Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 49: Accelerated Cheater

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

Rachel's favorite air conditioned attraction! Griffin's favorite anxiety-free retreat! Rachel's favorite public information warehouse! Griffin's favorite synthesizer videos! Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Red Means Recording - https://soundvision.bandcamp.com/music MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

🎵 Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, it's Griffin. And this is wonderful. It sure is, isn't it? Yeah. Oh boy, I got the glow, don't I? I'm glowing, aren't I?

Can you say that about yourself? Because I feel like I'm glowing. I've never heard anyone say it about themselves, but it's true in your case. I'm radiant, I feel like. Effervescent. My skin is glowing. My pores are clean and clear and under control. Mandy Moore came up to me and she was like you're glowing your skin makes my skin look bad and my skin is perfect because of the proactive

i'm just glowing and it's i think it's just still disney i think i still got the disney the disney glow and there's a lot of things trying to keep me down there's a lot of things trying to there's a lot of stuff trying to get rid of this glow. Or how the whole house stinks right now. Because something is going bad in the dishwasher. Right now there's an emergency in the dishwasher. If you don't hear from us tomorrow, it's because our dishwasher made some sort of horrible mess. I'm playing this game with myself because I started it before you got home.

There's a lot of plastic on the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's probably the culprit. I put a plastic plate in the bottom rack. It could be any one of those things. It could have been all of the things, but one of them did make a bad

stink in the house. And so that's trying to get me down. There's a ladybug on the wall. It's giving me kind of a stink eye. But I got the glow. I mean, politics. I mean, always, yes. And not to make light of that, I'm getting work done on my primary whip. And so I'm driving a rental car and listening to the radio and listening to NPR and listening to the news.

And it's not super good. But that's not what this show is about. This show is about good things. You got any small wonders? I was thinking about that as I was walking into the studio today. And I thought that if I talked for a little bit in that time, something would come to me. Okay.

a little bit in that time something would come to me okay and what i would have to say came to me is a thing yes you go first i am here about cherry coke today you know my affinity for cheer wine but like it started with cherry coke and um i still just enjoy it those coca-cola like mix-em-up machines um excite me because it gives me the opportunity to i used to have grenadine like in my apartment when i was still living in in huntington so i could just like sort of splash that shit in whatever i wanted to oh is that is that i mean it's what it's what you make like cherry cocktails with but yeah um and i don't know there's a big new destiny expansion came out so i was playing a little bit of that with uh justin and some friends from home it's a fun fun game still i like playing

games with my friends and chess videos been watching those again on youtube just like grandmasters playing each other it's fun to watch are you playing yourself no i have no one to play with but uh i like watching no it's like pretending that i have people who play chess with me in my life do you have do you think anything because i did three oh can i do can i do a little this is going to come across like a plug okay but i really like the new podcast merch that you guys have yeah we do we have sort of show um agnostic just podcast merch for people who are really enthusiastic about podcasts. There's literally a tie-dyed t-shirt that just says podcasts on it. It says 100% podcasts.

It's great. A coffee mug that says don't talk to me until I've had my podcast. It was partially inspired by the awful merch that they would sell at E3, which is the big gaming convention. I still wear that 100% gamer shirt you got. Yeah, Justin and I bought, when we were doing a video, just a tie-dye shirt that said 100% gamer. So it's definitely in that vein. But yeah, we're not keeping money from that.

We're donating it to an opiate addiction relief charity. So yeah, macroymerch.com. I think it's funny. I don't know if anybody else does. That's not me being humble it's for for anybody that's curious we we have had conversations about wonderful merch we're just we're just not there yet not there yet it seems like a big commitment um who goes first i don't know yeah i know because we skipped last week but i'm hoping if i keep

talking that who goes first this week is when the website loads rachel is up first should we do so we talked about this we had an agreement that we wouldn't all talk about only disney stuff the whole time because we had a really stupendous time um and i know there's a lot of people who are very enthusiastic about disney and there's probably a lot of people who are not so the compromise we struck up was half we all get to each get to do one um do you want to start with your disney thing or your not Disney thing? I mean, I think we should do like a Disney rock block. Let's do our Disney rock block.

