Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 44: Hot Dog Destroyer

Episode Date: July 25, 2018

Griffin's favorite crafty YouTube channel! Rachel's favorite moving art! Griffin's favorite modern folk music! Rachel's favorite modern soul music! 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. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. The podcast, adaptation of the movie, Of the novel based on a book. No, I love it. Keep it going. No, it stinks. Let's keep going with it.

I've run out of intro juice. Oh, no. I know. It's like the last- You know, you could toss it to me every once in a while. Okay, let's start over. Okay. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. And this is wonderful. Hey, it's a hot one. Yeah, all right, yeah. Shit, why didn't I think of it's a hot one? Because then you could, there's so many directions you could go with that. You could be like hot enough for you.

You could be like, like something, something in the midday sun. Is 2018 the year of Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas' Smooth? Do you think 2018 is the year of Smooth? Like, is it coming back? Do you think it is the year of Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas' Smooth? Do you think 2018 is the year of Smooth? Like, is it coming back? Do you think it is the year of Smooth? If they were going to remake that song with two different artists, who would they be?

Rob Thomas. Okay, let's keep him. And Carlos Santana. Okay. I mean, why mess with perfection? Yeah, and here's why I picked them in sort of my fantasy draft for remaking Smooth by Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana is because they know is I want you to have some experience, at least five years experience, making Smooth by Robert Thomas and Carlos Santana. Uh-huh.

I know. I like that. I can't think of too many other people who did it. See, that was a good intro. You're right. And that was all you. That was all me. You brought that four-seamer right over the plate.

You got any small wonders, though, for me? I do, actually. I wanted to mention the thing we watched this week, which was Nanette by Hannah Gadsby. Yes, it was very good. It was very, very good. We knew literally nothing going into it other than it was supposed to be good, and it was very, very good. It had been written about a lot of times, and it is not immediately apparent. I almost said it's immediately apparent why i almost said

it's immediately it's not but by the time you hit the end of it you're like oh okay that's why you think like you're just watching a comedy special uh and that it is that it is that it's extremely much much more and so much more uh go watch it's on netflix um i want to say queso just had some downstairs uh pretty good it's uh basically like hot cheese that's in a liquid form, and it's pretty good. Now, if you were going to remake queso, who would you put? Rob Thomas melted down his bones. I had another one, but I cannot remember for the life of me. We finished Great British Bake Off Season 5.

I don't know why that took so long to go stateside, but, you know, it was a good one. There's nothing, there are very few shows that kind of, like, fill that gap in my life. I did not, I remember when we watched, like, the first three seasons in a row, back when we, like, discovered the show, that's when I, like, bought a mixer

and, like, a big board and a rolling pin. I was like, I'm gonna to bake. And I baked. And now I did not really have that with this. And I was just trying to think what the difference was. And it's approximately one child. It's about one son. It's about one son's worth of just sort of constant low-level exhaustion. That's very true.

Griffin and I tend to prioritize our free time with sleeping. Sleeping and eating queso while watching American Ninja Warrior. Yes. I'm not ashamed of it. It's what we were literally doing before we walked up the stairs. Anyway, I think I go first this week. You do. And I want to talk about starting out a YouTube channel, because this is what I spend apparently

90% of my day doing, 90% of my free time that is not dedicated to Sleep or American Ninja Warrior Cheese Party, is watching YouTube. And there's a YouTube channel I've discovered because it just showed up in my sidebar, which I showed Rachel yesterday. It's fucking buck wild. It's like videos of these guys who throw huge darts into old printers from 45 meters up. Griffin tried to present this to me as if this was some sort of fault of YouTube.

He's like, look at this garbage. I was like, you made that. It's a history of speed running and destiny guides, and then it's so much bon appetit, it's wild. Anyway, the one I want to talk about is a YouTube channel called Kiwami Japan. And this channel is very good. It's a channel where one very dedicated, very inspired craftsman, he who goes under the username Kiwami Japan, has created this channel that is entirely dedicated to kitchen knives. I've shown you, I think one if not two of these videos, we may have

watched it in bed the other day. And it's all about kitchen knives. Some of the videos are about, like, restoring these old, like, fancy Japanese kitchen knives to, like, their former glory just by, like, polishing them up. Oh, is this the one where they make knives, too? Yes. Yeah. They have stuff where they take, like, a $1 knife and then, like, polish it with very expensive whetstones until it's, like, it can cut through space and time. very expensive wet stones until it's like it can cut through space and time but the thing that they are like i find those videos like those sort of not less novel videos very satisfying in a way

that i can't really explain like i'm really into sort of craftiness these days but like practical craftiness i'm also into bad craftiness like the videos we watch on facebook when we want to have a quick larf before we go to sleep there's one one, y'all, and it's like hot tips. And this woman walks into an apartment with a guy and she has a hole in her black sock and she looks all embarrassed. And in the video it says, here's what you should do. And she pulls out a little black Sharpie and just colors in her toe so it matches the sock. It's the wildest fucking thing. Do we want to talk about the hot dog destroyer?

