My Brother, My Brother And Me - MBMBaM 444: The 100 Wishes of the Pandemonium Cube

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

So, you think you’re tough enough to crack on into the Pandemonium Cube? Huh! Well, I hope you enjoy being a skeleton, because that’s what you’re gonna be after you fail to open the Pandemonium Cube — a SKELETON. Suggested talking points: They Shall Not Grow Old Watch, Sora’s Savior, Burrito Love Discount, Dream Commercials, “Secret Shopping”, Say It With Donuts, Haircut Convo

The McElroy brothers are not experts, and their advice should never be followed. Travis insists he's a sexpert, but if there's a degree on his wall, I haven't seen it. Also, this show isn't for kids, which I mentioned only so the babies out there will know how cool they are for listening. What's up, you cool baby? Hello, everybody, and welcome to My Brother, My Brother Me, an advice show for the modern era. I'm your oldest brother, Justin McElroy. Let me check my documents here. I'm your middle-est brother, Travis McElroy. Sup, it's Griffin. What's up, Griffin? We've got another film, Watch, our great series where we pick a popcorn flick coming out that we could pretend as though

we are very excited for it and that we've seen it or will see it. And this week, the funny one we got is They Shall Not Grow Old. You guys ready for some fucking gags? They Shall Not Grow Old, watch. Peter Jackson has taken a bunch of dope ass footage from World War I and given it that put jar jar in it, cleaned it up, put jar jar in it, colorized it, smoothed it out, sexied it up, crunchitized it. Now, Justin, photoshopped away all the old man wrinkles. Put a bunch of Instagram filters on it. It's just a bunch of sexy ass Chris Helzler's walking around. Now, Justin, I, of course, know everything about this film. I studied it up for the watch. But for those at home that may be wondering, is there like a storyline? It's an homage to British troops of the First

War War with a bunch of footage that he has like remastered with, overlaid with a narrative of those who partook of the war from interviews made in the 60s and 70s. What's uncomfortable is they can't, it's like Super Bowl. They can't actually say World War I, so they call it the big fight throughout the whole movie. The first big fight. Yeah. They're huge skirmish. I think that this, if you have, okay, if you've seen this footage, it is amazing what Pete has done. He's taken this like really old green footage and made it feel so real, which is extremely impressive. The reviews are in on this one and it is, I just, it's an amazing achievement that Peter Jackson has done. And the critics are all uniformly lining up to

hail this outstanding, amazing achievement. But you know, there's still one who's like, I don't know. I don't know. Where's the superheroes? I've seen some other movies. Before seeing World War I footage digitally remastered for my audiences. This one left me feeling a little cold. So I guess the thing that's on everybody's tongues is what's, what's else can Peter put his magic touch on and remaster? What? Maybe just Wars or maybe there's other stuff. It seems like War, he's got pretty much figured out at this point. So maybe it's cheaper for him to do Wars. I have some footage of me making a sandwich a couple years ago, but I didn't make it interesting. I forgot to make it interesting if I'm being honest. The sandwich or the footage?

I mean, both honestly, I would like Peter Jackson to remaster my sandwich. I'd like to see him take a pass at the War of the Roses, but not the actual one, the Kathleen Turner film. Oh, yeah. Punch it up. Punch up that Kathleen Turner Michael Douglas classic. Punch it. This guy can do anything. Right? Pete can take a whole war and make it feel like one movie. He could take 50,000 orcs and make them feel like one army. What I would like him to do is dip into the series Supernatural, which is just crested 300 episodes. And I would love him to just bring it on in. What I want Pete to do now that he's finished his World War One film documentary, I want him to just take all 300 episodes of Supernatural and just fucking

bring it in so I could get caught up on this series. See what all the fuss is about. So every other issue of Entertainment Weekly has it on the cover. I just want to get in on the hubbub, the fandom, the tumbling of this show. And I can't because there's 300 episodes and I will be dead by the time that I watch all those back to back. So I just need Pete to bring it in. To bring it on. Jay, man, I'm going to do some quick math here and let's assume that with commercial breaks, there's 45 minutes of actual Supernatural in each episode. And you're saying 300. So that's 13,500 minutes. Wouldn't it be amazing? 13,000. If Michael, if, if, if, who's Michael? If Peter Jackson could. Who's Michael though? I don't know. Where did Michael come from? I was thinking of

Michael Jackson. If Peter Jackson. It's 225 hours of Supernatural. Right. So much, so much show. Or 9.3. In one hour. Nine and a third days of Supernatural. In one hour, he would have to squeeze 225 minutes into each minute of an hour long episode to get you caught up. Math is fun. I think that. Thank you, Griffin. I agree. Good morning. I think that can you even imagine he did the whole war, I guess, in one flick. Uh-huh. But the Hobbit, a 300 page long book, did take three flicks. That's kind of a fart in the face to people who did World War One, huh? I think so. Because if they could come back and watch one of the three Hobbit movies where it's like, here's a 30 minute section on the kind of grass that Hobbits eat or whatever. And they're like, wow, that's cool. My whole thing got

