ANMA - Geoff is Intimidated by Gus

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Good Morning, Gus. Gus & Geoff are back in the streets with lots of "audio texture" as they have a cup of coffee from Flightpath while recording at local haunt Home Slice Pizza. Learn about Geoff being a call center phenom, Garage Sale Games, and how Gus & Geoff met on this week's ANMA Podcast. This episode of ANMA is sponsored by BetterHelp (http://betterhelp.com/anma) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What would you do if you had the freedom to be anyone or to go anywhere without limitations? Start your journey and experience for yourself the feeling of total freedom when you game with Alienware. Alienware is your portal to new worlds where limits don't exist and the only rules are the ones you decide to make. Defy boundaries and start gaming now at Alienware.com. Next-gen gaming is built with Intel Core i9 processors. This is a rooster teeth production. We're good. I'm just looking. Oh, I thought you were looking at this.

No, I'm just looking at it. Oh, okay. It's a cool little record. He's producing the producer right now. Uh. It's like you're producing. But. There you go.

If you're executive producing, you'd be on a beach somewhere. I don't fucking think I'm gonna be on a beach. I thought it was your mind-tie. Wherever you, however you want to start it, it starts now. So this somewhere. Yeah, I don't fucking think that's what it's like. That's what it's like. I thought it was your mother's eyes. Yeah. Wherever you, however you want to start it, it starts now. So this morning, hold on. What? Good morning, Gus.

Thank you so much. Good morning. Good morning. So this morning, we decided to get coffee from Flight Path, which is a coffee shop close to our studio. And it's call flight path because it used to be close to the airport, which we covered in episode one. We did. Yes. But it's now no longer anywhere near the airport, but it it's call flight path because it used to be close to the airport which we covered in episode one We did yes, but it's now no longer anywhere near the airport, but it's still called flight path. Yeah, yeah

It's kind of like the the LA Lakers are called the Lakers I never thought about that. Yeah, but the Utah Jazz used to be in Minnesota. Yeah, Utah Jazz is a good one Yeah, so it's called flight path, but it's nowhere near the airport It's close to airport Boulevard which strangely still does run to the airport even though they move the airport That is okay. Yeah, that's interesting. It's like they didn't have to rename the street a lot of history the The there are a lot of people studying. I guess it's around finals time maybe they're not gonna study at flight path So yeah, you've always been a big flight path. I like flight path a lot

I think I got a ice coffee look at it 8 out of 10. It's solid Well, I rather air copy one, but it's fantastic Look at that 8 out of 10. It's solid. Well, I rather ericot me one, but it's fantastic. That my issue with flight path, I love flight path. It reminds me of coffee shops from college towns in the 90s. Yeah. Which in the best way.

You say that like it's the best way. Okay. That my issue with flight path is the same as my issue with B-New, which is just I go there and I feel like if I make a noise, I'm ruining somebody's day. It is very live, very studious. Yes. I like that. I'm ruining somebody's day. It is very live. It's very. It's very. Yes. Yeah.

I like that. I'm a quiet person. You are. People, however, you're doing a radio podcast right now. So people, people of live bath do not want to be disturbed with our nonsense. So we came up the street a little bit. We walked two blocks up the street to a pizza restaurant. Yeah, but it's not open.

It's not. They're not open. So we're sitting at the picnic table outside of pizza restaurant. It's home open. It's not, they're not open. So we're sitting at the picnic table outside of Pizza Restaurant. It's home slice. It's their location on North Loop. Do you remember what this used to be before it was home slice, Jeff?

I don't. You told me, you started to tell me a story on the walk that I asked you to stop because I have no memory of this. But this also reminds me, after that, we have a connection to home slice that we could get into. Oh, okay. Yeah, I think I know where you're going with that. I think you know, you probably remember that.

Yeah. So I remember that this was a paper store for a while. Oh, kind of like a, like a, like a, like a, the office, like my wife's kind of, huh. For a while. Yeah, I'm talking about after that. Okay. So the, I don't, this place open, open is a pizza place, like three or four, three years ago, I think.

Yeah. Before that, there was, there used to be a little trailer here, remember it was like a Melvin's deli? There's a little red trailer here, that great Rubens, but they're gone. But before that, when this was still open after it was the paper place, this was a pediatrician's office.

It was a doctor's office. And out front here, kind of where that white truck's parked over there, kind of by the accessible parking, there used to be a little merry go round, like a little carousel, like a kind of you put a quarter in. Like outside of the grocery stores back in the 80s. And you and I were driving by, I think we were going to garage sales one Saturday,

and we were driving by the street here, and we were like, oh my god, holy shit, look at that old carousel, that little merry go round. This is 2000. For? No, no, it was before that. No, this would have been like,

Oh, two or a one. Okay, yeah, okay, 20 years ago, we're like, oh shit, look at that little carousel, let's get down to take pictures on it was before that. No, this would have been like oh to or what okay. Yeah, so maybe about 20 years ago We're like oh shit look at that little carousel. Let's get down to take pictures on it and ride it So we were like 25 or so so we like stopped the car and pulled it over here like or like crawling all over this miracle round Like taking pictures being real jackasses and they're like the doctor and some nurses come out They're barely the place was open. We didn't realize it and they started yelling at us They're barely the place was open. We didn't realize it. And they started yelling at us.

And we just like booked it back in the car and took off driving in that direction down there. That's cheesy. You can remember that now. I do, I vaguely remember that. It was right here. I forgot that we used to do a fair amount of that. Like we would see, like I have a vague memory

of us taking pictures, writing somebody's stone gorilla. Yeah, that were like off-wets live. Yeah, that was over Clark's bill. Yeah. The gorilla's still there. Yeah. We used to be fucking stupid. And yeah, obnoxious.

Yeah. Yeah, we were more obnoxious with our stupidity. I feel like we're, we're a mature and reserved idiots now. We don't shove our obnoxiousness in people's faces anymore. Now it's like if they want it, they can seek out the obnoxiousness and consume it. Yeah, it's not like going out and doing stuff and bothering people who are just trying to live their lives.

