Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 48: Baby Lou Bega

Episode Date: August 23, 2018

Griffin's favorite ironed food! Rachel's favorite playground game! Griffin's favorite playground game! Rachel's favorite sea mammal song! 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. Where the big dogs play. Are we working on taglines i don't know but i thought that it would be fun this is like we don't have anything that goes on a shirt we have a place where we can put a wonderful shirt but i don't know what would go on it and so i thought we could spend like the beginning of this episode putting some stuff out there because i

think our fans would also like the opportunity to wear our merch but i don't know what it is so let me hit you with this i've got one let me hit you with mine first please please yes it's gonna say like big dogs on it and it'll be a parody of like a movie so it'll be like darth vader but it's like a big dog and on the back it'll be like um i am your pa i'm your pa there or something it'll be like a movie parody, but it'll have a big, big dog on it. And I'll say big dog brand clothing on it. Wonderful. And wonderful on it somewhere. Okay.

Okay? You want to know mine? Yeah, I desperately. Get you some. Get you some. For a tagline or for a specific, like where are you thinking about this on a merch? What's the font?

What's the orientation? I think wonderful would be on the front. Yeah. And on the back it would say get you get you some that's pretty good um how about no fear wonderful no fear yeah don't fear it what if it's hyper color too what if it is hyper color i don't know if they can do that at the ftba but um yeah i think probably big dog the big dogs play. Oh, did we decide on that? Yeah, you looked very enthusiastic.

People can't see this at home. They probably thought I just steamrolled you, but you looked really enthusiastic about where the big dogs play. But what's cool, it'll just say wonderful on the front and it'll maybe have like our logo or something. But then on the inside of the shirt, it'll say where the big dogs play.

So that's just for you. That's a little treat for you. Do you have any small wonders? Oh man, I really meant to think about that. Ah, you didn't though, did ya? Did ya? I got one. I can start. Yes. I owe Daniel Tiger a big debt of gratitude. Oh yeah. Enormous debt of gratitude. This is a small tiger who was on the Fred Rogers program. Have you heard of this? Mr. Rogers enormous debt of gratitude this is a small tiger who was on the uh the fred rogers program have you heard of this mr rogers neighborhood yes yes and daniel tiger was on this one but he was

pretty different from the cartoon that we know and love and he's just a little boy and he's got friends who are all from the rogers averse and uh they sing songs about lessons. So each episode has a lesson like, clean up. Oh, shit. Come back. Is it a good one? Clean up. Put it away.

Something messes every day. There's one about the potty. Like when you have to potty, go right now. Flush, wash, and be on your way. I didn't do it good, but I like it. What I like about it is that um Henry is really into it and so we were driving home today and it hit like crazy traffic and there was nothing I could do

to calm Henry down in the back seat so I got on Spotify I was like do you have Daniel Tiger and Spotify was like I got you and it did get me thank you Daniel on the in the pantheon of children's programming, like Daniel Tiger is, I think, up there. I enjoy it, actually. Yeah. Among the many options, it's a good one. It is uplifting. It is zen-like, how purposefully uplifting it is. How about now?

Do you have a small wonder? Oh, I do. Okay. Making it got renewed for season two. That is a wonderful, wonderful news update. We never hit you with entertainment news, but now we have. So deal with it.

We were just watching that literally right before we came up here to record is a fun episode. It's all about the holidays. You know, I'm into it. I'm going first. Yes, please do. My first thing this week for wonderful where the Big Dogs Play is waffles.

Have you had a waffle lately? I have had many a frozen waffle. I don't know that I have had a, like... A restaurant waffle? Yeah. Yeah, I'm not picky, to be completely honest. See, I would prefer, like, a waffle iron waffle. Well, yeah, babe.

Of course. So waffle iron waffle would be better in any circumstance. But the frozen waffles is good too because you can do them at home so fast. I did them this morning at home so fast and they made me powerful all day. They had the cinnamon swirl and they were like the four mini waffles

combined into one big waffle. And I don't know why the fuck they do that, but it's fun. It is fun and i ate uh three of them which is i guess 12 miniature waffles uh just embarrassed with syrup and i ate all of them it gave me it gave me a lot of power and i needed a lot of power you know what i like is like a waffle pb and j oh a waffle pb and j is very very good i'm gonna talk all about the waffle being like the friend to any and all condiments. Okay. I do wonder, it's a perfect food, and I wonder if I feel that way about breakfast foods more

than lunchtime, dinner foods. Okay. I mean, I think that you do, and I would agree with you. Why? Is it, why? Why are they better? Why am I so into breakfast foods i mean you like a sweet i do uh you like i don't i don't go that way very often when i'm at like a restaurant i'll do

like a breakfast scramble with you know eggs and sausage and fruit cups just like the one meal where there's like a real happy mix of sweet and savory and it's just kind of understood that you're gonna have both probably maybe it's the restraint that i'm into breakfast more than lunch and dinner there's there's more things you can't have do you know what i mean well i think you and i might differ on that i like a savory breakfast item um i can't have a beef wellington for breakfast do you know what i mean but i can have scrambled eggs for dinner and i like being in that box that box you know i like to? But I can have scrambled eggs for dinner. And I like being in that box, that box, you know? I like to play in that box.

