Geoff’s Wedding

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Okay, this is episode 67.

Last time we were at Dog Day Coffee. Is our first episode back? Dog Day Coffee.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh.

We talked about how the sun is hot. We talked about the NBA play-in tournament, the NBA Midseason tournament, the end of the year slowdown.

We talked about a lot about TV shows, how we're an amazing race podcast, common interest puke, and late night tattoo. Season finale this week.
There you go. So that was all

last time. And now it's this time.
Good morning, Gustin. How are you?

Who do you think is going to win? Who are you pulling for to win? Is it okay to talk about that? We're not worried about spoilers or anything?

I mean, it's airing live.

Hey, if you are super invested in Amazing Race, but you haven't seen the latest episode, don't listen to the next 45 seconds. I can't imagine who that would be.

I'm hoping, like, I'm fine with all three teams that have made it to the final. I'm hoping Rob and Corey win.
The father or son.

Dude, they're just adorable. So good.
Really wholesome. So supportive, so positive.
Also, the dad looks so much like cousin Sal. I can't get out.

The dad's he's really funny. The brothers, I think, are adorable, too.
They are

so positive. I hate them because they're talented at everything they do.
Like, everything they pick up is like, oh,

I lived in France, and I know French now.

And he's like, oh, luckily everything's in French because I'm fluent in French. Cool.
And he's like, my brother is too, but not as good as me. Anyway, we'll be fine.

Yeah, Yeah, oh, this challenge, which should be incredibly difficult for anyone, we're just going to breeze through it. Yeah.

They're like, oh, I've never done this incredibly complicated thing before, but it's like this other incredibly weird, obscure thing I've done. Yeah, no problem.

I've never seen two people who are just so able to quickly pick something up and just so talented at everything they do.

They're how people see themselves in their head. Yeah.

Oh, I can figure that out. But they embody it.
Yeah, yeah. But they actually are.
Yeah.

I have nothing against the best friends, but they are who we would be if we were on the show. Old, out-of-shape dudes.

They had a really great moment a couple of weeks ago where they thought they were last, and they were like, you know what? Let's just slow down. Let's just appreciate it.

They were like eating their sausages and just hanging out. And they show up to the mat and they're like, you're not last.
Like, what? Yeah, that was really sweet.

I thought that was great. Like, really, like,

enjoy the process, enjoy the journey kind of thing.

But speaking of reality shows, you mentioned the Squid Game show last week. The challenge.
Squid Game Challenge. Squid Game The Challenge.
So

I binge it. I watched 10 episodes.
We watched all 10 episodes this past weekend.

It's really well made, but the whole time I was watching it, it just kept bothering me how much the crew, whoever decided to go forward with this, just missed the point entirely of the show.

And I thought, you know, after we talked about it, maybe they did something to redeem it or made something to make sense.

It's like, no, it's just like some dumb-dumb who watched Squid Game and was like, hey, you know what would be cool if we make that game for real? It's like, that's kind of.

Yeah, that's kind of the premise. It's kind of, it misses the whole point about like how capitalism is evil and just thrives on crushing people and destroying them.

And they're like, nah, nah, nah, nah. Let's just do the games.
No, no, no. I think it makes the point for capitalism.
I think the show is

like the show is like, oh, you can make more money off this doing it differently. This is capitalism, baby, and they'll eat it up.
And I'm eating it up.

And I'd like to point out, Gus is like, oh, it's fucking terrible. Anyway, I'll watch every episode of season two.

Yeah, it's terrible because they just missed it, but it was well executed. No, I think they got it.

I don't think they missed anything. That being said, you know, I did hear about

there was something that annoyed me about this, and it's not about the show, it's about people's reaction to the show.

There's a lot of talk, I believe the show was filmed in January this year, so it's really cold.

There was a lot of talk online about troubles are in production, about how contestants were getting hurt, and it was like really cold. Do you know where it was filmed? It was filmed in England.
Okay.

