ANMA - Good Morning, Gus
Episode Date: May 9, 2022Welcome to ANMA, the podcast about Austin, TX and what it used to be through the eyes of 2 guys who have been here for a long time. They also started a company here called Rooster Teeth. Gus & Geoff t...alk about the old Mueller airport, Halcyon Coffee, and why they started a podcast where they reminisce. Follow ANMA on Twitter https://twitter.com/anmapodcast and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/anmapodcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Thank you.
What?
That makes sense.
It's a weird thing.
Do you want to get a picture?
Do you want these headphones?
No, I don't.
Okay, then.
Then this...
I can't wear Sony headphones.
What?
My head's too big.
They have the tiny little Asian head thumbs.
Little Japanese head thumbs.
Same.
So, where we're sitting right now, used to be the Austin Airport.
Yes.
Robert Mueller Airport.
Did you ever fly in the desert?
No.
I only picked someone up here once.
Yeah.
What about you, J. Everfly?
Yeah. Yeah. When I was stationed at, I was in the army in Fort Hood,
and very tiny regional airport there.
So oftentimes we would fly into Austin
and then take a little plane from Austin to Colleen.
They wouldn't let you use the Air Force base?
Well, most of what, most of,
a lot of flying in the military was commercial.
Okay.
I did use, when we had to fly,
like when I flew to Kuwait,
we would, they would charter a jet,
like a big plane, and we would fly from,
actually from Fort Hood.
There's a, there's a,
there's a charter, it's not a commercial flight.
Yeah, there's a,
but a lot of times we would just,
or if you like, one of the go home to visit your family
or whatever, Austin was your layover.
It's weird to me,
because this airport closed in 1999.
Did you know that I stopped you head, or did you look at that?
No, I know.
I remember when it happened.
It was June 12th, 1999.
I put that in the history.
Is it in the dock?
Okay, you guys didn't look at it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
June 12th, I wanted, I'm not 100% sure.
I was June 99, I think it was June 12th.
Okay.
99 was the final flight.
I knew someone who was on the final flight
that landed here at Muleer.
Who was it?
It was like an old coworker of mine,
not from the call center,
but from the place I worked at.
You never met them.
Okay.
He lives in Canada.
You know that?
You know that?
It's just weird to be like,
there's like a flight that took off somewhere
and was like, we're flying Austin.
Wait, not the old airport, the new airport.
That's weird.
Yeah, it's like, it's so strange to me.
And now like, that's the old airport.
That's been there for 23 years at this point, almost 33 years at this point.
Well, it's weird because, like, you mentioned that long ago, we were having the discussion,
we were walking to the coffee shop.
By the way, we should get to the start of this podcast and the premise at some point.
But we're going to start of it.
Okay, well, we should be, we should introduce it at some point.
Mewler, we are in the Mewler development, is 18 years old.
It feels like just yesterday they broke ground on this place.
Yeah, they got screwed over.
Whoa, we all got screwed over by the financial collapsing,
like 2008, 2009, and they had to stop construction
for a really long time.
Like they built the Home Depot and the Best Buy,
and they stopped.
Yeah.
And then it's like, not only now,
everything else is catching up.
I remember they sold us all on.
It's gonna be like a second downtown, the restaurants and walkable,, not only now, everything else is catching up. I remember they sold us all on, it's gonna be like a second downtown,
the restaurants and walkable, like a European city,
and then they built a Home Depot and a Best Buy,
and then nothing for tickets.
Well, now there's a coffee, we got coffee right over here
down across the road, there's a,
there's a hellcy on here,
which is really mind blowing to me,
because hellcy on used to be downtown.
It's the same house,
it's not like a different coffee shop that took the name, is it?
I think hellcy on is still downtown. It's, oh, it's in the dark.
Second guys, yeah, there's one on fourth and quad. Fourth and quad. Yeah. So that Halcyon
going back, man, we could go way back. I first went to that Halcyon in 1994 when it was Routamaya.
Oh, yeah, that used to be Routamaya. It was the Routamaya. And I remember that because it was the
first time in my life, I saw Lesbian's kiss. And I remember that because it was the first time of my life I saw Lesbians kiss.
And I thought that was the knee, I was from Alabama, right?
And I was 18.
So I thought that was a big deal.
I thought that was really cool.
I was like in public and they don't care.
And this is 94, so it's still, you know, it's not today.
We're a lot more, you know, regressive fact than.
And so it was awesome to see.
I was like, I'm in a big city.
This is cool.
People are being themselves.
I love this.
Let's all abandon behind.
Yeah.
I forgot that that was rudemeya.
It just rudemeya still have any coffee shops
or do they just sell coffee?
So rudemeya moved from there to Penfield.
When Penfield took off.
And it was supposed to be a big deal.
And then I think the world largely forgot about Penfield.
They closed that rudemeya down.
And I believe now they just sell coffee.
I think they're just a roaster.
We almost moved to root of Maya.
Yeah, or our company.
We almost, I'm a root of Maya.
We almost moved to Penfield.
Yeah, we definitely looked at it.
It was too expensive, I believe.
Yeah, also it was like nothing great.
Yeah, I wasn't like good.
Root of Maya was down there.
Helsion came, what, I don't remember what your house got started.
I only went to Helsion a root of Maya,
but a couple of times.
And I think every time I went was with you.
Really?
I would never make the trek down there.
In my mind, if I wanted coffee, I wouldn't go downtown.
Or if I was downtown, it was late at night
and I was getting drunk.
There's no, like in my mind, it never made sense to go.
You weren't spending a lot of time
downtown in the daytime.
No.
Yeah, nobody was back then.
I guess I worked.
Not in the morning.
I worked downtown between 2000 and 2002. I think Ar Rudy and Maya was probably gone at that point. Yeah,
it was definitely Halcyon by that point. Yeah. And that was also a bit of a walk for you from
where you were. Yeah. They were close. They were close. The hideout. I remember the hideout all the time.
We'll have to hit up the hideout because there's a lot of historical significance to us in that coffee shop.
Speaking of which, we should probably introduce this podcast.
So this is, I guess the first episode, Eric called it a test, but we did a test, we did
two tests already over a year ago at this point.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
December 2020?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then so, you know, take a year off to digest.
Think about it.
Think about it.
And then tackle it again.
My name is Jeff Ramsey.
You are Gustavo Sorola and you are Eric Bedouard.
And we work for a company called Rouser Teeth.
We make a lot of podcasts.
For the record, I'm Gustavo Sorola.
You are.
He's Eric Bedouard.
Yeah.
There we go.
People don't know if they're listening.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, you're attaching the voice to the title.
Yeah.
So we work for an entertainment company.
We do a lot of different shit.
This is, I think, all of our third or fourth podcast.
This might be the most premise, heavy podcast
I've ever been a part of.
There are like 72 different reasons I wanna do this.
One, coming out of the pandemic, finally, after two years.
It's over.
Austin, well, I mean,
I'm in 60,000 people dying.
Stop on.
Starting to emerge.
As Omicon waves that with the wave dies down,
we're starting to emerge
and I'm starting to go out again. He just started testing negative again. So yeah, I've
been at two years through the pandemic and then I got to a COVID and test positive for
13 fucking days. And so now I'm finally able to go out into the world. And there are one
million coffee shops in Austin, our little city has exploded. Little city. That was a coffee
shop. Shit, that was a coffee shop. I had all the books on the wall.
Yeah, 11th and Congress.
I think they still have some sort of presence too,
but in Austin, yeah.
