So... Alright - Haunted hotels, lifelong quests, and cheap cities to live in

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Geoff gets sidetracked with some fantastic questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And chicken chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, The big things I wanted to hit today that I've been just like rattling around in my brain. I want to frame the NFL playoffs for non-sports fans. I'm still trying to figure out how exactly to do that. I started making a list of, I think I'm like, if you don't know football, if you're not into sports, how would this stuff make sense to you? Because the playoffs are about to begin. This was the last week of the NFL regular season and there are now 14 teams that are vying for Super Bowl supremacy, I guess you could say. 14 teams will make it into the playoffs via the regular playoffs or the wild card, whatever.

And so I thought maybe I could frame it in commercial terms like, you know, State Farm, that's, State Farm and football means the Kansas City Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes and Coach Andy Reid, right? And then, so I was trying to thread the needle between all the different commercial and television endorsements that players have had. So I started a list there, but it's overwhelming, right?

So then I thought, what if I just, I take it from a celeb gossip standpoint and I do like, who's dating who? And you know, you've got the Kansas City Chiefs again, Travis Kelce dating Taylor Swift, not to be outdone, Hailey Steinfeld and Josh Allen are together. I think they're engaged actually. Did they get married yet?

Let me see. Yeah, they're just proposed. Did they get married yet? Let me see. Yeah, they're just proposed. He proposed to her, but they're not married yet. Anyway, so I thought I could go that way. And so I started to compile that list. But 14 teams is just too many. So I think I'm gonna wait till the playoffs actually start and the field gets whittled down a little bit,

maybe after we get through the wild card. And then we can start looking at like, Russell Wilson is married to Ciara, you know, and really dial it in or be like Dan Campbell does Applebee's commercials. And then you can kind of line up your allegiances based on like what products you enjoy or what celebrities that are dating or married to what NFL players you enjoy.

As clearly important to a large swath of the population. Otherwise, there would be a lot less Travis Kelce jerseys out there right now, I believe. The other subjects that I am currently very excited about talking about with you are songs about ghosts. I don't have my research ready for that. That'll be next week or the week after. Most densely populated places on earth

and most expensive and least expensive things on Amazon. I think, oh, and I got, I wasn't planning on doing an email episode, but I'm getting so much great correspondence from you guys. I definitely want to read a couple of emails and respond to those as well. For instance, Jake Woods was listening to the Regulation Podcast recently

and I mentioned in it that oftentimes when I'm recording, I have my eyes closed and I just have sitting in front of a microphone with my eyes closed, just listening to what everybody's saying. And Jake said, that got me wondering, when you have your eyes closed, are you imagining you are sat at a table with everybody during the podcast together?

What's going on up there? I'll be honest with you, no, no. I'm not seeing anything in my head at all, but just like, I mean, the room's on, I have my eyes closed right now just to see. It's like a kind of a hazy, reddish, goldish kind of black, you know? Like there's some sunlight creeping in.

And I'm just, if anything, if anything, I see a picture of Gavin's face when he talks, a picture of Eric's face when he talks, a picture of Andrew, Nick, et cetera. But even then, mostly I'm just listening to the words and I'm not seeing any imagery in my head at all. It's like all that shit's turned off. So that's the answer to that, Jake.

Interesting question. Also, I got an email from Cormac, who gave me some groundbreaking information that I need to really dive into. He said, hey, Jeff, I was on the Wikipedia for baked beans. Did you know the Native Americans were using bean holes too? I imagine that's where the cowboys learned it from. Anyway, here is the paragraph from the origins

and history in the Americas tab. According to chef and food historian, Walter Staib of Philadelphia city tavern, baked beans had the roots as a native people's dish in the Americas long before the dish became known to Western culture. In the Northeast of America, various native American peoples, including the Iroquois, the Narragansett and the Penobscot,

mixed beans, maple sugar and bear fat in earthenware pots, which they placed in pits called bean holes, which were lined in hot rocks to cook slowly over a long period of time. That is definitely a bean hole. And that's interesting because I thought that they originated from loggers in the Northeast, but it must be something that loggers picked up

from the native Americans there and then continued on. Wow. What didn't we steal? Good Lord. All right. The next one was that I thought was super interesting. And this is that I don't have an answer for you here. I'm gonna have to look into it. But this is from Will. He said, just finished listening to your Saw Right episode of World First. I had the random thought while watching football. What was the first kiss cam? Saw Right episode of World Firsts. I had the random thought while watching football.