Do you know our other, can I actually realize when I was mentioning the other, I have two connections to homelys. You do. The one that I was gonna mention though is through our business, Rich Teeth. Do you remember why we are tied to home slice? The mural.

The mural. Yeah. When the original home slice opened up on South Carners, you know, it was designed, if you're in Austin, you know exactly what we're talking about, and if you're not, it was designed like a kind of a carnival, big top kind of pizza-e, and they had this huge, gorgeous mural with like an elephant holding a pizza and it was just very well done. And we were working downtown at the time. We had our office at 7th and Congress.

And which was above the P to Pit, used to be a Wendy's. It used to be a Wendy's. There was the upstairs dining room of a Wendy's. Yeah, when we moved in, we had to rip out all the, I remember half of that Wendy's was bathrooms. We had to rip, there was like eight, there was like eight stalls. There were so many stalls in urinals. Yeah.

Why were there, and there was all upstairs. Yeah, all upstairs. Why? So it was like 40% bathroom. And so we, like I remember where we made red versus blue for those many years was in the mince bathroom Or women's bathroom. There's a women's bathroom We had to rip out the women's bathroom and so like three seasons of red versus blue were made in the women's bathroom of a Wendy's Converted converted the

Cap Metro came by that we call that texture. That's some that's some ear texture ear texture Yeah, so a converted women's bathroom Nobody was currently peeing in that texture, that's some ear texture. Ear texture. Yeah, so a converted women's bathroom. Nobody was currently peeing in that room at that time. And so we had an idea, I believe it's probably Matt's idea, he always had the good ones, to do a live that, we were getting kind of branching out from animation, we're wanting to do live action stuff. Like Bernie and Matt had just bought a red camera.

And I remember this because I remember he's so frustrated with those guys for about three years Branching out for animation, we wanted to do live action stuff. Like, Bernie and Matt had just bought a red camera. Yeah. And I remember this because I remember this so frustrated with those guys for about three years because they bought this, we're some of the first people in America to get a red camera. And we had talked about how we wanted, Bernie and Matt were filmmakers. They made a film in college at UT

and they wanted to get back into filmmaking. Gus and I, live action filmmaking. Live action filmmaking. Gus and I didn't give a fuck. We just wanted to make stuff, right? Yeah. We just wanted to do internet, do internet Yeah. We just wanted to do internet. Whatever.

But so we bought all this camera equipment and then we were talking about making a movie. And then they found out about the red and they were like, well, we can't make the movie till we get the red because the quality is going to be so much better. Right. So then we waited like six months and then we finally get the red and then we're like, all right, let's make something and they go, well, we need to spend some time getting used to the red and getting to know it. And I just remember it was like this dangling carrot

where we never quite got to the thing. One of those series, or one of those things they wanted to do, was they wanted to make a show called Advertisem. And it was a... Oh, you're saying the name. Oh, why not? I think we've mentioned it before. I don't know, I don't know.

The show was called Advertisem. And it was about an advertising agency that was like an aggressive advertising agency. I thought it was a phenomenal idea. It's a great idea. Don't do this. Copyright. We would go and we would say

we're gonna make a Ford commercial and then we would just make this ridiculous Ford commercial and then invoice Ford. It's like here, we put the commercial out on the internet and send them an invoice. And then send them an invoice. See if they pay. That's fucking genius.

We got so far. It's such a good idea. I remember we cast for it, and I don't know where it fell down, but we needed an office environment. So we hired the people who made the mural at home slice, a company called Blue Genie. It was the main guy Rory, I believe. That was right.

Incredibly talented. The epitome of Old Austin, kind of just like Austin, like Austin artist in the 90s kind of guy. Just like, I mean, like Siri, he knew his shit. New his shit. It was just like easy going. Just, he was everything that was right about,

it was everything that attracted me to Austin. And so we were really excited to work with him and we had to make this oppressive mural that was in Latin. I don't remember what the Latin is off top, man. It was like work, consume, and re-double your efforts. Yeah, that's what it meant. Work, consume, and re-double your efforts.

Orro, Ingemino, something so I don't remember shit. And it was this big blue dystopian like a factory with men and suits going in and out. What's that? Voro in Geminiola Boris. Something like that. Don't Harry Potter curse me. And there were like B2 bombers in it.

And it was just like, it was really depressing. If capitalism had propaganda the way that communism did during the Cold War. Exactly. That's what made it. That was like the idea behind it. And so we built this mural. We hired them. They spent months making it, they came and they installed it, it took up the entire wall of our office and then we never made the show.

And that mural still in the office. That's still, so that's what that's from? Yeah, that's what that was. I don't look at that the whole time. Yeah, which apparently I hear a lot of employees don't like and it makes them feel uncomfortable. Do you know why nobody knows the origin, but it's just a press of capitalist don't like and it makes them feel uncomfortable. Do you know why? Nobody knows the origin, but it's just a pressive capitalist propaganda that we have to look at every day. So it's in her office. In her office.

The reason we kept it is totally, too, it's ridiculous. It's a, we have a, or at the time we had a airplane hangar at the Austin Film Studios. And though the office we moved to was so big that we just stuck it on the wall to remind us this mural used to be the entirety of our workspace.

Now it's like lost in this giant wall. So for us it makes us feel good every time we see it. Like, oh, we made it. Hey, look at that. That's really great for the four of you. Yeah. Maybe we should tell more people that story. Should tell anyone that story.

Well, maybe they'll listen to this podcast. Oh my god. Yeah, it was a,. Well, maybe they'll listen to this podcast. Oh my God. Yeah, it was a, it's a really cool mural. I like it. The other story I have related to home slices, the lady who owns and started home slice, her and her husband or partner, uh, I actually don't know that setup.

I just know that two people started home slice. They both were to Dell, I believe, or Intel, and they quit their job and created this awesome awesome awesome restaurant. I don't know how true the stories are but supposedly they used to like fly the dough in from New York City back in the early days and I know they would send employees out to go work in Pizzeria's in New York for like two months since to like kind of like to really get into the weeds and how to make good New York City pizza and come back and I went to a New Year's Eve party, like one of those ones where it was like a fancy dinner, like a

multi-course dinner, and I ended up sitting next to the lady who started home slice. It was the only time I've ever spoken to her. She was just like, so just like dinner chat. She was very lovely. And I had had my dog who recently died my bull terrier, and I couldn't figure out what's a name, and we had been going around, around, trying to figure out what's a name, or we'd had her for over a month. And she goes, oh, you should name her arrow. Really?