And

supposedly, some people claimed they had hypothermia, some people needed serious medical attention. It's this whole thing.
Who knows, right? I didn't see anybody's breath.

Well, supposedly, during, and I'm not going to give any spoilers because the final episode just came out a few days ago, apparently.

Apparently, when they were filming Red Light, Green Light, filming that challenge took seven hours. I heard that, yeah.

And that sometimes they would have to freeze and hold in position for 30 to 40 minutes while they reviewed footage to go over to see who needed to be eliminated and who didn't.

And that it was like an unheated airplane hanger in January. That sounds terrible.
Which sounds awful.

But I feel like when, you know now that the last episode came out, there was kind of a controversy, for lack of a better word, on social media about like, oh, they haven't even paid the winner yet.

But all the interviews I read, the winner understood that they were not going to get paid until the final episode aired. Sure.
And it's like, okay, now the final episode aired.

So now they're going to get paid. Right.
So I felt like it was the kind of thing where people, everyone sees the headline. The headline's written sensationally.
Everyone gets angry about it.

But then if you read the article, it's like they interview with the winner who says, yeah, I know I wasn't going to get paid until the last episode came out. Now I expect the payments to start coming.

Like, yeah,

like, if you, if you know, if your neighbor goes and competes on a game show and they come home and you're like, Hey, did you win four and a half million dollars?

They're like, I don't know, you have to watch a show and see. And then you see them buying boats and cars.
Why are you driving an Aston Martin? It's like, Oh, you work at Circuit City,

Circuit City.

That's your poll circuit. That's like the worst place I can think of to work in present or past.

But yeah, that was it. I thought production value, it looked really good.
I thought they did a great job. But there were things that I felt like

were done that I thought they were, I thought whoever was producing the show was controlling the outcome of some things. Like the way some things were set up.
Emily thought that as well.

Like there was one, and again, I'm not going to give you spoilers or anything. There was one time when people had to go up and hit a button and push a button.

And it was like, if it turned red, you're eliminated. If it turned green, you're fine.
But it's like, why did they have this elaborate button system where

you don't see what it's connected to or anything? I felt like someone could be manipulating what the outcome is in the back end. Why not just like pull a ball out of a hat or something else?

Yeah, which I say that because they do that sometimes. Yeah, like they'll reach in and pull out a ball and it's got someone's number on it.

I thought you just made that part up, and I'm like, I mean, yeah, I guess that works. I think it's less.
No, no, it was not. It was something else that was in

universe. Having done contests and stuff where we have to, where we have prize pools in the past, I know that we're

legally required to follow certain guidelines and we can't manipulate the outcome and stuff. So I assume that they are under those same strict rules, but who knows? Yeah, who knows?

I do agree that they could have done something a little more tactile to

allay any concerns,

but

I'm also happy just to trust it. Yeah,

I can't imagine how difficult it is to make a show like that with 456 people that you're trying to wrangle.

Dude, and you know, even the logistics of like, like, you know, like they did it like the show, right? Like the beds are all set up.

But even like bringing in food and the facilities, like toilets, showers, like, how do you scale? I don't know. It just seems like a, like a nightmare.
I can't, dude.

As someone who produced two seasons of Survive Block Island, which was a reality show we filmed in Minecraft, but that, but that was meant to be real and

an un

and it was like an unmanipulated outcome, right? Yeah.

Just following and trying to keep the stories stories of 12 people straight and just trying to keep them on track on rails and from breaking the game or dealing with the inevitable breaks and mistakes that happened.

It was like, it was awesome.

It was, you know, we say this all the time: Survive Block On is probably the most fun I've ever had. So much fun.
Probably the most fun I've ever had in my professional career.

And I wasn't even in it. I was just producing it because it was just so many, it was so much fun to figure out the puzzle and to keep it all together.
But it was such a level of intensity and stress.