We have to have talked about the hot dog destroyer. I'm not sure that we did. Somebody takes a big... Like a syringe. Syringe, cuts off the front of it, pokes holes in the front of it, and then sort of does a crisscross of wires. And then they put the plunger back in the syringe, and then they put a hot dog in that sort of channel and push it through this wire grid. It is a commonplace need to have a shredded hot dog. It's wild to me.

It was like a trap in one of the Cube movies. And the amount of time they burn little holes one by one into the syringe and very carefully place little wires through it. There's no way you save yourself more time than cutting up hot dogs for the rest of your life. Anyway. Anyway.

What they also do on this channel is they make knives. And when I say make knives, I mean they make them out of things that aren't knife stuff. I'm talking about things like wood and ice. That's wild, right? Oh, a wood knife? They actually make it really, really sharp. And then they can, you know, cut up foods in the kitchen. All of the things are very, very practical.

But that is like, that is the tip of the substance iceberg. He's made knives out of cardboard before, out of plastic bottles. His latest episode, he makes a knife out of underwear. Yeah, that's the one I watched. He makes knives out of food, which is cyclical in a way that I really appreciate. Things like chocolate and gummy candy and rice. Oh, I want to see the gummy one. The gummy candy one is very, very good. And if you're wondering how like this is possible, most of the videos involve him like sort of, uh, reducing these

materials down to some sort of pliable state, like stewing the cardboard in water, uh, and then kind of like pressing it together into one like solid block and then dehydrating and drying it out for like a super long time until it becomes firm and then uh you know cutting that into a knife shape and then using lead stones turning it into a knife um and that's kind of the process he goes through and it's really satisfying to have watched enough of his videos to like watch him make a knife out of gummy candy and be like okay so next he's gonna pop it in the old dehydrator yep here we go like knowing his this weird craft that this guy does. These videos, though, they aren't just, like, DIY overviews.

There's, like, a lot of humor and, like, personality in them, too. He never speaks, never shows his face. It's just him doing stuff in the kitchen. So, like, for instance, there's an episode, a fairly recent one, I think, where he makes two knives out of pasta, where he, like, mills it down to this fine pasta flour uh which he turns into a kind of a paste and then he forms that into a knife and he dries it out and then sort of sharpens it into a knife and then he does a demonstration uh with each of these two knives and one of them is not as sharp as the other one

so he throws it into boiling water and then makes a bechamel sauce and then eats that knife it's like very there's like so much like prop comedy going on in these videos uh and there's a lot of like really like a lot of experimentation that's kind of fun to watch like the rice video he had to mill the rice down to this very very fine powder so he invented this tumbler where he put these heavy stones in with the rice powder in this glass bottle and then built a sort of like rotation device out of rolling pins and a drill and he had to like dial in like how fast he wanted the drill to go to spin the rolling pins to roll this bottle full of rocks and rice dust it's like really really entertaining to watch um it's it's so good a lot of the videos are really like straightforward but a lot of them are like he goes through some pretty unexpected links and then makes some surprisingly extremely practical

very useful kitchen knives uh i just like this idea i find myself drawn to like crafty videos like this that are especially like transformative and especially like we're going to transform this uh seemingly useless thing into something very useful, like videos of people building houses in their backyard using mud is my shit. And this has peaked to me because not only is it surprising that you can make a knife out of underwear, it's very entertaining too. Again, it's called Kiwami Japan.

Do you think he'll expand to other implements? I almost think he has. I think maybe he has. There's probably other people. I like the idea also of just there's a person out there who has found this thing and become the best person in the world at it. That really appeals to me. Of course.

What's your first thing? My first thing is kinetic sculpture. This is sculpture that can move stuff with its mind? That would be telekinetic sculpture, I think. It's a sculpture that you can talk to with your mind? It's just a sculpture that moves. Oh, shoot. I messed up.

cysclosure that moves oh shoot i messed up uh so i thought of this because i've always been really into mobiles yes mobiles or mobile mobiles i oh man mobiles i spent a fair amount of time trying to figure this out yeah uh because i knew i was gonna have to say it over and over again i think i say mobiles but i'm from appalachia and saying like 40% of words incorrectly. I think I'm going to stick with mobile. Okay. Don't be pedantic. You know what fucking word we're talking about, people at home. So I've been for a long time, but it kind of became a big thing for me when I was actually

writing poetry. And my preceptor at University of Chicago, who was kind of... What's that? Oh, it's like a fancy word for like teaching assistant, kind of. It's like a mentor, but in like a teaching capacity. Is this like a common grad school word? I don't know that it is. It sounds badass.