And so if people aren't into Disney, they can just, you know. Jump to the ads, baby. That's where the money is for us. I'm going to open the door and check this thing. Yeah, it's not good. It's getting worse. So my, I mean disney was wonderful just first off we should say that the trip was wonderful uh in general we went with our son who is going to be two in november and the whole mcelroy group with their kids and uh clint mcelroy joined us and it was just

the absolute best. But the thing I wanted to talk about this week was dark rides. Dark rides, yes. This is an expression that you kept using and people kept using and I had never heard before. Interesting. I mean, it makes sense. Obviously, it's the rides where you sit on like a moving

vehicle of some kind in the dark. Yes, so think Pir pirates of the caribbean or haunted mansion or um figment or like uh there's there are so many rides i would say this is this is a majority of the rides that are at disney world yeah uh and i appreciated them in so many new ways now that we have a small child yeah i think when we were originally planning this trip um this is this is like a real parenting growth moment for me is when we were planning this trip,

I was like, oh, fuck yeah, I haven't been to Disney in so long. I wanna ride Space Mountain. I wanna see all the Star Wars stuff. I wanna go to Toy Story Land. I wanna go on Splash Mountain. I wanna see what that Seven Dwarfs roller coaster is all about.

And then I realized like pretty soon after that, like we're not gonna do any of that stuff. We're just gonna sort of go on the dark rides and experience story time with our child. that will be even better and it was i realized that a little before you did you did you did but i am uh you know still a child at heart that's true and it's one of the things i like about you true uh so so yeah so this is um something that has a lot of obvious benefits one of which is that it is constantly raining and hot in Florida. Sure.

So it's nice to escape. Rained every day we were there. Spent a little time in the Carousel of Progress, which is like an animatronics-based show where you sit in this theater and it revolves around four time periods. It was delightful. It was delightful, but also weirdly dystopian in a way. Like it starts off in the 20s and it's like the same family

and it's like the 20s and the 40s and then the 60s and it's like the future, but the future is like busted compared to our actual ass real future now. And really every single phase of it was like we've got a refrigerator that's not just been invented and it's it can hold 20 ice cubes yeah it started out with a like you hear those limburg guys are making a play but then it fast forwards to the 40s and he's like ah icebox can now hold 100 ice cubes it's like so walt is this mainly just an ice like a refrigerator technology?

Sure enough, every year, every like time period had some sort of refrigerator update. There's some sort of story there, but that was nice. So the first dark rides appeared in the late 19th century and were called scenic railways and pleasure railways was another phrase. Yowza! Is this like, so like where, was like the tunnel of love? Was this like the prototype? That's what they're talking about, the carnival rides. Okay.

I really thought we would make some jokes about pleasure railways, but we can move on if you want. I mean, it's one of those things that is already so explicit. There's not much, oh, it's like a train and you have sex. It's like, it's called a pleasure railway this is why you're a seasoned comedy professional yeah or i could do like i'll let you touch my third rail that's nice yeah it's where all the power is so that is that yeah no that's good okay i feel satisfied with that okay yeah oh Yeah. Oh, here comes the caboose. Something about the caboose.

Yeah, there's caboose. So the original Dark Rides came largely from the Pretzel Amusement Rack Company. I've not heard of this. And I read about it the citation i kept seeing was that people said that being in the car and being kind of moved back and forth and like crisscross the way that those dark rides do okay would reminded people of a pretzel okay what was their jam what kind of stuff did they did they make was there was there it because it feels like the genre back then was probably just like they make out in here the first single rail electric dark ride in 1928 okay but it doesn't say like what the theme of it is or anything i mean they give some examples of the early ones

a trip to the moon oh that sounds good again at the at the 1901 Pan American Exposition. Is that based on the movie? The movie with the big moon face guy and he gets the rocket ship in his eye? I don't know, babe. I watched that when I had a fever once. It's a trip to the moon. It's a well-named movie, I'll tell you that much. It's gotta be, right?

Because that movie, I just Googled it. That movie came out in 1902. When did The Dark Ride come out? 1901. What the fuck? Yeah. Okay, maybe it's not. Maybe.

I don't know. Unless the movie was based on the ride. Somebody went on a dope dark ride. I mean, you also know that a trip to the moon is not a terribly foreign phrase or concept. Yeah, it's not related to the film at all. How strange. I know, but for the first dark ride called The Trip to the Moon and then this momentous film called The Trip to the Moon

coming out two years apart from each other, sorry, it's strange to me, but go on. So as I was referencing, dark rides frequently change direction to improve the effect and give a sense of journey. When I was doing research, I read that all dark rides possess three core characteristics, a narrative arc, physical movement through a space, and a sense of reality or immersion. Interesting. We had one at Camden Park, which was our local amusement park out in Cerrito Canova near Huntington and soon to be featured in Fallout 76, which I'm so fucking excited for.