blown up. But I guess that one got cut for time, Pete. Cut my whole place getting blown up for time, I guess. I think that there is, and I think this one is just coming out for one day at a limited release situation. An event release, if you will. What a hot watch we're doing. Yeah, this is a hot watch. February one, I think is the time that you can see this one out. Cool, man. Yeah, man, cool. Go see this flick. Let us know. Well, I mean, let Rotten Tomatoes know what you think, and we'll definitely see it that way. We are an advice program, right? So, we take questions from you, our beloved audience. You can send those to mbambamatmaximumfun.org. And send us your questions. Let us know how we can help. If you need real actual advice,

not pretend advice, or you just want to tell us a story, anything like that, you need actual advice, let us help you. That's our core competency, really, when all is said and done. And that's going to do it for us this week. That's it for our episode. A lot of just sort of talking in this one. I feel like, you know what? Okay, wait, let me get a hand on the talking ball. Let me know. Listen, I want to talk. I want to talk. I just got a Google Calendar notification pop up that Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out tomorrow. And what I can't believe it's actually here, folks. And I heard in this one, Mickey Mouse actually kills Sephiroth. Why don't we do a watch on that? Why don't we pick the hard one about the war that we have

don't know much about and have to really kind of like watch what we say? We could have talked about art. It's because you're still very excited for it, huh? I just can't wait to watch Mickey Mouse fight. Do you think when they're getting ready to make a new Kingdom Hearts game, they just do a deep dive on like Disney fan fiction and steal a bunch of ideas? They've stolen a lot of my Wreck-It Ralph fan fiction. Yeah. I have one where his fists go to the sides of buildings and they're so big and sweet. You can't do anything with them. And they drag around and Elsa and Moana and Flant Ryer from Tangled have to come help him carry his fists and his pants get caught. His super overalls get caught on a rock. They tear off. Yeah. And so they're dragging him by his

huge fists and that is in Kingdom Hearts 3. I saw in a trailer, so I'm not sure. Yeah, in Kingdom Hearts 3 does have Wreck-It Ralph with his huge fists and he teams up with Master Chief for an Ultima Summon. And his pants rip off, I guess? His pants rip off. But it's not a dress. But he doesn't. It's not a sexual thing. Yeah. It's just a funny thing that happens. And as Jim Jams all pixelated, Master Chief's like, oh, I guess they're censoring your Jim Jam. Oh, so sorry. And Wreck-It Ralph's just like, no, that's what it looks like in a video game. And Master Chief then just says a quiet prayer. He's very religious in this one. There's a lot of praying to Christ. Yeah. There's a whole Christ narrative in this one.

Yeah. One of the movies that they like make a world out of is the Bible. It's great. Yeah, the Disney movie, the Bible. It sort of fully gets saved. Let's do some questions. Finally, Mickey converts. Master Chief takes off his helmet and he says, fine, I can reveal my identity. It's Jack Sparrow. And then he becomes a Christian too. This would have been a way better intro. It's a shame we didn't hear this one. Jesus Christ. And Tron comes out. He's doing all these crazy stunts. And when the camera pulls back, he smelled out with his light cycle, John 316. Yeah. Tron loves Jesus too. Even cyber Jesus,

of course, but. All right. All right. Here comes the question. Okay. Nope. Pull it back in. Pull it back in. We're almost there. We are so close to doing our podcast that we do it every week. Here comes the podcast. Let's see. Ben, I pictured Lightning McQueen getting baptized. We can't. We can't. It's just a car, but it's a car wash. We can't. We can't. We can't. Go. Read the first question. Go. Come on. No, we can't do this. I can't do it. We can't do it. No, we can't do this. The chicken for Moanix says Jesus. All right. So we're done. We're done. That's it. That's it. He swallows the Bible whole and he just choked on it. All right. Here comes

the first question. He goes to heaven. He does go to heaven. Hey, hey. Voice by Alan Tudik. For the last year or so, I've been working in the mall as a retail assistant. I don't like the feeling of doing one of these questions. I don't like reading questions. Come on, nephew. You feel froggy. Do it, baby. You started. It's just reading a question written by a sensible human being is weird to me. For the last year or so, I've been working in a mall as a retail assistant. Throughout my time working there, I have gotten to know quite a few of the people who also work in the mall. A few weeks ago, a girl who works at the Mexican restaurant, the Justin, come on. You're so clever. You're good. I'm fine. The mall came to introduce herself.

She told me her name and that I should, quote, drop by sometime and she will give me some, give me half price burritos. I have now happily done on so on several occasions. I just thought that this is a friendly thing to do, but my coworkers met her before and they have never been offered any discount. Some of my coworkers now think she's into me. This wouldn't be a problem. Except for the fact that I have been happily part of her relationship with her past four years and we've recently gotten engaged. My question is, is it okay for me to keep this burrito agreement and not tell this girl I'm engaged as long as she doesn't ask? That's from question Casadilla. There's a heavy one to start out with. What a tonal shift from Sora getting saved by Jesus

Christ to this tinted by the burrito of another sort of situation. I feel like swing on by for half price burritos is a weird game, is some weird game maybe and I don't know. I think, I think if, if you have something as powerful as half price burritos to offer, I feel like that's a big old power move because it almost ensures like I'm going to see this person again. Well, also some shows I can provide for you. Yes, burritos, which is important. My love language is half of the money that I would have to spend on burritos just being saved in my back pocket. This is a tricky one because there's so many ways you can play out. Number one, they're not actually into you. They're just being friendly. And also, what store do you work at? That's it.