So anyway, I was paralyzed by coffee shop options.
And that reminded me of a conversation that you and I had.
We've been working together now for about 25 years.
I've known you for over half of my life
I was thinking about that yesterday.
That's good.
And I guess we've been working together
longer than 25 years if you count the day job
that spawned our career.
It's been, it was I started in 19, 23 years.
It started in 98 at that place.
You started, oh yeah, you started like December 90.
December 90, yeah, that's right.
And so we've been working together
pretty much every day since then.
One of our early early ideas
before we started the company Rooster Teeth
was we wanted to create something called the drunk army.
I do remember this.
Yes.
We wanted to go get a drink in every bar in Austin
and then review them.
We bought a website for it.
We bought a website for it.
I don't think, do I still pay for that?
You might.
If you do, we need to use it for this show.
Yeah.
Well, no, no, no, no, because it doesn't apply anymore.
Well, it really doesn't apply anymore
because at some point, I became a crippling alcoholic
and then got sober
So I haven't had a drink in like in almost five years next month
So I had to pivot away from that there was also a period in time
We wanted to do the same thing but with hamburgers like we used to get a lot of fights about who had the best burger and all
skill births and so
so
Really I like Hilbert's I don't think that's it. Well, all right, so
I mean I haven't sat down to think about it. I'm top of my head. I'll top my head top notch better
Bold bold okay
My defiance pretty good
Anyway, that's a different podcast. I'm not just funny, because they lost their secret sauce recipe for a while.
Did you ever hear this story?
No, I've never heard that.
Yeah, this is great.
So the,
I've been like, it's sad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They had their mixture of thousand island
and ketchup or whatever.
Correct the original sauce.
And the guy who created top notch,
or I guess the owner, I don't, I assume he created it.
Yeah.
He unfortunately died. It was very sad. And his it. Yeah. He, uh, he unfortunately died.
It was very sad.
And he, his safe was locked.
And in the safe was this recipe for the special sauce.
No way.
And I, I want to say I remember reading about this in the chronicle.
I think it took them like three weeks to get that safe.
No, nobody knew the combination.
Nobody knew how to get it out.
They couldn't open his safe to get the recipe.
It was a big crisis for a while.
They didn't have access to the sauce for a while.
They could be lying to us.
Maybe they never got access and they're like,
oh, you gotta recreate it.
It was a great story to drum and support
because it made me,
it definitely put them on the map again at the time.
So the idea being to pivot sort of those old
and then combine it with going out into the world again
as COVID is waning, obviously, it still exists.
It'll exist for the entirety of our future.
And them in some capacity.
And then yes, in addition, I have learned,
Gus, you and I have been, what I would consider to be best friends for over 20 years.
Yeah, long time.
I don't ever speak to you anymore.
We don't ever talk. We never communicate.
And I realized I am only, at this point in my life at 46,
I'm only able to maintain personal relationships through podcasting.
Okay.
Like my other best friend is Gavin.
We have a podcast together. It is Like my other best friend is Gavin.
We have a podcast together.
It is the only time we communicate throughout the week.
Then I have a, our other very close friend of ours,
Jack, I have a podcast with him.
It is the only time I communicate with Jack.
So you got to make a podcast.
So if I want to maintain a relationship with you,
I has to be through a microphone.
That is the most like modern day problem I've ever heard.
Yeah, for real.
I just, I've turned into a hermit.
I've turned into what you always described to me.
If Seinfeld was on the air right now,
that would be like Kramer's thing.
He would only talk, no, actually more of a George thing.
George could only talk to people
if they showed up to be a guest on his podcast.
Yeah, George is more of an opportunist that way.
So they're all the premises that I lay out before you
for the reason that this podcast should exist.
Oh, also, one other one, think about this a lot.
Gus, you and I share a similar love for the city of Austin.
Yes.
We both came here, I was 18, how old were you when you came here?
I was, what year was I was 19.
19, yeah.
Okay, yeah.
So we both spent the better part of our teen years here.
I mean, for the first couple of years, I was station of forhood,
but I spent every second of a good here.
Let's think about last night.
It happens kind of so quickly and so slowly
at the same time that I turned around
and Austin is a completely different place.
Totally different.
Can I drink the water anymore?
That's what I'm thinking.
We witnessed the radical change of Austin,
the radical growth, it went from being this cool indie art town,
I called it the velvet ditch because because anybody you could fall into it,
and it was too comfortable to climb that of.
Yeah, it was cheap to live at.
It was a hard time job, right?
We had to debunk some month.
Get a roommate.
Yeah, it was the cheapest place on Earth.
And there was no crime.
And it was expensive places.
Yeah.
And I'm dealing with the fact I've been coming to terms with the fact
that I'm going to have to leave Austin someday, because I won't be able to retire here.
I don't think it's a city. It's like LA. It's not a city you can retire
Do you need to leave to make room for other people to move here?
It's true. It's got what it really breaks down to. I was looking into it a couple months ago and
I was pissed off that I was having to sit in traffic and I was trying to in my mind
I was trying to wrap my head around how much worse traffic has gotten yes
when I we moved here in the late 90s. And I looked it up and the
population of Austin proper has doubled between the year 2000 and the year 2020. That's crazy.
And the infrastructure has not. No, I'll tell you, dude. Back in the old days, you and I would drink
at a place called Bulma Caves or a place called Ocean's 11 a little later, or we would go to E-Mos.
Yeah, all that stuff's on Red River. Yeah, all that stuff's on 6th and 7th and 8th.
And then Emo's moved to Riverside.
It's the old back room.
Austin on a Friday night, we could go to Oceans 11
at 10 o'clock at night or 11 o'clock at night
and park in front of Oceans 11.
Yeah, or Casino right on the...
Or Casino.
Yeah, that's how much Austin's changed.
Like you would park at the bar you were going to.
I guess you wouldn't park in front of Casino on Friday.
And if it was closed.
If for any reason it was busy, you would park
at the Texas State Teachers Association.
Yeah.
That was always available.
Was it the teachers' association?
No, you're right.
Teacher's association.
And then if any reason that was available,
you would go eat dinner at Jaime's Spanish Village
and then they would let you park there all night.
And that was how you got around traffic in Austin back then.
I think that teacher's organization is still there,
but I think they put like a bar.
You can't park back there anymore.
Yeah, that's been closed off for years.
And Hyamist Spanish village is long gone.
It's been a couple different bars.
You can buy their salsa though.
I don't know why you would.
Yeah, I'd take terrible rest of it.
I've seen it in the stores.
The only reason it existed was for their parking lot.
Yeah, you get that red parking pass.
That was the only reason to go there.
So anyway, Austin changed so much.
And we were a part of that change
and we spent our 30s, our 20s and our 30s here watching it,
but we were so busy with work
and had our heads down with our company.
I think a lot of, like just passed us by and we missed it.
So I kind of want to do this podcast also,
just to kind of share our experiences going through,
we were in Austin in a very special place
in history and time, you know,
must have been like what it was like to be in LA in the 60s in the 70s and to get to watch the explosion
Mm-hmm and watch it turn into the go from the old city it was into the new city it became that's I think that's worth
So we're just gonna shake our fist at the microphone and at the city in general and yell at it to get off our lawn
Yes, the just that I'm getting here. I guess so yeah, and also we're gonna review every coffee shop in Austin
Oh, yeah, so that I I can tell you where the best place to get a coffee.
So we got coffee at Halcyon.
Yeah, which I'm not.
Which is in Mueller, which used to be the airport full circle.