Anyway, these waffles, man, they are good texturally. They're good flavor-wise. They're good functionally speaking. They taste amazing. They got good mouthfeel. And they are just this perfect little storage unit block for other toppings. I do like the little pockets in a waffle. So some quick history in medieval times, 9th century or so, there was this thing in Europe,

and it wasn't really a waffle, but it was sort of the origins of the waffle iron. It was a wafer iron, and sometimes more specifically a communion wafer iron. So they would have sort of uh these intricate biblical sort of insignias on them and then they would put some you know simple dough in there and press it down real real flat and have a communion wafer with like jesus on it and now when that happens it's like a miracle because there's not a jesus on the waffle iron he just got in there somehow um just rascally like that. And that is kind of like where the origin of the waffle iron comes from. It wasn't until like

the 15th century that it sort of started to have this waffle-like shape that we know today. And this waffle iron became sort of more commonplace in certain European regions, including notably Belgium. And over the next few hundred years, different countries would put their different spins on the batter recipe, adding and removing sweeteners and dealing with different levels of fluffiness. And that's why there's sort of a diversity of of different waffles uh depending on you know where you are in the world um in the early 20th century the waffles had become like less of a like an artisanal thing that you would like get at a restaurant and had become sort of a household food like a simple uh household food uh in the 1930s they started to introduce you know waffle pancake mixes from uh aunt jemima or aunt jemima i always say aunt but aunt jemima sounds wild doesn't it

aunt always sounds wild to me griffin uh bisquick also showed up in this time and also there was there were a team of three brothers known as the dorses. And they went on to found Eggo in 1953 because they like solved how to do like commercial frozen waffles. And they, you know, ruled the roost. I am super not picky about waffles. I like a frozen waffle just because it is so easy to get them.

Syrup is like the best fluid, is the world's best liquid. And there are not a lot of ways to really enjoy syrup in a like acceptable publicly acceptable manner except for the waffle and the waffle is just like you know you get a waffle and it's like a four by four grid that's 16 little cups little shots of syrup you're about to do and you're going to eat the cup too can i tell our listeners about the the great breakfast purchases that you repeatedly made for a while? Yeah, I got sort of stuck in like a looper, like time loop.

We would decide that we wanted to make breakfast, whether it was pancakes or waffles. And each time it was as if Griffin's memory had been erased. And so he would go out and he would buy more syrup. Kind of like the memento guy. A little memento. You wake up every day and then you would have to remember that we had syrup. And so we had like four bottles of syrup in our house for a long time. We had a great deal of syrup and a lot of mix.

A lot of syrup. A lot of, yeah. Pancake waffle mix. Yes. That I definitely didn't use. But I've cooked waffles. We had a waffle iron at some point or another. You did.

I like frozen waffles. I like a fancy waffle made of strange ingredients at a nice restaurant. I will murder some Stroop waffles. Holy shit. Yeah, see, when you were talking about the communion wafer, I was like, huh, that makes sense. It sounds like a Stroop waffle.

If you don't know what that is, it's basically like a very, very thin, almost wafer-like waffle that is pretty sweet that has, like, it's two of them. And like a cookie, it has like a syrupy, usually syrupy filling inside that's more like creamy and holds together kind of like a waffle Oreo, which is maybe why I enjoy it so much. But I will eat waffles with syrup, with butter, with fruit. I will eat it with fried chicken.

I will especially eat it with fried chicken. Holy shit. That's a recent, I think I had that for the first time when I was living in Chicago. Like, oh, damn, these butter, with fruit. I will eat it with fried chicken. I will especially eat it with fried chicken. Holy shit. That's a recent, I think I had that for the first time when I was living in Chicago. Like, oh damn, these guys are best friends. I just, I like foods, I think, that have a function to them.

Do you know what I mean? Like inherently, there is a function to this food. I'm having a hard time thinking of other ones because the waffle is like the perfect. But like Fritos scoops, it's like, hello. I will eat Fritos scoops by themselves. So the function of the waffle is what? It holds all these different things with all of its nooks. It's amazing.

You put some stuff on a pancake and the pancake just kind of drinks it up. And now you're eating just sort of a soggy cake. And don't get me wrong, pancakes are fine. Waffle may have a little bit tougher stuff than that, and it keeps the separate separation, a separate separation between the waffle meat and the syrup stuff. And not only that, it makes little fun little swimming pools of the syrup. And then I like to close my eyes and have an imagination vision of me.

