ANMA - Gus & Geoff’s famous on the internet handshake pact

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Good morning, Gus. From Thunderbird Coffee on Manor, ANMA is back with another episode. Gus & Geoff take you back to their early website days with their pre-RT pages, talk about attending E3 2001, and the perils of Rainey st in the early 2000s. They also review the coffee in this one. Can't believe it. This week's episode is sponsored by Fum (https://www.breathefum.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 Ruestur-Teeth production. Okay, so last time we were at... That was deleted and then the hard drive it was on was formatted. Uh-huh.

And then it was shredded. Well, that's good. Last time we were at Batch, this time we're at Thunderbird. And this is episode 5. So, feel free to take it away. Have we started? Uh, yes. Good morning, Gus.

You got it in for the first time. How are you doing? I'm good. Every time I've been trying to start the podcast to cut you off, to make you forget. Right, right, right. But you were expecting it this time. I'll be undeterred. Got a fair amount of audio texture today.

It's more consistent than episode three, but I think it's more low key. It's not as much trash trucks and buses. Well, we've got our eyes on a different picnic table as soon as this dude quits pretending to work on his laptop. We're at Thunderbird on Maynard. There goes a big truck. I just said, we're at Thunderbird on Maynard. I've been to this coffee shop quite a bit.

It's been a little while since I've been here. This area, it's probably been, since before pandemic before, it was like, it's been like two, maybe three years since I've been out here It's probably been, since before pandemic, before it was like, it's been like two, maybe three years since I've been out here? You and I both used to live on the east side. And now we don't. But so on the east side,

this is like a great, I'm the thing the price is a thunderbird. This is a great like middle of the city east side coffee shop. Like if you live a little south here, it's easy to get to, if you live a little north here, it's easy to get to, it's kind of right in the heart of things.

Mainers are great street. If you're not familiar with lots, a lot of restaurants and bars and stuff, not a lot of bars, but heart of things. Mainers are great street, if you're not familiar with lots of restaurants and bars and stuff, not a lot of bars, but a few. Enough to get drunk at. It's weird to me that, you know, just down the road from here is Bird Bird Biscuit, and there used to be another mainer over on 22-22, and that one became a Bird Bird Biscuit. Like, they used to be in the Thunderbird.

I think that's understaffed. There used to be an Thunderbird over there on 22-22, or Canig. And it closed and became a Bird Bird Biscuit. Can we talk about that? Why does that road have so many names? Everyone has three names. Yes. It's Alendale, Canig, or 2222,

which are all correct, but very depending on where you are on the road. And it changes, it becomes those three different roads in the span of like six blocks. Yeah. Like it doesn't take long to get from one to the other to the other. It's also the same as like 290,

Ben White and 71, which they're all the same west of 35, but then east of 35, it's only 71 in Ben White, because 35 becomes 290. It's like the intricacies of living in Austin. You know, like you would say Mueller and not Miller, because it's definitely not Miller,

because that's not right at all. Like that's a way to tell what someone doesn't actually live in Austin, is when they say the wrong name for something, because it's not right at all. Like that's a way to tell what someone doesn't actually live in Austin is when they say the wrong name for something because it's confusing, I get it. Do you know what that reminds me of? Fuck, we're getting now fun tangents already. There was stuff I wanted to talk about, but do you know what that reminds me of?

That reminds me of one time you and I were eating at baby A's on Riverside. This is how long ago this was. Pre-Rustrate, I'm assuming if it's baby A's on Riverside. So you and I are working tech support, eating $6 inch alatas, and- Spensive, my favorite. It's probably 425 if I'm being honest.

I will never forget this. You, I had been an Austin for a while. You had been, obviously, you were born here. And we're drinking lo and stars, waiting for our food to come. And some guy at a table next to us, taps us on the shoulder and says, hey, I just want to let you all know.

I can tell you all are from around here. But if you want to blend in, nobody in Austin drinks lo and star. And I go, I've lived here for like eight years. And you go, I was born here. And he goes, huh? And I go, it's all we can afford. And he goes, oh, sorry. And he just like, he moved away.

He was so shocked to find out that we were like, we were local. What's funny to me is that, I guess that may have been true at one point, but then like, Lone Star made like, a hipster revival reno-soft. Oh, yeah. And then it came back. And then it was definitely true.

Which is weird because I felt like there was a similar thing. We kind of, did we talk about this? We, I think we kind of came adjacent to a conversation like this in an earlier episode, but I think we ever really dug into it, but craft beer and like micro brews, breweries in Austin, in Texas, I guess, seemed like it wasn't a thing forever. Then it became a huge thing,

because for a while, the independent beer you wanted to drink was Shiner, and that was it. It was like you either were gonna drink Budweiser, one of the big ones, or Shiner, and then that was those were your options. you either were gonna drink Budweiser, like one of the big ones, or Shiner. And then that was, that was, that was, those were your options. I think it was, I think, I remember being, going the latter being like this,

if you were exceptionally broke, but wanted to be Texasy, you drank Pearl Light. No, God yeah. And then if you were like, average Joe Day, you drink Lone Star, because they had a puzzle on it too, which was always, a Rebus. A Rebus, yeah. And then if you were feeling fancy, Shinerbot.

Yes. And that was it. You're right. It was pretty, like now it's like there's 18,000 different beers about that. I don't know what changed. It's fucking ridiculous. Yeah.

Can I just say that the lone star under the cap puzzles aren't there anymore? Yeah, they're gone. They're gone. I don't know. Cost cutting? Yeah. How much does it take to print?

I don't know. It's a major loss. That's why I quit drinking. Yeah. Hahaha. Speaking, we're talking about being a Thunderbird though and I was gonna ask you a question. Yeah, yeah.

I'm here to answer questions. Do you remember, this wasn't always a Thunderbird but it has always been a coffee shop or at least in this iteration. I think it was a house for a while. But do you remember what the original coffee shop was? But no. I don't think I came to Thunderbird

before like 2008, 2009. So it's always been Thunderbird to me. So it was originally Clementine. I don't remember. It was a coffee shop called Clementine. It opened up. It was, I would say early 2000s, right around the time this area

started to really pick up. And then it was Clementine for a few years and I think they sold it to the Thunderbird people, but the original Thunderbird, to my knowledge, is that one that is Birdbird Biscuit now, over on Canig. And then this was like their satellite Thunderbird. Now I think this is the only one.

Yeah, the other one closed. There may be another Thunderbird around town that I'm not aware of, there probably is. But yeah, to my knowledge, that was the original. This was the expansion, and then they closed the original. Connor, we're gonna talk about like businesses? Cause I'm looking at hovers over your shoulder, which is a great restaurant.

It's okay. It's great. It's okay. Anyone who visits Austin should make a, if they're in the area, you do hovers. I love hovers. It's all right. You think anyone who visits Austin should go down.

