Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 46: Here Comes the Sauce!

Episode Date: August 8, 2018

Griffin's other favorite party game! Rachel's favorite hot bean! Griffin's favorite early 2000s electronic album! Rachel's favorite creative process! 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. This is wonderful. And we've got the need for speed. And what does that mean? Trucker speed. We're so tired, I guess. Do you want to start over?

No. So Need for Speed was something that they said in Days of Thunder. Did you see that one, Tom Cruise? I did not. Rubbing is racing. You ever heard anybody say that to you before? No. And what it means is that sometimes drivers rub their cars up against each other

and it's like a little kiss in the cars universe that's how cars kiss have you seen the cars movies i have yes okay so we do that's one thing we've got but anyway in that movie they were just all wild for trucker speed but this is a podcast about things that we're very much into. Which is not trucker speed. So I was confused why you brought that. No, it is Days of Thunder, though. We are both very tired. Yeah, our baby just didn't want to just do the damn thing last night. And the damn thing is sleep.

And he did damn, he damned it all up. He did a real piss job of sleep last night and uh i think we're both sort of suffering but our suffering isn't going to stop us from doing this podcast because folks we've got sponsors and responsibilities and you at home i know you're probably tired too what with the world being like it is and we're the only things that are getting you through your work week this is kind of a should we start over no we're gonna power right through it because i'm so tired this is three minutes and 50 seconds of good footage and by footage i mean recording um do you have any small wonders this week griffin that i'm alive still rachel every

day that i wake up and I'm still doing the damn thing, and by this time I mean living, I just am so grateful for it. We went and saw Mission Impossible Fallout and like... That was really fun. Fuck yeah.

That's all I, like the whole time I wanted to stand up and just yell, like, fuck yeah, fuck yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tom, yeah, Tom. Tom's just, his movies get me so crazy. And they would have kicked me out. You already mentioned Days of Thunder. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah. I'm just crazy for this dude's body of work. But Vanilla Sky, like badass, dude. So that was fun. The Austin Powers movie? Is he in that? Remember he's like in makeup

is that the movie? are you thinking Tropic Thunder? yeah that's alright though so um yeah mostly being alive though

do you have any small wonders? I do actually oh okay on my way to work every morning I drive by a high school and every morning there's a marching band

out practicing and it really charms me. That's so good. It reminds me of my days back in the band. I like that. They're all out on this parking lot, and they're all in their T-shirts and shorts with their instruments just walking around together. Did you get much guff because you were a flautist in a marching band from some of the tuba or trombone players or the ones who have to carry like four fucking drums people talk about that uh you know but i will say that you have to hold

your right arm up the whole time so like if you're holding a heavier instrument for example usually you keep your hands close to your chest huh but with the flute you got the elbow out and the arm like this yeah all day long like in the l shape you've got the elbow out and the arm like this all day long, like in the L shape. And that'll wear you out. And you put a lot of like stank on it. Like when you got out there, you did a lot of sort of like torso twists and like little jazz wiggles.

Sometimes I'd wear like weights on my arm just to really get the workout in. Yeah, like Goku. And then you would take the weights off and you would play the flute so hard that, you know, everybody on the other marching band team would explode. And then also like Goku, I would breathe really deeply. Yeah, Goku's embouchure was really fantastic. And he was good at that cyclical breathing. Is that what it's called?

So I don't know who goes first. I should have fucking checked it. I believe it's you this week. I mean, somebody made a website just for this purpose, and it seems wrong to not do it. But I think that this week the person who goes first is me. Is that correct? Yes.

I don't want to doubt the website. Yes. You went first last week with the Amoeba music video series. That was so good. I watched a couple more of those. Thank you. I thought it was good, too. Okay, so my first thing is, well, I'm going to tell you all about it.

It is a video game. And I talk about those on the show sometimes, and I try to talk about ones that are kind of accessible, like games that not only you have played, but like games that are easy to play with our friends, because like, I, my two like favorite things are like games that I play by myself that I can get into for hours and hours and hours, or the complete polar opposite, just like fun games I can play with my friends. And for me, I think there's like a sliding scale with those types of games, like approachable games, with stuff like Jackbox games, which we've talked about before, being kind of on the far low end,

where it's just sort of a casual party game. There's no mechanics or skill ceiling to speak of whatsoever. It's just a fun game. I'm so anxious for you to say what this game is. My personal favorite types of casual, fun party games, though, are the ones that are like right above that where they have some meat on their bones some like mechanics to to tangle with and some like skills that you can build up over time um while still being very approachable so like smash brothers i think is in

there tower fall i think is and there's a lot of games in that category but in my book, the gold standard is Mario Kart. Okay. Mario Kart. He doesn't say, he says his own name sort of like Mario, but I don't think he says Kart, does he? Kart. You would know better than me. I would. So Mario Kart is something we've played together. Do you know why some parts of the country say Mario?