I cannot imagine a show with 456 contestants. And they're getting

like the crew must have been

the camera crew, I mean, must have been massive. The amount of producers, because they did sit-downs with every one of those people, they had a story worked out.

They were clearly carefully selected for their situations they were in in life and how badly they needed the money and their motivation

kind of calls back to the show. Yeah, of course.
And

I just thought they did a superb job because I can't imagine how difficult that must have been to keep straight. And to keep honest.

Or to keep the appearance of honesty.

Eric's here. Hi, Eric.
Thanks, man.

Bless you.

Yeah, I can't imagine how much footage you just have to go through just trying to track everything. And then as the game progresses, being like, oh, this person now, you know, who is...

One of the few remaining, what was their journey the whole way through? Like having to go back and look through it all and comb the footage. Like, did we get anything of them in the first?

That's another thing. It's like, if any character you meet in the first three episodes is dead.
Like, there's no way.

You're not going to learn about the winners until halfway through the season at best. Right.
It's a, it's.

Like, pay attention to people that start getting, like, in all reality shows, pay attention to the people that start getting airtime like episode five. It's in episode season, episode six.

Halfway through, yeah. Once it, once it's whittled down a bit.

Yeah, it's, that's definitely true. There's way too many characters.

There were a couple of things that I want to talk about last last episode that I just totally forgot. We brought it up.
We were driving away from Dog Day and I was like, oh, we didn't have to do that.

Oh, that's right. We didn't talk about that.
We got too invested in the NBA tournament and that led us to a lawyer tournament. So it was really an off-the-wall episode.

I've been keeping an eye on the commercials. I'm the lawyer commercial.

Mike stopped. He grabbed us on the way out.
He goes, hey, I was just listening to Anma.

We're sorry. We got to do a Mike Purdle episode.
We have to. We have to have Mike on.

We should get his insight in the lawyers. Yes.
Well, I talked to him. He was like, you guys got to research this thing because this is like the way they do these commercials and all this stuff.

And I'm like, well, we'll start researching it. And he said, and I'll be the research consultant.

I love when Mike listens to the show.

It's that time of year when Ted Lorenz is running his Christmas commercials and I fucking hate him.

Anyway, back to, so we got so distracted. And we're getting distracted again talking about these lawyers.

We

had lunch a couple weeks ago at Texas Chili Parlor. Yeah.
We didn't talk about this. We didn't talk about this.
We haven't talked about this on anything. No.
It was my wedding day lunch.

I wanted to have, I wanted to have, here's something that I think is awesome about Texas Chili Bargo because I know Gus is about to shit on it.

I love that place. And I will go to the grave loving that place.
I have had way more good meals than bad meals. I love the ambiance.
I love the attitude there.

And one of the things I loved about them is when we had our rehearsal dinner for the wedding, instead of just having like the bridal party, we wanted to have everybody involved, right?

We wanted to be able to have some, like another opportunity to visit with people that are coming in from out of town and to get some actual FaceTime because then we knew on the wedding night, it would be just insanity.

And so we thought, let's just run out of really casual place. We asked Texas Chili Parlor and they said, we'll get back to you.

And then they got back to us like an hour later and they said, you know what, we're going to say no. And I said, oh, really?

And they go, yeah, we're going to say no because we just don't want to piss off our regulars. Fair.
And I thought, that's the best answer I've ever heard.

I garnered so much respect for them because of that.

And then we had it somewhere else, which was even better. Like, no offense, but Top Notch was amazing.
And they were super accommodating. And they gave us a little plaque.
And they were lovely.

And there was fucking hamburgers for days. And it was fantastic.

But I gained a lot of respect for a place I already had a lot of respect for when they turned us down.

I feel like you never hear that. Yeah.
People will get upset. They did not want the money.
Yeah. So we, I believe the plan was to meet up there at noon.

And I was worried I was late because parking there is tough. It's one of the reasons I typically don't go there just because finding a spot is really a pain in the butt.
And

I think we're supposed to meet at 12. At like 12.05, I finally like walk in the door.
Like as I'm actually, as I'm walking up to the place, I see Gavin walking in, like right in front of me.

