Wonderful! - Wonderful! 298: Sprigatito Went to the Pepper Palace

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Griffin's favorite gatherings for big nerds! Rachel's favorite localized animal puns! Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaReproductive Freedom for All: https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Welcome to Wonderful. Hello. Hello, welcome. Hi hello welcome hi come in take off your shoes please take off your take off your shoes we want to see those feet this is wonderful shall we talk about things that are good that we like that we are into we are back from New York

say we didn't miss an episode I guess so you don't know that we were there but we were in New York City we did talk a lot about going can you feel the sophisticated and cool New York City vibes coming off of us trains art, culture

bagels, pizza we've got it all from New York City and now you can have it too we'll give you the abundance of art and culture and bagels and pizza. We did eat some good pizza while we were there. It was fun. Our kids are – well, Henry is a picky eater. He likes one specific type of pizza, but it was fun because there was one night where we ordered pizza for all of us.

And I was like, man, if we can't get him to eat this, we're going to have to figure out other food. We're staying at a hotel. That's not easy but it was really great to just be like henry this is new york city pizza you gotta try this and he ate it he was like i love new york city pizza yeah those little those little tricks and hacks as a parent are very little culture vulture now he really really is hey do you have a small wonder? I'm going to say my small wonder is when a hotel has a fridge and a microwave in the room. Huge for us.

We stayed very shortly in Philadelphia in a room that had both and then went to New York and then ended up in a room that had neither, which is the problem when you have small children. So we luckily were able to switch with Justin and get a room with a fridge, but no microwave. So we just kept ending up with all these leftovers and we would dutifully pile them in the fridge and then realize like i guess i guess that's it for left behind a lot of dim sum in a big apple um heartbreaking heartbreaking i did i did enjoy eating it even though i exploded a soup dumpling all over my shirt moments before going to the theater to perform the adventure zone uh I'm going to say big shout out to the Nintendo World Store and FAO Schwartz in New York City, side by side. If you're going with a kid who likes shopping for

toys to New York City, you cannot do better than those two businesses. We did go on a rainy Saturday afternoon, which I imagine is the worst imaginable conditions to go to a big sort of uh headline store uh in new york city like that because it was just like sardines jam-packed in those two buildings but um henry's eyes were aglow with the promise of retail exactly that was very fun yeah as a parent um i go first this week appropriately enough this week I'm going to talk about conventions because we were in New York for New York Comic Con which was my first time going to New York Comic Con the rest of my family I feel like has has been several times but this is my first time and it just reminded me of how much I enjoy the whole idea of conventions, whether it's for comics or games or whatever.

They are all so very unique and exciting. It is very fun for me that you have sort of gotten embroiled in this world as well. I think Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle was the first one you had been to. It was, yeah. Was that last year or the year before?

So you're fairly fresh on the ground of this world. Yeah, no, you went as a child, right? Like your dad would take you as a kid. Yes. This was not anything I had any experience with until I was an adult. I can't even imagine what it would feel like as a child. Well, I'll talk about that because uh i i did start going to convention since i was like in middle school uh starting with mid ohio con uh which does not exist anymore i found out they changed the name of it and it ran until 2019 they haven't done one in four years which is heartbreaking because this was very formative for me but every november around thanksgiving it would happen dad would pile the three of us in the minivan and we would drive, you know, three hours to Columbus. So your mom didn't even have to go?

No, it was a sweet setup for mom. I imagine she got some very rare chill out time with the four of us gone. Was this because your dad was collecting comic books primarily? Or was it like also the the glitz and glamour of the celebs no i honestly think more than anything it was just a a unique experience i feel like dad didn't go there so much for comics as much as he did for like bootleg vhs collections of uh you know uh star trek andromeda or whatever. But we would drive up in the mornings, just he would let us run around there all day.