That's where that name came from. Like, excuse me, she goes, you know, like the old cartoon from the 70s about the kid and he's got the dog that's got an arrow face. So it looks just like your dog, and I went, oh yeah. And that's why we named her arrow. I had never spoken to that lady since,

but I had that dog for 12 years and she named my dog. I had no idea that was the origin of that dog's name. Yeah, from a near-seaf party over on the east side. That's crazy. Yeah, dinner party. And now our listeners are listening to the composting recycling truck.

Right, he's down. Audio texture, it's audio texture. We're getting a lot of audio texture in episode three. I think that was the goal with this podcast. It was, you know, is to, you know, one, go to different locations and, you know, like we started this episode, talk about the stories that it evokes in our memory,

and two, like, have the sounds of the city and the sounds of the things that are going on to try to, like, convey that local feeling to people who maybe have never visited here. Well, and also, I mean, this podcast is in a lot of ways a love letter to our friendship, but at least in my friendship.

You might be a love letter to our co-workers ship to you. A quick finish. My estimation. But it's also, by far, a love letter to Austin, right? For sure. And I probably wouldn't have even thought about the Aero story if we weren't sitting in the parking lot of

the second location of this. I think that's a great thing is we spend so much time in the city that wherever we go, we're gonna have stories. Like we were walking here, we pointed at the house over there like, oh, remember Nick used to live in that house. Like for Nick, we would visit him over here who worked at the tech support company, who, uh, where we started researches. Yeah.

Yeah. And, uh, I remember at the time visiting him up here, we were like, man, I got lives in the middle of nowhere. That's like, man, like all the houses here have a million dollar plus houses and I feel bad for some of these people because we're right on Duval, this is a busy street and like these people over here have a sign that's like please don't park here.

Yeah, please, forgot to say. Homelessly it gets so busy and they're parking lots, so small that this street just becomes flooded with cars and people trying to park. It's a mess. At least the sign is on the curb. I see sometimes people will put those signs out like in the street and block actual parking spots. Like, you can't actually do that.

That's the best way to do it. Please don't park here. Yeah, just come on guys. Not no parking, just like, come on, don't be a dick. Keep lost and parkable. Yeah, let me save my spot. Can I prompt you guys again? Yeah, please do.

So last time you talked about sort of working jobs to get to that call center job and everything, right? So did you guys get hired at the same time or was it around the same time? Like, I don't know how that all sort of worked. I got hired almost a year before Jeff. I got hired in like the February, like the first couple days of February 1998

was when I started. And I worked there for almost a year before Jeff got hired. By the time Jeff got hired, I was a, so there were different tiers of technicians. Like when you first get hired, you're a level one technician, just take whatever calls. Then if you do well hired, you're a level one technician, just take whatever calls. Then if you do well enough, you got promoted to a level two

technician where you would wait for the calls that the level one's couldn't fix, and they would transfer to you and you would fix it. Or you do callbacks if you needed an appointment. And then if you stuck around long enough, you became a manager. And you would need a manager. Or team leader, as they were called.

Yeah. So when Jeff got hired, I was at the point where I was making the transition from level two technician to team leader. And Jeff was a level one technician when you got hired, but he worked for a different team leader. Yeah, I don't remember. Oh, I remember.

Yeah. Or Paul, Brian, I think I worked for Brian. You worked for Brian initially, and then I think you got eventually transferred to Dave by the time you were level two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember Dave and I were both team leaders at the time, and Dave didn't like you.

Ah, you know. What are you gonna do? I remember like, when you got hired, I remember being crazy about Dave either. You were like a phenomenal call taker, like all your times, there's a big metric in call centers, like the times and like how quickly you can resolve an issue. Like all of Jeff's times didn't make sense.

Like everyone was like, is he hanging up on people? Like is he not resolving these calls? Like all these numbers are way too good. And Jeff was like a phenom at the call center. I, you know, I will tube my own horn. Uh, the average call time at that place was eight minutes. That was what the, that was the goal you wanted to hit. Was, this is an outsourced tech support company.

So it was Windows 95 and people with Windows NT, Windows 3.1, Windows 95 calling in, having trouble with their dial up internet connections. At least that's what it was at the time. We were there long enough to go into broadband a little bit. However, so you would shoot for an eight minute call time. And I was trying to get from, you start as a trainee and then you get promoted to level one. Training made 650 an hour, level one made $8 an hour. I was 23 and married

and had just gotten out of the military, was kind of shell shocked from that. Not literally. Not literally, yeah, I'm not, I'm not like I had like a literal PTSD, just like I just had to spit my only five adult years in the military and I was transitioning into the real world and trying to figure out what the fuck I wanted to do. I knew I didn't want to go to college. And so I was also a generation X, the last generation of people who wanted to go to work at a company, work 20 years there, get your Rolex and retire. We wanted to, but we realized that was not happening.

That's stupid same for us. That's really bad for us. Yeah, but so I viewed that company, the day job, telling network, as an opportunity for that. And I needed to get that extra dollar 50 quickly. And the team leader, or level two's made $10 an hour. And the fastest anybody had ever been promoted to level two was like a year and a half.

And I made it cool. And that was Gus. That was a good one. I made it a goal. I got promoted to level two in four months. Whoa! My average call time was like three and a half minutes. Yeah, we kept monitoring his calls. Like we were like, he's hanging out.

Like he's doing something wrong. Like we would monitor his calls and be like, what's he doing wrong? Like, no, he's nearly it. He's killing it every time. He's doing it absolutely right. And I was just so hyper focused on making more money that I made at my goal to be the best person at a tech support company in Austin, Texas, in the world. Just because I was desperate for cash. And for some sort of purchase in my life,

like I needed some sort of direction, something to work toward. And interesting, there was another dude at that place named Jeff, J. Jeff, I'm a G. Jeff. And Jeff, you can beat G-Jeff, and Jeff. You can beep it. Jeff, oh yeah. Yeah, we'll beep that.

