like ready for it and and and that you can you're not gonna have to be like cleaning shit up as you go and you know fumbling with this or that like it's just nice to like have this nice clean sharp knife next to the clean cutting board and then getting going from there um yeah i really i really enjoy it also watching like videos of super sharp kitchen knives cutting through shit like the ginsu era like all those commercials like i fucking get it now i don't think i appreciated it when i was younger watching a knife cut through like a cowboy boot or whatever but now like watching a knife stab perfectly through a piece of paper without the paper moving. That is my

shit dog. Watching a watching a tomato just get slowly like skinned like that rules. I don't know why that's so satisfying, but it very much is. Very much is. Because how do you even get that sharp? How sharp can you get a knife? Can you cut a hole in the fabric of space-time? Because some of these knives, man, I'm telling you, stab all the way through a phone book with, like, one, like, little bit of pressure. Could you give yourself a haircut with a kitchen knife?

Probably, like, with some fucking Hattori Hanzo steel, like, definitely. I mean, that's another thing, like, when you are, like like getting your knife really sharp and then it cuts through things very easily there is like a weird like oh i feel like a medieval knight or or like a medieval blacksmith at the very least although apparently you gotta get a grindstone gotta get a whetstone apparently that's not just some dnd shit like you gotta use those on your knife so you can cut through tomatoes super good i'm gonna buy a tomato at the farmer's market bring my knife and just be like

no keep going keep going i want you to fuck that tomato up i want a nub i want a nub and a handle uh how about we steal us some money let's steal us some money now Now this is an interesting development. Ooh, okay. Maybe the ad break could be like a heist that we're planning. And then it could be like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- I like that a lot, but we can never do it again. See, this is the problem we created for ourselves is that we do a new stinger or at least a new version of the stinger every week. You're right. So pearls before swine is not in that moment.

I really enjoyed it, but you can never do it again. I know you want to read that first Jumbotron. Yes. This message is for Alexander, Anton, Aranka, Celeste, Alina, Anaya, Philip, Ida, Lovisa, Malin, and Tove. Whoa. It is from Caroline Crushbone. Okay. Hey, MBMBOJS, which is, she says in parentheses, Swedish, my Bambino's.

My Bambino. That's how you say it, right? Yeah, baby. And thanks for supporting my art. Um, our group chat is amazing. And I totally love the way that we have found each other over our love for

Mackle content. I could think of no better way to let you know how much I like you guys than to have Rachel and Griffin do so in Wonderful, as you guys truly are just that. P.S. Hoping for some D&D sessions soon. How delightful and how nice. Is this an international sort of band of, you know, rabble rousers and ne'er-do-wells? Seems like it. Well, she did say Swedishers and... Seems like it....ne'er-do-wells. Well, she did say Swedish.

Yeah, I love it. So that might be exciting for us to know we have Swedish listeners. I know we have sweet, sweet-ish listeners. I mean, they're a little bit sweet, but they're also a little bit nasty, too. Okay. You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. Here's a message, and it's for alphonse and it's from jamie who says since we're bad at dates we'll call whenever this airs right so happy 10 year anniversary to my best friend i love you to infinity and beyond and this decade has been the best one of my life from hours on the couch playing bubble bobble fuck yeah uh to the birth of our cool babies flynn and potter you're better than a robot and or soul grafted to a suit of armor a lot of people don't recognize this is a very very good message and i love all of it but a lot of people don't recognize that a lot of these robots are just souls grafted

into you know big big uh you know shells and it's it's dangerous and it's not right. Let them go to heaven already. You know, that Osimo one, I think Toyota makes, and he's just this little one. He just kind of like stumbles around or the Boston, the Boston one that the big dog, it's just like a big dog and it can run on ice and stuff.

