Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 8: Candy Bones

Episode Date: October 26, 2017

Rachel's most spooktacular waxy candy! Griffin's most haunted national pastime! Rachel's most terrifying fashion ointment! Griffin's most ghoulish horror movie! 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. Click clack, click clack, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. You're making a face, was the that sound was i know you're confused my skeleton bones because i'm a skeleton i'm doing halloween fun i'm a skeleton so i walk around it goes click clack click clack and when i eat soup it falls right through my bones body because i don't have uh skin to catch it skin is basically a tote bag for all the food that you Oh no, she's a Medusa.

No. That's the ghost sound. I did ghost last week. I thought you might want to mix it up and be a Medusa or a mummy or a swamp thing or an Iron Man or a I'm the planet and I'm

heating up. See, now i'm getting genuinely kind of uh this is wonderful it's a podcast where we talk about things that are good and since it's our special halloween episode because we're not gonna have another episode until november 1st we thought we'd get real scary and that's why i am sorry i deceived everybody and pretend to be a skeleton i'm i have flesh i have organs i got brain and eyes i'm your hair and it's turning gray why are you doing that to me you're doing real world problems i hate them skeletons don't exist except the ones inside our body but i don't have to see those every freaking day it's true it's our halloween sp, spacular. And I'm so excited for this holiday. It's probably what third,

fourth best holiday. Do you count my birthday as a holiday or I guess your own? I do not know. Okay. Well, third best holiday then my birthday stopped mattering after I turned 30. That's a dark picture. You've just painted for me.

Cause I just had that one. Are you saying 31? My birthday stopped mattering. Oh no baby. Um, I'm so excited are you how are you vis-a-vis halloween because i i feel like i know the answer yeah griffin knows this about me i have lost enthusiasm for halloween almost entirely because all it seems like now is a list of chores that i have to complete by october 31st like now is a list of chores that i have to complete by october 31st i want to paint i want to i want to explain all of this is because we just cannot go out and get turnt anymore and i really feel like there's a lot of things i really like about this holiday even though we don't go

out and get turnt anymore but that really is like you get your costume and you put it on and you go out and you have like a fun night with you know a fun mischievous night with lots of you know pranks and spirits and can't tell you the other thing i mean not only am i'm gonna be missing the mischievous pranks this year but i'm also still not eating dairy yeah because of the baby favorite favorite things to eat are little fun size snickers i know i love fun size everything but it's you know you can still have all my favorite candy like sour patch kids you can't have it because it's mine but um yeah i i still love me a good halloween though and i'm excited to talk about our favorite halloween stuff i mean even even for uh for an old scrooge but for

halloween what would that be it could still be scrooge, but for Halloween, what would that be? It could still be Scrooge because three ghosts showing up and it's still like, whoa. Yeah. Isn't that spooky? How haunted. Anyway, even for an old ghost Scrooge like me, there are still some good parts. I love Halloween. I'm not going to let you poo-poo the spirits.

You want to hear my stuff? I want to hear your first thing. Yes, please. I love how. I'm not going to let you poopoo the spirits. You want to hear my stuff? I want to hear your first thing. Yes, please. I love how you print it out. I do. I take notes and make sure it fits on one piece of paper. Oh, God, that's good. Yeah. Use like a size nine font. Get it all on there. Oh, baby, you are singing my tune. My first Halloween item that I think is wonderful and accessible to me as a dairy-free woman is the candy pumpkin. Candy pumpkin, like the little, not the Reese's pumpkin. Like the- Like the Mellow Cream. Do you say Reese's?

Yeah. Oh, that's sweet. Reese's Pieces. So wait, which one are you talking about? Like the little waxy little son of a gun? Uh-huh. Baby, this is an unexpected turn of events. It is.

I don't usually like sugar candy. The Mellow Cream Pumpkin is made primarily from corn syrup, honey, carnauba wax, and sugar. Okay, wax being sort of the key. These are candy corns in the shape of pumpkins which is why i was so surprised because you're not a candy corn fan are you i think i like the density of a pumpkin uh it feels like a more substantial treat but you do not like you do not like a candy corn i mean i don't dislike a candy corn it's just almost like nothing it's over before you even start it see my thought when i eat a waxy waxyaxy candy corn is never like, I wish it was like 2.5 times as much mass in a different shape.

But still a lot of. You know, I think what it is, I think it's the texture. I think it's the honey in there. Okay. And the Chris Karabas wax. Here's the lead singer of Dashboard Confessional. Okay, thank you. I was going to ask.

Spooky. Wow, we did that at the same time that was sort of a halloween dashboard confessional mashup i'll do dashboard confessional on these episodes i don't give a fuck i literally don't we're on episode eight i don't give a fuck anymore i'll talk about dashboard i mean i guess so when i was in college and that band was popular it was it was not for me. It was for the, it was for the, for the people that were the people who felt,

yeah, the people that were just a little bit more sad. I feel everything. Yeah. Um, tell me more about this. Okay. Here's what I love about Wikipedia.

