Wonderful! - Wonderful Ep. 63: Goin’ Potty Backwards

Episode Date: December 12, 2018

Griffin’s favorite electromagnetic phenomenon! Rachel’s favorite nostalgic advertisements! Griffin’s favorite classy holiday album! Rachel’s favorite new Hanukkah jam! 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. What's up? It's Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Sitting backwards in my chair, how casual this is. How casual am I right now with my backwards chair? Pretty good. So we should address the elephant in the room.

Hello, elephant. Okay, that's good. We got a new sort of member of the studio staff here at Wonderful Industries from the makers of New Lamp and Brother Printer and the Target Chair. We have Exercise Bike. Welcome, Exercise Bike. Here to get sort of the show's motivation game on track. And folks, don't worry.

It's a Schwinn. I have my back to Exercise Bike right now, and I feel rude. Yeah, you are sort of shutting exercise bike out of the conversation. Exercise bike, what do you think is wonderful this week? The sweatbands. Took me a while to think of something that exercise bike would be into. Which shows how devoted we are to exercise. I've ridden it once for 10 minutes, but that's okay.

I'll get there. And did I mention it's a Schwinn? Is that a thing? Have you seen that commercial where the guy is like, he buys the woman an exercise bike and she's telling all her friends like, don't worry, it's a Schwinn. I don't remember this. I'm thinking of the Jared commercials. I thought maybe, yeah.

So do you have any small wonders this week? I do. Okay. Oh, you've written them down. Well, small wonders are usually so like scat. They're so scat jazz. Oh, I knew I would forget. The holiday episodes of Nailed It.

Those have been very, very fun so far. We watched, what, three? But we watched them in a row as you are want to do with netflix programming sometimes yeah um it's nice it like you know we're always looking for new stuff this time of year to get us in the spirit it's doing it and uh yeah it's really working weirdly it's the thing that's doing it also just sort of the the extreme bounty of great british baking show that we have begun. I feel like Netflix deployed five different sort of chunks of baking show greatness.

We tore through the new season and the holiday episodes. Yeah. Yeah. God, that was good stuff. Just started watching Final Table. It's not sort of giving me the same sort of feel good feeling. It's a little more cut throat, but you need a little bit of that too. A little little spice in the sugar you know how they say you should always put a little bit of chili powder in your sugar when you store it um i got oh our fireplace we got our fireplace fixed up

and just lit it for the first time today and holy crap is it cozy as heck y'all it's real nice. I think I go first this week. Yes. My first thing is the Aurora Borealis. The Aurora Borealis, at this time of day, at this time of year, localized entirely within your kitchen. You already did steamed hams. You're just talking in general? Can I see it? No. No, the literal Aurora Borealis. Okay. I want to talk about that, the phenomenon, the literal Aurora Borealis.

Okay. I want to talk about that, the phenomenon known as the Aurora Borealis. How much do you know about the Borealis? Very, very little. How much do you know about David Boreanaz? Oh, way more. It's funny. They're both caused by solar flares bouncing off of the Earth's electromagnetic field. Both have strong brows.

Both have strong brows and appear mostly around the earth's poles. Now, I've always thought the Aurora Borealis is super pretty. I've always wanted to see it. When we were up in Minneapolis, our friend, or not in Minneapolis, in northern, far northern Minnesota, our friend said, hey, while we're up there, we may see the northern lights. And I was like, oh, fuck yeah. I got so stoked.

Didn't happen for us. Is it the same? Okay, I was going, oh, fuck yeah. I got so stoked. Didn't happen for us. Is it the same? Okay, I was going to ask you the question. Are the Northern Lights the same thing as Aurora Borealis? Yeah, so Aurora Borealis is commonly sort of known as the Northern Lights. However, there is also a Southern Lights. I learned a lot about Aurora Borealis today. It is probably the most I've ever learned about a topic

that I've been researching for wonderful, and it's very, very exciting. I mean, the term Aurora Borealisalis is great it's very phonetically pleasing can i tell you all about though about aurora australis which is the southern lights it's very cool um so earth isn't also the only planet that has like a borealis effect uh or actually an aurora it's is what it's called uh like jupiter has one saturn has uh one uranus can can also have it um so what causes it is super neat uh solar flares come out of the sun right the sun is like doing this nuclear fusions creating all this energy and sometimes it toots it out and that's a very very rudimentary way of explaining it. But they let out this powerful toot that is made up of these super energized particles. They shoot that at Earth.

