Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 37: Secret Attic Biscuits

Episode Date: June 6, 2018

Rachel's favorite poem about a big city! Griffin's favorite gentle sport! Rachel's favorite spicy sauce! Griffin's favorite week of gaming news! 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. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful Nights. And I'm your third host, Chris. Welcome to Wonderful Nights. And I'm your third host, Chris. Welcome to Wonderful Nights. Nighttime record in the studio. It's the latest we've ever done it. It's like 8.06 p.m.

Can you even imagine? We flooded the studio with cigarette smoke from a local bowling alley and got all that smooth jazz you love playing. And we're here to take you down to Slumbertown, little dreamy dog. Just a warning. Hmm? I did fall asleep at about nine last night. Yeah, hell yeah, you did.

So if I get a little quiet towards the end of this record. We're going to be getting into what we in the audio business call the danger zone. Because Rachel might actually fall asleep. Because it's wonderful nights. It's going to be a little raunchier than you're used to. Yeah. The FCC, or is it the FTC? Which one does?

I think it's the FCC. It doesn't give a dang what we talk about here. So butts and pubes, whatever. It's wonderful nights. It's a late studio. Record. Smoke. Are you a late studio. Record. Smoke. Are you okay?

Mm-hmm. Is it all the cigarette smoke from a bowling alley? Oh, so now we're in a bowling alley? No, we brought the smoke in from a bowling alley. How to create a mood? Yeah, I filled up a bunch of balloons, brought them in here, and popped them.

It's Wonderful Nights. I wasted my whole day. You got any small, smoky, nighty wonders brought them in here and popped them. It's wonderful nights. I wasted my whole day. You got any small, smoky, nighty wonders that you want to tell me in the pale moonlight? Actually, I do. Yeah. The new, or the newish, as of May, Hamildrop. Oh, yeah.

That's good as heck. The regrets version of Helpless. Yeah. I slept on this one for like five days, and I regret it. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, it was. Good one, Griff. This song is what the kids call The Slap.

It is The Slap. I'm so glad. I think we have to conjure that one up on like 20 individual episodes throughout our oeuvre to make it really, really stick. throughout our oeuvre to make it really, really stick. I wanted to bring for the small wonder segment, Last Man on Earth. Pour one out, rip one up for Last Man on Earth. The news that everybody had six months ago.

The news that everyone, apparently, no, its cancellation came with the sort of death blow of like Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Although that one got saved. A while ago. Yeah, the season ended a while ago. Rachel and I watched every episode. Wildly inconsistent show. There were whole seasons that I could kind of skip if I ever did a rewatch of this one. But man, when this show fired on all cylinders, it was the weirdest fucking...

Almost every episode that we watched early on. I said the same thing after it finished, which is I can't believe this is a television show that got made. It is so strange. And later on, it also has a lot of heart. Yeah, I know you love everybody on that show. I think everybody's kind of ridiculous. But by the end, you're like really invested in them. Yeah, the ones that they didn't like kill off as like a fun joke, which is a fucked up thing this show did sometimes. But it was really weird and very unique and ended in a cliffhanger, which sucks.

I feel like all season finale should be banned from having cliffhanger endings, just in case. Oh, that reminds me. Other small wonders from this week. We have a little correspondence from The Good Place. And Oreo. And Oreo. Oreo, we've tried your salted caramel cookies. Oh, my gosh. They are awful.

Just kidding. They're the best. I ate a lot of them yesterday. I ate six of them after lunch today. So, yes, it's been a banner week for us. Also, another just sort of big update in our lives. I have gotten more washing machine repair tips from our fans. So much so that I could host my own sort of tool time with Tim the Toolman Taylor or perhaps this old laundry room, a spinoff series.

Because I think I know every single way that a washing machine can or would be likely to produce a stink. I know at this point, it doesn't even seem like we should hire anybody because we've got all the DIY tips. Exhaustive list. Thank you all very, very much. You go first this week. Ooh. Friends. Oh, yeah. It's a great show. I liked when Joey did eat the sandwich.

And when Ross was kind of a little bit too much, that's my favorite episode. I was addressing our listeners. Oh, okay. As if they were friends, which I think they are. They're getting there. We're returning to the Poetry Corner. Hey, come on back into the Poetry Corner. We're going to say some words that rhyme or maybe they won't.

That doesn't count as a poem. Change my mind. Whoa. So the song that I wrote there for Poetry Corner has a very strong stance about poetry in it. And it's cool. The words are all over the page in a weird way. Yeah, okay.

Make it frickin' rhyme. The poet I'm bringing this week is Frank O'Hara. Oh. Don't know him. All right. No, that's fine. Frank O'Hara was a New York poet and a member of the New York School, which was a movement in the 50s and 60s. Okay.