Maybe they're trying to get half price iPhone. They're trying to get a reciprocal deal. That's entirely possible. See, but the element of this question that is kind of like breaks the whole thing wide open is that none of the question askers, co-workers have been offered the same deal. You know what I mean? So like this is unique to them, but maybe, maybe it's just all your other co-workers are drips and you're awesome. And the person's like, I want to hang out with this person more and become friends. And it's, here's what you need to do. Okay. Bring your fiance with you. No, this is not good. That's not good. What? I think the only other option, like if you feel bad is to say like, Hey, I appreciate the half price burritos,

but you should know I'm in a relationship. No, that's like the worst thing I can know. But here's the problem. There's a very different version of this question that we could get that's like, Hey, I've been trying to hit on this guy with some low price Mexican cuisine. And he just brought in his fiance. Do I have to keep giving him these great burritos? Damn, you're right. I'm also assuming the gender of the question asker, which I, I shouldn't do. We have no idea. But sure, whoever it is, they, I feel like that's not, here's the thing. If you're getting half price burritos folks, the half of the price has to come from somewhere. And maybe it's coming from this employee. Maybe it's coming from Mr. Bell. I don't know. But it's coming from somewhere,

Mr. Kadoba somewhere along the chain, a piper is not getting paid. And I think that you could do that a couple of times and feel okay about it. It's not a permanent solution though. I don't think you could do that permanently. I don't feel great about that. I feel like somebody, eventually the game's going to get got. And if you're just in it for the free burritos, and not the camaraderie or the companionship, I feel like maybe it's time to let this particular hookup slide on by, unless you can reciprocate with you start bringing them burritos, start bringing them a half of a burrito Travis, from a different, a different, better place. And then you glue it to the burrito they gave you and you hand it back. And that's,

and that's how they, that's how they, I got this at a Kudoba and I know you're probably not legally allowed to go into Kudoba. So here's a Kudoba burrito. I like how you say that. What? Kudoba? How would you say it? I don't know. I've just never said it out loud because I've been afraid of doing it wrong. Well, I have, I live no fear. I, I do not have any limits. It's 2019. I'm becoming the monster. Let the big dog eat. If Travis, if Travis actually says Kudoba out loud, he loses his powers. I can't. I can't say Kudoba out. Oh no! My tricks have finally paid off. How about a Yahoo? I want to pivot. Okay. Yeah. The power is in your hands. Here's a Yahoo. This one's sent in by Emily Shock. Thanks, Emily. It's a Yahoo Answers user. FN2187, which I believe is the Star

Wars guy. Wait, when did the first Star Wars movie come out? The, I mean, the, the, I guess, seventh one come out. That was, that was fairly recent. That was while I was living in Austin. I think it was like 2014, 2015, something like that. FN2187, which is the name of the Star Wars guy, has been a member since May 7th, 2007. So they just happened to, I'm guessing the Star Wars stole their shit from this Yahoo Answers user? Whoa. Or they changed their username. No. So they ask, my dreams be having 10 to 30 second commercials. Is this normal? Yes. No lie. I can't make things like this up. You could. I normally, I normally don't remember my dreams, but when this happens, it helps me remember them. You all ever have sort of like, you're enjoying

a dream. You're, you know, flying a, you know, a jumbo jet with Richard Dreyfus and suddenly he turns into a piranha plant from Mario and then all of a sudden you're fully erect and you're like, what is this gonna? And then it's just like, you know, you get to, you watch the, the like Gillette commercial that everybody's talking about. All the advertising, my dreams is native advertising. Like it happens in the, like I would be flying with Richard Dreyfus. Yeah, Mario would show up and then he would pull out a Gillette razor and start shaving his mustache and talking about how smooth the shave it is and how it's making him a better person and not a jerk all the time. Yeah, sure. We do co-branded campaigns. So it is original content and then at the end,

it just is like sponsored by Chevrolet. And it's like, and it's not about the product, right? Like the car might be at it for like a second, but really it's more about like driving like a car and I'm naked and my teeth fall out and then the car explodes and then I'm a lizard and then I can fly and then at the end it's like sponsored by Chevrolet. Yeah. Don't you guys think, isn't the weirdest part of a dream always where like you get to the end of the story in the dream, but you're not awake yet. So then everybody in the dream just kind of stands around, kind of like cans in pockets and it goes on for like a long time until they look at you and say, wake up, please, we're really bored and then you wake up, but you're still in the dream brought to you by

Chevrolet. Yeah, the problem is when you take one of the commercial pills that and plants it in your mind so that you can see it when you dream. That Morpheus gives you. It's hard to flush those out sometimes. So you get them sticed. I'm still getting commercials for the Firefest. I'm still getting those in here. So I'll be having a dream where me and Robert Lausia are having a huge fistfight on the moon and then all of a sudden Joe rule pops up and I'm like awake enough to say like, Joe, you got to get out of there, bud. You got to get out of there, bud. Bud, it's not going to happen for you this time. You need to go, but every time it still goes and he still does it. Ah, shoot. You know, here's the thing that's really fucking me up is. Whoa.