And there was a haunted like cart ride that is a darkroom ride. And it was very low budge, but it still scared me quite a bit. It is interesting to me how dark rides you have really have no sense of how much space you're covering. Yes. You know, like you're, you're twisting a lot. And so it's hard to tell,

but they seem huge to me every time in them. And sometimes they have dips, but they don't tell you when the dips are coming. I love that shit. So, so, um, Disney world opened in the early seventies, uhneyland in the 50s uh but those the dark

rides you know that kind of made them famous or it's a small world which was 64 pirates of the caribbean was 1967 uh which is it's just crazy to think like longevity of these rides well i mean pirates of the caribbean did break down while we were waiting in line so i'm not like super surprised but no it was it was still a lot of fun well and that's disneyland i don't know when they opened in disney true i imagine right when disney world opened they brought in some of the faves some of the fresh stuff yeah uh according to uh phil bloom which is an attraction designer at American Scenic, the number to achieve a good return on investment for a dark ride is 2,000 to 2,400 people per hour. Holy shit. So, for example, the Haunted Mansion clocks about 2,000 riders per hour, and Pirates of the Caribbean puts 4,000 people in an hour.

Holy shit. That's so many people. I know. I know. I know. It's like, I think it's, I mean, the boats are kind of always coming with those rides,

you know, and they all house like, I don't know, 12 people or something. Maybe not 12, but like, yeah. Uh,

we were talking to one of our, uh, we took, they, so they have like a lift service at, uh, the park now called minivans, which is so cute.

Like, it's very cute. Um, and one of the drivers used to work at the park now called minivans, which is so cute. It's very cute. And one of the drivers used to work at the park and they were like, yeah, I mean, if that if any of those rides breaks down, that's how you get the weight. If there is no like issue with a lot of those darkroom rides, there is no line. You just like zoom right through it. But as soon as you start having any problems at all, like it just accumulates. Well, those rides are set up to where they're just, they are constantly moving. So you feel this pressure as a person

to like get in as fast as you can and sit down. But yeah, the reason I like these rides beyond the cool temperature. Yes. And family friendly nature. Is there always like, to me, they feel kind of more like going to see a movie, you know? Yes, exactly.

You're in this kind of intimate space with the people you're riding with. Like, it's nice to ride, for example, with a lover. Yeah, sure. Because you can do some stuff. No, you can do some stuff. It's expected that you'll do some stuff. It's expected that you'll do a little bit of stuff kind of it's in the really dark of what you mean baby i'm not sure what you mean when you say stuff you know you mean like

look at your phone no you mean like like open a piece of gum and start chewing on it warmer what else is in that pocket so uh what was your favorite dark room ride at disney oh my gosh uh i mean peter pan is great really i thought it was it was so cool when we got in there and we're like flying above london it was neat i know it did like kind of stall out a little bit yeah it stalled out right in front of a big skeleton, and that was fun for our child. I liked the Frozen ride a whole lot. The Frozen one is up there. There's an Avatar ride. Okay, I've never seen the film.

I watched it really, really, probably the drunkest I've ever been after a friend's bachelorette, like, let's go drink and swim in a lake party, and we went back to an Airbnb we had rented, and I watched like 30 minutes of it then and then i um got sick and that was sort of my association with avatar before this they have a little riverboat ride though that is so it's transportive i felt like i was with the

navi i feel like i was playing with their cool spiky dogs i feel like the little jellyfish guys were just swimming all around my head yeah the music the music and the lighting. It was so gorgeous. It's really nice. I only wish they were longer because they all ended a little too fast for me. That is true. My first thing is going to be quick. Okay. It is simply how they have just figured all their shit out.

I couldn't think of a better way to put it. Disney, not the Navi. Disney. Well, the Navi, I think, also are living large. I'm a very meticulous planner, especially when it comes to vacations. It is true. Because especially these days,

we never take vacations. And so I see my time off as this precious commodity and any time that is spent not using it to its best potential because like we got lost or because of some sort of confusion i admit i get like way too uh we have a saying in our family that we have also sort of adopted now of uh being on the case we just so like this this came up when um we would go to like the carolinas for beach trips uh because it was like the closest driveable beach the mackeroys would we were when we would go to the Carolinas for beach trips, because it was the closest

drive to the beach. The McElroys. The McElroys. When we were younger, and our dad would be like, there was one year our dad drove around for 45 minutes in the rain trying to find a steak and shake, while all of us in the backseat were like, please just go somewhere. There's a Wendy's. There's a Rally's.

Just stop somewhere. And he was like, no, we're finding it. Unless you're going to help me find the steak and shake. Very, very intense. So we call that being on the case, and I get like no we're finally unless you're gonna help me find the steak and shake like very very intense so we call that being on the case and i get like that sometimes disney world is designed for to to relieve you of that burden in almost every imaginable way i was thinking of a few examples of this actually when I was telling my parents about it. It's, it's astonishing. So I just mentioned the minivan thing. There's so many like public transport options. There's like boats and monorails and buses. And then like we took the minivan a few times, you have to pay for that. But it's like the car seats in the car,

that's amazing. Like, even before we got there, like I called a couple weeks ahead, because we were trying to figure out some logistics stuff. So we were like, okay, we're going to bring a pack and play. Uh, do we need to stop at a grocery store beforehand and get diapers? So I called, uh, we stayed at wilderness lodge, which is very nice. I can't recommend it enough, especially if you have kids. Um, and I was like, yeah, so, uh, do we need to bring a pack and play? How do we get that to you all?

