Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 17: Wake Me Up Inside!!

Episode Date: January 3, 2018

Griffin's favorite music-mixing card game! Rachel's favorite episode of her favorite show! Griffin's favorite life-affirming YouTube video! Rachel's favorite stone fruit-based poem! 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. Welcome on back 2018. Well, hello. Come on again Welcome on back 2018. Wow. Hello. Come on again, old friend 2018. Hello, new friend.

All the new friends 2018. 2017 weren't no friend of mine. But 2018, hey, good looking. 2018, why don't you slide on over the pew towards me? I don't know why we're sitting on a church pew. You know what I realized? Today is the anniversary of when we joined the Maximum Fun

Network. That is true. Wow, yeah. So nice to be here. So nice for you to join us and we're really excited to get back in the old saddle this time. Thank you for indulging us as we took last week off. But we would have been insufferable if we'd

recorded an episode like the day after Christmas. It would have been insufferable if we'd recorded an episode like the day after christmas would have been like presents and ribbons and ham maybe people would have liked that i don't know it would have just been me screaming about ham i could do a whole ham bit if you want definitely could if anybody could it be you what's that supposed to mean huh that i'm a big ham fan you're just good at bits yeah thank you um i'm excited to get going you want to get going yes this is wonderful it's a podcast some of you might have tuned in today expecting us to talk about the bachelor because the vulture the vulture is that what they go by it makes them sound like a freaking spider-man villain they re-ran an old article they'd put

together on the best uh bachelor themed podcast Which I can understand people's confusion if they did tune in thinking that, because up until about 1 p.m. today, our description was wrong. It was wrong for quite a long time. But yeah, thank you so much for tuning in. This is a show where we talk about things that we love and things that we think are great. And we talk about some of the things

that you think are great, and that's really all the show is now. So we hope that you enjoy it. I feel like I just sold us a short shrift. That's all it is. Whatever. No, we're very, we love doing this show. It is massive in proportion, I would say. What is?

We love a lot of things. The show? We have a lot of listeners. The potential of the show. Yeah, we're doing Bonnaroo, headline Bonnaroo this year. It's us. Can you imagine? It's the Bonnaroo this year. It's us. Can you imagine? It's the two of us on stage. It's like, you know what's great?

Candy necklaces. Am I right? Am I right? People are like, we can't hear you over the chain smokers a mile away. Like, I know. I'm sorry. So I think it's my turn to start? Yes.

Okay. I have two music things this time. Ooh, you're probably getting into the music thing, I've noticed. Okay. I have two music things this time. Ooh, you're getting into the music thing, I've noticed. Yeah. I guess you could say I like, one of my main interests is music. Before this, it was calligraphy, and then he just... And then somebody played me a song, and I was like, is this music? I could bring, Gabriel Gundacker is an internet personality comedian person who I found on Vine who had a series called

Guy Who Doesn't Know What Music Is. This is not my first thing. But it was just a guy like, this is good. What is this? This is music? That's great. Is that music? No, that's a plant.

Does the plant do music? It doesn't. Okay. My first thing, though, is a game and it's called Drop Mix. Oh, how perfect. DropMix came out last year, and I didn't really pay a ton of attention to it, which is weird, because it is made by a company named Harmonix. And Harmonix's whole jam is making these rhythm video games, typically. They did Dance Central, right?

They did Dance Central. It's amazing how consistent they were in this sort of genre, because they did a bunch of hits all in a row. They started out with a series called Frequency and Amplitude, which was just kind of like a music performing game that you used a controller and put together tracks of songs. And it was very, very cool, like early PS2 era days. And then they did Rock Band. That was the thing that I feel like if you know who Harmonix is, it's probably through the Rock Band franchise one, two or three or Rock Band Van Halen or Rock Band The Beatles, which was so fantastic. I loved Rock Band like that was kind of what set me on fire for rhythm games because it blended two of my favorite things, which is like making stuff like it feels like you're making music.

If you haven't played Rock Band before, it uses those plastic instrument peripherals so somebody's on drums, and then there's a guitarist and a bassist and somebody's singing. I think Rock Band 2 or 3 introduced keyboards, and I loved making stuff, but also playing video games with my friends. That's my favorite way to play games, and so that was one of my favorite franchises of all times. It also kind of got me into playing music i started to like play the plastic drums of that game a lot um like practicing and like learning like rhythm basically they were totally worn out by the time i saw them oh i went through like three or four i actually developed like relationships with like somebody on the harmonics team who are like oh you destroyed another drum pedal again huh

i think they sent me like one of their as a review unit, like one of their like heavy cast iron foot pedals, because I think I had complained to their customer service department too much. Anyway, so I love this company. They also did. They've done a bunch of these cool rhythm games, including Dance Central, which is like a hit among our group of friends. It is a very fun connect based dancing game. Drop Mix is kind of in the same vein, where it is not a video game per se. You do use your phone, but it connects to a big board, and the board has five slots on it that you play cards on. And each card represents a fragment of a song. So it could be the violin part of Call Me Maybe, or it could be the drums from The Mother We Share by Churches, or the keyboards from Chandelier by Sia, or the guitar part from Run DMCs It's Tricky, or Or the vocals, too.

