Wonderful! - Wonderful! 320: We Should Start Language Over

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Rachel's favorite comeback hairstyle! Griffin's favorite niche community that combines other niche communities!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Palestine Children's Relief Fund: https://www.pcrf.net/

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Thank you for listening to Wonderful. That's going to do it for us. And this is wonderful. Thank you for listening to Wonderful. That's gonna do it for us. This week on Wonderful. You know what? Let's tack on an extra half hour.

Thanks to Maximum Fun. Thanks to Maximum Fun, thanks Bowen and Augustus. This is a show where we talk about things we like that is good, that we are into. You know who that was for? That was for the people who read like the last page of a book before they like start it just to see. God, it would be so helpful to me

if I knew how any podcast I recorded was gonna end before I got to it. You know what I mean? That's like a fun little challenge if you're like, wait, weird, we're ending on waffles and peanut butter. Now this is arcing towards, trending towards becoming an improv game,

which is not the energy I wish to facilitate. Hey Griffin, what's your favorite theater game that you would play? I mean the one that I played, and this is my small wonder for this week, thank you so much. I used to play Freeze all the fucking time with my friends. All the time. Was this where you'd like tag out and enter? I used to play Freeze all the fucking time with my friends.

All the time. Was this where you'd like tag out and enter? Yes, so you'd have two people doing a little skit, doing a little scene. And when I say this was in a much different time of my life, this was like middle school, high school, peak community theater Griffin era. Is yeah, we would just like,

if there was a big enough group of like theater kids gathered around, Freeze would just start happening. It's like, it's such a beautiful encapsulation of my childhood and perhaps if I zoom out far enough, my entire life, where my dad, Clint McElroy, built a basketball, like half basketball court in our backyard, paved over the like the grass yard that we had to put built a half basketball court in our backyard, paved over the grass yard

that we had to put in a little basketball court back there for his boys to play B-ball on. But whenever I had friends over, we would just go back there and play Freeze and just do improv games on the B-ball court. Yeah, I mean, that could be a very active game, depending on how you tag in. That was not the, none of us were concerned.

Anytime anyone talks about freeze, I think of that episode of Freaks and Geeks where Millie was a member of this group that was trying to teach kids about the dangers of like drug and alcohol. And I think they did like a freeze. Okay, so what should we have done? I think about the episode of the office

where Michael Scott is in an improv class and keeps freezing and turning it like he has a gun and he's an FBI agent there to take them down. Oh boy, do you have a small wonder? Cause I already did mine and it was freeze the improv game from my childhood. I am gonna say hiding candy from your children. Yes, both in a mechanical like Easter egg I am gonna say hiding candy from your children. Yes.

Both in a mechanical, like Easter egg fun way, and in a we gotta get this stuff, we gotta put this stuff. I wasn't even thinking about that. Yeah, Henry is not like, he's not obsessed with candy. If he sees candy, he'll be like, oh cool. He'll be like, oh cool, candy. But we don't really have to hide it from him.

He just kind of tapers off on his own. Gus is ravenous for the stuff. And we have found that if we hide it, all of a sudden things get better. Out of sight, out of mind, eventually. Eventually. There's a few dicey times when he's like, lollipops, lollipops, lollipops, lollipops.

One of us has to like distract him with like a colorful ribbon while the other one goes to the secret lollipop cave that we've built in our pantry. We have to input the, we have to break the codec on the front of it and then retrieve one lollipop before sleeping. It's also good for us too, I will say.

I'm speaking about it as if it's valuable only to our children, but it is also good for me to not see candy every day. Yeah, it's hard for me knowing that there is a full, uneaten, like Hershey's white chocolate rabbit, the size of my forearm. I thought Henry would be super into that, because Henry has-

There's two of those untouched in our pantry. Last night I was like, I'm gonna have myself a little snack-a-roll. I knew if I went after that bunny, it would be a bad situation. I don't know that I would be able to stop it. And then also if the kids were like, I think I'm ready for my bunny now.

And you'd be like, well, here's his torso. That's what's different about Easter, right? Like Halloween, all the candy, you can kind of sneak in and out, but Easter, like it comes in different shapes. Yes. We can't re-gift the white chocolate Easter bunny. Yeah, well, and you also can't have a little bit

and put it back, like it will be noticeable. That's true. I will say you are going out of town this weekend. I'm probably gonna- Just treat yourself. I'll probably eat one of the bunnies while you're gone. And when you say this weekend, you mean last weekend because-

That doesn't matter to the audience. We're recording the episode. Well, I mean- That's how production works, folks. Accuracy. It's December, 2023. That's how far ahead of the game we are. You go first this week.