Sometimes you get little gems, like a quote, sometimes called Candy Corn's first cousin. Nah, you can't call it. If I take a Snickers bar and I roll it up with 2.5 times more Snickers bars and I put it in a big lump, this is the cousin

of Snickers. It's not like if I went into Walgreens and was like, oh yeah, excuse me, where do you keep the familial relation of Candy Corn? You know. You know what I mean. You know the cousin uh so candy pumpkins i've never seen you eat one of these i feel like you're talking about yay right now no i do i like them all right do you have a secret stash like in the bathroom cut like you keep it in the toilet tank and you just like dip in there you hide it in the vents

like you're walter white and you go in there you have a little pumpkin party? I don't have a problem, Griffin. I just enjoy it. Okay. Okay, so believe it or not, they are made using a similar process to the way they make candy corn. A different mold, though, I bet. A lot of earth-shattering information they provide here. Here's the thing that I found interesting. Okay. should provide here uh here's the thing that i found interesting okay uh they've been around since like the mid 20th century so like the 50s okay which that actually tracks for me

you you you're not surprised it doesn't seem like a modern sort of invention by the way that's the first time i've said that word halfway normal in almost a decade um so like the 50s is coming around it's like we need more stuff to throw in these kids bags and so candy corn been around since the 20s holy shit took them okay but like several decades trick or treating in popular culture has not really been around since the 20s which to me means is the 20s all saints eve or whatever rolls around and folks are like we need some to eat this was not like a dispensing mechanism this was like i want to eat this waxy corn well yeah i mean candy corn doesn't necessarily have to be seasonal if you think about it it absolutely what are you what what have you what have you just said okay take out the colors let's

just say it's like a yellow corn. It's just white like a dog's tooth, like you're eating dog teeth. Yeah, I love it. Merry Christmas. Here's some dog teeth. Or like the summertime treat, which is corn. Holy shit. You just made me think about just like chilling on the lawn in July,

and I reach into a big bag of candy corn or candy dog teeth, and I just start chewing away at those. And you've you've you've sent a chill up my spine happy march here's a candy cane what are you saying so mellow cream is when all those ingredients i mentioned earlier are combined and make love turned into a syrup uh it has kind of a mellow creamy texture which is why they call it mellow cream is there anything dairy in it? Can you call it cream at that

point? No, honey. Think about honey. Why, baby? I totally just razzed you and burnt you up. Is this how our podcast is now? We just try and make fools of each other.

Burn was so good, I'm playing my ribs like a xylophone. I'm not a skeleton. I gotta stop this. Okay, here's what might be kind of a turnoff to you. Because I'm rock hard right now thinking about eating pumpkin, wax pumpkins. Next line. The mellow cream slurry is then divided into two uneven amounts. With the large amount receiving orange food coloring and the smaller receiving green food coloring.

Now, which part's which in that one? Just kidding. I know. One part's this. And then they just put it together in a mold and bada bing bada boop? Yeah. Okay. Send to a drying room to dry for 24 to 36 hours.

Once dry, the candy is shaken violently to remove excess corn starch. Get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck out of there, pumpkin candy. I'm so comfortable. And a final glaze is added to give the candy pumpkin a sheen. Okay. All of that. Great. Next phase.

This is what I was like, should I really talk about these pumpkins? Griffin's not going to be interested. Can I tell you something, though? I was not into it at first. Somehow you describing how it's made made me think of how it's made. And if I saw pumpkin candy on how it's made

or unwrapped, well, anything I see in unwrapped or how it's made, I'm like, I want to fucking eat that. It's like, are you sure because it's uh car rims uh candy pumpkins played a role in the current u.s implementation of daylight savings time oh god what did they petition against it please since the 1960s candy makers had wanted to get the trick-or-treat period covered by daylight savings, reasoning

that if children had an extra hour of daylight, they could collect more candy. And so during the 1985 U.S. Congressional hearings on daylight savings, which hold on to your butt, guys, that must have been thrilling. The industry

went so far as to put candy pumpkins on the seat of every senator hoping to win a little favor so they were hoping that daylight savings time would be repealed so that kids would have more time right because in the in the oh no i guess it would be extended okay past halloween kids could trick-or-treat interesting so so it used to be daylight savings would roll over sometime before Halloween. Yeah, from what I gather. God, if only there was an easy way to fix all of that. Like, say, abolishing fucking daylight savings time.

What the fuck are we doing, guys? It's 2017. I don't want to get into that, Griffin. No, it's dark at 3 o'clock. Griffin, this is wonderful. This is the podcast. Wonderful. You know what's wonderful?

The sun. Give it to me. I. You know what's wonderful? The sun. Give it to me. I'm not going to argue you on that one. So on July 8th, 1986, Reagan signed the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act into law. Which changed time? Which contained a daylight savings rider, which continued daylight savings until the early morning of the last Sunday in October. Politics are so fucking buck wild. Fire is bad, and also it's an hour I gave you.

I'm Ronald Reagan. Here's something that's crazy that just slid by me. In 2005, Daylight Savings time was extended to the first Sunday in November. What? In 2005 2005 this happened like that was the year i graduated high school how did i not fucking know that i don't know so we can all agree we're playing fucking calvin ball with daylight savings time then yeah it was extended to the first sunday in november just long enough to include halloween that wild that is pretty wild i never really thought about it. I, being a Midwesterner, thought about it

and its relationship to the people that had to go out and work the land. The agricultural community. And so I thought it was very much based on the seasons for each particular year. I did not realize it was just legislation. We're just playing fun. We're just playing fun. Big candy

sliding pumpkins onto chairs. Jesus. And that's all it took was one pumpkin, one wax pumpkin candy. How many people fucking sat on it and got all over it? Fucking Robert C. Bird sat down. A pumpkin. No, I've been bedeviled. Hey, lobbyists, don't worry about so much money.