Are you talking about specifically Russ Frushtick's apartment where he lives? Because he's the only one I know who says it like that, and I don't know why. He's broken deep down inside. I thought there were some Canadians that say Mario. Maybe. I do remember seeing an episode of Figure It Out where one of the OG cast members of all that said, oh, Super Mario.

And I was like, that's can't possibly. That was a really specific memory to bring up on our podcast. But anyway, so there's been a ton of Mario Kart games, right? The most recent one is Mario Kart 8, which came out on Wii U and then came out on Switch, which is fantastic because it's a fun game to play portably, but also... I like that one a lot. That one has like a... It's very easy to play like portably but like also i like that one a lot that

one has like it's very easy to play multiplayer games on the switch you have a lot of different configurations and so we've we've played that one a bunch my loyalty lies with mario kart 64 which was the first four-player mario kart which man still holds up to this day and i think people who are like deep into mario Kart have their own personal faves. Although I think probably Mario Kart 64 is the best one, right? It's certainly the one we've played the most. I like the newer one better, but it's just because I'm better at it. That is true. But in any of its forms, Mario Kart really encapsulates that approachable, with a skill- design, like really, really well.

Like it's not hard to learn how to drive a cart. Just the basics, go, stop, turn. And even that feels really good. Even when you're not like especially good at it, it is a, it feels good to drive. And if you're up against somebody who's like much better at you than driving, somebody who knows how to do like the drifts

and get those blue sparks and get all the boosts and stuff um you still have that chance that you'll get like the item that you need to goof them up and then maybe i know about the blue sparks yeah when you drift really good for a long time you get the blue sparks and then you get the red sparks and then you can get the blue sparks if you drift for a long time and then you get a little boost you like a little extra a little extra something some that's what i'm saying there's like a lot of ways to get really good at the driving but even if you're not doing great at the driving and the person is better than you passes you you can get a good item and then mess them up that way and so there's like this element of chaos that sort of levels the playing field um that i really enjoy and every time you

do play the game um it's one of those games where I honestly feel like you get better at it. Uh, whether it's like learning how to find a good line through a turn or learning some of those like advanced techniques, like learning how to time out the hitting the gas at the very start of the race. So you can get that little boost right at the beginning. Every time you play it, maybe you find out like which racer you like the best, which character you like the best, which works best for you. Every time you play, maybe you find out like which racer you like the best, which character you like the best, which works best for you. Every time you play,

you get a little bit better at it. And I think that's a really sort of important thing to transition people into like, oh, I can play like, I can play tougher games. I can play games that are sort of more skill based. Hey, can I ask you a question? Sure.

People always like playing Peach, and I don't know why. She has just really high max speed. And I think Bowser's up there too. She also has really good acceleration so she can get you up to max speed. I'm probably messing this up. I almost always play as Peach, especially on 64.

Just like, she can get very, very fast, very, very quickly. Yeah. And I think there's something really cool. Growing up with all my theater friends, which was my main, and that is a generous way of saying only, group of friends growing up. Not all of them were into games. But if they came over and we played some Mario Kart 64 for a while, there is no barrier to entry. We're just playing Mario Kart 64 now. And then you've played Mario Kart for a while,

you think like, oh, well, let's try Goldeneye. Let's try, you know, let's try something else that is also sort of a skill-based video game because those can be fun too, even when you're bad at them. There's something scary I think about, like especially competitive skill-based games like shooters like golden eye

or at least it was sort of you know back in the day and there really doesn't have to be anything scary about it because it can be fun to play those games even when you're terrible at them and i feel like a game like mario kart is a good good bridge i will say one the one thing that i appreciate about playing video games with you is that you are not much of a trash talker, at least when you play with me. So if I'm playing a game with you where you have a lot of skill and I don't have any, you never make me feel like, no,

I wouldn't. Well, that's, that would be a huge dick move. I feel like video gamers are like notorious for that. Not any that like I play games, maybe like the video gamers, you call that a jump when they're on like fucking like csi and there's a case where a video gamer like strangled somebody with their xbox

cord like and they're playing a game and the game sounds on the tv that you don't actually see the game but it's like from behind the tv and it's like bloop bloop and it's like games haven't sounded like that for 35 years they will sometimes act like that and also probably most most video gamers but i don't uh i don't really mess with them i will say i do talk smack in one mario kart sort of related occasion and that is when we're playing cario mart which is the best like drinking game talked about that on the show they probably have but the rules are simple you can't finish the race until you've finished your beer and that's all there is to it and um one time i played it at travis's bachelor party like six or seven times in a row you remember that at travis's bachelor party there there was a time when we were like hanging

out all together oh yeah that's right and then it oh and then they we got things got bad did you know the original super mario kart for super nintendo uh wasn't originally a mario game Did you know the original Super Mario Kart for Super Nintendo wasn't originally a Mario game? Isn't that fun? Isn't that a fun fact? Well, who was in it? Just, like, some guy wearing suspenders who was, like, driving around in a kart. Well, it was, I read this and I didn't even think about it.