Like he gets dropped off right there. Like, okay, cool.
Gavin's here. Like, I'm not going to be the last person.
I was convinced I was the last person. Then I walk in.

Also, it wouldn't have mattered if you were. I just, I don't like being late.
I know.

You know that about me. Like, if I'm on time, I'm late.
Yeah.

So I walk in and I see Gavin and we look around. We're like, oh, we're the only ones here.
Okay, cool.

So we walk up to like the front and, you know, where the guy, the register, we're like, hey, we're here for like the

wedding lunch.

The guy looks at us like we're aliens. We're like,

Jeff Ramsey. And he like.
We didn't have a reservation. The guy just walked in.
He's got

no knowledge of what we're talking about. I was like, okay, I'm just going to go outside and

we'll call him. So Gavin and I walk outside.
We're like, all right, they're obviously not here. There's no reservation or anything.
We'll just wait. Y'all show up a couple of minutes after that.

And how many of us were there? Like eight, nine? There were 10 of us.

Okay.

You know, they go in, real nice, they sit us down. They find like we sat at the opposite table.
They didn't get to talk to you at all. Yeah.
I was bummed.

Well, it was like, it was one of those things where I saw there was a seat nobody was going to want, but it was perfect for me. It was like back in the corner.

Right, you don't have to talk to anybody. Exactly.
You'd be left alone.

So I went and I sat back over there. And, you know,

they come, they take our orders, whatever.

And they had like some special of the day, which was like enchilada with chili on it whatever but i saw they had a frito pie in the menu and i was like i'm gonna order the frito pie

classic it's chili it's fritos cheese onion um so we all order she you know she leaves uh brings our drinks and then our food comes out not like super fast but not like super late like 20 minutes maybe for everyone yeah normal normal amount of time yeah for a normal amount of time

yeah she puts her frito my frito pie in front of me and i think that's weird the cheese isn't melted i wonder if they just like put the cheese on at the last second and i get my fork and i was also weird because the Frito pie wasn't in a Frito bag.

It was like they poured what I assume was probably generic Fritos onto a plate and then cover it with chili and cheese.

So I get my fork or my spoon actually and like I take a big bite, put it in my mouth and I put my spoon down and I say, that has just come out of the refrigerator. What he said was, mmm, ice cold.

Yeah,

my chili was also oddly not warm. Mine was perfect and I had a great time and I loved the meal and it was fantastic.
I think there were other people.

Once we left, there were other people who all said, yeah, my food was really cold. It was not warm at all.
Not the best day.

I don't understand how it was that cold. It's not like it had just been sitting out.
It was like it was in the fridge and they forgot to warm it up. Yeah.
Yeah, it was. It was pretty impressive.

It was cold. It was not their finest day.
It was ice cold. Somewhere along the steps, someone had to realize it wasn't warm.
Yeah. Hey, you're going to cook that? Send it.
Send it. Like,

even picking up the food to put it down in front of me, like, hmm, this plate's really cold. You know, there were multiple points of failure along the way.

And what was funny is before the food came out, like we all placed our order, and Eric was sitting next to me. I said, man, I haven't been to the Texas Chili Parlor like in 15 years.

It's been a long time since I've been here. Like I said, the parking's normally really bad.
And then I took that bite. We're sitting there and I turned Eric and go, yeah, it's going to be another 15.

So I'm good.

Listen, everybody who's listening to this, go to Texas Chili Parlor. It's awesome.
99% of the time. I will say, I've been a bunch of times.
I've never had a bad time.

My food's always been hot and good. It's It's great.
You're at the special, right? Yeah.

My food wasn't great that day, but that's okay because I did some social engineering that I had had in the back of my head.

I wanted the opportunity to test where Berndog was sitting at the table with me and Dwight, Emily's dad, was sitting with me. And I knew.
Oh, you. I knew.

