Wonderful! - Wonderful! 334: My Bottom Game is So Not Tight

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Griffin's favorite niche machine to put his hand in! Rachel's favorite competition for B-boys and B-girls! 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/

["Rachel McElroy Theme Song"] Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Sorry we're late. There is traffic on line. We tried to upload- There was traffic on the stairs,

so we couldn't record our podcast because there was so much traffic on the stairs. The boys set up a series of child traps, a la Kevin McAllister, on the stairs up to the studio. We're talking folks, micro machines. We're talking broken Christmas ornaments, which also sucks, because those were expensive. No nails though, thankfully.

I got a nail. Oh yeah? It was clean, which I appreciate. I didn't have to go to the hospital for special shots afterwards. Paint bucket hit us in the head, knocked us right out, and my head got caught on fire. Rachel got electrocuted, turned into a big skeleton. But.

But we're here. Now we're here, a few days later, we're really sorry. If we could show you the many burns and lacerations and bruises and contusions across our beautiful bodies. We showed them though, because we left the water running in the house. Yes. As a calling card.

Yes. And so we really got them. But we did it in our master bathroom. So a real self-own sort of, I don't know that they're gonna learn a lesson from that. It was mostly our stuff that was affected. Do you have any small wonders, babe? There is a product.

It is a frozen Brazilian cheese bread. Yes, what's it called? I feel like we used to know the name of what. I mean, I do know what it's called. I just didn't know if I should bring it to the table. Oh, like I don't mean the brand, like the type of what that bread is called. Oh, I don't know.

I just know the brand. Anyway, Little Son loves this stuff. Yes. And it's very good. If he does not finish his plate, I will gladly eat what is ever remaining. But it's nice. It's like a little cheesy,

like it's got kind of a mochi quality to it. Yes, it does have a mochi quality to it. Yeah, and you know, there's protein and all sorts of stuff in there, so I feel good about giving it to him. Are you looking up? Pao de queijo. Oh, right.

I don't think I actually, I think pao is what we had heard it referred to. Okay. I didn't know the full title. Yeah, as good as heck, man. It's cheesy and chewy in a way that nothing else I've ever eaten really has been. I'm gonna stay on the food train.

Last night we went out to dinner with a couple of friends to a restaurant here in DC called Bon May. Downtown, I guess, on Seventh Street. You all know the place. It was like Laotian food and a lot of curries and a lot of noodles, but like, I don't know, sort of fusion style stuff. They had their own take on a filet-o-fish sandwich.

That's one of my favorite bites of food I think I've had in this whole city the whole time we've lived here. I had a drink, it was kind of like a margarita. It was like tequila and lemongrass. That is delicious. They put like, what, butterfly powder, butterfly rice powder or something in their rice

so it looks kind of blue. The rice was kind of blue and I kept being like, guys, why is this blue? And they're like, butterfly powder. I'm like, oh, and of course everybody knows. Butterfly pea powder maybe is what it was. Yeah, everybody knows that. You grind up the butterflies, it makes a blue powder

that is totally safe to eat and great to eat. Yeah. But it was good as hell. It was very good. It was really good. I go first this week. Yeah. I would like to talk to you and everyone

about a place I got to go to on this most recent tour we went on. A little spot, it's about a half hour outside of Detroit, Michigan. And it's a place I've wanted to go to for a while. I got to go with Juice and Sid and the girls. It's a little spot in Farmington Hills, Michigan called Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. I first learned about this establishment

thanks to a band from Ann Arbor called Tally Hall that I was a big fan of in college. They released an album in 2005 called Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. Oh. And it had, I mean, it was thoroughly referenced in a couple of the songs in that album. And like the album art,

I think was all sort of like inspired by that place, but I'd never really like looked into it. It sounded like it was just this weird coin operated carnival, which I mean, it basically is, I can now confirm after having gone to it myself. So it is a 5,500 square foot museum. It's sort of in like a strip mall area now, but apparently there's like a Meijer or something

opening there and they have to relocate. But right now it's in this strip mall. And it is dedicated to coin operated animatronics, arcade games, mechanical games, pinball machines, claw machines, other kinds of like coin operated attractions, both of the interactive variety, but also in the like old school ass world's fair, put a quarter in this machine

and watch the little guys do stuff. That's so cool. And that's also very, very cool. This place is just like a full system shock to the senses when you walk in because it's jam packed with this stuff and there's stuff like all over the walls. You walk in, there's a change machine with like cups.