Earth would be destroyed by this exhalation. When it reaches us, it's scattered and dispersed. It's called a solar wind at that point. If that hit Earth without any sort of protection, that would be pretty much ballgame Earth game set match sun. Sun wins this round. But we got this electromagnetic field. It's surrounding our Earth.

The solar wind hits it. It disperses all around the Earth. And we live to fight another day to keep recording podcasts for our friends at home. But there's two places where the electromagnetic field is the weakest, and that's at the poles of the Earth, the North Pole and Southern Pole. electromagnetic field is the weakest and that's at the poles of the earth and the north pole and southern pole so that is why in the arctic and antarctic is why that is where you usually see the aurora borealis or australis now it can happen anywhere in the world i guess like if uh like the solar wind is strong enough or maybe the electromagnetic field isn't feeling it that

day it can hypothetically happen anywhere it's extraordinarily rare for it to happen you know too far south but uh famously it once the aurora borealis once appeared in honolulu which is pretty pretty far down south from this had some depth to the steamed hands bit yes absolutely because it could have possibly been in his kitchen that day the whole phenomenon kind of works kind of like how like neon signs work basically the solar wind brings all this super energized uh like particles into the atmosphere and then it hits when it when it pierces in through the poles it hits the oxygen and the nitrogen in the atmosphere and those get like super charged with energy and as they like shoot electrons out to try to you know normalize that is what sort of creates the effect and depending

on like what the mix is of the elements in the atmosphere that are affected that sort of determines what the color is yeah i was gonna ask about the colors the shapes are like very specific right because it moves in like streams almost the streams or you know strips of of color and light uh what causes the shape of it is literally you are seeing the shape of the effect of the electromagnetic field you are see it is it is like you are sort of uh like rippling a sheet and pouring sand on it and all we see is the sand but you can see through the sand like what the shape of the sheet is underneath it i think that's fucking radical because I can't stress this enough. The electromagnetic field is essential

for Earth's whole thing that we're trying to go for down here. And occasionally, the right parts of the world, when the right sort of ingredients from the sun, the powerful sun toot hits us in just the right way, you can see it. Like you can see this thing

that keeps us all safe and cozy in here. So it could feasibly happen during the day. We just wouldn't be able to see it. I don't think you'd be able to see it. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's not like the sun waits until it's nighttime. Actually, it takes about two days for the solar wind to reach us from the sun anyway. But yeah, I guess it just doesn't.

I don't know that actually. I don't know if it would show up during the day um but i think it's really fascinating i also think it's like the prettiest thing earth does like i feel like sunrises and sunsets like went at it for a while and then rainbows were like well what about me and then double rainbow you remember that but then aurora borealis i think has just beaten the crap out of all of them. Yeah. Hey, what's your first thing? My first thing is 90s commercials. Fuck yes! This is all time. I'm so excited.

Can we, oh God, oh God. I don't want to cut you off in the past, but like, are you going to talk about Crossfire? Uh, let me see. Is Crossfire on the list? It is on the list, yes. Fuck yeah, all right. But in a very small way. Okay, well, when you say the word crossfire,