All you need is some wax pumpkins. Just one pumpkin. Can I ask you, I don't have any candy as either of my things so i want to take do you have another is your other one also candy okay then i want to ask you what's your favorite halloween candy is it is it with pumpkins because i think it's the the reese's chocolate peanut butter pumpkin but i just like chocolate peanut butter in general yeah um so yeah i mean i guess i could have talked about that but it's it's not as wonderful to me since i will not be eating it this halloween i always liked dots in a halloween

because you get the oh my gosh you're the weirdest person in the world griffin not only like dots um do you eat good and plenty fuck no okay i mean mike and ike's mike and ike's that's what i'm thinking good and plenty is gross good and plenty is like the kind of candy where you see it at the Do you eat Good & Plenty? Fuck no. Okay. I eat Mike & Ike's. Mike & Ike's. That's what I'm thinking of. Good & Plenty's gross. Good & Plenty's like a little- It's like the kind of candy where you see it at the movie theater and you think, that must have been there since 1992. Okay, but I won't buy a big box of it out to the movie theater.

Let me explain. Dots are little gumdrops. That's all they are is just gumdrops, and they take forever to eat. Yes, and they take out every single filling you have in your mouth. Yeah, but I mean, it's not like I have any fillings. Oops, I have like 16. I get it. You get a little box of it and you pull it out of the bag and then you

see it and you're like, I don't know. I don't know about you, Dots. But then you think about it and it's like, I can spend like a half hour eating this small box of five Dots. You cannot argue with that time to candy ratio. What other food in your life do you think,

this will take me a long time to eat and I'm excited about that? I mean, very little, but I mean, it's not candy. If I see a Three Musketeers or a Milky Way, Milky Way is probably my favorite candy bar. You crack open a Milky Way, it's like, yeah, I'm about to eat a milk. Oh no, it's gone. Dots are like, here I go. Let me get a book.

So if candy came on bones, let's gone. Dots are like, here I go. Let me get a book. So if candy came on bones, let's say, like ribs, or like inside a shell, you would be super into that. Oh, my God, baby. If I had to crack open a crab leg and inside was like gummy worms. Not nougat, but like, you know, Sour Patch. Actually, I take it back. Crab meat is the greatest invention. Can I do my first thing? Yes.

I'm going to switch mine up because like it's so germane now. Because it's our first Wonderful, I feel like I can go pretty broad. It's crab legs. It's crab legs. Thank you. Spooky Halloween treat. They look like big red spiders. I just want to do trick-or-treating.

Oh, this is, I got suspicious earlier when you seemed to know so much about when trick-or-treating oh this is i got suspicious earlier when you seem to know so much about when trick-or-treating started so uh the act of like trick-or-treating and i want to be very clear here that i'm talking about a separate thing than halloween and i also don't want to spend like a super long time getting into the origins of it are you going to talk about the thing yes that is unique? Yes. Okay. The act of trick-or-treating has a few different origins, ranging from ancient Celtic festivals to Scottish traditions, which they called guising, which is one of the earlier forms that it took in North America. Wait, guising? Yeah, like disguising where yeah um but like since forever uh the act of mumming it has been like a fairly commonplace thing when it is time for a

holiday and mumming is literally just going door to door and performing in some way in exchange for some sort of offering uh so like carolers is one form of this. This is not like an uncommon thing. And that is essentially what trick-or-treating is. But in the US, it first started to achieve popularity in like the 30s. There are some earlier examples of it sort of popping up from time to time. But in the late 40s and early 50s, it started to be depicted in popular culture, like in magazines

and uh radio programs there was a disney cartoon called trick-or-treat i think in like 52 or something like that and at that point like that is when it kind of took hold it was not like one year people were like all right y'all we're gonna do this thing you're gonna dress up like a mummy you're gonna be a medusa you're gonna go door to door and you're gonna get fucking wax pumpkins and candy corn i guess because candy corn's 30 years old it's 1952 and everything's kind of wild right now um the there are reports and i don't know if you've heard this that like it was a way to redirect this sort of mischievous energy that young folks had where they would just go around and fuck shit up that's largely apocryphal that is like there's actually not a whole lot of evidence to that being like this this like grand conspiracy of our nation's adults getting together and be like i don't know man they burned down my

fucking house can we just give them some wax pumpkins and maybe they'll calm down about it that's the origins of it now about the practical application it was the best like when i was a kid it was absolutely the best um i feel like i've talked about this before but like we we were not once to receive just sort of like random stuff like it was not like my dad would come home and be like here's a big bag of candy hell yeah like we um i have a hard time believing that because the macros are so deeply definitely true. I talked about it with like video games. I loved video games. But if I wanted video games, it was either on my birthday.

I would usually get one or on Christmas. I would get like a few and that's why Christmas was such a bonanza. I'm talking specifically about sugar. Yeah, because you told me that your family would get together and watch American Idol and eat a bunch. That was later. Yeah, I think that was in like the later years uh when i could go out and buy my own shock tarts or to be more realistic um like justin would steal them from blockbuster or something um and so like

i wasn't always getting a bunch of candy all the time and so halloween was like so fucking exciting for the same reason that kind of christmas was um and there is nothing like finding out the best houses that had like the dope candy i feel like that's kind of a trope whenever people talk about halloween um there's a few the halloween episodes of bobs burgers are so so great especially the candy randy episode is is fantastic but it like depicts this thing of like oh you gotta go to the house that hands out the full-size candy bars i knew where those fucking were there were three of them down by raider park up near the tennis courts you get up there you get the full size three musketeers and just like lose your mind um and i remember

do you have a favorite halloween costume like a trick-or-treat costume from when you were younger can you think of one off the top of your head um Oh, gosh. I may have to ask my mom if she can track this down. One year I was Lisa Simpson. Oh, my God. I would pay anything to see that. It was such a team effort. My mom crocheted me a red dress and made me a headband with spikes. And then my dad drew a saxophone on a piece of cardboard.