And then we would drive back from Columbus at night. And it was always very whirlwind, but it was super fun. It was a weird experience for me because like a lot of mid-Ohio con wasn't stuff that I was particularly enthusiastic about. Like there was a lot of signings and photos with like the cast of Leave It to Beaver or like photo shoots with Lou Ferrigno, who one time we saw at a Johnny Rockets just annihilating a giant hamburger, which was terrifying to behold.

Wait, where was that? It was like across the street from the convention center. Okay. Wait, where was that? It was like across the street from the convention center. Okay. And even though I wasn't like really big into comics or old ass TV shows, it was always a really like exciting place to be because I was surrounded by like nerds who were bigger nerds than I was. Oh. Which was a rare experience. All sort of just dealing in katanas and imported Japanese figurines and vintage Playboys.

And how did that feel to be around nerds that were bigger nerds than you? Was it comforting or intimidating? A little bit of both. It was a, I felt like I was not well-versed enough in the things that were being exalted there to like really participate in it. But as a sort of tourist in that world, it was illuminating and very, very cool. I will say the last couple that we went to was when the Pokemon trading card game came out and they held tournaments, which I competed in and did quite well, if I do say so myself.

I think the last year we went, I came in second overall, which was. Wow. Which is really, really, you know, a real feather in my cap. But I always like I always really looked forward to it because what you have to remember is that this was largely pre-internet right like yeah we had you know aol or whatever in our house but it wasn't like the internet as it is now where there is a discord community for every imaginable like interest and if you are into something you can just find you know infinity people who are also into that thing like this was there was so much excitement when you went to mid ohio con because uh it it was a rare opportunity to you know gather

with people who are into the same like very specific stuff that that you are into and even if i wasn't into leave it to beaver like seeing a bunch of people who are uh get get together was like a really uh i don't know a very exciting uh and very memorable experience though like and this shows my like lack of experience but i did not expect the number of people wearing costumes um it really caught me off guard when i just looked around and saw so much of it. I didn't really like typically, for example, when you go to the mall to buy, you know, a book, you don't dress as the book. No, I would say the mall and a convention are two quite distinct sort of. I just I view it as

primarily an experience for spending money and so uh and i'm not trying to hop on some kind of anti-capitalist horse i'm just saying like i didn't expect people to dress up for that yeah and then taking it in was truly like overwhelming for me i cosplay is a thing like cosplay more or less was not a thing that was a big thing at mid ohio con like people would come wearing you know there were a lot of um star trek uniforms going around but there wasn't this was not like a big facet of ohio con i'm not well versed enough in cosplay or the history of it uh to really speak on that but i feel like i have watched it become a really um common thing at cons in the you know length of time that i have been going to them yeah uh and i i feel pretty authoritative

in that because i have been to i hang on to every lanyard for every con I've ever been to. I think I've been to probably close to 100 or so at this point. Yeah, for sure. Because after Mid-Ohio Con, I started working at Joystick in like 2008, and then I was going to several a year. But it was a completely different experience because all of a sudden, like, I was working a lot. Yeah. a completely different experience because all of a sudden like i was working a lot yeah one of our earlier episodes of wonderful i talked about e3 and sort of eulogized it because it's doesn't exist anymore but it's just like me in a room with a like a really tight-knit small team of reporters just working into the the the wee hours of the morning yeah because you would spend all

day getting information and then you'd spend all night writing making articles yeah and and so like that was that was incredible in a different way where like the enthusiasm for this specific thing was was there more so than mid ohio con ever kind of like gave to me all of a sudden like i was a part of it and i also got to kind of like peek behind the curtain of this industry that I am that I continue to be like absolutely embroiled in. And so I've been to like I've been to every like game convention that has existed. I've gotten to travel overseas to get to go to Gamescom and Tokyo tokyo game show uh which are very very cool opportunities uh so that like is like another angle through which i i i love the convention scene and now like that i i don't really work in the games press anymore i'm on this other side of