And I just leaned over to Dwight and I said, hey, Dwight, take a look at this. And I showed him a picture of one of Bernie's paintings.
And I go, this guy across is he's an oil painter from you.

He loves the classics. And Dwight lit up and he goes, hey.
And he started talking to Bernie.

And Bernie wants nothing more than to talk about art with people because he just doesn't have a lot of people in his life who can speak intelligently to it.

And they started naming painters back and forth. And Bernie's eyes would get wider every time Dwight knew who a painter was or he would have like a fact because Dwight's like a walking encyclopedia.

He was an art off. He knows everything.

And those two didn't stop the rest of the day. Oh, you see.
It was so much fun to work. You connected them and it was like in the car, in the hotel room, at the wedding.

It was just them constantly going, what about this? Yeah, what about this?

It's me and my friends getting together and naming former Padres from the mid-2000s and going, hey, you remember Kyle Blanks? Yeah, you remember Wiltshire. Yeah, Vennable.
It's literally like,

oh, well, you got to go to the Sagrada de Familia. They have it.

It's not known for its art, but if you go into the back in the hallway on the right, there'll be a painting by DeSans or everybody like, oh, I got that saved on my computer. You know, and it's like,

it was so cool. It was a very eclectic group for your wedding, and it was so much fun.
Yeah. Your wedding was a really good time.

We got to see Gus and Esther for a little while, and that was really nice. There was something funny that happened at your wedding.
I feel like I barely saw you at the wedding.

I was bummed about that, too. You were busy.

Trust me, I know what it's like.

You had other things going on. Yeah.

Right before your ceremony, you know, you were up

at the altar, whatever, and people are getting ready.

There was a seating for us. Eric was sitting to my right.

To my left was Jack, but there was an empty chair. Jack wasn't there.
Can I ask you guys a question before you tell the story? How was the seating? I put hours and hours.

Emily and I both put hours and hours of like trying to fit you guys where you would be have people to talk to and it wouldn't be awkward. Okay.
Yeah.

It was really good. We had to make some concessions here and there, but I was most worried that you guys would be sitting next to people you weren't comfortable.
Totally great. Okay.
All good.

So this is, this is, you know, right before the ceremony itself. And like I said, to my left, there's an empty chair where Jack's supposed to be seated.

Then there was someone on the other side and then your mother

to the left as well. And then, you know, Eric and I are talking, just shooting the shit.

And then Jack comes up and he like stands right in front of me and like leans down and looks at me and goes, I'm supposed to tell Jackie to go stand over there.

And I'm just like nodding at him, nodding. And I point and I go, She's right there.

And he goes, Oh, I was like, Yeah, it's Jeff's mom. That's who you're looking for.
She's right here. He goes, Oh, okay.
He turns around. He's like, You're supposed to go stand over there.

I was like, I was like, This weird thing where I was looking at him, like, Why is he telling me this? Like, oh, he doesn't know who that is.

Like,

I was just like, Yeah, why are you telling me? Jeff Shane, go over there, go tell her.

Oh, man. It was fun.
It was a, It was a good wedding, and you had tattoos. And

oh, yeah, we had a tattoo artist. Yeah, everybody's tattoos fell out.
Really? Not everybody, but a lot of them.

I think Michael got one. I think it fell out.

I think a lot of people. I think it just happens.
Millie's is good.

Some were good. Some were not.
That's the way it goes.

Getting a tattoo at a wedding.

We are at once over coffee. We're not talking about once over coffee yet.
We're not talking about the place. No.
We are talking about the cinnamon roll because you guys all insisted on getting

I think they look medium, but I'm glad you guys are excited about it. Oh, no, it's something the bottom of mine was covered in like wet honey, and it's so like, oh, it's so fresh.

So, here's what happened. So fresh.
So, here's what happened. So good.

You're going up to order the coffee, and then Gus, Gus and Jeff have decided that when there are snacks and treats, sometimes there's a snack and treat. Only if they look good.

