Back to Where it Began

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We're driving. Yeah, different boys.
Different vibe on this one.

I always wanted to do a driving episode. You know, you're getting it.
Welcome. I've been pitching that as a regulation supplemental for a while now.
It's a great idea.

Parking enforcement finally quit blocking the road.

So

should we talk about where we are and where we're headed for? Where are we? Okay, so we are over on the east side today. We stopped at a coffee shop called Afuga.
Uh-huh.

Kind of tucked away off of like Navasota and Holly. Like, it's actually further in towards further south than Holly.

But it's like a, you wouldn't know it was here. No, it's like apartments.
And I had no idea. I rode my bike by it was there.
And a radio station. Sits right by Rebecca Face 2.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

The Rebecca is the name of this area. It's like a split use, like assisted living, retirement, and then like urban.
KMFA 89.5. Oh, they used to be over there off of Lamar, right? I don't know.

How weird. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. I know exactly why you're talking about by McBride's.
Yeah, absolutely. You're right.

Anyway, so I rode my... This is like right by the trail.
So one day I rode my bike by it and I saw it and thought it'd be worth

checking out because we're headed down south. Yeah.
Further south. Further south

to

the

location that Gus and I met. Yeah.
Yeah.

We we wanted to do for the last episode of this season, we wanted to like, oh, let's just do something different. And then we went, oh, it's TNI.
I think that's like a really fun idea.

And it's like, what coffee shops are down there? Nothing. Gas station.

I'd like to point out that

my beautiful robot friend Gus, I don't think was as on board as Eric and I. I thought, I fancied, I thought, I thought that's a cool way to end the season.
I thought that's a great idea.

Area with the place where we met, where we first met at TeleNetwork. And

Gus goes, Telenetwork's not there anymore. He goes, No, no, we're not gonna go in.
We're just gonna hang out in the parking lot. He goes, but there's nothing over there.

There's nothing there. That's the problem.
Like, it sounds weird that I'm being like, man, I'm against it, but it's like, there is nothing there.

We're there. That's weird.
The show, dude. Yeah.
Yeah.

There's like, I'll tell you what's going to happen. You're going to unlock 20 memories in that parking lot.
You know what memory

that I still unlocked that I didn't realize until we started going driving? I still know the address there.

That was crazy. I was was like oh I like I plugged it plugged into the GPS it's like I know exactly what the address is we haven't worked there in 25 years that is so crazy

but yeah I mean even when we were working down there in the call center not that there was much down there to begin with even back then happy taco yeah but we would we were so

poor that if even if we wanted coffee or anything, we would get it in the break room there at work.

The coffee maker. And there were free sodas for a while.
I think the free sodas were gone by the the time you started.

I never got to partake in the free sodas because people ruined it like a week before I got hired.

Inevitably, what ended up happening is since there were free sodas in the fridge, people would just take like a 12-pack home.

People would come in on the weekends and just take all the sodas out of the fridge. Yeah.
And that pissed Bernie off. Rightly so.

Yeah.

Rightly so. And I remember seeing it, but at the time, like, I was a new employee.
I was like, oh, is that just what happens? People take soda. Like, I don't know.
Yeah.

I figured someone else will say something. Guzz was busy stealing all the paper clips.

The real money's in ice cubes.

Yeah, so, and then after that, they put in a vending machine, and the Cokes were, I want to say the Cokes were at cost. Yeah, I think you're right.
It was like 30 cents or something because we

part of our job as team leaders was to occasionally empty the soda, the money out of the soda machine when it was full.

And I would always wrap it in cellophane and write drug money on it and give it to Bernie or Jordan. You guys had to do the soda machine? Yeah, we had the the keys for the soda.

We would also stock it. Yeah, we stocked it.
It was like, there wasn't a soda guy who came by.

Yeah, it was like we had the machine and then it was up to us. Where did the money...

What? The money, because the money went back to pay for the sodas, because the sodas were purchased at cost.

Yeah, so we were just taking the money and giving it to Bernie or George or whoever, and then they would turn around and go buy more sodas. Is that sort of like the through line of your career?

Is you take all the money and give it to Bernie and we'll figure out what kind of what happens with it. Well, then somehow

I'm still working.

It's funny you say the thing about drug money because that's something I used to do at conventions when we would get all the cash. Yeah, yeah.

Because we would put it in a bag and then write drugs or drug money. Hell yeah.

God, there was nothing more exhilarating and terrifying than walking out of a convention center with a backpack with like $38,000. And nobody knew.
We did the same thing. Nobody fucking knew.

And you're just walking through downtown Baltimore going, I'm going to get killed. I'm going to get fucking killed.
Well, it's great now that

everything's so cashless.

And it's so easy to take a credit card wherever you are like i remember even back when all that stuff was taking off like you'd go to san dio comic-con and try to do like credit card processing yep and it was just impossible yep even if you had the terminal the terminal had to connect to the internet and the internet was just so bad and it was 1100 i was gonna say it was super expensive to get connected to the internet yep yep brutal brutal but yeah now i can't believe you guys were in charge of the soda machine that's the most bizarre dude guess what i got we're guessing are responsible dudes we've done a lot we've had a we're jack of all trades.

Let's try it.

You name it. It's on my resume.
I've done it. What the fuck used to be there?

Yeah, we did used to be there. We're just driving south on I-35, and there's just a hole where something used to be.
Or we're next to a whip-in.

Wasn't it like a health clinic? To the right of the whip-in? I don't remember, man.

Because I remember like years ago, God, probably 20 years ago, there was like a bomb threat over here because it was like a clinic that provided reproductive health services. Oh, wow.

So it was, I don't know if it was there. Maybe it was a little further north.
And they had to close down part of 35, and then they come and look, and of course, it's nothing. You ever,

not to change the subject away from bomb threats, but let's talk about abortion.

Or abortion.

Do you ever spend much time at Whippin back in the day? I've been only a couple times. It was always like inconvenient for me to get to.
Whippin' became my spot when I would come home from TNI.

Gather and I would always stop there and eat like a quick dinner on the way home. Whippin'? Yeah.
What is it? Or apart from RT, I figured out what's your break. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Whip in was a, it was like at one half liquor store, convenience store, and one half Indian restaurant.

Oh, wow. Oh, wow.
Yeah, and they had like kind of like Texas Indian Fusion food. Oh, wow.
So they had like Indian quesadillas,

and they had really good, legit, just like straight up Indian food, but all the combinations were really fun. And they had this thing called the Slackers.

No, no, it wasn't Slacker's Banquet. That's over at Boulden Creek, but it was something similar.
It was stoner fries. Stoner fries, which was just like these

French fries with Indian spices and cheese and bacon. Oh, that sounds awesome.
Yeah. There's a,

in a similar vein, there's a like Indian Tex-Mex Fusion place off the east side.

What's it called? Like Narca or something like that? I've only eaten it once and I didn't like it. Oh, really? I liked it.
That like tika masala chiladas. Oh, really? Crazy.
Really bizarre.

Nacha, I think is what it's called. Nacha.
That might be it, yeah. Something like that.