It included other artists and poets like Kenneth Coke, John Ashbery, James Schuyler. I actually don't know how to say his last name. Schuyler? It's S-C-H-U-Y-L-E-O. Yeah, Schuyler. I actually don't know how to say his last name. Schuyler? It's S-C-H-U-Y-L-E-L. Yeah, Schuyler, like from Hamilton. Oh, okay. Yeah. So the New York School of Poetry and artists and writers

were people that drew inspiration from jazz, surrealism, abstract expressionism, painting, and contemporary avant-garde art movements. Those are my favorites. The New York School of Poets. It's an interesting bunch because the majority of them are Harvard-educated white men. Yeah. But the experimental work that they did in their art, I think, was transformative kind of for the rest of history. Okay.

And really informed kind of my initial forays into writing poetry. Is that common? Is this like a big jumping off point for potential poets? So here's what I'll say. So the reason I picked Frank O'Hara, he was kind of at the center of this movement. He described his poetry as I do this, I do that poems. Okay. accessible. And I found the New York School poets very accessible, because they would kind of bounce back and forth between these kind of academic, esoteric references, and then this very kind of commonplace everyday occurrences. And so this idea that you could kind of exist in a place and do

your daily routine, and then turn that into a poem. I've noticed just based on the poems that you brought to the show that that's the kind of stuff you're attracted to, less the super floral, like the blossoming of your bosom in the springtime moonlight is like a song sung from a huge bird. That's a good start for a poem. I'm going to write all that down. I liked it because it had bosom.

Yai! I don't know what that word was. I don't know if that thing I just said was an affirmative or a negative response to what you said. That's a fun catch-all. That's poetry, man. Yai, dude!

So Frank O'Hara did a lot of, as I mentioned, mixing of high and low culture, man. Yeah, dude. So Franco here, I did a lot of, uh, as I mentioned, mixing of high and low culture, the sharing of preferences and the free association of names and ideas. So in a way, it's kind of like the song that you brought last week.

Yeah. Aguas de Marco. Yeah. Which by the way, gang has been stuck in my fucking head so hard for 14 days. I had gotten it out today, and then I was going through submissions, and I got a lot of emails from people like,

yo, this song's the slap. It's called Aguas de Marco, and I was like, oh, there it goes again. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So here's a poem. Yes. It's from his book Lunch Poems, which came out in 1964.

It was published by City Lights, which is the same publisher that published Howl by Allen Ginsberg. Okay. It's called Steps. I'm going to read it. I look forward to it. How funny you are today, New York, like Ginger Rogers in Swing Time

and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left. Here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V days. I got tired of D days and blew you there still accepts me foolish and free. All I want is a room up there and you in it. And even the traffic halt so thick is a way for people to rub up against each other. And when their surgical appliances lock, they stay together for the rest of the day. And when their surgical appliances lock, they stay together for the rest of the day. What a day. I go by to check a slide, and I say that painting's not so blue.

Where's Lana Turner? She's out eating and garbos backstage at the Met. Everyone's taking their coat off so they can show a rib cage to the rib watchers. And the park's full of dancers with their tights and shoes and little bags who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y. Why not? The Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won, and in a sense, we're all winning. We're alive.

The apartment was vacated by a gay couple who moved to the country for fun. They moved a day too soon. Even the stabbings are helping the population explosion, though in the wrong country, and all those liars have left the UN. The Seagram's building's no longer rivaled in interest, not that we need liquor, we just like it. And the little box is out on the sidewalk next to the delicatessen so the old man can sit on it and drink beer and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day while the sun is still shining.

Oh God, it's wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much. It's like, slow down a minute, Frank. There's a lot of stuff going on there, Frank. It's like you're painting me an image of this gay couple moving out to the country. And then all of a sudden you're talking about having sex with traffic? I got a little lost. I get in the tall grass there where he was like, I love the traffic so much I want to rub against it and get inside it sexually.

That's the free association that I was talking about, which also is a thing that Ginsburg did too. Yeah, for sure. I enjoyed that very much. The New York school is very much rooted in New York, and a lot of the poems are very city-oriented poems, which I appreciate.

I mean, you know, I did that Bob Hickok poem about Michigan. I've always tried to write about the places I'm from and lived, and it's really hard to do yeah I don't know I mean I guess in a way you're kind of doing that a little bit with your adventure zone arc of like how you take a place that you have an attachment to and turn it into you know something accessible it's difficult it is it's I mean what I'm doing an adventure sounds pretty abstracted out pretty far away I wouldn't say it represents my time in Huntington at all. But like the trick isn't even like putting pen to paper and trying to find the right words to say.