I bought. God, come on. Geez. What? 10, 13 in the morning, Trav. You got to watch the language. I bought ads in my own dream for my, this was early days. Early days of my brother and my brother and me just to try to get some buzz going. And so now I'm right now having a hard time telling if this is a dream that I'm dreaming with an ad for my own podcast in it or if I'm actually sitting here recording. Yeah. Don't try to fucking freak my bean, dude, because it's early and it'll work and I can't have that kind of. I'm not trying to freak your bean. I'm living in my own bean freak and you're just here for the ride. You know what I mean? Wow. I have this occasional part-time job as kind of a secret shopper where I go to restaurants, gas stations and the like,

okay. I'm going to stop real quick. If you say my job is quote, kind of a secret shopper, I assume you are a thief or a murderer. The most suspicious intro possible. Okay. I have the occasional part-time job as kind of a secret shopper where I go to restaurants, gas stations and the like and attempted by alcohol or cigarettes and tested the cashier slash server checks for ID. I cannot get over, Justin. You have maybe realized how much secret shopper sounds like a euphemism for a shoplifter. Yes. Like I shop in secret. No. Occasional part-time secret shopper sounds like you're a shoplifter 100%. I'm 23 by look 17. So most of the time, the employee passes this weird test. I'm not giving a script or anything, but the goal is to appear to be somewhat normal

shopper slash diner. Recently, I've been tasked with attempting to buy vapes. I don't vape or have friends who vape. So I don't really have to ask a cashier for a vape without sounding completely unbelievable. Brothers, how does one try to buy a vape without sounding like a cop? That's from vexed about vapes in Chicago. One vape please. Vape me. I'm just now remembering. I just had a very vivid memory of being in high school and another friend trying to recruit me into one of these programs. I like to be an undercover narc, right? Where they like send teenagers in to buy cigarettes. And if they let them, then the place gets in trouble. It's only now occurring to me that this thing where it's a real adult pretending to be underage

makes a lot more sense from sort of a legal perspective than sending 16 year old narcs in to buy smokes. But also to that point, J-man, selling cigarettes or vapes to a 23 year old is in no way illegal. Now, I get that you're supposed to check like check IDs if they look under 35, which is bonkers. But like that idea of like, well, you're in trouble because that could have been a teen. And it's like, yeah, but it wasn't. Yeah. But like my thing was entrapment. So I can see where that would be a problem. And you did slink around in those leather pants to buy this. And I had a stippled on a beard that was I thought was convincing. But I had to deal with this while working at GameStop because pretty close to the end of my tenure

with that great company, the Institute of Policy, where you did have to like ID people if they were trying to buy a mature rated game. Because, you know, an 18 year old who comes in to buy Call of Duty nine for sure is going to have their ID on them. They are for sure they do know how to drive a car and they're very good at it. And every time that someone come up and buy a mature rated game, I would assume they were a secret shopper, which never worked because I never actually got one. But if I had, boy, would they have been flummoxed. I would be like, Oh, want to buy this mature blood game, huh? Gotcha. I. Okay, so it depends. Part of this is like, if you're going into a vape shop proper, or you're going into Speedway,

yeah, to just buy a vape, because those they don't give a shit. Yeah, you could wander in there and say like, I need, I don't know, a vape, and they're not going to have this sort of expertise. The expertise to guide you to the proper vaping experience. If you're at a vape shop proper, I think that that becomes a lot harder. I think that because you're not going to know, you know, the terms and all the slang. So as I understand it from my years in the game, you go in, you say, I need to. Okay, here's the thing. I got it. I got a solution. Okay. Okay. Here's the solution. You don't go in equipment focus or slang focus or juice focus. You go in outcome focus. Okay. You go in and say, I want to, I want to crank so much cotton

that my mom has to leave the room. Yeah. I want to, and then, and then reverse engineer. Yes, exactly. Here's my end goal is I want to crank some serious fucking dragon's breath, my man. And I don't know how to achieve that. And I want it to also have nicotine for sure, you know, vehicle stuff. So please, that's my outcome. That's my solution. I need you to get focused on the steps we take to get there vis-a-vis equipment and technology and implants, whatever it takes. Yeah, because it's like building a lightsaber, right? You're like, you're going to go through every step with them. And that's how you're going to master it. Guarantee someone working at a vape shop and that's like their job is going to be super excited

to have some kind of like goal that they're chasing and not just like give me- I imagine there's going to be a lot of like steepling of the fingers and, let me just, do you like cinnamon? We've gotten some new carbides from Vienna, right? And then they like roll out like kind of a jeweler's mat, you know? I'm sorry, I'm just so obsessed with this idea of your vape rig having to be like your lightsaber that you put together and choosing the the the kyber crystal that goes inside of it. And you have to make, I feel like everybody should have to make their own vape rig. I don't think you should be able to buy them. I think it should, this is my vape rig. There are many like them,

but this one is mine. It's how you learn the responsibility, you know what I mean? Like, yes, that I shape this with my will. I was I was thinking about vapes that look like other things because I'm sure someone has made like a huge lightsaber vape. The ones I've seen on the street all look like lightsabers anyway. So I typed in sonic screwdriver and I'm very upset with Google and what Google thinks of me because the auto complete from sonic screwdriver is sonic screwdriver vape. And so like Google has my fucking number in a major way. Oh, no, you could have spoken out of your shirt pocket a ticket for an R rated movie. And so you can walk in and be like, I would like to buy a vape and they're like, wait a minute, how and then they'll look in your pocket. And