And I'm like shrunk down. So I'm the waffle size, but smaller even. And I can swim in all these different pools of syrup. And I can make up my mind like which one I want to swim around in. Like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids style. If I could Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I can't believe there wasn't one of those movies where Rick Moranis' character, right, didn't like go around and set up a bunch of dope shit like on the floor of his attic where

the shrink ray was. You know what I mean? Like here's a waffle and put a bunch of syrup in it. Here is, you know, here's some, here's like a little, here's a bunch of like race cars. So I can shrink down and play around in those. That's kind of what Stuart Little is like. Oh, Stuart Little. Don't get me fucking started.

And like Mouse and the Motorcycle? Yeah, God. Can they hear him talk or not? It's like, come on, guys. What's your first thing? My first thing is hide and seek. Hell yes. This game is so badass.

Do you have any fond hide and seek memories? Let me think. No. Wow. All right. Well, segment over. I mean, we played it a lot. I just can't think of one particularly dope sesh

Yeah, I don't have a particular memory Although I have a memory of playing Adult Hide and Seek Uh-huh Wedding, or wedding night I hate this You're gonna hurt yourself with how much you're winking It's making that noise, do you hear that?

No, I don't. Listen, we work hard, we play hard. The seeker would get to carry around a giant bottle of alcohol while they were finding the hiders. Okay. Did they drink it or did they hand out drinks or did they just sort of have this accessory? You're forgetting, aren't you? Is it because of the big bottle? I wonder why.

This was after I moved to Austin. Some of my friends from St. Louis were visiting and we came up with this new version. But apparently people have been coming up with different variations of hide and seek around the world for a very long time. I didn't know that there was much to sort of iterate on here oh well there is okay so uh from britannica.com hide and seek appears to be the equivalent to a game described in the second century greek writing of julius pollux he was so fun he was so fun he did did Foursquare too. So here are some variations. So children in Nigeria play a combination

of hide and seek and tag, where the seeker stands in the center of a large circle that has been drawn in the sand and tells the other players to hide. The seeker then steps out of the circle, finds and then chases the other kids who must run into the circle to be safe. The child touched before reaching the circle must be the next seeker.

That sounds fun. I just remembered a hide-and-seek story. You want to hear it? Yeah. At my church that I grew up going to, which was a big, big four-story huge church with like you know a fellowship hall and a uh you know the the sanctuary place and like all of all of a bunch of offices and sunday school class places um i was there during the summer and a few of my friends were also there because i think like the parents were having some

sort of meeting uh to like plan for something and we had nothing to do so we played a game of hide and seek in the entire church and i remember hiding in the like um the like uh sound booth in this in the like sanctuary uh for maybe an hour and a half commitment yeah and i didn't know when the game was over. I'm pretty sure I missed the end of the game by quite a bit. But I did get to learn a lot how that soundboard operates and sort of the bells and whistles and gears that power the good word. So the thing I like about Hide and Seek is that it's a real good game for introverts because you kind of go off by yourself. Yeah. And you wait to be found. I was going to do that anyway.

I am technically always playing hide and seek. It was only when I was older I learned about sardines, which is kind of great and kind of awful. Like I like the idea. I don't know what that is. Oh, you don't know sardines? No. So sardines is one person hides, and everybody's looking for that person. And when you find the person, you hide with them in that spot.

And so the goal is to not be the last person. The opposite of what I want. Yeah. So everybody's packed in this tiny spot, and when you get there, you want to make sure you're not the last one or else you lose. Okay. That's fun. Do you want to know more variations? I do.

Yeah. I'm very curious about this. In parts of Australia, the game is called 44 Homes. What? Yeah. The hiders hide until they are spotted by the seeker who chants, 40, 40, I see you. They are spotted by the seeker who chants, 40, 40, I see you. Once spotted, the hider must run to home base and touch it before she or he is tipped, which is a way of saying tagged.

If tagged, the hider becomes the new it. Okay. Again, not a huge variation. I'm waiting for one that's like, okay, so first of all, you need the hide and seek bat. You want to grab the quaffle and hit that with the bludger. In North India, if the hiders touch the seeker and say Dapa, then the seeker has to count again. However, if the seeker sees the hider before they manage to touch him or her and say Dapa, then that hider will be it in the next round okay some other hider manages to dapa the seeker without being seen that

is fucking okay now this is what i'm talking about like some metal gear solid like if i can sneak up on you and do some like close quarters combat then i knock you out for a little bit that's so fucking tight so those are some interesting variations. The one thing you might be excited to know about is that there is a hide-and-seek world championship. This does not surprise me. It's 2018, and we all have a lot of time on our hands. Here's the thing, though.

It started in 2010, and it takes place in Italy every year. Okay, I wasn't expecting that. This seemed like a decidedly sort of American conquest. It's called Nascondino, which is hide and seek in Italian. Fuck yes! And takes place on a playground in the open air, set up with artificial and natural hideouts. It's a team game. Each team has five players.