Or the vocals, which is some of the most impressive stuff they do is with the vocals. So it could be I Will Survive, the vocals for for that and you play all five of these together and it makes a song and it always sounds good these loops uh the game has a way of like transposing them and putting them in the same tempo so that it always always sounds if not good like a song no matter what it always always works um and there's a couple like game modes to the game there's like a clash mode where you and other player like play cards against each other and there's like a party mode where you're all working together to put a song together but the real magic is the way that no matter what you do

it's going to sound kind of good sometimes really really good and it's it's like a kind of magic that uh i don't know why i wasn't excited about it when it came out last year until I got it for Christmas, and now I'm so into it. I've spent a significant amount of money buying more cards for DropMix, two packs of which just showed up before we started recording, and I'm excited to crack into those. But what's so impressive about it is how smoothly it changes tempo and key signature for these song fragments, but it doesn't just transpose the key up and down. It converts minor to major and otherwise, which if you're not versed in music and you don't really understand what that means necessarily, imagine Call Me Maybe, but in a minor key, so it sounds like a funeral dirge.

Or imagine Evanescence's Wake Me Up Inside, but in a minor key, so it sounds like a funeral dirge. Or imagine Evanescence's Wake Me Up Inside, but in a major key, so it's kind of like fun and beautiful and uplifting a little bit. Oh, and the other cool thing, too, is that when you create these kind of unique compositions, you can save them, too. So that major to minor switch is really fun, and we've saved a lot of those. We've saved a ton of those. There's also wild cards that you can play that all of the other fragments that are down on the board at that time kind of anchor onto that card that you play.

And then suddenly the song changes key and tempo to match that new card. And it does so with basically a dubstep drop, which is appropriate when you play, for instance, Skrillex's Bangerang and Hysterically Funny when you play Genuine's Pony, which is a card that you can find and buy um they've had like you can tell how much fun they've had like making this game because some of the cards that they have in there's a card for the doctor who theme song

there's several cards of the transformers theme song um it's really really incredible and it's so fun to play uh at during new year's eve we had it set up for all of our friends. We were over at our friend's house, and they hooked it up with an aux cable to their sound system. And then for like a couple hours there, we just had all the cards spread out on a table. And whenever people wanted, they could just walk up and drop a card on the mix and change the music everybody was listening to. And I thought it might get grating after a while. And there are ways to make it grading. Like, I'm going to play the horns from this Ricky Martin song over the horns from this cake song over the horns from this other song over the violins from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony over beatboxing. And it's like, oh, yeah, that sounds like dog shit. There are ways to, I think, make it grading. But most of the time, like, it was really cool. It was like a fun sort of party experience of just everybody kind of being the DJ a little bit.

And no matter what, it always kind of works. And the people who I think least expected to make some jammers made some absolute slammers and jammers. Yeah, that's the one thing I think Griffin pointed out because I was talking about how fun it would be to listen to professional DJs kind of play with this game. But he made the point, and it's true, that it's very accessible, that you don't have to have any kind of expertise. Can I try and play one off my phone?

Because I have some saved mixes, including the one that our friend Justin Minsker made over New Year's Eve. I don't know how good it'll sound. Maybe I can find a way to patch it in directly later but this is evanescence's wake me up inside in a major key with some other components i'll try to shout out as they come up this may sound like shit We were a little drunk when that was performed. Maybe it's not as great as I originally thought it was. But still, they transposed Evanescence's Wake Me Up Inside, laid over the horns from that Ricky Martin song, laid over the drums from the bass from Outkast's Miss Jackson.

Like, the novelty of it is pretty incredible. There are other mixes on here, but I won't subject everybody else to that again. But it's a really fun game, and it's really, really am i'm i feel bad that i'm this late on it because i think it's like one of the coolest things griffin got it as a christmas gift uh from his brother justin and i pointed out justin like threaded the needle so exactly of griffin's interests which involve collectible trading cards and games and playing music. And games and music, yeah. It was great.

It's very good. What is your first thing? I wonder. Answer me this riddle. Ooh, I got that. My tongue is a little chalky. We're drinking tea. We're drinking hot, hot apple cinnamon tea that a fan sent us, and it's very tasty.

But I have the chalky tongue so what's your first thing uh i wanted to start out 2018 with some heat the heat that everyone has been waiting for which is one of my favorite episodes of quantum leap oh damn how do you even pick those what can I guess? It was difficult. You know what I tried to do? Because I have a lot of favorites. And a lot of them don't work as well out of context, if you're not familiar with the series. Some of my favorites are like last season, like Evil Leaper stuff. Yeah, exactly. And so I wanted to pick something that was very symbolic of kind of a lot of what the show does is it the jfk arc no the jfk arc is so good much simpler think smaller scale uh is it the chubby checkers

come on uh is it the think i think a real tour de force i mean he's got a sing in it for scott bacula yes you are correct scott bacula if you're not familiar with quantum leap must have had something in his contract where he's like every other episode i get to croon he had a musical theater background yeah for sure that was what he was doing before the show i'm not complaining he's a very very good singer it was just like it was the premise of the show is that you're you know leaping into person after person and it just so happens that a lot of those people are going to sing beautiful musical numbers. Well, sometimes you leap into person that you don't know. Okay, tell me who.