You were saying words right now. And I recognize that they are words. Have you not seen the big dog? No. Don't watch a big dog video. This is important. We have to do it right now and i recognize that they are words have you not seen the big dog no oh don't watch a big dog video this is important we have to do it right now what does it have to do with boston that's okay boston dynamics makes this big dog oh watch him watch what he does to big dog you see watching fucking kicks big dog big dog don't fall over okay when you said big dog i

thought i was gonna see a robot that looked like a cuddly dog. No, this robot looks like a big, like... I'm a little disappointed, to be honest. I think big dog looks really cuddly. And I wish these men would stop fucking kicking it, because there's a dog's soul in there. Yeah, I don't like this, Griffin. It's creepy looking. Don't hate, it's big dog.

It looks like a giant insect. It's not a giant insect, it's a big dog. It looks like a giant insect. It's not a giant insect. It's a big dog. And it's my best one, friend. If it were a little dog, I think I'd like it. That's hateful against big dogs. You didn't decide to be that big. Like a little guy. If they could make them little, then the computer parts aren't sophisticated enough.

I had to put them in a big dog. Babe, you gotta stop talking crap about big dog, okay? It's very impressive. It's not just impressive, it's great. Watch Big Dog go. Not cute at all. Oh, gosh, no. They just keep kicking the dang dog, don't they?

But this Big Dog won't fall over. This Big Dog's gonna kill both of these men one day. Why did you start talking about this? I think because I just really wanted to talk about Big Dog. Also, they named it Big Dog. And that's great, too. Hey, Helen Hong. Yes, J. Keith Van Straten?

What's the difference between a layover and a stopover? I have no idea. What's the difference between optimal and optimum? I have no idea. What's the difference between an actual conversation and a promo for our new show on Maximum Fun, Go Fact Yourself? Nobody has any idea. Go Fact Yourself, the game show with celebrity

contestants, super smart experts, and answers to questions you've never even asked. Listen twice a month on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. And be in the audience for our tapings of Go Fact Yourself in downtown LA. It's free. Go Fact Yourself in downtown LA. It's free.

Go to GoFactYourPod.com for more info. We're having a very realistic conversation. Yes, we are. So, Rachel, what are we talking about in the back half of this episode of Wonderful? My wonderful item for this week is Hanukkah. Neither of us are capable of making that fucking noise. item for this week is Hanukkah. No, no, no, no. Neither of us are capable of making that fucking noise. Hanukkah starts tonight, right? Yep.

First crazy night. Well, as we're recording. Right. When this airs, it will have already. We'll be on this, what is that, second morning or whatever. Do you do anything in the mornings on Hanukkah? Nope. Just at nighttime. I like that. It's a sundown activity. I like that. Yeah. Because you can have the whole rest of your day to do whatever. Do you do anything in the mornings on Hanukkah? Nope. Just a nighttime. I like that. It's a sundown activity. I like that. Yeah. Because you can have the whole rest of your

day to do whatever. Can I celebrate Hanukkah in the mornings? No. Oh, okay. What if I really want to? So caveat, just to start off the episode, I had to do more research on this than i probably should have had to do considering i have celebrated hanukkah my entire life yes correct me if i am wrong and i should mention that i am uh i am not of the jewish faith and did not celebrate hanukkah until you and i got together um and now i i also think it is absolutely wonderful, and I'm excited to do it with the two of us and our son. But I don't know, like, I also do not know a ton about it. But from what I understand, it is not, like, the highest, holiest day. It is sort of, like, a more, like, what's a, like, a fun holiday?

Like, what can we do with like a fun holiday? And that is kind of Hanukkah. Obviously there's like a, an origin story there, but it is not like, what are the, what are the big ones? Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

Rosh Hashanah. Passover is another big one. Yeah. Like a huge one. Yeah. Hanukkah is more just like a part, like a fun, fun time,

like Purim, right? Yeah, well, it's literally a celebration. Right. So I am always confused as to when Hanukkah is because it changes every year. I never really understood why. But it always kind of falls around Christmas, which is why it gets paired up with Christmas. So the Jewish calendar is primarily based on the lunar cycle. And the first day of Hanukkah can fall anywhere between November 28th and December 26th.

So it kicks off on the 12th. We're pretty much right in the middle here. Damn, the 28th, dude. We are staring down the barrel of a year where we have Henry's birthday, Thanksgiving, and Hanukkah all in like the same week. Yeah, gosh, I didn't even think about that. Yeah, bud. Oh, that's terrifying. So Hanukkah is the eight-day festival of lights, and the word Hanukkah means dedication.