And they're like, no, there's a pack and play in every room. A pack and play is like a little portable crib. It's so good. Like, okay, do we need to stop and all? And they're like, no, there's a pack and play in every room. A pack and play is like a little portable crib. It's so good. Like, okay, do we need to stop and get diapers and wipes and groceries? No, there's a grocery store in every resort. And I was like, oh, my God, you all have it all figured out. The whole time you're there, you wear this little wristband that has a little, I don't know, like NFC chip, like an Amiibo in it. You can use that to open your hotel room. You can use that to charge purchases to your room at literally any place in the entire

like town, essentially. And for FastPass. And you can use it for FastPass. FastPass is a system where you get three a day and you reserve a spot in a very, very fast line for any ride in the park. You just have to show up within like this-long window that you book for yourself. And then when you've used all three, you can book more either at the many, many kiosks that they have all around the park or on the Disney Experience app, which has fucking everything. You can make dinner reservations on the app.

You can make dinner reservations. You can make FastPass reservations. Your pictures from the theme park. Yeah, I don't know how that happens. That is quite strange. But we would go on a ride, it would like send our pictures of us like you know the frozen ride you go down a little slope and it takes a picture of you being all scared and it knew it was us and sent it to my phone which was wild you can search for any like merch or like food

item that is for sale in the park and it will tell you where it is in an interactive map where it shows you where you are and that map also shows you all of the wait times for every attraction near you like i don't know how they do it man it's insane it's it's it is the most it is the most streamlined we didn't also we didn't do this but there's like a uh a service you can do where if you fly into orlando we flew into tampa but if you fly into orlando you can get picked up by this huge like disney bus and they will just get your bags off the carousel so you check your bags and wherever you're flying out of and you won't see them again until they're in your room wherever you're staying it's like wild how much they have like can i tell you something i appreciated yes it's very very simple every ride has stroller parking yes so and this is just like

so next level to me because they anticipated like us they would have a lot of kids with strollers and they would need a place to put these strollers and so they identified very specific areas to park strollers yes uh everything was so easy everything I very, very quickly, like by day two, and our acolytes of the Disneyland Disney World experience. And I couldn't really understand why that is, right? They're not updating stuff that fast. We watched a lot of reviews of people going to the restaurants. They're like, this is the best food I've ever eaten. And it's like, there's no way that's true.

It is still a theme park. true it is still a theme park but at the same time like instantly because of all this stuff and because like we had a really fun time and our son like loved every minute of it which is like man that is some choice shit right there um i had no anxiety the entire time i was there because everything was just figured out and i know i mean obviously you pay a lot of money it is not cheap to go and stay at the resorts or uh go to the park and i totally understand that that is like a we're coming from a place of privilege like talking about this but um i i i had like four anxiety-free days last week and it was so good and i completely get why people are like this into the experience yeah it's it's so wise because it is very expensive and they like identified all the major stresses that come with

traveling with children yes uh and they made it so it's like a vacation that you want to do again because it's so rare when you have a kid that you can travel somewhere and you feel totally understood by all the parks and accommodations available. Like, I just felt so comfortable, like, calling the front desk, for example, when I had a question or, you know. Yeah. Like, I understood, like, this is their business. Their business is people with kids and so i don't have to worry about inconveniencing anyone this is the whole thing yeah uh and so it's it's it's it's kind of genius like i i've heard a lot of people including my

parents talk about how some kind of haze comes over you while you're there and you just want to invest in this like ridiculous machine. And I think it is, it's just that feeling of like, it's covered. Somebody's got me. It is a nice, nice, nice feeling.

Yeah. Also, there's just so much cool shit at that park. It feels like the whole park feels like an ARG to me. Like it feels like there's a little mysteries, like all the hidden Mickey stuff. I don't know what an ARG means. An alternate reality game.

It's typically used as a promotional thing. We made a lot of jokes about it during the MBM TV show. Follow the numbers, the secret numbers that you see everywhere, and go to the website. And I don't know. I feel like there's layers of stuff at Disney World that is like so fascinating and like all of the history of it is

interesting to me anyway that is our Disney block you can now we're gonna get back to the real world ugh but to do that I'll have to steal you away boop boop boop boop boop boop

oh oh my god that was the best one yeah that was the best one yet. That was the best one ever. Do we have any Jumbotrons? Yes, we do. So this is a Jumbotron for an interview podcast called For Teenage Girls. F-O-U-R or F-O-R? F-O-R. Awesome. Four Teenage Girls.