I'm done guessing. What is the episode? Season three, episode one, The Leap Home. It's when he leaps into himself as a 16-year-old boy. Okay, let's take a beat and pretend that the person listening to this has no idea what Quantum Leap is. Give them like a 15-second elevator pitch of Donald Bellisario's sort of masterwork.

Very light sci-fi. This informed my taste in sci-fi in general. It is a man who is brilliant, has several degrees in a variety of areas. But he's got a Swiss cheese brain. Yeah, including like ancient languages and physics. He is doing a time-traveling experiment that goes awry.

He steps into the quantum leap accelerator and gets lost in time. And what he is doing is he is out of his control leaping within his own lifetime into different people, different places um and helping

him out of pickles yeah exactly he him and and his hologram guide from the present uh have figured that his way to leap is to put right what went wrong do good karmic deeds yeah it's a really great show because that premise is so that premise premise would not hold water today, I feel like. You don't think so? No, specifically that premise of in order for. Putting things right. In order for you to time travel, you have to do a good thing. Like that is such a like TV premise.

And it worked for Quantum Leap and I think it's great. And I think it asks a lot of almost like theological questions that the show kind of tries to answer in the last few episodes, especially. But it takes a long, long time to actually get to the meat of those questions. And in the interim, like if that show came out in 2017, the critics would be like, so he time travels until he does a good deed. And then that activates the time travel machine. What is what the fuck? But it definitely works for.

But this is the episode where I think it's the only one where he doesn't jump into just some rando, he jumps into himself. Yeah. Well, he also leaps into Al at one point. Yes, that is true. So he does kind of- Shit, that's a good one too. I know, that's a really good one.

All right. So let's drill down in this episode. He jumps into his young boy form. The big thing with Scott Bakula is- I would think you would be able to say his name by the way shout outs to scott bacula and and to lynn manuel who who uh got us got got a rachel a very sweet message a personal good luck message i also got to talk to him on the phone like during the tonys god that was the best okay um yeah so the big thing with scott bacula uh who plays sam beckett is that he is this very

moral honest man uh which is kind of the only way this works because he doesn't go into different places and kind of mess with things or exert his power now that said he gets a lot of smooch meat he does he gets a lot of smooch meat. He does. He gets a lot of smooch meat. But that's because he's in the moment. He's inhabiting the person and it's to get the job done. But it does raise some questions. He's smooching for the spirit. Yes.

to himself as a young man in Elkridge, Indiana, he's kind of overcome with the opportunity to not just address the immediate wrong, which as his companion Al says is to just win the basketball game. Yes. Very low. First of all, fuck off Ziggy because this is like a really low stakes. It's like you can't even give him like some high priority thing to do while he's trying not to get tempted to change. The argument is that the team initially lost the state basketball championships denying a lot of the players on the team opportunities to get scholarships and the small town an opportunity to be buoyed by the success. Okay, sure.

So the idea was that there were more stakes, but you're right. Not especially complicated mission. I mean, you have to win a basketball. I couldn't accomplish this. I'd be like, sorry, Al, we'll get the next one. Well, sometimes he has to like leap into a woman and give birth to a child. Like it does get a little more complicated.

I think it's harder to win a basketball. It would be easier for me to give birth to a child than it would be for me to win a high school basketball game. 100% definitely for sure. memory of history and his own personality and history. Because the idea is that the time travel has quote Swiss cheese, his memory. But for some reason, when he leaps into himself,

he's like crystal clear focus. So he, while there in his 16 year old body is trying to help his father who was a smoker and dies young, his brother who was killed in Vietnam, and his sister, who ended up marrying an abusive alcoholic. So it's just him frantically trying to address all this in the week he has at home. God, this episode is a barn burner. Well, it's a two-parter, too.

Actually, the second part, he ends up going to Vietnam with his brother. Oh, that's right. Yeah, the second part of this episode is that he travels there. It's such a great payoff in a way because of how it subverts the rules of the show so completely. And sometimes you can get this emotional detachment

from the situation. I'll be honest, Rachel and I rewatched the entire series a few years ago and there would be episodes where like in the first five minutes i would decide whether or not i was actually going to pay attention to the episode or not because it's like a low stakes or you don't form that emotional goofy episodes where like he's a magician or he's a stand-up comic uh but this one is like you know your dad's going to die young because of his unhealthy habits and you have a very narrow window of time to try to convince him to turn

everything about him. By the way, his dad played by himself. Himself. Yes. Very good. And the musical performance is Scott Bakula doing Imagine by John Lennon. Oh,

that's right. On guitar. Doesn't the sister become like a hippie or something like that? Because he changes. Well, the sister at the time hippie or something like that because he changes sister at the time because it's 1969 is a big beatles fan and so uh sam is trying to i guess convince his sister that he knows the future uh and so he plays this john lennon song um but so yeah, so I love, I would say 99% of quantum leap episodes, and I've watched the series through maybe half a dozen times. I like this episode, because it's so emblematic of what works for me about the show, which is that here's this guy who genuinely wants to do good, and is trying to kind of put the mission before himself, but has this opportunity to help all these people he cares about. Yeah.