I did not know that. I didn't either. So you'll see Hanukkah spelled a bunch of different ways. I like the one with the C at the beginning. See, that one always makes me uncomfortable because here's the thing. So the reason the translation is so inconsistent is that the ch sound is a guttural throaty sound like the C H in Bach. Right. Yeah.

Um, which does not have an English equivalent, which is why you'll often see H. But I always get insecure. Wow, yeah. Because it feels, I mean, I would, I definitely feel insecure. Like, I feel like that would be, like, kind of appropriate. I've never been good at, like, the throaty, like, sound. That wasn't, yeah, it wasn't great. I just, yeah, I get nervous whenever I see this.

It just sounds like you're putting, like, a weird amount of emphasis on the Hanukkah. Like, like, chutzpah? Yeah. Oh, but you can't like roll your C's. So Hanukkah, just brief history. The Makkah babies were being persecuted by Angelica. That's very sweet. It's also disrespectful in a major way.

Regrets. No, honestly, I don't think so. I personally think that more exposure needs to happen for this holiday. Yeah, sure. And I'll take it in most places I can get it. Yes, it's definitely limited. I don't think you could argue that it's not. In 2nd century BCE, the Holy Land was ruled by the Greeks who tried to force the people of Israel to accept Greek culture and beliefs.

ruled by the Greeks who tried to force the people of Israel to accept Greek culture and beliefs. And a small band of faithful Jews led by Judah the Maccabee defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks from the land, and reclaimed the holy temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of God. Here's something I didn't know about Maccabee. Yeah. Here's something I didn't know about Maccabee. Yeah.

Turns out there's a lot of opportunity here for acronyms because Maccabee is a word composed of the initial letters of the four Hebrew words, Mi Kamoka Ba'alem Hashem, who is like you, O God. So that's M. Wait, so his name is literally like a truncation of this phrase? Yeah, well, the Maccabees came from a word composed of the initial letters. Huh. Yeah. That's interesting. I know.

I didn't know that. So what was the eight candles, though? Explain that. Oh, okay. So. You kind of set up like there's a dude who's got a big army. And in my head, I'm thinking like, fuck, yeah, dude sounds like 300. Really into this shit. So they just reclaim the temple. Yeah. Kicks dude got a big army and i'm in my head i'm thinking like fuck yeah dude sounds like 300 really into this shit so they just reclaimed the temple yeah kicks him down a big pit when they sought to light this is hanukkah and he kicks him do you think they knew it was

hanukkah back then do you think when when christ was born they were just like yo it's christmas what and then they started counting down the shopping days to the next one yeah everybody in the world felt so guilty instantly because they had forgotten um okay so they sought to light the temple's menorah and they found only a single pot of oil miraculously they lit the menorah and the one day supply of oil lasted for eight days. Dope. Yeah. It's dope.

It is also strange that that is like the focal point of the, I mean, I don't know. Well, you know what I found? This might not be true. So I went to this website called Shabbat.org and it said that the initial story of Hanukkah was just about triumphing over the Greeks. Right. That's what I'm saying. Like, and then it was only later that rabbis got together and came up with this kind of celebration of the oil. That's that's OK.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's 100% true. But I think it's interesting to kind of turn it into like a more like, and this is why we do this thing we do. Yeah, sure. I get the symbolism and and everything but it's when i learned about hanukkah when i was when i was younger from you know uh from from afar until i watched that fucking rugrats episode no joke which taught me the actual meaning of hanukkah i just thought it was there were these folks who lit a lamp and

it lasted like a wicked long time and so we celebrate that great lamp when there's like a lot more to it than that. Yeah. Here's another thing I didn't know. So something is only technically a menorah if all of the candles are at the same level. If there is a shamash, which is the attendant candle that you use to light the other ones, then it's something called a Hanukkiah. Wait, wait, wait, wait. First of all, that's the name for the best, like, Kia car salesman promotion. Like, come on down for eight nights of great sales down at Hanukkiah.