The dev team, Shigeru Miyamoto, I think, was a producer on it. He was, like, the guy who made mario and zelda and all that um they wanted to make a game where two uh players could control two different characters at the same time which i was thinking about it like had that not happened up to that point like certainly it's but like i would be hard i don't think there was anything like that on i don't know regardless like it's hard to to pull off and so like that was their goal and so they made this like kart racing game and just for shits and giggles they put mario in one of the karts one time and they're like oh that looks really good it's before it was before it was greg kart yeah it was greg and he was a driving man um anyway i love mario kart there's like no time where i

wouldn't be down to play some mario kart it's like potato chips like i would always pretty much always eat some potato chips and i would always always pretty much always play some Mario Kart. It's like potato chips. Like, I would always pretty much always eat some potato chips, and I would always, always, pretty much always play some Mario Kart while eating chips. What's your first thing? Alright, you're not going to believe that we haven't covered this yet. Okay. I was so delighted when I realized we hadn't, especially today. Okay. My wonderful thing is coffee. Oh, shit, yes. Uh-huh. Oh, this sweet bean. Oh, yeah. Oh oh this sweet bean oh yeah oh this hot bean gives me so much uh you have brought coffee creamer specifically sugar-free hazelnut but we have not talked about

coffee yeah yeah yeah and that is a grave oversight on our part there's no way i got a full segment out of hazelnut coffee creamer is there it's on it's on the books holy shit okay might be a small wonder is it uh i don't even i don't even know if i should have this conversation but is it i have quit things in my life before because i've said like i don't like that i am dependent on this and like smoking especially is like that was that was categorically not good for me coffee is like i won't quit that until i die until i die i don't think a lot of people i have known use that logic to quit coffee for a while and i don't understand it personally but i also have never been a a huge um you know like five, six cup a day person. Right.

Like I am like one cup tops. I have certainly cut back on my consumption as of late, but like I can't imagine living without it. And I don't think it's doing anything bad for me. And I'm totally not interested in having that conversation with anybody under the power of my voice. But I also recognize I am completely dependent on it. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's good. It's that good bean. So I wanted to tell you some good things about coffee. Okay. So there's always research coming out, and I think it's largely because researchers are highly caffeinated. Sure. So I feel like every year there's some new study out on coffee.

Yeah. I mean, don't talk to me until I've had my coffee, you know? Yeah, Mondays, you know? Yeah, hack. So there is a bunch of different studies, a lot of which say a bunch of really great things. And so let me just summarize some of them. There's a recent study that coffee drinkers live longer. And apparently that's a conclusion that held up even for heavy coffee consumption. So people that were having eight or more cups a day. Good Lord. Regardless of whether the coffee was caffeinated or not.

Huh. Isn't that interesting? There's just something about that good brown bean then. Mm-hmm. And longevity was linked to coffee consumption regardless of what type of caffeine metabolism genes you carry. I don't know what that means, but it sounds like science. You know how some people react differently to coffee? Like they're more sensitive to it?

Yeah. So I was reading about that in a Harvard Medical School document from July 25th. Document? Article? Document. It works. Before I drank coffee when I was in high school or middle school, I didn't drink it, but I would for, I don't even remember how they got into our house. I think Justin brought them home from Blockbuster or something like that. Taster's Choice?

They were, no, they were like chocolate covered espresso beans. And I would eat those and I would get so much just sort of jumping energy to help me jump all through the night. To not sleep, but jump all through the night, you know? And I look back on that now, like, that's wild that I was doing that. I was eating. Well, that was everybody's like pathway, though. I remember when I was a kid going to Gloria Jean's Coffee Beans. Are you familiar?

No. It was like in our shopping mall and it was like a Starbucks and you could get sweet and caffeinated beverages. Yeah, I never went. Including chocolate covered espresso beans. I never went to your shopping mall. Well, but I bet Gloria Jean's was more than just. Gloria Jean's Coffee Beans? Yeah.

I love the name of the store. There's no denying that. I love the name of the store. There's no denying that. So coffee has been proved to lower the risk of liver cancer, liver failure due to cirrhosis, dementia, type 2 diabetes, and gout. Oh. Did you include any things that are probably kind of bad about coffee? I decided to leave those out. It probably hurts the tummy, corrodes that a little bit.

But no, listen, I'm not going to... Our show isn't called It's Probably Bad. It's called Wonderful. Oh, I can't. I don't give a shit if it's good or bad. I need it a lot. Is any of the positive facts that you have listed, like when you don't sleep well, or even sometimes when you do get enough sleep, it still makes you feel listed like when you don't sleep well or even sometimes when you do get enough

sleep you it still makes you feel super good when the day is just getting started well i was going to give anecdotal evidence okay uh my research was more around actual uh peer-reviewed yeah so this is from scientific american june 2018 uh apparently so there was always concerns about coffee consumption and the impact on your heart. But they did a study in mice, which was the equivalent to four to five cups of coffee for a human. And there was no damage to the heart cells. In fact, it apparently enhanced the function of heart cells, which is exciting for people

that have heart conditions. Potentially coffee is no longer something they have to stay away from. And then this Time Health Study in 2017, it's actually not a time study, but it was published in Time. People that drank coffee were less likely to die early, less likely to die of heart disease, and less likely to develop cancer. The study did not confirm, though, that people who do not currently drink coffee should start adding a cup or two in order to lower the risk. Also, current coffee drinkers shouldn't necessarily start drinking more coffee to enhance the

benefits. I thought that was worth bringing up. Like, coffee's not so great that if you don't drink it, you should start. Yeah. Can you think of the best cup of coffee you ever had? And I'm not even maybe talking about the flavor and the good richness of the brew, but just like the most transformative, necessary cup of coffee you ever had. Man, I don't know.