F-O-U-R or F-O-R? F-O-R. Awesome. Every week, 17-year-old writer and artist Bea Hyland sits down with another young woman or woman-aligned person to talk about their passions. For more information, check out fourteenagegirls.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. F-O-R-T-E-E-N-A-G-e-g-i-r-l-s.com. That sounds like such a fucking cool podcast. Or teenagegirls.com.

I know. It's super great. Yeah. I wish that kind of thing existed when I was a teenager. Oh, for sure. Yeah, definitely. Instead, I was just watching Dawson's Creek. Yeah, not a lot of helpful material there, I think.

Not exactly, no. Do you remember the Dawson's creek halloween episodes where they would get for real murdered each episode well it's because the guy was the right he was the director but he it still doesn't change the fact that like the episode would end with like dawson getting just shanked like everybody to death and then it's like happy i don't want to wait like we're back the next week, and it's not. It's just him and Joey doing, anyway. I have a Jumbotron here.

This one is for Johnny, and it's from Megan, who says, Hey, Bean, surprise, I snagged a Jumbotron. It actually says Jumbotron, which I love. There's so many fun ways to say Jumbotron. Based on the McElroy track record, happy B-Day-day but also happy anniversary that gives us a solid six-month span you're a joy an absolute delight it's officially immortalized here big hugs kisses and a few whidge licks love megan let's talk about what whidge also this is for august 18th so a little bit coming in and clocking in a little bit after the birthday. What's a widget lick?

How's it spelled? W-I-D-G-E. Widget lick. What could widget be short for? Widget. I Googled it and I got no results. Brian. Is it talking about eating ass?

No, baby, I don't think so. Are you for sure? I don't, I mean, I'm not for sure. I really didn't think we had to talk about it. I mean, we are now, I guess. I'm curious, though. I think it's talking about eating ass. But maybe it's not. Well, it's funny, because my next wonderful thing is...

Is eating ass? Well, let's go. Listen, we already know that you love genre movies, film craft, and female filmmakers. So if you love all those things, then by transitive property, you love my podcast, Switchblade Sisters. Hi, I'm film critic April Wolf. Every week, I have a conversation with a different female filmmaker about their favorite genre film. Each episode covers the filmmaking process, working in the film industry, and just like general geeking out about awesome movies. I've had such great guests like the big stick writer,

Emily Gordon. To me, indie movies as of late have come to be a catch-all term for a movie that kind of defies genre. Billy Madison and half-baked director, Tamara Davis. When a comedian comes and enters onto my set, they're just there to be funny. And we're all ready and waiting for them to be funny. Horror industry veteran and actor Barbara Crampton. That's where real drama lies for me. What's between you and I speaking right now? Where are we meeting? And what's the energy that we create between us? And so many others. So check out Switchblade Sisters every Thursday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you want to know my second thing? I already know it, babe! Yeah, what's your second thing? Public libraries. Public libraries are really the shit. Do we even need to go that much deeper? I know. It's free books, y'all. get them damn i know

i i had to double check that i hadn't talked about this already because i feel like i talk about going to the library a lot you talk about a lot of book adjacent sort of things and then i just and now i'm starting to feel like if we don't call out something on wonderful that means that not only do we not find it wonderful but we don don't like it. We hate it. Yeah. So now I feel like I need to say public libraries. Public libraries are officially good. Yes. Good.

McElroys are pro-library. Children's laughter is good. All candy, except a bit of honey. So libraries obviously have been around since the beginning of time. So libraries obviously have been around since the beginning of time. The modern public library grew out of the end of the 19th century. Philanthropists and businessmen, including Andrew Carnegie, helped to fund the the first large public library supported by taxes in the United States was the Boston Public Library. That was the first one. Well, so there is another library in New Hampshire established in 1833, but that was a small public library. And by public library, we're talking about tax-supported libraries.

Yes. Okay. And by public library, we're talking about tax-supported libraries. Yes. Okay. But the first kind of large city-wide library was in Boston in 1854. 1689 Carnegie Libraries were built in the United States between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to universities. By 1930, half the American public libraries had been built by Carnegie. Jeez.

I know. So here's where we get to the part that fills me with hope and joy. Okay. The main task of public libraries is to provide the public with access to books and periodicals. The American Library Association addresses the role of library as part of, quote, access to information and equity of access. It's part of the profession's ethical commitment that, quote, no one should be denied information because he or she cannot afford the cost of a book or periodical, have access to the internet or information in any of its various formats.