So you just like scoop up $20 worth of quarters and you just walk around in a daze, just like putting it, seeing something and being like, I'm gonna put a quarter in that and see what it does. I spent like maybe two hours there with Juice and their fam and I probably could have spent much, much, much more. Yeah, it's much bigger when you were describing it to me. I had no idea it was so huge.

Yeah, it was gigantic. So if you are struggling to kind of like get a, I feel like by the time you or I were like old enough to go to places that had sort of coin operated attractions, be it a beach boardwalk or a, you know, an arcade or anything like that, things like animatronic machines were pretty well gone. I'm talking about like your, what is it, Zoltar from Big, but things like animatronic machines were pretty well gone.

I'm talking about like your, what is it? Zoltar from Big, like the coin operated like fortune telling machines. That is the kind, I do remember actually seeing at like a Pizza Hut, like a love test thing where you would put your hand on it and you'd squeeze the thing and it would show you like where you ranked on the, that kind of,

that kind of stuff. Anything that is a coin operated machine for entertainment, regardless of what kind of entertainment it is, that is the kind of stuff that Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum focuses on. There's an automated wedding machine that Justin and Sydney used to get remarried where you like punch in your name

and it pops out a little capsule with like fake rings in it. That's lovely. Just very, very good. There's a bravery test where you put your hand in this hole and then you can see it through like a mirror. And then you have to keep your hand on this button inside of the machine while like a fake buzz saw goes down towards it or like little spiders

tickle your fingers. That's so great. It gets very hot at one point, which then made me think like, buzz saw goes down towards it, or like little spiders tickle your fingers. Or like- That's so great. It gets very hot at one point, which then made me think like, I have my hand in a pretty old machine right now. How am I sure that this is not going to be like a really weird final destination trap?

And then there's like bizarre, extremely old animatronic art. There is one with, is like a little box with a tableau of people getting tortured in the Spanish Inquisition that animates when you put a little coin in it. But it's so crude, it's like full blown Mr. Bill style, like little humanoid figurines, like putting somebody on the rack or shoving an Iron Maiden.

There's one where like a little tiny, there's like a little figurine bar scene where you watch a bartender do like a little magic trick and make a ball disappear and reappear under a cup while the guy sitting in front of him, his eyeballs like pop in and out over and over again. But like, again, super, super, super old. Like I think you walk in and you see like,

oh man, they have some machines that you'd see at like a Dave and Buster's, right? Like a lot of quarter sucking. I was picturing mostly pinball, so I'm delighted to hear. Pinball's only like one, it's not like pinballs in Austin, which I also love, which is a largely pinball focused experience. Do you remember that place we went in St. Louis,

the like silver ballroom? Yeah, that was dope too. It was like a pinball bar. The selection of pinball machines at Marvin's is great. They had a Foo Fighters machine I had never seen before where you're fighting aliens with the Foo Fighters and every time you lose a ball, you get to pick a new Foo Fighters song that you listen to

while you play the next round. Yeah, that's so great. Which is very, very, very good. So a lot of rare stuff. There's so great. Which is very, very, very good. So like a lot of rare stuff. There's a bunch of arcade games that, other than the like Dave and Buster's like ball drop one or pull this reel and see how many tickets you get. They have, they're like weird claw machines.