So let me... That was a very delayed reaction. So wait, if it's the eight candles, but with the one with the shamash, and the shamash is not on the same level as the other candles, it's not a menorah? So a Hanukkiah is a type of candelabra with nine candle holders.

Eight are in a line, and the ninth candle is out of place, either at a different height or position. And that's not a menorah. The menorah is more of a symbolic object that contains seven branches of candle holders and does not have a shamash out of place. That's only seven candles. I know. It's interesting, right? I didn't know that. Yeah, in my house we called it the helper candle. seven candles. I know. It's interesting, right? I didn't know that. Um,

yeah. And my house, we called it the helper candle. I like that too. That's so cute. What were your Hanukkah? What did you do for Hanukkah when you're younger? Tell me everything right now.

Okay. Did your grandma get, get, go like buck wild? Oh my gosh. So here's, here's my favorite, my favorite grandma story.

Um, my, so my dad's side of the family is Jewish, and they are, I would say, a faithful people, but not very active in any kind of temple or formal practice. But growing up in a suburban area of St. Louis, which does have a decent Jewish population, but not in the areas that we were, my dad and my grandma became kind of the representatives for a lot of their friends and co workers for the Jewish faith. And so the best thing about my grandma is she would tell this story all the time, where she'd be like, yeah, people are always asking me questions about Hanukkah and about Jewish tradition and expecting me to be this expert. And she's like, you know, and so I tell them what I know. And what I don't know, I make up. They don't know any different. Which is true. It's, it's, it's always been intimidating for me because I've always been in a group of people typically where Jewish people are the minority. And so when you mention that that is part of your background, people will ask you all these questions.

Yeah, sure. And, you know, like when I meet somebody that's Christian, I don't ask them a lot of questions about Christmas because I've just kind of grown up with it. But Hanukkah isn't something that a lot of people grow up with. Absolutely. In most areas of grown up with it. But Hanukkah isn't something that a lot of people grow up with, at least in most areas of the country. So yeah, so I had to do a lot of research. And I still found it very delightful. Yeah, for sure.

So like what? So, okay, so we would do a menorah every night, or I guess a Hanukkiah. I feel like I've been lied to not my entire life, but at least the last like five years. Can we just call it a menorah? Yes. Sounds great. Yes. And I would say what I thought was the Hebrew prayer.

Uh-oh. Which in my research, I was pretty close. But it was one of those things that was taught to me when i was very young by my dad and you know i've seen the two of you deliver the the prayer at the same time and it's it starts out strong with the you know barokhata and then it's uh not it's not that fast you can make it about you can make it about like you know six or seven words in and then you both kind of turn mumblecore on me it was one of those things that when i learned it you know i was probably really little and so it's probably kind of charming if i was a little off and then it just kind of

continued and now i don't know that anybody really knows it especially well in my family and so we all just kind of say like yeah that sounds good yeah okay so here it is oh wait are you sure you want to do are you are going to be opening yourself up to like scrutiny from the... Well, so I found a phonetic... Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. I found a phonetic reading of it.

And I'm just enough confident that it was close to what I was doing. Okay, so Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, Asher Kedeshonu, B'mitzvotav Vetsivanu, L'Hadlik Ner Shel Hanukkah. That was good. Although shall I don't see on here, but we always just say that. And it means, Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah light. I love how like interstellar like Hebrew prayers are because almost all of them use i don't know what the word is but king of the universe sounds so like it's so like i don't know it's so like cosmically reverent in a way that i think is like fascinating well that's one thing that i've always kind of

liked about the jewish tradition is there's this sense of that you are always you're always seeking a greater understanding. Like there is a lot still to be discovered, and you can only discover it through this kind of academic pursuit of the truth. And so there's a lot of like scholarly elements to it, and there's a lot of kind of, yeah, like you said, this kind of cosmic sense of like there's so much bigger out there that we are still exploring.