That is, yeah. I mean, that is what's pure and good about the library. I love that. Every time I walk into a library, and it's just like sometimes multiple floors, just like books and movies and all these resources where you can learn more and become a better person. And they're like, here, borrow this for a while and bring it back. Yeah.

And it's especially great when you look at it in the abstract, which is just like, here's a building full of knowledge. I know. And you can get knowledge in here, and then you can leave with that knowledge and be able to do more stuff and know more stuff. And everybody, it's equal to everybody. It's just how much you want to come in here and get the knowledge. Well, and it feels like, a lot of it feels kind of almost like a tribute to these creators. Yeah.

feels kind of almost like a tribute to these creators you know like it's this usually at least in austin anyway the central library which i've been spending a lot of time at with henry is enormous and it just feels like this big celebration of all these great people that have made these great things you get to like come and appreciate what they do without having to spend a bunch of money also they have a big chess, and the pieces are as big as Henry. Oh, it's good stuff. Last time I went, there was somebody playing it, and I had to keep Henry from running onto the board. You should have let him go.

Maybe he was like a Bobby Fischer. I know. What if he just won the game in one move? Yeah. I mean, obviously, yeah. One of the things that's also great about our libraries here, and a lot of libraries, is that they have, they're designed to be spaces to be, not just get in and get out. You know, they're not like convenience stores.

They like have little things to do and places to sit and computers and things that encourage you to stay longer than just, you know, you would get like a can of soda somewhere did your local library growing up do like summer reading programs because mine totally did of course i think all do ours was if you finished a book i remember very vividly there was one summer where i was just fucking like just tearing books apart uh reading reading wise i wasn't actually destroying them because if you read like a whole book uh and you brought it back you got to like roll a dice and then you would move like this piece on this game board that you got to take home and like if you landed on certain spaces you would get like some sort of little little prize and the prizes were probably like stickers

probably nothing like too incredible but it like blew my mind that you could do this i love how this like achievement focus of yours started this was like 1994 maybe and they had already figured out how to gamify reading for children i mean this was accelerated we had the pizza thing oh yeah like the pizza hut like you read books and you could get like free pizzas or something. Yeah. Did you have accelerated reader at your school? It was this program where you could read books from like the school library. And then you took like this test from this database.

And it would test your like reading comprehension and to make sure that you got it. And if you got like if you passed the test, then like for each answer you got right, you got a certain number of points. And for a way longer book like War and Peace, which nobody read because it was middle school, but if you read all of War and Peace, the questions were worth way more points because you read way more pages. And I did figure out how to quit the test before it counted my answers so I could learn which ones were the right answers and so I totally faked like holy shit war and peace Les Miserables um a lot of Moby Dick like a lot of them like I just memorized what the answers were and then I was like I think I got like like uh like some roller skates i forgot about that but libraries and actually reading books are so i don't even know

what to do with you sometimes libraries are so good i don't know what you're talking about by the way we we didn't ever like take computer quizzes about books to get roller skates. Well, 90s kids. Yes, I feel like libraries are as this like community center for like people to learn and share an interest in like research and entertainment. And the access piece really speaks to me too. Because I mean, when I was a kid, you know, like I absolutely loved reading. And you know, like my parents weren't going to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on me to read a bunch of books that I would finish in like two days and never read again

you know so we used to go to library in the summertime and i would get really interested in children's authors there's this one author that i was super into as a kid called mary downing hon and she wrote all these novels uh for kids and i have never heard anybody talk about her uh i, I like Googled her to see if this was like a thing. A lot of people haven't talked to her about her. So I'm hoping some of our listeners will, will shout out my love for her. Uh, but I just remember going in the library and learning exactly where all her books were and like immediately walking to that section and like pulling whatever additional book was off and just like having those memories,

um, of libraries. Like I still get that feeling anytime i walk into a library and so i it's just seemed worth mentioning to me yeah this is super great i mean for me it was mostly uh goosebumps and anamorphs and rolling a dice so you could get stickers yeah but i mean there was something pleasurable about reading the anorphs, and there were so many. There were like 80 Animorphs books. So you don't want to fucking buy all of those. It's also how I watched most of Breaking Bad. Yeah. I would get

the DVDs from the library. Oh, we would rent movies from the library because Blockbuster was a little rich from our blood. Well, I did that a lot as an adult. Yeah. Like, definitely. I think we watched a season of Survivor from the library, which was great, because we'd have to, like, we'd watch, like, eight episodes, and you'd be like, okay, off to the library to get the next eight episodes.

Oh, somebody's already got the next eight episodes. We'll wait. Do you want to know my second thing? Yes. I think I'll be quick again. With my second thing, it's a YouTube channel. It's all I do. It's all I do. It's all I do is watch YouTube.