what's that say? Fatal attraction. Well, well, you must be 40 years old. If you have a fatal attraction ticket, you're good to go or maybe just walk in with like holding a baby. And then you're like, I would like to buy a vape. And they're like, well, I don't have a baby with me. Hurry it up. Me and this baby have to go see fatal attraction. And then I've got to pay my taxes. My taxes I have as an adult car insurance. Am I right? I think you can't break a baby into a vape shop. I'm not I'm going to revoke that advice. I don't think the baby can you guys not vape just for like a little bit just like clear it out in here. Can everyone stop the baby's a cop too. Yeah. And it is a baby, but it's trained for this shit. It only exhales. This baby's

getting too old for this shit. He's four and he's pretending to be a vape baby, a vape vape baby. I bring it to vape shops to see if they let me have a baby in here. You've been busted. This is my vape baby vape stir. I bring vape stir into vape shops and see if they make me take the vape my vape vape baby out. My vape vape vape vape vape baby. And the it's legal to have a baby in a vape shop. So the vape shop doesn't throw you out with the baby then they're busted. That's a double illegal crime. Well, let's not throw the vape fog out with the baby water. Should we go to the money zone? We're already there. Look around you. I built it when you weren't looking. Now I'm breaking over the entrance. So you're trapped here forever. Oh no, I've been

I've been casked of a mambo. I'm on a lodge. No, you had it right. It's casked of a mambo number five a lot out. Correct. Hey, I want to tell you all about me, undies, because our bouncing day. What? Hard pass. Why? I don't want to know about your undies. Oh, I see it. Oh, this is a silly episode. Yeah, we're having fun not getting the things done that we got to get done in this one contractually. But me undies is great for Valentine's Day, because they're first of all quality underwear. They're made out of micromodal fabric, which is three times softer than cotton. And you can choose from four different cuts of underwear. There's the prime cut. There's the flank. You can get a porter house underwear, all of which are available from

mine's a t bone. Yeah, from classic colors. That was a finger. It was a stinker. Yikes. And it's got adventurous prints. I have I recently Marie condoed my whole like wardrobe. And so now like I am happy to say that pretty much all the underwear I own is me undies and that's great. And for Christmas, Rachel got me a me undies onesie that when I was in town in Huntington for the holidays, you could not get me out of. And yeah, so Valentine's Day, it's a great gift. And they have lounge pants as well. So me undies has a great offer for our listeners. If you want to get 15% off your first pair, free shipping and a 100% satisfaction guarantee, go to me undies.com slash my brother. That's me undies.com slash my brother. All one word.

I would like to tell you about Stitch Fix. Do it, Howard. I don't know who was that. I don't know who is that popcorn. And I don't know who's seen pictures. Oh, shit. But I got this sweater. Well, one, okay, everything in like the getting ready room for all the podcasts to everybody, everybody. I think Hank and I were wearing the same pants at one point. I fucking ran. I ran into Hank at the airport wearing the sweater that I saw him wear. I packed the sweater that I saw him wearing during like the opening ceremony. And if I had it, it was my only clean shirt left on the day I was traveling home. And it's like, oh, it's fine. I won't see Hank, saw him in the fucking airport line. But basically anyone who has tried Stitch

Fix is like into it. Yes. I got this sweater that I wore at podcast on that had like a blue bowl on it and like nonstop. That was a Stitch Fix? Yeah. Damn, that's a good sweater. I know nonstop. Like people were like, great sweater, great sweater, great sweater. And that's the thing is if you're looking to up your game, Stitch Fix is the way to do it because they don't just send you stuff. Like they talk to you. They ask you questions. They say, what do you like? Do you like this? And they also ask you, and this is my favorite thing, price ranges that you're comfortable spending on clothes. Because I know like, I don't want a $200 t-shirt like me and Macklemore both agree. That's ridiculous. And so you would say like, I don't want to pay more than

blank for a t-shirt. So they tailor not only the style, but the prices to you as well. And you work with the personal stylist who will handpick those items for you. And then if you don't like something, you send it back and you don't have to pay for it. And that also helps them shape your profile so that the next time it's even more accurate. How do I get this box? How do I get this wonderful box? Thank you so much for asking, Griffin. You go to stitchfix.com slash mybrother and you can get started now and you'll get an extra 25% off when you keep all the items in your box. That's stitchfix.com slash mybrother to get started today. Stitchfix.com slash mybrother. Hello, this is Amy Mann. And I'm Ted Leo. And we have a podcast called The Art of

Process. We're talking about how the creative process is in itself an art form in our opinion. There are underlying forms and structures that serve as a scaffolding for any creative endeavor. We've been lucky enough over the past year to talk to some of our friends and acquaintances from across the creative spectrum to find out how they actually work. We weirdly don't know as many musicians as you would expect. New episodes will be coming every other Monday starting January 28th. So please listen and subscribe at maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcast. Do y'all want a yahoo? I would love that, Griffin. It's sent in by Sid Ross, the yahoo answers user. Shhh. Who asks? Can a locksmith break into every door?