So Hanukkah food oh here we go here we go here we go here we go i never realized and it's so obvious now that i say it since the miracle involved oil it is customary to eat foods fried in oil i come on i knew i knew what the foods were. I knew potato latkes. Right. I recently learned about the donuts, which is another thing, like jelly donuts. But I never really made the connection of like- Oil. Why Hanukkah? Oil. Yeah.

This was one part where I kind of knew about Hanukkah. I obviously did not celebrate it before you and I got together. I obviously did not celebrate it before you and I got together. I don't know that I'd ever eaten a latke until we did Hanukkah and started doing Passover and stuff together. Yeah, so good, though, right? It's so freaking good. Yeah. There is a – okay, I'm going to brief tangent. There was a DreamWorks movie, I believe, called Home with Jim Parsons from Big Bang Theory, I think, is the voice of this like purple alien guy. I did not see the movie. But there is a cartoon series that is like an animated like 2D, you know, I forget, I don't know what the right word, 2D cartoon.

Yeah, I think Just came out this year, right? On Netflix? I think so. And we watched it as part of our sort of like getting into kids shows. Christmas movie, I think just came out this year, right? On Netflix. I think so. And we watched it as, as part of our sort of like getting into kids shows. It says that it's a Christmas movie, I think. So there's a little Hanukkah nugget. There's a whole TV show. There's a whole TV show.

And the TV show, like we've watched a lot of, and I, I have enjoyed it. And then they did this holiday special and the holiday special includes a performance by actual Kelly Clarkson. And then, uh,

a incredible cameo, not even cameo like a whole segment uh where ben schwartz from parks and recreation shows up the guy who plays jean ralphio shows up and does a whole song about latkes and it is really good fucking incredible and then him and kelly clarkson get back together at the end to sing like this whole duet it's like a really good christmas special it's like a really good Christmas special. It's a good holiday special that I really enjoyed. Latkes, they fucking rule. They're so good.

Sour cream, applesauce. Yes, all of it. Delicious. So for those of you that don't know, latkes are like little potato pancakes that you fry in oil. And I mean, when I say potato pancake, that's basically what it is. You're holding it together with egg and flour. Yeah.'re frying onion in there sometimes too yeah yeah it's very good it is real good um what else you like about hanukkah i mean you get eight presents right gotta love those presents here here's this is interesting too um and this is very recent and not true for everybody but as you mentioned earlier Hanukkah wasn't like a big

right big celebration I mean it was a obviously it was a celebration but it wasn't like Christmas level uh gift giving right sure and my dad and grandma always just talk about that a lot too of just you know the the presents that you got night to night were not supposed to be giant christmasy presents a lot of it was like money yeah or gelt like the chocolate coins that they give out for hanukkah um it's only recently as hanukkah and christmas have been kind of butting up against each other, that presents have become like a more significant part of Hanukkah. Why do you think that is? Just like, because if you're like a Jewish child and you watch your.

Yeah, I was reading this article on slate about kind of ways to make it so that your experience, especially if you're in a household like I was where there are the two holidays are both celebrated where they're competing, like how you keep them separate. Uh, and just kind of the challenges associated with trying not to have them

battle it out. Cause that starts to get, that kind of gets a little crass, like, well, not a little, like extremely crass, very,

very quickly. I don't think Like, well, not a little, like extremely crass very, very quickly. Yeah. I don't think of them as, and, you know, I didn't celebrate it until I was an adult when I was a little kid and like obsessed with getting presents. Like, I think I would be probably in that mindset a little bit more. Yeah. I just think, I think that Christmas has become such a huge thing. Yeah. In that, like, the shopping season for Christmas starts often now.

The day after halloween yeah um and being a child and seeing that and seeing hearing your friends talk about and seeing the commercials and seeing all the store displays and everything there becomes this kind of tension of like i am left out of not just a holiday, but several months out of the year. Right, sure. Which I think a lot of people these days, maybe as adults, they are stoked to not have to be party to, you know, holiday or specifically in this case Christmas-like stuff for two months. I have met a lot of Jewish people who have always celebrated Christmas. Right, sure.