I'm wondering about that. I'm wondering about it, too. What is happening to me? No, we were just on tour. So we did Orlando right off the Disney trip, which I'm not going to do that again. It's do a week at Disney and then a week in the tours. That was a little bit off. A little bit.

My eyes are a bit bigger than our stomach there. Um, but I had one day where I was like in Atlanta, I was just in the hotel room like all day and I was just watching YouTube. Um, and I stumbled upon this channel called, uh, red means recording. And this is a music channel. It's a guy named Jeremy Blake, who is like an electronic musician. And he does a lot of really cool stuff, mostly with like different synthesizers. I think what got me like really interested in it is like on a surface level,

I find like a specialized synthesizer equipment really interesting. Cause it's all doing like kind of the same thing which is like changing a waveform to produce like a certain kind of sound and then like the crazy billions of different like pieces of technology that do that the i found very interesting and his channel is all about that um but he has this series of videos that he does where he uses this keyboard called the op1 it's from a company called teenage engineering i know this because i want one so very badly but they are a thousand dollars on ebay

yeah um they're a thousand dollars they're also incredibly hard to find so on ebay they're actually like it's used it smells like cigarette smoke four keys are missing fifteen hundred dollars no i'm not gonna do that um i went down a rabbit hole watching the videos that he does. So this keyboard, the OP one, it is very sleek is very fucking stylish. And it basically does like everything that like a digital audio workspace like Logic Pro X or GarageBand or Ableton or like I use Logic Pro X now to like make music for Adventure Zone. It kind of does all of that stuff. But just with four tracks in this tiny little keyboard that is so cute. And I could like put in my backpack and like take on a trip with me.

Well, what's cool about the videos is he really like shows you how he puts it together. So I was talking exclusively about how cool this keyboard is. But what he does, these videos are like 20 minutes long. And he starts with nothing uh maybe he has like some samples so the keyboard can like take in samples you can like upload them to it or you can just record it with a microphone uh or off like a line in it also has a radio tuner in it so you can just like record shit off the radio and then use that as a sample to play so maybe he'll start with like a little bit of something but then you will watch him like okay let's play some drums and they'll lay down a beat and okay that's good here's the melody and we'll play the melody um and like constantly tweak and change things like okay here's the drums i'm gonna

add like maybe some hi-hats on top of all that you see every part of the song getting like putting it in text above yes there's He doesn't talk at all. It's just through this text that appears on screen. And it's still very entertaining. And a lot of personality comes through it. And it's also really educational. Because you're learning a lot of stuff about what different effects do to different sounds. This drum doesn't match like the rest of the song

because the rest of the song has this like crunchy feel what kind of effects can we use on that to like make it feel crunchier um and what is that what does the crunchiness accomplish uh but it does that in like a i don't know a really funny entertaining way um and then by the end of the song usually it ends with just the whole track the whole like finished track which you can also listen to most of his music's on spotify um and the music's like really fucking fresh um and like i've been listening to it in the car with henry as we like drive to school because he just loves like bopping around in in his little car seat and it's really neat listening to these songs and really enjoying them and know, knowing that you like watched the,

how it's made episode of how. So it's not just a YouTube thing. No, I mean, he also, I mean, he sells all of his, his music and,

um, has like a, you know, a band camp page and a soundcloud page and a Patreon page, um, which I just started supporting cause he like hands out all the music that he makes through that. Um,

yeah, I don't know. I got, I, I just watched so many of these videos. The music is so, so fresh. I'll, because he like hands out all the music that he makes through that um yeah i don't know i got i just watched so many of these videos the music is so so fresh i'll play a little bit uh of one song right now which like i don't know if necessarily you get the same thing out of it without like seeing it get made uh but this is a song called uh i need you which weirdly enough i was watching these videos and he does like a lot of like funny cut ins of like different like like

a gif of like a dude dancing will just like float up from on top of the keyboard that he edited in afterwards there's an audio sample of somebody saying boy and there's a picture of me doing the like face from the mbam show really that says pops up when it says boy which like scared the shit out of me um yeah i like it was a weird like uh uh this is not why i decided to talk about this like i genuinely i watched all of his videos and like was really grooving on them but like imagine me like in my atlanta hotel room they're locked up in the room for like seven hours like watching this video and then my face appears in the youtube video and i was like what the fuck it spooked me really bad but this is I Need You All that, all that, all that.

All that, all that, all that. It's like if I opened a jar of peanut butter because I really wanted some peanut butter. Yeah. And then there was like a picture of me and the peanut butter. Yeah, it's exactly like that. It's like the same thing. Do you want to hear some submissions? Yes. Oh, hey, where do people send submissions?

