Wonderful! - Wonderful! 119: Bergeron on my Mind

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Rachel's favorite physical love adaptation! Griffin's favorite warm water! Rachel's favorite new lo-fi rock! Griffin's favorite strange algorithm!Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https...://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 🎵 Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey, this is Griffin McElroy. This is wonderful. Pew! Pow! Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. That's us coming in in the helicopter uh we're landing and i thought i could do some more sound effects i you know i do i love it i love your sound effects i've been
Starting point is 00:00:34 watching a lot of michael winslow movies which is a way of saying the police academy films well in that shakespearean drama he did he did a production of king lear that i thought was moving yeah what was crazy is there was no set it was just him in front of a microphone opening doors um it's me the king i don't i've never seen kingly right oh don't stab my kids because there's usually yeah there's something like that in there and a lot of those plays those old ones with kings and stuff it's like oh not me kids don't stab me kids brother it's their brother stabbing their kids it's real fucked up uh this is wonderful a show that we like doing and we talk about what
Starting point is 00:01:27 we like on the show that we like doing like in the hopes that you will like it yes too uh we got the max fun drive coming up my small wonder is just sort of seeing what's been happening in the background the behind the scenes of this uh bonus episode we're going to be doing for the MaxFunDrive that donors will be able to listen to. Yeah. We went to the Facebook group and did a poll to get some feedback from our listeners as to what they would like to see for our bonus episode.
Starting point is 00:01:58 By an enormous margin, people wanted to hear Rachel talk about her first experience playing Animal Crossing. So that's what you've been doing for the past week. Please don't say anything about it. Please save it for the paywall. But holy shit, like coming home and like seeing you with the 3DS out and like playing Animal Crossing, I didn't think it would like excite me as much as it did. Not like sexually, but maybe.
Starting point is 00:02:23 And it just makes me so happy sometimes what i've really enjoyed is that griffin will shoo our child away from me so that i can continue playing yes it's like hey no no you come over here mommy's busy and you get the visceral thrill of prioritizing a video game over your family which i I've been, babe, I've been doing that for decades. It's so shit hot. No, just literally watching you play video games is a small wonder for me. It's a big wonder, but it's a thing I really like.
Starting point is 00:02:57 It's a thing I'm really passionate about. And so watching you do it. I feel like you've been looking for a while to find me something that I will enjoy. And it's a good time too, man. That new Animal Crossing comes out next month. Ooh. What's your small wonder?
Starting point is 00:03:08 You got any? My small wonder is fitness. Okay. Fitness whole pizza in my mouth. Have you heard that joke before? You know, I haven't. Oh, all right. It's like a...
Starting point is 00:03:21 I've heard namaste in bed. Oh, that's problematic. Which seems similar. Yeah. I did fitness for a long time. And then just stopped. Yeah. Pretty much stopped entirely.
Starting point is 00:03:38 And just last week I said, you know what, I'm going to return to fitness. People talk about it. They say good things about it. Maybe I'll give it a shot again. Right and turns out do you mean exercise does feel good yeah fitness feels like a weird way of saying that feels like the well exercise can be like walking around the street i see like fitness as a like like cranking it turning it up and fucking before you did not phrase it that way uh no i know what you're
Starting point is 00:04:05 saying like i like i go to a gym yes i walk into an establishment that is designed for people to exercise and i do various exercises in that establishment yes i there is a um like not like calorie focused benefit that I get from riding the, like if I wake up in the morning, take Henry to daycare and then I ride our little stationary bike for like a half hour or something, I feel pretty like pumped. Like it does,
Starting point is 00:04:34 it releases some sort of like, you know, good chemical, I think. For sure. For sure. That makes you feel like I'm ready to take on the day. A lot of people talk about kind of the mental health benefits of,
Starting point is 00:04:43 of exercise. And, um, I have always known that to be true. Yeah. Did not make it easier for me to change. No, it still sucks so bad to do it. Change out of my regular clothes into fitness clothes and then change back into my regular clothes. Like that alone was enough to stop me for years. That's an exercise right there.
Starting point is 00:05:02 Really, if you think about it. Yeah. Just like taking clothes off and putting other clothes on. Yeah. Hey right there, really, if you think about it. Yeah, just like taking clothes off and putting other clothes on. Yeah. Hey, well, you wear huge JNCO jeans, like huge, the heaviest JNCOs I've ever seen in my life.