And I almost got fired because of that guy, because people started calling in and saying, I got hung up on by Jeff. And they were like, ah, he is, fuck, he is, he is bullshit. He is bullshit. And so they were monitoring me twice as hard. The found out the other Jeff was hanging up on people and he got fired like the next day.

Very quickly, yeah. Very quickly. Almost took me out with him. Yeah. And I remember, like I said, Jeff's, our Jeff's Jeff's manager, Dave didn't like him very much and didn't want to promote him.

He didn't want to give him the bump. And like Dave and I were hanging out. We had a basketball hoop in the parking lot, I don't remember that. And Dave and I were hanging out by, in the parking lot one day, like he liked Dave like shooting hoops. And I was like, Dave, if you're not gonna promote him,

give him to me, I'll take him as my employee. And then, like, I just have to, I kept having to beat up on Dave. And I was like, I'll trade you one of my other employees for Jeff. I like traded him one of my other good, it's like a sports team. I traded him one of my other good, it's like a sports team. I traded him one of my other good employees

so I could take Jeff on. And then Jeff became my employee only very briefly, just because I was like, we need to promote Jeff. We need to keep Jeff around. So Jeff became my employee for the briefest amount of time. And I was like, all right, you're promoted. Yeah. That's it.

This is stupid that we're playing this politics game in this dance at a call center. At a call center. For people who are just working there for beer money. Yeah. This podcast is sponsored by Better Help. Life is full of twists and turns, stress changes, grief, moments of growth,

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And if you're interested in it, you can visit betterhelp.com slash andma. That's our podcast name, a NMA, that's better H E L P. Join the over two million people have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. In fact, so many people have been using better help. They're recruiting additional therapists in all 50 states. So again, that's a special offer for animal listeners. Get 10% off for first month at betterhelp.com slash AdMah. What would you do if you had the freedom to be anyone or to go anywhere without limitations?

Start your journey and experience for yourself the feeling of total freedom when you game with Alienware. Alienware is your portal to new worlds where limits don't exist and the only rules are the ones you decide to make. Defy boundaries and start gaming now at Alienware.com. Next-gen gaming is built with Intel Core i9 processors. Do you want to tell the story about when the... Well, there's two stories I want to tell here.

There's the story about the guy who hired himself. I mean, then we got to tell that story. There's the story about the attempted Midnight robbery. Yeah. Well, we can also talk that story about the attempted midnight robbery. Yeah Well, we can also talk about Jason and his interactions with the company. I feel like we can do an entire podcast just in stories about this call center Now that I think about it So there was a when I started in February 98 the call center was still really small a typical shift might be three or four people By the time Jeff came on, there had been a renovation and expansion. I don't know specifically what a shift was when you started.

It was probably like 20 people. Yeah, I know. I was like 12. It was 12. About 12 people. And the company had about 60 when I when I got hired. And then, you know, they got like 1500 now, by the way. Yeah, it's huge. They're a massive company. It remains to be seen. Jerry still out on whether Gus and I made the right decision when we rolled the dice and left the company. You might have blown it by starting restarting. He's not joking. Not joking.

I was like a low double digit employee over there, you know? Like as far as like higher date. And then it's undergone crazy expansion. But by the time, you know, Jeff was also, we were both managers, there was, the shifts had grown quite a bit. And there's a lot of turnover in that business. We hire a lot of, at the time, we hired a lot of college students,

show up, work for a while, quit, no big deal, right? That's sort of a life. We tried to make the job as easy as possible so that even if someone had no technology, they could come in and very quickly get up to speed and start taking calls. But because of this rapid turnover, sometimes there was poor communication

on the management side. Sometimes employees would show up for their first day, be like, oh, well, I don't have your paperwork, I don't know, well, let's get you started in the system. You get them going. One day this dude showed up. I was like, hey, I'm here for training. Neither of us was working on this day.

It was another manager was working. It was like, oh, well, I don't have any of your higher day or your paperwork. It's like, well, let's just get you started in training and everything. Start the training, started him taking calls, and it wasn't until payrolls get, the next payroll was getting run,

that I think it was Bernie, who was like running the payrolls, like, hey, who is this guy? He's not in the system. We can't pay him because we don't have any of his information. So then they had to retroactively put it in, and then later, he admitted that, yeah, he just showed up and said he'd been hired and said he was here for day one of training and Brian was the manager didn't catch it and was and so we just he hired himself. Yeah, and

He promoted himself to level two. Yeah, same same way. He was he's good at point. He also, He also here comes the crazy twist. He also played donut and red versus blue. Why is he in Godwin? That's how we met Dan. That's how we met Dan. He hired himself at the call center. Oh, thank God, guys, go get her. What?

This is insane. Yeah, there's so many weird stories like that with that call center and that people we know still to this day and that we've worked with for a long time. Yeah, like I consider Gus my oldest friend in Austin, but technically I've known Jason a little bit longer. Jason Saldani, they got the place Tucker

because we started training together on day one at that call center. So we met each other, there was like four people in training, we met each other that day. And then he was such a piece of shit employee at that company. He also was very smart, got promoted to level two. I want to tell how I met Jason. I would love to hear it.