It sounds like something that's at Hogwarts that patrols the halls at night to make sure the kids don't get up to pranks and hijinks. We were divided. There's a bunch of research that says if a student is in a cohort, they're more likely to finish their program. In a what? Oh, jeez. No, come on. You can't

act like I'm the weird one here. My cohort preceptor. In education, specifically higher education, there's a bunch of research that says if you pair like a group of students together and do a lot of relationship building among those students and enroll them in similar classes and have some kind of mentorship, they're more likely to finish their program. Okay. And so the program I was doing was very rigorous it was a year long

and so they clustered us all into these groups and gave us like a one like post-grad like doctoral candidate person who would kind of supervise us like meet with us once a week help us and they were the preceptor of your breakfast club that you were in okay which one were you because i think a lot of people would say Ally Sheedy, but I do not think that's. I mean, if I was going to be anybody, I'm not Molly Ringwald. Yay, Molly Ringwald. You did tape a kid's butt cheeks together that one time. Okay.

I'm so sorry to derail you. It's just you said some really fascinating words there, and I loved learning from you. sorry to derail you. It's just you said some really fascinating words there. And I love learning from you. So anyway, so my preceptor, use that as an analogy to writing a poem of, of like a mobile, if you change one word or change the rhythm of a particular line, you can set the whole piece in motion in a different direction. And I just found that idea really captivating. And I had always really liked mobiles, and so I kind of latched onto it. Sure. And the famous kinetic sculptor is...

I don't know. It's Alexander Calder. Why on God's green earth would I know that? I feel like his mobiles are very iconic. Like, they're just like the standard go-to if you're thinking of his mobile. I know, but like, you know. You know. Let's talk off mic really quick.

Okay. I'm not very cultured. You know this. I mean, you talk about E.E. Cummings a bunch. That's one. I can learn about that in middle school. Everybody knows about E.E. Cummings a bunch. That's one. I can learn about that in middle school. Everybody knows about E.E. Cummings. He does the silly word poems.

You know how you learn about him in school? And they're like, look at all these fucking silly words. It's like, dude, learn how to make a fucking paragraph already. Why don't you capitalize some letters, E.E.? I know, dog. Anyway, we can get back on the mic now. It's just you've humiliated me. I'm sorry.

In front of all my friends. So Alexander Calder in the 1930s started creating these kinetic sculptures that it was actually the avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp named mobiles. and I read a couple different things but the idea is that it's a French pun because mobile means both motion and motive or like a word similar to that I don't know okay I didn't research that so for a while he was making these motor or crank driven moving sculptures and he kind of found those to be a little predictable and repetitive, and it became kind of less exciting to him. Sure, you want that chaos theory in there. So what he did is he took many balanced parts joined by lengths of wire, whose individual elements were capable of moving independently when prompted by air movement or direct contact. These were often outdoor pieces, which were set in motion by the open air.

The windmobiles features abstract shapes delicately balanced on pivoting rods that moved with the slightest current of air. What was funny is that later in his uh artistic career he started creating these static abstract sculptures that didn't move and one of his artist friends called them stables that's very good i also imagine people would be like this talk of the town like do you see the new calder piece up it's at the museum i'm gonna go there and then you roll up and you're like let's give this motherfucker a shove but it's like wait what it didn't didn't go so there's a huge collection of them at the national gallery in washington dc uh they have more than 40 sculptures and paintings

uh and then 19 long-term loans from the calder foundation i've never been to the national gallery but i was looking online and it's just like the entrance has them kind of hanging from the ceiling. And then there's a whole room dedicated to his mobiles, and they have all these lights set up so you can see the shadows on the wall. But wait, if it's indoors, how do they go? I mean, there's air conditioning, maybe just a little breeze. I guess so. Gets them going. There's some stop motion videos on YouTube, too, which I definitely watched today.

Oh, wow. It's like a minute and a half, and it's just an entire day's worth of slight movement. It didn't move, and then you realized you were looking at one of his, it was just a JPEG of one of his non-moving sculptures. One quote that I found of his talking about these mobiles, he said, I have made a number of things for the open air. All of them react to the wind and are like sailing vessels and that they react best to one kind of breeze. What's that mean, dog? That's just kind of, I mean, they're all very delicately balanced. And so depending which direction the wind's coming from, you're going to get like the most interesting movement. So depending which direction the wind's coming from, you're going to get the most interesting movement.