There's one where there's just like a bunch of giant jawbreakers inside the machine and you drop a suction cup on it to try to suction onto the jawbreakers to like then drop it, which I did win one and gave it to my dad who is a real jawbreaker aficionado. There's also a lot of like Japanese arcade game machines that some of which I'd seen before they have Taiko Drum Master, which is like a rhythm game, but you play it on like a giant Taiko drum

with these two sticks, like hitting it in rhythm with the songs. They had a Japanese version of Star Wars Battle Pod, which is like a little booth you climb in. With like a door that shuts behind you and you sit in like the pilot seat of a Star Wars vessel with like a throttle on one side and a joystick on the other and then you like do scenes

from the original trilogy with this screen that like wraps all the way around you. Are you saying that because you watched somebody else play it or? I did everything in this arcade. Please understand, I did everything. I did everything. Time Crisis 5, which is the light gun shooting game

where you have like the foot pedals that you can press to like jump in and out of cover. Oh man, some real jams, some real classics. Just a really exciting mix of stuff, so much so that I felt by the end of it, yeah, this is a museum. It's an arcade, you can win tickets and exchange them for crummy prizes.

But it also, I don't know, I came out of it feeling sort of enriched by the experience that exchanged them for crummy prizes. But it also, I don't know, I came out of it feeling sort of enriched by the experience in a way that I don't normally when I go put up, I always have fun at an arcade, but not the way I felt sort of coming out of this place. They also sell food, like hot dogs and pizzas, big old hot dogs, I ate one, it made me feel so bad.

So the museum was founded in 1990 by Marvin Yagoda, who was a pharmacist, who started collecting these sort of like coin-op machines all the way back in 1960, and eventually he amassed enough of a collection of them to open up this museum dedicated to these old attractions, which is open 365 days a year, free admission, you just spend whatever you spend on food and games, like any other sort of arcade.

He passed away in 2017, but now the museum is run by his son Jeremy, who grew up in this arcade and working on these machines with his dad, which is like a lovely story. And Marvin sounded like just sort of the best dude. He was so excited about this like weirdly specific thing that he was interested in. And he just wanted to share his excitement

about these old machines with everyone. And I feel like I've heard from a lot of people who live in Detroit or spent a lot of time in sort of that area of Michigan who harbor like tremendous fondness for Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. And I think it's like really very easy to see why. Like it is a place that only exists

because of the amount of love for this niche interest and the love of sharing that with people. Yeah, it's amazing how you can kind of feel that. Like when you go to a completely unique place that is like put together in a way that just suggests like, hey, I love everything in here. Like you can feel that when you walk into a place.

It feels less like a business and more like some sort of ecosystem that you have wandered into that like has existed long before you came into it and will continue to exist after you leave. Yeah. Which is always like, I don't know, it is fun to feel like a tourist in a building, but I really didn't. Man, if this place was remotely closed, if this place was like an hour and a half away from us,

I would still probably make pilgrimages there with you and the boys like fairly frequently because I think that they would get a huge kick out of it too. So that's Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. If you for some reason live near Detroit and haven't made it up here, fucking get up there because it is a truly wonderful spot.

Can I steal you away? Yes. Hello, sleepyheads. Sleeping with Celebrities is your podcast pillow pal. We talk to remarkable people about unremarkable topics, all to help you slow down your brain and drift off to sleep. For instance, the remarkable actor Alan Tudyk. You hand somebody a yardstick after they've shopped at your general store.

The store's name is constantly in your heart because yardsticks become part of the family. Sleeping with Celebrities, hosted by me, John Moe, on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Night night. The following are real reenactments of pretend emergency calls. 911. My husband! It's my husband! Calm down, please. What about your husband? He... he... he loads the dishwasher wrong. Please help! Please help me! Where are you now, ma'am? At the kitchen table. I was with my dad. He mispronest words intentionally. There are plenty of podcasts on the hunt for justice,

but only one podcast has the courage to take on the silly crimes. Judge John Hodgman, the only true crime podcast that won't leave you feeling sad and bad and scared for once, only on MaximumFun.org. What have you prepared for us today, my love? So, mine is very timely. Good.

It has to do with the fact that the Olympics in Paris, the opening ceremony is tomorrow. Whoa. We are right on top of it. Yeah, that's why this one's late, is so we could be closer to the opening day of the Olympics. Yeah, we had it ready. We had it ready to rock. We were like, no, no, no, no, no.