This one I wanted to talk about because a locksmith can just kind of get in there. A locksmith motto could be, we just get in there. When you can't get in there and you need to and it's yours, the locksmith will be there for you. That seems wild to me that there's a career, a profession in there. There's probably a career out there called Lockmaker. And then there's an evil sort of, I'm not saying all locksmiths are evil, but I'm saying if they could be, you know how they don't trust the X-Men because of their mutant powers and they can do infinite evil with it? I'm just saying I don't know why we're sort of allowing locksmiths to be so footless and fancy free with their stuff. I don't know. I'm sitting here trying to think

of another profession that is so closely related to burglaring. There is not another, it's not like, oh yeah, I'm a wall scaler. If you need me to scale, I'm a professional guy who cuts holes in skylights. If you've ever locked your keys in your home and then had to call a locksmith to come help you out, I think that it is a universal human experience to watch someone break into your door in 20 seconds ago. Yeah, okay. Locksmiths, if you can at least pretend like it's a challenge and sit there and be like, well, this is the toughest lock I've ever seen. Something like that just to make me feel like, oh, this is going to take me at least an hour and a half, giving you plenty of time to call the police if you need it to. But you don't.

This lock requires an extremely loud drill, a rare tool that only I own and will melt down after I'm done over here. I'm going to leave this with you. Only I know how to unlock this door. Now kill me. I'll be $150. Good. Now kill me. That'll be killing. That's the only way you're saying it. That'll be $150 for another $50. You can clip out my tongue with these hedge trimmers. Now drive this ice pick up my nose. Nope. A little to the left. Got it. There he goes. Now that you think about it, right? It's like paying somebody to point a knife at you and it's I don't know why. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be locksmiths. I'm not saying that all locksmiths are using their powers. Probably most aren't. That's probably a pretty good way.

Most locksmiths are not. Yes. But I mean, right. There needs to be a checks and balances system. Do you think they show up for monthly meetings of a locksmith union or something and they're like, but where's Debbie? It was like, oh, she went rogue. Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. Debbie's a rogue nation now. Yeah. Well, we're going to have to hunt her and bring her in so that she doesn't give other locksmiths a bad name. But she's in a house behind 11 locked doors. Oh, no. Are you guys tough enough for this challenge? Yeah, just saying. Yeah. So anyway, let's keep an eye out. Become the monster, but like still be, you know, just keep an eye on locksmiths. Do you think that every locksmith owns in their possession a small locked box that they cannot

open? And if they do, they die? The paradox lock. God make a lock. Because they want to open because it's a challenge, right? Like they love doing, they love picking locks. And it's like, Hey, here's a lock that's unique to you. No one else has ever picked this lock before. Yeah. But if you open it, you die. Well, there's a pandemonium cube. And yeah, obviously, locksmith reddit is always blowing up about the pandemonium cube because somebody's like Debbie shows up and Debbie's like, I think I got it. I think I got it. And then she tries to pick it. And then she of course gets turned into a skeleton because she didn't she forgot to turn that one sort of bust of the devil. And there's also the million fasted

crystal of Akimara that a lot of people, of course, you need a lot of souls to unlock that. And that one's tricky sunlight. Some people tell you they're connected and you need one to unlock the other or vice versa. I don't know. I mean, we can talk about it in the forums all day, you know what I mean? But when it comes down to it, I guess I'm just afraid of the power of the locksmith that opens it. Yes. Yes. And what they might become. Especially because they will definitely need to be in possession of Igalatius screaming blade. And that is what really trips me out. And the 100, the 100 wishes you get from the pandemonium cube just seems excessive because you're going to you're going to change everything. It's just like that amount of wishes is designed

to make you lose track of how many you have left. There's a counter on there. There might there might be nobody's been inside the pandemonium. There might be a little like LL. That's not necessarily trigger them because I have heard voices for inside the pandemonium cube whispering to me the lock combination. And that's a trick. They want to turn you into bones, Travis. That's a trick. That's an old trick. You should, you know, better than that. What? This is what the voice sounds like. I want a munch. Squat. I want to munch. Squat.

It's a little sad this year for Valentine's Day that because of the Neco Company going out of business, we're not going to have the conversation hearts just like. What? Yeah. I didn't know that. I didn't know that happened. Yeah, bud. Neco's out of business and there's no candy hearts. It seems wild that someone hasn't like swooped in and just like. Swooped in and inherited that incredibly successful business plan of making yucky chalk candy that got them closed down. They have been bought there or they're like the Neco Company has been bought by the people who make chalk. No. The dumb, dumb people. But they didn't have time to make the new ones this year. So there is a

gap, right? And anywhere there's a gap in culture, you can count on one company that's always one K away from disaster. It's Krispy Kreme. And they're introducing a line of Valentine's Conversation Heart Donuts. And they are basically just doing the thing that they're not sure if anyone can sue them is what I would guess. Currently, they're not sure who would sue them. So they're just going to go ahead and do it. And it's just donuts that look like those except they're very big and they have phrases like I heart you or pick me or all the feels. Oh, yeah. Ho Chi, Mo Chi folks. Hey, folks, this is for you real quick sidebar. Emotions are the thing that make life worth living and separate us from sort of the

animals and refrigerators and all the other things that aren't people. Can we not reduce the entire human experience to the word feels? Can we just be sad or happy or horny for donuts or whatever it may be. Anyway, so these are giant conversational hearts that say things, and they also say DM me on them, so fuck it, I guess. Fuck it, anything goes. Why do they want you to play Dungeons & Dragons with them?

