Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 57: Gooey for Garfield

Episode Date: October 31, 2018

Rachel's favorite attractive talent! Griffin's favorite food brick! Rachel's favorite candy size! Griffin's favorite horror TV show! 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. Ha ha! Ha ha ha! You're very good at that i'm just so excited babe my voice is starting to come back it is it's lovely i was in the car and i was with my my son and we were listening to dan tiger which is what i call daniel tiger because we're very close and you know we were

singing his songs and i realized i can i can sort of hang with the tag again with the striped one my striped bro so i was learning about what happens when you spill mommy's milk and uh just singing along and it's just nice moment so what does happen well you first you say i'm sorry that's the first step then what can i do what can i do to make it better? Right. That's good. And so the first verse of that song is like, I spilled my milk. I told my mom, sorry.

And then I asked what I can do to help. To me, that seems like a weird relationship between the child and mother, right? Because it's like, I spilled my milk, sorry. It should be like, I spilled my milk. I'm very sad. You fix it. Yes?

Not anymore, Griffinin we're trying to raise our young men a real dan tiger to be self-reliant yes okay this is for nobody but you and i this is for nobody but me and you but anyway uh do you have any small wonders for the week uh gosh there's so much good stuff on netflix there's a lot of good stuff yeah there's a lot of good stuff on netflix right now i don't know this is one of your things the netflix things it is not okay we are currently watching the new sabrina show and loving it chilling adventures of sabrina is fantastic as to like uh people who shamefully watch riverdale it's nice to watch a show that is very similar but i don't feel ashamed to watch because it's actually pretty good it's nice to watch a show that is very similar but I don't feel ashamed to watch because

it's actually pretty good it's got some of that big Riverdale energy but like not not like as much for sure like not too much uh you got anything else nope uh I want to talk about a video game real quick because I don't have any outlet for this energy I promise I'll make it fast okay I told you about it a little bit it's called the The Return of the Obra Dinn. It's from a guy named Lucas Pope who made Papers, Please. And basically, you are on a ship, and it's a wrecked ship that has resurfaced. It had a crew of 60 people. All of them are dead. And you are an insurance agent in the early 19th century who has a magic pocket watch

that they can use to go to the exact moment like a freeze frame moment of each crew member's death and using that you have to identify who each crew member is using those like moments and then you have to figure out how they died and you have to figure out who killed them have you told your brothers about this oh yeah it's okay this is like both of their shits it's like poirot it's the best detective game i've ever played because you get like a little clip sometimes like you use the pocket watch and it cuts to black and then you hear like a little bit of audio and it can be like you killed my brother and then you know that like the person who is killing them has a brother so they are going to have the same last name in the

manifest so then you have to go back in other scenes and see who that guy killed because that's their brother so those two are brothers now you kind of know who they like it's like a big game of guess who on a big haunted ship it's also presented like an old macintosh game like it looks all dot it's just like two colors just black and white dot matrix it's fucking great it is so good i'm obsessed who is your favorite guess who character while we're talking about it oh i think well i don't know if i remember claude yeah are you making that up nope because i can't picture him i can't either it's the only name i can remember but i think you go first this week i do what you got it's funny actually that you were bringing up

uh singing along with uh dan tiger you're gonna say over den you're gonna be like my first thing is a haunted ship no it's musical ability musical i thought you were trying to say that in like one word i thought it took me a second to realize musical ability was two words yeah like musicality but i thought that you were saying musicality but incorrect like a little three-year-old yeah yeah uh yeah no i um i was thinking about some of the things that i find attractive in a person sure and uh i thought about some of the things that i find attractive in you and one of those things is your musical ability yeah thank you what were you? I mean, you know.

Your winking ability? That's right. Your ability to wink? I'm trying to wink so hard. Yeah, thank you. That's nice to hear. I mean, Griffin, not all of you know this, Griffin can sing. He can play an instrument.

See what it is, you might feel better's that's not one of my small wonders that's not one day i'm going to graduate from daniel tiger music i'm gonna be so fucking psyched because then it means i can listen to whatever i want in the car you were for a while and then now i feel like now he won't do it i was listening to podcasts i was getting caught up on friends at the table and henry was like i don't actually want deep rich world building i want to hear tiger a tiger sing songs about spilling their milk and feeling bad about it well you brought that on yourself griffin i'm sorry yes yes uh i i will say so i recognize that this interest i have is not unique that a lot of folks enjoy uh people that can sing and play instruments.