It wasn't just the diabolical traps that our kids put out for us. Our listeners will appreciate this more if it is late. Yes. So one of the things that I'm most excited about for this Olympics is the introduction of breaking. Yes, I didn't know. Yes, I didn't know. I've been pretty out of touch with the,

I'm not a big summer Olympics guy, you know me, I love the winter Olympics. I will dip in on the gymnastics when it's happening. Gymnastics, so cool. It's always so cool, it's always so good. And I will follow that usually from afar unless it's like spicy and then I'll definitely tune in to catch that. But otherwise, I don't watch a lot of the,

swimming doesn't do a lot for me, and it's like half swimming. I don't wanna like under, obviously it's remarkable athleticism being put on display, but I like it cold and slippery, and that's why I'm an ice Olympics man. Okay, thank you for providing a detailed explanation about that. I just want to explain my position. Okay, so breaking or break dancing,

as a lot of people probably know it. I'm sure fucking squares know it that way. If you have to say dancing. You know our podcast is also for squares. Nah, man. No? I've dipped into the Facebook group, everyone there. It's pretty cool.

And they definitely don't say break dancing. Okay. Okay, so popularized in New York in the 1970s, but brand new to the Olympics 2024, apparently it was introduced on a competitive like a large global competitive stage at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires. Okay. And it was just like such a huge hit that I guess they were like, you know what, let's do this in Paris with the adults. And so 16 men and women called B boys and B girls

will compete with a round robin followed by quarterfinals, semifinals and metal battles. Each battle will feature a best of three one-on-one contest. Holy shit. Where one breaker will finish their round and the opponent will instantly begin in a battle format. Oh, yeah. So if you watch, I sent you a video,

but what it is, I mean, it's like it's a circle and two people are standing on the outside and there's a DJ and they choose music and people have to improvise. Okay, the video you sent me was just like introducing the finalists. Yeah, it's true. Who are going to compete. I didn't see any actual battles taking place.

The fact that there's battles taking place, oh man, I'm so down. I'm so down for that. It's so wild because everybody is bringing the personality and flavor of breaking but on this Olympic stage, which has this weird formality to it that it seems like so far, like from what the footage

I've seen of like the qualifying rounds that does not impair the energy. See, you say that, but I don't wanna give our listeners the wrong impression, because when I saw this video you sent me, I fully expected a bunch of people. There would be like the USA team in like red, white, and blue sort of like, you would be like the USA team in like red, white and blue, sort of like, you know, windbreaker Nike suits,

just like very uniformed and very solemn faced doing their craft when really I feel like it was a lot more, it was a lot, if you just look at the fucking names of the people that are competing, I feel like it really differentiates itself. I remember Quake was one of them, which is like a really, really strong name for any kind of athletic competition.

Yeah, it's wild. So if you go to the Olympics website, you can see all of the athletes that are gonna be participating. And it's- Can you hit me with some of the names of some of the competitors? Yeah.

Which I have to imagine some of them are like, I guess the equivalent of stage names in the breaking community. So there is Logan Edra, who is representing California as a USA team member and she goes by logistics. That's so, that's so, that's so good. The fact that every Olympic sport doesn't have like names, like bonus names that you get

because you're so good at the game is a crime. There is Jeffrey Lewis who is coming from Houston, Texas. He goes by Jeffro. And yeah, I mean, it's, there's a guy from Canada named Phil Wizard. Now is his name actually Phil Wizard? I'm not sure. I hope so.

I feel like some of that sneaks into the snowboarding competitions at the Winter Olympics, where they'll be like, and here comes Boogie Douglas. And you're like, I don't think his name is, I bet his name's probably not Boogie Douglas, but who knows? What is also cool about this is that because it just is new to the scene,

there's just a wild amount of range in the experience and age of the competitors. So one of the people I've seen publicized a lot is Sunny Choi from Kentucky Kentucky and she is 35. Wow. Which is not an age you see often in the Olympics. No. I saw there's an interview with her in Forbes

that came out in 2022. And she talks about how she didn't start break dancing until her first year of college. She had to quit gymnastics due to a knee injury and started then. And now she's an Olympic athlete. That's so choice. Which is amazing.