And it kind of brings the dynamic in with Al too, because Al's trying to explain to him, you know, there's not a whole lot you can do. And you just see him over and over again, kind of try and make these little incremental movements in the direction he wants and then check with al and i was like no nothing my one thing with quantum leap is i wish that there were more episodes like this and the jfk episodes and the evil leaper episodes where they're like all right we have this strong premise for the show that we followed for many seasons now and those are like the best episodes the ones where they like try to subvert it and in that subversion it's so unheard of because you just watched 15 episodes in a row where he was like

a mob boss getting into shenanigans at his daughter's wedding like kind of a hacky episode where it's like oh he's buddy holly or he buddy holly lives down the street and he has to get buddy holly to write peggy or he accidentally to get Buddy Holly to write Peggy Sue. Or he accidentally gets Buddy Holly to write Peggy Sue. I think that's how that one breaks down. Yeah, or he shows Chubby Checker how to do the twist. But then you get these great episodes that, and this is something that all sci-fi media that tries to handle time travel as an element has to grapple with this idea of like uh you know predestination and if you alter altering the the past what that means for your future um and quantum leap does this expertly

even in the jfk episodes where that is setting up a fucking huge like potential change for the future it handles it like kind of beautifully of beautifully. And I don't think this show really gets enough credit for. You say the JFK episode. So Sam leaps into Lee Harvey Oswald, right? And he is trying to prevent the assassination of JFK. But when he is in Lee Harvey Oswald, he is so kind of overcome with what is left of Lee Harvey Oswald still in that body that he has very little control. And there are scenes I believe back in the left of Lee Harvey Oswald still in that body that he has very little control. And there are scenes, I believe, back in the present with Lee Harvey Oswald talking to real physical Al.

This is the other thing. So when he leaps into somebody's body, their body appears in the present where Sam would be. And so they're able to get information sometimes from that person uh in the case of lee harvey oswald he kind of is trying to overtake and escape if i remember it's a lot it's a lot it's a lot um and that's so this is why i my interest in science fiction um it's very limited. Yes. It's this kind of stuff. It's like back to the future.

I like time travel a lot. You like some Doctor Who. Yeah, I like Doctor Who. I liked Orphan Black, for example. I like kind of story-based light on the world development kind of stuff. If you hear somebody like, the quantum stabilizer, you're like, bye, done you're like bye done so yeah so anyway so i i love quantum leap um i could have brought any number of episodes i plan to watch that series all the way through again it's very enjoyable i would say i would say there's a couple of episodes it tackles a lot of like um racial issues throughout history

which this show was made in what the late 80s, early 90s? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The episode I'm talking about today was in 1990. And that's the third season. Yeah. And so as you might expect, a lot of those don't necessarily hold up great to 2017 scrutiny, although some of them do. And I think that when you're talking about a show in the early 90s, late 80s, that is kind of swinging for the fences like that is Yeah, there's some real ambitious. That is not to apologize for the... Real ambitious episodes. There are some ambitious episodes, some of which are...

Do not work. Do not work and are a little yikesy. Yes. But a lot of them are good. And it's a... I think it's a show that got written off as kind of like... By like the sci-fi community

is kind of like schlocky a little bit. Oh, yeah. Like a little touched of like schlocky a little bit, like, like a little touched by an angel, maybe a little bit. But I, I think it's, I think it's a really fascinating show. Yeah.

It, I mean, it was competing in a time period, you know, in kind of a prime time network TV culture where shows like, uh, Alf were popular. Yeah.

And I'm going to say, I also loved ALF. I will not apologize for that. The light sci-fi of ALF. But yeah, the idea was that these kind of outrageous sci-fi premises could kind of hold up on their own without much scrutiny. So the fact that the show tries to do some real storytelling was always really wonderful to me.

SF Sketch Fest is just around the corner, January 11th to 28th, and there will be plenty of Max Fun shows there to represent. We're bringing Judge John Hodgman on the 11th. Jordan Jesse Goh with special guest Andy Richter on the 12th. Schmanners on the 14th. We got this with Mark and Hal also on the 14th. The Greatest Generation and Friendly Fire Podcast Super Show on the 14th. We got this with Mark and Hal, also on the 14th. The Greatest Generation and Friendly Fire Podcast Super Show on the 17th. Pop Rocket host Guy Branum's talk show The Game Show on the 19th.