So I did some research to see, like, what is this phenomenon? Like, have scientists ever looked at, like, why this is such a big thing? Why music get horny is basically... That is what I typed into Google. You typed into Google, why music get horny. Uh-huh. Question mark, question mark? Question mark.

And then you asked Jeeves, and he was like, I don't know't know let me google it do the kids today even get the jeeves reference probably not probably not jeeves was an old butler so weird that that was a thing he would come to your house you would yell certain keywords at him he would go to the library it would come back six days later there's, maybe, unless it has anything to do with pop culture. So there actually have been studies on this. Okay. And what I kept finding over and over again is a study done at the University of Vienna. It was a 2017 study of 72 participants, mostly university students, and they investigated the impact of musical exposure on the evaluations of faces.

Whoa. So they wanted to find out if when participants looked at faces while they listened to music, whether that changed their feeling about that person. feeling about that person okay uh so they did short 25 second excerpts of romantic era piano music played as images were queued up uh and so and they did this with a variety of women at various stages in their cycles okay so um kind of where they were at in their fertility cycle. And men also. And the women, regardless of where they were at in their cycle, rated the men as more attractive if they had heard music,

regardless of whether the music was pleasant or unpleasant. Well, really? Okay, hold on. That last bit is wild. They could be listening to fucking grunge, chorus, scream metal.'re talking about like brahms and chopin we're not talking about like okay you know then that's even wilder that the study's like not one of chopin's shittier pieces one of chopin's real clunkers uh the results showed that female participants rated the male faces as more attractive and were more willing to date the men when previously exposed to music. What about the reverse, though?

Men had no impact. It says the men opinions of the females were not affected by music. Okay. Well, we have lots of other ways of get horny, I guess. I mean, not that you don't. That's weird, though, that it doesn't work in the inverse, because I definitely also think it's an attractive trait. Yeah, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. It said that overall, highly stimulating and complex music led to the greatest effect compared to the control condition. Stimulating. But this is just like listening to music. It doesn't necessarily have to be coming from the other person. No, but isn't that interesting to think about yes is that maybe it's not about the musician playing the music or performing but the fact that you are hearing it while you are seeing them yeah so it's like

when you walk into my office and i press play on the demo mode on the keyboard but then i pretend like i'm really razzle dazzling it It still works. And you just like, just. Just go gooey. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Tell me right now if I have to edit that out. You don't. No, that's fine.

Let's go with it. It's not fine. But yes, I mean, obviously you see this a lot in movies and in television and in reality shows yeah uh when they are editing the scene to make you kind of buy in more they will play music in the background yeah uh and it just it made me think a lot about especially when they said like regardless of like the quality of music yeah how when you're like in junior high and every male got like every male friend you have that like plays shitty guitar and you just think like oh that's so cool like it doesn't necessarily matter how good they are yeah just that there is music playing while you're in their presence that's

really interesting uh-huh it's funny also because i've been taking um piano lessons and my teacher has been having me focus on my fingering. So it's good on. Sorry. But it made me think about like some of the moments in our relationship where I felt kind of like, like this kind of interest in you, you know? Like we met during a music show. Yes. And we spent a lot of the time in our initial courtship

in musical settings. Yeah. And then, you know, anytime I see you do karaoke, I just, I swoon a little bit. Yeah, when we were first courting, we were in a community theater production of Noises Off. And God, we did a lot. It's not a musical lot of musical noises off isn't i don't think so oh well of all the musicals you could have pulled from i know i was trying to think of one that was obscure at the fantastics

we were in a sort of off broadway revival um yeah that's weird anyway. Anyway, it's obviously something that a lot of people are into. Yeah. I know my grandma always would tell the story about my grandpa was her piano teacher. Yeah. And that was kind of how she developed feelings for him. Yeah. God, he was so good. He was so good.