What was the first kiss cam? And that kind of sparked the idea. When was the first time the crowd was shown in a game? Like how sometimes they bring fans on the field. That's a really interesting question. What was the first televised sporting event? And I imagine that would be the first time first televised sporting event. On 17 May, 1939,

the United States first televised sporting event, a college baseball game between the Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers was broadcast by NBC from Columbia's Baker Field. And I'm looking at it and it seems like you can see crowd. So there you go. Now, first kiss cam. Well, all right, now here we go. This is interesting. The first kiss

cam was introduced during the inaugural season of the Florida Marlins by Bob Becker, executive vice president of Van Wagner big screen network. The kiss cam is a social activity work and what it is. When was the first Florida Marlins? 1993, that seems too recent. Here's some conflicting information on Kiss Cam Wikipedia. The Kiss Cam could, I have trouble saying that. The Kiss Cam tradition originated in California in the early 1980s as a way to fill in the gaps

in play in professional baseball games, taking advantage of the possibilities of the then new giant video screens. So, Bob Becker claims it in the 90s, but it apparently existed before that. Oh wow, here we go. What was the first on-screen kiss ever recorded?

Now that's interesting. Though some mistake another famous Thomas Edison shot kiss as being the first ever on-screen kiss, it is instead this one shot in 1896 and featuring Canadian actress Mae Irwin that is history's first on-screen kiss. It says this one but then I don't see it. Okay well Mae Ir May Erwin, first on-screen kiss. From Thomas Edison's 1896 silent film, The Kiss, featuring May Erwin and John C. Rice. The icon indicates free access to the linked research. Whatever, the first movie Kiss, yeah.

Oh, there it is, you can see it. It's 36 seconds, it's on YouTube. It's on the Library of Congress's YouTube channel. Let's see. Let me, oh, look at that. That's the first on, she's talking while he's trying to kiss her. These people look like they don't

have a lot of experience kissing, if I'm being honest with you. I don't know how much of a kiss it is. It's more just like incredibly close talking. Oh, there it is, there it is. They're going at it. Ah. Love to see at it. Ah. Love to see love.

1896. That was a cool email. Thank you for that. This is from Harrison. Hello, Jeff. I hope I got the email right. If not, then don't read this. This is for Jeff only.

I wanna start this off by saying I really enjoy Saul Wright and the random rant sessions every week. Thank you so much. I don't think I have anything to rant about today, though, to get to what I want to talk about. In the past year or so, I've really gotten into Catch-22 and Skypunk in general. Thanks to you. And I was hoping. Well, thank you. I was hoping we could get an episode going in depth about your relationship with the band. And I'm also curious as to what you think of Streetlight Manifesto and The albums they released under that name

I'm hoping to be able to see them live at some point soon Since I saw them doing a show nearby in Montreal a little over a year ago Hope you have a great day if you're reading this and hoping for an end to the tooth problems I've had two teeth pulled and one root canal in the past year. So I know the vibes are Harrison I'm so sorry to hear that That's a man. That's a, man, that's a long, if you're not familiar, Harrison's asking me, when I was 22 and 23, maybe, yeah, 22 and 23, I was the roadie

for the Victory Records, ska punk band Catch 22. Bunch of kids from New Jersey who I met when I was running a zine and I interviewed them after a show. We hit it off, we became friends. They invited me to come hang out at one of their practices and so I did and I just like sat in a basement and watched them play and practice all night long.

And then somehow we just struck up a fast friendship and I ended up becoming, they asked me to be their roadie and I said, yes, absolutely. And then we, I started doing local shows and then we went on a one national tour. It was one of the best months of my life. And then some circumstances happened in my life and I had to say goodbye and move to Austin

and leave New Jersey behind I did not leave my friendship behind. I'm still friends with some of those guys. I talked to Kevin Gunther Occasionally he collects baseball cards. And so from time to time we share whatever cool card we got, you know Whatever ssp or auto or relic or whatever that's interesting to us. He's a big Mets fan I'm not but you know, I get some cool Mets cards from time to time Was also pretty close with Pat and Ryan and Jamie. Well all those guys I love him to death I have a billion stories probably about my time with catch-22 and How much fun it was and what it meant to me and I will yeah, I'll do an episode about that at some point

Why not but it's too much to go into today. Here's one more I'll read. This is from Cole, big fan, first time writer. As someone who lives and grew up in a very expensive city, I'm always curious how much small or low cost city entry level jobs pay. And if you could have lived on one at the time. Thanks for the podcast. Love listening to it, Cole. OK, Cole. Well, I have the.