So I want to tell how I met you. Okay, we, you know, this was a call center, obviously, a bunch of computers and, you know, at the night, at night time when there wasn't as much call volume, obviously the shift's got smaller, so all the computers weren't in use. So sometimes we would go, and it had a really fast connection to internet,

man, this is the late 90s. So sometimes, at night, some of us would go over and we'd play like Quake or Doom or whatever, because it's all these network PCs that are all on the internet. So we would have like Quake, Quake 2, I think it was at the time actually,

Quake 2 sessions at night. And Jason, I believe he lived on campus at UT at the time. He didn't want to drive down because the call center was down in South Austin off of Ben White. He didn't want to drive down there so he'd connect from his dorm room at UT. And so he'd just like start joining our Quake 2 matches

and his Quake 2 name was Poop. Was Poopie. Poopie. So I was like, who the hell is this Poopie guy? Like, oh, it's Jason, he works with us. That was his nickname for 10 years. Yeah, we call him poop. We call it poop for like 10 years. And he hated it. I guess what? When you hate a nickname, it's gonna get you some more. I remember one of the funniest moments of my life is we had another friend who worked

their name Bradley and he was dating a girl who was really cool who had a twin sister. And Jason was single at the time. And we were all out like a we were Emo's going to see a band and I was the old Emo's and we were I was trying to facilitate like a I was trying to like wingman a little bit did not go that way and I introduced Jason to this girl and I wasn't thinking I go oh hey I don't remember her name but I go oh hey this is my friend poop and she goes and he goes I'm like oh she goes oh's sad. I'll never forget that reaction. That was the best reaction in the world. Reaction I've ever seen.

Just her face and she just went, oh, that's sad. I was just like saying it to herself, you know? And he's not back as to be like, I really seriously don't like it. Can we stop? No, especially asshole us in our earlier mid 20s, that was not going away. Would we were both employees on the floor? He would so, he was so brazen with how he didn't give a shit. He would be like, we're just be sitting there working two hours into a six-hour shift, and he would go,

I won't be here anymore. I'm like, oh, well, what are you gonna do? We got four hours to go and he goes, I think I'm just gonna leave and I go, you can't do that. And he goes, watch this and he goes, hey Brian, I'll see you tomorrow and just walk out the door and Brian to go Okay, all right have a good day and they never got in trouble and it's not like It's not like the team leader didn't know we have the schedule right in front of us We could see the coming is going so we knew you know what the call volume was gonna be and keep track of the employees You knew the schedule it was on right in front of you the whole time. He was just so confident with it. Yeah The schedule, it was on right in front of you the whole time. He was just so confident with it. Yeah.

Sonalville. Do you remember, if we're talking about employees there and being brazen, do you remember, did you ever work with Robert? Uh, which Robert are we talking about? Okay, we need to do it. You played it bleep this day. The last thing.

Oh, we talking to ****, yeah. Okay. He was not a great employee. Great guy to drink with. Great guy to drink with. Great guy to drink with. Maybe the best drink and buddy we've ever had. He was not a bad employee, but he wasn't like a phenomenal employee. Very smart, incredibly smart guy.

But he would show up to work in the morning, you know, hungover, usually. Big drinker, we would always, we hung out with the guy all the time at night. But he would show up to work hungover in the morning. And he wouldn't, you know, he wouldn't, you wouldn't, you would, you would picture like a cubicle farm, that's where we're all sitting for our, our, our taking our calls. Here comes a trash truck, by the way. Yeah, little audio texture. He wouldn't sit at the, maybe too much texture for a second. He wouldn't sit at the cubicle, He would sit under it. And like he was on the floor under the cubicle. And the only way you knew Robert was there working is every now and then his hand would

come out and hit the phone to answer it whenever it was ringing. And there was just like a headset dangling under the cubicle, under the floor. That's awesome. I remember like one of the managers one day going over to him and going, hey Robert, I'm going to need you to sit in your chair and he goes, I'll get you tomorrow, man. I'm gonna... I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like,

I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like,

I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, No, that was the charm. So how did you two meet then?

You remember the story, you were gonna tell it. So I was gonna say, I mean, I don't remember, yeah, I do kinda remember the day. So first off, this is gonna sound hilarious. I was intimidated by Gus. That's really hilarious, because if you picture me in the late 90s, like he was all hea.

I was, I was probably 30 pounds lighter than I am now. Like I was a skeleton with a giant head. He was. And the reason I was now. Like I was a skeleton with a giant head. He was. And the reason I was intimidated by my Gus was two reasons. One, he was very, I mean he was Gus, so he just did like a prick from the get-go without meaning to be, it's just his personality, right? And he was, I was, you know,

I was faking it till I made it at that place. I was not a tech guy. I had only, I think I mentioned last time. I had only got hired because I had PA in on a film and could talk movies. And so I was scared of him because he was, the guy I had to go and ask for help. And he just always looked at me like I was so fucking stupid

that I should have known this. And he was also one of the cool kids at the place. Wow, okay. No, seriously, seriously. There were like, there were like, there was the Jacobs and Justin and the cool guys. I was not part of that group. Gus was a part of the, I always thought

he rolled in that circle. And so I was kind of intimidated by him. The people he's named, there's the people who worked there when I started. Like they were like the old guy. I didn't have that historical knowledge when I worked there. He was just talking to those guys when I came in and they were like the old guys. I didn't have that historical knowledge when I worked there.

He was just talking to those guys when I came in and they were all very intimidating. They all like, they ran the show there. And I felt really dumb all the time. So I was kind of intimidated by that whole scene. And I was determined to break in and make friends. So I'm 23, I'm just out of the army, I'm in a city where I don't know anybody.

I literally moved to Austin, we can get in that some other time, but I moved also without a place to live. I just like my wife and I at the time, we showed up at the first, it just happened to be on William Cannon, the first apartment complex that had a sign in front of it that said they were, they had a vacancy.

And I just rolled in with a U-Haul that day and said, can I move in today? And they said, yeah, absolutely. I forgot, you still live off of Will and say. Yeah, it was a place called Cooper Sill, it's gone now. It's something else now. So I got invited to a party from one of the other level twos, this girl.

And so I was like, I gotta go. Was it Lindsay? Was Will, it was Lindsay and Laura. Laura. Yeah, Lindsay and Laura, they were living together, I think. And it was like off of a old tour. It was a, we could tell you some stories about that. You were a snatches.