I mean, my temptation, as snooty as it sounds, is when I went to Italy and we get little like cups of espresso in the morning. It was so good. so drunk sick, like to my tummy hurt really bad about to throw up. And I went in this diner car and complained to the, to the guy working the counter. Like my tummy hurts really, really bad, which I recognize now it's kind of a risky gambit. Cause you don't want to be like, there's I'm hello. I'm one of your patrons and I'm giving you like a 50, 50 yards sort of forecast. And he gave me a fried egg, some sourdough toast, and he gave me a cup of

coffee i was like dude it's 1 30 he's like no drink it up i drank it up instantly instantly like a potion from an alchemist drink it instantly okay totally great i always thought the black coffee or just not black but the coffee to sober you up was just to like increase your alertness not to make you feel better this wasn't even like a sober me up i had to like increase your alertness not to make you feel better this wasn't even like a sober me up i had to drive because i'm not that dumb i you know was taking public transit at the time but like it just made my tummy feel better and it made me feel like i didn't have the spins or anything like that it was it was a it was a lifesaver i like so here is here is the the thing i am always chasing which is you know, where you have like maybe two cups of coffee

and you feel like you're the smartest you've ever been. Oh, the limitless, you get the limitless drug. Yeah, exactly. I there's a, there's a certain ratio of food in your stomach to caffeine, where if you just get the right amount of coffee, you feel like you can do everything faster and everything that is coming out of your mouth is the smartest thing you've ever said. Sure. I love that feeling, man. The flip side of that, though, is you eat a bunch of pancakes and then you, no, listen, you eat a bunch of pancakes and then you drink a bunch of coffee and then the pancakes are like, time for bed. And the coffee's like, nope.

And you get home and you lay down for the nap, but the coffee's like, actually, let's think about every dumb thing you've done this week instead of the sleep. Sorry, pancakes. I hate that. That is also an experience you can have on coffee, I guess. Yeah, but... But I'm speaking... Of the good stuff, yeah.

Of the good stuff. You gotta be careful with it. That's all I'm saying. No, it's true. You gotta practice safe coffee drinking. It's true. I wouldn't recommend it to just anybody. So we're gonna get some emails about this one.

I feel like coffee is just good. And that's all there is to it. There's a lot of research that it can be dangerous for certain people with certain conditions. So I'm not saying that everybody should go out and drink a bunch of coffee. But I like it. It's the best part of waking up. Yeah. And I was not joking earlier.

If you ever see me and I haven't had my coffee yet, don't even fucking bother. Do not even approach it. The idea of it. Me, you know, some, some mornings I won't have time to make coffee.

Oh yeah. And usually the first thing Griffin says when he gets up is, is there coffee? And sometimes I have to say no. And it the first thing Griffin says when he gets up is, is there coffee? And sometimes I have to say no. And it's like, he won't. I yell and yell. I won't even get out of bed. My hot brown beans, my hot brown beans.

Not at you, but more at God for cursing me with not having the hot brown beans. Can I steal you away? Yes. This would be a really good week for us to have a coffee-based sponsor, but I don't think we're going to get there. Do you want to do the song? Drum, drum, drum, drum, drum, drum, drum, drum, drum, drum, drum, drum, drum. You all listening missed Griffin actually did the hand gestures

as if he were playing a guitar. I did it very weakly, though. It could also look like I was just sort of, you know, fiddling around down there. Just fiddle farting around. Do you want to read these Jumbotrons? You can't. You got to uncross for that, unfortunately. Okay.

This next message is for Michelle. It is from Riel. Hey, Shelly. I know you're into listening to this show while you cook and thought it would be the perfect platform to tell you that you're such a great friend. It's been great reconnecting and bonding with you over all that good, good McElroy content. You still need to get on Taz, Lazy Bones. I love you and you're wonderful.

That is so sweet. A good message. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. Shit. Is that really when they wanted it for? Yes. Yipes. Well. You know, every day can be valentine's day i like also people cooking

while they listen because it makes me think that my idea for a cooking podcast is getting but like a cooking show but you don't see it or smell it and you can't tell if it looks good throw me off though because what if you were saying on the cooking show a cup of flour and somebody was cooking and they only needed half a cup and they got distracted and they accidentally put twice as much mine would be more broad it wouldn't be any specific measurements it'd just be like you guys like cooking heat that's no it'd be like heat the spaghetti and i'm not going to tell you to what degree or how much spaghetti or why you're doing it. So like a Mary Berry Paul Hollywood challenge. Heat the spaghetti. Get the water.

