Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 56: Fremenies

Episode Date: October 25, 2018

Griffin's favorite autumnal stunt! Rachel's favorite form of camaraderie! Griffin's favorite sci-fi horror franchise! Rachel's favorite outdoor fun zone! 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. My name, my name, I Johnny Cash. And this is wonderful I did sort of a mixture Of like Johnny Cash but also Borat Did you like that? Because my voice sounds so wild and I started to talk

And I realized hey this is kind of not a bad Johnny Cash But then it turned into A Borat but then I saved it with going back To Johnny Cash Most things with you turn into a Borat That does happen but that's because of my affliction. And you know what I'm talking about. Boratus.

I got it. I went to the movie theater and I saw it. And yeah, let's just say a curse was laid upon me that day. And I talk about Borat a lot. I apologize. My voice sounds like a trash compactor trying to compact another trash compactor. I think is what I would.

Yeah, that's apt. Yeah, it sounds like a bunch of broken glass rolling down a mountainside is what I think it kind of sounds like. And I apologize for that. But we're here and we're gonna do an episode of Wonderful for you like we are contractually obligated to do. No, that's not true. We do it because it's fun and we're gonna do an episode wonderful for you like we are contractually

obligated to do no that's not true we do it because it's fun and we love each other in that right that is um both both are true do you still love me even though i sound like tom waits sort of coarser older brother ron waits i do and he's like like deep even more baritone brother ron waits yeah i do actually do you think uh he ever says tom waits for no man like if somebody's like running late for like that's good he's supposed to meet him at a movie he goes tom waits for no man he says and then everybody loves it yes Yes, I do. I'm high on Dayquil. It could also be like, oh, excuse me, are you waiting for this?

It's like, no, I'm Tom waits for this. And they'll be like, no, I know. What are you waiting for? There's a lot of really good sort of comedy there. But I think we should go back to Borat because that's really yeah that's where i really operate competency well wizard sleeve do you want to tell me about a small wonder that you have i do actually go for it uh so on the youtube yeah um wired are you familiar with wired sure they have this auto have this autocomplete interview series. It's like 80 plus videos.

And it's usually one or two celebrities promoting a movie. And they get on and they type their name or somebody types their name into Google. And so it'll be like Tom Hanks is and then they'll rip off the little thing, and it'll complete what the filter is. And so the celebrity is there, and they are responding to a lot of questions. And a lot of the questions are like, Mila Kunis is vegan? Or where is Mila Kunis now? And so you get to see these celebrities answer these fun queries about them. I enjoy it.

That sounds fun. It is fun. I want to say Stardew Valley is on iPhone now. And I'm just, that's it. That's all you get of me. Usefulness. That's all the sort of productivity you get out of me. This is the last podcast sort of thing you're going to get, I think, out of me,

Griffin McElroy. I hope you've enjoyed my career. Thank you for sticking along for the ride. If you were going to get, I think, out of me, Griffin McElroy. I hope you've enjoyed my career. Thank you for sticking along for the ride. If you were going to a desert island, and it came down to Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, which do you bring?

Probably I know. Which Animal Crossing? Because there's been like nine. Like my favorite, the best one? Yes. Shoot. Well, here's the thing.

If I'm living on the island, I'm basically already doing Animal Crossing. So I'm going to say Stardew Valley. Oh, that's fun. Yeah. Hey, do you want to let me talk about my first thing? I do. Okay. My first thing is jumping in a big old pile of leaves.

Oh, that's nice. I can see my sound waves while we record. I've never quite seen mine so spaced this far apart before. It's like my microphone is picking up the individual clicks that my vocal cords make as they slap together like two big wet pieces of meat. But anyway, I want to talk about jumping in a big old pile of leaves. We went on a fun trip together with our son up to

ely minnesota is like four hours north of minneapolis and had a fun little cabin weekend when we came back all the leaves have fallen there's a nice leaf pile and henry just played around in those leaves and it was so majestic so wonderful it's such a fun cute time and a really great photo op it was adorable to watch him figure out kind of what one does with leaves yes he had never really played with leaves before and seeing him be like oh yes these are great this is like fun confetti that uh the earth makes it's just good man jumping a pile leaves just sort of concentrated good um it's remarkable that essentially tree hair turns into a stunt cushion once a year. Do you know what I mean?

A stunt cushion. Okay. Okay. I see what you're saying. Like it's wild. Yeah. And that's, if you really abstractly think about it, like you're having fun with this big pile of leaves and the tree just made those.