Right, but that must be shitty for everybody around him when he's unveiling it. He's like, yeah, I wish it was good, but the breeze is... I mean, there's still interesting to look at. Yeah, but he knows and you know. Do you know what I'm talking about when I talk about his mobiles? Yeah. There was something like this, probably not one of his at the Huntington Museum of Art. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

I think they're interesting to look at whether they're moving or not. But I like this idea that it is a piece of art that continues to change. I mean, some of this was at like the Hakone. Yeah, sure. At the Hakone Open Air Museum, they had some kinetic sculptures. And I just always find it like so engaging because it's just like it's it's more dynamic and and you feel more like you're watching a performance interesting uh and so i just i i don't know i always find them really enjoyable um and also like the engineering that goes into the art of it yeah it's fascinating no exactly that was his his background if i

remember correctly when i was researching him he has kind of an engineering background. So I just found that interesting that he kind of channeled that into his art. So I just wanted to end. There's this quote by Jean-Paul Sartre that I used when I was doing research for my thesis. I just love it. So I want to share it. Yeah. Let me know this start. A mobile, one might say, is a little private celebration,

an object defined by its movement and having no other existence. It is a flower that fades when it ceases to move. I possess a bird of paradise with iron wings. It needs only to be touched by a breath of warm air. The bird ruffles up with a jingling sound, rises, spreads its tail, Sart. Isn't that lovely? Always gets me. That is really nice. I just, they're like these little live things, you know?

I've always kind of wanted one. Well, let's get one. But when you look up mobile online, it's baby stuff. You can buy, like, recreations, but I'd want to hang it in a particular, you know, there's some work to be done. Yeah. But I love them. Well, there's some work to be done. Yeah. Uh, but I love them. Well,

somebody's got a birthday coming up. Not, not especially soon. I was talking about my dad. That's true. Next month. Yeah. I'm going to get him some,

um, probably some DVDs. Okay. It's unrelated. I just remembered, um, that his birthday is coming up and I need to get looking for those DVDs. Can I steal you away?

You started doing some experiment with like tempo these days and like tempo and like meter in a way that like, I feel like you're on the cutting edge of like discovering a sort of new genre. I like this idea that this is somebody's first episode and they have no idea what just happened. Sorry, that was a home improvement in your stitial music. And we still do that because we made a joke about it once and couldn't think of anything better.

And that's the truth. Hey, Griffin. Ah. We have some messages. Tell me all about it. Tell me about it. We have some messages. Tell me all about it. Tell me about it. We have a message for Chrisanna from Alex. Happy approximate birthday, Chrisanna.

Thank you for nearly seven years of friendship, courtship, and more-ship. I love you so much. I want to tell the world that you, a 24-year-old adult, thought BYOB stood for bring your own bananas until recently. Why would that? Why? And that's adorable. Please forgive me for exposing your deepest shame. It's very good.

I think I thought BYOB was something other than it actually was. Like, I knew it was bring your own, but I didn't think it was bananas. I thought it was something a little more universal. Yeah, I thought it was more like beef or burgers or breakfast I don't know that I thought of breakfast but I just know that like usually that it's listed on like barbecue invitations yeah so obviously I thought it was like bring your own barbecue sauce we're having a barbecue bring your own um that's a very sweet message how far off did we fuck that up uh it was preferred april okay so that's about it and on the average these days across all of our podcasts we're fucking up about

three months worth every time so it's good that we're consistent uh this next message is for sarah it is from jill i can't believe we're turning 30 this year which means that we've basically been together half our lives. But I couldn't be happier with where our life together has taken us. Thanks for being an amazing wife and loving me through all my sour candy overdoses and late nights of video games long after I should have come to bed. Love you, bookworm. Sour candy overdose is not anything to joke around about. And late nights of video games, Griffin, this sounds...

I mean, it might be me, but you gotta be careful you eat enough of those Atomic Warheads. It will just, it's like you've poured paint thinner all over your mouth and gets it all raw. And then you eat the ranch Pringles while you're at church camp. And it's a miracle I'm standing here in front of you today. Well, sitting. Are stacks of unread books taking over your apartment? Do you constantly miss your train stop because you're caught up in reading? I'm Bria Grant.

And I'm Mallory O'Meara. We party hard. And by party hard, we mean read books. So join us every Thursday on Reading Glasses, a maximum fun podcast about reading and book culture. Get more out of your reading life. We'll help you conquer your to-be-read pile, get out of that

book slump, and squeeze more reading time into your busy day. Learn how to read better. Wow, that was good. I have a second thing. Oh, good. It is a thing that I mentioned it to Rachel that I was going to do it, and her response is, I cannot believe you haven't done this yet. And then she actually went to wonderful.fyi, a very good website.