Millie and I went there once right after it opened opened, and it was kind of, it might have just been an off night, but I've never been back. I mean, there were a couple times, and it's good.

I've heard, I haven't been back to Whippen in years, but I've heard it's under new ownership and it's a shadow of what it was. Yeah, it changed quite a while ago, I think.

And yeah, it's not nearly the same.

It was one of those things, Eric, where you'd order your food, and then you'd go to like...

You'd go through the convenience store and then get the soda or beer or whatever you wanted or a bottle of wine and then bring it up and pay for it as you pay for the meal. That's the way to do it.

Yeah. It's like a deli.

it's uh yeah yeah yeah i love i love that kind of place they're uh definitely few and far between now so when we worked at tni we're on ben white now when we worked at tni this was not a freeway no this was a four-lane road with lights

crazy and it fucking sucked

getting off of 35 and going to the airport like you would not go this way to the airport even though there's the way you would go to the airport now they'd be like no you what are you stupid yeah take riverside why the fuck

yeah this was a fucking nightmare and then used to get off in front front of this McDonald's. Yeah,

and then they ripped it up and fucked it up for 10 years to build this. Yeah.
Yeah. It's like when it was done, it's like, oh, thank God.
That bike path right there, Eric?

That was the street back then. That's crazy.
That was, yeah. Yeah.
Like, you're talking about ripping it up for like 10 years or whatever. This is the only east-west freeway.
Pretty much.

Like, this is it, dude. And, like, it was, I don't know, reluctance to have this happen.
Like, that's crazy. I can't believe the catfish parlor is still open.

Who's going to catfish parlor? The guy who who owned Tele Network? Yeah.

Really? It was his favorite place. He loved it.
Fat and Texas land and cattle. All right, dude.
I mean, I really appreciate you fucking me over like this. We spent,

there's, I'm getting hit with so many memories over here. We're turning right.
I believe this is the road where outhouse designs are. Yeah, they were.
No, were they on the next one?

Or they were wind down.

And that was our first t-shirt vendor. You want to drive by there? Yeah.
Let's do it. And Gus and I specifically, because we were living in the same house at my old house, and we,

oh what the fuck is that austin's like austin's shop those are like it's like a neon sign shop yeah

okay uh

yeah and so we were

we also ran the store out of a spare bedroom right and so we would go in my little old pickup truck and we would pick up all the boxes of shirts that was insane it was almost a record

and then we would take them back to my house and fold them up and

you know organize them and then ship them all out and so we were but we were pushing so much merch back then

before we had our fulfillment house that we were coming to out house twice a week probably yeah and that was just like most of my job outside of bobbing heads was talking to mark at outhouse who's been gone for years and years and years so i'm not doxing anybody is out house even around still i don't know and we found them

because they did them they did the we saw the t-shirts at chewy's and we thought they were well designed and we were like who makes your shirts and they're like oh out house design does and so we just called them up and we're like we want to make t-shirts like the shirts at chewy's oh wow.

Yeah. And it's like, well, obviously they work with like a local business Chewy's.
It's much bigger now. It's right here.
Or it's still there. Yeah.
And then we found out.

And then we didn't even know going in that they were the Keep Austin Weird people. Yeah.
But they were the people that launched Keep Austin Weird way back in the day.

And so, yeah, we'd go through this, you'd go through this fenced in area and go up to the loading dock and they would just throw boxes of shirts down. Really? Yeah.
Dude, this is crazy.

And then after Mark left, our agent was a guy named Eric and we really loved him. And then when he eventually left, we followed him.

Yeah, we followed him him to the new place he worked at because he was amazing and then then we outgrew that place and we went we went you know yeah that's full that other place was like south like south congress south of benwhite right like on the no i know what you're talking about that place we you they courted us heavily and we used them once for something the place where eric was was oh

up downtown yeah yeah i think yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

um

yeah i'm gonna say something else uh and it was also still there i think and then i think Happy Taco was like over here. And

Troublemaker Studios was right there. Oh, wow.
Like in 302 or 30 or 104, one of those. Way by Austin Flag and Flagpole.
Way back in the day.

We used to get our batteries from.

Yo, how is that episode? Good morning, guys. Are they talking about where they got their batteries? It's really weird.
This show used to be a Conoco.

This is it.

This is the best show.

This is the best show ever made. He's not kidding, though.
He's not kidding.

You know what was awesome about that? Conico? They had a slush puppy machine in it. Yeah.
They did have a slush puppy machine.

This is the only place in town you can get slush puppies.

Yep. So here we are.
So

nothing out here. Guzz is going to do his best not to make this a good episode just to prove himself right.

Oh, there's the

people and stuff.

So

I was thinking about

talking about, so I don't know how to do it, but you and I used to have a code that we would say,

Gus and I have had a very long friendship through a lot of different friend groups. We've worked together in multiple companies now.
And I'll be completely honest with you.

Gus and I, when we were very, I don't know if we've ever talked about this before, but we were very early on, we were starting in this career with entertainment.

It's your old car.

No!

We made a pact that we would always have each other's back. That if no one else did, we would always look out for each other and that we would never fuck each other over and we would always take care.

3800C.

And we would never

look out for each other. We would always

include each other and take care of each other. And I think that we've, for the most part, done that pretty well for 23 years.
I'm pretty proud of that.

Longer than that. That agreement.
Yeah, it is longer than that. It is longer than that.

I don't know where I was going with this. The code.
Oh, and so we determined that we needed a code to be able to speak to each other like a watermelon, you know, or like

to know when you could speak to each other. To know when you could speak to each other.

We're not saying, like, hey, I need you to go to a different room to have this conversation. Right.

And so the code was, I'm not going to say the guy's name. I'll give a fake name.
But the code was: hey, I ran into Bill Smith the other day.

Bill Smith was a guy who we worked with at Tele Network who we both really, really liked.

Who we've probably told stories about on this podcast in previous episodes. Probably have.

And

he just kind of disappeared.

And he was kind of like, we always joke about how there was this guy named John who was like the Pete best of Rooster Teeth because he could have been a part of it at the beginning and he chose to move to Houston instead and have a very, very successful career as a coder.

Turned out very well for him. Working in the oil industry, he's not hurting.
Yeah, he's doing fine.

Oil's still doing pretty good. Still doing great.
Yeah. Yeah.

Turns out he was right.

But

this other guy was like the very first, like, I would say, like, we were like a threesome very early on. Yeah.

And it was like the three of us. We were all managers.
We all got along. We hung out.
If we went to the movies, it was probably the three of us. He got the internet.

Like, he was one of those people, like, in the late 90s, who was like, he understood where the internet understood what?

He understood where it was going. He understood, like, he had his finger on the pulse of it.
He had one of the first porn sites.

What?

What?

Had his fingers in in a lot of pies.

There's got to be a better way to say that.

Oh, my God.

Anyway, we really dug that dude, and he left, and we lost track of him. And so we decided that we would have this code where we would say, hey, I ran into Bill Smith the other day.

And then it'd be like code for.