Starting point is 00:05:15 Which, are you saying taking them off would be fitness? I'm saying that there is a lot of belt work that goes into removing your JNCOs. And there's a lot of navigation. I've got my wallet chain. I've got my phone chain. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:29 I've got my keys chain. A lot of chains that I have to remove. Looks like your butt is some sort of wild dinosaur that they have to keep, you know, safe so it doesn't break out. Rachel's got that big, tall electric fence from Jurassic Park just wrapped around her butt and it's attached to her keys and her wallet and her mouth guard.
Starting point is 00:05:49 That's how I keep you away. Hey now. You know me, I'll be like that little kid that gets shocked and exploded and thrown. Hey, it's you go first. What's your first big wonder? My first big wonder is when couples start to look like each other. Is this a thing?
Starting point is 00:06:10 You haven't heard this as a thing? I don't think so. When people start dating somebody and then everyone's like they're starting to look like each other. You haven't heard this and or noticed this phenomenon before? Is it happening with you and I? It did happen, yeah, early in our relationship. What?
Starting point is 00:06:24 How? I didn't even notice. Do you remember just kind of spontaneously, I needed glasses pretty soon after when we started dating? Oh, you think it's, okay. I'm not saying that that was based on any kind of affection we had for each other. It was just a weird coincidence that happened. No, I think it was.
Starting point is 00:06:46 I think you were looking at my eyes. You think my eyes got worse just to be closer to you? I think your eyes looked at my eyes and they were like, oh, those poor eyes. They shouldn't have to do it alone. And so, you know, it's probably actually, you know what it really is? You didn't own a TV before we started dating.
Starting point is 00:07:01 And then like the first Christmas, I think we were together. I got you like a little lcd tv um so we could have anything to do at your place uh hey we had my laptop yeah that's true but yeah this was not a uh a particularly principled suddenly we both had glasses yes and then you started dressing a little better yeah uh which i would like to think was rising up to my level yeah sure um and i don't know i just think we started kind of looking alike and that's pretty common have you not heard this am i breaking this to you you are breaking this i mean i don't i don't have much of an eye for fashion um but i do i for me it's less like acknowledging that couples look similar the
Starting point is 00:07:48 longer they're together and more that like couples become like sort of universally across the board similar yeah that is that is what the science says okay so i did some research on this phenomenon thinking maybe i would find like one study it turns out researchers have been talking about this for a very very long time oh interesting yeah yeah because there's probably like at a cellular level like a sort of like chameleon camouflage shit going on right yeah well i think um it's so some of it is just kind of like being attracted to like right you know is that you find people that either have similar temperament or potentially like similar background,
Starting point is 00:08:29 you know, to you. Right. And then that kind of merges over time. But they did all sorts of studies throughout time to kind of look at this university of Michigan psychologist, analyze photographs of couples taken when they were newlyweds and photographs of the same couples 25 years later. And the results showed that couples had
Starting point is 00:08:50 grown to look more like each other over time. And the happier that the couple said they were, the more likely that they were to have increased in their physical similarity. Okay, hold on. Are we talking about like face bones? Are we talking about face bones and skin motion? What are we talking about here? Well skin motion what are we talking about here well so some people talked about just like the whole concept of like laugh lines you know like people that are like you know they kind of wrinkle in the same way because they're kind of smiling in the same way all the time okay interesting this i'm into yeah um i thought you were saying just like the face morphs like a transformer
Starting point is 00:09:27 I mean it would be more slow like American Werewolf in Paris it wouldn't be like a like parts of my face fucking fold out and turn into wheels or whatever that's Griffin and Rachel they've been in love for married for 50 years and they're they can turn into trucks
Starting point is 00:09:42 so sweet in 2006 scientists asked participants in a Married for 50 years and they can turn into trucks. It's so sweet. In 2006, scientists asked participants in a study to view individual photos of men and women and judge their personalities. The participants did not know who in the photos were married to whom, but the couples that had been together the longest were judged to have more similar personalities. The researchers concluded that processing personality traits that are attractive may be causal and making a face attractive. That's a lot to unpack. You're sort of like changing my whole sort of view on love and people in
Starting point is 00:10:22 general. It can really, it can, you know, transform your body. Yeah, okay. That's neat, I guess. Also, so there was a study of twins. University of Western Ontario scientists found that not only did study participants tend to pick partners with similar genes, the spouses of identical twins were also more alike than the spouses of non-identical twins that is wild right isn't that fascinating too but it's it's okay but we're getting into some
Starting point is 00:10:54 like nature versus i know it's just like maybe they just like like very similar like maybe your type is more sort of encoded than than would think. That is wild though. So this is my favorite one. So I was reading a Time Magazine article about this. And so there was a 2013 study where people were shown images of their romantic partner's face that had been digitally altered
Starting point is 00:11:16 to include some features from another face, either random other faces or the study's participants' own face. Both male and female participants consistently rated the one that included their face as the most attractive okay well that's that's less about so they would take like a photo of griffin right and they would maybe insert like tom bergeron's features right and i And I would say, eh, okay. Hey, why'd you pick him? No, stop the podcast. Stop the recording.