And double-checked. And double-checked that I hadn't done it, and I haven't. It is a musical artist. His name is Tallest Man on Earth, and I specifically kind of want to focus on one of his albums that was released in 2010. And it's called the wild hunt. So tallest man on earth is a Swedish guy named Christian Mattson, who is a Swedish singer songwriter who's been making music since like 2005 or so. And I just absolutely adore his work. It's kind of perfectly in my wheelhouse it's just like real good acoustic folk music a

lot of open-tuned guitars uh just like exactly my shit his musical inspirations are like bob dylan which i think is going to be immediately apparent if you've never heard him before as soon as we play some of his music uh but like also like nick drake and woody guthrie and Pete Seeger and folks like that. Can I tell you something? I had never really listened to his stuff before I met Griffin. Yeah. And now when I hear it, I think of you. It just feels very quintessentially Griffin to me. That's very sweet. Yeah.

I mean, there was a long time there where it was all I listened to, kind of. So he has all these folk inspirations that I really find attractive. And his lyrics are really evocative and often kind of inscr like folk inspirations that I really like find attractive and his lyrics are like really evocative and often kind of inscrutable in a way that I really enjoy. Um, so this album, the wild hunt came out in 2010. It was the second album. His first album, a hollow grave came out in 2008. It's also very good.

Uh, but I heard this album, the wild, the wild hunt for the first time when I was living in Chicago. Uh, this was in. This was in 2010. And I gotta tell you, I cannot think of a better album for like, walking to the train station on like a nice, cool autumn day in Chicago than this. Like that was sort of that's the mental connection that I kind of make with it just sort of like walk into the train by myself with my headphones on going, usually nowhere important, just somewhere to kind of get out of the house for a little bit um i listened to this album for like a fucking year like pretty much every day

and that was kind of a a lonely year for me like i had my had friends like my roommates and i were were good friends but like i didn't know that many people in chicago and so this album was just kind of a kind of a nice companion during that time. So if you've never heard Tallest Man on Earth before, he has a very distinctive voice, which you're going to hear in this, I'm going to play a little bit of the title track to The Wild Hunt, which really encapsulates like what I like about his music is just these pretty, open tuned chords, just like some gentle banjo backing, and then just these piercing vocals shooting through all of them. So this is The Wild Hunt. I will go under too But just for now I'll let the spring and storm return

I left my heart to the wild hunt But coming I live until the call And I plan to be forgotten When I'm gone As I've been leaving in the fall Do you think he sounds like He sounds a lot like Bob Dylan.

Yes, he does. And I think that's kind of undeniable. I think in the same way that Bob Dylan's voice is kind of divisive. I think there's lots of people who try listening to it and say like, oh no. And then there's people who say, oh yes. And then they listen to his later stuff and they go, oh no. Oh no, it's gotten so much worse. It's kind of the same thing with Tallest Man on Earth.

I feel like I've had friends who have tried to get into his music and just the voice. They don't enjoy it. And I very much do. It's like cilantro. It just tastes like soap to some people. You have to kind of settle in. You have to kind of accept. I mean, that was the way I was when I first listened to Bob Dylan. You have to kind of settle in like you have to kind of accept i mean that

was the way i was when i first listened to bob dylan you have to kind of like familiarize yourself with it but at the same time like i never really got into bob dylan like i enjoy a few of his songs but like i never really had the bob dylan phase oh man you know my dad listens to this and he's going to immediately send you a list i said like a few of his songs. Yeah, that's probably true. But like, I enjoy all of Tallest Man stuff. And I don't know, on the subject of Bob Dylan, like that is the 90% of the pieces that get written about Tallest Man on Earth

are about like, hey, so you sound a lot like Bob Dylan. And I can't imagine how fucking exasperating that must be. You know who does know the answer to that? Who? It's Jacob Dylan from the wallflowers oh yeah probably probably also doesn't love that um in his defense he had an interview where he was asked and uh he listed all these folk inspirations like like bob dylan and pete seeger um and he has a

quote where he said i don't consider my work to be part of any tradition this is how i play this is how i write songs. Again, I do think he sounds a lot like Dylan. And he talks about, I was 15 and I heard Bob Dylan. And it was very, very formative for me. He also covers I Want You by Bob Dylan, which is such a good song on one of his earlier albums. Anyway, that was a little tangent. I also want to play a song that kind of shows off, I mentioned, inscrutable lyrics.

This is a song off The Wild Hunt called Burden of Tomorrow that I'm going to play now that I just really like. Sometimes when I talk about songs on this show, I like to not do my road to you. Sometimes when I talk about songs on this show, I like to go to songmeanings.com and see how other people interpreted them. I didn't know that's a thing. It's a website where they post the lyrics and then people comment on what they think it is. And you can vote for who you think has the best interpretation. So I'll look at that sometimes just to see if I missed anything or to see like what other people are interpreting it as. The entry for this song is fucking great because the theories that people are floating are wild.