Here comes the sauce. That would be one of the steps. Here comes the sauce. Meatballs, you tell me. So I'm going to get that one off the ground. We're seeking funding right now. We're doing sort of a startup style. What's it called?

It's called Here Comes the Sauce. I like it i like it yeah yeah is it always about pasta um no but always about sauce that's involved yes uh this next message is for beck it is from campbell and griffin they want you to read this okay hey beck my dearest of friends here's a little something to stave off the sauce tm oh that's weird yeah uh i just want to say that i love love love you and i'm rooting for you and everything you do you're gonna figure it out and you're gonna be okay i just know it and And did I mention, I love you, good luck topping this one, Smorch. So Smorch was the alien from Flintstones. Do you remember him? I can't tell if you're joking or not.

Yeah, he was a little alien. He went around and granted, I guess, sort of Flintstone wishes, but his name was definitely Smorch. But Beck, get it. Do it. Here doesn't come the sauce, I guess, but you can still stir it on up. If you know what I mean.

I don't think I know what I mean. No, that's good. It's not anything. Hi, I'm Allie Gertz. And I'm Julia Prescott, and we're Everything's Coming Up Simpsons. We're a Simpsons podcast on the Maximum Fun Network, and we've got some exciting news. Ooh, tell me. We are going to be doing some live podcast shows in some of our favorite cities.

We're so excited, and we want to let you guys know out there in the Maximum Fun universe that we are coming to you. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. On Saturday, September 15th, we will be at the North Door in Austin, Texas. Yeehaw. On Saturday, December 1st, we will be at the Alamo Drafthouse Sloan's Lake in Denver, Colorado. There's no basement in the Alamo. We'll find out.

Friday, December 7th, we are going to be at the Vera Project in Seattle, Washington. Oh, God. Nirvana. Yes. Okay. And Saturday, December 8th, we will be at Mississippi Studios in Portland, Oregon. Hey, Matt Groening lives there. Yes. Or once lived there. He still lives there in our

hearts. So make sure that you mark your calendars for those dates and we will be posting the ticketing links on our Twitter. That is at SimpsonsPod and we will smell you later. Do you want to know my second thing? please it's an album of music prepared by a musical artist yeah so i try to i feel like i try to bring like stuff that maybe not everybody knows about when i talk about stuff on this show um but that's not going to be this one because I want to talk about the album Discovery by Daft Punk, which is a seminal electronic music album from the 2000 year. I think 2000 or 2001.

Um, this album kicks so much fucking ass and, uh, it almost feels like silly to talk about it on this show because I feel like everybody knows about this album and it's not really a secret about how much it how much ass it kicks um but i listened to it a lot today and in this past week or so it showed up in like my spotify like college playlist and uh it's a good album it's so good and it sent daft punk's career kind of like into the stratosphere and kind of changed electronic and pop music for good. So I want to talk about it on the show. You're familiar with Discovery by Daft Punk, right? I don't know that I've ever listened to it all the way through, but I've heard songs off of it. Pretty much all of the songs that people know by Daft Punk, not including like Get Lucky, which was on their most recent release, but like the classics, like Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.

Yes, I know that one. Which Kanye sampled in his song Stronger. Digital Love is on that one. One More Time is on that one. Oh, yeah. Crescendals. There's a ton of, I mean, all of their biggest hits, I feel like, were all on this album. It was their second album.

This was actually the album that sort of started their whole robot aesthetic. If you ever saw that one commercial for The Gap where Juliette Lewis is just kind of grooving in some blue jeans, they wrote the song She's Dancing To, that's Digital Love, and they are also the two robots in that commercial. They are a duo of French electronic artists. One of them is named Thomas Van Galter. And this is he did a Rolling Stone interview where he kind of talked about the robot thing. And he said, we're interested in the line between fiction and reality, creating these fictional personas that exist in real life. And he sort of quoted like Kraftwerk and Ziggy Stardust and Kiss as sort of

inspirations for this aesthetic and went on to say people thought that the helmets were marketing or something. But for us, it was just sci-fi glam. That whole aesthetic is like my shit. And I just really love what a like enormous creative endeavor this album was um it it did great in europe it like made it to number two in the uk and in france it only made it to like 23 in america that's like where it topped which is wild to me because i feel like everybody knows this album well i feel like electronic music is is bigger um in europe than it is here um yeah i I mean, they are also a French duo, so there's the home team advantage, but still it just feels like, man,

you could not go to a dance club at any point in the entire aughts, the entire decade, without hearing one of their songs. Do you know about the movie that was made to this album? They teamed up with a Japanese anime and manga creator

who specialized in making these like big space opera series and he was he was beloved his name was uh leiji matsumoto um and they teamed up with him to make this feature-length movie with no dialogue uh just set to the music of the album called interstellar 5555 uh and it was just like a dope sort of space anime where the plot was set to the songs from Discovery. I have. This is actually how I found out about Daft Punk is I saw this on Adult Swim.