But because we liked him so much, I would always forget about it. And Gus would say it to me, and I'd go, oh, shit.

How are you doing? You're ridiculous. Awful.

I'd be like, it's a thing.

I'd be like, oh, fuck, it's about time, dude. I didn't think we'd ever talk to him again.
Yeah. It was very frustrating.
God damn. I got it wrong way more than I got it right.

Dude, that's so funny. It was one of those things where it's like,

it's probably me. I'm the paranoid one.
I was probably like, we should establish this now, even though we don't need it in case it comes up in the future. It was useful.

Was it? Yeah. And I'll say, like.

There have been multiple instances throughout my career.

And

I'm not pointing a finger at any entity or person, you know, but there are instances throughout my career where Gus and I really did have to have each other's back.

And thank God I had him to trust and vice versa through certain periods in our career, our collected career. Because

I don't know, man, if I hadn't had Gus looking out for me, I don't know that I always would have.

It's good to have a second set of eyes or to have someone else looking out for you. That is a good way to put it.
Yeah.

You have to have someone that you can like,

I don't know. You can't bring all that stuff home all the time and then go home to your wife and just be like, here's everything I'm mad about.
Yeah.

And it's, you have to have someone on the inside that you can be like, here's everything I'm mad about. Because then they can go, yeah, I'm fucking mad about that too.

They also have the closer contact. Yes, absolutely.
It also, it's very similar to survivor in that you have to have your first strongest secret alliance that is unbreakable.

Oh shit, you have a secret one?

Feel my secret alliance.

Oh, no. I don't think that was a a secret one.

I think everybody knew about that one. Yeah, I don't know if they, I mean, everybody knew about Gus and I, but I don't know if they knew about the alliance necessarily.

Yeah, you got to have your first, strongest secret alliance. And

we definitely did. And that started here?

And that started here at Tele Network before we even thought of Rooster Teeth. So you see over there that...

Where it says C slash D, that was the door. It was off to the side.

You'd go in, and there was like a little keypad there. You would punch in your code, which was your employee number, which incidentally is still my bank pin to this day.
Come on.

Wow. So if you know my employee number from TNI and you find my debit card, you can access my banking.
Brandon Farmahees about to fucking get you.

And then over here to the right, there's like the loading docks. And the first one was also part of it.
That's where the warehouse was that we talked about with the off-site storage.

That's how you got back in there into the skate park that Jeff built. Yeah.
And up against the very back wall. I do remember hearing about the skate park.

Yeah, and then up against the very back wall is where we filmed that Apple Switch parody. Crazy.
Apple 1999 or whatever that was.

When you guys did that, when it was the Apple Switch parody, was that just, hey, we're fucking around. We like the internet.
We're going to make this internet thing. This is like a jokey thing.

Or was it like, dude, if we do this, like, let's make like a bunch of videos. Like, what was the thought that kind of like went into it? I think Bernie wanted to make the video.

Like, we were all like keyed into the internet stuff.

Like, parody. Yeah,

credit where credit's due there.

God, this is, it's it's a it's looking a long way back oh yeah you know and i i really have i'm not sure how much i can trust my memories at this point of our life

but i gus and i were all in on internet we wanted to create

written and photographic content on the internet. I don't think either of us had video was ridiculous.
We had an idea or experience of the video.

And when Bernie came in, he wanted to push video and wanted to push video. And when that Apple Switch parody came out, I don't remember where the idea came from.

I think we had to film it. Yeah, I think it was just like,

I thought it was him, but I don't know. It's been so long.
I really don't know. But I will say Bernie was definitely the driver.

He's the one who wanted to make videos on drunk gamers of his Halo gameplays and stuff. And

I mean, we were definitely on board with it, but he was the one who definitely pushed us in that direction. I remember we filmed it.
And I wasn't working at TNI at the time.

I was working at the other place downtown.

And so it was like, after work, I came down here to meet you guys. And we were going to, we filmed it out in the warehouse

at 4 p.m on a friday yeah and oh wow since i was working downtown and you know bernie had the camera here he was like hey we need uh some lights for this and i was like okay and so i stopped by uh holland his holland photography it's like it's no longer there i don't think it's over by across from where south lamar alamo is now and i was like what do you need He's like, get me a blue light.

He does not like this story, but he hates the story. So that's why I'm telling it.

He's not a fan of it. He needs a blue light.
Yeah. And I was like, what does that mean? What's a blue light? Yeah.
And I was like, what's a blue light?

He's like, yeah, yeah, it's what we need for the camera. I was like, yeah, but what is it? I'm like, I've never bought this.
I walk in there.

They're going to look at me like I'm a dickhead or something. He's like, yeah, just go in.
They have it there. Get a blue light.
He's like, why do we need a blue light?

Why am I not buying a white light? Yeah. And he's like, listen, dude, I don't know.
I just know we need a blight.

I just know we need a blue light. That's the way we're going to be.
It's like it's something to do with how we feel. I know we need a blue light.
I was like, okay.

So I went to the Holland photo over there on South America. I was like, do you have a blue light? They're like, yeah, yeah, here you go.
I was like, okay.

I guess, and now knowing what I know, it's for color balancing. Yeah,

for white balancing, you know, inside because the lights were so fucked up in here. That's all just so dumb.

Clueless. Bernie had made a film at that point already.
Yeah, but it was all, the colors were all wrong.

It's fun to look that far back and know like how like seat of our pants we were flying and not even realizing, you know? There was no expectation though. No, that's what helped with it.

That's the thing too. It's like

there was never the I remember Bernie wanting to make money off drunk gamers and Gus and I being like are you fucking serious money on the internet whatever what are you talking about this is fun why would we pass him a job like this is we're doing this because we want to and he's like yeah but we can make a little bit of money in it too and we're like what are you an asshole yeah like that we're doing we're altruistic here yeah we're we were very uh we're all altruistic yeah i don't know how you thought of yourself we were very 25 and 26 yes exactly yeah i would say i would say i'm pretty sure we thought we were altruistic like you know oh we're gonna do this stuff independently we're gonna do it ourselves we're gonna you know do what we want not gonna take anyone's money so that, you know, we're free to do what we like.

Zero money to take. Yeah.
There wasn't the internet and money weren't a combo.

Yeah. I mean, there were very few examples.
Homestar Runner showed us, Happy Tree Friends showed us that there was an inkling of an idea that you could generate revenue off of content in some way.

But that was about it. I think for me, excuse me.
For me, it was Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade.
Yeah.

I remember they set up like Penny Arcade Club where you could like PayPal them some money and you don't remember what you got you can't really get anything was like oh, okay, that's cool. I did that.

I did that for a while when they had that. Yeah, and you know when we started roosting I was like oh we can do like Penny Arcade Dance put a PayPal button on the website.

But yeah, there was but that was not a no money. And that's definitely not where you were when you did the Apple Switch parody.
No, that was just a like hey, let's do this. This will be funny.

I mean yeah, we were it was I don't remember how we

Where we put it or how do we put it? I don't know. Did we put it on a well put it on drunk gamers, but we had to like host it.
We did. I don't remember where we hosted it.