It's trying to find out like, I think, first what to say. Like how do you summarize, even not in a poetic form, if you just wanted to write down a frickin' numerical list. Like I don't know how I would summarize Huntington and I lived there for 22 years. And that's the Frank O'Hara, like his writing style, as you mentioned, where he's just kind of hopping from moment to moment, really kind of sets the tone for this kind of New York environment. Yeah. You know, like I read it, and I feel really present when he sees, like,

the dancers with their little bags of shoes. I love the rib watchers line. Yeah. So they can show a rib cage to the rib watchers. Uh, so yeah, so he is, uh,

he, unfortunately he died tragically very early. He died at 40. Um, well, that's very sad. Yeah, it is very sad.

Um, Kenneth Coke, who was also in that school, uh, went on to, very sad. Kenneth Koch, who was also in that school, went on to, to write a bunch of works and lived a very long, happy life. As did John Ashbery,

who just recently died in 2017. Well, no need to brag guys. So, yeah, so I, I think it's, it's difficult because it is kind of academic, especially John Ashbery is like very, you know, alienating in some ways, but kind of the drawback, especially with Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch, for that matter, to this kind of daily experience was really motivating to me when I moved to Chicago right after college.

When I moved to Chicago right after college, man, I wrote so many New York school kind of poems about walking down the street and walking by the chicken hut. Oh, the chicken hut. I don't know if it still exists, but it used to be on Belmont and Broadway. Broadway, yeah. I've been there before. You've been to the chicken hut. I've been to the chicken hut. It's tasty as hell. I wrote a whole poem about walking by the chicken hut.

I want to read this poem. I also want to read you my first thing. Okay first thing here's the deal gang i love sports where you hit balls with other objects i just love them i love the idea of them baseball baseball tennis golf whatever i find the whole idea of them very deeply therapeutic and enjoyable baseball, tennis, golf, whatever, I find the whole idea of them very deeply therapeutic and enjoyable. The only downside is that I am exquisitely bad at more or less all of them. You say that, but you have very good coordination. I have good coordination except when a ball's coming at me above a speed of even 20 miles an hour.

Anything above that and the fight or flight instinct kicks in and the bat just won't do its job um i'm i i'm also a terrible driver at golf i just i've gone golfing twice and my friends got very very uh exasperated at me just because of how many old shankers i put out into the trees. Tennis is also just way too much running. However, there are two sports that are an exception to this rule, which I classify as, and this is the official subject of this segment, gentle ball hitting games. And that is mini golf and croquet. I thought you were going to say badminton.

I guess that's not really a ball. Badminton is like tennis with less running, but still more than I'm used to. I'll start with mini golf, which is a game you play by hitting a small ball with a fairly small club that requires maybe the least amount of athletic activity that any sport could possibly. You are good at mini golf. possibly you are good at mini golf i'm pretty good at mini golf it doesn't require athleticism which puts it right in my wheelhouse um i i might attach too much fondness to the idea of mini golf because i did not grow up around a mini golf course that's

not true there was a bible themed petting zoo near my hometown called noah's ark which i imagine there are approximately 1300 of that exact establishment of every animal no no there were maybe one to a few of a few animals um uh but i didn't go there that i went there i think on one church trip, and I climbed up in the big boat, and I ate a taco Lunchable, and I got super sick. So then I got very angry at, you know, the Lord. No, that's not true.

I was a good Christian child. Why am I talking about this? I don't know what's happening. I didn't go to a course that often because we didn't live around one, so it was always something that we did on family vacation so it still seems so exotic to me that's fun um it helps that a lot of mini golf courses are also part of these big family fun centers with like arcades and go-kart tracks and shit like which like don't get me started on go-karts a good

go-kart course i feel like maybe it's like twee to say like oh go-karting so fun the cars are so small a good one where the cars go fast as hell and you can just like initial d fucking fast and furious drift around the the hairpin turns and those bad boys i could do a whole segment on that anyway um i would play mini golf right now though and pretty much it would no because it's like 103 degrees outside but at most points where it's temperate, I enjoy me some mini golf. I don't think I'm like awesome at the game. I think I'm slightly above average, which is something. What I love, though, is that if you're not in like an avid golfer who actually goes to golf courses and putts and tries to get under par with very, very good putts, you don't really know how to be good at putting a golf ball.