Starting point is 00:11:48 Edit this out. Stop it. Don't publish this part. Why'd you pick Tom Bergeron? You know, I feel like it's the same way that you and your brothers tend to consistently pick names like Jeremy. I was thinking Jeremy, yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:02 When I have to recall a famous person that's not too famous, it's Tom Bergeron. So you've got like a little Tom Bergeron just kind of scampering about in that dome of yours, just like looking at all your memories and- Inserting himself as necessary. Yeah, just hopping in, waiting for the synapses between like, I'm recording my podcast
Starting point is 00:12:24 and I need to say a celebrity. And Tom Bergeron jumps up and grabs them. Sometimes if I can't remember what my sixth grade gym teacher looks like. Bergeron will poke his head in and be like, he looks like me. Okay, so all that to say, if I saw Griffin plus Tom Bergeron and or Griffin plus Rachel, I would probably be more likely to pick Griffin plus Rachel. Well, you would see your own, you know, beautiful pouty lips and be like, oh, hello, gorgeous. Hello, gorgeous.
Starting point is 00:12:57 This is wild, babe. And then kind of what you were saying, lookalike partners may also be drawn to each other subliminally because of their genes. Plenty of studies have also found that spouses tend to be more genetically similar than strangers, sharing predictors of everything from height to educational attainment. Well, they've also kissed so much, right? That their DNA and their genes have all sort of gotten just one.
Starting point is 00:13:24 Maybe that's why I needed the glasses. That's probably it, babe. I got some of your bad eye spit. Just, yeah. Just from all the kissing we had been doing. Because we weren't married yet. We hadn't done anything. We hadn't got...
Starting point is 00:13:43 Okay, hey, cut this out too. Like Rachel's parents listen to the podcast both. They would be so disappointed. I'm finished. Okay. Do you want to do your thing? I do. Mine's going to be super fast.
Starting point is 00:13:54 Okay. I'm talking about hot tubbing. Oh. On a late night. Griffin has an enthusiasm for hot tubs that I feel like is unmatched by anyone else i've met well yes and i also and you can probably speak to this i have a strange sort of um preoccupation with hot tubs and what hot tubs say we have we have kicked around the idea of owning a hot tub
Starting point is 00:14:20 because like it would be good to be inside that warmth the warm water i'm gonna talk about why it's great here in just a second um but when you say we have kicked around the idea it's you've gotten really enthusiastic about it it's taken me a lot longer than you i think to get enthusiastic i have a fear which is that none of our friends have hot tubs and i feel like if you're the only friend in the friend group that has a hot tub it's like you are like having a key party it feels like to me let's let's practice this okay so let's say it's a Friday yeah we want to have people over yeah we happen to have a hot tub yeah how would you ask them to come let's role play and you can be like one of our friends okay um hey Griffin what are you up to this weekend oh uh well Rachel and I just got a hot tub.
Starting point is 00:15:07 And so like, I think on Friday night, we might just like get in there and like have some wine and just like chill. Do you want to come hang out? It makes me uncomfortable that you're suggesting this, that I get drunk. Yeah baby. That I get drunk in your hot tub with you.
Starting point is 00:15:21 Swing. Like that's the only way I feel like that conversation i don't want it to go austin powers like i tell you how it would really go people would be like oh that sounds fun i'm into it okay then we're not gonna be like oh so you want to get um you want to get weird partially nude and damp together like yeah anyway getting all that out of the, get all that stigma out, throw it away in the garbage can. Hot tubbing is very good. Today I was just,
Starting point is 00:15:52 I think I was driving and I went past like a hot tub store and I was like, I just reflected. Maybe I'll impulse buy a hot tub on the way home. No, that's not something I would do. But I did think about all my good hot tub times that I've had.