And One Bad Mother on the 21st. You can learn more about these shows and get tickets at MaximumFun.org slash SFSketchFest18. Get your tickets now. Can I do my second thing? Yeah. I've been thinking about this one for like two weeks and I'm so excited for it. It is another music thing.

It is a YouTube video. I don't want to tell you, I'm not going to say the title of the YouTube video because it'll give it away. So I just want to describe the YouTube video and then maybe you've seen it, maybe you't if you haven't we may need to stop and watch it real quick so that you can be on board for what i'm about what i'm laying down here is it a peanut butter jelly time it's peanut butter jelly time this banana is so zany

um it's spring 2013 when the video is posted and there's several versions of this video because it was witnessed from several different perspectives. And in the video, you can actually see tons of people filming on their phones and then kind of like bounce around those perspectives on YouTube because there's a bunch. And there's also a lot of videos sort of compiling all these together but like to walk you through the timeline of all of these different videos uh we see a guy in a gray shirt on a subway train in new york city playing a baritone sax he's just sort of uh busking there and do you know the video that i'm talking about you told me about it i have not seen it though we gotta stop right now and then watch it okay okay we've just watched it that was incredible there's a great guy in a gray shirt who will henceforth be known as gray shirt and he's playing a baritone sax on the new york subway i think it's on the f train which i'm basing off the fact that somebody at some point yells uh live

from the f train motherfuckers because of how incredible this scene is so gray shirt buskin playing a sax and this alone is like very good he's uh playing i want you back by the jackson five and if this is all it was like that would still be a pretty dang good youtube video because there's a lot of it kind of encompasses like when you don't live in new york like like the dream of just like there's art and performance absolutely everywhere although there is a very distracting kind of dopey man in a white t-shirt well that's another, an important character in the video, White Shirt Bro, who at one point comments that he can't dance for shit. I can't dance for shit! His shit's very performative, and it kind of feels like he's just trying to latch on to this very good saxophone player, which is not honorable.

But there is something also so redeeming about this video that you know that this guy is having literally the best moment of his entire life um so white shirt bro is in the mix uh and it's like to me i think it is actually kind of quintessential like what the reaction is to busking on a subway train there's a lot of people there's a dude no joke six inches away from the horn of the saxophone wearing earbuds just like waiting for the doors to open to let him out and that's fine he's on's on his own journey, right? Like everybody else. But then there are people who are like clapping along to the rhythm of the song and singing along to the lyrics of the song. Because the saxophonist is killing it there. They are doing absolutely wonderful. And it's great. And then gray shirt transitions into the bass part of Billie Jean that that boom, boom, boom, boom. But obviously it's a saxophone, so it sounds different.

And then in another video, we see a different perspective, and that is of Red Pants, who is another character who reaches into a bag and pulls out some saxophone parts that he then starts to assemble and walks over with another saxophone as he walks toward them playing the harmony of billy jean now things activate and there's like a second or two in the video where so much stuff happens like eight people all say oh shit at the same time can i want you to close your eyes and imagine you're on that train and suddenly you're watching this great busker and then another guy with a saxophone walks up. My reaction is fear and dread that this person is going to be a fuck up and ruin it and make things. Can you imagine anything more awkward than somebody like crushing a performance like this? I didn't think about that. When you're busking, like it's got to be so you're very vulnerable.

You're in a place where you probably shouldn't be doing music to a literally a captive audience who some of whom don't want to be there. Like even when things hit their peak awesomeness in this video, there's still people like, oh, God, please. I'm just trying to get just trying to get to Queens. Please let me. I don't know where the F train runs. Red Pants walks forward carrying a second saxophone and we get that second or two of uncertainty and then fortunately both of these people are super talented improvisers and the next five minutes of this video is just the two of them shredding a medley of songs improvising

the entire time in one of the greatest musical performances i have ever seen done between two strangers uh on the f train in new york uh they shred the hell out of billy jean there's a bunch of they again like they do some bgs in there i think there's there's a ton of songs and the reactions on the train are priceless i mentioned there's somebody who screams that welcome to the f train motherfuckers i think they might be a dj they say like this is dj something live on the f train motherfuckers this is like uh there's a lot of people just like standing on the benches dancing yeah white t-shirt bro becomes the hype man white t-shirt bro is like to applaud there's parts of the video i i uh showed rachel i skipped to the last like minute and a half of the video because there is like, the reactions from the crowd is really, really great. The body language, the human metronome

that these two form to keep each other on tempo and on the same song is, I've watched this video like 25 times in the last couple weeks. And there's so much like literally genius telepathy happening between these two people to make sure that they are making the same sort of and this is this is like big band stuff or, you know, regular size band stuff of just like following the lead of usually of append to. And without that, these two are literally just bouncing back and forth, almost like they're boxing, kind of, but they can like follow each other's rhythm in that way, just by looking at each other, the way that they like move their horns back when they're letting the other person like take on a solo and moving it forward when they have something to inject, like there's so much stuff going on there. That is so infinitely fascinating to me. And it doesn't always work. There's like 30 seconds in the video that I skipped over when I was showing it to you where they kind of lose the plot a little bit. And then they kind of like, stop and start a new song without missing a beat and get back on it for the finale of the video, which results in a literal back and forth, like you play a phrase,