Yeah, I really don't agree with the air. Come on, you're the East Side. It's okay. It's like, I don't like, I don't like, Southern down home cooking. You're from Alabama. Maybe it's okay. It's like Southern Down Home Cooking. Like from Alabama. Maybe that's why I don't like it. I do not put flavors in the same categories, thread gills.

Thread gills, I don't think anyone who ever made food at Thread gills had ever seen salt or pepper in their life. They have no idea what spice was or any kind of flavor. If you wanted bland white gravy on a chicken fried steak that tasted like nothing, yeah, I mean, third gills was the place for you. That's the job. That's the job.

And worked there. So that's a stain that for about 30 years. Whoever's used to have a second location, up off of 183, but that's gone. Now it's just this one over here on the minute. We can argue the disparity in seasoning, but the menu's very similar. The same kind of food is where I'm going.

Yeah, one chicken fried steak. And one of those, it's like you made some good loobies if you can eat it, thread gills. Oh, that's rude. That's rude. It's not good. How rude. I mean, yeah, I guess it's not around anymore, whatever.

I mean, I gave it to, it was here for a long time, but I tried that place every couple of years, thread gills. I just never, I could, I feel the same about foods. It was always so bland. Really? Well, I didn't, it was not bland. the same about who. It was always so bland. Really. Who was not bland? Who just makes you feel that after you eat it?

It's like real greasy and real heavy. Although I will say they had a case of deal there that was one of the best case of deals I've ever had. All right, man, I'm learning a lot about you. I ate it who was for the first time with you. Yeah, probably. God, it was forever ago back in 2009 or 2000 maybe, 2001. We ate there with Zach. Zach fashion? Yeah. yeah, there was a those those the first time I ever ate there

He's the one who who introduced me to to hovers. Oh, uh something that we haven't been doing very well. Uh, how are you coffees? Oh, I just assumed we abandoned that premise. I feel like I feel like we kind of did but like like look This feels like the coffee thing to me is like, well, we need a place to do this and it feels like it's nice to get around town. I'm not really writing these. It's really good. Thunderbird coffee is excellent.

Just, so everyone knows when we go to get a coffee, I get a drip, Gus gets an Americano, Jeff gets a cold brew every time. Let me just say this, because you're right. We have a band in the premise pretty quickly, but there are so many premises to play in to swim in This is a tin. There's a tin at 10 if you want a cold brew in Austin This is the one to get this is fucking awesome

Yeah, I've had today alone like I woke up this morning my girlfriend's getting ready for work. I made her coffee We had a couple I had a cup of coffee together Then I went and I had a meeting before this we're at another coffee shop at Hanks where we went two episodes together, whatever. And I had their eyes coffee. So this is like my 18th cup of coffee today. So I'm like, I'm telling you, or I'm vibrating, first of all, but also it's, I know it's good because I've had so many.

This is really good. I'm gonna regret ordering hot Americanos here very soon as we taped this podcast outside. They have it my year. I'll probably start getting iced when it's too much for a good hot. I do probably start getting off. I'm sure it's hard. I do wanna say speaking of hanks and episode two of Anima,

I'm glad that we're recording outside even though it's raining today. I'm fucked off. You know, it's just as rainy today as it was the day we recorded episodes zero. That's the point. I listened to Alexa told me before I left that there was at four o'clock,

there's a zero point, there's a 30% chance of rain, and rain as much as 0.08 inches. That's like Tuesday. I would like to say episode two, getting washed out by all the rain, having to tape inside. That is a no-in situation, by the way,

because if it had started raining, all I would've gotten was shit because it started raining, why did we do this inside? But the reason I bring up Hovers and Zach is I feel like that's a good way to talk about some of the earlier websites that we made. Dude, I'm so glad to hear you say that.

Mr. Chief, yeah, like one of the things that made us connect early on when we were working at the call center is, like we kind of touched on this a couple episodes ago about how you had that zine, I knew how to make web servers and kind of knew a little bit about like HTML and stuff. And we wanted to make websites.

I think I had a domain. Back then, you could only register domains with one company. It was $70 a year to register a domain with InterNIC. And I had a domain, show me the monkey.com. I don't know if you remember that. Not only do I remember it, I remember it being, I remember a certain day being one of

the most exciting days of my life. Yeah, we were building around that. It was just like a simple flash animation of a monkey sitting in a tree eating a banana. I believe though, you're girlfriend of the time. A girlfriend at the time made it. And I thought it was really funny, I don't know, so I bought the domain, put it up. And it was on our shared company server at the call center. So every now and then, Bernie and Jeff would quote unquote,

hack it, since we all had access to the server. And they would like put a pirate hat on the monkey or an eye patch or something. It was all very PG hacking. Yeah, it was all very, very, I don't know, yeah, PG. And so anyway, I had this domain and then that movie with Brendan Frazier, right? Monkey bone.

Monkey bone came out. And in the trailer, he like looked straight into camera and shouts show me the monkey. And I was like, that's my website. I remember looking at Gus going, we're going to be right. This is how old the internet, that's a long ago was. And yeah, I was like, oh my god, they said our website, like that, that we own that with there was nothing of course not Who the hell watches the trailer for a monkey bone and was like oh show me the right to the web counter and watch nothing happen

But I think that was like the start of like hey, you know maybe we can collaborate and do stuff together on the internet and Our first idea for a website that we collaborated on was called ugly internet Before you get to Ugly Internet. Okay. Should we talk about one of the more embarrassing things we've ever done together? It's completely related to this.

Oh God, I'm terrified. Gus and I had a conversation. We talked about this. Like I love internet stuff, you love internet stuff. Let's make websites, I'm making zines, you're making monkeys. Like what are we gonna do? We had this, we were both like just balls

of creative energy and we didn't know how to focus it. But we knew we wanted to focus it on the internet. And so I remember one day, we made a pact and we shook hands and looked each other in the eye and said, let's be famous on the internet together. And we shook hands. We made it happen. It got damn it, we did it.

So, it's like on the internet. Yeah, it's like, I'm really into that. Yeah, I never really, I'm gonna backtrack a little bit too. I never really talked about like dropping out of college and moving from Houston to Austin. I just want to touch on that very briefly before we get into the internet thing. I started college in the fall of 96 at Rice in Houston. Full scholarship, eh?