Starting point is 00:16:05 And it just moved me to talk about it on this show. Every time I do see a hot tub, I'm in a place that has a hot tub in it, I do get pretty pumped. I do get pretty excited. And I do make a point of trying to get in that hot tub. I don't care about anything fancy. I don't care about Bluetooth speakers and ground know ground effects and like turbo jets and shit like that i just want a nice you know warm water soaking in there with my with my buds and some suds although i'm not really a big beer drinker these days
Starting point is 00:16:38 um so it probably will be wine or a white claw. And just like fucking chilling and talking, connecting. You're so close together. And you got to talk about something. I do like the idea of being able to sit with you in a body of water with no distractions. And we just connect. And we just connect. We can't watch it. You can't just boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
Starting point is 00:17:02 That's you playing Animal Crossing. All day with this fucking, these millennials and their video games uh yeah it's just in in college me and my friends used to go to our friend uh hayley's parents house like way out there in ohio uh right on the river right on the ohio river and just like chilling in that hot tub and having some some especially when it got cold and like snowy chilling in a hot tub watching the barges go by and sipping some some you know mixed drinks like the celebrities do just like the celebrities do watching the coal barges go by on the ohio river uh with their what was your drink of choice then i did a lot of rum drinks uh famously the cocktail that like for a whole summer, like, you know, every weekend or so we would go out there
Starting point is 00:17:51 and I would do Sailor Jerry's spiced rum with, it was like Coca-Cola summer mix. And it was like, they only sold it, I think that one summer probably. I don't even know what this is. It would have been probably like, Jesus, like 2008 or so. Is it like cherry Coke? No, it was like orange and lime.
Starting point is 00:18:12 It was like tropical fruit flavored Coke. Yes, disgusting. I wouldn't drink it with my worst enemy's mouth. With rum, it's so sweet. But with spiced. Yeah, I mean, that was me though, wasn't it? Yeah, I just have that really fond memory. A lot of fond memories.
Starting point is 00:18:27 One time though, I was at a party at a hotel in middle school. I don't remember why it was there, but I sat in a hot tub for like three hours. I got so sick. But I learned you have to respect it, don't you? You got to respect that hot little pool, don't you? I think my first hot tub experience was when i was 18 and it was after prom and i was at one of my friends after prom parties she had a hot tub and we all got in it the way you said
Starting point is 00:18:54 hot tub just there i really wish i could like save it in a little bottle and open up that bottle and hear it whenever i want um and i thought it was pretty pretty okay i guess i don't i i enjoy it um but i don't crave it the way you do interesting can i tell you about the jacuzzi family please it's a real family that's what the the word jacuzzi comes from a name it was an italian family uh they were working on like a hydro pump technology in the early 1900s uh and one of the jacuzzis like a kid developed rheumatoid arthritis and these these brothers uh made a hydrotherapy pump called the j300 and it was just a pump that you could put into any tub and sort of add a jet to it.
Starting point is 00:19:45 And then in 1968, Roy Jacuzzi created like an integrated sort of whirlpool bath that had like the jets like built into it, ready to go. It was called the Roman. And then like really quickly after that, they did like an indoor outdoor model. And that's that is where the hot tub came from. It's just it's so chill it's so chill and social and all their friends felt weird when they were like hey come over i got this do you want us to take a bath with you roy i got this bubbly tub you want to come over no no no you don't understand it's a big bath and it's got fun jets in it roy it's still a big bathtub roy no i mean like
Starting point is 00:20:21 communal bathing has been like a thing right like like uh but not usually like at somebody's house usually it was like a place where everybody went right right i guess that's fair i guess saying like this is like hey you want to come over to my house but i think the jacuzzi family had been developing bath technology so if we had friends that i knew were high in like the bath technology game and they came over like hey you've got to come try out my new bath i'd be like i'm there in a fucking minute what's the new what's the new thing now this brings up an interesting thing so if we are to get a jacuzzi yeah and we want to invite people over maybe we pair it with something else so it's not just about the tub it's like hey do you want
Starting point is 00:21:01 to come over and get in my hot tub and also play checkers? Because that's a feature. And really, it's more about the checkers. Right. And we'll just happen to be. Or just like, you know, no need to ruin a checker set. We could just say, hey, come on over. Hey, are you guys craving boiled eggs?