God, that's good. And my mom drew eyelashes on my eyes. Oh, to be an only child and get that just that pit crew working on you halloween night um i got to be captain jean-luc picard of the uss enterprise one year oh my gosh did you wear a bald cap no i mostly just had my dad went to some sort of con and came back with i think all he came back with three of the your dad was so excited yeah it was a very good day um so then you got you go trick-or-treating it's very good

and very fun and you come home and there's lots of rituals for what you do with the candy afterwards like candy trading a couple years we played candy poker which was very exciting for me but i was too young to really understand it so i usually just got taken to the cleaners i mean i was smart about it i would get out before anyway these days trick-or-treating because henry's too young to be trick-or-treating he is a very very small child uh some call them babies and um i think it's still great because it's basically like a dope costume fashion show where we can sit outside you can sit outside and just here comes a bunch of folks usually little kids and it's good they dress up like little barn animals and that's good shit or alternatively they dress up like some sort of murderous ghoul demon and that

is also very good shit like seeing a little kid like wearing just a demon costume or like i'm a murderer like oh shit great you're five that's wild but i'm i'm loving it let me tell you something that as far as i know only happens in st louis missouri uh you can look this up the phenomenon of trick-or-treating in st louis is such that when you ring somebody's doorbell and say trick-or-treating in St. Louis is such that when you ring somebody's doorbell and say trick-or-treat, they expect you to tell a joke. And this was always a little stressful. I used to try and like lift from other trick-or-treaters I would run into along the way. Well, but then you hit the same houses as them and the people hand out the candy.

It's like, I already heard that one. Did that not happen? You never get caught? Yeah, I definitely feel like people hand out the candy. It's like, I already heard that one. Did that not happen? You never get caught? Yeah, I definitely feel like people have demanded multiple jokes. Because there was this pressure of like really delivering. Maybe I can understand why you do not celebrate this holiday as intensely as I do. Well, that and also. Oh, you weren't allowed to have candy.

Holy shit, I completely forgot. No, it wasn't that. It was that there was a misconception that I had a chocolate allergy when I was a kid. Right. So I didn't have chocolate until I was about 10 or 11 years old, which made Halloween kind of just a tidal wave of things I couldn't enjoy. So, yeah, it's not a great holiday for Rachel. But.

But. Dots. You got dots. The joke telling thing. I didn't realize that was regional until I moved away and nobody was prepared to deliver on that. Yeah, that's very, very stressful. Yeah. Speaking of regional weirdness, I think this is the thing you wanted to talk about.

Yes, definitely. When I moved to Austin, I think it was my first Halloween here. And I asked Rachel, when is Trick or Treat this year? And Rachel looked at me like I was just the dumbest person alive. I legitimately could not remember what day of the year Halloween was on. But that is because I am from Huntington, West Virginia. And in Huntington, West Virginia, and lots of other places, not lots of other places, a few other places, I think Ohio has the tightest concentration of places to do this. Trick or treating happened on a different day

than Halloween. And there are a few different reasons for this uh first of all halloween night everybody not everybody but uh certain irresponsible parties go out and they get fucked up and then they drive around and that is not an especially good cocktail for a bunch of kids dressed up like fucking ninjas or batman or inter dark clothed thing here um which i totally get, right? The other reason, and I was kind of researching this, and there is very, there's very little SEO for this phrase of like, why is trick or treat not on Halloween? But one thing that I found is it's kind of prevalent in rural communities, where if Halloween falls on a weekend, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, they will traditionally move it to the Thursday before. If it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Sunday, they will traditionally move it to the Thursday before.

If it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, it can be on that day. But if it's on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they move it to the Thursday before. You want to guess the reason for that? In rural communities. I mean, I'm guessing in rural communities, houses are so far apart that they do trick-or-treating somewhere else. No, it's because they're trying to counter program against like high school football games and church events yeah um i guess maybe that's not necessarily inherently a rural community thing but like everything that i found uh there are very few major cities that do this um and so yeah in huntington it was just always

kind of all over the place. And that news would be distributed like on the radio and on TV and in the paper, like trick or treating is going to happen at this very set point. How did everybody find out? Everybody knew. Everybody, everybody, when you when you grow up with it and you live in that town with it, you just kind of come to expect it and and know to look out for it. Sometimes this day has another name. They refer to it as beggar's night. It's a very good out for it. Sometimes this day has another name. They refer to it as beggar's night. It's a very good name for it.

Sometimes uptown will do a beggar's night and then kids will also try to trick or treat on Halloween. And I definitely appreciate that. And that, that entrepreneurial spirit, but yeah, I can finally explain to you why I trick or treated on a different night than Halloween growing up.