You really don't. You kind of have to feel it out. Every time you play the first hole of mini golf, you're basically learning the sport all over again. Well, it's kind of, the way I feel when I do mini golf is kind of similar to pool in that like the implement I use to hit the ball puts me very far away from the ball. And so then somehow I have to get my brain down this long stick to like get the ball where I want it to go. And it's never worked for me. Yeah, it's rough. But as a result, every time

it goes well, I just get ecstatic because it's like, whoa, I wasn't expecting that. I also really like the holes where the path splits off or offers you like multiple trajectories because then you get some strategy. Like that's my shit. That I do think I'm good at is like trying to figure out how to bank it off what thing, like when they have little pieces of wood over the corners and you're like, oh, I can hit that and bank it at a 90 degree angle and then at least get it close to the hole. Or like there's a ramp that goes over

the water trap is there a way i can use that is it worth it um i really really like that about golf um and also golf courses and this is gonna be very telling i think of the i don't know nature of my childhood uh they always seemed so opulent to me, like so well manicured and so well designed and fancy. I feel like I'm remembering a lot of the ones I played at in Tennessee and in North Carolina. I remember them smelling excellent, which may not be true. But it was like kind of like going to Disney World for me in a small way. I think every mini golf course I've been to is a little bit run down. Maybe, I don't know, in a tourism town,

I feel like they're usually a little bit better. There's grooves where you start the course, and then all the painted creatures, the paint is chipping. I guess we only went to nice places in Asheville, North Carolina, which is probably the mini golf capital of the world. I don't know if you ever got out there, but there was one year we went out there, man. We played so much mini golf go karts. We went to laser tag and like did all this shit. It was the best trip ever. Pan Mini Golf, which is also BYOB, which is a whole nother thing for grown-up Griffin. That is real good because it's hot constantly in Texas. Washing it down with a nice cold brewski and a nice hole-in-one.

And that place is always packed, man. It is so crowded all the time. We need like 13 more mini golf courses here in Austin. If you live here and you're an entrepreneur, get at it. Now, the second game, croquet. Mini golf's not always convenient. Sometimes you can't get out there. Croquet, you set that shit up in your backyard. You own a croquet course, technically. I discovered this game when I was on a lake trip with some friends in Chicago who I actually wasn't all that familiar with. I was kind of just invited along for funsies. And I had a really, really great time. along for for funsies uh and i had a really really great time and they all were playing croquet and uh you know having having some beers and going swimming and it was such a really really great

time it's got the kind of same like feeling it out vibe as mini golf like every time you hit it you're like i hope this goes good um and but it's got like a lot more strategy you can i feel like i've talked about this on some show before but you can get extra shots if you like run your ball into an opponent's ball. So you're trying to like chart out the best path through the course, which makes it different every time you play, even though the course is relatively the same. You can also send your opponent's balls and like spend one of your bonus shots, like knocking one of your opponents out of the way, which one time our friend Eric did to me while we were playing on a huge field in Zilker Park, to set like the guinness world record for largest croquet

course and he sent me out into the parking lot which i was miffed about but i recognized the strategy and neutralizing his greatest threat um but i i think i'm actually pretty good at croquet unlike mini golf uh even if i wasn't i would still love playing it because it's just a i like hitting a ball with another object. And these are the only two sports where I can do it without, you know, running or the ball's not going to jump up and hurt you, which is a constant, constant fear, constant fear of mine.

Gentle ball hitting games. Get at them. Do you want to steal me away? Yes. get at them do you want to steal me away yes and i will do so with a little thing that goes like oh boy this yay okay so just to set this up we have windscreens in front of our microphones they are these big black sort of things these mesh things so i can't see anything below i can just it's kind of creeping

me out now that i'm thinking about it for the first time is that i'm getting just sort of rachel's eyes and then this big black circle of mesh you do kind of look like my wife turned into bane and so i don't know how you made that sound. I think you were trying to do like a clock. Yeah, his famous line was bring me the Batman from the movie. This message is for Rob and Lauren. It is from Bernadette. Dear Lauren and Rob, I just want to thank both of you for being my best friends.

You both mean so much to me. Lauren, thank you so much for getting us into all the McElroy content. That's a very sweet thing to do for a couple friends. Also, do you think Bernadette has ever written a parody song of David Bowie's Suffragette City where she drops her own name in there instead of the word suffragette? You know, where it's like, I'm down to Bernadette City. I like that a lot.

I love that. That would also work for Antoinette if you're listening. I'm going to Antoinette City. That's how to say. That's a pretty good Bowie. She's all right. I'm David Bowie I really appreciate how much confidence you have

That's a really good David Bowie There's no way that you could debate That that's a bad David Bowie Time to take some cigarettes And put some in your mouth I'm David Bowie Just a David Bowie. Just a David Bowie.

I don't know no cigarette. This message is for the wonderful hosts and more. And it is from Emerson. Hello. After a year of nonstop animating, I finished my grad film today. I wanted to thank all the amazing people who made it possible. My friends, my boyfriend, my uni family, and you guys. Wonderful is a blessing

and gives me the good vibes I need to make it through the day. Thank you. Love, Emerson. That's a very sweet little message. That is very sweet. Thank you, Emerson. I'm glad that we could help. Congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. Are you the first to ever do that?