They got Hachimachi. They got four classic Krispy Kreme fillings. That classic is spelled with the C, do not fret, cake batter, strawberries and cream, raspberry filled and chocolate cream. Mystery. Mystery, power.

Finding loose flour, spare change, find the right word can be like, I don't know, hard. And there's a four dot ellipses here, so I'm trying to punch my monitor, and I'm just hurting my hand, I can't shatter the screen, but eating a donut is easy. Well, so we printed the right words

on the donuts for you, so you can't mess this up. Save, Dave Skinner, Chief Marketing Officer for Krispy Kreme Donuts in, I would say, a rare display of how these companies do, in fact, feel about their core customer base. Hey, dum-dum, you know how you can't express how you feel good? We wrote DM me on a fucking donut,

so you can shove it at your gob and cry. Anyway, eat these, no one's gonna see us, we're invincible this year. You can get one of these for free if you're a Krispy Kreme Rewards member, and you can get a free Conversation Heart Donut of Choice with any purchase on Wednesday, February 6th. If you're not already a Rewards member, don't miss out.

Sign up at H-T-T-P-S-COLIN-SLASH-W-W-W-DOT-K-R-I-S-P-Y-K-R-E-M-E-DOT-C-O-M-SLASH-A-C-C-O-U-N-T-SLASH-C-R-E-A-T-E-DASH-A-C-C-O-U-N-T. I look forward to someone remixing that. That is the address to sign up for it. Yeah, yeah, it couldn't get a bitly link going. Couldn't get a bitly going, and don't forget to show how you hashtag, say it with donuts this Valentine season by tagging Krispy Kreme with a photo

of your favorite Valentine's Day donut phrase, and then it doesn't say this, but I would say you wanna definitely append the hashtag, hashtag, say it with donuts. You know what I like to say with donuts? What? Ooh. So what?

You dumb piece of shit. I can't believe we shared that material. You made me so angry. You ate your guts. The only thing I say with donuts is it's Saturday morning and I've given up. Those are the two things that I've- This is my day.

This is my day, I guess. I guess I'm putting me on this trajectory of the day. Another question. Yeah, I'd love that. Thank you, Griffin. Thanks for reminding me of what we're here for. I hate getting haircuts for a lot of reasons, but the main one is I have no idea

what level of enthusiasm I should be displaying while I get my hair cut. I'm pretty awkward, so usually I don't talk with a hairdresser, meaning that I sit there in silence looking at my reflection, and it seems to me to have my resting, non-spiling expression.

It seems mean. It seems mean, thank you, to have my resting, non-spiling expression. I always feel like the hairdresser thinks I'm judging them, but then it feels even weirder to be smiling the whole time. Am I supposed to smirk?

Should I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep? Please help. That's from anxious in the hair seat. You're deep in your own feels. Deep in there. You're deep in the pocket. You need to pull up. My friend, pull up.

We're all just in this thing together. You know, we're all just here together trying to work it out. I'm willing to bet money that the hairdresser is not looking at your face. They are autopiloting, haircutting, a thing that they've done 20 times a day for the last X number of years,

and they're like singing a song in their head, or they're thinking about their grocery list or whatever. I think you're probably okay to make whatever face you're making, but let me offer this. Come in with just a powerful scowl and like stay scowling, but close your eyes while they're cutting your hair

and then open your eyes and let your face break into a smile and then reach up and like touch your own face. Like you can't imagine the feeling. What is this? And then like hug them and begin to weep and then tip them 25%. Yeah.

I mean, that's all excellent. Thank you, Travis. I wanna dwell on the, I'm awkward, so I don't talk. I think that part of that is just practice, my friends. It's awkward just means I don't know what to say. So maybe start thinking of some things that might be good to say to somebody while they're cutting their hair.

You know what I like to do? I like, I have different people cut my hair every single time. I used to go to my guy Sonny up at MasterCuts. Can't always get Sonny reliably. So now I'm a vagabond. I go where the wind takes me. Last time I had my haircut,

it was in the basement of this hotel in Cincinnati when I was gonna go to Beebe's birthday party. I got my haircut at eight in the morning down in some basement of a hotel. I'm, it's random for me, but you know what I like to ask somebody, how did you get started cutting hair? I'm curious.

How long you been doing it? That's pretty good. How long you been doing it? Do you like doing it? And you know what? That's just tough. When somebody tell you the life story, you're gonna learn a lot about the industry,

the business, you're gonna learn about them. I think asking, asking questions folks, it is very rare that you're gonna go wrong. Everybody, read your Dale Carnegie. People wanna talk about themselves. And if you are uncomfortable talking, then you're never gonna go wrong. Just asking the person about their life.

You're gonna learn something. You're gonna connect a little bit. It goes down smooth every time. Let the fear make you the monster. The last time I had my hair cut is by a guy on route 60 who had a little stand with a sign outside his head. Cash, only $12.

And I- Justin, what are you, what's your game? Are you okay? I sat down and he spent, I asked a couple of questions about this person. And then he spent 30 minutes telling me the story, the grand tale of how his wife always wants to buy things that are too large for rooms.

And then pick paint that's too dark for the rooms to make them seem even smaller. And he has so tripped out about this that he spent half an hour walking me on a journey through his home, which I can now picture in perfect clarity. And all the things in each room that are too large for the individual rooms.