If it was on a weekend, I mean, I kind of, I've kind of get of get it i mean like as far as school went i know that there were certain days assigned where we would wear our costumes to school i still remember this because in third grade i think uh this kid i went to school with showed up as a cereal box but holding a plastic knife and was a serial killer. It's very good, but not for school, probably. In like third grade. And he got in a lot of trouble. Yeah, I imagine that.

I just remember thinking like, that's clever. But. But whose parent would allow that to happen? Yeah. I mean, like concerns about safety has also given rise to trunk or tree, which will take in, like, you know, a church parking lot or I guess really any parking lot. I think our daycare is doing that this year, actually. Yeah, where you just go around to people's cars and they give you candy out of the back of their trunk and you do that. Which also seems a little suspect to me.

Maybe a little bit. But yeah, trick-or-treating, it rules no matter what age you are. I'm very much looking forward to probably here in a couple of years taking henry trick-or-treating which will be very fun but i'm also looking forward to just the the parade of all the costumes this year it'll be fun um hey can i maybe steal you away though for like a minute i mean halloween do halloweens do you have a tag team let's tag team oh i'm turning a horse why a horse i don't know it's unexpected that's a nature comedy um our sponsors this week i'm so excited to talk to you about them they don't know. It's unexpected. It's a nature comedy. Our sponsors this week, I'm so excited to talk to you about them. They don't exist. We don't have sponsors this week.

I'm so excited, though. What am I supposed to do with this excitement, babe? Where am I supposed to put this energy? Our sponsors this week include just love. Love and Halloween. Togetherness. Togetherness and just kindness is up there. Shit, dude. I have Jumbotrons, though. Can I do those? Yes, please.

This first one is for Livy, a.k.a. Larvia. And it's from Sophie, a.k.a. Larvia, and it's from Sophie, a.k.a. Schlarfy. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Schlarfy. It says, Happy belated birthday to the wonderful person

who introduced me to the McElroys and all of their good, good content. I'm so glad to have you as a friend. Larvia and Schlarfy, just two good buds keeping it real. Better watch out, though, for the... You better watch out, you better watch out, though, for the bug man. Hold on.

What's a scary thing? Vampire. Vampire. Oh, God. No, that was too scary, babe. Oh, I'm sorry. Taxes. This message is for Jenna.na it is from phalia happy birthday to my best friend in the world i

am so glad you were born let's keep kicking trivia's ass together i think you rock a lot of birthdays and a lot of friends a lot of friends a lot of birthdays a lot of friends, a lot of birthdays. A lot of birthdays and a lot of... Theme songs. Should that be our new stinger into the money zone? Oh, I would do anything to get off this home improvement train. It's been just screaming off the tracks for so long. You have been so insistent that we continue it. I would love to leave it.

Jenna, happy birthday. Thalia, fantastic name. I think you both rock. Go fuck that trivia up. Heavens. Are stacks of unread books taking over your apartment? Do you constantly miss your train stop because you're caught up in reading? I'm Bria Grant.

And I'm Mallory O'Meara. We party hard. And by party hard, we mean read books. So join us every Thursday on Reading Glasses, a maximum fun podcast about reading and book culture. Get more out of your reading life. We'll help you conquer your to-be-read pile. Get out of that book slump.

And squeeze more reading time into your busy day. Learn how to read better. Wow, that was good. Do you want to tell me about your second thing? Yes. In a Halloween theme. Oh, gosh. Semi-permanent hair dye.

Maybe. Specifically Manic Panic. What are you? I don't know what any of this is. Oh, see, I thought maybe this would happen. Manic Panic are those little four-ounce jars of brightly colored hair dye that you could get at at sally beauty beauty supply for example this is nepotism uh so uh you may all not know i used to work at sally beauty supply when i was in college for about two years uh and it was just super fun around halloween people would come in

model employee by the way based on some of the stories i've heard just that was a culture created by my manager okay sally sally i hope you like my beauty supplies um so i don't know why i'm judging you i was never great in any of the retail jobs i um attended but that was largely due to the culture let's just say we were um encouraged to use products and then place them back on the shelf. Holy shit. We all would regularly paint our nails and then put the bottle of nail polish back on the shelf. My bad behavior was due to a culture created by weed mostly,

I think, probably. I can't believe you stole. Did you steal Manic Manic ever? No. But you would use it and put it back on the shelf? Well, no. You can't steal hair dye and put it back on the shelf. It's the perfect crime.

Once you pop that top, there is no returning. That's fair. Manic Panic comes in super bright colors like Ultra Violet, Vampire Red, Cotton Candy Pink, Psychedelic Sunset, Electric Lizard. These sound delicious, which I know is wrong. Last four to six weeks. Is this when you told me that you dyed your hair blue? I never did blue.

I did purple and red. Is this what that was? Purple, yes. The thing that I loved about semi-permanent hair dye as a kid, especially around Halloween time, is it's one of the only things you can access, you know, as a teen on your own. Like you take your money and you go to the store and you can buy it and nobody can stop you, you know? And then you've dyed your hair on a semi-permanent basis. Yeah. I'm just, it was like, it was an act of rebellion. Sure. That was fully accessible. You didn't have to, like, break any laws to rebel in this way.

When did you start doing this? Middle school. And you would just do it around Halloween, or you would do it frequently? Not frequently. Because I think it's ballin'. So the thing that's kind of fun about Manic Panic, it was started by sisters Tish and Snooki Belomo. Is that the fun thing? The fucking names are the best names I've ever heard.