Yeah, it was whatever the web server was.

I remember what it was, that company that hosted drunk gamers. Yeah.

And then it got,

then it got, it went viral. Yeah.
And, you know, that's how Matt found it, but also it spawned, because I,

tell me if I'm remembering this right. Were we the first Switch parody? I want to say yes, but that doesn't seem right.
It doesn't seem right.

I want to say yes too because I remember all of them coming after us and being like, this is such a fucking lame attempt at what we already did.

I remember the one with the dude fucking the laptop. That dude from Austin.
Yeah. I've met that dude.
Ben Brown? Is that Brown?

He was friends with another friend of mine. I've run into him at parties.
He's before here.

He owns like some developer company.

Yeah. Damn, any fucked a laptop? That's crazy.
Mac fuckers. Mac fucker coders.

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So you make this...

Video. It's 240p or something.
It was 360, I'm pretty sure. What did you edit it in? Do you remember? Bernie would have edited it.
It probably was Premiere.

Really? Whatever he edited his film and. Because that's what we had when we started in the early days.
We started with Premiere. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
It would have been Premiere. It was like even pre-CS.

It would have been like Premiere 5 or 4. Premier 4.

Yeah.

And then...

And then it kind of went away, right? Like it got parodied. We run Slashdot and a couple places.
And then it kind of went away and we went back to doing just Drunk America stuff.

And we really didn't think about it again until cgm came to us was it cgm egm egm i think it was egm i can't remember i thought it was cgm but or was it computer gaming world cgw i fucking have it i have it

i have it somewhere in a box somewhere but they came to us and they said hey we'd really love to include this apple switch parody on our demo disc uh-huh you know with front of those and yada yada yada and we thought

in a magazine Yeah. This magazine.

This is going to be like, we were like, there's going to be like 600,000 people that are going to see this. It's got computer in the name.
I remember that was the number.

The number in our head, and I don't know why,

but I remember we had it in our, maybe this is what they told us, but we had it in our head that we were going to get 650,000 people. We're going to watch it.
I remember that number very specifically.

That's very specific. And we were, and we were, I think we had at that point wrapped up drunk gamers.
Yeah, drunk gamers was gone. We were pretty much done with that.

And the end of the Apple Switch parody just had a skull and crossbones with a drunk gamers logo on it, I believe. I said drunkgamers.com.
Drunkamers.com. Yeah.
Yeah.

And I think there was like an Apple bite out of the logo or something. Yeah, I think the skull was like the Apple logo.
Yeah.

And

we were like, it's dumb to have 650,000 people watch this video and then go to a website that doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Bernie changed it to red versus blue.

And I think that was kind of the impetus to help launch

RVB. Wow.

What you just described is like the same thing that happened with Mega 64.

It was like EGM going, hey, can we put some of these videos on some demo discs? And it launched them in the same way. What's crazy to me is the

naivete

of us being like, 650,000 people get this magazine. All 650,000 are going to watch this video.
All 650,000 people. They're all going to go.
There's no drop-off. Right.
It's like it's 100% all the way.

Every time I ever got... a demo disc, I went to every website that was on the demo disc.

You went and went through all of it and gave them all you gave them your money uh-huh absolutely that's so funny just so stupid so what was what happened at like what was next then so it was like you got okay so you got the apple switch parody why was red vs blue the site to drive it to were you guys already doing that

uh bernie had released the trailer the summer before yeah and so it was like the kick in the pants to get it to actually do it oh really i think the trailer came out in like september 2002

That magazine was January 2003.

And then officially April 2003. Yeah.
That sounds about right. We're probably getting that slightly wrong.
I'm pretty sure that's it. I mean, I could be wrong.
But if I'm wrong, who knows, right?

But don't worry. If you're wrong, if either of us are wrong, we'll get a text about it from Bernie.

I'm pretty sure that timing's right because we set up the redversusblue.com domain, I remember, and it wasn't anything at first. Yes.
It was the

leaving on a jet plane by Justin Timberlake. Because I was leaving, I was moving.
Because I moved to Puerto Rico in February 2003. Uh-huh.

So it's like we just had the placeholder up for a while, and then that's when we started putting the stuff on there in April.

There was that whole joke, it was even in our history of RVB that I wrote for us on our website for a while, but there was that whole joke about how we were a Justin Timberlake fan site pivoted to making content.

I forgot about it.

And that when Wed vs. Blue was born, the world lost the best Justin Timberlake fans site that would ever have happened.

Now we're free. We should get we should get back to work on our uh

yeah, dude. He needs he needs all the help in the world.
The world tour is not going well for us. He could use the help.

He needs a Justin, reach out. Yeah, let us know.
It's fine. You want to be on the podcast? You remember us? We uh we had that fan site back in 2002.

Justin, do you want to sit in a truck in front of where these guys used to work?

So at that point, you moved. Were you still working here? Yeah.
So you were still at TNI. When did you leave TNI?

I left TNI

in

May or June of 2003 or four. It was 2004.

Yeah.

I feel like we've told this story before,

but I was managing TNI and doing RVB with Bernie on nights and weekends. You know, I would work either 7 a.m.
to 4 p.m. at Tele Network or 4 p.m.
to midnight. Those are the two shifts.

And I would try to do the 7 to 4 shift so that I could come home, have a

bite of dinner with my then-wife, and then hop in my car and drive down to Buda to go to Bernie's house. And then I would try to get there around 6 so that we could film until about midnight or 1.

And then I would come home and I'd try to stuff t-shirts for like 30 minutes before I'd go to bed. And I remember it was rough because we'd wake up further behind than we went to bed on everything

but how I because we'd get there'd be more orders that in the night that would come in and I we were able to process and because we were still trying to make shit oh wow and I think what finally did it for me was after doing that for about a year Things really started to deteriorate between me and the other manager at Rooster Teeth because I was, I get it.

I was splitting my focus between two things and I was very excited about RVB, as was Bernie. They couldn't say shit to Bernie because he was the president or the vice president at the time.

They could, I think he's the president, he was the president at the time. They could say a lot of shit to me, though.
So, like, there was another president.

They were like co-presidents. One was like business, one was like tech.
The other dude, who I like very much and I like very much, made my life kind of a living hell

because he couldn't make Bernie.

Because he took out all of his frustration on Bernie and I, on me. And I didn't begrudge him for it.
I understood it. It sucked.
But then

Bernie left and an opening came up for vice presidency to fill his spot.

They came to me and I probably wouldn't have left Tele Network, but they came to me and they said, I guess May of 2004, they said, hey, I'm 28 years old.

Barely graduated high school.

Was in the army for five years. And they came to me and they said, we want to make you a vice president of Tele Network.
Oh, my God. And I thought, a vice president at 28 from Alabama? Yeah.

This is, I just won life. You know, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.
And I was like, absolutely. And they said, there's one condition.

You can't do this RVB shit anymore. Yeah.