And I don't blame them because like, I wouldn't know how to begin putting this song together into a message. The lyrics are just, they're very clever and they're full of imagery, but like, they're kind of hard to interpret. Like the line, rumor has it that I wasn't born. I just walked in one frosty morn into the vision of some vacant mind. Like all of the lyrics of this song are like that. And I don't really know what it means. But I like it a lot. So I wanted to just talk about this album, The Wild Hunt, because I love it. And I think you would really enjoy it too. Or maybe you won't

listener at home, you should listen to it. But while I was prepping for this segment, I found a YouTube video that he posted of a cover that he did of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now, which I immediately sent to Rachel because it was so good. He covered this song for like a video series he did and has this like intro where he explains that it's the greatest song ever written. And that is such a relief to him because now he's free to not try to write the greatest song ever written and that is such a relief to him because now he's free to not try to write the greatest song ever written um and then he did this cover of both sides now which i also adore if you are not familiar if you've seen love actually it's the very very sad song that plays when um oh my god i can't remember her name what's that actress's name i always get her confused with the woman who plays herione in the Harry Potter movies. I'm going to get there. Emma Watson, Emma Thompson.

Wow, good work. So anyway, when she's like crying, it's the song that's playing. It's a very, very good song. It's a really good song and it's a really good cover. I'm going to play it now. Now it's just another show. You leave them laughing when you go. And if you care, don't let them know.

Don't give yourself away. I looked at love from both sides now. From giving and taking. Still somehow it's love solutions that I recall. No, I really don't know love at all. I don't really have anything else to add about this. Like, it's, it's, it has broken my sort of theme of talking about this one album, but it's so, so good. Have you seen him besides the time we saw him here in Austin? No, I only saw him that one time.

I would love to see him again. There was a heckler in the audience. The heckler, after he finished playing a song, yelled out, Stop being so talented! It was very, very pure. It was very, very pure. It was very, very good. I think that was the same person. There's a song he has, I think, called Brothers

that has this like wild sort of, not solo, but just like instrumental break that he just like goes down the whole neck of the guitar. And that same dude just went like, damn, in the middle of this like pretty acoustic song. Anyway, this cover is really good he has a lot of other covers i mentioned i want you by bob dylan he has a banjo cover of paul simon's graceland that is my favorite cover of my favorite paul simon song

check that out it is fucking great and he puts all these like he when he covers a song he does just like covered he puts like a very distinctive spin on it that i really enjoy um i just really love his music it occupies a very singular space in my mind, not just for like, in terms of genre, like he is kind of the ideal folk music creator for me. But also in like, you know, I have a lot of sense memory, I feel like tied to tied to his music in this album in particular. Yeah. What's your second thing? Yeah. What's your second thing?

My second thing is also a musician. It is Charles Bradley. Hell yes. Okay, Charles Bradley is somebody that I was introduced to by a listener of the show, Anna Roach. Oh, yeah. Who is a big fan of soul music and was very insistent that we all go see him when he came to the austin city limits music festival he was i feel like there was a very there was a connection for austin and him because it's where and that where the movie there's so much sorry i don't want to spoil oh so the movie about his life premiered at south by southwest

yeah so that may be what i feel like everybody i know in austin is like a huge charles bradley fan like it's a weird like everybody here like knows who he was. It occurred to me when I was researching this, that maybe there were some listeners that hadn't. Yeah, for sure. I do not think that that is the case for everywhere. Yeah.

So Charles Bradley, and once we play a clip from his music, you'll be able to hear it right away. Actually started his musical career at 19 as a James Brown impersonator named Black Velvet. Yes. And you will hear that in his music for sure. But prior to that, he was born in 1948 in Florida, raised by his grandmother until his mom returned at age eight and took him off to New York. And then he led kind of a turbulent life. He didn't get along with his mom. And so he ran away and was homeless briefly. But then at 14, his sister took him to the Apollo to see James Brown.

And it just changed his whole life. And then so after he was a James Brown impersonator, he eventually went back to odd jobs and periodic gigs and continued to kind of have this rough life. And then in 2001, at age 53, he was introduced to the co founder of Daptone Records, who took him to the producer, songwriter, and guitarist Tom Brennick, which became the Menahan Street Band, which backs Charles Bradley. And that's when they recorded some 45s in 2011. And then at 62, he released his debut LP, No Time for Dreaming. And it is a fucking masterpiece. It is so good. So I want to play a little bit of the song, How Long.