I guess the the unique experience of I don't know how unique it is, but I have the experience of having moved to the city of Austin, Texas, when it was an incredibly cheap city to live in. When I first came here in 1994. And then back in 1997, Austin was the, they referred to Austin as the Velvet Ditch, which isn't unique to Austin. I know Oxford, Mississippi is called that as well. There's probably a couple of places. And it's a term that's used to describe a place

that is easy to get into, but hard to leave, hard to wanna leave because you may be in a ditch, but it's very cozy and very comfortable. And that is definitely the Austin I moved to. It's hard to wanna leave because you may be in a ditch, but it's very cozy and very comfortable. That is definitely the Austin I moved to. You could live in Austin in the 90s for four or 500 bucks a month, probably. You could rent a room in somebody's fucking house

out over by the campus for 300 bucks a month, and then you could probably get by on like 200 bucks with living expenses if you didn't have a car and shit. over by the campus for 300 bucks a month, and then you could probably get by on 200 bucks with living expenses if you didn't have a car and shit. It was a great place for people to come and start bands because there were a million places to play and you could bartend for two or three nights a week, make just enough to pay rent,

and then spend the rest of your time playing shows. I obviously am tone deaf and a huge fan of music, but would never wanna play it. And so that wasn't a route for me. But yeah, Austin was an incredibly cheap city to live in. And now it is an incredibly expensive city to live in. I've seen, well, I'll put it in perspective. I moved to, I moved back to Austin in 1997

when I came here full-time. 98, 98. I came back here full-time in December of 1998. In 1999, I got a job working at a place called Tela Network. It was a outsourced customer service and tech support center for internet service providers in the state of Texas and well also Mississippi, in the Southwest I'll say. And that's where I met Bernie and Gus and Dan and Jason and all of the people that kind of became the nucleus

of what became Rooster Teeth and it all started at that tech support center. When I got hired, I made $6.50 an hour and I had an apartment and a wife. She didn't work. I supported two people on $6.50 an hour. I didn't do it for very long because I got a promotion, I got a raise, I got up to $8 an hour.

But to give you an idea of what it costs to live in Austin in 1998, 1999, I bought my first house in the summer of 1999, in May of 1999, and I had a VA home loan, because I was a veteran, and the VA home loan helps veterans get home loans at an affordable price, and they make it a little bit easier for people out of the military to do something like buy a home. I was pretty young, I was 23 years old. I knew that I wanted to own a home. I knew that I wanted to start building equity. I knew that I wanted to plant a flag in Austin

for a myriad of reasons. I fell in love with the city. I was in love with Austin before I ever came here because of the movie Slackers, but I also had moved around so much in my life that I really, really just wanted to plant a flag and call a place home and have it be a forever or at least a long time home.

And I'll be damned if Austin didn't completely and totally fit that bill. Great fucking decision to move back here when I was 23 and And plant that flag So I buy this house with a VA home loan I think the national home loan average at the time was about 8% and I got my loan for 7 or it was 7% And I got my loan for 6. I genuinely can't remember it was a really long time ago But I remember I got a full I got a full percentage point less

than the national average and a lot of people, all my friends couldn't believe it. Also they couldn't believe a 23 year old was buying a house. That's actually how Bernie and I became friends. He was managing the call center, actually he was vice president of the call center, and he had to do an employment verification for somebody buying a home.

It was a level one technician making $8 an hour. And he was, you know, 26, 27. And it was like, how the hell is one of my employees at 23 buying a house? So I wanna meet this guy. And that's how we met and became friends. I was able to buy that house, support myself and my wife at the time

on $8 an hour initially. I pretty soon after got a raise on $8 an hour initially, I pretty soon after got a raise to $10 an hour. And we were okay, you know? I wasn't making a ton of money, but we were paying the bills. We were saving a little bit, not much. We were eating out on occasion, you know, and living a pretty decent life in Austin.