Do you want to know my first thing? Yes. I want to say something. Okay. I know a lot of people do not like it when the weekend ends and Monday rolls around. Okay. Because, you know, it's time to get back to work. I feel like I am at a-

Because they have to put on big boy clothes and go to an office with a bunch of other people. I feel like we are in a stage now, our son is very active and we are like learning how to like deal with that uh how to like keep up with them are you saying you love mondays in a way like when monday rolls around uh i mean i'm also like excited to like you know start like my my creative like week right of just like cranking out the making the donuts so i like mondays um but that is the only way in which i am different from garfield because i fucking love lasagna lasagna is my subject this week uh sort of a roundabout way whoa you really took me on a journey there griffin i'm not gonna do a fucking whole bit about mondays

we're gonna say you loved mondays. And I was going to get on you because your Monday is very different than most people's Mondays. This is true. But lasagna, my lasagna is not any different from, well, maybe it is. There's lots of different types of lasagna I've learned. I used to not like lasagna. Really? Well, it was a textural

thing, right? Because you're just putting a big just a big floppy noodle. Well well and i've had some bad lasagna see i don't necessarily know that i've had bad bad like it gets all slippery sometimes if you don't use the right cheeses or the right ratios i will say that is the only bad lasagna where if it doesn't bind necessarily right if it's not a thick enough sauce if it gets like watery and that can happen if you try to put like too many vegetables in it, which is why I say don't. Or if you go real healthy and use like low fat ricotta cheese or something. No, it's not good.

So I used to just like, I used to not like it because of the texture. Now I'm like all about it. I also didn't like it because it was like so much. It was so much. Lasagna is not something you eat as much as it is something that you, that you confront. It's like a, it's like a deep dish pizza, but without the crust. It is.

It's an object to conquer. The lasagna is a quest. And I'm super into it right now because it's so like, I find myself really into like hearty foods. Like stick to your ribs foods. Like an old lumberjack or something yeah um i just like food that kind of sticks around with you and i also now kind of admire this over and i used to be a fettuccine alfredo with you know blackened chicken me too man now that cream gets to me bad but also the amount of work is required to fucking spear a bunch of noodles twirl them up good cut

them so that it's not too big a bite get like a piece of the the chicken some of the broccoli get enough of the sauce on it and bite it by the time you've done that i've eaten a whole brick of lasagna i've eaten a whole kilo of lasagna uncut shit too the real shit um so the reason you prefer lasagna to like a pasta alfredo situation is because you can eat it faster no it's not just fast it's an energy expended if i'm chasing fettuccine all around the bowl that's wasteful lasagna is not going fucking anywhere you stab your fork in lasagna it stabs back it will outlive you and i like that about lasagna you stab it it's like so fucking what oh you're gonna carve me up and eat me fettuccine it's like no no please please

i got it's kind of like the dairy queen blizzard of ice cream you know you turn lasagna upside down it just stays there it's so dope um i like the good stuff at like fancy restaurants i'll eat a nice lasagna i had it for my cotillion and i had to show off that i had all the eating skills oh my gosh i wish i could have seen you at cotillion i dropped a little sauce on my pants and i excused myself to the bathroom to try and hide it and i did i did a very good job um i like the stouffer shit we had that last night yeah that's what brought it to mind i was eating it this afternoon for lunch and i thought man i do like lasagna and i was sitting here looking at an empty word pad document i said

hey here it comes some lasagna notes so lasagna is thought to have come from naples it's a first like instance of it came in a 14th century cookbook it called for a fermented dough flattened into a thin sheet boiled sprinkled with cheese and spices and then eaten with the use of a small pointed stick wait was this before pasta was this before forks is the bigger question i guess that's fair too when did forks come about? A fermented dough with a pointed stick. Yeah, I mean, it had cheese and spices, and it was thin in a sheet. Okay, and you boiled it.

That's pretty close, kind of. So the traditional is that there's different types of lasagna, right? There's two kind of main camps, as far as I can tell. There's the stuff that we eat, which is lasagna al forno which is uh has like a ragu sauce a tomato sauce and like bechamel cheese uh some sort of uh flesh cheese flesh on top of it that's that's lasagna al forno the uh traditional lasagna from from naples lasagna d and i I'm going to fuck this up, carnivale? Carnivale? I don't, I can't.

No, carnival lasagna, yeah. It stands for carnival lasagna. It's got sausage. Cotton candy. It's got cotton candy. It's got those little foam peanuts. It has local sausage, small fried meatballs, hard boiled eggs, ricotta, and mozzarella cheeses, sauced with a Neapolitan ragu, a meat sauce.