I'll play a phrase, you play a phrase, I'll play a phrase into this huge finish that is so fucking dope and unbelievable um if it's a hoax which like i googled to like make sure it wasn't and there was there was nothing that popped up about this being a hoax um i have to believe it isn't because it's too beautiful and perfect if you google and find out please don't send it to me and say like well i hate to burst your bubble don't fucking burst my bubble it's like one of my favorite bubbles well and their reaction griffin pointed out their reaction at the end when they finish playing so good is so believable that these are strangers because they just kind of shake hands and kind of awkwardly high five over their big big horns that they're holding and then they start to walk away but it's this beautiful i'm not joking right now it is this beautiful, I'm not joking right now. It is a beautiful human moment.

And this video is full of, I think, human moments at their absolute peak. And I think that's why I treasure it so much and why I watch it so much is because it is like, it is humanity affirming in a very genuine way. It's like before sunrise. It's kind of like before sunrise. You definitely want these two to just fall in love and start start like a new jazz trio together um but they they can't like they can't break away and and the reason i think that's such a beautiful human moment is because i think they both realize that this is a once in a lifetime not even once in a lifetime once in a

generation maybe because because I haven't seen another Subway Sacks battle video. So this is not happening very frequently. They just had this really profound moment. And they're on a train. And the nature of trains is that you get off of them at some point when you reach their destination. And so this is a very temp. You're right, this does have a lot lot in common there is an end point to this thing and acknowledging that they both kind of just like start to walk away but there's this reluctance to like gray shirt like kind of like pumps a fist like confused like he does not know how to like end this interaction with red pants who they have just created this train full of memories with

it is a beautiful beautiful beautiful video that is it's i'm almost getting teary talking about it because like um it it obviously like i said like it doesn't happen that often but the fact that it did happen is so like i have things like that in my life very very few that i'm like the fact that that was able to happen the fact that that actually existed at some point in our in our world is so like magical and so great and it loses so much in the retelling like if what if gray shirt went home and was like oh yeah i was playing and this other guy started playing and we played together for a while like that doesn't capture the the kind of the magic no but the 40 cell phones that people use to to record it um obviously

obviously did and that's a cool aspect too of just like the the good compilation videos just like kind of like bounce between these these different viewpoints it is it is a remarkable video it is i mean it's fresh as fuck like it's i i enjoy a good sax and a good sax duet and this is like really good music, but like there's, there's just so much to love about the video though. Not just the music, but like socially and culturally speaking,

like it is a, it is a beautiful thing. Okay. okay my final uh wonderful thing this week is a poem okay uh it is a poem by lee young lee it's from his first collection of poems which is called rose and was published in 1986 uh the reason i picked the first collection of poems, Rose, is that I totally fell in love with it when I was in grad school. It's one of those books of poetry where almost every poem in it was my favorite. Forget my ignorance, because you know me, I don't know a whole lot about poetry. Is Lee Young Lee a particularly widely spread, celebrated poet, or is he sort of an underground

jammer? i wouldn't think so okay um he's been in the game for a while i believe he teaches yeah i'm not aware that he's still writing today i guess his last book came out in 2008 so it's been a while maybe For that big. That was. Hey babe. 2008 was a decade ago. Wild bro. Wild dude. Griffin I'm getting in my poetry corner right now. I'm over here. Can I not do.

It's really hard for me. Can I not do that. To have you and your. DJ noise. To enroll. In a night school. Class class on how to make the dj noise we are going to have an episode that is just us face to face practicing the dj noise because i just went like and me i go like which is which is not anything anyway lean young lee oh god i'm so far away from the poetry corner.

I need to get back in. I know. Let me scoot my chair closer. That's my chair scraping across the ground. People love when we do sound effects. So, can what the, is a poem? So, I was going to read the whole poem, if that's okay. It's only four stanzas.

Okay. I don't know. That could mean anything,'s okay. It's only four stanzas. Okay. I don't know if that could mean anything, but okay. A stanza is like a paragraph. Sure. But stanzas are typically shorter. I know that word from church, actually, from hymns and stuff, because hymns are typically separate. I mean, all music is probably separated into stanzas.

I don't know. But we had a minister of music who had this very dramatic way of announcing where in the hymn, because you don't always sing the whole hymn, like some hymns are like eight stanzas long, and it gets a little on the tooth. So he'd draw, he'd tell you where to hop in. And it would do so by like, you'd sing a stanza and single every sunday like several times a sunday third stanza can you announce the stances yeah that doesn't really happen in poetry that would really throw god i walked away from the poetry corner again i went to the church corner i'm walking back it's very sticky yeah there's a lot of syrup on the floor. I had a pancake accident. Again. Again. Are you referencing the pancake accident you had with our cat?