Each round is played with one player per team. one player per team. There is a neutral seeker and one teammate from each team has one minute to hide and then five minutes to run to home base, which is a large mattress that you can launch yourself towards. The first to reach home base

is awarded 20 points and then each succeeding player receives one less point. I have a problem with that. Okay. I don't think it should be scored based on how quickly you can get to the mattress. I think it should be scored on how fucking long it takes them to find you. Because now it's less about the hiding and more about the like...

Because if they just go the opposite direction than you, it seems kind of luck-based. I just want a good hide. The winning team is awarded the golden fig leaf, which is biblically the symbol of hiding, referring to the story of Adam and Eve. Because they hid their... Their gems? Their shame. Their stuff? leaf which is biblically the symbol of hiding referring to the story of adam and eve because they hid their their their gins their their shame their stuff okay um that is fascinating we have

not um played this in some time huh no but i love it anytime i go to like a big place like a museum sure or a very large house i always think this would be awesome to play seek yeah i think in italy also i think i have a problem with them having like artificial hidey holes, like play this shit at like the Coliseum or something. Like you have some really, really great hide and seek like destinations over there. I read online that it's traditionally like rugby players and football players that do it. See, they just want to hit. I don't like this. I'm going to start my own hide and seek championship. And it's about the hiding and i want it to be this in a city and it takes a month and so you better like pack supplies when you know

when to stop hiding there will be a loud siren that pierces the air okay um and you it's for a month and then there's uh yeah you hide for a month yes that's what i'm saying you need to bring some mres you need to bring some water, and you got to bring some diapers. You got to. Wait, so there aren't going to be lavatories? Are you hiding on the toilet? Are you hiding on the toilet? It's not a bad spot, I guess.

Like, you're in a stall, you're in clothes. It's kind of a counter option to, like, marathons. Like, either you train forever to run a marathon and push your body the absolute limit that'd be good or you push your body to the limit by just sitting completely still can i hit you with the best idea i've ever had in my life yes this it's a movie okay it's this it's a city-wide hide and seek game that lasts a month yes we can do it in austin right uh and so you can hide wherever you want in austin and then there's like one one it starts out with like one guy and he's the seeker and then they count down and the countdown

is probably like an hour because they want you to get set up and it goes three two one and then when it goes back the guy who's the seeker a claw shoots out of his chest and you're like what and then the guy falls to the ground dead and And who appears right behind him? It's the Predator. And now the Predator's doing it. Predators 2. Fuck yes. It's the Predators. Are you kidding me? You have an incredible imagination.

But he has a hard time. In the movie, the hiders, they don't fight back. Like Arnold or Adrian Brody, which, hey, Hollywood, are you saying that those two are the same? in the movie they're they're and the hiders not they don't fight back like you know arnold or adrian brody which hey hollywood are you saying that they're those two are the same but okay uh they fight back no it's just the do the hiders die if they didn't hide good enough it's the predators do you know what i mean like this is the real challenge doesn't the predator just win not if they don't make it the month they don't make it the month the alien shows up eats him big whole eats him eats him big is what i said the first

time i'm gonna stick with that okay the alien shows up and eats him big and now we got a whole another kettle of fish it's a whole like a little old lady who swallowed a fly situation on her hands yeah predators too get at me hollywood i want to play this game with you not right now not with the predators one but just regular hide and seek yeah because we haven't played it in our our new house and like i don't know yeah what the good spots are i think i got a couple i got a couple as well all right but don't tell me okay um can i thought you're about to do the star spangled banner for a second i've got a jumbotron you want to hear it i would love to this uh is a message all about mike is a werewolf and that is okay. Okay, I agree.

There's nothing wrong with being a werewolf. You can find it on Amazon or by visiting Mike. Oh, thank God. Okay, it's like a fictional work, right? Okay, I thought this was like an actual thing and I got really worried about my chickens. Do you know? I don't even think we know a mike in austin uh i mean mike pence in austin he swings by sometimes okay i or uh if you can't find it on amazon or would prefer to go directly to the site it is mike is a werewolf dot tumblrcom. Tumblr does not have any in it, so keep that in mind.

I just want people to be aware if they're interested to go into the link. Mike is a Werewolf and That is Okay by Dave Gonzalez and Brewster is a novel about a man with lycanthropy, an anxiety disorder, and no clue where one ends and the other begins. Over the course of one year, Mike is a werewolf follows Mike Wachowski as he tries to manage his condition, his social life, and the string of wolf sightings around his town on the Puget Sound. Mike is a werewolf

is a slow, calm character study about life with mental illness, some mild violence, and strong language. That sounds really fucking good. I also really appreciated sort of the MPAA warning there at the end. We don't get that for a lot of our gumbo tromps. Just a lot of surprise cussing when you dial into those products.