it where and i'm so so grateful to to be here where like people are coming to our signings and our photo shoots and our panels and our shows uh all of a sudden i'm lou farigno eating a big burger johnny rockets um and like it's it's so cool it's it's incredibly humbling especially now that like i'm not so much on social media like getting to talk to people who to people who enjoy our stuff is like is important and amazing and very, very humbling. a show floor as much as I did when I was going to Mid-Ohio Con and I was in middle school and just seeing like all the imported Japanese figurines and Pokemon memorabilia. The variety of Lego minifigures. There's so many Lego minifigures which is amazing. I love walking through an artist alley which is like a very like constant thing and like I have a bunch of art here in my office that I've, I pick up at, at these artists alleys because it is so,

it's so exciting. That's like another facet of, of cons that like, I'm not an artist. So like, I'm not really a part of, but it's very, very cool too.

Well, not in the, not in the visual sense. Thank you, baby. I appreciate it. I was not fishing for compliments there. It is bonkers.

How much like the idea of conventions has exploded in my lifetime. baby i appreciate i was not fishing for uh compliments there uh it is bonkers how much like the idea of conventions has exploded in my lifetime uh because like mid ohio com was basically the only thing we had access to in the entire tri-state yeah uh area uh and now there are around two million conventions held in the U.S. alone annually across, of course, a bunch of different disciplines, right? There's dental conventions or whatever. I'm sure those are lit as hell. Huntington used to not have anything in this way. Huntington used to have what was called the Tri-State Sportsman's Expo

that we would go to because dad would do like a remote broadcast from them. Was it like fishing stuff? Hunting and fishing, which like I don't give a shit about, but we would tour, they would have like RVs that you can come in and tour. Oh, that's fun. Which is always great.

And we'd ask our dad like, we should really, we should really get an RV. I know. Isn't it funny when you're a kid and you just assume like everything is within reach? Like I was talking to Henry the other day and telling him that I didn't go to Disney World until I was in fifth grade. And he was like, why did you wait so long? A big thing there was jerky. That was like the only thing I cared about is I would buy a lot of jerky.

And that's probably where my love for jerky came around. But like there was nothing that I cared about at that place. Yeah, of course. Now, Huntington has like several comic and anime expos that happen every year. Which is, I don't know. I feel like if that had been available to me when I was was younger it would have been a very transformative experience i love talking backstage at at cons now to like other people in our field who went to cons growing up and hearing like their experience going to like you know actual uh

nerd expos in their hometowns yeah and how much it sort of, you know, shaped their relationship with this community. And, you know, I'm very grateful that I had Mid-Ohio Con for that, even though it wasn't specifically kind of tailored to my interests. And yeah, I just I love them. I love working at them. I love going to them. And I'm very grateful that I've had the kind of life and career that I have had where I've been able to go to so many and see it from, as Joni Mitchell would say, both sides now.

And I always get excited to go to them regardless of whichever one it is, if it's about board games or video games or comics or whatever and now that you have two children you have an excuse right yeah it's to go to the show floor and just browse because it's for the kids it well yeah it is for the yeah i mean there's that's a that is one way of putting it the other way is like i remember when we took henry to emerald city that was his first con too yeah and he saw like cosplayers and was like it was like an eye-opening experience for him to see like and me too yeah right like he could be a fan of a thing to to an extent that like he didn't really know about and that's like at that is cool to to show that to someone who is very enthusiastic about a lot of different sort of like nerd things so um conventions they're great

they uh sometimes they sell infinite root beer uh mugs there and sometimes they smell like popcorn they fill the the the entirety of a you know million square foot building with popcorn smell which is astonishing so um cons get. Can I steal your way? Yeah. Hi, I'm Bikram Chatterjee, the CEO of Maximum Fun, and I'm here with my fellow worker owner. Marissa Flaxbart, producer. This week for Co-Optober, we'll be highlighting other co-ops who work in the arts. The past few years have been challenging for all kinds of creative industries. We at MaxFun believe that co-ops are better suited to meet

these challenges, and there are a lot of other companies who feel the same way. So all this week on our social media and website, we'll be sharing interviews with some of our fellow co-ops. And head to our YouTube channel, Friday, October 20th, where I'll be talking with worker owners from Defector and Stoxy about their co-ops and why the model works for them. And next week is Volunteer Week. Learn how you can participate in that and get details on exclusive merch, our live streams, and other Co-Optober happenings at MaximumFun.org slash Co-Optober.