I'm always hungry, and they didn't have tacos. Yeah, so

we at the bottom, there are these.

It's like a bakery case.

Yeah, let me let me me take a picture because it's it's kind of a cinnamon roll if it's totally cinnamon roll if it was like a like a dry cinnamon roll and they sprinkled cinnamon and sugar on it it's like when i think of a cinnamon roll it's got icing and it's an ooe gooey so soft and chewy sort of treat yeah pillsbury yeah yeah yeah

this is this is uh like if somebody went like well this is classically what a cinnamon roll is yeah exactly um

you guys both saw it you're both very excited you're like oh i'm gonna get one i'm gonna get one too and then we ordered them and then i'm like oh this thing that's like on the top and they're saran wrapped and i'm like but they're down what's the difference you're like is that the same yeah and she said uh oh the ones up here from like yesterday so they're at like a discount

they're half price uh-huh and then gus went oh yeah we'll just get two of those and jeff went he can have one of those i'm getting one from the bottom it's so good it's still good it's just from yesterday come on that's wasteful half price i'm looking i'm concerned about the budget here i don't want today's fucking cinnamon uh i don't want today's to turn into tomorrow's i'm trying to cut it off while it's still fresh so there's that honey so good.

Guys, you guys both got a cinnamon roll. And again, we're not talking the coffee yet or necessarily the spot, but outside of the spot, you guys both got a little snack.
We're sitting by this river.

This is

air quotes. What is this? Where is this a little stream? This is a spot that I found yesterday, and I went, oh, we'll just do that.
I want to go south of the river and find something.

And what is like, where are you? It's probably like fucking Boulden Creek and it wines. It probably is.
I'm just verifying that.

So is this like a spot you guys are not once over, but like, is this a spot you guys are like familiar with? It is Bowling Creek. We were

south first or this place?

Like, not this spot in particular, but like this stretch.

This is a great stretch. It's been a while since I've spent a lot of time here, but we have, you know, we used to come down here every so often.

There used to be a great Mexican bakery across the street down a little bit that was open for many years. It just closed, I think, last year.

That was like the best place in town to get Mexican pastries. A lot of good Mexican foods

used to be be up and down here they've largely been pushed out i would say this is an area we i hung out with a ton earlier in awesome like there used to be some some cool clothing stores and some like i don't know just some like curiosity shops and stuff south first is it's an awesome location it it it's always been an awesome location it's basically one of those situations where i hung out here when all the stores were just different things yeah and all the same stores are there they're just different things now but uh yeah it's lovely i was actually just reading we got our blade tattoos around the corner from here we did that tattoo parlor is no gone.

Incredible Inc.

That tattoo parlor is now. On Mary, I think.

On Mary, yeah. South First of Mary.
And that place is a soup peddler now. Oh, is it? Yeah, or it's next to a soup peddler.

You think if you walk in with your blade tattoos, you'd be like, I got a tattoo here. Can I get some soup? Yeah, give me some.
Hit me up. No, the lady who owns it.

Give me some moligatani.

The lady who owned that tattoo parlor, without getting into specifics or names, the lady who owned that tattoo parlor, Gus and I saw her during the pandemic and she was homeless. Oh, no way.
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Oh, that's crazy.
We actually reached out to some people that we knew who knew her and let them, it was a, it was like a mental health thing.

And like we, we tried to, we tried to, you, you, uh, she screamed in my car once. Oh, really? I showed you a video of it.
Yeah. Oh, no shit, really? Yeah.
Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. Oh, that's crazy.

So you guys got blade tattoos around the corner from here. And then you used to come down here all the time, but now everything's done and different.
Which don't live south of the river.

Yeah, that's the big thing. We were driving here.
You know, we took the riverside exit to get over here.

And I made a comment while we were driving, like, there was a time for several years where, like, that was was the exit I would take every day to go home. Yeah.