You have to all in. You have to pick between tele network or red versus blue.
Wow. And I quit in the meeting.
I just went, is that for real? I went, I

have to quit. And they're like, what? And I was like, I can't do this.

And I was like, and I remember the guy who was offering me the job is a friend. He goes, listen, if you leave, you can't ever come back.
This is, you're walking away from this.

This is vice presidency of a fucking company, which by the way, would have been a great gig because that company is huge. They're huge.
Yeah.

Oh, shit. I don't know that I made the right decision.
I just made a decision. I don't know if I made the right decision or if I made the decision right.
You know what I mean?

But,

and I was like, well, I got to quit. And then I went home and I cried for like a day.
Wow. And I was terrified.
And I was terrified. And I just remember.

I just keep thinking like, I'm not going to starve to death. Yeah.
I'm not going to starve to death. What's the worst that could happen? I'm going to eat tomorrow.

And I'll tell you what, the worst could happen is you'd be unemployed 25 years later.

Sitting in a parking lot reminiscing about working at the call center. Remember when we used to work here? So I just looked from here where we are

to Bernie's old house in Buta. It's about 35 minutes, according to Google Maps.
And

that's it's also relatively light traffic right now. But also, like,

okay, yeah, there's like not a ton of people when you guys were living here or whatever. But like what were the roads? Were they it was it

was the 35 35 like what like yeah I mean well the thing that's also like we so it's 35 minutes now the thing that we mentioned It's faster now because Ben White's a freeway. Yeah, exactly.

You would have had to sit through all of those lights going the other direction. It was a nightmare.
It probably would have taken longer to get there. And 35 was fine.

It was probably actually not as bad back then as it is now.

Then there wasn't, not that I can remember, I don't think there was any construction on this section. So it was probably a pretty much straight shot.

And if you're going at night or in the afternoon, you're probably okay. Damn.
So

there weren't like as many people living out in the suburbs, like commuting at the end of the day. So at that time, the suburbs were all north.
So it's like Cedar Park, Round Rock, like still now.

Yeah. Like Beard and Kyle weren't really big commuter destinations.

So at that time, Jeff's quitting. And then you're in Puerto Rico? I had come back right before then.
So I probably moved back in like March or April of 2004.

Was that with the anticipation of doing red versus blue stuff? Yeah. Okay.

So that's why I used to always say I was employee number one, full-time employee number one, and Jeff was at full-time employee number two.

Because like that was it. That was our focus.
Uh-huh. Yeah, and then it wasn't long before Matt moved back from California.
Yeah, I think Bernie may have... quit TNI first.

Before Matt moved back?

It was close to the same time.

I can't remember because I remember like Matt moving was was to help out so Bernie didn't have to quit I feel like who can remember who can't that was like everybody quit and everybody everybody quit and everybody got hired and it all worked out that was between season one and two

oh really yeah oh you were already deep into like a season yeah oh I didn't know that yeah so like

yeah season one was pretty much wrapped up at that point uh-huh yeah because we'd have yeah yeah yeah and so it was we were beginning to work on season two so Matt must have come that summer

I remember he would come and visit yeah and he would help out like I remember they came during thanksgiving and that was when we were all hanging out just stuffing envelopes at bernie's house yeah stuffing dvds and i think it was pretty decided in that moment that they would go home

come back figure out their exit strategy back to austin what's funny is looking around you know you see all these loading docks and all these trucks that have been coming and going yeah and you know you look at how high these docks are when we were doing the merch out of jeff's house we would frequently have trucks like this show up with merch or dvds or whatever salads Yeah.

And they'd be like, where do we unload the DVDs? I'd be like, right here in point of Jeff's driveway. And they're like, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah.
And they'd be like, you don't have a dock?

Like, nope, this is it.

1,200 square foot house. Where am I going to put a dock? So

we'd have to unload all the boxes and pallets by hand out of the back of an 18-wheeler. It'd just be some dude with a clipboard going, all right, man, if you say so.

And like to just drop it all in Jeff's driveway. Usually they had a lift gate and that made it better, but sometimes they didn't.

And they'd just drop it there in Jeff's driveway. It's not that different from what i'm envisioning for our build up no

oh no luckily we're not making dvds we ran it this is out by now but we rented a house recently yeah i got it we finally got it we pick up the keys tomorrow yeah uh but we can't make dvds well we could make dvds oh we should make dvds that's a fun idea what if we made jeff what if we made I pitched this back to mega 64.

We used to do con DVDs on Mega 64. We'd sell them for like 10 bucks or whatever.

And it would be a con exclusive disc where it's like, here's a bunch of skits and then here's something exclusive for like this thing or whatever.

What if we did just a cheap, not even a Blu-ray, just a cheap DVD of like some of the best stuff that we wanted to put on there or whatever. And then we sold it for cheap and we did a DVD.

Yeah. Totally do it.
I'm down. I'm all about it, dude.

I want to go through. I want to do eras, Eric.
We've done vinyl. Uh-huh.
I want to do 50.

I want to do Swift style eras. No, I want to do fucking 8-track.
I'm going to do Laserdisc. I know.
Let's run all media. You should do it through like 80 discs.

Every generation of who's on the podcast. Like, what was the predominant physical media at the time? And then they should curate a collection for that.

That's a great idea.

There was an idea to do that. You were already working on a stinky dragon.

I consider hiring. Yeah, part-time, part time, part time.
It's almost like we've been working together a while. We have a very similar thought process.

There was a consideration of doing like a cassette. Like, oh, we did like the vinyl.
Let's do a cassette.

And I just kept thinking, like, I can't think of a worse way to listen to a podcast than a fucking cassette eight track that is just miserable I don't think I've ever physically used an eight track my uncle had an eight track player in his car when I was a kid I remember and I used to I used to love putting it in and you pushing the buttons to get to the different songs so it it was just eight tracks yes on a four on each side yeah you would flip it And then it would be like one, two, three, four, and then you flip it, one, two, three, four.

Yeah. And that's how you listen to Fog Hat.

If I remember, I think also, I could be wrong. I was a kid at the time.
I think 8-tracks were mono. Like, you couldn't even get a stereo version of songs.
I don't remember. I could be.

I was a little kid, so I don't remember at the time. Boy, that sounds right.
But yeah, I think it was like a mono-only format.

I just remember thinking how impossibly big and chunky they were.

It's cool when you're a kid, like you can really get a grip on it. It's a big tactile thing.
That's like this big, ugly thing.

It sat, like, I think the 8-track player in his car was an aftermarket add-on. It kind of like sat under the dash in the middle.

Jeez. Oh, man.
So, TNI, I don't know. This is like a part of town nobody ever comes to.
There's nothing here. That's why I went.
I was like,

it's just, it's just,

what would you call these? I'm going to call office complexes, just industrial complexes. Industrial complexes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
With just a bunch of loading docks.

I think there was a Radio East around here that we went to once. Yeah, that's right.

But it's also like not that close. Like, I remember finishing that, and then we just drove around here.
Like, oh, you guys went, oh, you guys, you want to see where TNI was? And I went, yeah.