That was how I was first exposed to it. And I just thought it was the coolest fucking thing I had ever seen and heard because I had never really heard of a band like Daft Punk before. And this movie collaboration was kind of born out of their childhood love of anime. And that idea of things that they loved from the 70s and 80s that was their childhood, this is kind of like a concept album of a tribute to that stuff. And that's why you get sometimes, uh, it some, sometimes like kind of

corny, uh, sort of things like things that sound like old hair metal guitar solos and like arena rock power chords. It's why you get like a lot of like disco samples is because like, they are trying to sort of recapture that, that one very, very specific era, which is personal to them because it was their childhood, but trying to turn it into something else. So to give you an idea of that, I'm only going to play one song. I know I usually do more than that whenever we talk about a whole album. But again, I feel like everybody knows these songs.

But I want to play my favorite song from the album just to sort of show what I was talking about, about this sort of tribute to this era. This is Digital Love. this song is like it's fantastic and it has this great build to it um it has all of these like great little sections that i feel like whenever i would hear it at like a dance party or something like that would be like little checkpoints. Like, oh, here comes the part where it kind of drops off and it's like, why don't you play the guitar? Here comes that dope guitar solo. All of the songs on this album actually have really interesting structures. That was sort of another sort of concept for it. Their first album, Homework, was just like, here's some cool electronic music. This one is

like, let's see what we can do with the form of these songs. For instance, in this song, that one sample plays the entire fucking time. And it's only like a four measure sample, and they play it a billion times in this five minute song, but you never really get tired of it. And the lyrics are just like super basic, you know, talking about love, but they work with the vibe of the song so well. That sample I also want to play. It is a loop that comes from a 1979 song from George Duke, who is this very prolific, like funk keyboardist. The song that they sampled is called I Love You More. And it's just from this artist. The song that they sampled is called I Love You More. And it's just from this super specific small part of this song before that original song, I Love You More, turns into

something way different from Digital Love. So here's the first 15 seconds of George Duke's I Love You More. i just love that like they were like let's find a dope hook for our song. Here it is. It's a kind of, I guess, obscure George Duke track. But really, it's just a measure or two from the first 10 seconds of it before the song completely transforms and like george duke made this fucking incredible hook that people i probably didn't didn't venerate until it became the entire backbone of this very very famous song like thinking about the process that they must have gone through to find that and make that song is crazy you think of like girl talk and this is, you know, a very clumsy comparison,

but you listen to a girl talk song and you're like, Oh, I know where that came from. I know where that came from. I know where that came from. I know where that was like, here's, here's,

uh, eight seconds to 11 seconds of this one George Duke song from 1979. And it's going to be the entire fucking track. It's just wild to me. Um, I love this album so much. If you've never heard it before, like go listen to it. You've probably heard most of the songs off of it

in some way or another. And if you haven't heard it before, it super holds up. It's still my favorite album of theirs and like probably my favorite like electronic music album ever. What's your second thing though? My second thing is,

uh, it's kind of, it's kind of deconstructionist. Okay. So here's the thing. Getting heady. Normally I take you to the poetry corner. Oh,

are we going? Can I sing it? Today? Oh no. I'm going to take you to where the poetry corner is made welcome to the stool factory over here is where we keep the cushions

over here is where we keep the stool legs that's all that goes into the stool poetry it's the poetry corner corner can you explain what you mean Poetry. It's the poetry corner corner. Can you explain what you mean?

So I realize that poetry is kind of an unfamiliar medium to a lot of people. And I don't know if our listener really realizes the process that goes into writing a poem. Our one listener. And Toby. Thank you, Toby. Thank you, Toby, so much. Toby, how about you tell a one friend? No, it wouldn't be. I want it to be.

Because we make so many Toby-based jokes. That's true. And, you know, Toby's friends aren't going to get those. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, so I guess I was thinking a lot about podcasts like Song Exploder. Sure. Or just documentaries or kind of the making of featurettes where you talk to an artist about how they put something together.

And I feel like people are kind of familiar with that context now in a lot of areas, but not necessarily with poetry. And it's very similar to that. Yeah. Something that I got really interested in, I think when most people start writing poetry, they start from a very personal place of like, you know, I feel really sad about this person that didn't like me back. Or I feel lonely and this is the thing I'm writing about that. or I feel lonely and this is the thing I'm writing about that. Or I saw, in my case, I saw a pretty tree, and now I'm going to try to write some sort of floral Appalachian poetry about it and not do good.

But I think the more time I spent with poetry, the more I got kind of into the precision of it. Okay. So I thought I would share something I've written before. Like a recent one or from school? No, this is an old one. This is actually after school. Not like an after school poem.

The trucker speed put it down, down, down to the ground where the trucker speed lives. No, thanks, Toby. I really liked that one. Thank you. Yeah. So is that, can I ask if your poem involves any sort of sexual ice cream imagery at all? Because I need to know if I need to prepare my, my body.