What was that link one more time where people can get Mike is a Werewolf? Mikeisawarewolf.tumblr.com Again, there's no E in that. There's an E in Mike and werewolf, but not in Tumblr. There's actually two E's in werewolf. Fuck, so many E's. Do you want to hear the next message? I would love to.

It is for Nir. It is from Robin. Hey Nir, just reminding you that coffee isn't a meal and you do in fact need to eat food occasionally. Love you lots. Oh great, get in, get out and give a nice one. That is a good message, I think, for anyone. That is absolutely true, especially since coffee is a breakfast drink,

and as we've established, breakfast is the most exciting meal of the day. Welcome. Thank you. These are real podcast listeners, not actors. What do you look for in a podcast? Reliability is big for me. Power. I'd say comfort. What do you look for in a podcast? Reliability is big for me. Power.

I'd say comfort. What do you think of this? That's Jordan Jesse Go. Jordan Jesse Go? They came out of the floor? And down from the ceiling? That can't be safe. I'm upset.

Can we go now? Soon. Jordan Jesse Go. a real podcast. What else do the big dogs have to say, Griffin? Well, the big dogs love this second thing, my second topic. And can I say something? It's wild what my second topic is because of what your first topic was. We got kind of close to the singularity

a little bit. Okay. Mine is also a folk game. It's Johann Sebastian Joust. Oh my God. Johann Sebastian Joust. That's wild that you did hide and seek. Johann Sebastian Joust is also sort of a physical playground game, but with the sort of modern

electronic twist. So I would encourage you if you don't know what Johann Sebastian Joust is, or I'm just going to call it Joust from now on, because it's kind of a mouthful. If you don't know what it is, go search for it on YouTube. I actually wrote a feature about it for Polygon. It was like the first thing I wrote. I think it may have been the only feature I wrote while I was at Polygon.

It's very, very good. This is a physical video game. It was made by a studio called Dagut Fabrik, which is a Danish indie developer. And this game kind of spent a long, long time just kind of as this prototype that the game's designer, who's a dude named Douglas Wilson, who I've interviewed a ton of times and I think has a lot of interesting like philosophies about video game design. He would just like bring it to conventions and people would play it in hallways because it is kind of a tough game to figure out how to release because the basic gist of the game is this every player and you can play with a ton of players.

I think we got up to like seven people playing at one time, but you can go way, way higher than I think you can go up to like 16. Every player has in one hand a playstation move controller and this was a peripheral that sony put out kind of in the wii xbox connect era uh where everybody thought for like 20 minutes that motion controls were going to be like the permanent future of video games um it's a really cool looking controller though it's like this little rod with this plastic ball on top of it and there's a an led inside of that plastic ball that can change colors uh so and it's it is motion sensing so everybody has one of these controllers in one hand and the point of the game is to jostle the other player's controllers uh past a certain sort of like movement threshold and if you can do that you will knock them out of the game while doing that you have to protect your your own controller uh

because everybody else will be kind of trying to do that to you also uh they they sort of frame it as a dueling game which sounds hyperbolic until you play it once because it very much is all the way from um and i i actually interviewed douglas about this before i got a chance to play it and he talked about how the physicality of the game is so interesting the poses that people take on is almost they look like fencers kind of holding up their their you know their torch in one hand that they're trying to keep upright and safe while you know stabbing one hand outward like a like a foil or something. So that's it. If you're the last player standing, you win. The thing that complicates this is that there is music that

sort of scores every round of the game. It is set to Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg concertos, and the tempo of those concertos swings, uh, periodically from very, very fast to very, very slow. When the music is going very fast, the threshold for movement is, is way more forgiving. You can like make some dope maneuvers. You can run with your controller and probably not knock yourself out. You can dive forward to swat at another player's hand and not knock yourself out. But when the music slows way down, if you barely move your controller too much, you are out. It is extremely unforgiving at that point. And so the matches are so unpredictable because you never know when

the music's going to change. You might make a bunch of desperate maneuvers to try to knock somebody out, and then the music slows down, and now you are pincered between two people who are very close to you and you have to very cautiously like you're disarming a bomb get yourself out of that situation um it is it is it is it's fun in a way that no other game i think i've ever played is and i've played so so many games uh it is there is something uh and i'm probably going to misuse this word but there's something kind of transgressive about it we play a lot of games with our friends but there's something about this game the this game's physicality that actually requires to kind of make a physical move to shake your friend's arm or make almost like a fight, right?