I went, oh, oh, this sucks. Where were, all right, do you want to talk about, we talked about Bill Smith earlier.
You know, that's not a pseudonym, obviously. Not even a pseudonym, just a fake name.

Did we ever tell the story about Bill Smith's car?

We, I don't know. I know we talked about it when we came here, but we weren't recording at the time after we did the Radio East.
So I don't know if we've ever told that story. Do you want to? Yeah.

Go for it. You want to drive over there? Yeah, let's drive over there.
Oh, my God. You guys probably tell the story better than I have, but.
So,

you know, everyone that worked here was like a person in their 20s and didn't have much and wasn't very necessarily the most responsible person. Almost everybody was a UT or an ACC student.
Right.

And varying levels of fuck-ups, ourselves included.

I'm not saying that to be mean to anyone. It's like we all had our quirks.

I had to have a conversation with an employee once because he kept being late to work. And eventually I had given him so many warnings, I was like, I had to sit him down.
And I said, listen,

you're going to lose your job if you come to work late one more time. And he's like, well, what do I do?

And I go, go i tell you what i either got to let you go today or if you tell me you can come to work every day for on time he only worked three days a week

for the next 90 days you'll be off probation you'll be fine and he goes you should probably just let me go today no way he just couldn't like that's the level of like commitment these people had yeah he's like i'm not even going to try to come to work on time for three months yeah for three days out of the week just fire me today

what did we just why we just pull around to the front yeah so bill smith had a car that he brought, that

he used for a long time. And then he eventually, it stopped running and he pushed it into that parking spot right away.
Oh my God.

And then left it. Wow.
It's like, yeah, it's going to cost more to tow it. Like, there's no point in fixing it.
It's like, you're not going to get anything for that vehicle.

So we just pushed it over here and left it in that parking spot. And it sat there for probably eight years.

What the fuck?

Eight years.

Eventually got to the point where people would be walking by and they'd just start putting stickers on it. It was covered in stickers.
What? It was like bumper stickers and whatever.

It became like the sticker car. If you had a bumper sticker or sticker, you'd walk over here and put it on the car.
And then we decided to be like, please remove me.

I don't know what eventually, I don't know why it eventually got moved, but it was like, it was there forever.

It was a real years and years and years. I don't even remember what kind of car it was because it was so covered in stickers.
In my head, it was like a Ford Taurus or something.

But it,

yeah, it

just became like one big sticker. Yeah.

It was really funny. That's crazy.
So it just broke down and it was like, well, that's the end of this thing? Yeah. And you saw where we were back there.
There wasn't much parking.

Like it was going to be a pain in the ass. So it's like, well, just push it and then stick it over here because there's plenty of parking over here and there's no building right there.
Right.

Part of what drove us out of this location was parking because we only had a handful of spaces.

And when I started working there, there were like, I don't know, 60 employees or 20, 40 employees, something like that. And, you know, we had a couple hundred by the time I left.

And people were having to park out here. And I remember the landlord rented the place next to us, A, to a new company and then gave them some of our parking spaces.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.

And we're like, you can no longer park in these spaces because they need them. And we were like, fuck you.
And it wasn't long after that that we moved

fucking

just right down the road. Yeah.
But that was, I think, one of the

impetus moments for us to leave. Yeah.
It was a crazy fight, a dispute over parking.

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And what's funny is there's so many cars driving around here. I don't know that must be a mechanic shop or something.

It's a tire shop.

I think they do like low-profile and like racing tires and stuff. When we were working back here,

you wouldn't see anybody. Yeah.
Like, I didn't know that. I don't know what any of these businesses were

because it was like, they were all empty. There was a, I knew that one of the neighbors was a furniture, or no, a carpet cleaner from like industrial accidents.

Like, they would come in and they would clean up if you're like business flooded. They would come clean the the carpets and shit out.
Remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, vaguely.

They were, that was the only because I just remember I'd see their trucks in the parking lot. I was the only one who was

the rug cleaning company. The rug cleaning company? It's fucking, it might be.

Estonian rug cleaning company or something. Yeah, that's what it's called.
Oh, should I not have said that? Who cares? Okay. Fucking working gives a shit.

What do you guys do for like lunch? Like what? There's nothing here. There is.
There's a McDonald's. There's a McDonald's right over there.
There's a Wendy's right down there.

There was Happy Taco. I lived off of junior bacon cheeseburgers for a while.
Damn. And there was a

Italian restaurant, like a little deli shop called,

what was it called? Queer.

It opened up right next to Happy Taco, and it was like a little family-owned, they had sub-sandwiches and stuff. That opened up.
Is it on the other side of this?

No, it's true. It's right over here.

It was very, probably around the time you quit, but you probably went there once or twice. And then there was Pasta Bar, which was the best.
Yeah. I remember actually what we would do.

We would drive up to Old Torf. Ah.

A lot. And we'd eat at places up there on Old Torf.
That's like the first place I ever had fun in my life was because I went up there with Ray. 888 and Wan Fu

and Java Noodle and all those places. We would also go a lot down to

Lamar and Ben White because we would eat a super salad because it was super, it was fucking cheap. We would eat at Delaware Subs over there at

William Cannon and I-35.

And we would eat at

Trudy South. Oh, dude, you remember we would eat it at Serrano's by the Best Buy? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Because we'd, on Tuesdays, Andrew liked to go over there to look for the new DVDs that were released at Best Buy. And then we'd go eat at the Serranos in the parking lot.

Because there was a greeter who was really pretty that we were all.

Oh, there you go. Yeah, this all makes sense when you guys are like in your 20s.
In the 20s, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then if we, I don't know if you ever had lunch with Bill, but he liked going to the old alligator grill where like Kirby Lane is now off of like Southampton.

Yeah, we would go to old alligator grill a lot. We would also go to Double Dave's a lot.
Pizza's Buffet Pizza.

That old alligator grill is what they used as the interior for tchotchkes and office space.

Oh, that is correct. Oh, shit.
And I think it's a Kirby Lane now. I think it's a Kirby Lane now.
Yeah. Oh, how crazy.
What about Catfish Parlor? I think I may have eaten there once. I ate there once.

It was horrible. Yeah.

Horrible. I hate catfish.
They closed the one off of 183, right? It's just this one now. It did.
It's just this one. Anyway, those are all the restaurants that we ate at 25 years ago.

If you come to Austin in the late 90s and want to know where to eat, man, we've got you covered.

Yeah, none of these places have existed in Austin the last 15 years, but dude, if Pasta Bar is still there, though. I think it might be.
Why would it be gone?

We'd go down to the Omni Hotel over here at Ben White in 35.

Which is where they filmed the externals. Yeah, the externals office space.

Cinatec was there. Oh, how crazy.

I don't know.

One of us, someone here liked going there because it was like a pasta bar, but it was set up like a subway style, where you pick your type of pasta, you pick your sauce, you pick what they put it in.

It's like Mongolian grill kind of thing. Yeah, and they would like assemble it all in one.
Which we used to eat at all the time downtown. Yeah, it was right by the convention center.