If I asked you to describe it a different way. Yeah. Do you got another one in the chamber? It's like forest dandruff that turns into jump zone. Okay. Anyway, I just, seeing him splash around on those leaves really took me back to just simpler, better times. It's just such a classic autumnal activity that I used to enjoy quite a bit because growing up in West Virginia, there are trees for days. Trees for days, I say. And they would all shed and I would jump right into them. I did so much leaf pile jumping. I was not a very outdoorsy kid or

teenager or young adult or adult. I will not be an adventurous outdoorsy grandpa, I bet. I would like to raise an outdoorsy child, though. This is a good city to do that in. But I did do leaf pile jumping because it was so fun and it was so rewarding. There are also, so there's a controversial topic. There's a lot of controversy about this topic because a lot of people say don't jump in the leaf pile. Because if it's wet, it can get moldy. And also you don't know if there's bugs in there. and also you don't know if there's bugs in there and also you don't know if there's debris in there and here's the thing can i tell you i was stifling those instincts as he was doing it i know me too

i was thinking like this might end up being gross for him but i was like you know what don't be that person right now don't be that person i feel like this caught there was a buzz like 2016 there was a lot of buzz as if we needed more things to be buzzy about in 2016 that was like no more leaf piles i remember seeing an article that was like do a scarecrow instead shut the shut shut the front door with that kind of dookie garbage. Are you kidding me? That's a completely different thing. You're like making a fake guy to scare off birds. Unless you lay the scarecrow down on the ground. And jump on it. And jump on it. I don't want to scare birds, internet.

It's like, take care of your young ones, but scare the shit out of birds. They didn't do anything either. But anyway, I was trying to find scientific reasons for why jumping in leaf piles is good. I had some trouble, as you might imagine. I'm sure there's some sort of psychological benefit. It's fun.

It gets the endorphins pumping, blood pumping, good activity, good exercise. The crickly crackly sound? The crickly crackly sound is like ASMR. What I found, though, the scientific reason to do it, crushed leaves decompose faster than whole leaves, which leaves less time for those leaf piles to develop mold and diseases and stuff in them. Because they decompose faster because you crushed them all up with your bod. And that's science right there.

And that is a reason to run into your neighbor's yard and say, I'm going to jump in these just to save you from some mold. Just to save you from some mold. Well, you shouldn't. The only reason you shouldn't jump in a leaf pile is if the person who just sorted it into a pile asks you specifically not to do it. But even then, come on. I don't think they can blame you, right? It's a good leaf pile. One time I went down a slide into a leaf pile when I was visiting my nanny's house.

A spider bit me right on the hand. It got so big and fat. And I will admit I got out's house, a spider bit me right on the hand. It got so big and fat, and I will admit I got out of the game a little bit for a while after that. But it's been long enough that now I can say leaf piles are good. Just keep your hands out of them. Because spiders love these guys. So when you

jump in, you're suggesting hands up over the head? Yeah. I mean, you should be doing that anyway, because you're having a fucking great time jumping into the leaf pile. Anyway, I mean, you should be doing that anyway, because you're having a fucking great time jumping into the leaf pile. Anyway, I love leaf piles. What's your first thing? My first thing is friendship.

Okay. We are really getting really, really very, very abstract. I was surprised we hadn't talked about friendship, because I feel like I distinctly remember you making a lot of friends goofs when we were on the show. And I assumed it came from us talking about Friends. Friends, the TV show. Yes. Oh, I talk about Friends a lot on this show.

I feel like you make a lot of Friends references just in your day to day. I found out that I don't know how to. I'm sort of a day walker to make a Blade reference when it comes to Chandler. I say Chandler sometimes. I say Chandler sometimes. And I'm not entirely sure which is the correct one, even though I've seen every episode of Friends, I bet. I don't know if it's Chandler or Chandler.

This is like the... It's Chandler. It's like the Berenstain Bears. Oh my gosh. The Mandela effect. I don't know. Is it Chandler or Chandler? Take a poll.

It's Chandler, baby. It could be Chandler. There's Chandelier. Yeah, which is a real thing. I want to swing from the Chandler. I still got it. Even when my pipes are really bad, I can still open them up and get some Sia out of them. So I bring this up because while we were in Minnesota, we were with some dear friends of ours. And I just felt very grateful to be at our age when it becomes harder to have friendships as an adult, I think. I think starting at like 24, it starts becoming a lot harder to make friends.