We were going downtown and drinking all the time. You know, alcohol was, everything was affordable back then. And so I was living the life of a pretty I was having a pretty solid life for a 23, 24 year old. I didn't feel broke all the time. I bought my house to give you an idea of how much Austin has changed. I bought that house for $92,500. Now it wasn't a gorgeous house or anything,

but it was about 20 years old. It was over on the East side. Not gonna dox the location, but I bought it for $92,500 in 1999, and I was able to afford that and two people on eight to $ dollars an hour. That house now, as a matter of fact, I'm going to look it up and see what it zillows for. Holy shit. They have pictures of it and everything.

Wow. They did some ugly updates to my first house. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh, what did they do to my baby? That's gross. Okay, well anyway, it looks like the house values somewhere between $450,000 and $500,000. Now homes appreciate, right?

But this is a 1,100 square foot house on the east side of Austin in a not super desirable area. Not bad or anything, but you know, not a fun neighborhood. And it's gone from $92,500 to about, I don't know, it looks like about $485,000 in 2025. That's been 26 years. I don't know if that comports with the national average increase,

but I mean, it's worth essentially five times what I paid for it 20 years later. That's pretty crazy. And that's nothing to some of that. I remember I saw a house for sale over in Travis Heights in the mid-90s and I thought, I wanna live in this neighborhood someday maybe. But it seemed so out of reach.

And I saw this house for sale, it was like 110 grand. And now that house is, I don't know, it's like 2.4 million or something. So, and neighborhood dependent, it can get a lot worse, but that's what it was like to live in a cheap town. And that was a lot of the appeal of a place like Austin. There was, you know, it purported to be the live music capital of the world, still does.

And so there were a million places to play. And so it just attracted all of these artists and musicians and vagabonds and weirdos and just all kinds of freaky fun people because it was a really chill, relaxed, easy place to live, easy place to play in a band. And most importantly, really fucking cheap. Not anymore, not anymore. If you want that, I recommend you go to Oklahoma.

Go up to Tulsa or Oklahoma City or somewhere like that. Because I think those days are forever gone in Austin. Now, I just saw a house the other day, somebody bought a lot near me. And I'm renting these days, but somebody bought a lot near me and it was like 600 grand for the lot and then they tore the house down to build a you know they'll probably build like a two million dollar home that's by the way probably going to be 1400 square feet it'd be a very nice 1400 square feet but the idea that a 1400 square foot home will be two million dollars this is all conjecture on my part, of course.

I'm just, you know, surmising based on everything I see around me all the time. The city is in a constant state of growth and change and transition and rebirth and everywhere you look, it's happening and it's very much the opposite of the city that I fell in love with. And that's okay because everything changes. People get hung up on how cool Austin used to be

and how it was better then. And I'm sure that goes on everywhere people live, but this is where I've lived for the past 30 years. And so it's what I've been subjected to and I get it. I see it. I first came here in 1994, it's 2025. I have seen firsthand how much this city has changed from an easy hippie outlaw cowboy art music community

to a tech bro, comedian bro, weird media tech hub that I don't quite identify with anymore, but that's okay, because I identify with the city at large still, you know? And everybody wants to lament the, you know, salad days when the grass was greener, but everything changes. It would be so weird if Austin didn't change. That'd be like, and I don't mean this to be an insult,

but have you ever been to Eugene, Oregon? Eugene, Oregon is a cool city, but that is a place that's trapped in like, somewhere between like 1997 and 2005, I feel like. And that's what happens when a city doesn't grow. And that's cool. It becomes a cool place where you go, like, UG's a great place to go be in your 20s,

go to college probably, but then you don't wanna spend the rest of your life there. Maybe you wanna move on to another city. Austin could have been that town where you go, you go to UT, you have a, you know, you go to law school or whatever, you have that fun college time and then you move on. But Austin was not a city that wanted to be

purely a college town. And I think there was, there's just, there's a lot of entrepreneurial spirit in this place, man. For as laid back and relaxed and as cool and chill as Austinites and old school Texans are who live here, the Willie Nelson crowd, They are motivated and hardworking and they're creative and artistic and they got a hell of a lot of good ideas