Here it is. I look at him and say, brother, don't leave me. Don't leave me Don't leave me How long How long How long Must you keep loving like this So you'll hear, obviously, the James Brown connection right away. He also gets a lot of comparisons to Otis Redding and Al Green,

and that he is very soulful and very passionate and emotional. And that was my experience seeing him. So I saw him twice at Austin City Limits Music Festival and then actually once during South by Southwest, this little party that was being sponsored by Rolling Stone. And it was him and a bunch of other artists. But it was a real small venue. And it was not unusual to see him on stage just like weeping,

just so engaged and tapped into what he was singing um i feel like shit i never got to see him i know because he played here all the time and i just i just never made it so he had uh two other albums that came out uh victim of love in 2013 and Changes in 2016. And then, unfortunately, at age 68 in 2017, he died after battling stomach cancer. But that last album, Changes, actually he covers Black Sabbath's Changes. Yes. And I wanted to play a little of that, too. Yeah, here it is In my life. Oh, baby.

Oh, baby. Obviously, it's very sad that he died. Especially after it took him forever. Forever to have a career that bloomed this late in life. And that documentary about him, you can really kind of see just how difficult his life was. And then just out of nowhere, he became successful. Oh, it wasn't out of nowhere. Well, no. I mean, but just suddenly, all of the insecurity, just instability. He had tremendous opportunity all of the like insecurity just like instability you know it just he had tremendous opportunity all of a sudden was playing out to these like sold out crowds and getting like a lot

of recognition for how talented he was uh and he was so grateful uh and just humbled by by that um and and it was just like i would say even more than like James Brown or, you know, he obviously the performance was great and the voices is great and the lyrics and everything, but just how much of himself he brought to the music. you just feel very connected to him when he sings. It's very nice to listen to and to feel that much emotion from an artist. So yeah, so I immediately developed this very strong fondness. And I feel like anybody who kind of spends some time with his music feels that. Especially people that, I feel like that's why everybody I know here in Austin why they like love him so much is because they all saw him perform at South by Southwest yeah I well yeah I saw him perform like three times in like you know

four years or whatever it was like I never missed an opportunity uh to see him uh just because it was so powerful and you just you felt so happy for him, you know, that he was somebody with this immense talent that was finally getting an opportunity we recognized for it. Yeah. That's our episode. Before we wrap up,

I'm going to tell you about some of the things that our friends at home playing the home version of Wonderful are into. And here's Danny who says, my nightly routine has always been brushing my teeth, then going straight to bed. It's always been a chore though. routine has always been brushing my teeth, then going straight to bed. It's always been a chore, though. I've never liked brushing my teeth.

So a trick I've developed is brushing them well before I hit the hay. That way, when I go to sleep, it feels like I've cheated the system and I'm a happier boy. Danny, my dude. I've started doing this, too. It is dope. It is so good. I kind of do it out of necessity because I go to sleep much earlier than too. It is dope. It is so good. Well, you kind of do it out of necessity because I go to sleep much earlier than you.

That's true. And I don't want to disturb you with the sounds of the moans of pleasure I do when I brush my teeth. What about like if you want a little snack though? Oh, I'll still eat it. Griffin. I'm supposed to not eat for like a couple hours

after I brush my teeth? Once I brush my teeth, Once I brush my teeth, I have closed up shop. I don't know who's wrong here. I think you are. Is it wild if you brush? The part of brushing your teeth is to get your mouth all clean before you go to sleep. And if you eat something, you're getting it all dirty again. But I brush my teeth in the morning and then I drink coffee and eat breakfast right away.

But you're letting those food particles just sit in your teeth all night. Who gives a shit? Your teeth do. Griffin, you have no leg to stand on here. Oh yeah, cavity count. Ready? Count of three. One, two, three.

Two. Twelve. Okay. Our second one is sent in by Sarah who says, The thing I want to talk about is working on homework with friends. It's especially good when you aren't working on the same things. I just love sitting with a friend or two and getting shit done. We're all in grad school, so there's endless work,

and this way we can hang out and be productive all at once. It's even better because we usually meet up in libraries. I love libraries. That could be a whole other email. But yeah, I love doing homework with friends and quietly motivating each other through the endless grad school slog. Yes. I mean, I love the idea of it did you never do like study group oh we did or you eat a bunch of snacks and just hang out and get work done except for the last thing oh griffin it's mostly

me and patrick stanley hanging out writing our capstone paper the night before it's due pulling an all-nighter taking a quick break to go and play through all of megaman x then go back into the the study you were exactly the kind of student that i resented yeah and then i got you know a good a on that kind of song so no big deal but i like the idea of it i bet you can't do that in grad school. I bet they'll find out. Did you beat Mega Man X last night instead of... Yes, I did. I'm sorry. Your second page is really influenced by Mega Man X.