I do. What do you got? Okay, my wonderful thing this week is actually something I am sporting right now, and that is the pigtail. Yes. Specifically two. I don't know. Okay.

If you have one, it's kind of just like a ponytail. Yeah, I think that's the differentiator. What is it if you have three? I don't know that there's a word for that. And there's nothing that has two, three tails. But then again, pigs don't have two tails. True. Well, actually you'll come to find out

that pig tails are not in fact named after the pig's tail itself. Yeah, I figured that would probably be part of the discussion. Oh man. The etymology. Yeah, but figured that would probably be part of the discussion. Oh man. The etymology. Yeah, but weren't you thinking like, oh, I know what this is.

This is a pig. Can I be honest, Meg? Never thought about it before, even once in my life. Well, welcome. I've never had pigtails. Welcome to the thought. Thank you. It's nice to be here.

Yeah. I love pigtails. I have probably since high school, my hair has never been particularly long. I mean, I would say like 80% of my life, my hair is not that long. I was gonna say, when you were pregnant with Gus, your hair was.

Yeah, and my hair got really long in college because I just didn't get it cut for four years. Yeah. Or maybe even more than that. It was a long time. But most of my life I couldn't really do a pigtail. And then in high school I realized it's actually a much more accessible hairstyle

for me than a ponytail because you need less hair to do it. Interesting. Yeah. So for me, I can't, with my hair the length it is now, I can't do a ponytail, because like half the hair will fall out in front of my face. Right.

But given the placement of these guys, like I- On the sides then. Yeah, like I don't need as much hair. I've never really thought about hair. Period. I've only recently started thinking about hair, period. but I've never thought about hair sort of, uh, how it is dispersed around the head. Yeah. How, how the physics is this is like a whole, whole new thing for you this episode.

Yeah. I mean, I've only sort of just figured out like oil, like hair oil, like how to make your hair feel nicer. The idea that then I would chart the orientation of each of my discreet hairs is a new concept to me. Yeah, so now when I do fitness primarily, I will put my hair in the pigtails to keep it out of my face. Yes.

I don't do it really much out in the world because I think, and I'll talk about this a little bit, like it's been kind of infantilized and like hypersexualized for adult women to wear pigtails. It's a fucking gnarly combo, dude. Yeah, it's very true. So I'm always hesitant to bring it into the world because I mean, one, I feel kind of old for it also,

you know, because it's very much associated with like- Is that Brittany? A cute look for children. Yeah, Brittany was one of the trailblazers. I mean, trailblazers in the sense that she like brought it back and made it like a signature thing. Yeah, for sure. What was that?

What was the one she did? Was that, oops, I did it again? Or she did it- Or was it Baby One More Time? No, Baby One More Time was like the red jumpsuit. That was like, right? Wasn't that? And then Oops I Did It Again, I think,

was like the sort of schoolgirl pastiche. Yeah, I think Oops is right. They just call it Oops when you're a fan. They just call it Oops in the Britney community. That must have been 75 years ago. Yeah. That's a good point actually. I can't please don't, oh Jesus.

You don't want me to look up? No, I'll turn into the crypt keeper in front of you. Oh no, you're wrong. Oops, I did it again is the red outfit. Oh, well then what was the- I think baby one more time. Hit me, wow, I can't believe I got those mixed all, mixed them all up.

Well, it's been a hundred years. Yeah, and no toxic, that was like the cool like, flight it's in on the airplane. Yeah, Baby One More Time was the pigtail look. Interesting, wow. Well, I'm finished. That's the end of Rachel's segment. Rachel's segment is being able to tell the difference

between Britney Spears songs and then corresponding music videos and outfits they're in. Okay, so pigtails. The history of, interestingly enough, there's definitely a connection to 17th century American colonies because the term pigtail was used to describe a twist of chewing tobacco.

Now, okay, okay. One of the steps in processing tobacco was to twist a handful of leaves together. The term pigtail was applied to the bunch based on its resemblance to a twisted pigtail. Okay, cool. I mean, I guess, cool, I guess. From the later 17th and 19th century,

the term came to be applied to any braided hairstyle. Okay, so it was sort of a Venn diagram catch-all. Yeah, kind of the pigtail braid is, I think, how it really got connected. And then now, you know, it doesn't have to be a braid to be considered at the tail. We should start language over because there's so much of etymology

that dates back to shit that just nobody gives a shit about anymore, right? Like I feel like back in the day, you think about, okay guys, gang, for 200 years, we're gonna name this incredibly common hairstyle after twisted up this tobacco. But now it's like, that would be sort of a wild thing to sort of base an entire language on.