They opened a boutique in St. Mark's Place in New York's East Village in 1977. And it was kind of like a punk rock thing. They were both musicians. They sang backup with Blondie. Holy shit. And had their own punk band. Did they help Blondie get that look on? I don't know.

Maybe. Probably. Definitely. Sure. And they were known for having kind of wild hair color. And in the 70s, they started selling the hair dye. And then quickly, that became their whole business. Before it was like vintage clothing and the whole like aesthetic and then it became just hair dye.

Do these come in the little bottles that are like see-through and you can see like the bright color? Yeah, exactly. That's why I meant the little four ounce jars. Yeah, for sure. Like little candles almost. With like black print on them? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the label says live fast and dye your hair oh that's fun see right there it's punk rock but they're also having a lot of fun with it uh so they now have 44 shades of hair color uh 11 shades of styling gel 48 shades of lipstick, 32 eye colors, glitters, nail polishes, etc. All vegan, cruelty-free. And yeah, I brought it up because there's something really fun to me.

And granted, I haven't dyed my hair in maybe 20 years now at this point. But I get it. It's like an identity thing. Like you're planting your flag on the ground. It's like the spirit of Halloween, too. It's like I can become a totally different person by doing this temporary fun thing. I always wanted to do that. Not necessarily a manic panic color, necessarily, but for a while.

not necessarily a a manic panic color necessarily but for a while um i was into green day for about four weeks and i wanted the jet black look for like a second oh my gosh with your blue eyes griffin no it would be very much uh that'd be striking billy joe what's armstrong king billy jing king that's what i was thinking that's not who it was. Yeah, Billy Joel Armstrong, that look, that fierce look. I thought that would look good. One time at church camp, I did get Liberty Spikes. Oh my gosh, I don't know this story at all. Okay, I was at church camp, and some kid had hair gel. I was like, can you give me Liberty Spikes?

And he was like, yeah. But I had my really thick, floppy, matted, just sort of spongy hair. And it essentially looked like udders. It looked like udders, like small nipples appearing from my head instead of these tall, proud spires. That does actually remind me. Part of the curse of manic panic that you do not get appropriate information on as a kid, it will stain absolutely everything. Oh, yeah. get appropriate information on as a kid, it will stain absolutely everything.

Oh, yeah. So they actually say, if you look on their website, they say in the instructions, do not use in your shower. Because that was exactly what happened to me. It's stained our bathtub and my hands. If you don't put Vaseline on your skin, it will stain your scalp. None of these things did I know to do in advance. Oh, babe. that's so fucking rock and roll though the whole bathroom was purple how did dave and linda take it when you

had that hair you know it came out my mom actually uh to her credit um was always very supportive of uh of hair dye not that she encouraged it but she uh would allow my friends to come over and dye their hair at our house too and if you got some hair dye in your hair then say lovey somehow it always came out i don't know what she did or how it happened but um i'm talking about your hair like you come up you come downstairs you're like my hair's purple now well here's the thing i never bleached it uh and so it was never like especially yeah i have relatively dark brown hair so whenever i would dye it kind of an extreme it would one, it would wash out in a few weeks and it would also never be like bright. So, yeah, it was not particularly damaging or wild.

We should dye our hair and just roll up to daycare the next day. Like this is us. That's what this show's about. Do you want my second thing? Yes, please. So I want to do a movie. I want to talk about a spooky movie. It's very hard to find one that has sort of stood up against the test of time and is a true Halloween movie.

I wanted to do the same thing, and then I kept reviewing these thoughts I had, and I was like, this is not appropriate. This is not really appropriate. And I think that's because there's a lot of shitty tropes in these movies that maybe haven't aged very well, largely because I think this genre birthed a lot of these shitty tropes in these movies that maybe haven't aged very well um largely because i think this genre birthed a lot of these shitty tropes so much misogyny too like wildly yes um i mean not just that but just harmful depictions of every imaginable um yeah so uh and i'm not saying that this movie is free of it but it is i i think uh a movie that gets gets uh by just

by being a lot of fun for the most part and very campy for the most part and the more i thought about it like while there are a lot of halloween a lot a lot of like scary movies that i really love i love the thing and i love uh alien and aliens i don't necessarily think that those are great halloween movies i thought when you were going to talk about a movie, you were maybe going to talk about The Thing. No, I do enjoy The Thing quite a bit. I only saw it for the first time a few years ago, and it scared the shit out of me,

and I thought it was a very good film. The movie, though, that I came back to, that I really wanted to talk about, is the one that I feel like I watch every Halloween, and it is Evil Dead 2, Dead by Dawn. Oh my gosh, how did I forget about that? Yeah, I don't know. Evil Dead 2 is just a Dawn. Oh my gosh. How did I forget about that? Yeah, I don't know. Evil Dead 2 is just a movie I want to watch on every Halloween.

I think it is a perfect sort of Halloween movie. And it sort of represents kind of my favorite type of scary movie, which is a scary movie that is just fun and funny and and campy uh and i think that evil dead 2 like does all that stuff really well so if you've never seen it it is strange it's a strange like categorization of films because it is a sequel but it also opens up with like an extended like 15 minute long recap of the first movie but it's not a recap they shot new stuff with uh fewer characters they cut two characters completely out like it's uh ash uh driving in this old car with his girlfriend and two buddies up to this cabin in the woods

um and horrible things happen to them in evil dead one and evil dead two it opens up and it's just ash and his girlfriend and his girlfriend's played by a different actress and the two buddies just aren't in the car and then they continue to play out the first movie in 15 minutes. Yeah, so this is kind of embarrassing, but probably totally understandable. I did not

realize that it was just a remake. I thought it was a sequel. So it just happened to be basically the same movie again. That's what I'm saying. It is a sequel. So it just happened to be basically the same movie again. That's what I'm saying. It is a sequel. The categorization that the film studio used, as far as I can tell, was parody sequel, which is buck wild, a fucking like wild way to describe any movie. Also, it's Evil Dead 2.