But it's harmless and it is not violent in any way. We never certainly hurt each other while playing this game, but I don't have that relationship with my friends where we're like rough and tumble roughhousing all the time and yet this game kind of required it and i thought that was so every time we played i was like battling this desire to win and to not get knocked out versus like oh well that's like that's like my friend who like i go out for happy hours with and talk to and i'm gonna fucking push them for as hard as i possibly can to try and knock them out of the out of the game um it's

also just like visually a super interesting game to watch not only like watching people figure out how to duel in this game that they've never played anything quite like before but also like from afar these controllers have these beautiful glowing lights every player is assigned a different color and so from afar you just feel like you're like watching some will-o'-wisps like wonder through the forest a lot in the front yard back when you were living with justin oh yeah and people would walk by and drive by and just look at us like what are they what the fuck are they doing it is a very weird game to see people playing um but there was a time where like every time that our group of friends got together i would bring it out um it was finally formally released in i think 2014 in

this bundle of games called sports friends which is actually has like a ton of super fun like local multiplayer games in it uh and uh johan sebastian just is one of them i actually kind of always preferred the like unreleased version that i had on my macbook because you can play it anywhere as long as you have your macbook you can just open it up and hand everybody controller and just fucking play wherever you want to so we would play it like lake houses at night where you can play like really really huge games because we've played it in like living rooms we played in living rooms too i had one round where i like hid in the bathroom in like the shower waiting for like everybody else to knock each other out so I could finish the last person one on one. And our friend Eric found me in the bathroom and it was literally like a horror movie pulling back the shower curtain like, oh, my God.

Oh, no. It is. It is a great game. We have not played it admittedly in quite some time, but I still have all the controllers. So so I guess anytime we want to, we could do it. But if you have a PlayStation four, uh,

sports friend and, and like, you do like to play with sort of like local multiplayer games, sports friends is a great package and you can play this game with like the regular PS4 controller. You don't need these like special move peripherals. Yeah. Uh,

the, the, the move was kind of a, kind of a flop. You can use it with the PlayStation VR helmet now, kind of. But there was a period there where you could get them for like $15 on Amazon. So I stocked up on a ton. So I know this is not exactly like a reproducible thing for the folks at home.

But I just, man, I love this game. I think, you know who I think would really like it is Henry. Henry would very much like it. But I mean, I would beat him pretty bad. He would lose to me. I think just wingspan wise, he's still a little unstable on his feet too. So you could jostle him real easy.

He's very jostle. I would never do that. But I, I don't know. I like this. I got very, when I was writing that feature, I got very into the idea of folk games.

It was a, and probably still is like a movement in the video games industry of just like, hey, what if the thing that you looked at was not the screen? What if the thing you looked at, like what if we could make digital games with like electronic components

where you actually had to look face-to-face with another player? So I remember there was like a dueling game where there was a screen, but you weren't looking at it. You were looking at the other person, you know, six feet away from you as you guys had like a wild west duel uh stuff like that like i think is so conceptually so cool and so refreshing and this is the by far like the

pinnacle of that um yeah go seriously go watch videos of people playing this game it is a fun fucking game to watch where's the national championship for this that's what i want to know there should be we could incorporate it into our hide and seek predator there actually was Watch. Where's the national championship for this? That's what I want to know. There should be. We could incorporate it into our hide and seek predator. There actually was a version of this game that Douglas Wilson told me about that he prototyped in a theater. I think you could play with up to 100 people and he played in a theater with all the lights off. And this is going to be kind of complicated, but when he told it to me, it sounded like the coolest thing ever. And also what's cool about it is that i think this was the only game of it ever played on earth and it may never get played again so that's interesting to me that it was a game that was played once in the

history of mankind so everybody had a move controller and there was a seeker and their controller was glowing red and this was in a theater with no lights on so it's pitch black and they're all that you can see when you're're hiding in the seats in the theater is this red ball floating around in the distance. And all of the hiders, their controllers were not illuminated. They were completely dark. But if you move, it starts to glow. Oh, my God. And so the Seek will come close to you.

And if he gets close to you, you can start to move. But your ball is going to start to glow. And they're going to be able to find you. It's kind of like Marco Polo. It's kind of like Marco Polo meets Hide and uh hide and seek meets like the scariest sounding game ever um yeah what is your second thing uh my second thing and i thought it was interesting that you brought up daniel tiger earlier because my second thing is the song baby beluga okay oh this is gonna make this connects a lot of dots.