Starting point is 00:21:20 I'd fucking kill for some boiled eggs. Why don't we boil up some eggs and get in the hot tub water? With the eggs. With the eggs. Two birds, one egg. How'd they both fit in there? That shouldn't be like that. Aw, it's cramped in that little egg, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:21:38 Those two birds. Hey, can I steal you away? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, can I steal you away? Oh, yeah. Got a couple jumbotrons here. Do you want me to read the first one? Sure. This one is for Grant, and it's from Delaney, who says,
Starting point is 00:22:01 Dear Grant, you are forever and always my first wonderful thing of the day. Thank you for all of the love and support you have shown me through the years i cannot wait to love you more and more each day i'm so proud of all you have accomplished and i hope that this made you smile at work your wife delaney p.s i can't wait to smooch you i love that p.s i love that p.s it and you know maybe it should have gone i don't want to criticize this this writer but I think it's important. I think it should have been the subject of the email. Uh-huh. Like, re, coming to smooch ya. Mm-hmm.
Starting point is 00:22:35 I've been working on a new mask movie. Somebody smooch me. I love when we went the same shit. Your whole first segment was like so wicked on point. But now I just feel guilty. Like I have poison. Like I've put my poison. Oh no, you have.
Starting point is 00:22:53 Okay, cool. Can I read the next one? Yes. This is for Mike. It is from MB. Hey Mike, I hope you're having a good day at work or a good drive in the car. You and Levi are my wonderful things.
Starting point is 00:23:09 Just no matter what, though, Mike's not listening to this in the house, which is important because of household accidents. It's a real issue, people. And you get us in your earbuds. You're not going to be able to focus on the gutter you're cleaning. That's true. I've never cleaned a gutter once in my life there's got to be other household accidents right you never reached your paw on a cover and scooped out some leaves i did reach my hand up in a governor once listen it was uh cecil underwood uh former governor of West Virginia. We'll talk about it later. You wept as we crafted the tragic tale of Jar Jar, a Star Wars story.
Starting point is 00:23:52 Dude, like he forgives Darth Vader. He says, still love you, Annie. You gasped out loud at the shocking twists of Face Off 2. Face is wild. He takes his kid's face. What? We're writing an entire screenplay week by week on story bricks season two heaven heist hey folks freddie wong here with some exciting news about story break the writer's room podcast where three hollywood professionals have one hour to spin
Starting point is 00:24:17 cinematic gold we're shaking up our format by turning heaven heist one of our favorite ideas we've ever come up with on the show into a full screenplay heaven heist is an action comedy about a crew of misfit gangsters robbing the celestial bank of heaven think a coco meets point break join us as we write this crazy movie scene by scene and get an inside look at the screenwriting process on our podcast story break every thursday on maximumfunk.org hey what's your second thing my second thing yes is a musical artist oh Oh, yeah. The group I'm referring to, Soccer Mommy. This is, I believe, the second band with Mommy in it that we featured on this show. I talked about a Mommy during my lo-fi hip-hop segment that I did. I don't remember this.
Starting point is 00:24:59 That was my most listened to artist of 2019, according to Spotify, was Mommy. But 2020, it's going to be soccer mommy because fuck this band is my jam um i so soccer mommy has been putting out albums since uh 2016 um i just got hip to it recently so there's a new album coming out end of February called Color Theory. And I happened upon it and remembered some friends mentioning Soccer Mommy and thought like, oh, yeah, maybe this is good. I know we have some friends that like Soccer Mommy. It's good. Turns out.
Starting point is 00:25:53 Sophie Allison, who is 22, she's from Nashville, and she puts together a lot of kind of lo-fi, love-inspired songs. Right. I read some interviews with her, and it's interesting because part of the reason I liked her is that she's got kind of this grunge rock sound. Right. And she kind of references bands like Sonic Youth and Nirvana as some of her favorites. But she also mentions Avril Lavigne and Taylor Swift because she's 22 years old. Right, yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:16 And that's about right. She has toured with a whole bunch of artists. So in the past few years, she's toured with Mitski, Casey Musgraves, Phoebe Bridgers, Vampire Weekend, and Wilco. Fuck, that's a lot of really good bands. Yeah, so she really put together- Have we talked about Phoebe Bridgers on the show before? That seems like a strange oversight. Yeah, you have with me.
Starting point is 00:26:39 I don't know if you've brought her to the show before. uh so she was going to school at nyu and um after completing her sophomore year dropped out because she was already like in a successful band right touring um she worked with a producer um that also produced like deer hunter and war on drugs uh and put together a few albums. She said about this new album, quote, I wanted the experience of listening to Color Theory, which is the name of the album, to feel like finding a dusty old cassette tape that has become messed up over time because that's what this album is, an expression of all the things that have slowly degraded me personally. Whoa. Okay.