I think, yeah. I think, yeah. Now do it as David Bowie would do it. Congratulations. Perfect. From me, the star man. How's it going, everyone? I'm Oliver Wang.

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

It might be a musician. A writer. Maybe a scholar. I mean, I would have been happy to just talk to you about your heat rocks, but this is a different show. Yeah, I think people might enjoy hearing

maybe the guests instead. To do that, you'll have to go to MaximumFun.org. So if you want to talk about hot music, you should check us out. Heat rocks.

Hey, what's your numero dos there, partner? It's your David Bowie impression. All right! No, it's not. But next week. Next week. For sure. Once I've had time to really polish it. Look forward to that, Rachel. This is a threat.

My next thing is sriracha. Sriracha. This spicy paste really gets to me. So I did some research on sriracha because it is one of my fave condiments, specifically on noodles, on vegetables, meat. Vegetables is my friend to have these on. Eggs is another good one. Cake?

What's the other foods you haven't listed? I didn't say ice cream, and I didn't say ice cream intentionally. Because gross. Yeah, it'd be too much for me. Yeah, yeah. So sriracha, most of you will probably know, is composed of chili peppers, vinegar, sugar, salt, and garlic. And it was developed specifically to provide Vietnamese immigrants with a hot sauce worthy of their pho soup. Yes, I love this in pho.

Especially bad pho, which, holy shit, there is so much of in Austin. I did not realize that when I started eating pho a few years ago, I would become kind of a snob about it. But I've had maybe two good pho places in Austin and maybe a dozen super, super bad ones. That's very true. You dropped some sriracha in there though. What's up? Now you can't taste the bad flavors. It's such a good addition to anything that is remotely bland. Sure. Like vegetables again, broccoli. Sriracha was developed in 1980 by David Tran. Sriracha was developed in 1980 by David Tran. It is now located in the Hui Fong Foods factory in Rosemead, California.

The factory used to be owned by Wham-O, the maker of Frisbees and Slip and Slides. Okay, but they weren't cranking out Sriracha, right? They weren't like, here's our fun discs and also our burning paste no but i like the idea that they kept like some of the slip and slides sure covered them in this oh jesus christ you would be donezo on a sriracha slip and slide no thanks didn't the factory famously like kind of ruin the property values of all surrounded like Like didn't, I remember reading something a long time ago, not that long ago about how it just kind of overpowered the whole neighborhood.

Yeah. But that's not what I'm talking about this week. No, it's good for, it's good for 99.99999% of the country, except for that one small outlier of their neighbors. So when he, when David Tran first started making sriracha,

they were in glass bottles filled by the spoonful and personally delivered all over Chinatown in a blue Chevy van. Look, it started from the bottom. Yeah, nice little startup. So they also make other types of sauce, which I've never had. They all start with a chili mash, but some of them have more garlic or more sugar. Are these different types of sriracha? Are they in different sort of families altogether?

No, different families. Interesting. But hot sauce, you know, focused. Sure. Because of the chilies uh the company has never advertised uh and its sales have still increased by almost 20 percent each year that's fucking what are they that's the only company on earth that that's true that's crazy think about it have you ever seen advertisements for it i haven't no i've just gone out to eat at like virtually any as restaurant. I know. The rooster's on the

bottle because David Tran was born in the Chinese year of the rooster. Interesting. The article I read, so I looked at articles from LA Times and Huffington Post, there was an article that says you'll soon see a gallon-sized bottle of sriracha. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know if I could, I mean, if the health post says it, if Ariana's swearing by it, then it's gotta be true. I just don't know that, I don't think I could work through that before I

died either of old age or my incisor melted like a Terminator because of how much sriracha I could try to eat. Well, I don't know, part of what I enjoy is the squeeze. Yeah. I don't know that I could squeeze a gallon. You could, but you're going to get, your bottle's going to write a sriracha check that your mouth can't really cash. A hundred million pounds of fresh chilies were processed last year over the course of the harvest season,

which lasts only 10 weeks and provides for the entirety of the company's year-long sriracha sales. But they use fresh chilies, which is unusual for hot sauce. Hot sauce usually uses like dry, dry-ass chilies. And so their factory is only an hour away from Underwood Family Farms, which has been the company's only chili supplier for the past 20 years. They're cranking out 100 million pounds of chilies every, hey. I guess so. Pretty good farm, it seems like.

Yeah. Yeah, so I liked the story of that. It feels very personal, the fact that there's this man that used to sell it out of his van. Yeah, this Racha man. And now it's on every table in every restaurant. Yeah. It's a cool story.