Yeah, I was, I received, I had grants and like every semester when everyone would go to like the registrar's office to pay their tuition I would go get in line to get a check from the university Anyway, how many of those semesters did you get to do I did to them? That's it because every at the time like I had started doing web stuff in 94 when like the first version of Netscape Navigator or actually I used NCSA mosaic and then which became Netscape Navigator and a net-skate navigator, or actually I used NCSA Mosaic, and then which became a net-skate navigator. And, you know, 96, 97, I was sitting there,

you know, we had Ethernet in the college, and I was sitting there with this fast internet for the first time in my life. And I was like, you know, I could stay here, I was not a great student. So I was free for the first time in my life, and I was just playing video games and fucking off all the time,

but I thought I could sit here and like, really apply myself and finish and get a degree, but by the time I finish in the year 2000, the internet, early days of internet are gonna be gone. I need to quit college and I need to jump on this now. Strike wall dance hot. Yeah, and I didn't have money or anything. I couldn't move to California where everyone,

all this Silicon Valley stuff was happening. I was like, I'm just gonna move to Austin. Like the Silicon Hills? Yeah, it used to call it. It's just up the road and we've talked about four. Austin's cheap to live in relatively. I'm just gonna move to Austin. Like the Silicon Hills, as they used to call it. It's just up the road and like we talked about for Austin's cheap to live in, relatively. Like I'm just gonna move up there. I'm sure there's other people I can find

who also wanna do stuff on the internet and we can make this happen. So I moved up, sorry we're at the call center and it wasn't a glamorous job but at least it was like kinda in tech and you could meet people with who were tech minded. So it was great for that. Anyway, so we, we to show me the monkey,

we get to the point where we decide we're gonna make a website together and we decide we're gonna make uglyinternet.com. And it's a website, and again, remember some of the other stories we told, we were assholes. It's a website where we decided, everyone had at the time like awards on their websites,

like the beautiful whatever website award and the web rings were a thing. Oh, it was so obnoxious. You would go to a website and it would be 40% little banners and like, chachkis at the bottom displaying some bullshit award that nobody had ever heard of that was invented just to give to the,

probably was invented by the website to give themselves the award to look legitimate because like as the internet was we talked about it being the Wild West it really was there was no legitimacy to it yeah right no like corporations had I mean I guess they had websites where you could maybe look at their stuff but yeah it was it was very like it was still at the point where George Lucas was suing anybody who put Star Wars images on their website you know it was a very very place. So we decided we were gonna make a website where we were going to rate other people's websites

and tell them how bad they were and send them ugly awards. And then we took it a step further. I was a real, I still am a real big nerd, I was even more of a big nerd back then. I would petition the American registry of internet numbers to revoke their IP address and be like, because it was like we're running out of IP addresses.

This website is wasting one. That another website could be using. And I'd send letters trying to get websites removed from the internet for being too ugly. And then we would post them on our website, on ugly internet. We thought we were doing a public service. And we also thought that it was very clever and very funny

and that everyone would be in on the joke. Right, they weren't. They were not at all. They might play. We're trying to get their IP revoked. We thought everyone would be in on the joke. Right, they weren't. They were not at all. They might play. We're trying to get their IP revoked. We thought everyone would be in on it. No, every second you were fucked. They're not gonna revoke.

I'm learning something about that. And I'm learning that we, the GenXers just had a different view, like a different breed. Yeah. And they got time passed us by very quickly. Yeah. Over the last few years. So, ugly internet, shockingly,

was the source of our first death threat. Yeah. You may be astounded to hear. I don't know if we ever figured out who exactly was behind it. We narrowed it down to the building. Yeah, but this person said they were gonna kill us, sent us photos of where we lived.

Send me pictures of my truck. Oh my God. And said, I know we, I can get to you. Yeah, this is like before Google Maps and stuff like that. They drove to our street and took pictures of our house. We were living together. So we figured out that we figured out that they would call us. The phone number was at the building

where the Omni is downtown at like, what is that? 7th and Brazos? Yeah. Yeah. Ethan Brazos somewhere over there. So we went over there to try to find the person, air quotes. How are you gonna find a person in a building? We just like walked around the entire building,

took an elevator up to every floor, like trying to go into every door we could. What was the building at the time? Because the only is complex. But there's also businesses and offices. Huge building, dude. Just like, I'm in an office calling you and say you're gonna die.

It's 30 stories. Oh my God. Yeah, I'm in an office calling you and say you're gonna die. It's 30 stories. Oh my God. Yeah, so we just like took, there were some floors we found out where, there was like private, like the doors opened and someone just turns and looks at you, like, what the fuck are you doing here? Yeah.

Like, oh, and what we did ugly internet for a year and a half? Two years? Was it that long? Yeah, probably about a year and a half. And do you remember what we did after that person? Like we laughed off the death threats. Then when they started sending pictures of our house, we got very, very scared.

But neither of us had the money to buy a gun. And I don't like guns. So we went to play it against sports. Oh, yeah. I was super salad. We used to eat it all the time. We were telling network, yeah, at Lamar and Ben White. And I bought a metal baseball bat.

And then we just kept it in my car. Do you remember, okay, so I'm gonna make a call back here. Do you remember, I guess I can tell this story. Robert used to always carry a baseball bat in his trunk. And do you remember what he would do with, well, like his process with the baseball bat? I don't, but let me tie this together with that saying in previous episodes we talked about Robert as being a guy who showed up in our house with a suit caseful

of beer and a fifth whiskey. He kept a baseball bat in his trunk, but he said that if you ever got pulled over and a cop found just a bat in your trunk, they would know you're up to no good. So he kept like a bag with a baseball glove, some baseballs and like a little bit of casual equipment and be like, if they find a bat and other baseball equipment Then you can just say you're gonna go play baseball so they can't can't do anything about you having a weapon. He's not wrong So that's where we got the idea to go down the plate and buy baseball bats and we also bought those bags and gloves and some other things You can keep it in our trunk. I forgot about that part. You're right. You didn't have enough money for a gun But you had enough money to play baseball. But this was this was like secondhand sporting goods, but you know, you don't have to buy expensive

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So yeah, that was pretty much the end of ugly internet. I don't think we ever said let's end this or let's stop doing this. It was just like let's find a new project. It just stopped being fun. Yeah overnight. Yeah, but that was interesting because that that was our very first attempt together It creating something I would call it successful in that at its height It was getting probably 200 views a day. Maybe 300. I think it was about 300 which to us seemed like 300 strangers go into our website every day to learn about bad websites. People would email us and like send us pictures and stuff or suggestions for websites to review. And we met our first, our very first online friend, Skylock, who followed us to drunk gamers. I think you made it written for drunk gamers for a while.

Yeah, he did for a little while. And I don't know if you ever made the transition to Rooster Teeth, but in the early days, yeah. Let me tell you a funny story about this guy. I think it's okay to tell the story. His online monitor was Skylock. It was a Star Wars reference, I believe. Really cool, dude.

He was in California. I can, I remember the city. I can tell you, I don't know if we want to say it. Probably not, it's fine. He was in California. I don't know if it's okay that. Yeah. And he became like an online friend

that we would talk to every day and that he, we just had it, we developed a great rapport with. And I remember feeling like, well, this is the power of the internet like here's this dude that we have this so many similarities with uh... this kinship with and who we've never met who lives in california but he had a great story one night where he went out drinking with some friends and he was in a parking lot uh... i think it was apartment complex and uh... he went to pull his keys out of his pocket and he dropped them on

the ground to drunk right and he went down to pick up his keys and they fell on a grate just like a metal grate and when he picked up his keys and pulled back He felt a weird pop and he looked and his pinky finger was gone like right right out of the knuckle He had somehow got it into the grate and when he jerked up drunk not paying attention He ripped his own pinky finger off. Yeah. You said I didn't get it back, could he? Cause when the great or did he get it back?