I am going to just scream sing the theme song for that. I'm gonna wake up our son and the sons of all of the people living on our street. So many sons will be awoken by my crossfire. So I'm not a big YouTube person, but one of my favorite things to do is to watch old commercials on YouTube. I noticed that I was not alone in this when last year we tried to find christmas commercials to watch in an act of desperation i think yes uh and so i a part of this you can just explain

as like nostalgia sure uh but part of it is kind of just the unique time period that was 90s commercials. Yeah, there's there was sort of a loudness to it. There was like, like the 80s. We were kind of calibrating like, how loud can we be? And the 90s? It was like, maximum. Yeah, like, oh, shit. The 2000s came around like, okay, hold on. let's let's rethink this so the other thing that i thought was interesting is is you know the presence and role of commercials has kind of lessened yeah since everybody's watching stuff on platforms now yes uh apparently and this is a goal that was released from fox uh the network will aim to snip the time given over to ads in each prime time hour down to a total of just two minutes by 2020 for the whole hour yes what the fuck last year ads took up over 13 minutes each hour yeah uh and so they're shooting for two minutes by 2020 why is it just because of like the changing nature like everybody's streaming and yeah everybody's streaming and subscribing i mean we subscribe to hulu plus because i mean i can't we have saved literally

days from not watching commercials uh that's wild to me that means like tv shows that air on fox are gonna have to change exactly yeah i know they're gonna give more more time right you can just get away with 47 minutes worth of content now it's gonna be 58 that's fucking wild i can't think of actually a single fox show that i i want you know, another 11 minutes out of now that I think about it. So they talk about, you know, I read some articles, a lot of people have written books too. There was a book called The Sponsored Life, Ads, TV, and American Culture. It talks about how we're now living in a post-slogan era and the memes have overtaken slogans which is kind of an interesting no no slogans instead we get logans

like logan paul i'd rather have slogans any day of the week but nobody asks me who is this andy rooney character you're bringing can we mention the first thing i thought of when you mentioned this is our friend had a party where we watched like they just he just had 90s commercials like up on the tv and it was impossible for me to communicate with anybody else the reason he had it up on tv and i can't believe you've never talked about this on the show before because i think they came up with it and it's such a fucking brilliant idea it's a small wonder i'm cutting in with an unofficial small wonder they do we've done a claim to fame party it was actually uh justin got that idea from his friend scott oh it's it's so good just get all your friends together and have everybody bring like a claim to fame like some time they made

the local newspaper or like clips of their dance recital or something. It is, it is, it is, you will learn things about your friends you would never imagine. It's so good. Uh, so another, um, kind of cultural critic, uh, at Duke university talked about how, um, when the cable revolution happened and we moved from three major channels to 100 overnight um the communication became super fragmented and suddenly you had like certain types of ads appearing on certain types of channels depending on what they were wow that's a good point i didn't think about that either but like channels become specialized so like you and i were watching nickelodeon we were just getting like slammed with all those toy commercials that we now love so much yeah yeah uh also a lot

of brands have have shifted to social media to kind of promote their message you know they have many ways to get at you which is part of the reason yeah i mean teens today are gonna think about like you know the funny arby's twitter in the same way that I think about Crossfire. I don't actually know that theme song. Crossfire, you'll get caught up in the crossfire. Crossfire! Oh, I remember that now that you're doing it. Yeah, you remember it?

Have you ever played the game? That's it. I think only like 200 people in the fucking world did. My uncle Josh had it and we played it once and it's actually pretty fun you shoot marbles at like a small little disc in the middle you try to knock it in each other's goal it's kind of like hockey but with guns so uh so the nostalgia thing yes uh a lot of and this is an article in ad week from february 2018 they talk a lot about how the during the super bowl a lot of brands were leveraging the nostalgia for like previous

commercials yeah uh and uh the article said nostalgia creates a story where the brand can be the hero uh a spot that harkens back years or decades demonstrates the idea of trust while simultaneously showcasing a brand's longevity. If you can show that a brand has always been a part of culture, it shows how it's still relevant. Nostalgia is a way to do compacted storytelling, which is especially useful in the Super Bowl. Sure, but it's not like Crossfire had built-in nostalgia when it first aired in 1996 it's not like they capitalized on virtually no i'm talking more like pepsi and coke and like mcdonald's oh yeah i mean how many times have they done like the share a smile with whatever the fuck yeah and when i say that i don't know which one of the two big brown soda companies it is that did it but you know what I'm talking about.