and they've done a hell of a lot of good in this city and with this city. And there's been a lot of bad too, but you gotta take the bad with the good and you gotta look at the total picture. And the total picture is Austin's still a really cool place to be. And I'm getting off on a tangent about Austin

and not really answering the question that you asked, but I don't know what it's like in 2025, but I can tell you that when Austin was a cheap city, I could live in Austin off $8 an hour and own a home and support another mouth off of one 45 to 55 hour a week job. Couldn't fathom doing that in 2025. I hope that answers your question. Jesus Christ, I'm running out of podcasts. We didn't even get to songs about ghosts.

We didn't get to the most expensive and the cheapest items on Amazon. We didn't get to population density. Here's another one. What happened to Jai Courtney? We didn't get to how much distance does an earth mover go in a day just going back and forth There was a bunch I wanted to talk about but you guys your emails were so engaging Fuck instead of diving in and doing a half-assed job on one of those other ones

Why don't we just see if there's any more emails I can address? Let's see Here's one. Let's see what this is. I'm not even I haven't even read this yet. So if you're hearing it, you're hearing me read it for the first time. If you're not hearing it, it's because I cut it and you're not hearing this either. Dear Jeff, so I'm finally catching up and so excited to participate in the conversation now that I'm not like 100 episodes behind. My name is Jake and I have worked in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado on and off for nearly 10 years. And it will probably be the coolest collection of jobs

I will ever have in my life. For starters, if you are unfamiliar with this hotel, and I'm not, it is the location that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining. And it is of course supposedly haunted. As a side note, I was really hoping for a while that you and the AH crew would somehow get permission to do an episode of Haunter here,

but knowing the current owner's dislike of the paranormal, I knew it was probably never going to happen. I don't specifically remember reaching out to the Stanley Hotel, but we might've. We definitely got turned down by a lot of people. We got turned down by the Winchester house over and over again. We desperately wanted to go there.

But back to the main point. While working here, I have been a bellhop front desk agent, tour guide, parking attendant, barista, and then they have in quotes my favorite and I currently still run the coffee shop, chocolate shop worker, event security, and probably the weirdest magic show manager for the underground theater. The job was consistently the craziest fever dream between getting to meet magicians from all over the world that would come to do their shows here, to crazy customers constantly trying to start

literal physical fights with me for enforcing the simplest of theater rules. Yeah, customers are the fucking worst, aren't they? There was never a dull moment the three years I was with them. I am so thankful for the friends, coworkers, and incredible talented performers I met during the gig, especially since one of those coworker friends

ended up taking a shining to me, I get it, the shining, after a few years, and we have been happily together ever since. I truly don't know what I would do without her, and as much, that's really sweet, and as much as I would love to rant about how amazing she is, I reckon you are more interested in the ghosts.

But listen, you rant about how much you love your partner and how fucking awesome and fantastic they are and how they made your life better in every measurable way. You should always rant about that. I will tell anybody who listens how fucking great my wife Emily is and what she's done for me. That's okay. Don't ever apologize for that.

Don't ever apologize for being unapologetically in love and a fan of the person you're in love with. For some quick reference, I was raised a skeptic, partially from a religious upbringing, partially from just having a very logic-based way of thinking. Anything and everything could always be explained somehow. This changed when I, and apparently my entire family, started having very weird hauntings

in a house we were living in around my final year of high school. I bring this up because whatever was happening in that house scared the crap out of me and I have never been truly terrified of anything except when I was having vivid night terrors and sleep paralysis I have never experienced before or since. To be honest, I don't like talking about it

because I truly feel like a crazy person whenever I even think about it. But the point is the Stanley Hotel is nothing like that. While I've had fairly limited experiences myself, any experiences the guests over the many years have shared with me are almost exclusively happy ones. Sounds of children laughing and playing, certain ghosts cleaning during their old jobs,

others responding to fun music, even just the pleasant smells of roses or sounds of pianos being played late into the night. It was a strange idea to me at first that ghosts could be pleasant, especially with my history and the fact that the place literally inspired the Shining. But over the years, I've come to accept the idea that if bad experiences can make bad ghosts, maybe good experiences can make some good ghosts. I fucking completely agree with you there. And oh boy, have thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people had some amazing experiences here

over its 116 years of history. I know I have certainly gotten to the point that when I inevitably pass on, I wouldn't mind living here forever in some of my happiest memories, but maybe that's just some wishful thinking. The place has a lot of crazy fun history and my friends and I are always looking into it

and finding out more interesting facts about it or its owners. It kind of reminds me of the rabbit holes of research you often fall down on so alright It seems like these days all my rabbit holes are just email related. Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble for a bit I love that I found this podcast and morning somewhere after falling off of our tea train for a few years and I was just starting to jump Back in early 24 and I'm so glad I did Oh