Yeah. When you finish any kind of schooling that you're pursuing and all of a sudden your only you know adult contact is in the workplace right it becomes difficult uh there's a lot of benefits to having friends i i yeah i imagined that was true before you listed off some facts some of them are health benefits oh okay uh In a 2010 meta-analysis that combined data on more than 308,000 people across 148 studies, researchers found a strong connection between social relationships and lifespan. Ah, wow. The size of the effect rivaled that

of better-known health-related behaviors such as smoking and exercise. Does that count like Twitter followers? Because I got a quarter million of those. I am Zool. I will live. I will outlive you all. No, babe. They're each my friend. I know them all by name.

I have not tweeted in a month. Do you want to name just like, I don't know, like a hundred of them? Oh, yeah. There's Dr. Pepperdick420. Yes. He is always cracking me up. Yes. There's Chim Chim Chiru. Is the Roo zeros?

Yeah, it's all zeros. Okay, so I'm friends with the one that has the letters and not the zeros. Oh, that one sucks. Hey, it's my friend. The zeros one is where it's at. He's got the best sort of like political stuff going on there. it's at he's got the best sort of like political stuff going on there uh a 2015 analysis that compiled data on more than 3.4 million people across 70 studies uh found that the absence of social connections carried the same health risk as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day okay science

i'm all about you but sometimes you do shit that is so wild. Because it's like, I lived in Chicago and I didn't really have any friends. Well, I had the people I lived with, but I didn't really make a lot of friends there. And you smoked a little bit. And I smoked a bit. It was a dangerous time for you. I guess so. I guess at that point, you can either have friends and smoke or not have friends and not smoke.

Can I say when I met you after you moved here from Chicago, you did seem a little unhealthy. Yeah. But then I made friends. And now you're a vital, vigorous man. Now I'm a fucking vision of health. Look at me. Look at me. I'm fucking.

This is your healthy voice. This is my healthsome voice. The rest of the time I've been sick. I get very high pitched and nasally when I'm sick. This is the low baritone is kind of where I operate. I haven't been able to sing with my barbershop quartet for like fucking eight years now. What are the names of the people in your barbershop quartet? I haven't met them yet.

Yeah, there's Skillet and Busy Bill and Scroat. What's the name of the alto the alto is alton brown that's nice yeah he thinks it's funny i do not i tell him every time i was like your name sucks dude it really is alton brown uh so as griffin mentioned it is hard to make adult friends uh as a study published in 2006. Sorry, y'all. There's a boil notice going on. Y'all have to drink bottled water. I don't know how to do it quietly.

There are a lot of things you don't know how to do quietly, Griffin. Whoa. People had an average of about three friends they felt they could discuss important things with in 1984. By 2005, the average number of confidants had dropped to about two. There's not much more it can drop. I feel like this is the countdown to the end of civilization. If it hits zero. At the end of the study, close to 25% of respondents said they didn't have anyone they could trust. Oh my God. triple the proportion from two decades earlier it is so bad it's bad out there guys but we have we have each other i think we're lucky enough we have

each other we have wonderful friends we have wonderful friends we've had for a very long time we've had for a very long time it's so important to have and i think that like i give internet a lot of shit um and a lot of that i think is pretty well deserved. But I also think that it is an incredible way of finding the communities that give you this kind of support. And I don't know. I think that I was very, very antisocial in my

sort of traveling, wandering days. But if I'd had something like that, I don't know. It probably would have been a lot easier. I have always been lucky to have a decent group of friends. That's true. But I will say that not all of them were especially decent. But I am lucky. More Fremenies, right?

Fremenies? Frenemies. Leah Fremenies. Damn you. It wasn't even that funny, I don't think. It was. It was really fucking funny. God, I'd take my fucking hoodie off for that.

So I just wanted to bring it up because one thing I've noticed when you develop like a real good lasting relationship is that you can just check in every once in a while. You don't have to be all on the ball. You know, like our friends that moved to Minnesota that we were visiting. We don't get to see very often. We don't get to talk to very often. But, you know, just a few kind words here and there really, really make it last. I like to, because I'm uncomfortable a little bit with sincerity face to face. Oh, yes.

