Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 7: Dog Beach

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Griffin's favorite homemade foodstuff! Rachel's favorite TV storytelling technique! Griffin's favorite jewel-based board game! Rachel's favorite condiment friend! Music: "Money Won't Pay" by Bo En and Augustus: https://open.spotify.com/track/5hs2nY40aeqM0mpP8SBOon MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Boo, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Yeah, I did a, um, it's almost Halloween, so I guess I did a it's almost Halloween so I guess I did a boo there as maybe I'm being like a spooky like a scary ghost this time around about like a dead

person who's still around but see through you know should we agree that next week will be our Halloween episode what day is it I think next week will probably be our Halloween episode that'll be the 25th and we want to get in there before people don't like halloween episodes when it comes in after halloween or maybe we should do monday the 30th that might make more sense this podcast comes out on wednesdays you're correct what happened there

i don't know what I was thinking. Were you thinking that this was my brother, my brother and me? Maybe. Up aboard. There's room on the broom, which is a broom, another spooky Halloween thing. So this is wonderful. It's a podcast where we talk about things that we are into. We talk about things that you're into, things that we're excited about and enthusiastic about.

And I think it's my turn to start. I believe it is. And I really am very excited to start with my first thing. Okay. Because we haven't done one like this before. Okay. My first thing that I'm real into this week and every week of my life for the rest of my life is Rachel's chili. Oh. Oh yeah. No, it's a lot of people I think maybe had that reaction of like, oh, how sweet. I thought we were going to save this kind of stuff for our Valentine's Day episode. No, I mean, I feel no greater love for you than I do when I eat this good, good chili. A lot of people are going to hear this and say, oh, but I want to be entirely sort of academic about this.

I want to be very scientific about this because it's the best fucking chili in the entire universe. Oh, Griffin. No, we can't do that every time. I'm not saying all these things about your just rambunctious chili. It gets in my mouth and it just plays around in there. I'm not talking

about this so you boost your spirits up. Although if that happens, I'm psyched about it because I love making you feel um like like you are treasured because you are because you're a treasure your chili is so fucking good and i'm saying this as somebody who's not always been a chili fan one time when i was a little boy small boy i went to my nani's house and she made me a plate of food and And on that plate was some beans. And I ate the beans. I threw up.

Oh, no. And from that point, I told myself I was allergic to beans. Oh, my gosh. This explains so much. So I just would not eat beans forever, which did not afford me many chili-tunities. And that was especially heartbreaking because Huntington, where I grew up, had a number of food festivals food festivals one of which was chili fest where I think it's in August sometime they like shut down fourth avenue and it's just like all these different places come and they have a chili competition I ask you how old you were when this like chili like seven or eight oh my god my dad

judges the chili competition which is for me hysterical and also sort of a sort of statement about the nature of man and the way that he inevitably harms himself because my daddy's tum-tum is quite bad um but i didn't participate in chili fest because i didn't like beans there's beans all over the damn place there was a restaurant there was a restaurant in hankton called chili willies and they had a cup of what they called Texas red chili, bean-free. It had venison in it. It was amazing. The place shut down when I was in college. That's a big thing with Texas chili is that typically there aren't beans in it. There are no beans in it. My mom made chili growing up, but for me,

it always turned into a sort of bean excavation, just a sort of bean collection. I would lay them out in even rows as I would dig them out and leaving myself with sort of a tomato meat soup. And then what else? I guess I lived in Cincinnati for a while. And Cincinnati, you got a lot going on. Loved living in you. Go Reds.

Your chili is basically sort of cinnamon sweet spaghetti sauce. But keep at it. spaghetti sauce but keep keep at it um rachel's chili is like a sweater that you can eat and that you should absolutely eat it's a sweater you can and should eat you eat it and eat there is nothing better on like a slightly cold day do they call it chili because if you eat it when it's chili it feels like you're eating a big sweater that you should be wearing. You know, that would be adorable if that were the reason. I imagine a lot of it has to do with the ingredients, which include chili powder. Oh, that's probably more what it is. Eating Rachel's hearty ass chili on a cold day is

about the best thing that you can do with your body. I know you're asking me, Griffin, how's the spice? Terrible. Just kidding. Perfect. It's extremely good. You don't want to eat, you don't want to tuck into a big bowl of this hearty, hearty soup mess, and then your mouth is burning the whole time? No, because it's work, eating a bunch of chili, because it's a hearty,

hearty food. You have to attack that motherfucker, but you can't do it if you're getting your mouth burned the whole time, so Rachel's chili doesn't come at you like that. It comes at you with a good savory flavor with a little bit of spice on the back end that just keeps you coming back for more. It's not soup. Because chili should not be soup.