That's C-O-O-P-T-O-B-E-R. All right, class. Tomorrow's exam will cover the science of cosmic rays, the morals of art forgery, and whether or not fish can drown. Any questions? Yes, you in the back. Uh, what is this? It's the podcast Let's Learn Everything, where we learn about science and a bit of everything else. My name's Tom. I studied cognitive and computer science, but I'll also be your teacher for intermediate emojis. My name's Caroline and I did my master's in biodiversity conservation,

and I'll be teaching you intro to things the British Museum stole. My name's Ella. I did a PhD in stem cell biology biology so obviously i'll be teaching you the history of fan fiction class meets every other thursday on maximum fun so do i still get credit for this no obviously not no it's a podcast okay this uh this topic my wonderful thing this week is a topic that i think you will have a lot of input to provide okay um but i also think it i don't know so we have discussed this topic before but i am focusing on a particular element of it okay cool and i'm talking about the names of Pokemon. Oh, babe. I know, it's your love language.

Yeah, it's close enough. Wow. It was wild. You know, I felt a little bit like I was wandering into your corner of the world. Sure. And I thought this might be a more appropriate topic for Griffin because he has the background. But then I realized you couldn't really come to this with like, I really love the names of Pokemon. Because your understanding is so much deeper than mine.

That's true. Whereas I can just kind of delight in the like sonic pleasure of some of these guys. You could also just delight in sonic pleasure, which is a different game franchise, but. Different corner. So Henry's gotten into Pokemon cards. So I imagine this is where this is coming from, that you have seen so many more Pokemon and their names than you ever have in your entire life.

Yes. Okay. The gateway for me is of course, Sprigatito. Sprigatito, fun to say, fun to play. That was my starter got to oh really oh yeah um i love a grass type starter hey you're in the corner you're in you're in my corner right now you are a guest here i know um henry uh obviously is becoming more and more interested in pokemon particularly the cards. And one thing that has been

happening lately at a nearby fast food establishment is that you can receive cards. And he has repeatedly received his Brigatito. And I always get really excited when either I hear him say it or I get the chance to say

it myself. You've gotten to say it twice or three times so far already in this recording is a great is a a great day for you uh some of my other favorites um garchomp garchomp fun to say yeah absolutely uh i found one named swampert swampert sure which is fun it kind of sounds like stewart but a pokemon swampert? Swampert, sure. Which is fun. It kind of sounds like Stuart, but a Pokemon. Swampert evolves into Marsh Stomp, which is not fun to say. I don't like the way that that kind of runs together. I did a lot of research trying to figure out, like, is there a guy? Like a guy Pokemon? Like a person Pokemon? No, that, like, names these.

Like a guy that, like, lives in a room in, like, a big tower and just names Pokemon all day. That does not seem to be true although there do seem to be teams devoted to like translations that's what it is right it's you would need that all of these names are localized because they have japanese names that are i don't think ever the same names as their uh anglicized titles yeah Yeah. So I did find some, and I don't know how reputable these sources are. Does CBR mean anything to you? Yeah.