Because when I came home today from picking up Henry, I saw a printout of the lyrics to Baby Beluga downstairs. And I was like, is Rachel doing some like open mic nights somewhere? I know. I thought later I should have hid that from you. Yeah, that's fine. We like to keep our topics secret. Baby Beluga, huh? Baby Beluga. secret baby beluga huh baby beluga so it um for those that aren't familiar this is a uh it's actually the name of the album but it's uh a name of the song that i'm was this raffy it is raffy

okay uh released in 1980 damn it's a raffy classic uh so the album begins with the sound of whales communicating and includes an illustrated sing-along book, which was also published and sold separately as a companion to the first track. During the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1993, the song was sung in a blue screen featured Baby Blue is Swimming. Okay. Was this an important song to you as a child? A little bit, yeah. I have a lot of memories of hearing it as a kid and loving it, but I can't pinpoint

specific things. I remember recently I asked, because you were talking a little bit about the songs that your family would sing when you were growing up, and I asked my dad, I was like, did you guys sing any songs to me? And my dad said that he used to sing me the

theme song from cheers which is just perfect yeah that's peak wiener um but i uh i've been trying to sing this song to henry when i change his diaper i used to sing it all the time i do a little less now but he used to just really hate having his diaper changed like in a very specific kind of way so i used to sing this song uh when i was reading about it online i read something that says children who grew up listening to raffy song are referred to as beluga graduates or beluga grads no they're not they're actually not they're super super super not rapping it's kind of a bad rap because he was like such a popular children's music performer and i think parents kind of grew to hate his music sure but

i just i still find it so comforting and warm well i was kind of a bit of a later generation and so for me it was baby lubega and this no give me a little bit of that give me a little bit of what that sounded like griffin yeah i mean it was mombo number five but it was like you know nice and it was like a little bit of mini mouse no i'd be like mombo number five and they would still have you know whale sounds oh I thought you see, I thought you were going to like try and make it more kid appropriate. No, it was still about courting multiple women.

A little bit of pumpkin pie. Oh, yeah. Kind of like Hungry Caterpillar. Yeah, that's fun. Mom Bun Number Five. Sure, yeah. It's not all about all the foods Lubega ate and he got a tummy ache and he turned into a butterfly.

So I wanted to give you some lyrics of it. It just paints such a nice, comforting picture to me. So it's a little baby whale and kind of his adventures in the ocean. I mean, yes, clearly. It's Baby Beluga, my love. I'm painting a picture, Griffin. You've got to set it up.

Sure. No, I know. But it is Baby Beluga. So let me read a little bit. Okay. Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea, swim so wild and you swim so free, heaven above and the sea below and a little white whale on the go. Baby Beluga, Baby Beluga, is the water warm?

Is your mama home with you so happy? Way down yonder where the dolphins play, where you dive and splash all day, waves roll in and the waves roll out, see the water squirting out of your spout. And then just kind of continues from there and ends where the whale is like home in bed for the night. I just, I don't know. Read that. I want to hear that part. Okay.

When it's dark and you're home and fed, curl up snug in your waterbed. Moon is shining and the stars are out. Good night, little whale. Good night. Who doesn't like that? If you don't like that, you're a fucking ghoul. Well, I think Raffi just had a lot of repetitive children's songs that I think graded.

This was before there was like a huge amount of children's programming. Sure. And so there wasn't a lot for kids to want to do over and over and over again on repeat. And, you know, music albums kind of allowed for that. I think a lot of parents got sick of it. Yeah. kind of allow for that. I think a lot of parents got sick of it.

Yeah. I mean, if I had to listen to, on this drive home, I heard the song, The Tiger Family Trip or whatever from Daniel Tiger twice. And I was like, oh, this fucking sucks. So I get,

if I had to hear Baby Beluga a million times, I would probably not love it. But those lyrics are so undeniably pleasant. I really have a terrible memory when it comes to memorizing songs. So I still haven't memorized the whole thing. So part of me printing it out was like, I've really got to learn this one. I really have a terrible memory when it comes to memorizing songs, so I still haven't memorized the whole thing. So part of me printing it out was like, I've really got to learn this one. You really need to.

Because I like the idea of having a song that we sing to Henry. Yeah. Do we not have one? Not consistently. I mean, we have, um, this is the diaper song, this is the diaper song, this is the song that we sing when we put the diapers on, this is the diaper song, this is the diaper song, and if you feel like it when we put the diapers on this is the diaper song this is the diaper song and if you feel like it you can sing along that's one i

wrote though because i'm also we also have one that i wrote it's true patience patience p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e and that's fun patience wait with me wait with me and that's great because you get to learn and that was also was that also invented during diaper time they don't tell you warn you like, hey, you're going to change a lot of diapers. And you hear that and you think like, uh-oh, poopy and pee-pee. Gross, gross, gross. What they don't tell you is how fucking boring it is. It's so boring to change a diaper. And there are multiple periods in your child's life where they absolutely hate it.

And a lot of times will fight you during the process. And so you're trying to do anything to distract them. God, that was so pleasant, baby. That took me to like a nice place. Good. Yeah, I needed to go there. I'll sing this to you tonight before we go to bed. Put those eyebrows away.

Hey, do you want to hear what our friends at home are into right now? Yes. Luke says, Something I find wonderful is the website futureme.org you can go on to it and write a letter to be emailed to yourself or someone else on any date in the future it's kind of like a little time capsule i write myself a letter every week to be delivered on the first of january every year so that by the time january rolls around i have 52 digital

versions of myself talking about what's on my mind what i'm excited about funny jokes i want to remember goals i want to accomplish, and so much more. I did not know this was a thing, and I love it. I love it. It's like your MacBook's time machine where it's like, I want to know what I was like the third week of March. And then I'd see that and I'd be like, oh, okay, maybe it gets better.