I've had a lot of chili where my friend's like, I made you chili. And I'm like, oh, I didn't know that we were this close. Yeah, it's real soupy. And it's soup with beans. I know what you mean. It's a meat bean soup. Get this the fuck out of here. I've also you mean. It's a meat bean soup. Get this the fuck out of here. I've also had shit that's just a big pile of beans and meat that's kind of wet. And it's like, you've done it wrong also.

Rachel's chili is hearty and savory, but it's also like creamy without cream in it. You know what I mean? Like it's luscious. Do you know what I mean? It all melds together. without cream in it. You know what I mean? Like it's luscious. Do you know what I mean? It all melds together into like it's that perfect, it's a good chili's like a plasma almost. It oscillates between the solid and liquid states.

And that's what you bring to the table. Can I talk a little bit about what's in it? I want to know what your secret is to your chili. Because every time you make it, it feels very experimental. Yeah, it's a little different every time. And I love that because I never know what to expect. So the recipe is actually based on one that I got off of allrecipes.com.

If you Google it, I believe it's called Laura's Slow Cooker Chili. Rachel's Original Chili. I'm not going to pay attention to anything you say about sourcing this recipe. For me, it came from your heart and your brain. They got together for this hot collaboration. So thank you, Laura, wherever you may be, for inspiring this dish. So, gosh, I don't mean. So you saute the meat.

Fuck yeah. With some onions. We had special meat this time that we got from a farmer's market. We went to the farmer's market. They were very intense. Don't cook this above 90 degrees Fahrenheit because it has a low fat melting point. We were like, whoa, shit. Calm down.

It's ground beef. But they were right. There's some kidney beans, black beans. What's up? Is it got sauce? Like you put a tomato sauce starter in there. So then, um, Laura's slow cooker recipe recommends, um, two cans of tomato soup. Laura.

Yeah. So I use a small can of tomato sauce. That's how you make it your own. And then here's the other interesting thing. And this is actually a recommendation on the website. So I can't even take credit for this either. Take credit for it, please. You use a can of

diced tomatoes with some jalapeno peppers in there. So it's kind of like a can of Rotel. Yeah, sure. Can't believe you came up with that on your own, baby. Can't believe you came up with that on your own, baby. Listen, I'm talking about this on you came up with that on your own, baby.

Listen, I'm talking about this on the podcast as advertising because I want to. I'm going to move away from the mic so they can't hear me. I want to start selling your chili. Okay. We're away from the mic so they can't hear us. I want to sell your chili. I want to put you on every jug and vase of this chili. We're going to sell it in vases. And if you say that you got all the recipes and you stole them from an old woman named Laura who you knocked over at a Walmart and stole her recipe book out of her purse,

they're not going to let us trademark it. So just be careful. Let's get back into it. Gosh, yeah. And that's honestly about it. Put it in the slow cooker for four to six hours. I think there's just, I love your chili. I like to add, sometimes I'll add some red pepper flakes if I'm looking for some spice. Didn't this time. Didn't do this time.

Salt, pepper, you know. Loving it. Garlic. I love your chili because it feels good to eat it with my mouth. Um, but really like the love and the love and the secret ingredient is love. Um, when you tell me at like 10 AM,

I'm going to make chili for dinner tonight. I like get excited about the entire day that we're about to have. And that's not a joke. I'm not being like cutesy here. Like when you say at 10 a.m., like, hey, I think we got that ground beef from the farmer's market. I think I'm going to make chili tonight. I just think like, one, that's going to be a good dinner and probably a good lunch the following day. Definitely a good lunch the following day if it survives the dinner.

But also the house is going to be filled with the most wonderful, pungent meat stink that is just going to be like so good. And I don't know, it makes it, we're deep in that season game now and it just feels so, it feels, I don't know, it smells so good. And I just look forward to it so much. I don't know that I've ever made chili in the summertime.

For me, it is an exclusively fall, winter food. Only drawback, perfect chili, very profitable. look for it in your sam's clubs look for the jug and vase with rachel's face on it mama rachel's good chili i want some alliteration though real bad but like a sound like a chunky chunky cheerful cheerful chili cheerful chunks of chili and we'll sell them in little we'll sell them in little um like bags like they used to sell like school milking i thought you were gonna say like squeeze pouches oh squeeze pouch of chili i would fucking destroy those only drawback i love this chili very profitable okay is that it does give me toots that could shatter a car windshield is the only

problem if i'm in the car with all the windows rolled up and then i could do it too and then just sort of the pressure displacement all the wind glass in my car explodes which is problematic when i'm driving a daycare because then the you know the baby seat mirror explodes and i can't see our baby while i'm driving anymore um so that's that's obviously not ideal i have heard and i don't know if it's true i try to do it but i have heard that if you rinse off the beans really well you have less of an issue in that area they got fart particles on you're suggesting that when the beans grow up out of the ground from the good earth that they have they are coated in some sort of fart particle that they picked up

well and i've noticed this too if you rinse a can of beans like a lot of like bubbles will come up that's and you're suggesting that's the fart particles that are just coming up off the beans i gotta be careful here because i gave you i gave you guff on the last episode because i thought you were gonna say the names of the different chemicals wrong or something. And people were like, wow, Rachel actually crushed it. So, like, I'm looking forward to getting mail into our P.O. Box, P.O. Box 66639. I'm in Texas, 78766. Just like, yeah, dude, fart particles, they're real.