That's a whole other story. That's a whole other story. Like I said, we worked at this call center together for five and a half years. We got tons of stories we could tell about it. But so I went to that party and the party, they said, started at nine, but I heard it wrong. It started at 10 and I showed up at nine with my ex-wife and they didn't know what to do with this and they were just getting ready

and we sat on their sofa for an hour just feeling horrible. Like once I was in the door, I couldn't leave. I couldn't be like, oh, I'll be back in an hour and I knew if I left, I'd never come back and I'd never come to those people again. And so they were like, just still killed. They gave me a drink and like we just sat there And I'm like can we help and they're like no no no we got it and then I put makeup on and get ready and put out chips and stuff

And we're just sitting in the shitty apartment off river side my ex wife and I just like watching them for an hour Gus was the first person to walk in the door I'm very punctual and I was it at 10 at like yeah, it was like at 10 a 1 or whatever this and 10 I'm there and I just went straight for them And I just like I gotta talk to somebody. There's the guy. I want to be friends with those guys anyway And I just struck up a conversation with them. I totally forgot about this. I don't remember what we talked about I talked about work who knows I don't remember how awkward it was but the night ended with us going I don't know if you remember this the night ended with us you and, and my ex-wife at the time and a couple of the people,

I don't remember who else was with us, probably Theo or somebody. And you guys all went to Casino, and you let me tag along. And that was the first time that ever been to Casino, and our friendship was cemented that night by the end of the night at Casino. Casino rules, that reminds me,

that time you and I went to Casino, I was in the middle of a streak where every time I went to Casino, I was in the middle of a streak where every time I went to Casino El Camino, Starship Troopers was playing on the TV there. It was like six times in a row and I was convinced like there was something wrong with me because every time I walked in, it was always Starship Troopers

and it was always more or less the same place in the movie. It's like in the training montage where they're in the shower and I'm like, what the fuck, what's going on here? We should do a whole episode about Casino someday. Yeah, we should do it at Casino. At Casino in the back. The little courtyard in the back.

Yeah, they have that courtyard. I haven't been there in. I haven't been there a long time. Are you serious? Probably 10 years. That's probably my favorite bar in Austin and my favorite burger in Austin. Used to be, it's gone through some quality.

Ups and downs. Ups and downs. Really those guys who make those burgers that through some quality. Up and down. Up and down. Ebs and flows. Really those guys who make those burgers, that have the quality of a virtual reality. We have some great stories about Casino, some sad stories about Casino actually. I do want to talk about Casino.

Maybe we should save that for if we do an episode there. But you said a name that reminded me of another story. Please, go for it. You mentioned Theo. Oh yeah. You were the new gritties this story last time. So again, this is all, just to put it context, this, a lot of these stories are like late 90s, early 2000s,

totally different world than now. It's raining now, by the way, little audio texture free. The first digital camera I ever saw in my life was at that call center. Yes. The call center bought a digital camera to like take photos, like headshots and the employees

to attach to their profile and like the intranet that way you could like look up employees and see who you're talking about and everything. And you could, since it rarely got used, like if they were gonna use the camera, they were gonna use it at like 9 a.m. on training days and all the other times it wasn't being used. So you could check it out kind of like a library.

If you were an employee, you could check out this camera and take it home. And this camera was so old, it used double A batteries and it connected to computers via serial port because USB didn't exist yet And if you filled up the internal storage of this camera, which was probably only like 100 megabytes or something and you wanted to transfer the photos via your serial connection to your computer If the camera was filled with photos the batteries would die before you could transfer all the photos off of it because the connection was so slow But anyway, anyway getting ahead of myself here. You could check it out

and you could do, you know, take photos, do whatever and then like turn it back into, uh, to the company. And, uh, one day we were all hanging out, I think we were all on shift and, uh, Theo came in, he like returned the camera and he's like, oh man, he like sat down and he's like, that camera's great. You can tell all kinds of things like, yeah, I must be neat. I hadn't used to get by this point. And he's like, yeah, you know, I took and he's like, that camera's great, you can tell all kinds of things. Like, yeah, I'm supposed to be neat. I hadn't used to get by this point. And he's like, yeah, you know, I took it home and I did that same thing everyone does. When they first did a digital camera, took a picture of my balls.

And there was like this long pause. And we're all like, what? You know, I just got the camera down real low, got a low angle, I want to see what my Gucci looks like. And he's like, I'm in my balls with a huge. I really like, Theo. Are you fucking with this? He's like, no, you all did it, come on. He's like, Theo. Are you fucking with us? He's like, no, you all did it, come on.

He's like, come on, I'm just like, I took a picture of balls. It's the first thing you did when you got the camera. Home you took a picture of your balls. You're like, no Theo. No. What? Yeah, and he just like tried to pass it off so nonchalant.

Like everyone, everyone does that. Like you're weird for not taking a picture of your balls. And he was such an outwardly cool guy. Like, he had cool hair and he was in a band, like a math rock band and he was like, oh God. So, whenever I think of digital cameras, I inevitably think of the, you're taking a picture of his balls and like,

and now there's like, there's cameras everywhere. He was so indignant too, I remember. Yeah, go ahead. He was so, so, he was so, and he was like, gleeful that he made his balls like big. Like he wanted big balls. And with the angle, he made them look huge. It was the 90s, you know?

Yeah. God, different time. Oh my God. So, so you guys struck up a friendship at that party in a casino. Was it like fast friends thing or was it, oh, pretty much, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We, uh, I don't remember the courtship. Well, I think, exactly. If I remember right, I think early on, probably wasn't the first thing we talked about, very early on, we talked about making content on the internet together. Yeah. Because Jeff had already been making a zine.

Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah, I had, you know, I grew up in the punk scene in the 80s and the 90s. And so I started making zines when I was like 15. Then I joined the army in 93 as a photojournalist and public affairs specialist. And so the last year and a half I was in the army,

I was in Fort Mom with New Jersey at the United States Military Academy of Paratory School. And they wanted a website. And so they came to me and they said, hey, you're the website guy. And I go, I don't know what you're talking about. And they're like, figure it out. And so the last year, I had no choice,

but it was my job to teach myself how to make websites in like Netscape Gold or whatever. And so in the process, I learned how to make their website. And I started, I had my, it was my light bulb moment where I went, I should move all my zine stuff online. And so I started making all my punk zines online, and then I think we bonded over. Yeah, and then I knew like around, say, Mage,

when I was like, I don't think so. It's a regular truck. That's just a truck. It's just a truck. It's the loudest thing. Yeah, when I was the same age, when I was around 15, I learned how to make web servers. And I learned how to host web servers, and I learned the very age when I was around 15. I learned how to make web servers.