It is a sequel. And anyway, Evil Dead 1 is okay. I think it is a laudable film for what it achieved for, I think it was made with $33. And it sort of established a lot of things about Sam Raimi's career and this genre and like how much, like the special effects, specifically the gore for what they had, was pretty phenomenal. And it had sort of that dynamic editing and a lot of the chase cams, maybe a little bit too much of the chase cams that would continue to be in the rest of the films. But Evil Dead 2 is, I think, a much better movie because it does not take itself nearly as seriously as Evil Dead 1. And I think it is the film that more than any other he made, that Sam Raimi made, like really, really encapsulates his oeuvre. Well, and he, so you can tell after the first one, I think he recognized kind of the talents

of Bruce Campbell, because he gives him a lot more to do in the second one. And it is so much more entertaining. Right. In the first one, he is just sort of a handsome action star hero. And there's some comedic stuff kind of in the first one, but in the second one, it's like, okay, Bruce, just fucking have fun, dude. And I'm so glad that that did happen because some of those scenes are, are, this is almost like a super gory, sometimes scary slapstick comedy movie. Um, a lot of that tone came from the,

uh, collaboration of Scott Spiegel, uh, who co-created this movie with, uh, Sam and had worked with him on some like short experimental films when they were much younger. Um,

and he just insisted that, that evil dead to have this like way less serious tone um and they they they lived together with uh like the coen brothers they made a movie sam raimi made a movie with the coen brothers and i can't remember crime wave i think is what it was called i've never seen it i never even heard of it um but they were living together and with like francis mcdormand and uh the coen brothers and a bunch of people and while they were working on that movie they they hashed this one out um and scott spiegel helped kind of give it this this comedic tone um and the result of that

is like there are so many sight gags in this movie i've seen it probably 20 times and every time i watch it it like there's just some little thing in the background um a lot of it is very like in your face the entire extended hallucination sequence where the uh various objects in the cabin are laughing at uh ash it's very very creepy which is another thing that I want to talk about. But there's also an extended, almost like old Looney Tunes-style, Bugs Bunny pranking Elmer Fudd-style

fight between Ash and his own disembodied hand that takes up when you're watching it, it feels like approximately three-quarters of the movie, but it is very good, and there is a section in which ash finally gets the better of the hand and traps him under a big pile of books at the top of which is a farewell to arms yes it's fucking great it's like and there's stuff like that all throughout

the movie and you just mentioned it but that mix of comedy and horror yeah well it makes both so much stronger i I feel like. It feels delirious. It does. It feels like when you're slap happy because you're exhausted. Well, and also when you're laughing, and then all of a sudden the monster in the basement punches up through the floor and drags this guy to his bloody death. It's like, am I supposed to be laughing?

Like, the whiplash from that is, like, really dramatic. And then when you're really scared and something really funny happens, like the the whiplash from that is like really dramatic and then when you're really scared and something really funny happens like the relief that you feel from that makes it all the more relieving also making it very scary is that claymation in old movies like this scare the fucking piss out of me large marge tell them large marge sent you and peewee's big adventure scares me to death every time i'm 30 years old uh so i was gonna ask you do you remember when you first saw it uh let's see i was in college me too i was gonna say it felt like the perfect college movie absolutely it felt like a movie that i could like me and my dumb

friends who are making movies in college could have absolutely made even though that's like hubris but it was kind of almost the story of of at the very least the first uh the first one um they sam raimi really wanted to do the middle ages stuff which is uh comprises uh evil dead 3 army of darkness which at that point is just a straight up action movie i feel like there is not even a little bit of yeah horror in in that one um and the he requested i forget the numbers but he requested like six million and they're like sorry we can only give you five million he's like well i can't do the middle ages stuff and so they saved it for army of darkness army of darkness is fine also evil dead 2 is i in my opinion just

just it is uh sam raimi's best movie it is the most like and, just, it is Sam Raimi's best movie. It is the most, like, and I feel like it's the movie he's been trying to make again a little bit, which there's absolutely no problem with that. I just think it's the most fucking fun, and I look forward to watching it every year. And it's super gory, and I'm really into, like, old special effects, practical effects shit, and that is like all that this is and then there's just like so much humor all throughout that i did not catch the first 20 times i saw it no it's it's a great great movie yeah my friends and i would watch it

i think year round in college uh because it we we got really into horror movies uh which can be kind of exhausting if you watch too many of them and this one is so refreshing it is uh it's good good pick thank you although i will say we usually watch it on halloween night we've done that a few years in a row now when the trick-or-treaters are coming by and it's like you can't there are very few frames of that movie that are okay for like a kid to see through your blinds very true um do you want to hear some submissions yes please some spooky submissions from these ghouls and zombies realize that i keep saying yes please to you it's a little embarrassing it's what you say to me when i ask if you want a coffee um uh so this one's sent in by carly who said i work in the food service industry and i've worked

every halloween this isn't a bad thing though my though my favorite halloween thing is dressing up at work nothing compares to the image of a barbershop quartet introducing an a la carte menu and a silver painted host dressed as the moon me uh seating and busing tables at a fine dining establishment oh that is fun i like it not Not just like at restaurants, but just anywhere. If I go and everybody's dressed up in costumes, it's fantastic. Yeah, I do, actually. And something specifically about restaurants too makes it fun. I will

say at an office environment, there's something a little less fun about it, because you are still making copies. Making copies! Griffin has never worked in an office. I've seen the SNL character. No, I know.