Got eggs up in there. I'm all for it. Interesting. Yeah, I would be into that. And yeah, I just like, you know what else I like about lasagna? It is the only thing in the universe that gets me excited about a side salad. thing in the universe that gets me excited about a side salad because when you are when you are digging your way out of the fucking lasagna cave of wonders from the inside out and you get i get tired yeah i get tired fighting that zhonya then the last like the what i want to reach for

is a nice little airy green sort of lightweight treat you know when? When I'm trying to get through a Zanya Harding, I want to reach over and I want to get some wet leaves. I really want you to be a food critic more than anything in the whole world. I think I could do pretty good. This salad was airy wet leaves. Hey, do you want to know why garfield likes lasagna

because it's really good no there's a reason from an interview that jim davis did oh my gosh yes i do it's not a joke setup i know it sounded like one i know um like this is from a huffington post article like garfield davis is a fan of lasagna yeah quote yeah i love lasagna i like how jim davis speaks as if he were garfield himself like i feel like i could see a t-shirt with jim davis's face on it that says yeah i like lasagna not like this motherfucker loves lasagna do you love lasagna? Sure. I haven't finished the Jim Davis quote. You have to let me through. Oh, okay.

I'm sorry. Yeah, I love lasagna. I thought it would be funny to have a cat who likes lasagna, but as it turns out, I hear from people all the time that their cats love lasagna. And he confessed, this goes on, this is not germane, but I thought it was so wild. And he confessed that even though John loves Odie too, Garfield is his favorite because of the depth of their relationship. He confides, quote, because of the depth of their relationship.

He can, quote, he confides in Garfield so much, and I think John may have a little masochistic problem. He enjoys the abuse that Garfield heaps up. Ooh. Yo, Jim. Yo, Jim. Yo, Jim. Getting a little wild in that there brain cage here, is there, Jim? Sounds like John's a little gooey for Garfield.

I mean, that's the episode title, but... All right, so can I steal you away? Yes. Nice. Thank you. We're really moving away from the home improvement thing pretty good. And I think that that's because we've sort of gotten all of the meat off the fair use bones. Hey, are you ready for some personal messages?

Uh-huh. Give me the dish. This message is for Scrungus. It is from Ezra. I really hope you are listening in the car like you normally do so I can ask you to bring home some Oreos. We are out of Oreos. Happy birthday. Thanks for being so nice to me.

Complimenting me and I appreciate everything that you do. You're the best friend and natural born clown ever. Um, Skrungus? Skrungus, we're out of Oreos almost. That's not true. We have like a whole I mean, but we're closer than I'd like to be. Uh, yeah.

I'm starting to realize I can't eat six Oreos a night. No. And then it's breaking my heart. This message is for Rain. It is from Gail. Julia Sneezer, you are my best friend and I love you. Most of all, you suck at video games. Get good. Oh, damn. Happy birthday. friend and i love you most of all you suck at video games get good oh damn happy birthday god you just got put in the fucking ground are you kidding me julia sneezer is like a great name

for a guinea pig it's a good name for anything it's a good name for our band it's a good thing to say when somebody sneezes and you want to be rude to them. Great work, Julia Sneezer. Oh, God, it's good. It's really good. Also, get better at video games, you scrub. Hi, I'm Biz. And I'm Teresa. And we host One Bad Mother, a comedy podcast about parenting. Whether you are a parent or just know

kids exist in the world, join us each week as we honestly share what it's like to be a parent. I'm just gonna end with this. Everybody, you're doing a remarkable job of swimming through the shit show that is parenting. So join us each week as we judge less, laugh more, and remind you that you are doing a great job. Find us on MaximumFun.org, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's your... You... What? Yeah. Can I have the second thing? Yes. Thank you. Since this is actually... This episode's going to go up on Halloween, correct? Yes.

Fun-sized candy bars. Oh, good. My second thing is also Halloween-related. Okay. yes fun size candy bars oh good my second thing is also halloween related okay fun size candy bars are so good though they're so good does this count for fun size sort of all candy i think so my piano teacher gave me a fun size skittles oh that's adorable i go to was this because you did so well on your fingering? Yes. And the next student after me is like four. So I have no pretension about it. She was like, please take some Halloween candy. I was like, hell yeah.