The main matter states are neutron, positron, and fart particles. what was the wrongest thing i just said i'm sure we'll hear about it um do you want to tell me about your first great thing yeah and hey thank you i didn't i didn't write down like anything about griffin's great sauce in mine so i'm sorry about that it's fine i just i ate your chili for dinner last night and lunch today and i just like i love eating it but i also love that like when it when i know that you're making it like my whole day is like chili day it's like a little miniature holiday um okay so i am going to talk about first uh you're gonna say furs and i was like whoa really yeah i've got some nice fox and mink um so this topic came to me this is something i realized sometimes i'll think of a particular thing i like and then i'll try and figure out why i like that thing go a little deeper

and so i was thinking about the show my so-called life all right and i was thinking about the show, My So-Called Life. All right. And I was thinking about how I like it so much. Okay. And then I started thinking about what are the things I like about it. And then I realized in general, I think I just like TV shows with narrators. Okay. Because I started looking into My So-Called Life. Yeah.

Which Claire Danes plays Angela Chase. Angela Chase does a lot of narration, very similar to The Wonder Years. Yeah, Wonder Years is, I think, the- Which I also love. Is there a more famous show with narration than, like a more iconic narration show than The Wonder Years? No, but listen to the other shows on this list. I can think of a few off the top of my head. Veronica Mars. Yeah. Scrubs. For sure, that a few off the top of my head. Veronica Mars.

Yeah. Scrubs. For sure, that was one I was thinking of. Arrested Development. Arrested Development's a good one. And then some of the other shows, probably less exciting to you, but I realized also Sex and the City. Grey's Anatomy is like all over that shit. Yeah, and Grey's Anatomy.

And I realized I like all over that shit yeah and gray's anatomy and i realize i like all those shows i really like the episodes of scrubs where the point of view would change when characters would touch each other and then they would be the narrator for a little bit see i don't i i honestly have not seen oh i've seen all of it but it it led me and maybe we can explore this together. Why do I like that so much? Well, it's very literary, right? Like, if a book is written in first person, then you are essentially getting action and dialogue, but also the narrator's thoughts from a first person perspective, right? Which is not something that you get usually from television without a narrator. And so it's like, I think it makes you feel a little bit more intimately

connected with the character speaking, but also like the world that they are plugged into. Like in some ways it's kind of a controlling element. It's kind of like the show the show's directors or writers saying like, we are going to tell you what's really happening here

um well that's the inverse is like sometimes it is also like we can't it's not enough for us to deliver sort of the the moral message of what this episode is trying to get across and just like the action and the dialogue that is happening so we're literally going to have the main character of the show tell you you know sometimes i think it's more important to lie if it means protecting your friend's feelings like yeah i know i just watched you fucking lied to them like i get it you didn't have to come in and then i'm no superman like thanks zach but i i got the message yeah it adds it adds kind of a comedic element a lot to the show uh like especially in the case of shows like Arrested Development and Scrubs, like you mentioned. And it also kind of adds this poignancy a lot, like especially in The Wonder Years, because that's told from Kevin Arnold as an adult. So you get a sense of kind of the significance of what's happening. And yeah, it's very literary, too. It's very much like you're being told a story that's being acted out in front of you.

I honestly think my favorite example of this, because it, I don't know, I really liked How I Met Your Mother. Even though it did have an element of, like, it was Bob Saget who was doing the narration, of like, it was Bob Saget who was doing the narration, and Bob Saget did not play the younger version of the character he was doing the voice of, nor would it be like... Well, it's like Daniel Stern in The Wonder Years. It is, I guess, but it is also like, Josh Radner, I think is the character's name, who plays Ted on How I Met Your Mother,

and old Ted is played by Bob Saget. But Josh Radner's already sort of an older, like he's a dude in like his 20s, 30s. And then Bob Saget is probably in his 50s. He probably just would have been him. I don't know why Bob Saget did the voice of old him. Because Bob Saget, when he was younger, I didn't know what he sounded like. Bob Saget from Full House.

Just saying. I guess I need to circle back with Josh in like 15 years and be like, talk for me, dude. You don't sound like Bob Saget at all. Got you. Yeah, so I thought about talking about all of these shows individually, and maybe not. What's your favorite of all of them?