And it's also unlike any other condiment, I would say. Yeah, I certainly can't think of any other condiment. I mean, there's probably a ton of East Asian spicy pastes out there. I will say, yeah, that's true. I will say between sriracha and chalula, those are probably my two fave hot sauces. Oh, yeah, for sure. Only ones in the game, in my opinion. Ooh, gosh oh gosh we are gonna get a lot of comments about that i'm just saying i used to eat a lot of tabasco and then like the first time i had cholula i was like oh okay i know but there are so many

hot sauces out there and you were gonna hear from oh don't get me wrong like i enjoy like a wild a wild and spicy hot sauce but if i'm looking for my freaking off-court buddies, it's going to be Cholula and Sriracha. Okay. Do you know what I mean? Yes. I don't need to get our tea. It's not like I'm drinking the same bottle of wine

every time I drink wine. It's just these are my spicy friends, and I know what they bring to the table. Because sometimes a spicy friend comes at you with a bad chemical burn. I ate, while I was on tour, our last tour, Justin had the spicy Skittles holy shit wait what they make the skittles and spicy though what kind of spicy i can only describe it as hot like

uh more uh like a acid rain chemical burn in my mouth oh my gosh you take you i ate one it was not like i was like challenging myself just was like do you want to eat the spicy skittle and i was like the skittle is my favorite so this seems like sort of a an abomination in god's eyes and he said no try it they're good and so i ate one and i feel like i just ate like i took a big big if i had metal teeth and i chomped into a big thing of mace, it's just a chemical burn in the mouth. And then like a little bit of that strawberry sweet. No, thank you. Anyway,

my second thing is the electronic entertainment expo, the E3, which I have gone to, I believe nine times this year would have been my 10th. Oh my gosh, Griffin. I got fired from Polygon for stealing all the cups

in the office. The cups? Yeah, all the cups. I thought it would be a fun April Fool's Day prank. I brought them home and then I looked at them on the shelves and I said, oh shoot, they look good there. So I didn't take them back and then it became less of a prank and more of I stole all the cups. The flaw in this

goof here is that you say that you brought them home. And I also live in the home with you. Oh, they're not in the kitchen. Okay. Yeah, they're not in the kitchen. They're in the secret kitchen I have in the attic. Okay. Continue.

Ah, shit. Continue. No, I told you about the secret attic in the kitchen. You know, sometimes the air conditioner comes on and you'll smell like biscuits or eggs and you'll be like, huh? Oh, gosh, you're making secret biscuits? I'm making secret attic biscuits. Oh, jeez.

Anyway, E3, if you don't know about it, is a show I've covered in some way either there or remotely since 2008. And I'm feeling a little bit blue that I'm not going to be going to it this year. Here's the truth. On paper, this is like the big video game sort of expo of the year. There's lots of video game conventions across the world

and I've gone to a lot of them. I was lucky enough to go to Tokyo Game Show and Gamescom in Cologne, Germany and a bunch of PAXs and stuff. Is E3 always in Los Angeles? Always. One year it was in Santa Monica when they were beefing with the LACC, but pretty much all the time it's in Los Angeles. It's the big show, basically, where all the big, big game developers and publishers come together in the Los Angeles Convention Center, and after weeks or months of building up hype

for their big announcements, they finally reveal everything that's coming. So on paper, it is kind of a crass event, right? Like they spend outrageous amounts of money promoting these games they're working on that'll be out over the next year or so. They have these press conferences that are big and ostentatious, usually without a ton of substance. They are sales pitches that are like doctored to the point of unbelievability. And so, yes, on paper, all that. Pretty bad. And also, the nine years that I covered this show, without fail, it was always just a staggering amount of work, which I wasn't used to as a games industry professional.

Especially when you were doing like news team stuff. The news team stuff was wild. When I started out at Joystick, I was doing a half dozen interviews every day. I was checking out over a dozen games every day or so. And there was an expectation that I would have all that written up before I went to bed that night. Yeah, like immediately

because everybody else is doing the same thing. Yeah, there was a desire to be first, to be fast. And don't get me wrong, I loved that feeling of being side by side in the war room with all the other riders and just cranking shit out. We famously pretty much never went to parties, which a lot of people would go to E3 just to hobnob. We couldn't do that because we were writing until literally I was falling asleep at my computer. In the War Room, did you guys ever help each other out? And somebody would be like, what color were Mario's overalls? And then somebody would be like, I'm pretty sure they were green.