So there was a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research that suggests that people spend more money when they're feeling nostalgic. The authors conducted six experiments that looked at how much people were willing to spend, donate, and value money when feeling nostalgia evoked social connectedness. Yeah, let's talk about my Super Nintendo game collection that I've been acquiring over the last decade. Exactly, yeah. And one of the things I read was talking about how Nickelodeon has capitalized that on a big way. Oh, shit, yeah, I mean, for sure. Releasing all those DVDs of their previous series,

except for Pete and Pete. Well, Pete and Pete is out a couple seasons of it, right? It's just not the whole collection. I mean, this is what Nick Gas is all about, the Games and Sports channel, which like when that dropped on my cable box when I was like 20 years old, I was like, oh shit, stop ever. I don't think

I went to class that week. I think, I mean, a lot of heat gets put on our generation, but I think if this kind of medium existed for the older generation they would be all over it too you know like they don't have that experience that we had yeah where our whole childhood is like a little time capsule that you can get at your fingertips all the time it's

very like uh it's it's done to death right the only 90s kids but there is a part of that where like i remember when it was when i was like you know in my early teens and that's when you first start to find out about like the time period that your parents grow up and not find out about but like give a shit about like learning about like what the 60s 70s and early 80s were like and for me i remember hearing that shit and thinking like well that sounds awesome when we landed on the moon for the first time i bet that was pretty fucking sick man i wish i was around then now that i'm 31 I bet that was pretty fucking sick. Man, I wish I was around then. Now that I'm 31, looking back, I'm pretty fucking stoked I got to be in the 90s.

The 90s were such a buck wild fucking time of shit that as far as I know, just kind of stopped happening December 31st, 1999. And then nobody wanted to talk about it for a long time. And now we're here and we're like, actually, that was pretty tight what happened in the 90s so let me give you a list i got from mashable of the best 90s ads for kids yes yes yes yes number one oh or should i go backwards yeah don't start with number one okay it goes all the way to 15 do you want to hear all 15 maybe start with 10 okay uh so 10 well i'll just go very quickly okay because i don't want to leave any of these out number 15 mousetrap oh yeah number 14 fisher price triple arcade and

tournament table yes clint wilson had one of those it was fucking legit made me an athlete 13 stretch armstrong uh yeah 12 poly pocket yeah 11 soccer boppers you remember those no they were the big inflatable like punching gloves that you could put on your fists oh you could hit people with them no we wouldn't do that in my family 10 zoo books nine super soaker 100 yes eight talk boy yes seven skip it hold on come down for dinner kids it's ready what was it yes no you're exactly right come on down kyle dinner's oh 90s kids don't remember this and then okay so this the kids the list gets confusing here because number six is just mcdonald's okay five is crossfire oh yes four is bubble tape yeah oh shit was like the weird like painted up like teacher lady yeah the animation ghoul

and it was very much like it's very monty python in a way well but six feet of bubble tape for us not them it was all like fuck the police they can't have my bubble tape it's too long for them three is gack yeah well wait i don't remember so much gack commercials i mean i remember it made rude noises i think they had some fun with that okay yeah sure number two mr bucket mr bucket you put the balls in my mouth mr bucket let's spit them right back out yeah i thought this would be a fun game to play with you because the mackleries have an encyclopedic knowledge of television commercials but here mr bucket is light crossfire i'm pretty sure 150 people around the world have ever played mr bucket i am one them. It's a pretty bad game. It's kind of chores.

Number one was one that I had to find on YouTube and watch. Okay. Because I didn't remember it. Gimme. And I don't know why it's number one. Gimme, gimme. Rappin' Rockin' Barbie. No.