We're bringing it all back around.
In my head, Mueller is a solid seven at a 10.
Or Halcyon.
Halcyon is a solid seven at a 10.
I haven't had it yet.
I got a black coffee and I got a black iced coffee.
And that's what I'm gonna get at every coffee shop we go to.
You got every kind of coffee there.
I just got two coffees. Warm coffee, cold coffee. You know, and that's what I'm gonna get at every coffee shop we go to. You got every kind of coffee there. I just got two coffees.
Warm coffee, cold coffee.
You know, maybe, here's my first.
Maybe we should have gone to flight path
since we're right by the airport.
Is this the same?
Or I would have the old airport.
So six is like a set.
Yeah, six somewhere in there.
The warm coffee, let me see.
She's drinking the ice coffee.
Ice coffee is shaking, it's head.
Ice coffee is six.
So that's a ice coffee, not a cold brew.
Well, this is, yeah, they didn't have cold brew,
and they didn't have ice coffee, so it's an iced American.
Oh, it's an iced Americano. Yeah, we're saying it's fine. It's a, I'll go up to seven cold brew. Well, this is, yeah, they didn't have cold brew and they didn't have ice coffee, this is iced American. Oh, it's an iced Americano.
Yeah, we're saying, it's fine.
It's a, I'll go up to seven.
Okay, fair, fair.
All right, well, thanks for listening everybody.
Yeah.
On Beyonce, does nothing for me.
Yeah, we actually are not in the coffee shop.
We went across the street.
There's like a big man-made lake here.
Yeah.
Believe it or not, they didn't have this lake
when planes would land right here.
It's a little bit of a hazard for planes landing.
I looked it up before I came over this morning
to record this.
The old runway was runway 13 or 31,
which means it was like at a 13 degree.
Yeah, so it would be like 90 is west.
So it would have been like 130 degrees.
So it's like, it would have gone northwest.
So we would have seen planes coming in from this,
I'm pointing you guys, the audio is looking at the camera.
But planes would have come in from that direction,
landing here, and I think the runway would have been
more or less where we are right now.
Really?
Yeah.
I was trying to figure it out because I can see.
Well, there's an old hanger.
I found the old runway map, and I oriented based off
of the Austin Film Society stages.
And I think the runway came this way.
I think we would have been right in the middle of it,
in the old tower. You can still see the old control tower.
It's over behind the houses in the Mueller subdevelopment.
Wow, that's crazy.
It was interesting because back then,
if you were driving down 35, very often,
plates would come in really low and, you know,
be on approach and land right over you.
Like, it felt like you could reach out to your car
and touch the plane. It was so low, like about to land.
It was like in the movies.
It was pretty cool.
I guess I should also mention for posterity sake,
our offices are in the Austin Film Studios.
That was a shallow deep-quant again.
Yeah, I oriented it based on our office.
Yeah, so we're right over there as well.
Also, I have a question for you.
You mentioned this as a man-made lake.
How did ducks work?
Could be woman-made.
Oh, what?
How did ducks work?
Did you just build a man-made lake and the ducks show up?
Or those imported ducks?
I think they just show up.
Yeah, I think ducks are just hanging everywhere.
Yeah.
Ducks hanging out waiting for lakes to be built.
And they just like call their duck buddies
and they're like,
They're like at another lake,
like in Ohio or something.
And they're like,
Hey, we hear this new lake in Austin.
Yeah.
And it's way cheaper.
Yeah, then the old ducks are here
and they go, we can't retire in Austin
We have to go somewhere else. Right new ducks and move in ducks work much the same way humans do I believe so
Okay much more accelerated timeline though. I just figured I don't know if you go to like you like good like call of hands and buy a bunch of duck
And throw them out there. No, they just show up. They're everywhere. They're endemic much like COVID
I mean, you make it sound like there's ducks just like hey waiting in the woods. Yeah, you don't see them because there's no lake
or any place for them.
If you go to like, if there was another lake
anywhere around here, you go to it, there's ducks at it.
I don't know.
I'd be interested to see how,
maybe somebody who was involved in the construction of mule
or this lake could tell us how long did it take?
How long did it take for the first duck to show?
Was he by himself or her did they come and pay
I wish what they have to do is they build the lake and then they have to stock it with fish
That's the part they have to import the fish can get your own fish don't just come here
Yeah, so they got to fill it with fish and then once the fish get here in the wildlife
Gross and then the duck show up to eat everything and shit all over the place
I'm you know you say that shit part, but I don't see any duck shit anywhere
I actually keep it pretty close to the...
Because they don't come over here.
That one over there, he's a little upety.
He said.
That's not having a good time.
They're pretty messy.
They stay close to the water, so they keep it all over there.
If you walk over there with that group of ducks,
it's a guaranteed duck shit everywhere.
How's your coffee?
It's okay.
I think we've been under a boil water notice here
the past few days in Austin.
Yeah.
So it's been really limited as to where you can go to get coffee.
So, I've been a little coffee starved.
I've been making it at home and it's like different making it at home versus going somewhere.
Luckily, there's one place not too far from our studio called Epic or Epoch.
Epoch.
Epoch.
For some reason, whenever there's a boilwater notice, it'll keep selling coffee.
I think they have a deal with that brewery over there off of airport where they'll boil
the water for them and Epoch can keep making coffee. That's cool. So, like, Epoch's. I think they have a deal with that brewery over there off of airport, where they'll boil the water for them
and epoch can keep making coffee.
Oh, that's cool.
So epochs spend the only person going to lately.
Do you have, is that, would you consider
that your favorite coffee shop?
Oh, I don't know if I have a favorite.
No, so no, I wouldn't,
but not because they're bad,
just because I've never thought about it.
Okay.
I can't, it's not like a hamburger.
I can't think of it off the top of my head.
Okay, Eric, how about you?
No, I make coffee at home.
I don't really go to coffee shops. So that's another thing we should get into. I learned how to drink coffee off the top of my head. Okay, Eric, how about you? No, I make coffee at home. I don't really go to coffee shops.
So that's another thing we should get into.
I learned how to drink coffee in the army to stay warm
and coffee to me is very utilitarian
and I have pretty plain taste anyway.
So I just have a black coffee, black cold coffee.
And Tom Ford sunglasses.
And what?
Tom Ford sunglasses.
Very, very plain taste.
Very utilitarian.
So to me, I was like, listen, listen.
My girlfriend, Bobby, I didn't buy these sunglasses. They were Christmas presents. What am I gonna plane dude. Let me show time. Oh So so you never drink coffee for enjoyment.
It was always like sort of just,
I could never, I just don't have a very refined palate.
So like, folders or a fancy coffee shop to me
aren't that different.
Oh, that bird almost hit me bad.
I wonder if that keeps doing the mic.
I feel like my standards are pretty low.
Gus, I would say you're not that person.
You definitely have taste buds.
But Eric is like the other end of the spec.
You're a coffee, you're a coffee fee?
I spent $300 on a grinder like me.
Oh, I'm like a grinder.
Wow, not for a weed, for coffee.
Because the hand grinder that I had was fine,
but I ran into an Ethiopian coffee that is tough for me
to grind by hand, but I really enjoy the flavor profile.
So. Is it a burger grinder or a conical grinder?
It's a burger grinder, yeah, yeah.
I don't know what the difference is, like,
they don't. Yeah, that was it. It was what the difference is. I think I'm going to go.
Yeah, that was a.
It was like a big purchase.
I'm excited about it.
But I do, I make coffee every day, like, pour over,
like make my own.