Oh, man, probably my so-called life. Really? More than Wonder Years? Yeah, I almost, I almost talked about that because the show so uniquely captures kind of the teenage experience. You know, it's like, I don't know if you had a show like that when you were growing up but for me the the voice for angela chase and the words they chose just felt like resonated so strongly with me and i was just like it's like finally a show about the teen experience sure when they're like speaking to that is me there isn't one of these that lasts longer than five years like that it's it doesn't cover the there is a there is a a the reason that like the

teen show market is so like saturated is just because like once a show's a few years old it doesn't work for for me anymore me like an actual teen like in that shit these things have a shelf life of no years and so it's like and that's why like a lot of the greats get in do they think get out and if they stay a little bit too long dawson's creek then they start to lose the plot maybe a little bit maybe yeah maybe there's an episode where a character leans over to pick up an ice cream cone they dropped in the car and die in an accident. Maybe there's a little bit of that that happens to all. So it's great not to name names, Dawson.

But for me, I mean, like, as corny as it sounds, I probably, like, the only one I really watched much of was The O.C., which, while not a representation of the glamorous lifestyle that I lived uh like they talked kind of like how people i knew talked and that was like my first like sort of experience i guess it would have been what else for me like party of five was on or probably dawson's creek was on while i was well i was gonna ask you if you felt that way about boy meets world because i know you're a big fan well yeah but that was more sort of family-friendly sitcom-y. I guess the later episodes did, the later seasons got a little bit more hard. Yeah. But, I mean, fuck, yeah, probably.

I mean, I watched every episode of that a few times, because we had the Disney Channel. Don't want to brag, but maybe it is like the OC, you know? We had the Disney Channel. We did not have the Disney Channel. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Welcome to the Orange County, cuss word, character said. Do you want to steal me away? Wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop.

Now, what's great is I can reverse that right and it'll sound like and it says uh paul is dead do you want to read the first jumbotron message well actually before that we should mention that jumbotrons are about to go back on sale uh i believe november 1st at 11 a.m pacific 11 a.m pacific uh so if you want to get a show a jumbotron spot on the show, I think they are selling through the first six months of 2018. I think we're sold out for 2017 at this point. Yeah, they do sell kind of fast. So if you do want to get a message on the show, make sure that you show up. And you can go to MaximumFun.org slash Jumbotron for more details.

And yeah. Okay, this message is for Becky. for more details. And yeah. Okay, this message is for Becky. It is from Cassie and Lori. To our favorite female parent, although it's surprising to all of us,

The Bachelor has become a delightful part of our lives. So we decided to celebrate you with a shout out from your favorite podcast. From your best daughter's happy, probably late Mother's Day. Enjoy your last one before becoming a grandma. That's a late one.

You're going to be the greatest. That's a late one. That one outlived the original podcast. But that's okay. We knew this would happen. This is still your favorite podcast. Yeah, I hope so. I think it's really only gotten better.

Despite what those three negative iTunes reviews we've gotten that we, for some reason, just can't stop focusing on. I've said it on other podcasts. Thank you for listening at any point in history. And if you have stopped, say lovey. Congratulations, Becky. You get to be a mother year-round. So it is always a happy day for you. Every day should be Mother's Day Day is what I'm always saying.

A lot of hot takes. Everyone I meet, I just say that to them. I got a message for Chris and it's from Robin who says, the last year being married to you has been amazing from having the best wedding ever

to spending our honeymoon and now our first anniversary at the happiest places on earth. I'm glad you're my fam, my boo, and my bubs. I am in love with you, and I'm glad we're on this journey together. I couldn't not read that like Chris Harrison, which was challenging. Thank you for being the world's most wonderful husband.

That's a sweet, sweet message from Robin for Chris, putting down a lot of stuff there about best wedding, best husband. I like Bubz. I like Bubz as a nickname. Can we talk about it? Do I get to say? Oh no, I don't have to call you that. I'm just saying from afar I enjoy that.

Can I call other people Bubz? Like I'm Wolverine? Like you're Wolverine? Hey Bubz. He calls people Bub or Bubz or Bubby. i think he says bubby hey bubby stink and it's a clause sound they say stink every time you know when i was a kid yeah um and i was learning about the jewish faith because of my heritage. Yeah. Grandma and Grandpa are Bubby and Zadie. I like that very, very much. I think I learned that from Rugrats, as I learned so many Yiddish turns of phrase.

Thank you, Rugrats. Hey, you with the headphones. Just between you and me, the MaxFun store just got some of that sweet, sweet new merchant stock. You know, that merch from your favorite MaxFun shows? Could be posters, tote bags, shirts, stickers, patches, aprons. We got it all. Well, we got a lot.