So let's start over. Start over. And just like men in black style, you just wipe everybody's memory? No, there would be a, you know, you would get a book in the mail. Of all the new expressions that you're supposed to use. Yeah, like pig tails, that's done.

That's so wild that that is, we call it that still. Apparently in Japan, hair bunches are called twin tails. Okay. Which is fun. I mean, you'll see pig tails a lot in anime. Yeah, sure. You know, like a sailor moon kind of thing. Tell me more, tell me, tell me, tell me anything else.

What else do you see in anime a lot, my love? Well, you know, Hatsune Miku. Not really, okay. Not anime, doesn't count. Not particularly anime, but that's. Okay. You know what's funny is that I have pulled up a website and I am still having difficulty naming anything else.

You're looking at a website of anime hairstyles? Well, I'm looking at a website that talks about the pigtails connection to anime. Okay, cool. Akko-chan? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one. Okay.

Half our audience is just like, yeah. That's one. Okay. Half our audience is just like, yeah. She said it. Oh, Coach John, she did it. If you do some research on pigtails, you will see like there's 20 articles from 20 different years saying they're back. I found one from 2022 that says, pig tails are the latest 90s trend to come back from Glamour Magazine.

But then is there one from the 90s like pig tails are the latest 70s trend to come back. There's one, well, I guess it's a lot of it's recent. And there was also, it's speaking to what I said earlier about the kind of the weird like sexualization. Yeah. And in 2022, there was apparently a TikTok trend where women in the service industry talked about how they made significantly more tips

when they wore pigtails. Ah. And so everybody was kind of trying it out and it was pretty much universally found to be true. Wow. So there's something there. Maybe it's also though, when your hair is sort of that functionally out of your way, you can just, you know.

You can go faster. You can go so much faster. Just a devil's advocate for all the dudes out there. Maybe it's just that the pigtails let them do the work best. Maybe it's not a horny thing. It doesn't all have to be a horny thing. Maybe it's like, I recognize you because of your distinct hairstyle

and I really appreciated the work you've done. The aerodynamic quality. It's like you've got two wings back there. Incredible. Yeah. I noticed you've shut your computer. Is that a whole year? Yeah.

Hi! Kick ass, man. I mean, there's obviously, there's tons more to say about pig tails, but I'm gonna- Yeah, who's got the time? Who's got the time? Yeah, I love it.

Can I steal you away? Yes. Thank you. ["Pig Tail"] Are you tired of being picked on for only wanting to talk about your cat at parties? Do you feel as though your friends don't understand the depth of love you have for your guinea pig? When you look around a room of people, do you wonder if they know sloths only have to eat one leaf a month? Have you ever dumped someone for saying they're just not an animal person?

Us too. She's Alexis B. Preston. She's Ella MacLeod. And we host Comfort Creatures, the show where you can't talk about your pets too much, animal trivia is our love language, and dragons are just as real as dinosaurs. Tune into Comfort Creatures every Thursday on Maximum Fun. What is up, people of the world? Do you have an argument that you keep having with your friends and you just can't seem to settle it? And you're sitting there arguing about whether it's Star Trek or Star Wars or you can't decide what is the best nut or can't agree on what is the best cheese?

Stop doing that. Listen to We Got This with Mark and Hal only on Max Fun. Your topics asked and answered objectively, definitively for all time. So don't worry everybody. We got this. We got this. Follow up, I meant to ask you this during your segment, but I forgot. How do you feel about Cow Tales, the candy?

I don't know that I've ever had one. Have you seen them? Is that like a sugar daddy kind of or no? No, it's not like a sugar daddy. Cow tails are the long, they look like Slim Jims. They're long tubes, but they're like caramel with a little, just a ribbon of cream. Do you always say caramel?

Now that I, it's one of those words, babe, that as soon as I say, how do you, you say caramel? I think so. Caramel, caramel. I can't, now say, how do you, you say caramel? I think so. Caramel, caramel. I can't, now I can't do it. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I feel like this was a staple treat at concession stands for like kids sporting events.

And I loved a cow tail. They cost the same as all the other candy, but it took you way fucking longer to eat it because it was really big and super chewy and also kind of gross. And so you didn't- The ROI on that candy is- The ROI was outrageous.

Through the roof. Yeah, no, I don't think I've ever had one before. Fun Dip was like kind of a sucker's game, concessions can stand wise because you could slam one of those like so quick and then you have to balance out stick and powder. We've talked about Fun Dick, Fun Dick. Excessively on this show already. But Cow Tales are where it's at.