But when you work in the office, you all don't do that nonstop? I would. That's the only reason I work in an office for me. Are you going to make coffee? Making coffee. I love you, Griffin. Here's another one from Austin who says, I love getting whiffs of that uniquely stanky smell from the Halloween decoration tub that's been in the garage all year.

It is old vinyl, taffy residue, or pumpkin stink? Sorry, that was a question. Is it old vinyl, taffy residue, or pumpkin stink? Only the ghosts know. I will add on to that. Anytime you open up an old box, usually decorations, because what other thing do you have to get out of your garage on an annual basis? And you catch a breath of that old air that smells like the holiday from last year.

Am I over romanticizing this too much? No, that's good. I just never really thought about that as a tangible thing, but it's true. When we open up our Christmas decoration box, there's going to be a smell in there. And it's unique and indescribable, but it does exist. And you open it and you're like, ah, time to begin. Should we start trapping smells regularly yeah i mean i you know like when henry takes his first steps should we like

bottle up that air his foot smell um steven says one of my absolute favorite things about the halloween season is the prevalence of theremin and harpsichord usage in the seasonal songs for the spooky feeling. I love these instruments, and this time of the year always feels like their time to shine. Can't get enough of spooky music. Have a good one. Not a whole lot of opportunities for the theremin to really get out there and do its thing. Yeah, you know, Halloween music does remind me, though, of A Nightmare Before Christmas, which I thought about bringing up for this week's episode because of the Halloween stuff.

Yes, a lot of harpsichord in that one. A great deal of harpsichord in that one. Not enough theremin, I feel like. That was my only criticism of the film. There's a theremin at Guitar Center, the one down the street. And so I always like stop in just to see if like maybe I'm a secret virtuoso. No, it is an impossible instrument to play. Imagine trying to play a violin, only it's fucking invisible.

Yeah. I've seen people play that before in concerts, and it's incredible to watch. One last one. This one is from Alan, who says, In my neighborhood and in many around the area, we do something called booing, where after dark or sometimes earlier for families with small kids who go to bed early, we'll either run or drive over to the house in which we plan to boo. Are you ready for this?

It's so good. I don't know. And we stealth drop a bag of Halloween goodies, candy, Halloween magazines, little toys, glowy eyes for pumpkins on their porch, ring the doorbell, and book it. It's anonymous unless someone spills the beans or you get caught, and it goes for all October. There's also the Halloween block party screaming contest, but that ranks second. That's very sweet. Hey, Alan, it's extremely sweet.

I think you live in, like, 1958. Yeah, it feels like what happened in Bedford Falls in It's a Wonderful Life. Yes, absolutely. They should make an It's a Wonderful Life Halloween movie. Can you imagine? But Clarence is a little demon. No, it sounds too spooky. But it's fun.

They'd have fun with it. Oh, okay. That's going to do it, I think, for us. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you have a very safe and spooky Halloween. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus. Augustus. For the use of our theme song Money Won't Pay It's a very good theme song And you can find a link to it in the description of this episode Anything else?

Thank you We got a bunch of great stuff in our P.O. Box But we do not have the list in front of us We will be sure to thank you next week Yeah, thank you to Maximum Fun for having us Oh, that P.O. Box is P.O. Box 66639 austin tex p.o box 666 halloween 66639 austin texas 78766 when the people at the post office gave me that box they're like whoa and i was like there's at least a thousand of these like why are you so there's a thousand of these you have to anyway

uh thank you to maximum fun for having us you can go to maximumfund.org slash jumbotron that's nothing but if you do want to get jumbotrons i'm glad i accidentally said that because they are going back on sale uh wednesday november 1st uh at 11 a.m pacific time they'll be selling spots uh available for the first six months of 2018 go to maximum fund.org slash jumbotron for more details yeah for those of you that were still hoping to get a jumbotron in for wonderful this year we are sold out yeah so if you want to get on top of next year this is your chance hop on it uh i think that's maybe it all right well thank you all for listening have a fun halloween get lots of candy sorry we were a day late thank you for your patience thank you for your patience and your prayers. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

Listener supported. Hello, I'm Cary Poppy. And I'm Ross Blotcher, host of MaximumFun.org's Ono, Ross, and Cary. We wanted to tell you the good news that our podcast is now weekly. Yeah, weekly! On Ono, Ross, and Cary, we don't make extraordinary claims. We investigate them. We go undercover with fringe religious groups, investigate paranormal claims,

and participate in pseudoscientific medical treatments and report our findings to you. In a time where alternative facts reign supreme, we cut through the murky spin to give you the real deal on topics like UFOs, the IT vaccination movement, Scientology, and even apocalyptic churches. We're even undercover for some very exciting investigations right now. Well, not right now, right now. Yeah, that would be unwise. That's Ono, Ross, and Carrie at MaximumFun.org.

We show up so you don't have to.