I think he got mostly back. I think he didn't get the last knuckle. Yeah. I think the last knuckle was removed when they reattached the pinky. Just can you imagine? Just bend it down to pick someone. And you just suddenly your finger's gone. Oh, he said he just said drunk.

He didn't hurt at the time. it was just more shock than me. Yeah. But I mean, your body probably just goes, even if you weren't drunk, you immediately in the shock. Immediately. And it feels shit. Just counting to nine. You think you'll make it to the end

with all your fingers and toes? I hope so. Yeah, me too. I need them. Safe garden for like 46, almost 47 years. I would hate to lose one now. Yeah, you're most of the way there. Yeah, that's true.

Even pinky toes, you feel like you made it, like your pinky toes aren't too hammered or anything? No, I got good pinky toes. That's good. Yeah, mine are good. I mean, the knuckle, the nail fell off the for a while that time in the other podcast, but. It's great.

Great pinky back. It's great back. But yeah, that was a, it was really, I think it was, it was very proof of concept for what we wanted to do. And mind you, this was, I want it was very proof of concept for what we wanted to do. And mind you, this was, I wanna say 99, 2000 maybe, 2001, somewhere in that area.

We were hooked. No, this was, this was earlier, this was a bit of 99. Because right after that, we were like, all right, ugly internet, we're gonna shelve that. We're gonna come up with a new concept. And we loved drinking and playing video games. We're like, all right, well, let's make our new website will be drunk gamers. It'll be just, well, we want to get video game

companies to send us free video games so that we can review them for our video game review site drunk gamers, where we just get hammered and then talk about video games. This is the website where we would do the garage sale stories for that we talked about in a previous episode. This was really where we found a rhythm. Yes. Like we were kind of flailing in a direction with ugly internet. And clearly there wasn't, I think even we realized there was only so far you could take that joke and we had taken it to far enough.

Yeah. And so drunk gamers allowed us a much bigger sandbox to play in. And do you remember the first game we played? The first game. We got drunk. It was me, you and Frank. We got drunk at our house. And we played Onamusha. Oh, that was the very first thing we played the first we got drunk it was me you and Frank we got drunk at my our house

And we played on a mooshia. Oh, that's right. We ever did that's right drunk game. It's a PS2 game Yeah, yeah, yeah, we drank sake because it was oh, yeah, Japanese god. I did not we got we bought sake at cost plus No, no, let's yeah, it was a world market. Yeah, we're a bar. No, none of us knew anything about sake So we just went to a world market because we knew it was there and we bought like $7.00 soccer and it was no good. I got so drunk. I remember laying on that couch just hating everything about the world but it allowed us to learn about building online personas and

You know we were using our names, I guess I was always Gus, but it allowed us to, like each of us picked a console. And we were like, this is my thing, even though in real life, I don't give a fuck. I just wanna play video games, right? It was like, I'm gonna be like the pro PS2 guy, the pro Xbox guy, the pro Dreamcast guy, whatever, right? And just like really try to write to a style

and develop a persona in that, see here, because you know, video people play video games are very territorial about consoles and stuff. And we were kind of shooting for like big brother mag a little bit, like the video game version of big brother mag, at least initially. I do want to point something out.

I think that we did that was very revolutionary when it came to drunk gamers. We live streamed playing video games on the internet in the year 2000. Wow. I had like a web, like an IP-based camera We live streamed playing video games on the internet in the year 2000. Wow. I had a web, like an IP-based camera that you could stream to the web. And we're like, we're going to do a stunt.

We're going to stream video games for 24 hours, and we're going to stream it to drunk gamers. And we tried to get people to write about it. And we did. We set up, in my apartment, over there by Barton Creek Mall. Yeah. We set up, and we stayed up for 24 hours playing video games, just streaming it to the Drunk Gamer's website.

Starting on an after work on a Friday night at like 6 p.m. I remember. How do you have the upload speed for anything like that? No, it was terrible, it was really choppy. So the IP camera would upload to our website, but it was, you know, if any decent amount of people started watching it, it would just like slow down and throttle to where it was like an image,

a second or an image every two seconds. So it was a kind of very slight showy. We definitely didn't have the bandwidth for it, but it was like an early attempt at trying to livestream a video game to the internet. Do you remember? I watched a purse, I watched a, we talked about Dan, we talked about the guy

who hired himself at Ristartyth, who became played donut in Red vs. Blue, who's to this day my favorite character, his work in Red vs. Blue is my favorite, by far. I remember, I saw his online persona in fandom and love, die in one moment. Dan's a very, one of the funniest people I've ever met, one of the most naturally funny people I've ever met,

just like, one of those people you sit down and you just laugh for 30 straight minutes you don't even realize it. You know, genuinely talented in that way. And he was making some jokes. We were playing, somebody said, hey, why don't you play Dreamcast games? And Dan was there with us and he said, we gave up on Dreamcast around the same time Sega did.

Oh, we lost interest. We lost interest in Sega around the same time, or Dreamcast around the same time Sega did, which was a funny burn, right? Except the guy in the other end texted, I bet if Sega made cheeseburgers, you wouldn't have lost interest. And that ended Dan, like Dan, that moment, he was like, I feel like the whole dinner just like,

it just was over. It was, oh, like a cloud. And I don't think it ever changed. Like I think it cemented in him. People on the internet can be funny and ruthless. And I mean, we learned that, definitely very early on. Yeah, but I think if I remember right, I wanna say that Penny Arcade even made a blog post

about the fact that we were gonna be doing this 24 hour streaming thing when we did it way back when in the year 2000 before we met any of those guys. We just tried to get, because we all read Penny Arcade and we were just trying to get like other people in the video game sphere to write about us and to help promote us so we could get our website be bigger. What I would do is we would every day, I think we'd publish, I don't know, like four days a week or something.

Yeah, some like that. Publish articles or stories or bits, whether it's the drunk sailing or we had like an advice column called Ask Flexo or the video game reviews. every story we posted I would then email I had a list that I had compiled and I got I learned this from punk scenes, right? You like create a punk scene and then you send a letter to 50 record labels asking for free records and asking for access to interview Fans and shit and then 10 get back to you and then those 10 become the basis of your scene So I did the same thing with online websites So I would just cold email like blues news. Oh yeah.

Tom's hardware, mate. Dave Tom's hardware and daily radar. Maybe slash dot. And slash dot and pinniarcade and happy puppy and like all these different gaming news sites and just say, hey, just let you know, drunk gamers publish a new story. And pinniarcade was one of the few groups

that when I did that, they would mention this. Very kindly, like Gabe and Tyco. And we fell in love with them early on because they were the first bit of support we ever had from a peer. Yeah. And I guess I used the word peer loosely because they were infinitely bigger than us.