Like a KimEx.
Yeah, do KimEx.
I have like a standard like single pour over also
that I do.
And so.
You ever use an aeropress?
No, it's, uh, aeropress seems like it's a fine way
if you need to get like a espresso without having like
a machine, but it's just not. Make it look like an Americano fine way if you need to get like espresso without having like a machine,
but it's just not.
Make it look like an Americano.
Yeah, but I just, I take all my coffee,
I take black coffee and unless it's like, you know,
on an airplane, then, you know, cream and sugar away.
You drink coffee on a plane?
Oh, I know you're not supposed to,
I don't care.
I don't give a shit.
Don't drink coffee, don't drink tea on a plane.
Why?
They can't clean the water tanks.
Yeah, I drink it all the time.
Yeah, me too.
And I will continue to.
Yeah, this isn't gonna stop me. It's not that it's inherently dirty. It's just that they're scaling in Yeah, I drink it all the time. Yeah, me too. And I will continue. Yeah, I'm not, this isn't going to stop me.
It's not that it's inherently dirty.
It's just that they're scaling in there.
That there's no way to...
D-scale.
D-scale.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I got a D-scale, my coffee pot right now, actually.
Yeah.
The little light comes on.
It says, Asshole, D-scale.
Asshole, D-scale.
Grasshole?
Yeah.
It's aggressive.
No, very aggressive.
So I feel like we represent the spectrum of coffee drinkers.
Yeah.
I enjoy going to a good coffee shop.
I like a pour over at Kubei.
I like that place.
The Kubei, it's on E6.
Oh yeah, yeah, I've been there.
Yeah, that's a pretty, I don't know if I have a favorite coffee shop,
but that would be up there.
Pretty up there.
Oh, oh, fleet.
You ever been to fleet over on Weberville?
No.
That's how tiny, you know where that metal punk bar is
that a friend Adam goes to, the Lost well. It's next to the lost well
Okay, I don't know. Okay. Yeah. What was there 20 years ago? Maybe I'll know that
Probably another shitty bar
Was it over by like the peacock room peacock is at the end of six then wasn't a pleasant valley or whatever
Yeah, this is if you go down seventh where kind of over by where fly red is you can take a like a
a dog leg on the web. I know where the kitty coons is and garbons. Yeah it's over there.
Gotcha. I got you now.
Uh, the peacock's still there?
No, it's been gone for... The peacock has been gone so long it's been a couple of
different places. I think currently it's Saint Rox, which I'm not a fan of.
The other thing is that we're also really old now. So I don't know about you, but I never
go to these places anymore.
Well, yeah, not my money.
Yeah, my mind is stuck in a very particular period of time.
When I quit drinking, I swore.
I made a promise to myself.
I was like, I'm not gonna be one of those alcoholics
who quit drinking and then never goes to bars
and never has fun again.
I'm gonna still go to bars and hang out with my friends.
I'm not gonna let it affect my social life.
And then I discovered that bars are fucking smelly and gross.
And I can't go into bars anymore
because it makes me wanna throw up.
So I definitely became that person
that I swore I wouldn't be almost instantly.
It's years of like spilled liquor.
Just to get the cleaner, like sanitizer.
It's a very specific bouquet of gross smells.
It's disgusting.
I will say the chairs at peacock.
I don't know if you remember they had these white leather chairs
that they could talk to and write it on them.
I thought that was the coolest touch.
They ended up at Clive Bar.
When that place opened up, they bought those chairs
and they had them there for a while.
So I'd go visit the chairs and write it.
I don't know if they're way around town.
I don't know if Clive Bar's still there.
I think they're building a bar on top of it or something.
Something above it.
Speaking of building,
our mutual friend Jason
sent us a photo yesterday.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess they're tearing down that block
at like fourth in Colorado, where most recently
that restaurant loan some dove was.
Yes.
But that's where right next to that
was where the original draft house was
that opened back in like 97, 96.
And Frank, right?
Frank used to be right next to that as well.
Yeah, I found out.
I thought everybody knew that.
I mentioned it to my girlfriend last night
who's lived in Austin for over a decade.
And she goes, they're the Ritz.
And I was like, no, the original Alamo.
And she's like, I thought the Ritz was,
she had no idea that there was an Alamo fourth in Colorado.
So in Colorado, there was like,
that's the first one they opened up.
I suppose it like I said, 96, 97.
And like back when it was a really small shitty theater
with no reserve seating.
So if you wanted to see what they were playing that night,
you had to show up to the box office
like three or four hours before the movie.
Or stand in line.
And stand in line.
And it's not economical, too.
What, like what they were showing?
I think so, yeah.
Yeah, you could see what they were showing,
but you couldn't buy tickets.
Right, right, right.
You had to go there and you would have to stand in line
in order to get a decent seat.
Do you remember the first time you went to the Alamos?
First time I went to the draft house.
No, I don't.
I do.
The very specific memory,
because I came here in 94,
but then I got stations elsewhere,
and so I had to move away.
So I moved back,
I got out of the army,
and I moved here full time in 98.
And my first wife and I at the time,
I hadn't been here.
I'd never been in the Alamo in those first two years.
So in December, December 98, we moved into Austin.
The first weekend we were here,
I was looking in the Chronicle for something to do.
There was a midnight showing of Grimlands,
and I thought, where am I that shows
that Grimlands at midnight in 1999 or 1998, right?
So we gotta go.
And so I hadn't ever heard of the Alamo before that.
We went there, there was nobody at the downstairs,
walked up the stairs, and then I was also,
I was in my early 20s and the 90s.
So I was, if you were into film,
you were an anacle news reader.
And so, I lost it as well.
Yeah, based on Austin as well, right?
So I walked up the stairs and immediately bumped into
Harry Knowles, who was there,
who was the closest thing I'd ever seen to a celebrity
at that point in my life, probably,
next to my Charles Barkley experience.
And so he was talking to like a ticket lady,
and I stood there for a minute
and they were just having this whole conversation,
and then I thought like, I guess I don't know,
I just walked around him, my wife and I walked around him,
and went and sat down and saw Grimmelens for free,
and that entire time I was there,
I had no idea it cost money to go to the room.
I thought they made their money off the bar tab
and the food, and I thought, oh,
they just show a movie for free at midnight
and then people buy food and drinks.
And it wasn't until the next time I went to the Alamo
and I tried to get in without paying
and they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
asshole, what are you doing?
And I was like, oh, a life.
I was very wrong about that.
Can I pay you for another ticket?
I already saw a movie.
I felt so bad.
December 1998, I believe.
That's the first time that. Yeah, I can't remember the first? I already saw a movie. I felt so bad. December 1998, I believe. That's the first time that.
Yeah, I can't remember the first time I've seen many movies.
When I went to college for a year,
and one of the people who'd lived next to me
was the sister-in-law of Tim.
Tim League.
Tim and Carrie League, the creator's family.
I would say he was the, she was Carrie League's sister.
Okay.
Like, live next door to me in college.
And she would tell me, like, yeah, my sister and brother-in-law are opening up a
Movie theater in Austin gonna be called the draft house like and do all this stuff
So it's like that's how I found out about I was living in Houston at the time and then I was like oh, you know when I moved to Austin
I was like oh yeah my old neighbor or this is like her sister in her brother-in-law's place like I'm gonna go watch a movie
They're like it was it hadn't been built up for me. It was just like, oh, my friends in laws and you know, simply opened up this place.
Like I'm gonna go check it out.