Starting point is 00:27:23 The production warps, the guitar solos occasionally glitch. The melodies can be poppy and deceptively cheerful. To me, it sounds like the music of my childhood, distressed and in some instances decaying. Should we play some of it? Yes. Okay. So I wanted to play the song that came out most recently off this new album called Circle the Drain. I feel like if we don't talk about snail mail,
Starting point is 00:28:09 people are going to comment on it. Cause it is like, it is. I almost, I was telling Griffin, I almost didn't want to bring soccer mommy because I thought, well, this feels a little like similar to snail mail.
Starting point is 00:28:21 And some of the characteristics I like about soccer money. I also like about snail mail as a like you know as a biographically speaking i think there's a lot of like uh comparisons that you can make very easily and i think like they are playing a sort of like original indie inspired lo-fi rock but i really do think they're they're like sounds are pretty different like yeah yeah i mean it's like you know similar age obviously both women you know that kind of like
Starting point is 00:28:53 lo-fi you know grungy sound a little bit but her shit is less like garage rocky i would say yeah soccer mommy is less garage rocky than Stale Mail. It's a little bit more like, I don't know, it's a little bit more, produced isn't the right word, but like there's more sort of elements to it.
Starting point is 00:29:15 And there's more sort of, I listened to a song today called Yellow is the Color of Her Eyes. Yeah, it's another one that's gonna be on the new album. It's like seven and a half minutes long and it's just this sweeping, and there's so much going on in that song so like i think that it's an obvious comparison but i do think that there is like enough sort of different between
Starting point is 00:29:33 them so the 2018 album clean which was the last one that was released was on a bunch of like best of 2018 lists like paste pitchfork rolling stone they all put clean on their best of 2018 list so we're a little i think late to the party on this one but um i was really excited like my day like yeah this is the the best shit about this show to me is like uh you put new awesome things into my world like you do that like every day just by being you but also like i listened to this band today i think i've talked about this experience this may have been one of my segments and i was like this is a fucking good band that i am now like so into and will be you know for a long time and that's cool that it just happened today i mean that's kind of like snail mail and cigarette like we've had a lot of
Starting point is 00:30:19 kind of good discoveries yeah uh hey can i do my second thing? Yes. This one will probably be also pretty quick. I wanted to talk about, well, okay, this one's a two parter. So I need you to like stick with me here. Okay. First,
Starting point is 00:30:33 I want to talk about Tom Naughty. That's N-O-D-D-Y, not like naughty. Tom Naughty was a magician kind of in the 80s. And he was like the kind of professional magician who wasn't like in Vegas, I don't think. He was doing like TV circuits. He was doing like late night shows.
Starting point is 00:30:56 He did Letterman. He did Carson. His shtick was so singular and so focused. It boggles my mind because tom noddy was a bubble magician he did magic with bubbles like soap bubbles like that you get out of the wand and you blow it and bubbles come out he did magic with those he was a bubble mancer and he would just have like a bubble wand in one hand and usually a cigarette in the other one okay so he could like take a drag and blow smoke into the bubble he could do stuff with
Starting point is 00:31:31 that he could merge the bubbles he could blow a bubble inside a bubble and right now your mind is thinking like how much fucking stuff can you do with bubbles also how is this magic right like well i'm going to show you um well i'll get to the prestige here in a little bit. Okay. He made a career out of this. He did a how-to magic bubble book in 1988. It was about bubble magic. The book itself wasn't made out of bubbles.
Starting point is 00:31:56 Maybe that technology someday. He created a bubble festival with a place in San Francisco called the Exploratorium that over 15,000 people went to in a weekend. Like, I guess this was a thing for a few people. He had this like profoundly strange, very like explicitly focused career that I had never heard of. And how did I learn about Tom Noddy?