Oh God, they were massive. But when we started it, I think they, I didn't forget Tyco gave us a phrase, like serving up frothy. Wrath on tap. Wrath on tap, that was what it was called. Yeah. So I still have my ugly internet shirt.

This is Rath on tap. Oh no, what's the trunk gamers? It's an ugly internet. I don't remember. It doesn't matter. I think it's a man I don't remember. I still have that old shirt. I need to find it.

I know where it is. I need to look at it. I guess. I don't remember what it says. But I will say, like, and I try to always remember that, they were very encouraging, very politely encouraging. And I have no idea how much that helped us. It's hard to quantify that, but it was probably a lot.

You know what I mean? And so you just try to keep that in mind when other people are starting out. Yeah. If it hadn't been for people like Penny Arcade, I don't know that we would have found the traction we needed to continue. Because there was no social media.

I mean, Google was still new at the time. Like I remember using Google for the first time in 98, 99. Like, it's crazy to think now, like these entrenched technologies, and the way we use the web, just didn't really exist, or like in the very infant stages at the time. God, I never lose my train of thought in any other podcast, which I guess makes sense, is the old man podcast.

Well, it's a meandering podcast too. I've lost my train of that like six different directions. I wanted to go that I lost and I can't get back to. Yeah, so drunk gamers, we know now and we learned, it was a hard lesson to learn, but we learned it after a while, is that no video game company wants to be associated with people who label themselves drunks.

Yeah, or alcohol. Who deal, you know, who consume alcohol like that. So it was a very hard sell, but we leveraged that website into being able to attend E3, because it was now we had credentials. We had a website, we did reviews, and E3 was a lot more strict back then about who could go in.

You had to definitely prove you had credentials and you were legitimate. So we all attended E3 in 2001 for the first time. Yeah, you and I went for, well, we went under the auspice that we were gonna talk to video game developers about providing outsourced technical support. For our call center.

For our call center. So that way the call center paid, Bernie, you know, he's the vice president of the call center. So Bernie, Gus and I went, we really went for, drunk gamers got us in the door, but we were going to try to drum uppresenter call center. So Bernie, Gus and I went, we really went for, John Cameron's got us in the door, but we were going to try to drum up business for the real center.

Real quick clarification. I actually didn't work at the call center at this time. Okay. I had left and I worked at that other company downtown, so I had to pay my own way to go to E3 in LA. Free trip for me. Yeah. And that was eye opening.

I mean, that was a crazy year because the original Xbox was not out yet. So it was like Microsoft's grand unveiling of the Xbox. This was in May 2001, I think the Xbox came out in November. So it was like six months before the Xbox came out. Two years for Rich Teeth came out. Yeah, we got to go and like play all the Xbox launch titles. I was drunk on Margaritas and I slipped on the convention floor.

And I looked down and the thing I had slipped on was a press pass that had fallen off of someone's lanyard so I instantly replaced my pass with the press pass. I don't remember this and got into the press only area at the Microsoft booth and like to try to like get shit to write about for drunk gamers and just try to like get content. But what's weird to me is this was the first time

that the public got their hands on the video game Halo. And Bunchy was there showing it off, and they had a webcam that would take images every now and then and upload it to their website. If you go through that archive, you'll find an image of us standing there playing Halo for the first time. It was me and Matt, I think.

Yes. Yeah. Playing Halo for the first time, we were playing, I remember, I captured the flag on Blood Gold. Uh huh. Uh, just staring at it, like, in amazement. And uh, it's weird how influential that game became to us later on for, you know, future

projects that we haven't even touched on yet. And we were excited about to even check out Halo. I don't know if you remember, because we were all, well, you guys had a longer history with Bungie than I did for sure with marathon and stuff. But I was excited because we were all like jazzed about One. Yeah. Like One was going to be the most amazing video game. And this was the people, these were the people that were making One.

Yeah. You know, and I can't remember One. I can't remember one thing about One. It was a, it was a lake. Canoko. Canoko. Yeah. She was in that police force.

Yeah. was a lady. Kenoko. Kenoko. Yeah, she was in that police force. Yeah. But it is wild to think that like that video game Halo is in large part responsible for our career. Yeah.

And there is footage of us playing it before it came out for the first time. Yeah. But that are literally our first impressions. And if you look at that image, I'm wearing a red Hawaiian shirt. And I was wearing that because there was another game coming out that I was excited about, state of emergency. Oh, yeah. And one of the main characters wore that red Hawaiian shirt, and I was wearing that because there was another game coming out that I was excited about, state of emergency. And one of the main characters wore that red Hawaiian shirt. I was like, oh man, I'm gonna wear red Hawaiian shirt

to E3, you don't look just like the guy in state of emergency. You were bounding and you didn't even know it. Hadn't even been invented yet. But we learned a lot, you know, walking around and seeing how the industry actually works and going to a trade show, which was very difficult, impossible, probably, to get into, you know,

as a general public, trying to make contacts and learning how to interact with people in this industry we were trying to break into and learn more about. I remember how we saw the middle gear saw the two trailer. Remember they were played at the top of the hour at the Konami booth on that giant screen? Just like, it was a crazy E3 to go to as a first one. And I will say, and we don't want to hammer the video game stuff too hard, but I will say we get a lot of, to this day, and we have for the last 19 years, a lot of emails and social media posts from people asking how we got our start,

how to get a foothold in the industry. And I'm not saying this is how you do it. These are just, this is literally how we did it. Cold emails to video game news sites, paying our own way or getting a company to pay our way to go to E3, just to see it, to understand it, to wrap our heads around it, to meet people. Like, we were working, we were beating our head against a lot of walls, trying to figure out. I think we had a very strong fake it till you make it attitude, but not in the phony taking an investment money kind of way, not like faking projections and financial bullshit. It was very much like, we're just gonna project

an aura of success and we're gonna act like we belong. And it was easier back then because nobody understood the internet enough to tell us we weren't successful. Right, right? It was very easy. Very easy to fake it. Right. It's like, oh, you had a website. Like, that was nuts. That's 90% of the job right there. Right. Yeah. That in itself was legitimacy. But yeah. So when people ask, like you said, now it is how to do it, like, I have no idea. I couldn't tell you now.

I could tell you how to do it 20, 25 years ago. These days, man, good luck. Everyone's trying to do that. We were definitely fortunate to be early and jumping on this and to like what I was talking about earlier. If I had stayed in college, earlier 2000, we wouldn't have been doing this. We had a hit start on trying to do all of this stuff

and trying to get in front of it. I probably would have continued making punk scenes. Like, something we don't talk about, but I continued doing the punk scene thing, even into ugly internet and maybe even a little bit into drunk gamers. I was still running that independently on the side because it was a, well, it was free music for me. It was free albums and access to free concerts at E-MOS. But eventually I got burned out.