Now it's a nationwide chain
and a part of what I would call the,
I don't know, the emerging,
a culturefication of America through Austin.
I feel like a lot of Austin chains have spread out
from chues to rooties to Alamo Drafthouse
to fucking, every time you turn around,
there's a run into a Chewies in South Carolina.
And you're like, what the fuck is,
hello, bro?
That girl was staring at your hands.
Huh?
My friendly little girl.
It was like, hi.
It was flashing.
You got like eight nipples.
You were very firm.
They were very erect.
Uh, yeah, I feel like, um, a lot of that stuff started
in the late nights,
because I remember living in Houston,
like going to Chewies there.
I mean, like, oh, it's weird that they have one here too.
Like it's just started creeping out,
and then just slowly, you know,
went over across the rest of the country from there.
And then the next thing you know,
you're going to, you're eating at a hopped out of the NLA.
Yeah, where was I?
I was in Denver last summer,
and I saw like a tortillas.
Yeah, really?
Yeah, and I was like, man,
I wouldn't eat there in Austin.
I'm sure it's on the I wouldn't eat there in Austin. I'm sure
Man, do you remember when the first torches was it a trailer? It was a trailer It was the trailer behind star bar right? Yes, we're not creaking up. Yeah, that was the very first torches
I want to say oh wait, it wasn't it was across. It was by poor little wood drozzy's now right or was it like that?
Yeah, right there
And then they ended up being one on
36th as well.
And we were like, our office at the time was at 7th in Congress.
Yes.
So we were kind of equalist in between the two.
And other guy we worked with, Matt Hollum was obsessed.
Yeah.
I remember he wanted to eat it towards his every single day.
It was, yeah, it was fun back then.
But I would say we probably ate it three days a week
for a lot of delicious.
Yeah, I ate there for the rest of my life.
I'm full.
Yeah. How does it taste compared to now?
Is it the same or is it, like, do you feel like it lost,
like kind of luster off the parole?
I think it's different and that's just inherent
with growing, you know, your supply,
if you think about like a restaurant supply,
like I'm sure they had like, you know,
a company that gave them everything they needed,
but as you grow and expand,
you need bigger suppliers and you can supply more stuff.
So the quality changes and that's just,
that's just a side effect of growth, you know.
And I think, I think you taste buds change
and what your idea, like, it's not my,
not my kind of taco anymore.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Do you remember that place, we used to have
an office in Buto a long time ago.
Big oak filly.
We have big oak fillies, that's,
that's the, that's the place I was thinking about.
I was thinking about Garcia's.
Oh, notaneous.
Oh, you know, getting notaneous,
but I was thinking about you could get
a chicken fried steak covered in queso instead of gravy.
Whoa.
It's like, it was just like mind blowing.
I would say that Garcia's and Big Oak Philly, which was a barbecue shop,
same-wish shop, Eric that started in a hardware store.
It was a hardware store, then they opened up a Home Depot in Buda, and the day the Home Depot opened,
the hardware store became a barbecue restaurant.
Wow, really?
And it was, I kid you not,
the best sandwich I've ever had in my life to this day.
I would say that those two restaurants
are responsible for at least 100 pounds of chicken.
At Big Oak Philly, they would make a Philly Cheese steak,
but instead of using normal, like, rib-eye or whatever,
they would use barbecue brisket.
Oh, shit.
And you would cover it with queso and like a barbecue sauce.
Holy shit. It was so good. with queso and like a barbecue sauce.
Oh, holy shit.
It was so good.
Is there anywhere that does that now?
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
That place closed 15 years ago now.
We ran into somebody after it closed
because it was weird
because it was these like stereotypical Texas dudes,
like big old country fed Texas dudes
who just genial lovely guys
who you would expect to run a hardware store
and then who you would expect to probably spend a lot of time barbecuing.
And I remember we were having a conversation one day
and the guy was like, so what are y'all doing down here?
We see you every day, you know, you don't look like Buda,
you know, and we're like, oh, we run a video game store
or this video game company where we make cartoons and shit.
And he was like, oh yeah, I used to be a professional counter-strike player.
No, you never got about that.
What? And he was like, yeah, I did a professionally for professional counterstrike player. No, I forgot about that. What?
And he was like, yeah, I did a professionally for five years.
And then the world got really small that day.
Wow.
He said that this is awesome.
Yeah, and this was probably 2003 to 2005 to 2005.
2005, yeah.
Yeah.
And anyway, ran into that a few years later in Austin, I remember.
Oh, really?
He mentioned, you were there.
He mentioned.
Sometimes I'm like engaging for podcasting. Oh, okay. I remember we, we tried. He mentioned you were there. He mentioned sometimes I'm like engaging for it. Okay. I don't know. We we we try. That's that's how it works. He we tried to get
it us. We tried to get it to either give us the recipe or open up another barbecue
store. So we get the sandwich again. He wasn't having it. Yeah. I love that unexpected
fusion. But I also love that like that spirit of well, we can't compete with this with
this business like this one. The other that just opened up well, we can't compete with this business, this home depot that
just opened up, so we're just going to pivot entirely, make a whole new business.
And they had a way bigger hit on their hands in that sandwich.
For people who are familiar with the Arabiuda, it's like a suburb, a little south of Austin.
Like if we were to get in a car from here and drive down there, probably take like 20,
25 minutes to get there right now.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like halfway to San Marcos.
Yeah, and it's tiny, especially back then,
not very many people living in that town.
So the market was really small.
Yeah, there was that they built a Cabela's there
and that changed everything.
And I would wager they were probably,
at this point there's probably more people
working at Cabela's than lived in Judah
when they opened Cabela's.
I was in view to this weekend.
I went to pinballs.
There's a pinballs and you get pinballs kingdom.
Yeah, what is that? It's like a big castle, there's, pinballs. Yeah, pinballs kingdom. Yeah, what is that?
It's like a big castle.
There's like a dragon.
Remember the old truck.
Oh, the old truck stop.
Yeah, yeah.
The old T9 cafe.
What is cafe T9?
There used to be a truck stop.
And that building that stone building that's there used to be a restaurant for the truck
stop.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, they turned it into a pinballs.
I will say this about that place.
Dirtiest fish tanks in Texas.
It looked so much better than it tasted.
Like you drove by it when I want that burger,
and then you go in there and you're like,
I did not want this.
We worked in Duda for a couple of years.
And that's where we found Big Oak Philly and Car Seas.
I think we went to that two-night cafe once.
Wow.
And they're very limited food options in Duda at the time.
We're like, that was enough.
It was also a restaurant called Tumamas.
You remember that? Oh, yeah, yeah. It was like, they would serve one meal, like one dish. Like you walked in on Monday, Monday was meatloaf.
You walk in on Tuesday, the Tuesday was casserole or whatever.
It's like every day of the week,
it was just one thing.
And if you wanted that, that's what they had.
Yeah, it was like two sisters that ran it,
they were both moms, so they called it two mamas.
And yeah, and it was just like home cooking.
And we ate there all the time as well.
Their meatloaf was, I'm not a huge meatloaf fan,
but it was fucking good.
It was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it mamas. And yeah, and it was just like home cooking.
And we ate there all the time as well.
They're meat loafers.
I'm not a huge meat loaf fan, but it was fun.
It was good.
That's only when I remember.
That's why I said that.
It was one day I made it.
They had like a stew or something that we ate a lot.
Yeah, like a beef stew or I can't remember what it was now, but you know.
It's been so long.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was all right there like on Main Street.