Yeah, it's just like any photo or still that you see from. It's really good. It's amazing. It's impossible to take a still image of somebody who is actively breaking and not have them look like they are a sorcerer of some sort. So I wanted to really quickly tell you,

so there are of course rules because it is an Olympic sport. That's what I wanted to know is how are we judging this? So there are three basic elements that make up breaking. Top rock, down rock, and freeze. Top rock is all the moves that are performed while standing up. So you know, it's like the little like ball change,

arms in, arms out, kind of, yeah. One of these. Griffin just demonstrated for me, thank you. I'm doing it perfectly, you can't see it. Freeze is where the breaker comes to a standstill in an unusual position. That's so, that's my fucking favorite part. So they're often like on their heads.

Yeah. Up in the air, yeah. Mm-hmm. And then down rock is all the moves done on the floor. So spins, footwork, transitions and power moves. That's where I struggle. Power moves are when the breaker is spinning their whole body

on hands, elbows, back, head, shoulders. Okay. But it's not codified to the degree that, for instance, figure skating is, where it's like, well, that's a three and a half Lutz followed by an act, are they counting the rotations of these people as they spin and whirl, or is it mostly sort of a vibe thing? Okay, so the judging criteria, there's six of them.

Creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity, and musicality. Okay. So they all have different weighting. With technique, performativity and creativity constitute 60% of the total score, while variety, musicality and personality make up the remaining 40%.

There are multiple judges, they submit their votes after each round and then the breaker with the highest points is declared the winner. I am so looking forward to learning about, I feel like this is the thing that is the best about the Olympics is I will not care about a sport and then I'll get interested in the sport. And then if you just watch a lot of it at the Olympics,

you start to learn a lot of shit about the sport. Oh, I know, I know. I feel like I learned a lot about the Olympics or about gymnastics from when like, I don't know, was it the Homme Brothers? I feel like I watched a lot of their gymnastics stuff back in whatever Olympics that was. I remember learning a lot about figure skating,

mostly from Yuri on ice, but it's like learning that there's actual rules and that it's not just people looking at, people doing the thing and saying, I think that was pretty good, 8.5. Yeah. It's so fascinating. It's wild too.

It'll be interesting to watch because I watched a qualifying battle between Sonny Choi and an opponent and I thought, for sure she's got this. She's doing cool stuff. That's it. But her freezes maybe were. But she didn't end up winning that round

and I was surprised by that. But then I thought, okay, well, it's not just who does the most impressive shit, you know? Like it's also- Maybe her musicality was off. Yeah, like and how she's like, because there's this delicate balance, right? Because it's improvised.

But I'm sure people also have these like things they can do and they wanna like slide it in, you know? And maybe if you don't do that in the most elegant way, like the judges will call you out on it. Like cool move, loved it, in the most elegant way, like the judges will call you out on it. Like cool move, loved it, on the head, spinning, amazing. Musicality though, like was that right? I just hope there's no bullshit restrictions

like there are on figure skating where it's like no back flips, no, no, don't, you can't do the worm. Like do you get kicked off immediately if you try to do the worm? Is there a certain banned moves? Well, that's what I thought was so interesting about Sunny Choi's background is that she was a gymnast.

It made me wonder, like, are there a lot of people, and I guess we'll find out when we watch, that are coming with that kind of background. She did do like a flip when she was competing, like in a way that I feel like most people probably couldn't flip. But most breakers probably could, I bet most breakers probably could bust out

a pretty good flip. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I just assume there's, if you can do gymnastics at a certain level, I just assume there's a lot of other stuff you can do, like American Ninja Warrior, for example. Yeah.

Yeah, I know this actually, it reminded me a lot of American Ninja Warrior, like when it got started in that, you know, I'm looking at these competitors for this year's Olympics. And I told you there's like a wild range and age and experience, but I imagine as this sticks around, you're gonna see a lot, it's gonna look probably more like gymnastics.

You're gonna see a lot of like 17 year old contestants. I'm so fucking excited. I will absolutely tune into this. Yeah. Oh yeah, there's somebody on here who is in their 40s from Japan, Ayumi. Oh my God, yes. It's just so cool.