And he actually told me that when he, he hated the last color of paint so much that he asked the person that painted it to leave him his number. Because if his wife broke up with him, he was going to call them to have them come back and paint a different color, because he hated it so much.

It was a fucking great 30 minutes. And I got a great haircut out of it. Okay, but please walk me through, you were driving past and you saw a sign that said cash only $12. And you were like, Screech and pulled in. Yeah, I mean, pretty much, I was at Google Maps. I stopped at a stop sign and I typed Barber into it.

And I went to the closest place that was there. Your game is so wild. Does that make you feel alive? Is that the point? I have two hairstyles, cut and not. It is a binary thing that is taking me from longer to shorter. That is it, that is my style.

My go-to Barber here in Austin made the mistake of one of our first sort of sessions together. Mentioning Pokemon. She talked about wrestling. Yeah, she mentioned a wrestling thing she had gone to around town. It was one of two things, Justin. I thought that was a thing.

Well, Pokemon is basically animal wrestling, so I'm not sure that I should. Yeah, I mean, especially with like a May Champ who's got that style or an Incineroar, like that one's four. And that's 15 seconds. Sorry, Griff. Save it for next week.

Here it goes. One last y'all who would close it out. Wait, no, no, no. Do tell me about the wrestling. It's just you're only allowed to talk about it. She talked about wrestling. Now every time I go see her, I'm like seeing any good wrestling lately.

But it was really just the one time. It's like how when you're young and you mentioned in front of your grandparents that you are into dinosaurs because Jurassic Park just came out. And then for the next 25 years, you're getting dinosaur books, dinosaur bones, actual ones, they stole from a museum.

I hate, Griff, and I feel really bad because that was the way that my brain completed that anecdote. And you told it with perfect efficiency. You only told the first 10 seconds because that's all you needed. The rest of it shook out exactly the way. I'm so sorry.

I wanna thank everybody for... You're welcome. Oh, come on now, Trav. Come on, bud. Rest ya! Another famous Travis Raz. I wanna thank everybody for listening to our show. If you want more stuff that we make,

go to McElroy M-C-E-L-R-O-Y dot family. And you can find all the shows we make, all the zany videos, books. And most importantly for this particular vignette is tours. You can go on there and buy tickets to our next round of shows that are gonna be Thursday, February 7th in Birmingham, Alabama and Sunday, February 10th in New Orleans at the Orpheum.

We're gonna be doing Mbem Bam at both of those. And both of those shows, the website's don't even say this yet, both of the shows are going to feature both Sawbones and Shmanners as opening acts. It's a lot of show. And if you go to McElroy dot family and click on tours,

then you can get tickets to those. Also, I believe there's a new Monster Factory out this week and y'all. It's a good one. Oh no, then we gotta do the other part of that that I have not done yet, but I will. Also on February 9th in New Orleans, we're doing the Adventure Zone,

so yes for that as well. I mean, we haven't sold a lot of tickets for those and we're probably gonna take a fucking bath on this one. Folks, come on out, please. We're just so excited to come visit. We're just super excited to come, but we also don't want this to be the only time we ever do because we're bankrupt

because nobody came to our show. So please come to this show and we knew that we didn't have a ton of listeners down there, but we almost- Why are we nagging ourselves? This show's gonna kick ass. We're gonna sell all the kick to last day. If you fucking miss it,

you're gonna be kicking your own butt in your- When you put us in a corner, when we don't fill a room, and we're deseret and hungry, that's when we put on the fucking best shows. Ever ask anybody, ask Detroit, ask any city in this great country. Don't ask Detroit.

Don't ask Detroit. But that's Detroit, specifically not ask anywhere else. McElroy.faili, just get the fucking tickets, please. Please, I have a children. Thank you to John Rodgerick in the Long Winters for these for a theme song. It's a departure off the album,

Putting the Days to Bed, fantastic, fantastic album. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network and go to Maximum Fun, check out all the great shows there, shows like Switchblade Sisters and the Beef and Dairy Network, and there's a bunch of new shows. The JV Club with Janet Varney, there's a ton of shows there,

all at MaximumFun.org that you should definitely go check out. Also real quick, cause we haven't mentioned in a while, the Adventure Zone graphic novel book too is coming out this summer and you can pre-order that at TheAdventureZoneComic.com. Yeah, should I tie it all up with a nice little ribbon? Yes.

It's finally Yahoo that was sent in by Seth Carlson, the delivery man, thank you. It's Yahoo answers user Anonymous. I'm gonna call them Joe Ass. The son? Is that sucker big or what? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. My name is Joseph McElroy.

I'm Charles McElroy. I'm Griffin McElroy. My brother, my brother and me. Kiss your dad, school, hair on the lips. The girls didn't want to say, hey, I want her. MaximumFun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

Listener supported. Is there a dog in a car at a bar on the street? Yay! I'm Alec Beringo, a small dog owner. My dog, Pistachio, howls when she's excited. And I'm Riddick Holvert, a big dog owner. My dog, Tugboat, tips over when he's sleepy. And we co-host a podcast called Can I Pet Your Dog

that airs every Tuesday. We bring you All Things Dog. Yes, dog news, dog tech, dogs we met this week. We also have pretty famous guests on But Legs. We're not gonna let them talk about their projects. No. Just want to hear about those dogs. We don't want to hear about your stuff, only your dogs.

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