Starting point is 00:32:24 Didn't you bring bubbles one week? Like I feel like you've brought bubbles before. That's weird that I didn't bring Tom Naughty as part of it, but I hadn't seen a particular YouTube video that I'm going to show you a little clip from for everybody at home. This video is titled the night tom naughty forever changed the world of bubble entertainment january 5th 1983 okay so rachel's watching it now i'm just giving her a little slice tom naughty is a fella he's wearing how would you describe the shirt he's wearing hun
Starting point is 00:32:56 kind of a velvety velour kind of right track suit almost but with uh a sort of festive i would say cuff uh on it he's got a pretty tight ponytail like a pretty sick sick ponytail very long ponytail big mustache that kind of mustache that like has uh a lot of it's it's a strange mustache it's an old i would say cowboy prospector mustache and he's got a bubble wand in one hand and a cigarette in the other he is oh he just blew a he look at this he's just blowing bubbles into bubbles inserting smoke bubbles and he's so fucking cool about it right he's so chill yeah i do kind of feel like he invited me over to his house for a party and i'm in his basement right now he's very casual he's just like you're absolutely we are in his
Starting point is 00:33:49 basement like i can smell it i can smell tom not it's like i went over to my friend's slumber party and she's like oh yeah my dad's in the basement he does this stuff with bubbles and i thought oh i guess i'll go downstairs and now i'm transf See, that's just a little joke he does about the Inside Out bubble. Anyway. So what, how did he transform? What? Well, he forever changed the world of bubble entertainment. This was January 5th, 1983.
Starting point is 00:34:13 I believe he was on Carson when he did this. And after this, the landscape of bubble entertainment was changed. The second thing I'm going to talk about is why I watched this video. And the reason I watched this video is because youtube decided that i should watch it based on your history i so youtube's like suggested video algorithm is so fucked up and so occasionally deeply like hilarious uh and i think it's the kind of thing that you only really get the full benefit of if you do watch a lot of youtube which like i watch a lot of youtube videos uh and to be fair to this algorithm they have really nailed me from time to time i found kiwami
Starting point is 00:34:57 japan uh through this uh the uh japanese artist who like makes knives out of all kinds of wild shit i found bomb gardener art restoration through this like sometimes like they they got me right but sometimes it puts up such a fucking weird brick that like i can't stop like trying to unravel backwards the steps it took to get me to the night tom noddy forever changed the world of bubble entertainment, January 5th, 1983. I can't think, can you, you know me?
Starting point is 00:35:28 Yes. You are me. Apparently. What of my interests, what I've watched YouTube videos about that would have got me to the night Tom Noddy forever changed the world of bubble entertainment, January 5th, 1983.
Starting point is 00:35:39 Well, we mentioned that. I think that you have talked about bubbles on this podcast before, but I never got on YouTube and was like, to look at bubbles. You know why? Because they're bubbles. Like I'm pretty sure I know how they do what they do. that you have talked about bubbles on this podcast before but i never got on youtube and was like to look at bubbles you know why because they're bubbles like i'm pretty sure i know how they do what they do and also i talked about bubbles a long time ago i've watched a lot of other shit on youtube but have you thought about growing a very big mustache or a very long ponytail i've
Starting point is 00:35:59 been looking into velvet wear uh i was about to like research this right because i decided i wanted to talk about this after being after watching this video this morning and so i hopped back on like later in the day and the first video that it served to me was called wow is this an axe or a laser beam and this is just a big woodcutter man who uses like an ax, like a woodcutting ax to cut wood. This reminds me. He's reviewing an ax. Remember the slow motion explosion thing that you watched for a while?
Starting point is 00:36:32 Okay, yeah, like slow-mo videos I get. I get like, we watched some hydraulic press videos. I don't see how YouTube gets me from that to a big burly man outside of his cabin surrounded by defiled logs, just like doing his YouTube axe reviews. The knife videos. Because they're bladed objects.
Starting point is 00:36:53 Maybe, you can make a case for that, I think. The bubbles I'll give you, that's kind of strange. But like, it's not just, this is not my own personal conspiracy theory, because my absolute favorite thing, and these are just two examples of every day every time I log on to the website at least one of the little thumbnails like visible to me from the jump is like some nonsense shit a lot of the times it sucks shit like a lot of times it's like you want to watch this Logan Paul video
Starting point is 00:37:16 and it's like no YouTube I don't uh but sometimes it's like do you want to watch this mustachioed man do bubble magic on Carson? And I'm like, yeah, I guess I do. And the most amazing thing is every comment on those videos, which have millions, that video has millions of views. Every comment is like, what the fuck am I doing here? Every comment is like, I wasn't, I didn't want to watch this, but here I am. Like YouTube said I should watch this, so I'm watching this. Every one of them,
Starting point is 00:37:48 which means that there's a library of weird garbage that YouTube, like a fucking proud cat dragging a dead bird into the house, is like, you want Tom Noddy? You want Tom Noddy?