That's a deep cut. It's a commercial. Barbie's wearing like a little like quote unquote rap outfit. Oh, that sounds great so far and these two little girls are playing and we're like hearing a rap about how cool barbie's outfit is in that very 90s i see nothing wrong with this this is great sure nothing wrong with this i don't know why that's number one yeah um i did remember when i saw it but again it's gonna watch it did not stick with me gotta at least look at what it looks like yeah not ideal okay okay okay we're done uh yeah so i was glad to bring that this week uh because i was thinking

about um you know all like all the kids watch the youtube and i don't even know like how to find the the hip youtube celebs but i can tell you what i know how to find the soccer boppers commercial i'm surprised that no like video game commercials made this list because those really stand out to me because in the 90s there was this trend of no matter how hardcore a game it was like from doom to like ocarina of time on n64 the theme of so many of those commercials will were like this game will literally fucking kill you idiot it's you're too big a baby to play this game you baby it will kill it will strip the skin from your bones you fucking infant and it's like dude it's pilot wings calm down um hey can i steal your way

hey i've got jumbotrons hit me with that jumbotron stick uh So this next message is for Keisha. It is from Robert to my wonderful wife. I don't know when this message will air. So I'm going to take a wild shot and say that I'm so proud that you became the first kindergarten teacher to make a billion dollars a year and that I was able to quit my job to pet our dog full time. I hope that our robot butler is taking good care of us today. Love, your soup snake. Drag us. Drag us. Drag us through the mud. Got us.

I mean, it's a good point. We are very tardy on these, but robot butlers do kind of exist. What is a Roomba but a robot butler, if you think about it? And I know you're saying it's sort of relegated to just cleaning and sweeping the floors, but I will say, first of all, there's also mopping Roombas. And second of all, you can balance a drink on it. True. Balance a drink on it.

You can balance a lot of things on there. A lot of stuff on it. I've seen a lot of videos with cats on there. I mean, put my nice silver platter on there with a nice China gravy boat full of champagne. Bring that right to me. Okay. This next message to me. Okay. This next message is for Josiah. It is from Heather.

Josiah, you are my sweet and wonderful boy. Thank you for always being there for me, never failing to make me laugh, and for putting up with our three gremlins disguised as cats, Margo, Pearl, and Tinks. You make every day truly wonderful. I love you. Good message. good cat names good love had a good flavor to it i really like the name margo i do too was that the cat or the person it was the cat but i like it in either respect hey if you like your podcast to be focused and well researched and your podcast host to be focused and well-researched,

and your podcast host to be uncharismatic, unhorny strangers who have no interest in horses, then this is not the podcast for you. Yeah, and what's your deal? I'm Emily. I'm Lisa. Our show's called Baby Geniuses. And its hosts are horny adult idiots. We discover weird Wikipedia pages every episode.

We discuss institutional misogyny. We ask each other the dumbest questions and our listeners won't stop sending us pictures of their butts. We haven't asked them to stop, but they also aren't stopping. Join us on Baby Geniuses every other week on MaximumFun.org. Can I tell you about my second thing? Yes. Let's get the holidays going. Okay. It's December. I don't even think we did did we do holiday shit in our first episode in december i don't think i don't think so shameful shame on us the creep is coming a little late this year i guess but it's here and in full effect because

my second thing is the vince guraldi trios a charlie brown christmas album have we never talked about this oh i hope we haven't no gosh you scared the shit out of me it is unbelievable we haven't talked about this this is if if we had to throw away every piece of vinyl that we own save for one album this may be a contender for that very album it is definitely the one that has like gotten the most playtime on our turntable for sure without a doubt griffin don't forget about algero breaking away damn it you're right it's the second that's not a joke it's the second most played it's beautiful it's the one we have is like a reissue it's like translucent green it's sick as shit lovely it is it's so good i don't think there's a lot of like