Because it's a seasonal thing for them. It's just like part of the wintertime and celebrating. Yeah, and I mean, there is definitely a, what's the word? I was not sectional. What's the secular? There you go. Sectional. For this Christmas, I got you a new sectional

from pottery barn it's great this folds down eight piece sectional eight piece sectional i think a lot of people just like treat it like a secular holiday like straight up like oh i just i really like um you know i really like lights and i really like the lights and I really like, it's a wonderful life and, you know, and that's, that's how I get down on it. Yeah. So I,

so I always celebrated both, um, which was tremendously fortunate for me. And I had a lot of jealous friends because of that. well, at least you weren't also an only child. So you were essentially just siphoning off the tip of this enormous gift funnel present violet beauregard any presents in the house were always for me and i never had to

share with anyone one time you took a present away from one of your cats like no these are mine my presents you know that might sound insulting to some of you, but that is exactly how I sounded as a child. It's true. These are my presents, kitty kitty! So, and the other thing I will say is that in my house, Hanukkah presents were substantial. Oh yeah, sure. And I think part of that was, I don't want to say competing with Christmas, but giving It was the literal war on Christmas.

Giving like an equal footing for both holidays. Can we talk about Hanukkah stuff in media? Because I really do think the Rugrats stuff is like a genuine revelation and was so like valuable to me as an educational resource as even though i have not watched it in quite some time also the oc chrismica episodes there's actually only like one actually good one and one of them is a season in which they uh fall into an alternate reality because the oc gets fucking buck wild it's only for one episode it's not like a they don't do a uh what was that show with joshua jackson on it dawson's creek yeah you're in dawson's creek

where they fall into all the french um okay i mean there's not a lot i mean no joke like adam sandler eight crazy nights is like probably not one that maybe you want to own. I have not seen, I don't know. I have not seen eight crazy nights. Let us know. There's, there's probably a ton that we just don't think enough.

I mean, you could Google it. Seven best Hanukkah TV episodes. That'll make the perfect finale to this year's festival of lights on bustle.com Saturday night live. Come on. Oh, that was the, it's the episode where Adam Sandler sings the hanukkah song yeah rugrats hanukkah nailed it the nanny the hanukkah story did not see that even stevens heck of a hanukkah i do remember that fuck yeah i was a little after

my time um friends the one with the holiday armadillo friends that's a good one the oc the best chris micka ever yep yes uh crazy ex-girlfriend my mom greg's mom and josh's sweet dance moves oh i don't think we've seen that one yes there needs to be more there's seven now let's search the best christmas episode the top 399 christmas tv shows I mean, yeah, 100 best Christmas TV episodes of all time. Hanukkah movies? This is what I was telling you about, though. This is the problem with trying to put Hanukkah up against Christmas. Yeah, I know.

Like, the nature of Hanukkah is not... They do not need to compete. I'm just trying to illustrate that there's not like a ton of stuff out there to learn about if you did not grow up in a Jewish household. Well, and that's what's interesting. So when I was telling Griffin that I wanted to talk about Hanukkah this week, I felt this need to do all this research and provide a lot of education on the holiday. And we were talking about how typically when we talk about things we like, we don't feel the need to do that. You know, we'll give a little bit of history, but we won't spend a lot of time giving the background. But I just felt like there's

probably a lot of listeners that aren't really familiar with it. And I wanted to give a little bit of information as kind of a jumping off point. And they might go looking for resources on like, say, this e-news listicle that I'm looking at now, which lists Inglourious Basterds as a Hanukkah movie. Okay. Little Fockers. Little Fockers? Say that out loud.

No. Say that movie title out loud. So we've got It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, these real like warm classics that have just some beautiful elements and superior acting performances. And then what was that Hanukkah movie you just mentioned? Little Fockers. So hold on. I read it wrong. Little Fockers.