Starting point is 00:38:01 I didn't ask for Tom Noddy. I wonder if he has a group of lobbyists who are like slowly upping the algorithm of like okay are you trying to install a bathroom sink all right let's just throw in this video right after right uh it is it genuinely i don't get a lot i don't derive a lot of like pleasure from uh online interactions in general but this is the purest like form of camaraderie that i feel where like it is hard for me not to get self-conscious after i've watched the entirety of the tom noddy changes bubble entertainment january 3rd 1980 uh i feel guilty because it's like what the fuck am i like what am i doing with my life? And then seeing literally thousands of people saying the exact same thing.
Starting point is 00:38:46 Like it makes me feel a connection to this is I'm being serious. There's a, it makes me feel a connection to those people and it makes them more like real than a lot of like online interactions I have because I know that they literally did the exact same thing as me for the exact same reason I did it and feel the exact same way about that afterwards and I feel like a genuine kinship with those folks it does make me wonder if there are like a series of like counterparts to you out there that have watched the exact same videos
Starting point is 00:39:17 you have watched and now on this path that you are on as well and so like tomorrow when you get pushed like here's a hula hoop but it's covered in peanut butter watch this dog lick the whole thing right somebody else somewhere is also watching that video because they are on your path well it's like an infinite monkeys typing hamlet thing right or like yeah that video just described probably does exist yeah somewhere and some weirdo is watching it but i don't think that person i'm not married to them so like they're not that much like me i guess is the thing i took away from the first segment um hey can i tell you what our friends at home are
Starting point is 00:39:54 talking about yes here's a submission from griffin not me another griffin okay there's not that many of us this is a precious gift so really listen it. I'm going to wonder if this is something you also like. No. Hi, Rachel and Griffin. My wonder this week is the feeling of freshly brushed teeth. It's so clean and smooth. I love it. You don't like that? I mean, I like it. I wouldn't write into
Starting point is 00:40:18 a podcast about it. But today I did go to the dentist for a cleaning. I do like that. That's the only time I feel like my teeth are like damn I know you're like whoa this this feels
Starting point is 00:40:27 oh is that tooth always like that yeah I got gaps in there that I didn't even know about that's neat it's like my teeth
Starting point is 00:40:33 just got a haircut Gretchen says something I think is wonderful is when you're putting away laundry and you're hanging up the last shirt
Starting point is 00:40:41 and you realize the bunch of hangers you grabbed at the beginning was the exact right number you needed for the laundry you had oh that is nice that's good shit people write stuff like this in and i think like they maybe should be doing our show for us because that kind of precise look at your daily life it's good it's good it's a good way to live yeah it's measuring your life and love and love. And hangers. And hangers.
Starting point is 00:41:07 I don't know if I was quoting Rent or Mbembe then. I've crossed the stream way fucking too far. Hey, thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the Use For a Theme song. When you won't pay, you can find a link to that in the episode description.
Starting point is 00:41:17 And thank you to Maximum Fun. Yeah, thank you Maximum Fun for hosting our show and for hosting a lot of other delightful shows. If you haven't listened to the Jackie and Lori show and you like funny ladies, that's a good place to go. Go check that out. Go check out Judge John Hodgman and Story Break and a whole lot more at MaximumFun.org.
Starting point is 00:41:37 Go to McElroy.family because we have a lot of fucking podcasts. We got a pin. We got a pin of the booger cat. We got a new pin. It is got a pin of the booger cat it is a delightful pin of the book if you haven't listened to our huntington live show this pin is based off of that very show yes we talk about the wayne county booger cat uh my new favorite cryptid my new favorite pin uh you're gonna love it there's a john pin too from a monster factory that i'm very excited about a lot of cryptid, uh,
Starting point is 00:42:05 work that, that, that we have this, this month for you. Uh, yeah. And I think that's it. So like,
Starting point is 00:42:11 I think like, it's like whatever, man, you know, you want to do some bubble tricks for me? Yeah. So go ahead and describe what I'm doing. Okay.
Starting point is 00:42:21 So he's dipping the wand in the bubbles. Oh, and he's, oh, he's doing some kind of tongue technique uh the bubble wait the bubble is in the shape of tom bergeron wow that's incredible thank you i love you i love you too no that was Tom. I'm on. Hey! Working on. Hey! I'm on. Hey!
Starting point is 00:43:06 Working on. Hey! I'm on. Hey! Maximumfun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.

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