No, this is one I wrote after I finished my graduate degree. And I wrote it in the summertime, so I thought it would be appropriate for this time of year, which is also the summer. You're sure there's no ice cream imagery? No ice cream. Okay. Anyway, I wrote this in May 2008. Okay. And see, now I'm embarrassed to read it.

No, why? Because you wanted ice cream so bad. No, I hate ice cream. I want the real shit. Okay. My damp face follows the hollow vein of the wing. Summer stokes the insect. I speak the hum of her motion.

In tempered flight and fold, the fly cuts an upward bend, stretches her lenses to land, senses in her legs to land again. stretches her lenses to land senses in her legs to land again to settle on your ear itself all bend and strength a curved pale for collecting a sense for sound for balance and behind the sound the fly finds her branch and bent channels a strength within the most delicate skin around a middle of spun air it's's so fucking good, Rachel. Thank you. I don't get a lot of Rachel's, like, you have not shown me much of your poetry. And it's so good.

And I get what you're saying about the precision, because like, it felt like every word of that was like exactly, you know, the right one right where it needed to be. So here's some of the unpacking I did for that. So did the line, I speak the hum of her motion, resonate with you in any way? Yeah. There is a Walt Whitman poem where he says, I sing the body electric. Oh, right. Yeah, I know that.

But mostly from fame. There's a musical fame in this part of it. So that really kind of inspired me, and it's kind of hidden in there, that line. Okay. Also, in order to do this poem, I researched how hearing works, like how ears work. Interesting.

So that thing about in the poem, yeah, here we go. To settle on your ear, itself all bend and strength, a curve pale for collecting, a sense for sound, for balance. And then at the end, a strength within the most delicate skin around a middle of spun air, like how your eardrum resonates with sound, like the vibration that carries in and how you hear.

So I did research on that. And then I did research on flies too. Yeah. And kind of learned about how flies uh and kind of their whole process for for landing and traveling uh so i i guess i think um for me it was really kind of transformative to get to that place in my writing where it wasn't just about expressing some like very urgent emotion but kind of doing research and exploring, you know, what it is that's interesting and how it relates to, to other things.

And it's a lot of kind of what we do in this podcast in a way, you know, of like, I get interested in something and research it. And then I try and kind of put, put it together like a brief way of telling the story. Yeah, for sure. And I i i really liked that about uh i i sort of felt that same way about the poem and that just in how much like sort of obvious work you put into the science of it um and and also like what a stark contrast it was from some of the other poems that you've brought that are like there's so many i guess i never really

appreciated there's a lot of different kinds of poems huh sure Sure is a lot of different kinds of ones of them. Yeah, that's good. You know what I mean? Because it wasn't like, I like Michigan and here's why. It was like... No, that's true. Here's a cool poem about a bug. About a bug in the summer.

So, yeah, I guess I really like the process of writing a poem. And I think it relates a lot to composing any kind of new creative work of kind of having an idea and then doing some research to support that idea and kind of making connections in that process and ending up with something that's much more complex than you started out with. I feel like, you know, you and I have talked about that when you, when you write music for Adventure Zone or when you're putting a story together, thinking about kind of a few pieces and then finding opportunities for, you know, the story to pivot or to create kind of an interesting turn. And I really like that about creative writing. Because you kind of sit down thinking one thing and then learn something in the process and make a connection that's much more exciting than the original idea. Did you ever sort of, I want to say indulge, but that's probably not the, that seems a little insulting, maybe, in the more sort of emotionally charged, less sort of precise.

Honestly, it's not a strength I've ever had. I think because what's interesting to me about writing poems is the precision. We've been hacked. Ah, shoot. More than kind of the catharsis of it. So I have written emotionally charged stuff, but never anything that felt good to me. It was more like getting it out of my system than like, oh, this was a satisfying exercise. Because it's not what I find interesting about writing. like getting it out of my system, then like, Oh, this is, it was a satisfying exercise because,

uh, I, it's not what I find interesting about writing. Sure. Your vows were like that though. I guess it wasn't technically a poem. No. And I was just saying them to you.

It was nice stuff. I said, there were lots of other people there, but like, you know, what's different. It was like, um,

what was it? It was like, I'm starting at the tempting top of my ice cream cone. That's right. And then I was like, am I the ice cream cone? And then I got really sweaty because I was like, whoa. Whoa. Whoa. That was a very good poem, baby.