overtly holiday-y stuff about it like obviously it's playing like you know pretty classic christmas carols and there's a few like uh original tracks on there as well but really it's just like really good like it could be released as not a charlie brown christmas and it could still just be like a great album full of like new jazz standards because that that album is so iconic to me uh obviously it is the uh instrumental and very occasionally vocal accompaniment for the uh a charlie brown christmas special um but i don't really have strong feelings about that special i know a lot of people very much uh like it a lot for me the soundtrack sort of is the bigger the bigger thing for sure um it's just a nice album to put on at a holiday party because it's it's really nice like background music for you

know a party a gathering of friends of any sort or you know doing dishes or any sort of cooking cooking up a nice holiday meal in the kitchen it's just smooth and fucking classy as heck which is unexpected for a child's cartoon holiday special but um so i read a bit about vince geraldi today uh which led to me for the first time in my life actually seeing what he looked like uh my dude's style is very fresh he's got a he's got a fucking. He could ramp a bike off of. It is extremely good. He doesn't look like a Peanuts character, because that's all I can picture.

He doesn't. He looks like a young man with a big mustache, a big old mustache, just a really luxurious mustache. And like I said, there's a few original songs on top of. You're Googling him right now, aren't you? Yep.

It's mostly Christmas carols that are sort of this mix of new arrangements and a ton of piano improvisation from Vince Giraldi. Oh, my gosh. What a big mustache. I'm not joking about the mustache. There's also a couple of original tracks on there. So I want to play one. It's skating, which, like, if you've ever seen the special or listened to the album like this one really stands out because it's super upbeat it's a swinging three four time song that like really kind of like when you listen to it it's like yeah

i could ice skate to this um the other big original song on the album is christmas time is here yes i know that one if you've never listened to this album or watched the special it's inexplicably the sad walking away music from arrested Development it's just like one of my favorite running jokes on that show um there is an instrumental version on the album immediately followed by the vocal version I may have actually switched that around um so originally like Grawley had written the music for the album and it was just instrumental um and then uh the the studio like that was making the Charlie Brown Christmas like special they needed a scene when more kids were singing and they hadn't written lyrics to it yet so the story goes

that Lee Mendelson who was the TV producer behind that that special who actually reached out to Vince in the first place and is kind of responsible for their you know union of Vince Graldi being like the official composer for the whole like Charlie Brown averse uh he in a panic wrote the lyrics to the song in 15 minutes on the back of an envelope oh my gosh it's very good why don't I play a little kind of great. They wanted real kids. Real kids like you might see at a store a car wash or a pharmacy it's a it's a children's choir from a church in in san rafael california um and there are people who are like in that choir who now like have like spoken to

you know different documentaries and people have written books about like the Charlie Brown specials and been like, yeah, it was pretty tight. The kids who participated were paid $5 for their effort. Not great. Probably in terms of labor laws and what have you, they also would take them out for ice cream after each session.

Oh my God. So the vocals for the whole album, there's also a recording of what's the other song that has singing on it oh hark the herald angels sing also has the the kid singing so all of that was recorded over three sessions over the course of two weeks uh and parents the sessions would run like super long into the night and parents of those kids were like what do you do like my kid can't stay out until midnight recording your charlie brown album so they would pull them out and constantly cycle in new kids from the church

the casting crew are constantly changing um they were the kids were directed by a guy named barry uh minia who uh who who wanted the choir to you know know, sound perfect. It's an album and you don't want a shitty take on there. But Mendelssohn and Vince Guaraldi said that they wanted these kids to sound like kids. Like on the TV special, are you supposed to expect that like these professionally trained vocalists just happen to be friends with Charlie and Pigpen and the gang? No, they want them to sound like real kids. And that's why like, especially on Hark the Herald Angels Sing sing like there's a lot of sort of flat notes in that song but like there's an authenticity to it that's really cool um i just man i just love this album it guaranteed gets me

in the mood and it does so in a way that is not like at all obnoxious yeah so many christmas albums are obnoxious and i I love that stuff too, right? Like I'll listen to All I Want for Christmas is You, like the OG cut and still groove to it. But it can get grating after a while. This album I listen to constantly in the month of December and it holds up. I agree. What is your second thing? My second thing is also a holiday album.