But I also, like, it was very clear which path was going somewhere, which wasn't. So I switched, I went all in on the RT thing. But who knows? Yeah. Well, I think that's a recurring theme, right? It's like we weren't making a lot of money. We were trying to find hobbies

that we could parlay into free stuff. Whether it's free movies by reading the Chronicle, free music, by doing a punk scene, free video games by doing drunk gamers. It was always like, let's, if we're gonna be doing this stuff for fun, let's try to focus it in a productive way where we get something out of it. And we had the benefit, because we had no money,

but we had the benefit of the EB Games seven day return policy. Oh yeah, fun to call lab, but we used to do it. Fun to call lab, we used to do it. And so we knew that we could, we essentially had to buy $160 game and then we had free access to video games to review for the rest of our lives.

We knew those guys. I used to go to the fungal land over there in Sunset Valley, which is a game stop now by God, it used to be CompuOsa, whatever it's a Michael's now. And the guys who worked there, we knew all of the staff and they knew like, we were gonna be constantly coming in and seven days. Yeah, and just swapping our game out returning our game and getting a different game.

I got carded at that game stop to buy when I bought Conkers bad for a day. Which was the first video game review we did on drum gamers. I know we played on a moussa first but I think Conkers might have been the first thing was it released. Yeah man I might have been like 22 when that game came out and you had to be 17 to buy it and I got carded to buy that video game, which is dumb as hell to me. Oh, man, I was going to say, I'm going to say, or I wanted to say rather, I was driving around here, say I had like an hour to kill before I had to be at RT. And so I was just driving around East Old Turf.

I had almost bought a house on East Oldtorf, many, many years ago. The house that was falling. Yeah, it failed inspection, which is why I didn't buy it. Had it passed inspection, I'd probably still be living there. But I wanted to go see if the house was still standing and so I was driving over there. And in the process of going through East Oldtorf, I drove by one through, and it's a dentist office now.

The very nice dentist office, yeah. It looks like, I mean, I can't say for sure, but from the outside, it looks like those floors are dry. I would hope so. But, 888, Viet Namiz is still there. I never liked that place. I never liked these. And Javanoodle was also right there.

Or Javanoodle. Yeah, it's 888 and Javanoodle. Those places used to much like coconut curry, like coconut milk in their curries, I'm not a fan of that. Yeah, I remember Ray, the guy we worked with loved Javanood. Java Ray and we had a lot of people with similar names Ray and Jay Ray Both love that place. Yeah, yeah It was an ID stone ask Yeah, anytime we went to go to lunch and they wanted to go there. I was like, no never mind

I'm just gonna go to gatties or something You talked about just kind of driving around like killing time or whatever. Is that something you do a lot like I do Yeah, yeah, guess or whatever. Is that something you do a lot? Like, I do, yeah. Yeah. I do do anything like that. Sometimes if I'm bored on the weekend, I might drive around a bit, especially down like you, that area you're talking about, the old stomping grounds. I do, I do, I try to do a Sunday drive every Sunday.

Oh wow. That's the day for it. Yeah. That's the day for it. Yeah. So I had to say something that like, it's such an antiquated thing in American history Sunday driving, but it was something my family always did. So I still to the stage try, like, it's such an antiquated thing in American history Sunday driving.

But it was something my family always did. So I still to the state try to do it in some fashion. It's just going out for a drive on a Sunday? Yeah. Checking in on stuff. Austin is, it's easy and Austin because the entire city has been under construction for the last 15 years. So every Sunday, it's a different city.

So I remember that when I first moved to Austin, I'll remember, I always remember this. Well, I'm going to remember this date forever now because it has taken on new meaning, but it was January 6th, 1998. And I moved into an apartment complex off of Riverside there, Riverside and World Crest, and like I moved in, I moved in with a friend of mine, Joe. He lived in a studio and he very kindly let me sleep on his floor. He's the one who you stole the job I tell America.

I probably talked about, yeah. And the first night I was there, I moved up, I had a shitty little truck and a box of stuff. And I was like, okay, I live in Austin now. I don't, I've been to Austin many times, but never on my own as an adult, right? Well, yeah, for the most part, I never lived in Austin. So I'm like, I need to, if I'm gonna be living here, I need to know the city. So I went across the street on Riverside, you know, the HUB's right there at like Riverside

in Pleasant Valley, and back, it's been rebuilt. It's not the same age. The old one was built behind it. Right. So I went there and in the parking lot of that old HUB, I don't know if you remember this, it used to be an Exxon gas station. And I went to Exxon gas station and I bought a city map of the city of Austin. And I took it Exxon Gas Station and I bought a city map of the city of Austin.

And I took it back to the apartment. And I was sleeping on the floor. I unfurled the city map on the floor. And I put with a pen, I circled where I lived, and I circled that HB. I was like, all right, I need to learn this city. I'm going to circle places I've been to, so I remember where everything is, and I learned the layout of the city. And like that was day one, like step one, it was like bi-map, learn my way around this town.

That is awesome. Wow. And I think day two, if I remember right January 7th, maybe January 8th, I went to that old movie theater that was right there. It's not a movie theater anymore. It's like now it's a Chinese buffet, joy, east. I think it was the prosidio, I want to say it's what that movie theater was called. Yeah. I went over there because Jackie it was the prosidio. I wanna say it's what that movie theater was called. Yeah. I went over there,

because Jackie Brown was playing. Oh yeah. And it was like one of the first things I did in Austin, like day two, day three. I went and I watched Jackie Brown in the theater at that theater. And it's funny now, because we work with another guy named Brian Gar, who at that time worked at that theater.

And he always talks about, specifically, like showies of Jackie Brown. It's like, man, you might have been the projectionist when i was there like watching at my screening of jackie brown is that the movie theater where the guy ordered the pizza to the movie yes we were watching stigmata uh... less scary movie it was you me i think jason might have been there in april

and uh... maybe uh... abbey or margarit was there to anyway uh... we're all we all went down together to watch Digmata and like halfway through the movie, you know how movie theaters, you normally enter from the back, right? The doors are at the back that lead out to the lobby and everything. But there's also exits at the front under the screen.

We like normally go out to the parking lot. We were watching Digmata and one of those doors under the screen at the front of the theater opened up. Oh my God, what? Nothing, I'm just thinking, I'm just thinking about happening during the bono. You hit the Zoom recorder and said, oh my God, What? Nothing, I'm just thinking about happening during the bonnet. You hit the zoom recorder and said, oh my God. Sorry, sorry, I'm just thinking, oh my God.

Thinking about the door's opening while the stick mod is going. And it was in, in step, a domino's delivery driver with a pizza. And you look around this dark theater and he's like, Mike, Mike. And you have one some dude stands like, yeah, over here. The domino's got walks in and there was pizza, takes his money, and then walks right back out that door. And this is not the kind of movie theater in the part of town where you raise a stink or complain.