So it's like that we lived in,
or we didn't live in,
we worked in the only apartment complex in Buda,
which had 12 units.
Yes.
It was two buildings,
six units in each building.
There was only apartments in Buda
and we would walk across the train tracks to Main Street
and that's where all of these things we mentioned,
they're all right next to each other.
It's like Big Oak Philly was on the left.
Garcia's was just to the right of that,
and then just to the right of that was two moments.
Wow.
I'll tell you a funny story about Eric
that I bet you've never heard about our time there.
We've got a billion, that's another thing too.
As I get older, I've realized I'm becoming far more sentimental
and nostalgic than I anticipated,
and I think I'm the only one.
Like, I've tried to do this with Bernie and Matt,
the other guys that founded the company,
and they have no interest.
Like, nobody wants to reminisce with me,
except for Gus puts up with it.
So I like to reminisce.
I like to reminisce.
I did not know I'd be so sentimental.
So we worked, it was a six unit apartment complex,
three downstairs, three upstairs,
right on the railroad tracks,
which was awesome when we were recording audio 10 hours.
They were not trained constantly going by.
Yeah, only every hour or so.
Below us was a coffee shop.
I don't remember what it was called,
the most burnt coffee I've ever had in my life.
Yeah, it was the burnt as a fucking day.
It was, what was it called?
Oh.
It was so long ago.
I remember the name of the dude that ran us out of town,
but I don't remember the name of the coffee shop
that went through every day.
He ran us damn triangle.
He ran us damn triangle. What? It's a remember the name of the coffee shop that we went to every day. Him and his damn triangle. And his damn triangle.
What?
It's a total bangle, dude.
It's a total bangle, man.
He was trying to help us become a successful business.
That's right.
All right, we're gonna go back to Austin, thanks.
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Anyway, so this was in the early days of Ruestratyth when we started in Bernie Sparibadroom
which was also in Buda, then we rented the 800 square foot apartment which was huge started in Bernie Sparibedrum, which was also imbueda, then we rented the 800 square foot apartment, which was huge compared to Bernie Sparibedrum.
One better.
His wife was like, get the fuck out of this house.
And so we did.
And we were like, we thought we were big shit at the time.
So the apartment right next to us was empty.
And then the apartment to the right was this like,
25 year old blonde girl.
Just nice girl.
We didn't really talk to her much, but we'd say.
I think I saw her once.
Yeah, and every once in a while you'd see her,
say hi to her.
But this was in the early days when we were kind of taken off
and we were in vogue as it were.
We were like a new oddity in the entertainment world.
And so we were getting a lot of press,
New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
people would come and interview us.
Fucking Wall Street Journal.
For a fucking Wall Street Journal,
don't even be starting on that one.
Oh damn.
The goddamn writer of the,
the goddamn writer of the Wall Street Journal article who was really fucking nice, and I'm going to do. The goddamn writer of the, the goddamn writer of the Wall Street Journal article
who was really fucking nice.
And I really liked to do it.
It was a really good listener.
And we took him to Salt Lake and we had a great day
with him.
We hung out with him for like three days or something.
Days, and I felt like a connection with him, right?
This fucking guy, sorry, this is an aside.
And then with the article comes out a month later
and there's all these sentences,
this exposition where he's like,
Ramsey stands on the balcony of the of the office and
takes a slow drag of his cigarette i don't know to see her in my life at least
you were in the article
also gusk was completely up at the airport
i drove the i'm not even
mentioned in the article completely omitted
completely omitted from the article there were only four of us his family thought he was lying about being in
Rooster Teeth when it came out it's not like there was a huge cavalcade of
cancer was in it more than you so uh so at one point MTV came to do a story on us they came to do a couple
stories on us but sway was still working in
TV on you remember sway right oh yeah and soway shows up and he's a fucking cool,
super cool dude.
He was at the tail end of his time at MTV.
He was aging out.
He did not give a fuck.
He was just like, he was just a long for the ride, right?
So he was just like, talking about how,
like how fucking country it was and like,
Megan Fonda, it was fucking awesome.
But he went downstairs to get a coffee.
He came back up and he got confused.
And he didn't go in our, he didn't go in our apartment.
He walked into the blonde girls apartment and she was like getting out of shower and she was fully closed.
She was fully closed, but I remember she had like a towel in her head.
And she over the door and this was like blacked in with dreads walked in and she screamed and he screamed and he was like,
oh my god, I'm so sorry. It was fine. It was what I remember him saying was that
she looked at him. The reason I bring up that she was fully clothed is because
he said she looked at him screamed and then still covered her breasts and her
growing. Yeah. And he was like, she had all her clothes on. And what was she
covering? And it was it was it was it was it was it turned out to be very funny.
The cops weren't called. But he was fucking shook after that.
He was like, this is not the town.
You know, you're not even locking into the wrong fucking apartment complex and scaring people in.
Oh my God.
That's crazy.
Oh God.
That was a cool guy.
Yeah.
Man.
We had a lot of visitors down there at that apartment.
It's interesting because we've had, you know, for the production company for Rooster Teeth,
we've had a very long-running podcast.
So we've been running for,
10 years?
Oh, God, no fuck you.
We've already, we're like 13 or 14 years now at this point.
But when we started that podcast,
we were already in the Congress office.
Yes.
So like a lot of this stuff, like all the beauty stories,
predated it.
Predated it.
And we may have talked about it,
but it's not something I think we ever really dug into
because there was so much other stuff to talk about at the time.
It's also, I've realized we're at a point where
I thought the last decade plus of podcasting
and also all the other kind of videos we do
that are just conversational, we use shared stories.
I've tried really hard not to repeat stories
because I know like one of the guys we work with,
who used to work with Bernie, who was since retired,
he used to get hit all the time
for just telling the same stories on the podcast
over and over again.
So I'm always hyper conscious of that.
But we're so long in the tooth that it doesn't matter.
No one who had listened to us today
was listening to us five years ago.
Yeah, plus also we had so many people
who we even worked with internally at the company
who would get mad at us for retelling stories.
So it like, it really trained us to try to not do that. so many people who we even worked with internally at the company who would get mad at us for retelling stories.
So it really trained us to try to not do that,
but we churned through audience,
and after 13-year pockets,
you're gonna, the same people who are listening now
are not the people who are listening at the beginning.
They don't know those stories.
No one's gonna go back and listen to 5,000 hours
of, how are you fucking long?
It's like 650 episodes now.
And like two hours, like,
it's like, no one's gonna listen to like 1500 hours
of podcast to get caught up on every single story.
And if they do, then I can remember 80%.
I don't remember it.
Yeah.
So I'm allowing myself car blanche
to tell any story throughout the history
of our relationship.
I think that's all about it.
I think that's the reason for this show too.
Well, that's the reason for this podcast.
It's just getting, yeah, getting you guys together
and just like, hey, let's talk about this place,
this area, this thing, and just go.
Like the way that you guys start going about view to
and all this stuff, like I've never heard a lot of this stuff.
So this is fun to me.
I sometimes try to remember when we first met Eric.
I try to place it down.
And I, it's like, I feel like you're like COVID,
you're just endemic.
You've always been there.
When, when did we meet?
That's a great question.
Probably at a Pax.
Yeah.
I think either a Pax or a Comic Con.
I wouldn't have been for it.
It would have been, it probably would have been 2000, God, probably 2005.
Yeah.
Something like that.
And then it was like, but that's where I came from, megast 64.
And that was just us being booth neighbors one time and then going we should do this every time.
Yeah.