And I learned how to host web servers. And I learned the very technical side of that. So then I was like, well, I wanna make content, but I don't know how to, like I knew how to very fundamentally make websites. I know why you're laughing. I think I make very rudimentary websites, but I needed someone to work with to help me with that.

And Jeff knew how to make websites as well. So I was like, we can make websites together and we can make funny stuff on the internet. Yeah. And why are you laughing, Jeff? I'm laughing because in the process of this, Gus showed me the first website he ever made. You found it on your own.

I found it. He told me about it. He told me it doesn't exist anymore, but I could tell it did. And so I tracked it down. It was a website Gus learned how to make, I think in math campers. It was a math camp.

I used to go to math camp every summer. And it was like the official, like the unofficial Gus grew up in Eagle Pass, Texas. Middle of nowhere. Middle of nowhere. Like closest town to San Antonio, which is like a three hour drive. Right across the border from Pedro Snagress,

which I think is where they made nachos first or something. Yeah, the nachos was invented there. And he took me to the restaurant where they invented the nachos. That was close. It doesn't exist anymore. You're lucky you got to go there. That sucks.

I'm glad I got to go. Anyway, so I find this website that he made in high school and it's called, it's Gus's unofficial e-go pass. Welcome to e-go pass website. And he literally e-goes, hey, my name's Gus. Take a ride on the Gus bus and let me show you. He's the bus. He's doing a voice.

There was no voice on this website. And there was a picture of a VW bus. Remember that? It was like this blue VW bus. And there was a whole page devoted to the bluester call. It was the Eagle Pass and the Luester Cult fan site. Because my pedophile computer science teacher was a bluester cult fan. And he was like, oh, bluester calls pretty cool.

So I show that to Gus. He's horrified. It spreads like wildfire through the office, right? Through the tech company. And then within a day he got it taken down. He had to track down his high school teacher. The problem was yeah, it was like a math camp. I didn't remember how to log into that server. I had to like find the people who administered

that computer network down at Texas State with Texas back then, and have them take that website offline. Oh, he was so horrifying. Take a ride on the Gus Bus. Take a ride on the Gus Bus. I wonder if I could find, I bet I could still find that same VW bus image.

I should look for it. Yeah, you should. I feel like I find it. Do you have your Zine stuff anywhere? No, I mean, not online stuff, but any Zine in print, anything like that. I don't know. I don't have to look back through my old stuff.

I've moved so many times, you know, shake it stone away. But that's part of why I wanted to do the f*** face scene. Was just to like kinda, play in that world again a little bit. I think that's really, and here we are still, you know, 2022, like working together, collaborative, making content much easier now

than it was back then. But it was, like, it was like this creative part of my life, by the way. It was such a niche thing back then. Like, oh, you wanna make stuff and you wanna make it online? Like making stuff online, like in the late night, like what was it?

Like it was fan pages and like the cringy shit I made in high school, like that was it. So it's like we wanted to try to make original things. And when we were talking about driving around and the reason we stopped here when there was also a doctor's office was we were making content back then. We would go to garage sales and we would take photos of stuff we would find and just like invent humorous stories and post it like blog style on the internet. That was like a big thing we would do for years just trying to find

stuff to put to post online. Yeah we would we called it drunk sailing, SAILING. Like garage sailing, drunk sailing. And I would wear a little captain's hat, like a little captain boaters hat, and we would write these stories, they were like photo essays, right? About how we were hungover, and then we would like, we would come up a little,

we would just make bullshit up, we got into a car accident, we ran somebody off the road, and then this happened. Take a picture of a car wreck that we saw, you know, stuff like that. And we were just like taking the piss out of stuff and just telling these stories of,

and we were essentially just trying to find old video games. That's all it was. Uh, at Yard Sales, but we made, we crafted these little stories about them, and people really latched on to that, and liked it in a way that I don't think we recognized at the time, and then we found out years later that people believed a lot of that.

Yeah, they thought, like, wow, did you get away with running those cars off the road? And we're like, it was all made up. It was, I mean, the hangover stuff was real. We were always hungover. Gus, you still have to drag me at a bed in those days. But then after that was for our second website, drunk, drunk gamers, drunk gamers.

And after we stopped making that, some community members from that site who lived in Chicago continued to do that and put it online for another seven or eight years. It was really cool. Yeah, it was interesting that idea lived on and had its own life with them and then they're seen for a long time. Yeah, that stuff was a lot of fun. And looking back, I remember we had a website counter, I think at its peak, like those stories

we would get like 3,000 views a day. Which was huge. Yeah, I was like, man, that's massive. There's like a couple thousand people who are into this and who want to like come see what we're doing. And that's how I would drag Jeff out of bed on the Saturday morning. We're like, hey, listen, we gotta make this.

There's people who want to see this. There's like 200 people waiting to see what happened. We want to see what we're gonna do today. And we came up with, I don't, should we talk about the Grasch Hill games we came up with, I don't want should we talk about the garage sale games we came up with? I don't want like people to take this in a bad direction. We never did these because they were a little too evil. Or if we did them, we're not acknowledging that we did them.

Yeah. But I was gonna say we should roll into ugly internet and where we started. But that's probably a conversation for, I told you a whole lot of this. That's a whole other one. So let's, yeah, let's stick with garage sales. So again, late 90s or early 2000s,

garage sales got advertised in newspapers or like little yard signs. You put a sign up garage sale, pointing in this direction. Or new scripts. New scripts, yeah. So we came up with almost like guerrilla style garage sales we wanted to make, or we wanted,

like, I don't know what you would call it. I would, the guerrilla style garage might be the best make, or we wanted, like, I don't know what you would call it. I would think Gorilla style garage might be the best descriptor. Performance art. Performance art. We called one surprise garage sale. We would advertise a garage sale and an address and not tell the people there.