Oh, man. Oh, yeah, I'll never forget that. I got ordered a dominoes pizza. What was the first, do you remember going back to those early days? Do you remember the first place in Austin that either you fell in love with or that you felt like,

oh, it was my spot, like I'm a local now, or like this is my like, I identified with this place, I'm gonna come here all the time, it's like an anchor point for me. It was definitely casino. Casino. Absolutely casino, you know. And that would have been before you met me.

Yeah, I didn't go there frequently, because like again, we keep talking about, I was poor, I didn't have a lot of money to go out drinking. But if I was gonna go out drinking, it was definitely gonna be casino. drinking, it was definitely going to be casino. Yeah. Yeah. That was definitely like home base for anything.

I don't know if it's nostalgia or just being old now, but it felt like back then, it was definitely easier to park. You could park right in front of casino and walk right in, but it felt like there wasn't as rowdy or crazy in the downtown area. It might have just been, there weren't as many people in general. So it wasn't like this overwhelming crush constantly on the weekend.

I mean, we were not a destination city back then, right? Like you go to Sixth Street now and it's Bachelorette Party after Bachelorette Party after Bachelorette Party after like, it's just, and in addition to the 10 billion people that go for other reasons, Austin has become like this vacation destination spot that I don't think, I still,

I mean, I get it because I love Austin, but it's not like we have a lot to do here other than eat and drink. Yeah, absolutely. But that's what you do on, I guess. I guess that's right. I guess that's right. You can go like museum trips,

but this is an eaten drinking city. And that's all people wanna do for that stuff. I don't know how long we've been recording for, but do we have time to talk about Rainy Street? How long have we been recording for? About 45. Let's talk about it a little bit. Okay.

So, Rainy Street, speaking of destination, like Rainy Street, as people know it today, is a bunch of bars and a couple hotels down there at the end. A ton of high-rise condos. Yeah, condos. It's like, trade-al-park eateries. It's a very like hip part of town, very much a destination. Like, if you're visiting Prada Towns, like, oh, go to Rainy Street and whatever.

And what it is if you've not been, it's like amongst these condos and high-rise developments on this one street are also these old craftsman style, year old homes that have been converted into bars and restaurants. Yeah. That are just gorgeous now. It didn't used to always be that way. Side note, the main characters of King of the Hill lived on rainy street. Yep. But back before all of this was built, it used to just be run, those same craftsmen homes,

but before they were fixed up, run down with 100 years of wear and tear on them, just like falling apart, like holes in the roof, you know, apply wood, plugging up a hole in the wall, like you're really dilapidated falling apart. And it felt like nature was taking that street back. Absolutely. Like it really was so overgrown and swampy and like, not foresty, but like, you know what I mean? It was like dense. And it's not to say like, it was a scary part of town

or it's just like there was no reason to go there. If you lived there, sure, but you know, I guess it's really close to downtown, but why would you go there? Yeah, it was a street with, it was a street with 25 houses maybe, that were all dilapidated, but all lived in. And it was far enough away from everything

that you wouldn't go there to park, right? Like there would be like, there would be really no reason to go there unless you lived there or knew somebody there. And we had a friend who lived there in one of those streets. He rent, you know, he didn't own the house. He lived, he rented that house with some other friends, like mutual friends, and they all lived in this house. It was at the Northwest corner of Rainey Street.

Yeah, it became, it was across the street from, God, even this is a dated reference, but it was across the street from lustre-pro a dated reference, but it was across the street from lustre Pearl. Yeah, that's how I think it was this it was this it became the sports bar that was I guess owned by Bridget Dunlap as well. But it was like 918 I don't know the name of it, but it was the sports bar directly across from the original lustre Pearl, which was picked up and moved physically moved. So we spent time down there quite a bit, hanging out with this friend of ours at his house, and every now and then, you know,

he'd have like a house party, invite a bunch of people over. And I remember one time we were down there, Jeff and I, you both, we both were at this party of his. This guy was still as awesome, dude. Awesome. Really great guy, one of the best people I've known. Really interesting fun, dude.

Really great DM for D&D. Yes. One of the best DMs I've ever had. But like this, but like an anarcho punk, like really politically minded, really big into the anarcho scene back then. Like just to kind of frame that scene and what those parties looked like.

And had this huge overgrown backyard with like a chain link fence and With like a fire pit in the middle of it. Yeah, you know We show up to this party and there's a keg of beer Which is shocking cuz kegs are expensive and you know, none of us really has any money We were flabbergat like literally flabbergasted to see a keg of beer. Yeah, they're like wow, okay, let's uh, you know Let's go get a beer. We just arrived there wow, okay, let's, you know, let's go get a beer. We just arrived there. Oh, then.

Yeah, so Jeff and I, you know, have a beer. We're sitting there like, ah, it's a beer. I don't know what this beer is. It's like, let's skunky. It's like, I would have expected like, loans to our maybe, like, I don't know, what is this? Yeah. We're like talking about it, trying to figure it out.

So then we go ask our friend, like, hey, what kind of beer is that? What is that keg? He's like, oh, I don't know. Those two people over there, I don't remember their names anymore. These people I'd never met before. Those two people over there brought the Keg. I was like, oh, weird.

I've never seen those people before, but okay, I'll go ask them. But the Keg is, we walk these people like, hey. You're gonna love this. Good to meet you. I'm Gus, Jeff, whatever, blah, blah. Yeah, we're drinking something this beer. It's like, what is this?

We can't, we can't place it. We never recognize it. Like, oh, we don't know. We found it in the empty lot down the street and just brought it up to the party He goes can you believe it? It was just sitting in the woods a full keg of beer. What yeah, we were like oh Okay, are we left? We didn't drink anymore that beer that was left We were like what poison did we just drink we were convinced for an evening we were gonna die We will but that was that scene like you couldn't be mad at those guys We were like, what poison did we just drink? We were convinced for an evening, we were gonna die. We were, but that was that scene.

Like you couldn't be mad at those guys. Because that was the life they were living. They're like, oh, you found beer in the woods. And you drink it, you know, that's a second thought taking it, yeah, absolutely. Who abandoned the keg of beer in the woods? To the state, I don't know what the hell was that keg doing there?

It must have been six months old. Who knows, who knows? It's just absolutely wild. So I have drank beer that's been found in the woods before in my life. It was like, was it tapped? And he's like, yeah, it was already tapped. We didn't have to do any work.

This is insane. Yeah, absolutely. Bonkers. I like old rainy street, new rainy street sucks. Yeah, so it's funny. It's such a juxtaposition because what it is now is nothing like what it was before. And I'm not like, you know, a lot of Austinites hate rainy street for what it is now, and I get that.

I'm bivalent towards it. I just don't have a reason to go over there. Although I will say bangers used to be a pretty good restaurant. But at the beginning, when it first started to change, it was a pretty interesting place. Like there was an Indian restaurant. I guess it's still there called Garage Mahogs, which was literally, it was a pretty interesting place. Like there was an Indian restaurant, I guess it's still there, it's called Garage Mahal,

which was literally, it was called Garage Mahal, because it was in somebody's garage in their backyard. And the people were still living in the front yard, you could just go into their backyard and there was seating set up and you would eat out of this trailer and it was really lovely.