To Bernie who's since retired to his detriment.
I was there at every convention that he was at.
Yeah, I don't know a lot of people know that, but we became such fast friends with the
mega 64 guys because at our very first Comic Con, we just happen to be next to you guys
with a boot.
We were next to our second Comic Con.
The first Comic Con we were in the back by the comic book,
Rainbow comic books.
Was that what it was called?
Yeah, yeah.
Like a comic book publisher.
Yeah.
So the second time, and we became such fast friends
that we just, it became a part of every convention
we went to, we have to be next to mega 64.
And you guys became our first real internet friends.
Yeah, it's great.
And just had the best time for years and years and years.
I remember, I have a very specific memory of you, Eric,
when I realized I wanted to work with you.
This wasn't that long ago.
We were,
oh, it's before we started working here.
We did, it was during E3 in LA,
and we did, our sales team did a meet and greet
for members of the podcast network.
Oh, that was like,
it was like H3H, so there's a bunch of people that members of the podcast network. Oh, that was like, it was like,
H3H, so there's a bunch of people that people in the industry were there.
You were there. Was it the ping pong place?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do remember that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'd known you for, you know,
10 years ago, or something.
We were friendly, friend-ish, you know.
We'd always hang out in whatever town we co-habitated at the time.
But you were at a table with Gus and two other people,
and I was
talking to Lewis and kind of making the rounds and you were holding court and you were telling
these fucking Mario jokes.
I don't remember what they are.
And Mario's got a gun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah and I pointed at Lewis and I said, just watch what's going on here. And Gus was gaffal. And I don't even remember who the other people were.
But you were just like, you were doing a podcast by yourself.
And I turned to Lewis and I said,
we have got to hire him to work here.
When we did last laugh season two,
which is a wrist-feet production,
one of the social promotion clips,
they sat me down to do an interview and they asked,
what, can you remember the time you laughed hardest
in your life?
And that's the memory of that.
Oh really?
Oh that's right.
That's right.
That's great.
That's when Eric was talking to me jokes about Mario having a gun when Mario rabbits
was announced.
Like Mario's going to kill you.
On Mario.
That's so funny because I wasn't even a part of the conversation.
But watching it from afar, it left such an indelible impression on me.
I thought like Eric has to work for us,
you know, in some capacity.
And I'm so glad that you ended up.
I'm glad it worked out.
Now I won't make a podcast without you.
It takes up for one.
We had to hire him in secret.
Did you know that?
Oh, yeah, I didn't know that.
Yep, why?
Patrick's LHR and I had to work under the table
to keep the process out of Bernie's site.
Yep.
Oh, so we had to work to get him to interview.
Was he an impediment?
Bernie an impediment to you?
Wait, does he hate you?
Hate it.
So we tried to write out an interview
and get all the paperwork and everything done
with that and Bernie was hit his hands.
Like he wasn't the CEO or anything,
but he was just very aware.
Technicals.
Everything happening in the company.
He knew everything.
So we had to like very quietly get everything started.
And Bernie didn't find out until Eric's first day
when he came to the podcast.
On the podcast, the podcast that you guys were on
and that was my introduction and he saw me
and went, what are you doing here?
And I'm gonna produce over this.
And I went, I work here and he went, what?
And that's when he found out.
He, I mean, it's no secret.
He hated me.
And there's for all the conventions and everything.
Cause it's just all, constant, constant.
It's all on all the time.
But for me, I think it was just that thing
where I'm in that sweet spot where I just fucking
needled him.
And I think he hated me until after I got hired,
I produced E3 that year and like ran it like clockwork and he was like,
oh, he's not some dipshit.
I can actually do stuff.
I will say, Bernie is a complicated man.
Wonderful dude, who we've spent 20 something years
working together and building this company with him.
Obviously a creative genius, but if you get on his bad side,
it is like, it is a lifelong offense.
Like, it's hard to win him back.
He is a hard, we've been on that many times.
We've been on the shit list, off the shit list.
Do you think you've been, I'll say you and I as a team.
Whenever I got yelled at, you got yelled at.
And whenever you got yelled at, we were like a package deal.
Do you think you and I have been yelled at by Bernie
more than anyone else in his life?
Do you think there's any ex-wives, kids,
college friends?
Anyone else in his 40, I'm 46, he's got to be 48, right?
Somewhere around there.
In his 48 years, come close to as much as he's yelled at you and I.
Well, I can't imagine.
No, I mean, we've known him way, way longer
than probably just about anybody else.
And we spent, not only that, we spent more time
in a room with him.
And it's just a side effect of being there.
Yeah, I mean, we always talk about it.
And it's, you talk about it so much,
it sounds like this thing that's not real.
It's not a tangible thing.
But we really were working 11 to 14 hours a day,
every day, six or seven days a week for the first like,
we bought eight years.
We bought a couch to put in the production room
so that if three of us were in the room,
two people could work and one person could take a nap.
And then the person who took a nap
could come up and work and then one of the people
would work and go and take a nap. Like we could all trade out a nap could come up and work and then one of the people working to go and take a nap.
Like, we could all trade out taking a nap
because there wasn't enough time to go home and sleep.
So we bought a nap couch that we could work as much as possible.
I remember we were making one of our DVDs.
That was called Crunch Time for Us
because we would pack the DVDs.
It'd be for a, we would make a DVD
that would comprise a season of the cartoon
we were making Red versus Blue, which was usually 18 to 20 episodes,
probably clocking about two hours each length.
And then we would try to put at least that much
bonus content in.
Like if we had a two hour season,
we wanted two hours of bonus content and Easter eggs.
And that was on top of like a commentary
and all that other stuff.
Yeah, I mean, it was a ridiculous amount of work.
We put way too much work into those DVDs.
I remember having a conversation with Matt one time,
he was wrapped in a towel sitting on the couch,
and he looked at me and he was just like,
he was just out of it and he goes,
I don't think I've been home in nine days.
Oh my God!
Oh my God!
Are you serious?
And he was like, I don't know.
What's today?
And we sat down and figured out,
and he hadn't been home.
He had kids.
He hadn't been home in nine days.
It was, it was like, it's impossible to overstate
the amount of work that went in on those early days.
And, you know, it was early internet time.
It's, it seems like it's early internet time.
To us, I felt like it wasn't.
We were all on internet really early,
but learning so much, like not being able to like,
Google stuff or, yeah.
We were out because no one had really done it.
It's like, the only people doing that
were like big mega corporations.
And everything was a hack we did.
Yeah, and I mean, we'd learned so much.
Like I, to this day, I hate DVD players.
I hate DVD players with a passion.
Because we learned every DVD player has different logic
for how it handles a disc.
So it's like you had to test,
we would burn a test DVD like Jeff was talking about. And we'd have to test it on as many different DVD players as we could and handles a disc. So it's like, you had to test, we would burn a test DVD like Jeff was talking about,
and we'd have to test it on as many different DVD players
as we could and find a bug,
like, oh, this one particular DVD player doesn't like this.
We need to reauthor the entire thing,
and then you'd be like, okay, this is decent, send it out,
and like, oh, this one brand of a cheap DVD player
hates this DVD and will not play it.
We need to make a new version and exchange anybody
who has this problem like, and swap out their DVD.
And then to talk about learning to hate your own content too.
We would have to test if that DVD
would have four hours of content,
we would have to test four hours of content every burn.
And so by the time, and it wasn't bad enough
that we had to make the fucking cartoon too.
And we'd seen it a hundred times before it came out
on a Friday or a Monday.