I like to send a good email every once in a while that just says, hey, here's some things that I appreciate about you and I miss you. Yeah, when me and Scroat had the big fight, we didn't talk for 26 years. But then I wrote him a really nice email. We were six when we started the group. Okay. And your barbershop. You were six when you started your barbershop quartet. How much do I love the idea of six-year-olds?

A six-year-old named Scroat? I'm not crazy about that. No, no, no. Doing a barbershop quartet together with the little red and white vests. Yeah, sure. Just harmonizing. That could be fun. It's definitely a lot more innocent than what I was suggesting.

Friendship is great. Can I steal you away? I could see how low I can go with this voice. Yeah, I think you should take a crack at it. Let me see. I've been working on my scales in piano class. Let me start with the lowest I can do, and then I'll work down from there. Okay.

What's that do it for you? I mean, I wanted to say it was good. But that would imply that I liked it. It can be good and you not like it. Okay. That's what it was then. It was like a tree of life for me when I saw that flick. I was like, yeah, good.

Never again, though. Mother. Mother. Father. Fafa. Hey, Griffin. Yeah. I got some personal messages.

Oh, you hacked into their accounts and you're going to read all their, just leak all their dirty laundry. This message is for Bruce, Hillary, Cheyenne, Zoe, Lily, and Caroline. Got the dirt on all them juicy. It's from Donnie. Hey, this is Donnie. Bruce, Hillary, Cheyenne, Zoe, and Lily. Y'all are like family to me and the best of people I could have around. I love you all. Just thought you should know.

Caroline, it's been a wonderful six months at the time of this writing. Just wanted to let you know how much I love and appreciate you. Love you, Blady. And in parentheses, beautiful lady. Well, and also she has retractable blades coming out of her fingernails. Yeah, like the Wolverine or the

Deathstroke? Deathstrike? There's another sort of X-Man character. Anyway, do you have another message? I do have another message. I am so sorry that my Dayquil mush mouth is so offensive to you. This message is for Jeffrey. It is from Lindsay. Oh, this is going to be fun.

Oh, good. Jeffrey, do you want to go look at houses with me jeffrey you are my sweet peach and my favorite boy i'm so grateful to have you in my life with maritime bus as my witness just know that i'm sending you smooches and shooting you double finger guns oh and jeffrey we should do this again sometime it's a sweet message that's on my brother my brother me reference it's an old school one too is it bad i can't even see the word peach without thinking about i could eat a peach for hours i thought you were gonna say the the mario brothers no i was doing the the

nicholas page the other one i could eat a peach for hours this voice makes that fun to say, doesn't it? I could eat a peach for hours. Wait, let me try it. Yeah. I could eat a peach for hours. Damn it. That's really good too. Hi everybody. My name is Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. And together we're the hosts of Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. What does that mean for you, the podcast consumer? Well, it means that you're going to get a lot of stories about how we used to do weird stuff to people in order to try to fix them.

Do you know that we used to think diseases were caused by bad smells? And that we used to eat mummies for medicine. That's super funny. I kind of like it. Well, thanks. And we hope you'll kind of like our show, Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. It's available every Friday wherever fine podcasts are sold.

Or at its beautiful, picturesque home at MaximumFun.org. All right. Yeah. Do you want to know my second thing? Yes. My second thing is Alien. And I'm not being like, I'm not doing like weird speak when I say that. It's literally the movie Alien.

Oh, do you mean ALF? No, no. Yeah. Yes. Did they ever make an ALF movie? Because if not, they left. They did make a cartoon movie they did and they made like a tv special that was like movie length and it was like how to keep kids off drugs and it was

like bugs bunny was in it fucking alf was in it like everyone was in it it was a free rinse let blockbuster i watched that fucking tape a lot no i want to talk about alien alien the movie the sigourney weaver the sigourney weaver movie and i rest i wanted to bring a spooky movie this is our last episode before halloween so i wanted to bring some autumnalized stuff and i wanted to bring a scary movie and i was trying to think of like what's a good one that holds up well and you know is is fun and important i guess to talk about and when i think about it man i think alien is the best. It's like the best of them. It's certainly among the best of them.