I'm so glad that you read it on our show. Do you want to hear some submissions from our friends at home? Yes. Sarah sent this one in and it's a fucking slam dunk. Okay. read it on our show um do you want to hear some submissions from our friends at home yes uh sarah sent this one and it's a fucking slam dunk okay uh sarah said i am a flight attendant and something i find wonderful is when you find surprise magazines on the plane it's a treat to find new reading material but what's even better is knowing that another flight attendant stashed that magazine for you to find later you know they saved it from the garbage so someone else could read it. It gives me this sense of community, even though you never

see the other people who did you this solid. So you're on the plane, you're a flight attendant, you see somebody throw away, you know, a new magazine, you grab it, and you hide it away for the next flight attendant to find on the plane so they have something to read. See, I was assuming they were talking about in the back pocket of just a

random seat on the plane. And I always thought that meant that it had been overlooked by the crew. But this person makes it sound like anything you find on a plane was deliberately left there. There's a secret sort of flight. And I'm talking about like a flight attendant dead drop sort of thing, where flight attendants are just leaving each other magazines that they pulled out of the garbage. I love that. I don't think it's pulled out of the garbage i love that i don't think it's pulled out of the garbage no but i just love the whole world of uh like flight secrets like i'll

read any any fucking thing about flight secrets that's true like what is it like diet coke is like the least favorite thing for them to pour because it stays like carbonated for so long and that's like annoying i don't't know. Anyway, Chris says, my wife got tired of all the trash laying around our neighborhood. So she brought a couple of trash pokers online. And now when we go for walks, we pick up garbage along the way. We call them trashy walks.

It is a wonderful feeling to know that we can help make our community nicer while getting some exercise. Trashy walk. That's such a nice idea. I'd like to do that with Henry when he's older. Yeah. getting some exercise. Trashy walk. That's such a nice idea. I'd like to do that with Henry when he's older. Yeah, you really teach him the value of the sweat on his brow. Give him a fresh nickel for every can he... Do you remember being a kid and feeling really obsessed about litter?

Or is that just me? No, I remember hating it very much. Like feeling very strongly that if there was trash on the ground that it needed to be picked up immediately. Sure, and if I saw somebody throw something out the window of their car, like, I still, I still feel angry about that.

Yeah, I guess I do too. Not, I think I saw somebody pull up to a stoplight, open their door, literally set a cup on the ground, close the door. And then once the light changed,

they drove away. That's a new one. Yeah. So deliberate and slow and terrible. Um, Emily says, I love watching movies during a thunderstorm. Thunder and lightning plus Return of the Jedi is one of my favorite combinations.

That does sound nice. That does sound really good. I love being inside doing something cozy when it's raining out. How do you feel about power outage activities? Oh, I don't like it. Me neither. Because I always romanticize it like I'll light candles and then we can play chess

And backgammon by candlelight The other day our internet went out for five minutes And Griffin literally ran out of the house If I lost internet and also air conditioning I would just I would go to a Motel 6 or something And I would leave you guys behind I'm really sorry about that.

I wouldn't blame you. So anyway, that is our episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for a theme song. Money won't pay. I can find a link to that in the episode description. I'm so fucking tired,

baby. I hope this episode was good and I hope you all enjoyed it. And I, I hope that. Hey, thanks Toby. Hey, thank you,

Toby. And I hope that we're more sort of alert for you next time there, Tobes. Hey, thanks to MaxFun for having us on the network, too. You can go to Maximum Fun and check out all the great shows on there, like Bubble. And what do you feel like plugging this week? Pop Rocket? Oh, yeah. Beef and Dairy Network?

Yeah. It's a good one. They're all good ones, and it's all on MaximumFun.org. Go check them out. Heat Rocks. Heat Rocks, hell, and it's all on MaximumFun.org. Go check them out. Heat Rocks. Heat Rocks, hell yeah. It's all at MaximumFun.org. If you want to hear other stuff we do, it's at McElroyShows.com.

Got some shows coming up, too. If you want to get tickets to that, it's at McElroyShows.com slash tours. And if you thought about sending stuff to our P.O. Box, please don't. Don't do it. We have closed our P.O. Box, and we are looking into getting a new PO Box, but it is now very, very inconvenient for us to go to the old PO Box. So yes, we apologize for the interruption in service, but we'll let you know. We will let you know when it is back up.

And thank you to everybody who sends us stuff. I feel like we are poor stewards of the PO Box um we get a lot of stuff in there and it's it's it's all very very great and uh and we appreciate hearing from you and um i guess to just like close out um and i've been meaning to get this on my chest for actually a little while okay um and it might be like are you upset with all the stools we have from the Poetry Corner episodes? No, we have a reasonable number. And, you know, you can use stools for a lot of different things. Fun drum set for your imagination.

No, it's something I've been wanting to, like, say for a while. And it may be like... It might be weird. It might actually put some people off for a show. So maybe I Are you going to ask me to marry you? No. It's just that would be a good thing. That would be like a good thing. People would be very

much into that. Even though it would be weird because we are definitely still. We are for sure. But I guess what it was was Cowabunga dude. Thank you. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Kardashians. Michael Cohen.

Hashtags. Clickbait. Memes. Debunking. Rebunking. Regular sized bunking. Boaty McBoatface Do any of these words make sense to you?

Then maybe Trends Like These is the podcast you should be listening to We put out an episode every week on MaximumFun.org Hosted by me, Travis McElroy And me, Courtney Enloe And me, Brent Black Trends Like These on MaximumFun.org Cause with Trends Like These Who needs any memes?

Ah? Ah? Yeah, that was great.