That is such a cool thing. Yeah. I thought so too, And so does Luke. Gabby says, I'm a third generation Nancy Drew fan and she's my role model. Nancy's independent, clever, shrewd, and compassionate. I've written essays about her,

own many Nancy Drew books and video games, and I'm even putting her books all around my upcoming wedding. That is so amazing. I don't think I've ever read any Nancy Drew, but it still sounds so amazing. I haven't either, but I mean, I'm into it.

I was really into Harriet the Spy. I think this is the OG Harriet the Spy. Yeah, I think so too. And one last one from Rory, who says, I love pull-through parking spots. There's nothing better than setting future me up. Whoa, weird. Future me. Wild.

There's nothing better than setting future me up for an easy breezy exit. I'm filled with joy when I see one and I will park super far away to snag it. Can I tell you a horrible story? Sure. I was in the Walgreens parking lot and I parked and I went in to get, I don't know, something probably butt cream or whatever. And I went and I got back in my car and I was in front of like, it was like one of those two for parking spots where two cars park in them and face each other. There's nobody in like one of those two for parking spots where two cars park in them and face each other there's nobody in the other one and the parking lot was almost empty I looked around and there were none of those like dividers that go in between the parking spots that

face each other right that would prevent a pull through so I went ahead and I drove straight forward and I ran over one of those dividers and I's happened to me before, too. And I was like, what the fuck? And I pulled backwards and I looked. It was the only one. It was the only mother, it was the only fucking divider in the whole lot. And I drove over it. That happened to me in the parking lot of a value village when I was in high school.

Anyway, I do love the pull through, though. I cherish it. I do get excited about it, for sure. But I'm not willing to back up to get that easy escape. Oh, God, no. You know, people back into parking spots. You're robbing Peter to pay Paul at that point.

Yeah, exactly. That's a great turn of phrase. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Like, it's so good. The first time I would hear, it sounds a little bit when you say it like, robbing Peter to pay Paul. As if you're giving a a list of like fun things. Yeah, it sounds like a folk band from the 70s.

So that's our show. Hey, thank you so much for listening. Oh my God, we almost forgot to tell you this. Update for next week. There won't be one. There won't be a wonderful next week. And we're sorry, we're going to walt disney world and um we tried to like figure out like a way that we can do an episode for them and also this episode's like a day late so obviously things have been going horribly wrong

for us this week uh so we are going to take a vacation from you all next week we still appreciate you a whole heck of a lot and we'll be back the week after that with new content. But yes, next week, no show. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for a theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to Rachel. She just crushes it week in, week out. Except for next week because we won't be here.

But yeah, and thank you to max fun for having us on the network yes thanks max fun uh if you want to check out other shows about comedy and culture that include comedy and culture sometimes they're more than just about but include uh you can go to maximumfund.org to do so yeah. And if you want to hear other shows that we do, it's at McElroyShows.com. And I think that's it. So let me just open up the gate here. Uh-oh. Who let the big dogs out?

It was me. Time to go home, big dogs. What's the opposite of where the big dogs play because you hear where the big dogs play at the beginning of the wonderful and you get excited what's like the sign off like how the little dogs sleep i don't think it's got to be the opposite size of dogs i think we're just sort of dismissing the dismissing the big what if we just say like get out of here big dogs you know what i mean and then one of us goes oh that's great but i was i want to do like a harry and the henderson's thing so you can be the dog get out of here big dog just go i know get out of here we don't want you anymore

this is making me actually sad money I'm on it. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Beloved Maximum Fun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Beloved Maximum Fun Star Trek podcast, The Greatest Generation is going out on tour. We are bringing Greatest Gen Con to a bunch of cities in the U.S. and Canada. It's our big tribute to slash send up of Star Trek II,

The Wrath of Khan. And we have a big leg coming up. Yes, we are raising our legs on a number of cities in the coming weeks. We're going to Washington, D.C. on August 23rd. The Bell House in Brooklyn, New York on August 24th. Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts on August 25th. Pittsburgh on the 28th. Boston, Massachusetts at the Wilbur Theater on the 29th.

Atlanta, Georgia at the Earl on the 30th 29th. Atlanta, Georgia at the Earl on the 30th. Ferndale, Michigan at the Magic Bag on the 31st. Those are some great big rooms and some great big cities, Ben. And it's a really fun show. It's accessible even if you haven't listened to the podcast yet. We can't wait to see you when we're out on tour. Check greatestgencon.com for dates and ticketing information. And con is spelled K-H-A-N because Wrath of Khan. greatestgen.com.