Point is, there's some new stuff. Go to MaxFunStore.com. Do you want my second thing? Yes, please. My second thing is a board game, and you've played it with me before. It's not one I made, though, so I guess... It's a board game Rachel made. You really spoiled me with that first one.

It's a board game Rachel made called Dog Beach. And the point of it is you have to get all the dogs on your beach. And you do this by drawing development cards. And it's a very complicated game. I'm very confused. You look at the box, and it's got dogs playing on a beach. the box you look at the box and it's got dogs playing on a beach and it says by rachel mcelroy i don't remember making this game but then you open it up in the instruction book there's like 500 pages and there's like warlocks with subclasses

and it's like i just wanted to play dog beach but then all of a sudden you're rolling 15 sided die which i didn't even know was a shape that was possible. And there's a whole faction system that's incredibly complicated. I don't understand it. I'm making a very elaborate joke right now, and Rachel doesn't seem to be getting it at all. I hate playing in Griffin's space. I'm Rachel's brain. Nothing makes me happier than watching him squirm in his space alone.

I won't play with him. Dog Beach? Why did you call it Dog Beach, the board game you made about dogs playing on a beach, Rachel? I was so fixated on that, I couldn't even pay attention to all the other good goof work you were doing. I didn't name it Dog Beach. You called it Dog Beach. So let's move on together and talk about Splendor. Okay.

Splendor is a very good board game. It is by a company called Space Cowboys. Game came out in 2014. And it's kind of like my favorite type of board game, which is like the kind that is really quick to learn and pick up. But then every time you play it, there's like different, there's variety from session to session.

And you can, you kind of have to use different strategies and react to sort of the the hand that that fate dealt you and sort of to counter these strategies that your your opponents are using well and it's the kind of game too that the very first time you play like recently we played it with a group of friends and um our friend who was completely new to the game ended up winning her very first time right um so like this idea of like a game that's easy to what was it there's that video the the board game mastermind where you had to put the pegs in and then the other player would tell you like how many colors you got right and if they're in the right position i think the tagline for that was easy to learn difficult to master or something like that

i'm sure every board game at some point has used that as their tagline but i really like that like katana is like that like katana is not too hard to learn how to play and then every time you play it there are certain random elements where it's like oh it's different this time uh we like this game machi koro that is kind of also a resource gathering game um but splendor is like my favorite version of that it falls into a genre called engine building which is basically this idea of you creating strategies early on in the game to support big, big moves later on and building like a ladder to help you support those, those moves. So really quick,

basically the basic breakdown is every player on their turn can either sort of collect some gyms from a pool. I think you're allowed to take like three gyms or you can purchase a card which will count as like a permanent gem in your collection so that whenever you buy something in the future, if it costs like one ruby and you have one ruby card, then you don't have to spend anything. You just have this permanent thing. The idea is that you try to build a basically a bank for yourself where you don't have to

spend any money on cards. You can just pick them up for free because you have the the cost covered by by these permanent, uh, gems in your, in your collection. I hope that wasn't too complicated. Um, and then the, the, the cards come in different tiers and the higher ones have victory points on them. And once you collect a certain number, then, then you win. Um, and so the whole time you are building, you're like racing against your opponents to build these ladders, to help you build these big cards by investing in cheap stuff that's going to help you buy more expensive stuff which is going to help you buy more expensive stuff and so on and so on um while also everybody else is competing and maybe somebody else is doing sort of the same ladder that you're doing and so

you are racing to get the the card before your opponent so this is there's several levels to this game and i tend to play at a very base level where I play my own game, where I'm just thinking about what I want to do and the points I want to get and how I want to get those points. And then there's kind of the next tier up, which is, I believe, the way Griffin plays most games, where he is trying to figure out what everybody else is doing and play a little defense and try and kind of figure out, okay, if they're going for those cards, then that's how I'm going to play my game so that it prevents them or gets ahead of them. Four-dimensional chess is what, what's great about Splendor is in addition

to these sort of two basic moves of either collecting gems to buy stuff or buying stuff, there is a third thing you can do, is reserving a card which is like you take it off the table um and it doesn't count as a gem in your collection um but you keep somebody else from buying it until you and you alone can buy it later on so it kind of takes two turns to do like something that normally takes one but if you can't afford it right now but you want to make sure nobody else gets it or you see somebody's like about to win on this turn. If they buy this card, you snatch it up and you keep them from doing it. And you're kind of constantly choosing.

You're constantly like prioritizing different things. Like I love games like this where you have a starting point and you see what the, the lay of the land is. And then you try to figure out what your end point is. And so you have your start point and your end point and the whole game, you are just trying to walk this tight rope between those two points and make it work. And I think Splendor is a really, really brilliant, infinitely playable version of that.