And I was so bummed that we couldn't do one last RTX send-off celebration for you the gang and the amazing company you built but I am forever thankful I got to make the drive to Austin and experience a few of them over the years man. Thanks everything you do Jeff. All right, Jake. I love and respect you too Jake. You know it's funny you mentioned that wanting to do one more RTX. The last RTX we did was the most fun RTX I've had. It was the best vibes and the best feeling. It wasn't the biggest, obviously. It wasn't the most ambitious. It wasn't the wildest or the craziest,

but it was warm and kind and supportive and it really did feel like a coming together of a large extended family. And obviously, I couldn't have known at the time, but I had some pretty good ideas that it was going to be the very last one we did as a company. And I tried to approach it like that. And I tried to approach it like that. And I tried to make sure that I enjoyed every fucking second of it I could. And I'm really glad I did, because it ended up being my favorite RTX, our final RTX.

And yeah, I hadn't thought about that in a while. Thanks, Jake, taking me down the memory lane. Let's do, uh. Let's do one more. This is from Keenan. A bit of a non-secret or to anything current, but in the past on fuckface and regulation, you and the guys have talked about real life quests you've had open a long time. Here's mine.

Oh, this is interesting. Thanks, Keenan. Let's see. Pretty much since I've had an income, I've always given a fake name for fast food orders. My real name is Keenan, and for whatever reason, folks seem to struggle to understand me when I say it out loud. It's led to confusion when getting food, so my solution has been to give a fake name. The fake name, Jeff, but he spells it G-E-O-F-F.

That's no, you're not doing anybody any favors spelling your name like me. The achievement, have someone spell Jeff your way just once ever. The reason, to walk a mile in your shoes. I've been walking this mile for 10 years. Ha ha ha ha ha. This turned out to be a severe fuck face

for several reasons. Number one, it's been 10 years and it's never happened once. Always spelled J-E-F-F, 100% hit rate. And I watched my receipts like a fucking Falcon waiting for the day. Number two, I exchanged a name people can't pronounce for a name people can't spell. And it makes me question is the grass truly greener? Number three, at any point in my life, there's like a half a dozen people who only know me as their restaurant regular named Jeff, actually Jeff in their heads, spelling.

As I've started responding when I just hear that name in public, I've long since decided that I have to retire the fake name and find a new one if I ever hope to finish the quest. I've also decided it'll never happen, so I have no clue what the next name would even be. I have to ask, has anyone ever spelled it right for you? And not when you punched your name in on an iPad,

like just naturally. How long should I expect to be on this train? Also, boy, I am sorry that this is your life. I know I'm doing this because people struggle with my real name, but at least I'm displaced from all these identity issues. Lol. Lol. Lol.

Love you, man. Been watching for 13 years now. Here's to 50 million more. Happy new year. Keenan, aka Jeff, aka Jeff. Oh man, I'm a DeWalt man, but it's completely on accident. Just what people buy me. They kind. Oh man, I'm a DeWalt man, but it's completely on accident. Just what people buy me. They kind of suck ass if I'm being honest.

When I was a kid, when I was a kid, when I was a tool repair man, DeWalt was a decent brand. It was, we used to fix a lot of DeWalt tools. I'm sad to hear that if they've fallen off. But in the early to mid 90s, DeWalt was a pretty decent brand, if memory serves. Yeah, so the question is, has anybody ever asked for my name and then like at Starbucks

and then spelled my name properly on a cup or whatever? One time in my life, it has happened. I think I've actually probably talked about it on either Off Topic or the RT podcast at some point. But the downtown Whole Foods has, in Austin, it's the national headquarters, it's their downtown Whole Foods has in Austin it's the national headquarters it's their flagship Whole Foods it's fucking amazing grocery store I know it's a grocery store and people think it's silly to talk about how amazing a grocery store is but we love our grocery stores in Austin we have HEB which the

entire state of Texas will fight you over. It's the greatest thing on fucking earth. And then of course we have the Amazon backed Whole Foods as our local fancy grocery store. This is where it was created and this is their headquarters. This Whole Foods downtown has like five or six restaurants in it. They rotate around all the time, but they have a barbecue restaurant.