It's so cool, it's exciting. When you watch the Olympics, it's really easy to feel like, oh, well, I didn't start pursuing this when I was six years old, so I guess I'm never gonna be good at it. And this is just kind of a reminder of like, there's still an opportunity out there. I mean, I don't think I could start, for example, right now.

But it's not too late for Henry, who's seven. Like he hasn't already missed the window. Yeah. Hey, do you wanna know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Sydney says, my very big wonder was going to the Washington Nationals game last night, July 19th,

and staying for the post-game Carly Rae Jepsen concert. Yes. The Nats won and Carly was of course amazing over all a great night. How did I not hear about this? I guess I was out of time. I did tell you about this. You remember, I told you about it months ago.

I was like, Carly Rae Jepsen is coming to perform at the baseball game. Unfortunately, it is while you're gonna be on tour. Because I put it on my calendar. I was like, all ready to go. And then- I think that's the day I went to Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum when we were in Detroit.

I mean, I had a great time there, but would I rather do a baseball game where Carly R. Richardson performs? Yeah, probably. Some of the people in the Facebook group said that apparently like towards the end of the game, like eighth inning, people just started chanting Carly. Carly.

Yeah. I love that. Maxwell says, my small wonder is locking eyes with my suitcase at the baggage claim. It's a sweet little taste of home in an unfamiliar place. No. How exciting when you see your little guy come tumbling down that little scalloped escalating walkway.

I don't think I had ever checked a bag until I was in my late 20s, early 30s. I come from a family, and probably a lot of people have this experience where it's like, you do carry on. You find a way to make carry on work. Was it when you got with me and I started to show you how to live luxuriously?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. With your big bag that you have to wait for like 45 minutes. Maybe I'll bring two pairs of shoes. Whoa. You know? Yeah, easy there, Mrs. Rockefeller. Thank you 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. We've got a bunch of merch over at McElroyMerch.com that you can go check out. There's a new TravNation pin that is exquisite and 10% of all proceeds this month go to World Central Kitchen. We have a bunch of live shows coming up next week when you are hearing this.

So July, I think August 1st through the 4th actually, we are going to be at Gen Con in Indianapolis. That is not actually a live show though. No, it's me and Dad and Travis, if you wanna come and, you know, we're doing photos and signings and a couple panels, you can come out to that.

But we also have a bunch of other shows coming up all over the country. You can go to bit.ly slash McRoy Tours for tickets and more information. And oh yeah, if you haven't already and you enjoy the Adventure Zone, if you would consider picking up the Adventure Zone Suffering Game,

the sixth graphic novel adaptation of the Adventure Zone Balance arc, it would mean the world to me because I am very, very proud of that book and I want a lot of people to read it. Yeah. That's it for this episode. Join us again next week.

This is the good thing about this being late is like you have so much shorter to wait for the next one. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I'm looking for, I feel like once you and I get really into break-in, we are going to be different. Like I feel like the next time you hear from us we'll be different to different people.

Yeah, no, I think, you know, if you see enough people spin on their heads, I imagine it changes you fundamentally. Yeah, it lets you know how much more you could be doing. Uh-huh. Which is why I'm proud to announce that by the end of the year, I will learn to spin on my head.

I wonder if head spin on my head. I wonder if head size makes a difference. Like if people with larger heads have an advantage. I mean, you think about those balancing bird toys that are like really top heavy and then you can like put them on the tip of your finger. I think I've got what it takes. There's a lot of fluid in there.

And so when I start spinning, there is a bit of a Coriolis effect that takes place around my brain. And so I will lose consciousness. But if I can spin one time, then I gotta get, I gotta. And the ball changes in the hand gestures. I mean, that's it, you're done. I'll do that.

Again, like I've said, my top game is so choice. My freezes, my bottom game is so not tight. My bottom game, my bottom- I really wish you would rethink. My bottom game is so not tight. You were talking about your top game prior, so I just- My top game is tight. My bottom game, my top game, my freezes,

so tight, my bottomzes. So tight. My bottom game. Not tight. Not tight at all. Money won't pay, work can't help it. Money won't pay, work can't help it. Money won't pay, work can't help it. Money won't pay, work can't help it. Music Maximum Fun, a workaround network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.