The game takes like 30 minutes to play also, which, hey, board game developers, is the right amount of time. Can we talk about the packaging? It's so good. All the little compartments for the cards and the gems fit just so they're perfectly sized the little gem tokens have some weight behind them which like when you reach over to pick up some gemstones it's like that feels good when you put away this game it is just always very satisfying because everything has a place and it looks like it did when you first bought it yeah it's wonderful super good i I think they just announced an expansion to it in June.

I don't know if it's out yet or not, but we've played a lot of Splendor this year. I think it is a brilliant board game. It's more often than not, like if I know my friends are into it and they are over and want to play a board game, it's the one we reach for because we can play it a couple times.

Yeah, there's no actual board. It's just cards and gems, so you can spread it out anywhere. And I love board games. I love super complicated board games and stuff, but we don't play those. We have a wrapped copy of Betrayal at House on the Hill just because it's like, oh, it's going to be hard to onboard somebody onto that one. Splendor takes like a minute to teach somebody the rules, and then you can just keep playing. Good job, Space Cowboys.

It's a very good game. Go play it. It's won like all kinds of awards. If you have not played it, I think it's great quite as good as dog beach dog dog beach is second dog beach is a game that i made and forgot about and then couldn't remember anything about it until griffin reminded me and let me just tell you those dogs you want to get all of them on that beach yeah one time i got close I was short one terrier. But then they countered me on the next turn with an ultra cancel.

Well, and terriers are worth a lot of points. Terriers are worth 100,000 points. And I don't know why the game works that way. It's sort of a golden snitch situation. And you just announced there's an expansion pack for Dog Beach coming out. And I was wondering if you could tell us the name of that. It's called Dog Palapa. It focuses more on the city building aspect of Dog Beach.

And so you start out with palapas, which, as we know from our previous television watching, are very small enclosures on a beach setting. Yeah. But you build up from the palapa. Okay, to like an empire, like a dog empire. To a dog empire. a dog a dog empire no bones about it this is a great game and so that's the review quote that you can use on the box i just said it you can attribute it to me not to be confused with the television show empire not to be confused which rachel did make a board game adaptation of that was critically

acclaimed at one of the boardies do you want to tell me about your second thing yes this is going to be such a long episode because we spent so much time on talking about Dog Beach, which there's a lot to talk about. It's a complicated game. My second thing is the Lazy Susan. Get ready.

Why that name? I hope part of this is the etymology of the name Lazy Susan. I was hoping for that too uh so the reason i came up with this topic um you reach for apple the other day couldn't quite reach it but then you spun that helpful friend we we had a lazy susan at my house growing up which is kind of ridiculous because i'm an only child so it was just me and my parents there wasn't a lot of passing that needed to be done built in cabinet lazy

susan or like shell like top of the because we had a built-in cabinet lazy susan and that shit was no that's incredible yeah it was so good um so the lazy susan uh goes all the way back to the 18th century um but from what we can tell, it was not actually called the Lazy Susan back then. And when I say we, I mean other internet experts. It was called a dumbwaiter. Dumbwaiter is a different thing. I know. I know.

Here's the thing, though. Dumbwaiters used to describe anything that removed the need for waitstaff. This sucks. This is a bad naming convention. You fucking dumb waiter. You can't lift something up a tiny shaft up to my attic. What's wrong with you? It was not only revolving tabletops like the Lazy Susan, but also the elevators that carry plates of food.

Why can't it just be like efficient Jeremy? Like, oh, yeah, it would take a lot of energy for you to stand up and hand me the salt shaker. And so you just spun this little turntable. That's very efficient, Jeremy. And not that's lazy, Susan, or that's you're being dumb waiter. I was a lazy Susan didn't come around to the fifties and sixties. And before that, the earliest print reference to a lazy Susan was an ad in a vanity fair magazine from 1917, which. It almost certainly has to be somewhat hateful in the origins of the name, right? Yeah.

Like, is your... Get ready, I've got text here. Oh, no, shoot. So it was $8.50, and the copy was an impossibly low wage for a good servant. And it refers to Lazy Susan as, quote, the cleverest waitress in the world. Holy shit, guys. Yeah. so lazy susan as quote the cleverest waitress in the world holy shit guys yeah it's a little disc that you spin around on ball bearings or what have you or some sort of spindle it's not a person but even if it was that's a horrible way to talk about them now i feel bad for this turntable

i feel like the turntable is being taken advantage of in some way. So another popularization occurred, as I mentioned, in the 50s at Chinese food restaurants. Oh, okay. So with the popularization of Chinese food, which happened in San Francisco's Chinatown, there were a new group of entrepreneurial restaurant owners who took the small amount of space they had been given for these restaurants and used the Lazy Susan as kind of an innovation to get various dishes and sauces to a round the table. I'm into that. Good thinking. Clever stuff.