I struggled with whether I wanted to bring alien or aliens. Cause I enjoy both of those movies very, very much in the same way. If you've never seen them, alien is a very slow burn, uh, sort of survival horror story. The first half hour of it, i remember is is a lot of setup

and a lot of uh a lot of like hard sci-fi and then it's a story of just like uh-oh there's an alien on our ship what are we gonna do the second one is let's get the big big guns and go and kill all the fucking aliens hooah and it's fun too like it's still like a really really good flick but it's it's it is a lot different i landed on just talking about alien because! And it's fun, too. It's still a really, really good flick, but it is a lot different. I landed on just talking about Alien, because I think it's a really incredible movie. It came out in 1979. It was Sigourney Weaver's first starring role and kind of launched her career, so it is important in that sense. What I find so fascinating, I love horror movies. I've seen them. I've seen many, many, many of them. What I like about Alien is like, it, it set up this whole franchise,

right? They've made a million alien movies at this point. And I think Alien also sort of created its own, or not created, but sort of popularized this sci-fi horror genre that like you know uh arguably like the fly was a part of and and and all this really alien is a very like by the book horror movie if you if you compare it to like uh friday the 13th or halloween or like it is kind of the same where it's like here's the characters here's the protagonist here's the setup for what the monster is. Now that's the first half of the movie. Second half of the movie is now that we've made this like sandbox, let's, let's see what happens.

It's just like nonstop after that. Um, and I, it's so, it's so fascinating. Like it doesn't really break from that tradition at all. And so in that sense, you kind of know what's going to happen next,

but it's still like extremely tense and really really really scary and the aliens themselves are like unlike anything really that's been was seen before you know yeah like most i feel like most monsters were kind of very obviously people in suits sure in previous horror movies and that's not really the case with aliens i don don't even know how they put those folks together. It was still a person in a suit. Yeah, it was just a really expertly made suit. So the aliens are sort of the highlight of this whole franchise, right? And what is really fascinating about them is there's a lot of things that are fascinating about them.

First of all, this movie and Aliens spends a long-ass time teaching you the physiology of these aliens in a way that I think is really fascinating. It's like you're taking a biology class on these aliens while you're watching the movie. It's like, okay, their blood is made out of acid. Here is their whole reproductive cycle. Every movie adds a new step to their reproductive cycle. And now you know all of this uh and it sets you up for for what's about to happen like jurassic park got a lot from alien when you think about it that way yeah i think so too he's been a lot of time discussing like how the dinosaurs work before you see the dinosaurs yeah for sure um but as for like the aesthetic of the alien because i agree like you look at monster movies any everything in the past like nothing holds a candle to alien in the first alien do you see like the little alien that comes out of

the mouth of the bigger alien uh does that happen in the first movie it's such a like iconic thing and it's like it does fascinating to me yeah i like thinking about like a little griffin coming out of the mouth you like thinking about that of just like just like a little griffin coming out of the mouth. You like thinking about that? Just like a little griffin with little glasses coming out of your mouth. So like you lean in to smooch me and then like a littler griffin comes out and smooches me first. You would enjoy that, you're saying? I'm just exploring. I'm exploring that idea. Oh, you want to play?

What am I doing? Which one of us is on the day call? That's what I's what i'm yeah let's save this pillow talk for later what do you say so they were designed by hr giger uh who yeah so i don't know how much you know about his work he's a swiss artist uh who basically just like, who does a bunch of fucked up shit. I don't know how to describe his art except for like deeply, deeply, deeply unsettling. Uh, actually the alien was largely based off of this one painting that he had. I cannot remember the name of it. Um, I'll see if I can find it. Hold on. Okay. He had this series of illustrations called Necronom. There's one called Necronom 4 that he put out in 1976 that was just sort of this surrealist monster, essentially.

And if you come over and look at it real quick. Oh, yeah. It's got the head and the big eyes and the whole structure. I mean, it's more dick like i would say way more way more pp like for sure but that's the xenomorph essentially uh which is which is what the aliens called uh and like that's why that's why it looks so different right like you you tagged in this like surrealist swiss artist to design your your your shit like that's incredibly wild for you that is that is a wild thing for you to do um it's just like a wild investment but it's so clearly paid off right

because it established this this thing as like a new thing to be scared of which is something that like horror movies still like struggle with and i think they always will is trying to say like here's the here's the new thing to be scared of it follows was so great because it's a new thing to be scared of it's a a source of terror that's never really and aliens got really hot after that movie i feel like into the 80s all of a sudden like everything was alien related uh yes baseballs well i'm talking like et et for sure the aforementioned alph uh alph is definitely inspired by Alien in so many ways, I feel like. And then, you know, Alien Autopsy. You remember that one?