That's what it was called. An American Tale? Oh, I mean, they're Jewish. They're Jewish mice. I think that this e-news article is just like it's not we need movies with any jewish people in them um yeah i'm glad you brought honka to the to the to the table here and i'm glad we gotta go out there and light that that first candle huh open up that first that first package uh so i read online so you

you're supposed to do it at sundown uh a little late on that, but we had a podcast to record. Yeah, and then the idea is that you light an actual candle. You're not supposed to do the electric menorah, but, you know, we work with what we have. We don't have candles. Yeah, and then the flame is— And we also apparently don't have a menorah. We have a Hanukkiah. And then the flame is supposed to burn for at least 30 minutes after sundown,

which is about how long typically a Hanukkah candle will last. Unless you have a piece of shit cat that wants to knock it over or burn itself to death. Yeah, it's always a terrifying situation in our house. And how about some submissions from our listeners at home? Yeah. This is one from Emily who says, I think baby trucks are wonderful. Not trucks for babies, but semi trucks without the trailers. So they just look like tiny baby trucks. Every time I see one driving, it makes me so happy to think of them growing up to become a full grown truck.

I was gonna say, is that a technical term baby truck? Almost certainly not. But it doesn't make it not great. Here's another Emily, a different Emily, who says, I know many people dread having to wrap presents, but it's one of my favorite parts of the holiday season. I love the whole process, finding beautifully patterned papers and coordinated bows, the sound of scissors gliding through a cut. Oh, God, that sound. The crispness of each crease around the edges and the joy of singing a perfectly wrapped

gift waiting to be opened. I love a good crispy present. There's nothing more cheerful than a pile of presents. Nicely wrapped presents and that sound of it. I mainly included this because the sound of those scissors running through paper is like the shit. No, that's wonderful. I think that might be ASMR for me. I think that might be the first one.

I bet there's YouTube videos, Griffin. Yeah, definitely. Here's one more, and it's from Whitney, who says, something I think is wonderful is the episodes of Survivor where the loved ones visit. It's always a joyful and poignant moment when Jeff Probst brings them out and lets each contest and

have a moment with their loved one. After hugs and tears, Jeff then asks them to share about the emotions that they are feeling or love for each other, and their responses are always beautiful regardless of whether a contestant is hated or seen as a villain any dislike or gameplay is stripped away in that moment you see them for their real human self you see how their loved ones see them there's just so much joy and love and vulnerability in those moments and it's not only a truly wonderful thing it also never fails to make me cry the happy kind kind. Oh my gosh, I love those

episodes. They're like so exploitative and I know they're coming and I know exactly what they're trying to do to me and it still works. The, yeah, like the spouses being reunited. Yes. That's fine. Usually like the tough guys that are kind of jerks

like when their family member comes out and they fall apart. It's the best. It's the parents. Like when the parents roll up, that fucks me up, dude. Yeah. Fucks me clean up. But it is also very it's beautiful and nice. It's

very nice. I think that's it. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description uh you want to thank you to max fun uh you can find lots of great podcasts on the max fun network uh some that i have been listening to lately include judge sean hodgman you are obsessed with stop podcasting yourself stop you are listening to it pretty much constantly i'm a huge fan of that um jordan jesse go is a good one uh i listened to one bad mother uh gosh just a whole whole lot of them um but you can find mackleroy programming on mackleroy

shows.com a lot of those shows are on the max fund network, but, uh, you can find a lot of other stuff there. Yeah. I want to think like, uh, till death do us.

Tell death to us. Blart Rachel's most favorite podcast. Um, I think everybody who said, Hey, at podcom, we got a bunch of people saying that, uh,

they loved wonderful and that they were very supportive of the show. Rachel was unfortunately not there. Um, at, at podcom. But I do want to say people have asked if we are ever going to do a live show, and that is very much a plan for us one day. Yeah, I think we definitely want to do it.

We almost, we had considered doing it during the Chicago tours, but Henry goes to sleep at like 6 o'clock, which makes it very difficult. If y'all ever start doing matinee shows. Yeah, let's do a wonderful matinee. Fuck it. I think that's it for this one. So. I always get so low when it's time to part, you know?

I know. I've written a whole song about it. Oh, here we go. Bye. Bye. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. How do you say cheese in Spanish?

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that always has a fun, diverse panel talking about the stuff we love. Catch us every Wednesday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you decide to get your podcasts. I'm not going to judge.