Oh, it was a waffle accident on a cat. That was a waffle accident. I dropped a waffle of syrup. Can we read a poetry? This poem is called From Blossoms. From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches. We bought from the joy at the bend in the road where we turned towards signs painted peaches. From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all, comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. Oh, to take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard, to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days, to hold the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into the round jubilance of peach. adore it, then bite into the round jubilance of peach. There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background, from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom to sweet impossible blossom.

That is very good. Isn't that beautiful? I love when you bring poetry to the show because I feel like I'm legitimately getting an education and I'm not being like coy when I say that. I hear that poem and obviously I feel like I lack the language to really dissect it necessarily, but I get why you fell in love with it, which is interesting. Yeah, so one of the first poems i loved um was the red wheelbarrow by william carlos williams okay which is the so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow it's very short and it's this kind of kernel of a very simple idea kind of telescoping out into this like great, uh, profound statement about life or existence. Um, you know what?

Probably this one reminded me of what is the, um, the plums. I eat your plums one. Cause that one also had a fruit in it. Oh, took me a while to figure out why it clicked with me. That's also William Carlos Williams.

He wrote a lot about things that are simple. Well, I like this one better because this one doesn't make you feel guilty for eating the fruit. Is there a poem about apples? I'm sure there is. Okay. Is there a poem about apples? I'm sure there is. Okay.

So anyway, so this poem kind of starts out with what I consider kind of your basic poem thing. Like, oh, you ate some really good peaches. But there's this turn right in the middle that kind of pops off with the to carry within us an orchard. That is a very good line. Oh, my gosh. I love that line. This idea that this moment becomes so meaningful when you think about kind of how carefree it is and how much joy is carried in it. And I love that. And Lee Young Lee's poems do that over and over and over again.

He's really good at kind of capturing this very present, detailed image and then taking it into this kind of profound place. And so I love that whole – that was his first book of poems. Like that poem is so meaty. And all the poems in that book are like it. But yeah, so I wanted to bring that. I find I've never really been intimidated by poetry. I know a lot of people are. Because for me, it's like visual art in that I'm OK if I don't get everything.

You know, if I look at a painting or if I read a poem and that's maybe a healthier way to think because I can't like for me, if I read a book and I donle with the meaning of the thing, which is also kind of fucked up because words and prose is not just a vehicle for meaning, right? It's also like there, you should enjoy just reading the prose. So like, that's a wrongheaded way of thinking about prose, but in poetry, especially if I'm like, I don't get it. Is it just about it? Or I feel like an idiot because I feel like I'm not dissecting it in the correct way, which is, I feel like the joke of just like, oh boy, that must have been one dang good peach.

But at the same time, I think you could boil this poem down into, wow, that was a dang good peach. Am I wrong? No. There's obviously a lot more to it than that. But at the end of the day, let me shorten the poem. What's that poem about, Griffin? Dude ate a great piece griffin and i have had a conversation about the plums in the icebox poem uh and i believe it's

called this is just to say yeah and he was like trying to get me to kind of explain at a fundamental level like how does this cross over from an observation into a poem? And I said, well, when I read that poem, I get really horny for plums. And I feel like that's what makes something a poem. If you have an emotional connection, if you are very present when you are reading it and you feel not just transported, and you feel not just transported, but you are feeling a feeling that is beyond just the initial description of what is being identified. For me, that's a poem. My thinking is indicative of a lack of education about poetry because you expect every poem to be about life and love and death when sometimes it can be can be about, you know, a very good plum or very good peach. Or there's a lot of bad education about there out there about poetry.

Yeah, there's this feeling of, oh, you didn't get it. Or, oh, this is what the poet is saying. And, you know, period, end of sentence, close the book. And and my thought is like, if you get anything out of it, you know, that resonates with your experience or, you know, connects you to something you didn't feel before. That's there's value in that, too. So this one made me horny for plums, which is weird because it's a peach. It's a peach. It's a peach plum.

It made me horny for plums and gave me like a metal taste in my mouth. Well, stone fruits. You know, it's there's a similar. I guess so. That is sort of they did both pick nasty fruits if you want to get down to it why not a wholesome fruit like an orange huh huh with its chased rind so it's beautiful griffin i can do poetry it's easy with your chased rind and dribbling and juices and the weird white part in between nobody likes the weird white part in between

i do wrap that stuff all over my tongue you're you're walking away from it i had it there for a little bit it's hard to live slam like that yeah you're getting a little into the my name is griffin and i'm here to say i like oranges in a major way. Thank you for bringing that great, great, great poem. Yes, it's incredible. I find a lot of value in the poems that start from a very accessible place and turn into something huge. And that is a great example of that. Yeah. Let's do some submissions from our friends back at home.

Because my tea's getting cold and I want to wrap this jam up. I know I've said jam a lot this episode. I think it's because we just talked about peaches and I want to wrap this jam up. I don't know why I've said jam a lot this episode. I think it's because we just talked about peaches and I love peach jam. This is one that was sent in by Gus. Gus says, my family has a wonderful tradition I want to tell you about for our New Year's Eve party.