It's where like the P.F. Chang's is now or somewhere.
Yeah. Dang.
It might be where Gus's is now. Oh, it was right there.
It was right north, right there.

But yeah, we'd go to, but the problem with the pasta bar was it was expensive. It was $11.

but you got a drink with it it was 11 but it came with a drink and it was all you can eat pasta so if you went there twice oh it was worth it we were making like i think where we were like as level twos we're probably making like eight dollars an hour here yeah so um paying eleven dollars for lunch was like it was like over oh yeah an hour that's almost an hour and a half of work so we we would rarely go there yeah and sometimes we would go we had a run there for a couple months where we would go to blazer laser tag oh yeah yeah and play laser tag for lunch that's when we were trying to get to the top of the leaderboards so and we realized one day we were competing against children and we weren't catching up

it was fun though we had about three months there where we had we hit it pretty hard and heavy

man

yeah Or we'd go back to Gus's house or his apartment at the Metropolis and I would watch him play Final Fantasy. Or we would play Puzzle Fighter.
Or Puzzle Fighter, yeah.

Were we driving somewhere the other day and we saw Gus's like apartment for like sale or something?

Yes. Different apartment.
Your place over off Infield. Oh, it's for sale right now.
The whole building's for sale. Yeah.
Yeah.

I think they're selling it for like, I looked, I looked at it the other, I mean, I didn't look at it. I looked online.
You just wanted to like live in it again. You just want to see like go back.

Yeah, that's the whole building. That's the whole house, really.
I think the whole scary building was for sale for like $2 million or something.

A fourplex? No, it's bigger. It's like 14 units or something.
Oh. Crazy.
Maybe 10 units? Something like that. Yeah, we drove by it and then Jeff pointed it out.
Oh, he used to live there.

Jeff hated that house because scary. You ever see the grudge? Yeah.

I had a loft and a little attic space and it looked just like the attic in the grudge. Awesome.
And Jeff was always freaked out. It's so funny.

I used to have to go like feed his cat and shit when he'd be out of town, which is always. And it was fucking just dark and creepy and old there.

And it was at that time when like Japanese horror was super popular. So everybody was watching it and consuming it constantly.
And so you were just in that couldn't escape from it.

Yeah.

Well, this was a nice walk down memory lane with TNI and everything. I thought this was fun.
We should talk about

a fuga. Afuga.
Oh, before we do, real fast. Please.
Two things I saw in the news yesterday. Oh, yeah.
Another fished another body out of Ladybird late yesterday, a naked lady.

They say no foul play. No suspected.
Yeah. But a dead woman yesterday at 8 a.m.

And did you see, Gus? that they announced yesterday that Sundance is leaving Park City and moving to Boulder, Colorado in 2027.

So they have one more that's going to happen in Utah, and then it's moving to Boulder.

Yeah, they were.

Park City was a weird location for that. I didn't.

It didn't have. It wasn't built out enough.
It didn't have the infrastructure for it.

Definitely, the film festival definitely outgrew it.

But even Robert Redford came out and was like, we're very excited to move to Boulder and for the next chapter, and we really think it's going to help the film festival grow.

I think it's the bigger it needs to get. It's huge for Sundance, and it's going to fucking hurt Utah.
Utah's fucked. That's a lot of money and then a lot of tourism.

Not just off the back of that, but people learned about Utah and going for like ski vacations or whatever. Like celebrities like learned about that through that.

And now all of that's gone and it'll be Colorado. I bet they're still going to have plenty of the ski tourism side of things.

So I mean I don't know that'll hurt. It'll hurt a bit, but I don't know if it'll be like devastating or anything to them.
Crazy. Because that city was

when you when sundance was happening you could not get in a car right because like everything was gridlocked and not moving.

So it's like you have to walk everywhere if you could and it was fucking frozen. So you'd be, I would be busting my ass the whole time.

I bring it up just because we had a couple of sundance years there. Yeah.
When we were sort of in vogue in the industry briefly. What a weird time.
We were cute. We went to sundance.
A couple times.

Channel.

Wild. Yeah, it's just absolutely nuts to think back about that stuff.
And now it's moving.

If you added up all the collective places that we did panels or appearances at at events between like, just say you, Bernie, and I, because we were the ones that did the most of them. Yeah.
Right.

You put those together. It's a staggering list.
Yeah. It really is.
It's a lot of shit we did over the years.

All the fucking upfronts we did. You know, being on stage with like fucking people from CNN and TNT and shit.
It's weird. That's wild.
That's so crazy. Long career.

I'm just fucking Don Lemon at an event with the camera. That's what the fuck?

Dude, that's really funny.

Anything else before we get to Afuga?

Nah. That's all I want to mention.
Love it. Love it.
What did you guys think of afuga? Because they didn't have drip coffee. They didn't? I went to the bathroom when you were ordering.
Nope.

I got a cortado.

I like a cortado. It's just a lot of milk to drink.
I've never had one. It's fine.
I mean, I like a cortado. It's just, it's a different.

It's like every other, you know, espresso mixed thing drink, whatever, where you go, oh, that's nice. Yeah.
But, like, that's not the way I drink my coffee typically.

But Cortada is what I get when they don't have drip, which is fucking nuts.

Like, he's like, oh, I can make you an Americano. It's like, I don't want an Americano.
What's wrong with Americano? I don't want it. It's not what I want.

It tastes like espresso the whole time, but longer. Well, I think I know how Eric feels.
Mine's a good. It's like a 7-9.
Yeah. I go 7-5-8, somewhere in that area.

That's fair. It's fine.
I I think the Cortata is definitely a 7. Like, it's fine.
Like, it's good. I like it, but it's not...
I had to shift gears hard. It seems like

a chill place, but it was very... There were a lot of people there.
There were a lot of people there working. Yeah.
Everyone had laptops. That was a very, like, locked-in

workspot. It's not, it doesn't seem like a...

It's not a social coffee spot. Yeah, like a foot traffic meetup kind of place.
There are a lot of businesses in the area.

No. It's also a rainy day, so everyone was inside.
I could see that place having like a nice little outside presence. Yeah.
If we went again or whatever. How was your chocolate croissant?

It was so good. Was it really? It's filled with like a chocolatey cream.
But it was a little crumbly. That's why I keep looking.

If you see me looking around, I've been looking for crumbs to pick up so that they're not like

all over the place. It was like

brown chocolate. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
Yeah, yeah. Normally, you think croissants just got like a little chocolate in the middle.
Now, this, this, like, was a chocolate pastry. Yep.

And it's crazy looking at this, just how much of our lives were beige back then. Just tan and beige.
Everything around us. Industrial park, half-dead grass, sad trees.

Sad trees. Big green dumpster pallets.
White and brown rocks. Everywhere.
Just pallets everywhere. Pallets and trucks and shelves.
That's it. And this was

life in Austin in the 90s.

It was just industrial complexes like this all over town, littered all over town with little tech startups. Wow.
Just big dreams and little buildings.

It's really deep. It's beautiful, profound.

Well, we're at the end of

the second season of Good Morning Gus.