You know what else is where it's at? Okay. The music production speed run community. I've talked about speed running a lot on this show because I think it's a very, I think it's a very entertaining pastime that I, you know, at the very least twice a year get very

into with the Game's Done Quick marathons. It is sometimes it is nice to like when your algorithm serves you up a piece of content and you know exactly why it serves you up that specific piece of content. In the case of like videos about the music production speedrun community it like it knows I love music theory and like composition videos and like music production tips and also video game speed runs. Well, combine them all and you get this incredibly niche like genre of content. That as far as I can tell, it started in February 2022. There is a music producer and teacher named Simon Servida who posted a video that was supposed to be a joke

in which he trained himself to recreate the first 40 seconds of the song, Crank That Soldier Boy in FL Studio, which is like a digital audio workspace like Logic or Ableton, which is what I mostly use when I make stuff for Taz. This is FL Studio, FL stands for Fruity Loops, if that rings a bell, it is like a pretty,

it's one of the oldest sort of like beginner amateur music like production studios like ever, but it's kind of come a long way since then. Can you explain to me, because I don't know a lot about these different platforms that you use. If you figure out like the note sequence, isn't it just a matter of picking those notes really fast? Like what is the challenge of speed running it?

Well, it comes down to the fact that, yes, a lot of it is sort of like, you know, twitchiness and accuracy as you are, you know, clicking. In Fruity Loops, everything is very visual. It is, what's the acronym? WYSIWYG, what you see is what you get. So like as you click around, you just like click where the notes are and you can drop it in.

So it's not quite as like, you're not playing any instruments or anything like that. You're not using like a MIDI controller, like a MIDI keyboard in these speed runs. It's all mouse clicks and copying and pasting. And like, artful. So it's not like I can type like CCBBA. No, no, no, no. The interface is, it does not work like that.

It is very, it is like dropping notes on a timeline, right? Like you would see in a video editing suite or anything along those lines. FL Studio famously like very easy to use for this specific thing, right? It doesn't have a bunch of tools to help you like, it's super granularly tweak and augment like different parts of the arrangement.

It is very much like make some loops really fucking quick and get it out the door, right? A lot of like old school, well not old school, like Fruity Loops isn't that old, but you know, hip hop producers from, you know, the aughts used FL Studio to make like beats like pretty fast for a lot of different purposes. But now you can do it really fucking fast

if you know what you're doing, because this guy, Simon Servita, he recreated the first 40 seconds of Crank That Soldier Boy in FL Studio in 37.39 seconds. That is faster than the song itself, which is kind of remarkable. Obviously, Crank That Soldier Boy is longer than 40 seconds, but not really,

because it's basically just the first 40 seconds over and over again. If this story was just that, it would still be very entertaining, because watching a man sort of slam his hands against a keyboard and mouse until Crank That Soulja Boy happens is like, it's just an incredible use of anyone's time.

So this video, it's still up, you can still go watch it. He ended the video asking people to not try and beat this record because he worked really hard on it and it took him a really, really long time and of course it's the internet. So nobody listened and tons of producers on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram all started trying to beat the record, this 40 second crank that

speed run record. Because the concept really lent itself to short form videos, right? You think about like all the things that make you watch a YouTube short or something as you're like scrolling through it. Maybe this is, I don't know if you watch a lot of YouTube shorts,

if not being forced to by our children. Yeah, only with the children. Yeah, you know, you're scrolling through and you see somebody frantically clicking on a keyboard and you're like, what the fuck is it? What are they doing? And then you just start to hear that steel drum hit of like, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum,

over and over and over again. You're like, wait, is he making, Crank That Soulja Boy in 30 seconds, in 20 seconds? Like, you're gonna watch that because it's short and familiar and like pretty interesting to watch. The current record is held by a producer who makes like a ton of music speed running content named Rob TMB.

He makes a lot of like beats. He has like a five second beat that he has put together that sounds pretty good. His record, he has knocked the whole thing out, the 40 second Crank That Soulja Boyz Beard Run record in about 14 seconds. Wow. It is truly spectacular to see somebody moving this deftly

and expertly around a music timeline to flawlessly and accurately recreate this chart topping hit of the early 2000s. It is a ton of shit that you do in a very short amount of time when you are making specifically this record. There are eight instruments that have to be loaded in. Five are for the beat.

You have like your kick and your snare and your like hi-hat and you know, claps, I think. There's a couple other things. Then there's like an orchestra hit that only really happens once per like four bars. And then, you know, you gotta get in that steel drum melody which is kind of the iconic part of the song. There's like a little bit of piano that goes in there.