I took one and I took a Jolly Rancher lollipop too. But you get the fun size sixlets. There's just like three of them in there. And you just like put it in your teeth and just like a shooter. Fuck yeah, fun size candy. Sixlets always kind of let me down because i want them to be like m&ms but they are not like m&ms like them all right yeah anyway sorry did you know how recent fun size candy bars are huh you had to pick a decade uh 70s okay well it's 1961 oh okay i mean well that makes that seems recent to me i think i don't

think people had fun until the 1960s that's fair so that tracks to me in 1961 mars introduced miniature snack or tiny candy bars sold in bags specifically to hand out to trick-or-treaters the term fun size was coined in 1968 and the first fun size candies available were Snickers and Milky Way, and then later on, Three Musketeers and M&M's. Still holding up. M&M's, see, that was a good innovation. I wonder how they did it back in the day. I wonder what fun size M&M's looked like back in the day.

Because I don't think they had the little envelope, the little whatever that material is, because it's not quite paper and it's not quite plastic. It's incredible. Fun size was used exclusively by Mars The little whatever that material is, because it's not quite paper and it's not quite plastic. It's incredible. Fun Size was used exclusively by Mars until the Curtis Candy Company started using it for its Halloween versions of Baby Ruth and Butterfinger. Oh, cool. Mars unsuccessfully sued in 1972.

I mean, can I say something? That doesn't seem frivolous to me. You think you should copyright fun size? Yeah, if it's in reference to your small candy bars and somebody says, oh, we also do the fun size. Like if I open up a coffee shop, can I start selling like Venti? Yeah, but can you trademark fun? Can you trademark size? I guess not.

So how would you trademark fun size? Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. And so this led me to look up king size. Oh, interesting. Which originally labeled cigarettes. Okay. In 1939, the American Tobacco Company repackaged Paul Malls as a longer cigarette called king size, which is now the standard length.

Fucking one-yard-long cigarettes that took you two days to smoke. And then Coke introduced the now-standard 12-ounce King Size bottle in 1955. Whoa, oops. I know, I love how these are all standard sizes now. Can I have a King? I'm gonna say that next time I'm at the bodega. Can I get a king? I'm going to say that next time I'm at the bodega. Can I get a king-size Sprite?

Which led to king-size cars. Dodge came out with a king-size car in 1956. We get it. And then freezers and frozen food and hamburgers became king-size. Okay, was there like one day where man took a look at the destruction he hath wrought and then everybody in every industry simultaneously agreed like this is all just the normal size now um and then in the in the 50s is when the beds went king size too. Oh, wow. Really? Okay. That one is surprising because that one seems like substantial to me. Like a candy bar length doesn't seem like it matters as much to me, but like a bed size

like changes your whole shit. So the king size candy bar seems to have come about not until 1980. Hershey released something called the Big Block. And this was just a Hershey bar? I'm guessing it was just a very large Hershey bar. That's easy. I could make a fucking very large Hershey bar. You give me 30 Hershey bars and a lighter and a paperclip,

I'll make a big Hershey bar. No problem. So here's the thing. Yeah? I found a lot of articles on the favorite candies by state. Oh, wow. I didn't even think about that. And then also 538.com, which you know is like Nate Silver's big polling website, also generated the top five matchups.

So they had matchups of candy versus candy. And over 8,000 people voted voted can i guess what the number one halloween candy is that is that fact on there i'm going to guess and let me give you so they match one candy up against another and have people vote that way okay so it's kind of like our thanksgiving episode where we match one food up against another and so that's how the number one was not just candy bars right like all candy right um yes okay because what i what i think is number one is not a candy bar okay i'm gonna say reese's peanut butter cup you are correct fuck yes but it was a close one and here's what's interesting 84.2 percent reese's peanut Cup. 81.9% Reese's Miniatures.

Okay. What is a Reese's Miniature? They're the little ones. It's still Peanut Butter Cups. I would say that's a fucking decisive victory for Peanut Butter Cups because it won twice. Well, Twix got 81.6. Get the fuck out of here, Twix. Nobody eats those for Halloween.

That's garbage. I like Twix. They're great, but nobody gets them for Halloween. Yes, you do. That's clown shoes. You get the one little bar, which kind of destroys the entire purpose of Twix. The whole thing about Twix is you get two of them. That's the only fun-sized bar that doesn't make sense.

It's the caramel and the little cookie crunch. I don't need a star crunch if I want all that. Kit Kat, 76.8%. Snickers, 76.7%. Okay. Do you have thoughts on the top candy for your state? For mine? West Virginia, yes. Is it something weird?