And there was about two years there where it was pretty much just Garage Mahal, and then eventually I think Lustre Pearl opened up and then it was off to the races. I saw, you're talking about people in Austin grousing about Rainy Street. I saw someone actually posted this podcast in the Austin subreddit a few days ago. Really? Yeah.

Dorks. It was interesting because people, you know, who independent of Ruchete and whatever, most people seem pretty receptive to it, but there was one person who left a comment that was something like, you know, people complaining about how Austin used to be better, I'll pass. And you know, people were in the comments a comment that was something like, you know, oh, people complaining about how Austin used to be better, I'll pass. And you know, people were in the comments, they're like, well, you know, not really, they don't really, you know, dwell on that.

And I hope that is the takeaway. We're never, we're never trying to talk about how things used to be better. I don't think they were. I don't know, it was just different. Right, we were younger, we were in a different place in our life. It was a different city.

Things, things didn't get worse. Things have definitely changed, but that's not the theme of this podcast. Well, the theme is Things didn't get worse. Things have definitely changed, but that's not the theme of this podcast. Well, the theme is not, the things got worse. The theme is things have changed. Yeah, and we've changed with Boston, right? Like, that's been part of the beauty of this is I feel like, so I came here when I was 18 and I'm 46

and it is an unrecognizably different city. But I am an unrecognizably different person and I feel like Austin and I have in many ways grown together And that's part of the fun of this. I have to give you guys all the credit in the world because if I was doing a similar podcast about San Diego like my hometown where I grew up or have all these memories and everything We're in a podcast right now. Exactly. I wouldn't be nearly as measured and Like receptive as you guys are and I don't know if that's with age or what,

but like there's a lot of what's what Austin is going through right now is what San Diego went through in the 90s, where everyone's, I grew up in San Diego. I'm from San Diego. Nobody was from San Diego at the time. It was just a transplant city. And that's what Austin's going through now. So when I talk about it when I look back at it,

I have fond memories and positive stuff, but all the change in everything, it's really hard to be like, yeah, it's like, hey, you know, I changed and things changed. A lot of times you just want to bite at it, and you guys are not doing that at all, so like all the credit in the world to you guys. It's like a interesting retrospective looking back. Maybe it is an age thing, maybe we're getting to the point

where we're looking at everything, looking at everything, and I feel like I'm trying to look at it objectively, whenever possible. I remember this is unrelated, but I remember back in 2001 when I was working at that other job downtown. For the first time in my life, I started making good money. Like I was hired doing IT work for this company.

I was 23 years old and it repaying me $62,000 a year in the year 2001. I was like, I'm loaded, I'm fucking set. Bar's money for you. And I was like, I want to buy a house, right? I was like Jeff bought a house, he was working at the call center, like I'm making, I'm fucking set. Bar's some money for you. And I was like, I wanna buy a house, right? It was like Jeff bought a house, he was working at the call center, like I'm making like really good money,

I'm gonna buy a house. Well I was making it. Yeah, well I bought that house. So I started looking at houses and I always really, at the time like I was like, I'm gonna buy a house in Terry Town. I remember I contacted a realtor and there was this, there's a house, there was a corner lot.

I wanna say it was a two bedroom, one and a half bath. Not a very big house, I wanna say it was was like 900,000 square feet, something like that. And we're looking through it, Realtor showing me the house, and it's $300,000. And I remember laughing, you'd be like, no, it's ever going to pay $300,000 for this house. That is absolutely ridiculous. I'm not buying this house. That house is probably worth like $2 million today. Dude, I remember that it was this guy we used to work with at the tech support company who

was older than us, really sweet guy and he worked at UT. And he worked at Call Center at Night because he had a bunch of kids. He was trying to put through college. And he was just like this really sweet older dad. I ran it until a few years ago and had about five minute conversation with him. It was really great to see him. Yeah, that's got it., that's good. Lovely guy. Yeah. Lovely guy. But I would give him a ride home sometimes because he was like a one car family.

And he lived in Travis Heights. And he had, I would talk to him about it all the time because I always felt like I just missed the boat on Travis Heights. Yeah. Like if I had been two years older, I would have been able to buy a house for $92,000 in Travis Heights instead of on East Riverside. He bought his house, I wanna say in like 93, in Travis Heights for 72 grand.

Wow. And that house has gotta be worth $3 million. Yeah, that's nuts. Just like a little 1200 square foot craftsman home, if it's even there anymore, it might have been bulldozed right now, but I just remember thinking like $72,000 to live in Travis Heights in my lifetime. Of course, like we talked about before, interest rates were totally different.

You'd be paying at the butt, interest on that. We should wrap up because we're right at that hour. Time flies. Yeah, this. Jeff, do you have any guesses for the name? Oh, oh, oh, before you read a good one. Before you all start guessing. Uh-huh.

So I'm not trying to narrow this down. I read the comments everywhere. Yeah. Our website, read, on different podcasts, apps, the comments. Someone somewhere in the internet has the right idea. Okay. They didn't get it.

Okay. But I could see the thought process was starting. I was like, that's the closest anyone has come. Wow. Okay. The guess that I read that I immediately fell in love with, that seems plausible, and I guess it's not right, but maybe it's headed in the right direction,

is another morning in Austin. Oh, no, no, no, that's not it. And Emma, okay. Because remember Gus says that the end is not that that's the word. It's an an, and some kind of an word. A lot of good guesses, by the way. Please keep sending them either like,

I read all of them. You have podcast reviews or our website read it wherever I can't think it's gonna have anything to do with Austin But I really do think it's something like and my Austin I like yeah, but again, it's not but that's my guess apples and my Austin And my apples my apples and my apples Jeff gave me it cosmic Chris apples for my birthday Call it apple a bag of apples. They're. I did. I did. I did.

I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did.

I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did.

I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. got a lot of ideas about what we're gonna be posting on Instagram, which is apparently gonna continue to be my job to do. We need to get social help because I would love to, I know, but I would love to just start to post in retrospect to photos of like places as they existed then, which is now from fine then. Yeah, yeah, Gus sent us all these one food things. not knowledge. Nobody acknowledged it. Nobody acknowledged it. Sorry, sorry, we're busy with work. So, but follow us, let us know what your guess is for An-N-M-A,

but again, it's An, it's the first word, and it's dream logic. It's dream logic, it doesn't make explicit sense. It does in a dream logic kind of way. Right, any parting words for all the people? Thanks for listening and see you next time. Jesus. I felt I switched into face mode for a second.

No, yeah, I gotta do that later today. Stay in the, stay in the. Stay in the. What's your favorite food? I'm a fan of food. Describe the show to a newcomer in a more familiar way. Do you like apples? All right, example.

Together in trepid hosts, charmacons.. Characombs are free to deal with nothing to do with this podcast. Analyze various unsolved and rooster teeth's 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?