I mean, it's an outlet that I've heard of before. They identified some of the like roots of these names. Do you know Pikachu? Do I know Pikachu? Like the root of that? That is a, that's a pretty direct translation, right? Like that is more or less what his Japanese name is, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, so Pika Pika means sparkling or shining, and Choo Choo is the noise a mouse makes. Yes, okay. I did know that. LeChonk, another one I like. So fucking good, Le chonk another one i like so fucking good le chonk uh le chonk draws upon a mix of spanish and english with words like le chonk and oink yes as well as the affectionate slang word chonk generally mean big round and cute so him and sprigatito are both from the new games pokemon scarlet and violet which are set in a region that each game's region is sort

of inspired by a real world region and that is supposed to be like spain and so that is where you get a lot of the uh a lot of that flavor like fue coco i love fue coco uh i found for this is the gamer.com uh which they allowed me on to even though I am not one. I didn't have to answer a series of questions to access the site. A captcha for non-nerds. And they list some of the more punny ones. There's coughing and wheezing. Great.

Are you familiar with those? Of course. If you get into, I would say, the first 250 Pokemon, I know them quite well. Do you know about Pseudowoodo? Pseudowoodo, yeah. He looks like a tree, but he's a rock type Pokemon, hence the name. Octillery? Yes, this is an octopus, but it's also like artillery. Pretty much, I would say 96 of pokemon

names is just like animal plus yeah or other uh noun uh i'm just reading a lot of these now um perzerker perzerker love it new mouth evolution yeah exactly i knew you were gonna be good at this yeah i didn't know that i wouldn't have to finish there's like 900 of these guys and i think i know almost all of them at this point uh crab crabominable crabominable is a weird one because i think he looks like he's water type but he's actually fighting type i get him confused with oh no that's a different one that's a icy that's an icy fella yeah kind of a like an abominable snowman in my defense there's like 90 crab based po they have run they have the well is running dry of animals that they have not uh explored i think i'm thinking of crab brawler which is a oh of course of course uh and just to end on a seasonal note uh there's pump kaboo pump kaboo there's a there's a few pumpkin based guys as well oh there are i guess

pumpkins pumpkins um have global appeal yeah sure everyone loves a everyone loves a pumpkin um i like uh i mean one of my all-time favorite names is is a big pokemon with just a huge tongue that's as long as its body is called lickitung that's all of his name is very very good um yeah i mean honestly i don't you know i don't have a lot of expertise but sprigatito sprigatito is a good one it's very good you know pokemon uh mean uh pocket monsters i did know that yes i i i did know about that i enjoyed that too uh i guess it started i was reading it started as like a like a magazine or something and then they sold it as a game not no i don't think that's right. The article I said or I read said the franchise has

its roots in a gaming magazine in the early 1980s. GameFreak. GameFreak is the name of the company that makes Pokemon, so it's possible that they started as a... That may be some fact about Game Freak,

the company that I was not aware of. But Game Freak is the developer of all the mainline Pokemon games. Yeah, no, I'm so glad you came on this journey. I think I did a Pokemon segment, but I guess I didn't really talk about their names as much. Just like as an outsider, it's a very delightful aspect of the Pokemon.

I think you'd be good at it. I think you would be good at naming Pokemon. names as much just like as an outsider it's a very delightful aspect of the pokemon i think you'd be good at it i think you would be good at naming pokemon there's a great series of videos that is probably quite ancient at this point where um someone shows pictures of pokemon to their grandmother and their grandmother says what they think that their name is. Oh, that's great. And it is delightful. And some of the names are, I would say, even better than the names that some of these guys ended up with. But I think that'd be a fun job. This looks like a dinosaur with a bulb of garlic on its back.

Well, that is a Bulbasaur. Of course. So you think they start with the drawing and then they name it? I think that's all they, yeah. I think they say a turtle what's he do squirts well i um i was looking desperately for like a little feature little like heartwarming piece about like the process of naming pokemons i couldn't find it it might exist there is a there is a um the art of localization and and translation is a strange one because there is i i would say and this is all from you know outsiders perspective looking in and covering the games industry, there is a lot about localization that is not prominently discussed or revealed. And I think that is because of this sort of cultural idea