I don't think so. I'm going to say Milky Way? No, that was actually the top candy for Missouri, though. Oh, okay, because I know we love nougat. West Virginia. And this is from a People.com article. Apparently, there's a website, CandyStore.com, that in 2017 ranked candies by collecting 10 years of Halloween sales data for every state.

That's a fun study. The top candy for West Virginia was Blow Pops. Blow Pops. I can buy that. Yeah. God, I love a Blow Pop. Candy for West Virginia was Blow Pops. Blow Pops.

I can buy that. God, I love a Blow Pop. Illinois, New York, both Sour Patch Kids. California, M&M's. Texas, Starburst. Huh. Huh. I know. This seems made up.

I mean, you know. If there's one thing I know about Texas, maybe it's the Texas Star. Some people like sweet, chewy stuff me i know uh well take it up with candystore.com okay um so america currently spends an estimated 2.7 billion on candy this time of year that's a lot of cash and so this led me to think and this is my final tangent yeah what were they giving out before the fun size candy exactly and that's what i want to get into yeah i think it was like little chocolates wrapped in foil like a little chocolate wrapped in like a foil that looks like a pumpkin they're handing out fucking necco wafers and they were handing out you know

wax lips and toothpaste and bullshit i, you're not too far off. So from history.com, when trick-or-treating started in the 1930s and 40s, children were given homemade cookies and pieces of cake or fruit or nuts, coins, and toys. Cool. This was when? 1930s and 40s. They hadn't invented murder yet back then? They hadn't invented poison? Murder didn't come about until later.

Okay. Wow. In the 50s, candy manufacturers began to promote their products for Halloween, but it wasn't until the 1970s that wrapped factory-made candy was viewed as the only acceptable thing to hand out. Yes. Yes. God. Yes. God. Yes. Progress is good. There's something kind of satisfying and inherently wasteful about opening a bunch of individually wrapped candy.

Sure. Just like looking at your pile of leavings. Yeah. But I am at a point where the portion I crave and require is fun size. Exactly. I feel the same way. I get excited because it scratches the itch. Yes.

Without committing you to a very large portion. Literally any bar. I brought up a Milky Way. God, I love a Milky Way. Really? Oh, holy shit. It surprised me because I mean Snickers I get because there's like full peanuts in there.

Milky Way, it's like the nougaty stuff and the caramel. I don't know. It's so good. But, but I take one bite of the Milky Way. Oh, I'm in heaven. I take a second bite of the Milky Way. And you're done? It's pretty good.

I don't want any more of the Milky Way because I've just eaten a lot of nougat. That's fair. I've just eaten a fistful of nougat. That's fair. I've just eaten a fistful of nougat. That's fair. Yeah. So, man, I really want to eat

a lot of fucking candy right now. I know. Me too. It's so difficult to make it through this season without just wanting

to get through a lot of candy. I know. I think tomorrow's going to be a real cheat day. Oh, gosh. Can I tell you about my second thing? Yes. It's a TV show. Okay. I want to see going to be a real cheat day. Can I tell you about my second thing? It's a TV show. I want to see if you can guess what it is. I'm going to try and do the introduction to the TV show like when it comes on. It's the first thing you see in here.

I want to see if you can figure out what it is. Okay, you already gave me kind of a hint because you said it was Halloween related. Yeah. It's like. Oh, Are You Afraid of the Dark? Yeah, it's Are You Afraid of the Dark? That was a perfect impression. That was perfect. I was so into this show and still am, even though I haven't watched it in a while i got as a christmas present like a bunch of bootleg dvds of are you afraid of the dark a while ago or maybe justin or travis did i

just remember watching a lot of are you afraid of the dark around the holiday season dipping into the highlights and it totally holds up unlike a lot of uh early children's programming from that era uh i looked up a lot of stuff about Are You Afraid of the Dark? It was so incredible. It was so good. When I think back on it, the performances from the kids are so good, and the storylines and the production value.

It's all so good. I keep almost saying, Nick went deep on this one. Actually, this show did not originate at Nickelodeon. Ooh, is it Canadian? It seems Canadian. It is, of course. It is deeply Canadian. It's completely Canadian.