And then set it for 7 a.m. And that we would show up and set up a garage sale in the front yard at 7 a.m. and start selling stuff until they came and kicked us out. We had another one we called the Grand Prix where we would say We would set up Garasel signs that said Garasel this way and it would keep pointing you But it pointed you in a big circle around the block and the goal was to see how many times you could be able to Lapse and you could get the fastest lap time and I'm or Garas, it doesn't exist. I'm not saying we did that one, but if we had,

it worked very well. Well, to say that. We also had reverse garage sale, where you would show up with your own stuff, you would try to sell it to someone's garage sale, and you would try to sell them something you brought to them. Yeah. So it's like they're trying to sell all their shit,

but you bring your stuff there and try to sell it to them. This is wild. We also had one where you, we're similar to the first one, Gorilla Garage Sale. But you get up at like 4 a.m., you set a bunch of signs to a house, and then you get to that house,

and then you just put a sign that says, yard sale around back and just points to their backyard. And then you just sit back and watch people just start walking through somebody's backyard. Because there's a lot of trust involved with these garage sale ads. As you realize now, when we're saying all this, there's a lot of trust involved with these garages as you realize now when we're saying all this there's a lot of trust that's easily exploitable with hilarious outcomes

my god not know what the statute of limitations is and state taxes but i will say for the record doesn't i are not acknowledging that we did any we're saying these are bad things and you should not be doing these having an idea and and and then acting on that idea are two entirely different things. Oh man. Oh man.

Oh man. Oh. Those were, we spent a lot of time thinking about garage sales and going to garage sales, which is why we started thinking about funny twists to them. Like, in a way this is kind of like breaking video games. It's the same thing, or it's like you play a video game like, I want to do the thing that they don't

expect me to do it. Well it's yeah it's sort of like the I mean I don't think we either of us recognize that at the time but it was we shared a certain comedic and creative sense of expression. Yeah. Yeah. Well it was very gen X I think as I'm learning I'm reading a lot of Chuck Klosterman in my old age and I'm uh... assholes well yeah well it was very genx i think i've got as i'm learning i'm reading a lot of chuck claustron in my old age and i'm learning a lot about the why i did the things i did growing up fast uh... but it was very much of a time and i don't think we realized it we it just made sense to us

like we're just bored kids looking for fun it was an extension of all the shit i was doing in high school in alabama and i assume all the stuff that does was doing in Eagle Pass, trying to. And, but never with any malicious intent. It was just to make ourselves laugh. We were just trying to make ourselves laugh. And we just kept fumbling through it, and eventually,

landed on the machine. People really like some stuff. Yeah. I have a lot of stuff I want to talk about with ugly internet, but we should say that because there's a lot, I mean, a lot of it. Ugly internet was, I would say one of the most want to talk about with ugly internet, but we should say that because there's a lot, I mean a lot of it. Ugly internet was, I would say one of the most formative things that happened to us.

I want it, yeah, we learned a lot. I mean, scared to shit out of ourselves. Yeah, that's the thing I want to talk about, but we'll have to save that for, for like, a few years. Well, let's save it. We're right around, like that 40, 45 minute mark. I don't want to, that's probably enough. Yeah, like we're running out of steam, but can we take guesses at what animal means again?

Oh, right. I have, I do have, I'm trying. I have to do good one time, at least once. You're taking a lot of good today. The, I think, and this is a, this is a guess for my wife as well. A new meat alternative. Oh!

Meaning on the vegan list. Oh, yeah, I do like eating plant-based stuff. Mm-hmm. I don't, I, I shot my wild last week. I don't know. You gotta think just thinking, uh, what's A? Uh, apples.

Okay. An apple. Need. Uh-huh. Microaggressions. Oh. Microaggressions. They do.

They get real opening. Now here's the thing. I like my guess, but we know that Gus' actual name is Dream Logic, so I feel like your guess is a lot closer. I love dreams because your brain's just like laying the track in front of you. It's building it as you're looking around like, oh no, oh no, oh no, what does that mean? It are either of us on the money with the name. No, unfortunately not.

Okay, out of all the guesses so far, have we nailed one of the words yet? No. Jesus. It's like the most complicated day of wordle ever. Yeah, really, it's tough. But if you wanna make a guess, you can tweet at us at and podcast.

When am I actually gonna say it? When we get it right. Oh, you're never gonna get, it's never gonna happen, okay? No, I think we were getting close. I think we got it. We're at episode three. And I think we're already like, okay, you said we haven't gotten a word yet. There's only so many A words that we can lay down there.

Only so many A words. And there's two A, I think about it. We get two chances every week. Yeah, think about it. Between the two of us, that's four chances every week. Plus, all the people who are tweeting at us, there might be a couple of good ideas that they have. Okay, let me give an asterisk to the anime. Between the two of us, that's four chances, every way. Plus, all the people who are tweeting at us, there might be a couple of good ideas that they have. Let me give an asterisk to the anime.

Okay. There is no N word. Uh, wow. Okay. God dammit. So, uh, so is Ann a word? It's Ann in A? It's complicated.

This is great. Don't give me anything more than that. That's all I want. This is good. Guys, don'tNA? It's complicated. This is great. Don't give me anything more than that. That's all I want. This is good. Guys, don't forget, it's complicated. But you can follow us on Twitter, at Animal Podcast, on Instagram, at Animal Podcast, A-N-M-A podcast.

You know what it stands for. Yeah, you know what it stands for. It's your favorite podcast. You know what it stands for laughs. Lafma. Lafma. This was good, man. I really like getting a cup of coffee

and then listening to these stories is like, this is great. It's a good way to start your day. Yeah, that's not bad. Now there's audio texture of dogs barking. Look at those dogs, they're so mad. All right, well, I guess that's it. We'll be back again next week,

not telling you what the name of the podcast is. Like us. Bye, Jeff. with the name of the podcast is. Ha ha ha ha. Bye Gus. Bye Jeff. unsolved and Ruestriteats cryptic podcast, f*** face. Call to action. Feel free to add something show premise specific, but short.

Listen to show name on Apple Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. It's f*** face, a podcast. Subscribe or no. You do yes? Yes?