They send them to wonderfulpodcast.gmail.com. Okay. Aaron says, One of my favorite things is when the first signs of autumn start to appear, even when it's still technically summer and very hot outside. Autumn is my favorite season, so when those first few leaves or individual tree branches start to change to red, orange, and yellow, I get very excited for the upcoming fall festivities

and can't stop trying to spot more leafy outliers that are changing before the rest. Oh, it's so good. I noticed that this week. Some of the leaves are changing here. Yeah, I'm excited. Here's one from Amanda who says, Commonly known as scary trash birds, crows are actually real smart. These bad boys can recognize human faces and voices, learn to mimic speech,

and if you're nice to them, they'll remember you and tell their friends about you. I don't know about that last part. Yeah, the last part's a little confusing to me. Yeah, it sounded like you were like, these guys aren't ominous, they're really cute. They learn how to speak, and they'll tell their friends about you, so fucking watch it, Daryl. Julia says, something I think is wonderful

is a flawless parallel parking job. Oh my gosh. Done. I always get so excited, and I always demand whoever is in the car with parallel parking job oh my gosh i always get so excited and i i always demand whoever is in the car with me to really recognize my talent which is only wild to me because you pretty much nail it every time like you are really very very good at it which is great i i got good at it living in chicago with a car because i had to drive my friends well my like two friends uh that i had in chicago like uh to to a few places and i

drove to like i drove a lot um more than i needed to more i should have and you have to fucking learn how to parallel park because there's it's so scarce i failed it on my driver's test wow uh i don't know exactly how i i got so expert that's what i'm saying you didn't get you didn't you weren't forged in the crucible of a crazy metropolitan city. No. You're just really good at it. Thank you. You have the talent.

Thank you. Do you ever see those commercials or stunts in movies where they do a 180 drift around and they land perfectly in the parking spot between two cars? I have always wanted to do that. It would take me about 75 cars. 75 of the car that I am driving and then like probably 100, at least 100 of the two cars

that I'm trying to like get in between. As far as you would ruin 75 cars? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would goof them up real good. But then the one time I did it, I'd be like, that was so awesome. Yeah. Hey, thanks for listening. Hey hey thank you for listening i was just thinking about stunt driving how cool it would be to do it i wish there was a place you could go and like

hit a ramp there probably is right ability on that and the expenses associated i know i know you could be a contestant on a reality show. They seem to do that a lot. I mean, I could also just like, when it's time for this car, I'm driving a rental car right now. I could drive up to Lake Travis, build a ramp. Stunt. Stunt. And then return the car, maybe?

Well, no. Just ruin it? Something happened to the car. I could be like, dude, where's my car? And be like that's fine that's legally binding uh if you don't know where the car is gotta get used on us and we just fall for it just fall for it we can't do anything about it thanks for listening thank you for um all of your support uh hey go check out maximum fun they have a bunch of great shows at maximum funFun.org, shows like Story Break and Switchblade Sisters. Minority Corner.

Minority Corner. And Inside Pop. And Inside Pop. And we have other shows at McElroyShows.com. I don't... Did you thank Bowen and Augustus? Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description.

Oh, hey, Justin and Sydney wrote a Sawbones book. It is very good. I got an early copy of it. Taylor, Sydney's sister, did all of the art. It is really, really funny and informative and gross and cool. And there's a picture of a big penis. And also, besides that, super accessible for people even if you don't listen to the podcast. Yeah, for sure. If you have any interest in the history of medicine or just like the

history of crazy, weird treatments throughout the years. You should listen to the podcast, too. It's a really, really good podcast. You should, but I want to make sure that people understand that it is a great gift for everybody. It's available to pre-order on uh you know wherever you want to pre-order a book uh it's it's it's all over it comes out in october and you're just gonna love it um and i think that's it yeah yes okay well uh thank you guys for listening yeah hope you had a great Labor Day weekend. Oh, so great. Here's to many more episodes. All right. And a lot less labor just going forward.

And in the physical kind, not the unions. Labor unions are great. Keep it bouncy Money won't pay. Work it off. Money won't pay. Work it off. Money won't pay. Work it off. Work it off. Work it off.

Maximumfun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Judge John Hodgman ruled in my favor. Judge John Hodgman ruled in my friend's favor. Judge John Hodgman ruled in my favor. I'm Judge John Hodgman. You're hearing the voices of real litigants, real people who have submitted disputes to my internet court at the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I hear their

cases. I ask them questions. They're good ones. And then I tell them who's right and who's wrong. Thanks to Judge John Hodgman's ruling, my dad has been forced to retire one of the worst dad jokes of all time. Instead of cutting his own hair with a flow bead, my husband has his hair cut professionally. I have to join a community theater group. And my wife has stopped bringing home wild animals. It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Find it every Wednesday at MaximumFun.org

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