And then there's a cymbal sound effect that is reversed that goes into those stoooo, right? And so you have to take all those clips, put them in the timeline, add them, and remove those sections to recreate the 40 seconds of the song. Now, what do I love about this? A lot.

It is genuinely fascinating to see somebody produce a song this fast. I think about music production, mostly because like this is true for me, as something that takes a long time, a really, really long time, from like conceptualizing to like, you know, laying down the first stuff and then just polishing the arrangement over and over and over and over and over and over again until you get it where you want it and then you start to like mix it to make sure it all sounds good in relation to each other and master it so it sounds good as one whole thing.

It takes a really, really long time. So seeing someone do this in an extremely short amount of time, it's really impressive. It's something that I could watch a lot of. It's also fascinating when it's a familiar song and you see somebody just really confidently just bump bump bump bump bump,

like put in the steel drum hits that fast is interesting. The other thing that I love is for this category and others like it, after someone completes their run and they stop the timer and they see their time, before they can feel like they've done it, they have to listen to their work, which sets up a situation where you watch a grown adult listen to Crank That Soldier Boy with bated breath. The videos where people beat the record

and then are like, okay. And then they always have the live chat because they're doing it live of people like, holy. And then like they always have like the live chat because they're doing it live of people like, holy shit, what's up YouTube world record. But before they can celebrate, they have to listen to Crank That Soulja Boy and just watching them with each like, passing like the reverse symbol hits

and they realize they did it right and they're like, yes. And then the trap like drums kick in at the right time. They're like, yes, yes! And just like pop off to Crank That Soldier Boy that they have put together is one of the funniest juxtapositions of song being listened to and human emotion being expressed that is like imaginable. I think it makes sense that this genre started this genre started with Crank That Soulja Boy

since that song was made in a cracked version of Fruity Loops back in, you know, whenever that song came out, 2002 maybe, 2003. But from there, this little like esoteric speed run genre became like a whole, a whole thing that lots of music producers do now. There's folks that make like just fucking exceptional, original beats in less than a minute. There's challenges to, I've seen a couple of videos where people try to produce a whole album in one day, which is like, leads to like a panicked

composition that is like kind of fun to watch. There's like trap rhythm speed runs, like huge arena, EDM riff speed runs, speed runs to like recreate chain smokers songs, which is also shockingly easy apparently. Speed runs to create like hour long lo-fi hip hop tracks. There's so many different like iterations of this, like one idea that spun out of this one guy's video that he did to recreate the first 40 seconds

of Crank That Soul, and I love being able to kind of follow the path of an extremely specific thing that caters to my extremely specific interest over the course of the last two years. Yeah, obviously the people who are doing this are almost always not coming up with the song itself on the fly, rather they're just sort of like exhibiting their muscle memory and mastery over, you know,

creating a chord progression or a beat or like whatever in a short amount of time. But even that, I don't know, it is really appealing to me to have this thing that just scratches so many different itches for me of people practicing to do something really fast and also making music that they then listen back to with a celebratory nature that defies explanation. So that's the music production. Yeah, it's interesting to think about speed rums because usually it's just like an instantaneous thing,

where you are watching it happen and you know if you're successful as you were doing it. This is like an interesting spin on that. There's a delayed pop-off, which is very, very fun. Thank you so much for listening. We already did this part at the beginning of the show, but thanks again to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay.

You can find a link to that in the episode description. Thanks to everybody who supported us in the Max Fun Drive. We have not had time yet to record the second part of our Bachelor recap for Rosebuddies. We apologize for that. Rachel is traveling at some point in relation to time when you are hearing this, but we are hoping to get that up this week.

So thank you for your patience in that. We have some new merch up in the McElroy merch store for April. There is a wombat pin inspired by Wonderful. It has a little chain dangling off the back with small poop cubes on it. It is adorable and wonderful. And there's some other stuff up on the merch store too

over at McElroyMerch.com, and 10% of all proceeds this month will go to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for, just thanks. Thank you so much. We owe you a lot. We are in your debt.

And if you ever need a ride from the airport, then don't, that would be wild. Yeah, that would be hard, I think, for us to deliver on. Yeah, if you live in DC, even that, like, come, that's a, the airport is so far away. Wow, there's a lot of airports in proximity to us. We'll probably go to the wrong frickin' one, you know? Traffic in DC, let's talk about these terrible also, this neurocasting, oh boy.

Yeah. talk about these terrible lessons in your casting. Oh boy. Maimo! Masukeno! Maimo! Masukeno! Maimo! Maimo! Maimo! Maimo! Maimo! Maimo!

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