What? It wasn't a movie. It was like a television show where they dissected an alien. Is the TV show called Alien Autopsy? Just Google it real fast. I think it was on Fox. And the suggestion was that it was an autopsy of a real alien. This was a TV movie from 1995.

Rachel, you can't reference TV movies from 1995 starring Jonathan Frakes in it. That's a really deep, deep cut. That may be the deepest cut that's ever been made. I was thinking it was a television show. It was a TV movie. That's a really deep pool. Anyway, this movie rules. The aesthetic of the whole movie,

the ship in the first movie also looks really cool. They didn't try to sci-fi it up. It looks very much like if there were spaceships in the 1980s, what they would look like. It was 1979 when this movie came out. It was like they said, what if there were spaceships in 1989? And let's see what that's like. Yeah, exactly.

It looks very like, it looks, there are parts of the ship that look like really comfortable and like lived in. And that makes it like all the scarier when that place is sort of violated by this, by this, by this terrifying, unkillable monster. That's very true. And also, I mean mean can we mention like how awesome sigourney weaver is oh she's fucking awesome character of ripley and like the performance so good yeah uh this movie is like top to bottom like uh it is it is this is i always

feel shitty talking about like horror movies this way um where it's like well it's it's not just a good horror movie it's like a good good movie because that suggests that like we rate horror movies on a different scale but i also think that alien is maybe one of the best movies ever made and is also like very very scary and i want to watch it because we haven't this this spooky season yeah we haven't dipped into spooky but i'd be into watching alien let's do do it. What's your second thing, though, first? My second thing, playgrounds. All right.

I have been really excited to have Henry be at an age where he appreciates playground because I have always loved them. I have, too. Did you have one growing up that was like your spot? Did you have one growing up that was like your spot? I mean, there was a church near my house that had a playground that I used to like to walk to and like hang out with with friends when they came over. Nice. And they were cool with that? The church?

Yeah. Well, as far as I know. Okay. I mean, you know, I didn't like knock on the door and ask them if I could use their playground. Okay. I like always get excited to go to one. I don't know if you have that experience. When we take Henry to the playground, I'm legitimately psyched to be there.

Yeah, I do, for sure. Especially going to a new one, seeing what kind of playground innovations, because there certainly are some playground innovations. That's very true. They're actually much safer now. Well, I don't know. There's a zip line at my old playground now, which wasn't there before. So that seems demonstrably unsafe. So playgrounds actually started in Germany in 1850. The founder of kindergarten, Friedrich Froebel, promoted the importance of free play as well as nature play for children.

His model kindergarten plans emphasize the need for opportunities for contact with natural materials. The kindergarten movement spurred the use of sandboxes in German schools and homes. Interesting. So that was like the touching natural materials idea? Sandbox is like where it all started. is like where it all started. The introduction of, quote, sand gardens to America was prompted by Dr. Marie Zakruska, who, while visiting Berlin in 1885, observed children's playing in heaps of sand. She wrote a letter to the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association,

which resulted in a large heap of sand being placed near the West End Nursery in Boston. Can you imagine all of those Bostonian kids? Just like a big old pile of sand. So we're just supposed to jump in? Just get in there? Get in there?

We're just supposed to jump in the sand? I mean, is it any better or worse than a leaf pile? It's probably a lot worse because it's a lot harder it's sand but you can build stuff with sand that's true uh so she i wanted to do a boston accent there but i complete i've forgotten how a boston accent sounds um yeah is you you just want me to jump in the sand i'd be so terrible if you couldn't have remembered that. You want me to jump in the sand? Okay, you're getting in a weird place now. Boston, back behinds.

Boston, back behinds. Oh, Brad talks. So by 1899, there were 21 sand gardens. It's just like Wikipedia. It's just like, we know exactly how many sandboxes there were in existence.

A hundred and 19 years ago. So shortly after in 1905, Henry S. Curtis, who was the director of the DC playground system and Luther Gulick, who was the director of physical DC Playground System, and Luther Gulick, who was the director of physical education in the New York City school system, joined together to form a National Playground Association,

which was officially formed at the YMCA in DC. And it was designed to promote ideas of playgrounds to communities, including benefits, construction, layout, and design, and the conduct and activities to occur on the playgrounds. This is so alien to me, this idea of just like we needed people to gin up playgrounds. I know. It seems so like, what if we had toys that kids could come and play with as a community? Yeah. I think people didn't really see the benefits of play until much later in history.