And as we talked about previously, we have to leave it up to a vote and see if we're going to do another season. In the first season, we voted yes.
We did. Shocked.

I don't know why people thought I was going to be the one to vote no, but I didn't. I voted yes in the first season.
But that's first season.

We got through another eight episodes, eight more coffee shops, eight more places. People said we had things.
People said we couldn't do it. That's what they said.
Big Rooster tried to keep us down.

They said.

That's right. Big Rooster even came back.
Big Rooster came back to us. He came back and tried to hold us down.
And we said, no way.

So we need any more episodes. That's the end of the second season.
So now we must take it to a vote. to see if we are going to do a third season of Good Morning Guests.
Remember, the vote is final.

There's no arguing. You don't have to explain yourself.
It's just a yes or a no. If there's one no,

that's the end. We don't do another season.
But if we're all yeses, we do another eight episodes and we renew. So we call it oops all yes.
That's right. That's right.

So

it's now up to a vote.

Okay.

Do I go first? Who goes first? Do we, guys, you want to go at the same time? You want to do like thumbs up, thumbs down, or everyone's saying? Well, the audience can't see thumbs up, thumbs down.

It's true. I guess that's true.
This is an audio podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
If this was a video podcast, this would have been the worst episode.

We're just in a car over there and then in a car over here.

All right, I guess we can all go at the same time. Okay.
Ready? Okay. It'll be

one, two, three, and then we say it. Ready? On three or three? One, two, three, and then you say it.
Okay. Okay, ready?

One, two, three.

No. Oh.

Well, that'll do it for good morning.

And I know we don't have to give an explanation, but I think we should.

Well,

before we wrap up, there's something I want to say. I want to say thank you to Eric because I think

nobody appreciates the amount of work that Eric has to do to wrangle us and our schedules to get this done.

It is constantly shifting things and trying to find times at work. And because we're all so busy with our respective projects now.
We co-own a bunch of companies. Yes.

And

I feel like, Eric, you may not get enough credit for. Oh,

I'm in the background, baby. For all the work you've done to help facilitate facilitate this and make this happen.
But yeah, it is, uh, it is, it has been, it seems like it's been very trying.

Well, thank you very much. It has been, and it's been a headache.

But, but, but, if I could go back in time to junior year high school me and go, just show him the pictures of, I took a picture in the back seat of this car holding a cup of coffee while you guys were talking to each other in the front seat.

If I could show him and be like, hey, this is your job when you're in your threes, he'd go,

what the fuck are you doing?

He'd lose his mind. Lose his mind.
So this is great.

I loved doing this as we did it. I cannot think of a better and more fitting place to end this podcast than on the literal spot where Gus and I met and fell in love as friends.
Yeah. This was so nice.

I'm going to get a little emotional, but I really don't think I would, but I just.

Gus is the first creative partner I ever had.

And this creative relationship has lasted

longer than any relationship I've had of my life.

And it's in some ways ending today.

Yeah, a little bit. It is.
It is. I mean, this is not to say that you and I won't work together in the future.

But it is to say that we have been working together in some capacity every day on a project since we met in January of 1999. 2016.

Definitely met in December of 1998. But we started working together on projects to say in January or February of 1999.
It's a long,

hell of a run.

And the thing that I worry about, if I'm being just honest and raw, I just, I'm a little worried about our friendship going forward because this has been such an anchor for us.

And I just want to make sure that we maintain a friendship outside of working together. Well, now we have time.

Yeah, dude, honestly. Yes.
That is the most important thing to me. I've been thinking about this decision a lot since we started ANMA.
I think we both knew we were going to end it here. Yeah.

We've known for a long time. We haven't really talked about it, but I get the impression we both are in the same place there.

And I just, it takes our friendship and our relationship into a new area, uncharted territory. And it's just, it's exciting to be back to being just your friend.
Yeah. Can I say that?

We haven't been just friends in two decades.

It's been a long time. And I'm looking forward to just being your friend.
We,

you know, you talk about 26 years, and I'm not going to get super long-winded about it, but when

the Roosteith shutdown got announced,

you know, there was a desire to say something publicly about it. And I wrote up a pretty long post I was going to put on the Roosteith website about

the decades it's been. And

I ended up not posting it because Bernie wrote something and I was like, he should be the one to have the post on there. So

I never posted it. But I think there was a sentiment in that thing I wrote that holds true here, you know, which was I said at the time for the Roosteath thing that Roost Teeth lasted 21 years,

which is crazy in internet time. And you and I have been working together on the internet for 26 years now.
And

the summary of what I wrote was

that

this is like, this is our high score. 21 years for that, 26 years for us.
Yeah. I encourage anyone who's listening to do better.

And I encourage anyone who's listening to pick up a microphone, pick up a camera, pick up something and just start it. And go for as long as you can.
Beat our high score. Yeah, beat the high score.

That's what that's what I say. And I think in it, I said that, you know, Mega 64 would pass our high score very soon because we started around the same time.
They've probably passed it by now.

Damn sure came close to not, though. Right.

But

like, I admire them. I'm glad they're still going.
I'm glad that they have surpassed us. And I encourage everyone listening, start something and do it and see how far you can take it.
Yeah.

Use our journey as

inspiration, maybe, or fuel to do it yourself. Or a cautionary tale.
Or a cautionary tale.

I have, you know, this is a sentiment that I've said a million times, but I've been inundated with people telling me how to do my job for the last 20 years. And

everybody has an opinion on how we should and shouldn't do it. I highly encourage you to prove yourselves right and go out and create your own rooster teeth.
Yes. Create your own regulation.

Create your own stinky dragon and put every bit of your heart and soul into it and develop relationships around it and learn what you're capable of and learn what the people around you are capable of and challenge and push yourself and fail or succeed, but just have a fucking adventure doing it.

Yeah, you'll be shocked where it takes you. Yeah.

We might be looking back 27 years later. In a parking lot.
In a parking lot, you're high five in each other because you beat our high score. Yes, I hope you do.
Yep. I hope you do.

Well, I think that'll do it for good morning, Gus. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for checking out all these episodes. You'll always have the backlog because it's just going to live there.

So go check out those episodes and everything. But

I think that'll do it. Any other wise words? Go to the regulation Patreon and the Stinky Dragon Patreon.
Please, we need this. Yeah.
And

thank you, audience, for supporting Gus and I through these various endeavors for now more than half of my life. So definitely more than half of his.
And I know Gus already,

I think, really eloquently summed up your contributions here, Eric, but also thank you. Yeah, absolutely.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you. It was a lot of fun.
This was a great show.

I had a really good time doing it. I somehow weaseled my way into hanging out and getting free coffee, which is really all I'm ever looking for.
So that was great. And then,

yeah, getting together to do this was always fun. It was a headache to try to schedule, but like it was always, once we were together, it didn't matter.

Yeah, it was great. It was great every time.
So thank you guys for making time for this. This has been a lot of fun, but that's it.
Who knows what's next? But it's not this.

So thanks for listening, and we'll see you later. Bye.
Bye.