And then somebody else would be like, no, they were yellow this time. You've just described Lario and Luigi? Hold on. Whoa. You've been out of the game too long. I guess so. It's been like three weeks and I've already forgotten the good brother's names. Um,

no, it was fun. It was like, it was genuinely like grit your teeth and like, let's just like be first and just like crush it. And so it wasn't just exhausting ourselves for exhaustion sake. Like it was really enjoyable. Um,

but like the years where I was doing the podcast also at the same time it did get a little bit too much especially the year where we did max fun con which is a very fun weekend but straight into you know a little bit exhausting you're hiking all around and we do do a show there and then literally drove down from the mountain to e3 to cover that for the next week that was that was pretty pretty rough all that said i imagine it will continue to be this way and it has been this way for a long time for me it is one of the most like exciting weeks of the year for me because i i really love video games and i always have um there is this culture of secrecy that game like creators try to maintain most game creators and

i should mention here that i'm speaking almost exclusively about the big AAA games. I do not mean to exclude the indie games, which I think have more of a presence at other shows like PAX, and there's tons and tons of indie game conventions. They do get some placement, especially the press conferences, but this is mostly about AAA games. I just didn't want to make it sound like that was all i really cared about um but the the creators of these big games try to build these hype around their announcements before revealing them in one big push to try to like own the day for like maximum exposure and i think that's kind

of bad for the industry as a whole because like you don't get to see the people making the games there's a disconnect between the people making the games and the people playing the games because the publishers try to like maintain the message by not letting you really see the the you know the guy behind the curtain um but the one good thing about that is there's one week a year where everything just goes fucking haywire and like a billion things get announced i don't know i i just really really love games and i love playing new games and like getting to experience them and try I don't know. I just really, really love games and I love playing new games and like getting to experience them and try to figure out like what they were thinking

when they made them and get to dive really deep into them. And so having a week where it's like getting an idea of what my following year of entertaining myself in my favorite hobby is going to look like, you don't really get that for movies or TV or really anything else. And so I think it is kind of a cool little, maybe like the auto, what's the big auto show that they do?

I think there's an auto show equivalent. Supercar. Supercar, yeah. Palooza. Palooza. Supercar Palooza-zers, I think is what it's called. And they do that one in the ocean. If you've never been to e3 and

you're not in the industry do not go it is not made really for enthusiasts because you usually will i've watched people wait uh rush the like line for the new mario game that came out last year uh to wait in line at that booth they get there and are 300th in line and they spend their whole day waiting in line to play the new mario, which is like, if that's your jam, I do not mean to shame you, but it seems like a lot of work to play the Mario. Is there a set time for how long you get to play those games? Oh yeah, yeah. Usually the games

are programmed to end. Like the demo will just shut off after 10 minutes. So that is kind of rough. There are other shows, like PAX is much better suited for fans, but even if you don't go, you can still watch the big press conferences to see the announcements in real time sometimes every few years ago they'll also be like a new console cycle starting like oh we had playstation 3 guess what we got now playstation 4 yeah it's a playstation 4 uh and things get really really wild then

because there's like a big land grab from all the publishers and all the developers trying to you know be the killer killer app on this new thing that appears and so things just like get whipped up into a frenzy i don't think this is going to be one of those years but it's still you know really exciting when that happens uh i think in 1998 when sega was still a big player right they still had like the genesis had just come out and they were like we want to see what we got next it's going to blow your fucking mind do you know about this i don't think so they announced their next console which was the sega saturn which you may not have heard of because it failed miserably but they announced it at their e3 press conference

and then they said and it's available right now and it was just available you just go fucking buy one which nobody had ever done before and nobody did again because they didn't have time to market it at all. And like, it didn't sell. It was a colossal mistake. But that was one of the more buck wild sort of examples of this. I don't know. I just, I, like I said, like, I like knowing what my year of this hobby is going to look like.

And I am very, you may know this about me. Like, I am very much a person who likes having things to look forward to um and e3 is like pound for pound like one of the densest sort of examples of of that that i can think of you mentioned you were gonna watch some of it online since you weren't going this year how do you do that uh all of the like on twitch and youtube usually every yeah so like nintendo only does nintendo directs now, so they don't have a press conference, by the way,

rumors are going around about that new animal crossing switch. You know, I'm going to sort of go dark. I'm going to be jealous of that alligator again. Rachel's going to get furious about this fucking digital alligator again. Um, uh, so yeah,

I'm going to watch pretty much all of those. I think. Well, I'm excited for you. I'm excited for you. I'm excited for Yoshi. Do you want to hear some submissions from our friends at home? Yes. Okay.