Yeah. I just want to take I love a Lazy Susan. I'm right there with you whenever I see one unless unless unless if it's one of those deals where it is like fucking a fucking gigantic glass disc where if you put any amount of pressure on it it starts to wobble like it's going to slide off and cut you in half a thing i think about basically constantly. No thanks. That kind of, I need it to be structurally sound, a structurally sound Lazy Susan, not some flimsy glass on like a tiny, tiny, tiny little spindle.

You know what I mean? I'm gonna put this big bowl of beans on it to poison Griffin because he's allergic later. And then like it falls, it doesn't spin anymore. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think as a kid, anything that spun at the dinner table was an exciting thing. Yeah.

But also, it's nice if you want to kind of forego the formality of saying, excuse me, will you please pass me the ketchup? Because, you know, I didn't like to... Well, one, I didn't like ketchup as a kid. Talk to your parents when you were eating i i didn't i didn't like to well one i didn't like ketchup talk to your parents when you were eating with i don't understand no i just you know i it didn't

want to go through the hassle of of interrupting someone else's meal to get what i needed i just wanted to reach for the the disc and serve myself helpful disc i love it i love a lazy susan we just need a better name for it because I genuinely feel uncomfortable saying Lazy Susan I want to say like Helpful Food Friend there's like Infinite

Spin Pal Dish Dancer Dish Dancer is so good there's literally anything but the fuckers in the 50s were like, I want to call something Lazy Susan. That. Like, I just hate Susan so much. I'm going to call this Dish Dancer a Lazy Susan.

I'm coming up with a jingle right now in my head. For the Dish Dancer? Okay. Spin me salt to dish a dancer help me season my help me season my what help me season my meal today sort of a sort of a minor key funeral church version

of a disco dancer. Get me soy sauce and lanolin. Lanolin is on the table? I don't know. What's the final? You had a busy day today. That one still works. Yeah. That one still works. Yeah, so the Lazy Susan, there's a lot of scuttlebutt on the internet about it starting with Thomas Edison or Thomas Jefferson.

Oh, I don't listen to any of that. And in reference specifically to one of their lazy daughters, but that's not true. Nobody has agreed to that. I looked at some articles from like Smithsonian Magazine and nobody can pull it back to them. Lanolin is wool wax or wool grease. A wax secreted by the sebaceous glands of wool-bearing animals. I'm curious why that's at the table. Don't look that up.

Look up the lyrics to Tiny Dancer because I thought... Sheets of linen. Oh. It doesn't say sheets of lanolin lay me down in waxy lamb sheets i like to be a sticky boy what are you saying wax me up my sticky lady i always thought it was sheets of lanolin. Cover me in sheets of wool wax? I don't know. It doesn't make sense.

This is actually, this is another funny, another funny thing. All of the, everything Rachel said in the past 10 minutes has been her pretending to do narration for me. So it was me who thought all of these things, like that elton john was singing about sheets of lanolin this is a piece of uh of lore and my family um i am notorious for misinterpreting song lyrics and my mom told me that um you know that song zippity doodah yeah instead of mr bluebird my shoulder, I used to think it was Mr. Beanbag on my shoulder, which doesn't make any sense. It's better, though. So is that it? You want to talk about some submissions from our listeners? Yes, please. I'm so glad I fact-checked Lanolin, because I wasn't 100% sure I knew what it was. And if I hadn't, we would have gotten a lot of

very, very confused. I thought I was pulling an original Tiny Dancer lyric. So here's one from Josh G, who says, I've been really digging on the band Wolfpack lately. Have we talked about Wolfpack? We haven't. I don't think so. Particularly their bassist, Joe Dart. Look him up if you haven't. He's extremely talented.

But the thing that makes me happy about this band is that a lot of their stuff is pretty bass driven. And the fans know that. During live shows, people get really pumped about Joe and his incredible playing, and as a bassist myself, it's always heartwarming to see a frequently overlooked part of the band get the enthusiasm it deserves. Wolfpack fucking rules.

Joe Dart fucking rules. Griffin has gotten multiple members of the McElroy family into this band. Yes, and just anybody on the street. Animal Spirits is extremely good back pockets very very good they have a bunch of really really good jams i also love bass i also didn't appreciate bass in songs until i got rock band and then whenever you're playing rock band you usually want to be playing guitar or drums or singing and so every time you get stuck on bass it's like oh bass it's usually the most boring part of the song until you play a song with the

freshest fucking bass line like let me hit you with this big surprise. You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette has the freshest fucking bass line ever. I remember the first time I played it on a rock band, I was like, I guess I have to play bass on You Oughta Know. No, it's extremely, extremely good. Next time you listen, listen for that bass line. Yeah, I don't usually notice it. It's all over the place. Here's one from Madison who says,

just wanted to take a moment to talk about theme parks, specifically Harry Potter World, and how crazy it is to me that places like Harry Potter World and other magical theme parks like Disney World are all because a person was sitting there and came up with a world. Everything down to the smallest detail is because J.K. Rowling is a magical genius, and now I and so many of my fellow theme park nerds can enjoy this amazing creativity. And I find that wonderful.