It's a walkthrough of Mega Man X that you printed out in the same batch as your capstone. I mean, I do appreciate knowing how to beat Spark Man Drill, but I'm a... I was wondering what Flame Mammoth's weakness was. Now I'm just trying to remember all the bosses in Mega Man X. There was a penguin. There was a chameleon. Did you say Spark Mandrill? Yeah.

Be a good roller derby name. Yeah, it would. A lot of the names. One of them was like a boomerang head man. I've lost it. Eric says, a summer threat. That can't be right a summer treat a summer threat I find quite wonderful are snow cones

they're everywhere the silent killers everyone has fond memories of them which that's my fuck up and not this person's I hope everybody at home knows that it says treat everyone has fond memories of them which may that's my fuck up and not this person's i hope everybody at home knows that it says treat everyone has fond memories of them which make them feel immediately nostalgic especially with friends on a hot summer day enjoying your time off school plus all the different flavor and color combination make them endless fun and weirdly beautiful for just being

shaved ice covered in sugar juice we gotta get some snowballs before the summer's over we do i'll say this on the subject of snow cones they are the most um mercurial in terms of quality food out there i think because if you get this shit that's like pebbles of ice with a little bit of just sugar water poured on it yeah that's gross and then the water goes all the way to the bottom. Gross, no good. And the juice goes all the way to the bottom, yeah, and then the top is just straight ice and flavorless ice. Terrible.

Fuck that. Proper shaved ice, and I'm talking about that fine powder, that sweet cotton mixed in with heaping helpings juice that actually tastes like something. Oh my God, there is nothing better. Especially if it's flavors that aren't just like cherry, blue raspberry. What's the place down... Casey Snowballs. Casey Snowballs makes just the best snow cones you've ever tasted.

It's like New Orleans-inspired somehow. Yeah. Or from New Orleans. They also do an ice cream thing where you can get a snow cone ball on top of an ice cream scoop. Oh, my God. It's so fucking good. Anyway, yeah, snow cones are dope and really dangerous.

Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for theme song Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Hey, tell a friend about our show. I don't think we've ever asked anybody to do that. But we really appreciate... Yeah, if you get some good vibes from this show, and you have a friend who could also use some good vibes, please recommend it. We try to be a good vibes show,

and I think there's people who could be helped by that, instead of just, you know, the bad vibes show. Like, you know, the show where they talk about all the stuff that they hate, and the stuff they think really stinks. I mean, that's basically the news, Am I right? Am I right, people?

Thank you to Maximum Fun for hosting our show and for putting out all sorts of great programs. Bubble is very good, if you haven't heard Bubble. It is good. I listened to a lot more of it while we were traveling to Santiago. Oh, yeah, and you got to see all those folks. I did. Well, not all those folks. I saw Jordan Morris

at a fun party but I think that was it I was only there for like about 13 hours it was a wild one and yeah I think that's it oh if people want to send in their own submissions how do they do that?

wonderfulpodcast.gmail.com if you want to hear more McElroy shows you can go to McElroyshows.com one more quick note we've mentioned our PO box in the past we are having to transfer that so stop

sending stuff to it we'll let you know when we have a new PO box yes so just sort of chill on that for a little bit okay that's it so i'm out of outro juice too oh griffin um could we air more jokes about smooth is there another santana you didn't ask me who i would replace it with. Oh, yeah. Who'd you replace it with for Smooth, the song by Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas? John Mayer.

Oh, God. And Blake Shelton. Oh, my God. You have to legally say that was a joke. I'd call it smoother. Oh, my God, Rachel. You have to say this is a joke.

Not loud, because people will cut it and they'll lose the context of it being a joke. And then we'll be run out of town on a rail. It drops September 2018. Look for it. For Smoother, the sequel to Smooth with John Mayer and Blake Shelton. You gotta say you're joking.

Because now I don't know if you think this song would be smoother than Smooth by Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana. It is a joke. you're joking because now i don't know if you think this song would be smoother than smooth by rob thomas and carlos santana it is a joke griffin oh thank god Money won't work at all. Money won't work at all. Money won't work at all. Money won't work at all. maximum fun.org comedy and culture artist owned listener supported and rolling the news today is terrible so why not forget about it while listening to Jonah Radio with Cash Hartzell.

Hey, everybody. Featuring Neil Mahoney. Also me. This is a podcast where we play music submitted by a listener. We hang out, we listen to new tunes, and we take submissions at jonaradio, R-A-Y-D-I-O, at gmail.com. Come and check us out. We're here anyway yeah yeah so and

that's it back to your regularly scheduled uh podcast i hope this one goes