Here's one from Clementine who says, My wonderful thing lately has been the little pieces of cookie dough that go on top of fro-yo or an ice cream. They're so convenient to eat. It's so delicious. Like little bits of happiness. I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah. Cookie dough ice cream? Okay, yeah't even know that was a thing. Yeah. Cookie dough ice cream? Okay, yeah. Obviously I know about cookie dough ice cream. I didn't know that you

could go to get fro-yo and just scoop a bunch of cookie dough pieces. Maybe not at the average yogurt place, but if you went to, say, like the country's best yogurt. Oh yeah? Do you have some of that? We had that and we had cheesecake bites, both of which you could kind of warm up in your hand and then you could throw as hard as possible at the wall, and it would

stick to it, which was a fun game we played in the back room a lot. Which is probably why I don't usually indulge myself in the stickier toppings. Sabrina says, I don't use vending machines often, but there's such fun little adventures that end in a snack. My favorite vending machines are the ones dotting

every corner of Japan, especially the one I used that literally poured a drink in a cup for me. It was like a giant rectangular outdoor Keurig. I do love meself a vending machine. I'll tell you where I love them. The airport, coming back home, I land, I want a little snack roll. I don't want to wait for 30 minutes to get home from the airport. Vending machine.

Boop. Beep. Bop. Skittles. They have a really interesting vending machine at Costco. Boop. Beep. Bop. Skittles.

They have a really interesting vending machine at Costco. It is an entire machine full of bottled water, yet they still let you pick your letter and number when you're buying it. So it was a strange experience for me to look and say, I guess I'll get C7. I'm sorry. Rachel's allergies are really bad right now, or something is going on in that corner of the room.

I don't mean, I'm not laughing about that. I'm laughing about the fact that you look like you're crying a little bit while you're talking about it. There's this fitting machine. You're okay, right? Yeah,

I'm good. Owen says, Hey, we have different colored chip clips in our house, and I absolutely love finding the matching color clips to the main color of the bag so that they're coordinated. Thank you! Thank you, Owen!

That's delightful. That's very good practice. It seems like a little bit of work, but you gotta risk it for the biscuit, as I see. And as we all know, in the UK, they refer to chips as biscuits. Perfect. And cookies as cris see. And as we all know in the UK, they refer to chips as biscuits. Perfect.

And cookies as crisps, which is how you get the name Cookie Crisps. I'm just a wealth of knowledge. Now could you say that as David Bowie? Let me get... Hey, let me get up.

I lost it. It's okay. No, it's not. I lost it. I pushed you too hard. You pushed me get up. Hey, let me get up. I lost it. That's okay. No, it's not. I lost it. I pushed you too hard. You pushed me too far. Do we have any other submissions? No.

Okay. Nobody else was grateful for anything. That's not true. Hey, if people have suggestions, where would they email them? Wonderfulpodcast at gmail.com. Fill that thing up with whatever you want. Submissions, keep them tight. One, two sentences.

That's going to be great. And we sure do appreciate you. And we appreciate you, 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. And thanks to Max Fun for having us on the network. They got so many shows. It's all great.

Like Can I Pet Your Dog? Yeah. That's a real upbeat, fun trip into pet land with two wonderful lady hosts. Yeah. I would recommend it. And then there's No Stop It, which is the sort of they react to every episode. They do like a recap of every episode of Can I Pet Your Dog? And it's just like you've petted him like 30 times already.

His fur's starting to come off. If you want to listen to other McElroy podcasts, you can find them at McElroyShows.com. That is true. And let's just wrap it right up. Okay. Because I need to start editing it right now so I can remember how good the Bowie was or what it sounded like. It was like... You never asked me to do my David Bowie.

Oh, yeah, that's a good closer. Maybe we should, because this would be the second time that we've done this, you ending your sort of episode with you doing an impression of a British celebrity is something that I could get really into as sort of a standardized thing. So go ahead, Starman, Ziggyman, David Bowie, go.

I'm going to do a quote from Labyrinth. Oh, great. Forget about the baby. Shit. Money won't pay. What can I pay? Money won't pay. What can I pay? Money won't pay. What can I pay? Money won't pay.

What can I pay? Money won't pay. What can I pay? Hey! I love it. Good stuff. Oh, man, every time. Well, I hope that you're enjoying this podcast you're listening to as much as we are pretending to. But anyway, why not listen to another podcast, too? It's called The Flophouse. And on our podcast, we have recently watched a movie, often a bad movie, and we review it on our podcast, but mainly talk about other stuff and, I don't know, hang out. It's all about hang out, feeling like you're being with your best friends.

Who are your best friends? Us three. Dan McCoy, Emmy Award-winning writer for The Daily Show, Stuart Wellington, owner of the best bar in Brooklyn, Hinterlands, and Elliot Kalin, former Emmy-winning head writer

for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, former head writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Return, so many things. Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Return, so many things. Author of the upcoming children's book, The Dog. The Elliot's credits just go on and on. Yeah, but if you like the idea of listening to three funny guys

talk about bad movies, then why not come over and listen to The Flophouse? It's available at MaximumFun.org or wherever fine podcasts are found. So get out of here!