This is where you're announcing the Adventure Zone theme park? The Adventure Zone theme park. No, I think that I love. That would be cool though, right? It would be pretty cool. I love theme parks, but I had never really thought of it this way. Just like you walk through Harry Potter World and what if you're J.K. Rowling and you walk through there and you're're like, oh yeah, all of this shit is here because I thought of it with my fucking brain. What's up?

Yeah. Or the Jurassic Park ride. Yeah. Michael Crichton. Yeah. Michael Crichton just having fun with his friends. I made that up. That's a T-Rex, Michael.

You didn't. I invented him. Or the Garfield ride. The Garfield ride. Jim Davis goes on that and he's like... Where you shoot down through a pan of lasagna. Yeah. And you shoot terrorists.

Yeah, I don't know why they went in that direction. Well, Jim Davis loves his country. Hates Mondays. Here's one from Andy who says says i've been so happy watching the new season of the good place on nbc this is a show for many of the same creative minds behind parks and recreation so if you're not watching it i feel comfortable in saying it's up your alley it's got kristen bell and ted dancing to start and a host of others that i wasn't familiar with before this show but they tell so many great jokes every episode the good place is a very very good

television show yeah i bounced off of it the first time i tried to watch it because the first like four episodes i was like okay i kind of get it now i go some places and it goes it in the second season uh it's it has some of the most like ingenious premises for a television show where every episode you're like oh well that's the end of the show right like every episode kind of feels like a series finale a little bit. It's very impressive. One last one is from Kyle. This is something y'all might be familiar with around Texas.

The Polyphonic Spree. The choral and symphonic rock sounds of this band set my mind right every time I listen to them. Their last album, Yes, It's True, is a great example of a fall album that I think is just wonderful. I also kind of associate them with fall. I'm not entirely sure why. That's interesting. I think of them as wonderful. I also kind of associate them with fall. I'm not entirely sure why. That's interesting.

I think of them as more of a summer band. They definitely have some summery tones. But yeah, I've been a big fan of Polyphonic Spree for quite some time. They are a Texas. We went to see them once and it was kind of uncomfortable because Tim DeLotta was very angry at the audience because we didn't know the lyrics to some... It was Nirvana. He got angry at both things. the audience because we didn't know the lyrics to some it was it was a nirvana he got he got angry at both things it was it was it was a strange vibe for the show but yeah he did uh we were just he did lithium and he would like oh man it was so rough i don't i i don't want to

harsh the vibe because i do love this band but he'd be like i'm so happy and he'd stick the mic out to the crowd and people be like he's like really he got like he got kind of pissed off it was a very intimate venue and it's one of those venues where you get kind of nervous uh looking directly at anyone in the band we were we were front row center also yeah you could very easily make eye contact yeah it was it was it was rough but great band uh incredible band st vincent got her start in that band i I think still plays with them sometimes. You've probably heard Night and Day, which is their light and day, I should say,

which has been in a bunch of commercials, an episode of Scrubs. This is our Scrubs episode. Yeah. Thank you all for listening to Wonderful. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay, which you can find a link to that

in the description of this episode. Thanks to maximum fun for having us. What are some great maximum fun shows that friends can find at maximum fun.org? New one. Heat rocks. Heat rocks. If you like podcasts where people talk about things they're excited about, heat rocks is a great opportunity exclusively about music,

but they bring in cool guests to talk about their favorite songs and albums and it's a it's a treat it's a cool new thing uh if you want to hear other stuff and videos that we do you can go to mackroy shows.com you can find a purchase link for dog beach on there um it's 199 there's so many pieces of big fucking box. Well, but you get the commemorative backpack that holds the game and the four commemorative dogs. Oh, there's dogs in the backpack? Well, there's large dogs. They're like... You shouldn't put dogs in a backpack, baby.

They're like life-size dogs that come with the are they alive are they real dogs no no to which question because i asked you two questions and depending on which one no is assigned to is going to change sort of the mood in the room and the listenership. Real dogs. Okay. They're like, they're like toy dogs that you might display in your office.

Let's say cool. One is the terrier. Aren't you glad I called it dog beach. Now we got so much, so much. I'm so glad that you called it Dog Beach. Yeah. Whatever.

The facade is broken. Thanks for listening. Bye. Bye. Bye. Hey! Working on it! Money won't pay! Working on it! Money won't pay! Working on it!

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