It's from a... It's clearly Canadian. It's clearly... It's from a kid's television network in Canada called YTV. Came on there, I think, in, like, 1990 is when it aired. And then, like, one season and Nickelodeon was like, we got to have this. And it was added to this nick lineup in 1992 uh ran for five seasons and then they brought it back uh like turn of the millennia like 1999 2000 for two more seasons uh with a new

cast except for one of the kids came back as a reprising role um and this show if you've never seen it like i don't know man like i feel like horror tv shows are super big right now um and have been like for the last you know few few years uh you got your uh what's the new one haunting of hill house just came out on netflix there's uh american horror story before there was american horror story there was a horror anthology series that was so important i'm not talking about fucking goosebumps the goosebumps tv show is buck wild too by the way but it is a whole different kettle of fish um no i'm talking about are you afraid of the dark it was so good and i don't think like it's such a like bold addition right because nick's like this nick lineup had at certain

points you know kablam hey arnold uh in like the live action department it had uh all that it had alex mac shelby woo it didn't have anything like terrifying and they were like let's add a children's horror show to the to our fun saturday night lineup there was something almost like there was an element of danger to it because you're staying up late on saturday night and watching horror stories that i was like so fucking into um and there are two things i remember primarily about this show like one two things i remember really really liking about it The first thing was the framing device of the Midnight Society. If you've never seen the show before, every episode opened up with this group

of kids and teens that would come around this campfire, this secluded little forest clearing where they had a little hideout. They would start a campfire, and then one of them would be the storyteller for that night they would say submitted for the approval of the midnight society and then they'd reach into a bag and throw the midnight dust into the fire and the title would appear um do you know what that dust was i feel like i've talked about this you've talked about this is a coffee creamer it's non-dairy creamer yeah it apparently has like petroleum in it oh geez that's not great um I just loved like the stories were great like the horror stories were awesome uh but like I really

wanted to be in the Midnight Society oh for sure every kid did like the show dabbled in like their lives and relationships occasionally sometimes like their relationships bled into the stories that they told there was one episode where there were two brothers in the midnight society one of them like stole the older one's love poem and so the older one told a horror story where like the younger kid was tormented for being a brat and then he like apologized at the end of the episode it also every episode ends with them uh you know talking about the moral of the story or whatever and then putting the fire out uh or playing like a scary prank on each other It just seemed like a cool group of friends who had this

awesome thing going on. That show, as I'm listening to you describe it, could have been so bad. There are so many opportunities for it to have not been a good show, but it very much was. I mean, if you go back, I'm sure there's a lot of episodes that do not hold up necessarily as well, where the stories aren't as crisp and the acting, I mean, you're talking about, you know, child actors. It's not going to be a hit 100% of the time,

but it's so like, I don't know, there's something so brave about this show. It was just, it was like that Pete and Pete era of just like... Pete and Pete all die on the mountain floor. Like that show was good on every level. But just like Pete and Pete. I'll die on the mountain for like that show was good on every.

Yeah. But just like children being like kind of children, you know, like kids being kids in a way that felt like not performative. I don't know. It was very authentic. There was, I don't want to be old man yells at cloud,

but like there was something about Nick culture in those days where they were creating the culture that young people followed instead of chasing it. Isn't that crazy to think that there was a network on cable television that just had the kids' attention 24 hours a day yes like i don't know that that really exists anymore oh it doesn't it doesn't and that's why when we we turned on mtv why did we have mtv i think we just like had it on yeah and there was a show on a reality show about tattoo show people who like hate each other who design tattoos for each other that they then have to get on their bodies forever and like holy shit i i'm totally an old man yells at cloud territory but that's objectively fucking awful yeah that is not necessarily has anything to do with this okay there was a second thing that i remember loving about this show there's a second thing that i remember in general about this show and that it was legitimately very scary i was looking at some of the stories trying to like refresh my memory

because there are definitely like two or three that like stand out i wanted to see like what are the most agreed upon like scariest ones there's the one where the the girl is like uh like trapped in a house with the girl in the mirror who writes help me backwards on all the walls like that one i remember there's a kid who gets stuck in the pinball game that's like in the mirror who writes help me backwards on all the walls like that one i remember there's a kid who gets stuck in the pinball game that's like in the mall that one i really really scared me some of them had like dark twisted endings a lot of them resolved and we're like ha ha ha yeah good thing we beat dracula uh but a lot of them were like and now you're trapped in my box forever um okay so there's three that i wanted to point out. First is The Tale of the Frozen Ghost, where Melissa Joan Hart is in this one. She plays a babysitter, and she's sort of haunted by this young dead boy who's out in the woods and appears and says,