Oh boy. Specifically a song off also a holiday album. Oh boy. Specifically a song off of a holiday album. Gimme. So the album is It's a Holiday Soul Party from Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings that came out in 2015. Oh, Sharon Jones. Sharon Jones said good. I didn't realize, so I did a little research on Sharon Jones because, you know, she's got like a very like deep soul voice. Yes.

I assumed that she'd been around forever, but her first album didn't come out till 2002. Kind of like the Charles Bradley arc. Exactly. Yeah, she released her first record when she was 40 years old. It's so good. I know. So in 2014, Jones was nominated for her first grammy uh and then unfortunately in 2016 she passed away from cancer uh but before she did in 2015 she released the it's a holiday soul party

album and so there were uh 11 tracks on it and include a lot of holiday classics like soul versions of things like white christmas silent night please come home for christmas silver bells little drummer boy all awesome the song i wanted to talk about is eight days of hanukkah hell yes uh for those of you that celebrate hanukkah uh like me you may have grown up thinking that uh it was a little disappointing that there weren't more sort of there weren't more Hanukkah jams. Yeah, no, I mean, it was just that Adam Sandler song. And dreidel, dreidel, dreidel. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel is great.

And there's been a lot of great versions of dreidel, dreidel, dreidel. Yeah. Eight Days of Hanukkah blows them all away. It's so fucking good. Mm-hmm. So the soul group counts down the eight days and nights with catchy verses that celebrate what's great about the holiday traditions, presents, and yummy Jewish food.

So if you could play a little bit of that song. Here we go. Those Maccabees who's oiled it, burn it, burn. Day two. Time to spend a great all. And hope that good will show up on my turn. Day three. So another thing I recommend is that you check out the music video for it. They use this kind of animated schoolhouse rock style video that makes the song also feel like from a very specific soul time period and it teaches you a little bit about the history of Hanukkah

yeah for sure like there's there's shout outs to like the Maccabees uh you get a little bit of of the the foods in there it's uh it's really ideal I was excited to find it I was not aware of it until very very recently uh and it it really made my day to know that there's something like that out there and this was not a cover right this was a an original original so good uh yeah sharon jones was an immense talent and this this song is very very fresh we can only play a little bit but good but go listen to it in its entirety and also happy late hanukkah, folks who did celebrate. We didn't shout it out in the last show.

We had a nice little quiet Hanukkah. Henry enjoyed the candles very much. Yeah, it was fun. I would say, Henry, do you want to do Hanukkah? And he would say, yeah. And he'd run over. And then I'd light the candles. As you precariously lit the skinniest candles ever our son would yank

at your pants to add a degree of challenge to it um hey do you want to know what our friends at home are talking about yes here's one from bob who says i love finding the stuff previous owners have used as bookmarks and used books plane tickets magazine subscription cards old coupons i enjoy picturing the moments of the last owner's life that led to the use of that scrap of paper. Yes, I used to love this when I spent a lot more time in used bookstores. Yeah, I wasn't a huge reader, but my dad was obsessed with used bookstores. Every time we went to anywhere on vacation, like anytime we left the city, the state lines of West Virginia, we would go to a bookstore somewhere and peruse it for what felt like hours.

And seeing what I could get to shake out of books was very exciting for me. Not knowledge and stories, but maybe a dollar's in there somewhere. Here's one from Hannah who says, my small wonder today is getting comfy after a fancy event. I just got home from a swanky office Christmas party and I'm flicking off my fake nails,

pulling off my false eyelashes and swapping a spangly dressed a spangly dress for a flannel onesie it's a delicious feeling that is so good yeah i mean getting out of the shoes oh the shoes gross um yeah it's very nice i don't i don. I'm trying to remember. Yeah, it feels nice. I haven't worn formal wear. I don't think I wore formal wear this year. I don't think I put a suit jacket on this year. I can't. Yeah, because all of our friends that were going to get married seem to have gotten married.