So the next kind of big moment in playgrounds was in the 1940s and 50s. That's when adventure or junk playgrounds were started. So it was a large lot stocked with building materials. So it was a large lot stocked with building materials. This was started, it was actually started in Denmark, but then moved to London in 1946. The concept was that there would be puddles, hills, grass, and no asphalt. The main features were to be, one pipes ropes bricks lumber hammers and nails where with very little supervision children could build and paint play things that they wanted like swings tree houses and forts oh god okay so you're almost there guys you almost got there on one hand

it's kind of beautiful right like kind of like of like Legos. Like give the kids opportunities. Ain't no nail Lego. Ain't no sharp Legos. Ain't no sharp Legos. But yes, also very dangerous. The other key tenant was a central pavilion for children to get in out of the rain to hold meetings. Hold about all of their injuries where they would do triage on each other well he's got seven nails you've only got four nails in your hand so

we're gonna take him to the hospital first i think we should stop throwing the hammer at each other jimmy what do you think well i don't know it's pretty fun second the first adventure playgrounds were staffed by workers called quote wardens oh my god their job was to unlock the tool sheds at the playgrounds and observe the children of play assisting them only as necessary so as not to lead activities like jeff probst on survivor. You gotta let them get hurt. The workers eventually became known as play workers. It's a lot better than wardens, for sure. 1950s through 70s.

Play workers, though, is very, very, it's very 1984. Oh. Isn't that like, I guess a little bit. I do play work. It's's good. It's double good.

To me, it makes me think more of, you know, kind of the arbitrary name like retail employees are given to. Yeah. Sorry. It took me a while to remember what the year was from the big book. It's so bad in here.

Like at Barnes and Noble, you're not like a cashier. You're a bookseller. Yeah, for sure. It's kind of like here. Like at Barnes & Noble, you're not like a cashier. You're a bookseller. Yeah, for sure. It's kind of like you're a play worker. I was a sales associate at GameStop. Oh, yeah.

That's what I was at Sally Beauty's. Garbage term. It doesn't mean anything. So in the 1950s through 70s, that's when you started to see novelty playgrounds, which were the things with like rocket ships and animal shapes and tunnels all made of metal. And no hammers? No hammers this time. That's some bullshit.

But everything was made of metal, so you could still hurt yourself. Okay, good. And then the 70s and 80s is when you started to see more of the rounded edges and hard plastic equipment. The 1980s to the present is when you saw more of an emphasis on safety. Yeah, I would say so. So, yeah. So, I remember from my youth, we had the wood chips, which you still see today.

You also see a lot of that kind of springy rubberized ground. Yeah, I remember when they replaced the... So, I grew up next to a park in Huntington. I was very lucky to grow up uh you know a three minute walk from that park and i had a big beautiful playground and they have they have renovated that playground so many times since i lived there adding that springy ground adding a like a zip line there was a huge huge like sand pit uh for kids to play in uh and there's like a cement like tunnel you could go in underground.

There was so much stuff. It was a dope playground. I just like, I love the spirit of it. I love the kind of adventure element. I kind of really appreciate, you know, it's kind of where you build a little ninja warrior. Yeah. And I like that.

Did you have a playground sort of activity you were fond of in school? I mean, I liked a lot of like hot lava, don't touch the ground and those little mazes. Okay. That was fun. You know, crawling to the top of the slide where the little thing is and just reading all the graffiti. Oh, that's fun. I remember elementary school. Oh, and the tire swing, the graffiti. Oh, that's fun. I remember elementary school. Oh, and the tire swing, Natch.

Oh, you got to. I remember in middle school, I did a LARP with my friend Taylor for Final Fantasy IV on the big toy, which I've said before, and you've chastised me. I actually Googled that. So that is actually like the official name of those big structures is the big toy good

yeah then i chastise you we just never called it that where i grew up um and we did we would play fun fancy up there and i had like i had a ring pop this i remember this very clearly i had a ring pop but it was like a magic ring that could shoot fire out of it it was fun to have um i guess i burned him in the game. That's not as fun. But anyway, I like to play sort of in my own mind. So this is sort of going back to the friendship segment and explaining why I didn't have very much of it. But now it's getting hard to think about. So let's, is that it?

That was my trip to the playground, yeah. It was fun. I think going to the city museum in St. Louis reminded me of like how much I love like playing around on big objects. Yeah. Just climbing and sliding and like being up high and getting to kind of use your muscles in ways you don't normally. It's good for you.