They used to have like a sushi restaurant. I don't know if that's still there. They have like a raw food restaurant. They have like a restaurant. They used to have like a sushi restaurant. I don't know if that's still there. They have like a raw food restaurant. They have like a little pizza restaurant. They have like a little sandwich nook. They have a place where you can get coffee and stuff. And one time I was getting lunch there when I was working downtown

and a guy asked for my name on a, I think it was either a coffee or a pizza. I can't remember, but he asked for my name and I said Jeff and he said, okay. And then when I got it, he had written Jeff, G-E-O-F-F. And I thought briefly, oh, maybe he is familiar with Rooster Teeth, but I don't think he was because he asked for my name and when I gave it,

there was no recognition. So I can only assume that his name is also G Jeff. And just as an act of, you know, just open Jeff defiance, anytime he hears the word Jeff, he spells it G-U-F-F. At least that's what I've come to believe is the reason behind it. But yeah, one time in my life at a Whole Foods, it was on the receipt spelled G-U-F-F,

and it stopped me in my tracks. I didn't talk to the guy about it, I should have, but yeah, so in 49 years, this happened exactly one time. And it was awesome. I'm gonna be honest with you, it was fucking cool. It was really neat. I know it's a dumb thing, but if you're used to having your name spelled wrong 100% of the time

your entire life, the one time somebody spells it right who doesn't already know you, man, that was sweet. Okay, well I have unintentionally spent an entire episode just responding to awesome emails you guys sent me over the break, of which I have hundreds more,

maybe thousands more to get through, but I'll do my best. Come back next week because we will be talking about the most expensive and the least expensive items on Amazon or, and or, depending how long the conversation is, the most densely populated places on Earth. I've already done all the research on both of them. I'll either combine them in one episode or,

well, we'll just see. We'll just see how long the rambling goes, right? In the meantime, you guys need a song of the episode and I have collected a ton for you. Okay, so today's song of the episode is going to be one of my all-time favorite songs. I just put it back into my playlist. I listen to it nonstop for a couple weeks,

every few years, until I kind of get enough of it, and then I put it on the back burner again, until I'm ready to play it into the ground again. It is a song called Los Angeles by Frank Black. If you don't know who Frank Black is, he is the lead singer of the band, The Pixies, and also known as Black Francis. And there was a period in time when The Pixies broke up

pretty famously, and Kim Deal went off and started The Breeders with her sister, and Frank Black did a solo career that was pretty awesome. And then now they're back together again without Kim Deal. I think that whatever, my entire life I've been a Pixies fan and my entire life I've never known what the breakdown was that caused the rift between Frank Black and Kim Deal. I guess ultimately it doesn't really matter

and I don't care as long as everybody's happy. But the Pixies, if you're my age, if you're Generation X, they are probably one of two what we consider to be perfect bands in the sense that everything they made was good. And if you met somebody and they liked one of these two bands, you instantly knew you liked them. It was like an instant vibe check.

It was like a test you could give people. And those two bands were, my entire life growing up, were the Beastie Boys and the Pixies. If I met you on the street and I said, do you like the Beastie Boys or the Pixies? And a person said no, it's like, I'm probably not gonna be close. Maybe, but probably not.

If I said, do you like the Pixies or the Beastie Boys and they said yes to one or both? There's like an 85% chance will become best friends within a week. That's just kind of the way it was and so If you're not familiar with the Pixies you really should be I'll probably do an episode on them someday because they are an incredibly important band for for my generation But this one fucking song Los Angeles by Frank Black from his solo album or one of his solo albums is so goddamn good that you'll want to listen to it 60 to a thousand times back to back to back I recommend you do that and then have a great fucking day. Alright. This is the end of the show. Mwah!