Probably six years. Yeah.
And it's like, I would just always sit at that light. And we've talked many times about how the river cuts the city in half.

And just like once you move to one side, you typically stay there just because crossing it's such a pain in the ass. I was reading on Reddit today, kind of in this area.

Did you know that there's a series of trails behind like where Peter Pan Mini Golf, like at the bottom of it, there's trails that start there that go all the way down, like between

Lamar and whatever's on the other side of that, where like uh

uh

there's a trek bicycle store there we used to go to some of the pawn shops there back when we were in the in the troubles and uh

apparently there's like a whole trail system that you can mountain bike and stuff back there but it's super not safe because it's there's like a bunch of aggressive uh violent homeless camps there and i guess the city and the neighborhood just had like a cleanup project and anyway i was reading about it and i was fascinated because i've lived in austin for a billion years and i never knew there were trails back back there.

I never knew that was a place you could hike and ride bikes and stuff. Do they go all the way down to like St.
Edwards? Because I feel like they're... I think they must.

I felt like I had heard before that there was some backup over there. I've been to the St.
Edwards Trails before. I walked around there last year, and it's really pretty and really nice.

The grackles have a record. Yeah, it may connect, but I just, it's weird when you find out there's like a whole trail system.
Like it's behind a restaurant you used to go to. Yeah.
You had no idea.

It's like... hidden in plain sight.
Like you just have to like move some tree branches aside and it's like a lost civilization.

Yeah, I guess the trailhead is literally where we filmed hardcore mini golf. Oh, you just never knew.
Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

Uh, it makes sense that there would be stuff back there, but you know, if people don't know, then that's what happens, right? Like, it just becomes unused.

I read that it looks like Narnia back there, is what people said. Let's walk there right now

after this podcast. Let's go.

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Another thing I wanted to

talk about last episode, but I totally forgot because we got distracted,

was i've i'm trying to

get rid of my car uh i want to trade it in sell it just i don't want it anymore uh because elon musk and uh i'm looking at getting a different car but i don't want to have like a car payment so i'm trying to like see what i can get for my car and then try to trade it for another car and not owe anyone anything right sure

uh so I went down the other week. I went down, my wife and I went down to

Capital Chevrolet.

So I was like, oh, you know, I'm going gonna look at Chevy Bolt right I've talked about that car before is it the bolt or the volt they have both I was looking at the bolt what's the difference the volt is gas electric the bolt is all electric okay um so I went down I was like I'm gonna look at some of these and

I forgot what a misery going into a car dealership is

it is a fucking nightmare like we walked in and well first of all we were walking up to the building and there's like dudes loitering around the front like and I guess it's like oh it's salespeople.

They're just like looking for people to pick off as they walk in. You know, we got inner,

we got intercepted. Dude was fine.
Like, I got nothing against the guy, right? He's doing his job. And he was actually probably the most pleasant part of the entire experience, honestly.

But, you know, we tell him you want to see a bolt, whatever. He's like, oh, you know, come in, you know, sit down on my desk.
I'm going to go, you know, get the key. The lot's huge.

He's like, I'm going to go find the car and I'll bring one around. They had a bunch, actually.

So we sit down. Like, we go into the building, and there's like music blasting on a giant Bluetooth speaker near the front entrance.
And it's bad enough, right?

It's like really loud, kind of electronic, very bassy music, which is awful enough. But for like a Saturday morning.
Yeah.

Who whoever was running the music from their phone, like I guess this was a Bluetooth speaker because it kept losing Bluetooth connection to whoever's phone.

Right. And it would like pop in and out.
So like the music would stop for a second and then kick back in and then like stop. Like every minute it would probably cut out three three or four times.

And it was just like, this is hell. This is a nightmare.
And they seem oblivious to it. They don't care.
Like, I think they just need the noise so you can't hear other people talking. Yeah.
Right.

It's just, and, and also, it just like overpowers your mind. It overpowers like your, your, your thinking.
I think so. Like, it just.
This is how Scientology happens.