of like not wanting to step on the original work that the folks did. There is a company I I think, called 8-4 that does a lot of localizations of Japanese games to English. And there's so much that goes into it because you get into, like, you know, translating these, like, historical cultural meanings that don't have necessarily like an english uh like direct correlation um so like the entire thing is very very fascinating but it is also like a thing kind of shrouded in mystery because uh it's just not something that is discussed a whole lot also because like back in the day translation teams was like a guy that like one one dude sometimes who was like doing most of the heavy lifting and so uh you know that it is lost to history for that reason but

yeah yeah i'm sure i bet there's a great story out there just waiting to be told about sprigatito sprigatito sprigatito um can i tellito. Spriggetito. Spriggetito. Can I tell you what our friends at home are talking about? Yeah. Well, Hemlock says, My small wonder is lucky socks. My Nana got me a pair of knitted multicolored socks with lots of different patterns, and I always wear them to sleep the night before big events.

Telling myself the socks are lucky and magical gives me just a little more confidence. I think this is very nice, the idea of wearing socks to bed i can't i can't i know i know once you like remove those guys it's really hard to get in the habit of putting them on that's where i let my body know it's time to it's time for rest i'm not wearing socks right now that might be why i feel so very tired right now um nathaniel says my small wonder this week was inspired by a thought rachel had in the outro of the august 30th episode uh yes of course uh pepper palace it's a u.s slash canada hot sauce and spice rub store that's basically what you would get if you crossed a candy store and the spice aisle at the grocery store the entire store is arranged from mild to very hot and the employees are always very enthusiastic about hot sauce huh i don't know what this is referencing i think you mentioned a

hot sauce sommelier oh yeah that's right um and so that is what this that's what the pepper palace offers i suppose the pepper palace pepper palace it's fun it's fun to say spritito went to the pepper palace spritito went to the pepper palace how's my sibilance reggie reggie's our producer um yeah man i i i really like hot sauce and i feel like maybe i'm stuck in a rut a little bit we definitely are like we just buy the same stuff over and over again. It's a hard thing to try other versions of because if you have the wrong one, it fucking it will wreck my whole shop. It's a high risk, low reward sort of experimentation. Yeah, we need to go to the Pepper Palace. Gotta go to the Pepper Palace.

Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for these for a theme song. Money won't pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Go to MaximumFun.org. Check out all the great shows that they have there because they're all great and they're all shows. We have some new merch including a poster of the Plato's Rave, a diagram, a map, if you will, a walkthrough of Plato's Rave from My Brother and My Brother and Me. This is a bit, for those of you, I have to imagine there's at least 2% of our listeners

that do not also listen to your other podcasts. This is a bit from My Brother, My Brother and Me, where the boys turned a container store into a rave and added a variety of floors and elements to this it spiraled i believe out of the first question we addressed in the episode and then we accidentally talked about it for like 55 minutes the great thing about this poster is it's like a little where's waldo and that the me and sydney and theresa are in it amanda's in it yeah it's great you can you can find a lot of a lot of uh insider like references there yeah we also have other merch and stuff.

We got an Amnesty Lodge candle. I don't know if we still have Poetry Corner candles on there, but I lit one before we recorded in here because I left an old sandwich in the room before we left town, and it had left a foul musk. But the Poetry Corner candle is so powerful that I erased it and replaced it with just incredible aroma i should say that it is it is frequent that griffin and i will eat lunch in

our office space it's not like he five days a week like not like he somehow a sandwich ended up in here no i mean sandwiches end up here five days a week when i eat them for lunch um that's at mac remerge.com. I don't think I said the link. And, oh, this is usually when I'd plug shows, but we're done for the year. So that's cool. Well, eventually there will be Candle Nights. Eventually there will be Candle Nights.

And so that'll be exciting. I'm sure we'll have details on that soon. But that's it. That's it. That's going to be it for us. Thanks to everybody that came to New York and Philadelphia. It was so cool. So cool to see all of y'all.

And, you know, Spriggetito. Spriggetito. Spriggetito. Do you know what Spriggetito evolves into? Meowscarada. Isn't that? It's all so good. It's very good.

It's very good. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.