I'm cold. You remember that one? Oh, I do now that you mention that, but a lot of what you're describing I don't remember. Okay. But I do remember that you remember that i used to say that to try us to scare him like when we were kids i would like hide around the corner i'd say i'm cold it got him every fucking time uh there was i mean zebo the clown anytime you get him in the mix it's gonna be a bad one oh yeah yeah tale of laughing

in the dark was that one i think is his first turn number one this one we actually did watch recently i think it was when we got those dvds is this the swimming pool the tale of the dead man's float is the kid trying to learn how to swim from another kid uh only inside of the pool is a monster that kills kids by drowning them and then at one point the monster appears and is way too scary for this television show he's like a blood skeleton with like veins hanging off of him and he drowns kids and it's fucking scary uh that one that one definitely number one in my book but like that's wild that this blood skeleton was on after you know after after pete and pete like yeah you watch the episode where he's trying to get the marshmallow out of his nose

and then there's a blood skeleton on 15 minutes later. I loved Old Snick because it took a lot of risks like that and it was the thing that you talked about in school the next two days from then. And Are You Afraid of the Dark? was just a big part of that. And I just, when I think back on it, I admire it just a whole lot. Yeah, we have to check and see if those are on YouTube.

I bet they are. We found Bug Juice on there, which I love for similar reasons. Hey, can I tell you what our friends at home are into? Yes. Oh, and can you give that email address? Yes, it is wonderfulpodcasts at gmail.com. The submissions have been slowing down a little bit so if you got something you're excited about just one or two sentences shoot it into wonderfulpodcast at gmail.com carolyn says one of my favorite things is when a song ends just as i'm parking my car somewhere it just happened and it's so satisfying i had to pull out my phone to email you this from my driveway this is what i'm talking about this immediacy this this because if you don't do it you'll forget about it but i also really really

like this me too i used to do the thing where i would like sit in the car for a little bit and like let it finish but now i park in a garage and i don't want i don't want to do that doesn't seem safe i guess you can turn the engine off i'm still learning how garages work anyway izzy says something i think is wonderful is when you wash your hands and without even trying, the water is at that perfect hand washing temperature. Not too hot, not too cold, just beautiful, warm hand water, making you all sweet and clean. That's nice.

I love so often when you go into a public restroom, they don't have hot water. And I always get so delighted when they do. Yeah, I do too. I love hot water. They don't have hot water. And I always get so delighted when they do. Yeah, I do too. I love hot water. Hey, I love hot water. Cool. Hey, thanks 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.

Thank you to MaximumFun.org, a very good network. Yes. Thank you so much for hosting our show. If you're not familiar with maximum fun.org you should go look there are great podcasts podcasts like reading glasses and jordan jesse go and stop podcasting yourself and beef and dairy network and so many more at maximum fun.org if you want to hear more stuff that we do it's at mackleroyshows.com uh go vote uh if you can early vote if that's available in your neck of the woods uh if not go vote on

november 6th and uh i think that's it do we have anything else no that's it okay well you want to arm wrestle okay let's do it are you trying to wink again no you gotta make noises like oh i'm gonna go over the top i don't think I like the way this is gonna Excerpt Oh you think it might sound like Like fingering God Is there anything above the explicit tag on iTunes

Like the words aren't explicit But the ideas are very very That's my wheelhouse man Yeah it's just Fingering and goo Happy Halloween Happy Halloween Real house, man. Yeah, it's just fingering and goo. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. Money won't pay. Money won't pay.

Money won't pay. Money won't pay. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. In a world dominated by dude bro movie podcasts, only one podcast is brave enough to call bullshit. Who shot ya? The podcast that dares to say that white dudes' opinions aren't the only opinions.

If you have a movie pass, like, get a ticket to it to support Taraji, then go home. Ant-Man seems so unnecessary at this point. Ant-Man is like a ketchup packet too many. Who Shot Ya? with Ricky Carmona. I wanted to see Wolverine kick ass and eat some popcorn and have a good time. Alonzo

Duralde. Is this Andy Richter? Yeah! And April Wolfe. I love wild things because I get to see Kevin Bacon's dick. Who Shot Ya? Listen every Friday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.