I just did it. And so now we don't really have an occasion very often. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Me too. Here's one from Mitch who says, A subtle but wonderful thing I found this week is restroom locks that indicate vacant slash occupied these are becoming increasingly popular at restaurants and bars and are wonderful because they remove the dreaded knock and response

routine usually required to determine a toilet's occupancy yeah yeah yeah this this is griffin's wheelhouse you know what's the opposite of this is just the handle button locks. It's not even like a deadbolt. It's like the button like on the handle to the doorknob. I don't fucking trust those things as far as I can throw them. Well, you always have to test it to make sure it really works. And then you seem like you're worried there's going to be somebody outside who's like, there's somebody trapped in the bathroom.

And then they kick the door down and they see your butt. Never mind. You don't know how i go i perch up on the tank like an albatross like an albatross keeping a ship safe i perch up on the tank back oil would be a good on the toilet backwards like a cool teacher like I've been doing this whole time. What a fun way to potty train Henry. We should really think about that. He walks into the bathroom and sees me sitting backwards on the toilet like a cool teacher. Hey, son, it's time. Come over here.

This is the lever. It makes it go fleshy flesh. So that's our show. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description what else thank you to maximumfund.org for hosting our show yeah you know what i listened to this week uh the flop house has a new episode and they are talking about a christmas movie that i was not familiar with and it was very very funny what was the movie you do not remember i remember well i'm sure it was a good episode regardless um yeah uh thank you to you all for listening oh we have a new website that

has all of our stuff on it i don't think we talked about this last week because it just launched uh it is uh mackleroy.family or the mackleroy.family all of the stuff that we make is going to be on there there's a monster factory up there there's a new monster factory we're gonna be uh doing those i think on a monthly schedule for uh the rest of time uh which is exciting it's also just the uh like the place to go we're gonna be putting like our news and announcements and new merch and stuff um and so yeah we're partnered up with box on that website which was my former employer at polygon they know how to make a fucking good website so we teamed up with them and made one so i hope you will check it out there's a whole wonderful page on there oh and thank you to uh those of you that obviously heard our most recent promo and went into iTunes and left positive reviews that said Amber is the color of our energy.

Oh, good. Thank you. There are at least a dozen. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's it. What do you say we just sort of close it out with a little bit of our own little like improvised holiday jazz? Yes, yes, yes. So what song do you want to like vamp over an existing song or should we just make

up our own uh i i'll we can do like silent night like i've always wanted to hear what a jazz version of silent night would sound like do you want me to i'll just sing like the i'll do the melody of silent night as it traditionally is because that's what they do in the vince grady stuff like they'll play like you know here's what a tenor bomb sounds like but then he'll come in like so i'm gonna just sing silent night and you just jazz on okay yeah yeah do you get it i'll sing it you jazz right on me yeah okay silent night holy night oh the holy holy night i thought it would be more instrumental here why don't you give it to me and I'll jazz on you. That expression is terrible.

It's so good. Let's just try it again with you. Okay. Silent night. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, That's not really improvising as much as that one song. Okay, I got it. Do it again. Do it again.

You're just doing a deconstruction of that. We're done. Bye. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay. Working on pay. Money won't pay.

Working on pay. Money won't pay. Hey! I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. And I'm Judge John Hodgman. If you live on the west coast of North America, we're coming your way. That's right. Judge John Hodgman is taking justice to the west coast on tour. Starting where? Vancouver, British Columbia, January 15th. Then to Seattle, Washington on the 16th. Portland, Oregon on the 17th.

San Francisco, California on the 18th. And Los Angeles, California, the City of Angels on January 22nd. Tickets are on sale now. You can find links to all of the shows at MaximumFun.org. And if you're going to be in one of those cities and you have a dispute, we can try on stage. Send it to us. Just go to MaximumFun.org slash JJHO or email Hodgman at MaximumFun.org. I'm ready to judge you on the road. Take that, Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road.