We get everybody at the party, both old and young, to come out in the snow and play a rousing game of rubber chicken football. There is one large garbage can for the goal and only one rule. Be nice to the chicken. If you break that rule, you have to go to the penalty box, usually a hay bale and sing a song praising the chicken.

What it becomes every year is an anything goes Calvin ball meets hunger game snow battle. There really is no better icebreaker. I think that was almost like a, almost a Mr. Freeze esque snow pun. That was from Gus. I like this. That's so awesome.

You gotta slam and jam this rubber chicken right in that garbage can. But if you are not nice to that fucking rubber chicken, you're gonna sit on that hay bale and sing a song about how great it is. Oh my gosh, that's incredible. It's a fun game. Did you ever like, I feel like I might know the answer to this, but did you ever have like a sporting holiday thing? Because I used to play like basketball on Thanksgiving. And then with the Smurls, we do some Thanksgiving football. You are making a face at me.

I'm asking you to picture that happening. Okay. Here's one from Emily who says, for me, one of the most wonderful things about this time of year is waking up after a fresh snow and going outside to see all the animal tracks that were left the night before. Where I live, the majority is birds and rabbits. But every now and then there will be some footprints from a neighborhood dog or cat there's something about finding tracks first thing in the morning while everything is still quiet and untouched that feels like a ghibli movie or ghibli i've still never i love all their films so much and i've never really learned how to say it um this is very nice i was thinking about snow because we got about 45 seconds of snow on new year's eve here in texas yes we did um i think i like looking at it i think i like like the

ambience and the quiet of it a lot you probably know you like looking at it yeah yeah no i i like that more i mean oh more than touching it with my delicate thermoreceptive skin. I like looking out the window and it's like everything's changed and there are little tracks in the snow. Yes. And that's very nice. It's very pretty. Than touching it with my thermoreceptive skin. I do not miss having cold, wet socks in Chicago.

No. Chicago, you went through a lot of my socks. Here's one last one. And this is a Christmas one because we didn't get a ton of submissions in the last couple weeks because everybody was off celebrating the holidays. But I liked this one so much. It's from Kaylee who says, my different slash unique Christmas tradition is something I do with my British grandparents called Christmas pie. Imagine what this is. You're wrong.

grandparents called Christmas Pie. Imagine what this is. You're wrong. Everyone goes to the dollar store pharmacy and dollar store or pharmacy and gets small weird gifts, wraps them, then attaches a long ribbon to each. Then we put them in a bowl with a special cover so you can't see what's inside. And we take turns picking a ribbon and pulling out the gift attached. We all pay attention to who got the good stuff, chocolate, et cetera.

And then when we get all the gifts and they have been opened, the cutthroat trading begins. That's fun. It's fun. Putting a little wrapping paper over a bowl and then pulling ribbons out and seeing what's inside.

It's like a little mystery box. Yeah. It's a mystery bowl. What a great idea, man. People are so good at coming up with these little creative traditions. I know, you never hear about these in the mainstream media.

What is the email address if people want to send you their wonderful things? It's wonderfulpodcast at gmail.com. Yes. Hey, thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to it in the episode description. Hey, how about a round of applause for maximumfun.org? I was looking at you to talk about maximumfun.org because I had a little burp I was doing. I wondered if...

I wondered... Wait. I did the class and the claps mean I edited everything out before. And now people are going to know about my secret burp I did. It was a little one. I drank some tea a weird way. And now everyone's going to know about my ding burps. Thank you, MaximumFun.org. It's too late now.

For hosting our show. I wanted to bring up a particular show to listen to. There were some people in our wonderful Facebook group talking about books for 2017, and Jesse Thorne popped in and said, hey, you guys should listen to Reading Glasses. And I thought, oh, that's a great suggestion we should bring to our show. Yeah, so I wanted to recommend Reading Glasses if you are a book lover or

a book enthusiast or a book-interested person. For sure. You should check it out. There's a ton of great shows on there. Just go check it out. Go check out all the the shows and if you want to hear other stuff we do you can go to mcelroyshows.com uh i think that's it uh thank you all so much for listening thank you happy new year happy new year i want to say big thanks to uh my dentist my, who's now climbing up the window screen. Do you want to go take care of that? I'll wrap up here.

I promise I didn't say anything embarrassing. Big thanks to Waluigi, the evil Luigi, out there doing the hard work. I want to say a big thanks to Bobity. I don't get it, but I'm glad that you're out there doing that.

Did I hear you say Waluigi? Bye, everybody. Money won't Work at all Money won't Work at all Money won't Work at all Money won't Work at all Music

MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Hello, Internet. I'm your husband host, Travis McElroy. And I'm your wife host, Teresa McElroy. And together we present Schmanners. It's extraordinary etiquette. For ordinary occasions.

We explain the historical significance of everyday etiquette topics then answer your questions relating to modern life so join us weekly on maximumfund.org or wherever podcasts are found no rsvp required check out schmanners manor schmanners get it