But then we had to, I'm probably would watch those episodes
thousands of times.
I fucking hated that thing that we all made that I loved.
So I'm gonna circle back now that you say that.
One of the proudest moments I have,
speaking of things that we hate,
I'll bring it around to Pride.
One of the proudest moments I have actually is
when we had our first screening of that project at the draft house.
Yes. At the original location.
I'm glad you got there.
Which is now gone down on Colorado Street.
And we had different versions of season one.
So, you know, we had the actual version as it released, the movie version.
And then for like festivals or screenings, we had like a 60 minute cut that like cut a bunch of stuff out just to try to like compact it in.
It's irrelevant, not a hybrid, not a lot.
But that was really cool to go from like,
being a fan and going to the draft house
to watch things that I love,
like, Gremlins at midnight,
go to like, night of the living dead screen.
He's like, it was never in a new release movie.
It was like, something,
iconic, something that you love for whatever reason
to then be on the other side of it,
to like, be standing in front of the crowd at the,
you know, at the screen and, you know,
people not yelling at you to sit down.
Talk about trial by fire, by the way.
Yeah, it actually bought a ticket to see you.
It was like, in my mind, I was like,
we are never gonna talk this.
This is the absolute coolest.
I will never forget this.
And then we did, and I'll tell you how,
keeping it with the Alamo.
So we did that first showing,
and Tim came to us after and said,
that went so well, we sold it out. He had us do
Another 14 days. We did 15 days in a row. Yep 15 days in a row
Across the two alamos at the time village in downtown and we sold out everyone
And I want to say and maybe I'm wrong here, but we might have done two shows a night
I don't remember we have to split our group some people would have to go to the village some people would go to the original
So we sold out I, 30 shows in 15 days, which was phenomenal.
And then every year when the new season would come out, we would probably do like one show
like theatrical showing.
But when the original Alamo closed, which was a big deal to everybody, I mean, at this
point, they had Alamo, South Amar, they had Lakeline, they had a village, they had
rips.
Drop passes out of Austin, I think. Yeah, they were out of Austin as well.
When they finally closed down the fourth in Colorado,
Alamo, Tim came to us and he asked us
to be a part of the final week of program.
Oh wow.
So we came back and did one final show at the original Alamo
and Tim may have said that,
I will never forget this to the day I die.
Tim, he may have said this to every single performer
who got up that week and did a showing with them.
I have no idea.
I know the Quentin Tarantino was a part of that.
I know there were a lot of more famous people than us.
Way more famous.
But way, way, way, way more famous than us.
But Tim stood there in front of that crowd
and he told us that we were his favorite guests
in the history of the album.
Wow.
And that meant so fucking much to me.
Like I, that touched me, even if it was lip service,
even if he only met in the moment
or even if it was just a nice thing, he said,
that meant so fucking much to me as someone
who fell in love with Austin in 1990.
I moved here, well I joined the army,
but the whole reason I got into Texas was because
at 16, I saw Slacker in Alabama,
and I thought I wanna live there.
I wanna live where people talk like that.
And so it had been my goal since 16 to live in Austin.
And to have someone who I respected so much who was, I thought emblematic of the entrepreneurial
nature of this city and making it such a special place to give us such high praise was like,
I could have retired that moment.
It was awesome.
Yeah.
Man, what a sad day that they've had closed and now it's turned down and totally gone. It was fucking awesome. Yeah, man, what a sad day that that closed
and now it's turned down and totally gone.
Now it's turned down.
Yeah, and I didn't even know that Jason hadn't told us.
I would have had no idea.
And again, not that it was like a phenomenal theater.
It was a fucking dump.
But it was like the care that went into it
and the programming and like, I mean,
I saw the jerk there and they served everyone pizza
in a cup, you know?
I like to show you. Yeah, yeah. It was there and they served everyone pizza in a cup, you know? I went to that show and you said, yeah.
It was just like all kinds of like cool old stuff, you know, that I felt like a lot of stuff that was special to me
and maybe our generation, like movies that influence dust and our sensibilities to this day.
Do you remember before YouTube, when you wanted to watch people get hit in the nuts with footballs or like Monkeys pissing their own mouths or whatever
You would have to go to the Alamo and they would have these like there was this local access show called the show with no name
And it was the internet before it was internet video sharing before it became a thing
And so this guy Charlie would program like two hours of like just dudes falling off ladders and shit
And we would go watch it on a Friday night at the Alamo
And that was how you that was how you scratch that itch.
Man.
Tim used to go to Japan and sit in a hotel room
and record everything on TV for like a week.
And then he would come back and he would program
like an hour and a half of weird Japanese TV
and you would go watch it.
Because you couldn't get it.
Yeah, he just couldn't get it.
There was no other way to do that.
Man, they just did the cool stuff back then.
I guess they probably still do.
I just, you know,
Well, it's hard to say like we're COVID,
we all been kind of like locked out for a while.
Yeah, but now we're doing this and we should probably
put a bow on it and wrap up.
Uh, what did you want to call this?
Dude, by the way, that was a good producing.
You just did that much.
I was like, see why I can see why I can see
why I burning you one burning over.
Yeah, so, uh, here's my idea for what we should call it.
Okay, I think we should call it.
Good morning, Gus. No. I knew you'd hate this. I don't want my name in it. Good morning,
Gus. I don't want my name in the title. Why? It has to be something with Gus and Jeff.
Like, there's no like good news, right, man? That's the other thing. It's, it sounds good.
It's fun to say good morning, Gus. And you're not a morning person. I I am so I love it. I kind of am more now than I used to be okay
It's a part of getting old. Yeah, well no, no, no, it's not called it that well
I guess we'll figure out a name because this was a test
But it'll probably be released as an episode
Oh, definitely ever said one of good morning. Gus. I didn't come out here to film to record something that we're not releasing
Yeah, we're listen. We did our tests last year. Okay, well, we did it.
Anything you want people to know, I mean,
what do you think finals thoughts on Halcyon coffee?
Seven out of 10.
Yeah, it's not bad, but not the best.
Fucking, I wouldn't seek it out, but I wouldn't,
it's fine.
It's fine.
It's close, it's close.
It's convenient, it's fine.
It's good, don't not go.
Yeah, yeah, but also don't go out of your way.
That's how I feel.
Yeah, there's probably better coffee.
Where are we gonna go next?
Can we pick now so we can give the audience something to look up? Yeah, if you want to.
Where should it be? I mean, the flight path is close. I think it's a great opportunity to build
social engagement, to ask people where we should go. Okay, so we'll leave it up to the audience.
Ask a lot of people who are from here, don't live here, where we should just pick a, do a poll and
see what they pay. Just Google coffee shops and tell us which one you want us to do that. Yeah,
okay. Look at photos online. Okay. Yeah, just Google coffee shops and also tell us what when you want us to go to look at photos online
Okay, yeah, there you go. You go follow us at and then it's the name of the show good morning Gus
No, okay
Mercheting that right now see if I'm get it
That'll do it you want us say goodbye goodbye Jeff
How about what were we gonna call last time mind your own business
Good morning Gus or Mind your own business.
I'll mind your own business with Gus and Jeff.
Yeah, there you go.
Cool.
Cool.
Describe the show to a newcomer in a more familiar way.
Do you like apples?
All right, example.
Together in Trempit hosts,
Characombs, Characombs are free of Diaz
of nothing to do with this podcast.
Analyze various unsolved and rooster-teeths
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?
It's f*** face, a podcast.
Subscribe or no, you do yes?