Yeah. I feel like that's what I always want hiking to be, but then hiking it's never planned out is that there's always like that one root on the ground that's gonna like pop your ankle a little bit and it's like that would never happen on a playground but it definitely would happen on a playground i think no because i it's all flat and safe it's safe fun it's safe flat fun for adults. Thank you so much for listening to Wonderful. Can I hear what the listeners sent in?

Yeah, we skipped it last week because we just were completely. Did we really? We really did. I felt terrible. But yeah, the listeners sent in some, I don't know if it was last week, recently. I know we recently skipped it. Yeah, so Catherine says, I love watching experts at work. It's truly satisfying and inspiring to watch a master chef or craftsperson do the thing that they're really, really good at.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Yes, this is kind of our whole thing with reality competitions, I think. Sure, and I mean, I'll also watch YouTube videos of just people who put the pizza boxes together super good. Or if you go to a Silver Dollar City and watch somebody blow glass. Oh, so dope. That's also nice. Corinna says, Taryn Killam's Robin tribute on YouTube.

I was listening to Robin's new single when I remembered that this, and it's a link to that Taryn Killam video, happened in 2011. Simpler times. Taryn in a crop jacket and tight pants busting a move to Robin's Call Your Girlfriend while Bobby Moynihan shines a flashlight in the doorway.

Bonus wonder. The song is still a bop. I don't know if you've seen this video. The original, like the song is fucking great. The music video is great. And then basically Taron Killen when he was on SNL in 2011 and like a whole big room full of SNL,

uh, like cast people is a writing night. And so it was like 4 30 AM and they just recreated the whole music video shot for shot in kind of perfect synchronicity. Do you remember the Halloween that I was robbing? Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's a really, really good video. I love it very much.

Tessie says, you know, when you're hiking in the woods, uh-oh, I definitely copied and pasted this into my document earlier. I guess I forgot. You know, when you're hiking in the woods, uh-oh. I definitely copied and pasted this into my document earlier. I guess I forgot. You know when you're hiking in the woods and you notice that the tree roots have grown in a certain way so that it looks like stairs? When I was a little kid, I went on hikes and I used to think to myself that they were magic trails made by fairies or something. When I see them nowadays, I just think it's really cool. Like the trees just wanted you to have an easier time climbing that hill. Thanks, trees.

Just wonderful work you're doing out there, ladies. Oh my gosh, that's really nice. That's really cool. Like the trees just wanted you to have an easier time climbing that hill. Thanks trees. Just wonderful work you're doing out there, ladies. Oh my gosh. That's really nice. That's really nice. I'm sorry. I talked shit about it. It really conjures like a very specific visual for me.

Yeah, me too. Um, really back to that same park that I grew up next to. I don't think I give that park enough credit. It was formative. Just like your church. I think that's it.

Uh, thank you to Bowen and Augustus for for the use of our theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description um let's say a few words about maximum fun maximum fun.org is home to wonderful positive podcasts that can teach you a lot and make you laugh uh i always turn to that website every single day just looking to see what's going on i'm constantly refreshing it looking for new podcasts and new lessons um they have shows like tights and fights and stop podcasting yourself and oh i've been wanting to listen to the new tights and fights because open mike eagle oh yeah i participated in a wrestling match that's awesome i'm very curious about it. It's all on MaximumFun.org.

We have other stuff at McElroyShows.com. Go buy the Sawbones book. Go to bit.ly slash Sawbones book. Now it's really, really great, and you're just going to love the hell out of it. I think that's it, huh? That is it. Are there any other deep voice songs

you want me to cover for you? Oh my gosh. Can you sing Barbie Girl by Aqua? I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world. Wow, that's so low. I cannot believe how freaking low

that is. Life's fantastic when it's plastic. That's fucking great, baby. I have to record this right now. It's never going to be like this again. You can go my hair. Undress me any...

Oh, wow. That song is problematic as hell. Goodbye. Working on it, money on it. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. The secret is out! I, Open Mike Eagle, officially had a wrestling match. And on the next Tyson Fights, I'm talking all about it.

From the rap battles that got us started. Open Mike, you ain't ready. Oh, really? You're cold like some spaghetti. Ha ha! And to how I hurt myself in ways I didn't know I could. That day and the day before, I got so many texts from people who really care about me who were like, please don't break your neck.

The only place you can get the full story is on the newest episode of Tights and Fights. Find it on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get podcasts.