It dulls out your like higher brain functions. Like you're just unable to think.

And, you know, we go back and forth and the uh, you know, they're like, I'm like, how much money can I get for my car?

How much money is this car all of this and like they run the numbers like yeah you know you can walk out here today with uh that chevy bolt over there uh for only twenty five thousand dollars and i'm like how the fuck am i gonna give you a three-year-old electric car and you're gonna say i still owe twenty five thousand dollars on that car

and uh they're like yeah yeah you know we ran the numbers and your car uh your car's you know only worth

I think they said it was like $26,000. And like, I looked at my phone, like, Blue Books for $32,000 trade-in.

Like, yeah, yeah, I don't know. They ran the number.
That's what it says. Tesla makes a lot of cars now.
The cars have gotten cheaper. Like, yeah, but not this car.
Not this car.

Like, you realize that different cars have different options. You're a car salesperson, right? Different cars have different channels.
You know what packages are. Yeah, this one is worth $32,000.

That's what the internet says. Like, yeah, I don't know.
27

points, I'm like, all right, fine. We're out of here.
Start walking out. And then he's like, well, you know,

in an ideal world,

what kind of deal would you make? What would make you happy?

And I said, my ideal world, I would trade you my car and you would give me that car and we would be done and that would be it he goes oh yeah you know we can't do that like oh yeah i mean obviously not so we're leaving and then like another guy comes like the manager comes over he's like oh you know what kind he gives the same spiel what kind of deal can we make today to you know to get you in that car i'm like yeah well and i tell i say the same thing i told the other guy like if we trade and that's it we're done he goes yeah but you know we can't do that i'm like yeah and he goes well what if you know what if you only paid a dollar for that chevy bolt and i said oh Yeah, I would absolutely do that because then if I don't like the car, I'm just going to sell it for a profit.

It's like, are we just making stuff up now? You're like, like, I have a dollar in my pocket. Is that what we're doing? Yeah.
It's like, are we just making stuff up now?

And it was like, and it's like, I feel like that kind of broke his brain. Like, he didn't know how to respond.
Like, he just kind of froze. Like, yeah.
I mean, okay, I'm leaving now.

It was just like the most awkward encounters.

If anything, it's gotten worse. I similarly, at the exact same time, have been looking for a used car for Millie.
Okay. Get her first car.
And I bought one last week or two weeks ago.

So we might have run into each other, we might have, except I wasn't at that dealer.

But

I have, I got, I've always hated the process of buying a car. It's so unfun.
It's awful. It's so like, especially, you can go in there and be like, listen, I'm going to buy this car in cash right now.

Just let, I just want to be out of here in 45 minutes. And they'll go, no problem.
You can get you out of here in six hours.

Like, what are you typing? I'm giving you all the money for the car right now. Just give me the car and I'll come back and pick the fucking plates up in three weeks, right?

And so to the point where I was getting pretty frustrated. Used cars are real fucking expensive right now for what you get.
And my brain got a little broke by that.

I was thinking pre-pandemic where you could buy a used car with less than 100,000 miles for less than $12,000. Go talk to Capital Chevy.
They'll buy a used car super cheap from you. And

so I

like I was trying to get her a Subaru. They're very safe cars.
And I just got so annoyed with the Subaru people. Oh, really? I was like, I'm just not going to buy a car from them.

And I got turned off by somebody. I ended up going to a Honda dealership and they were

Honda. They were the least annoying.
And so I didn't get her a Honda. I had a, they had a different car on the lot that I got, used car that I got her before.

Which was the least annoying Honda dealership? Howdy Honda up there. It's up there by like Steck, I think.
Oh, okay.

There's a Lowe's up there. Yeah.
Kind of that area. And it's still the same thing, like terrible music.
I still was there for two hours, even though I was buying the car outright.

But the kid was really nice, and the finance guy was really nice.

And they weren't high pressure, and I appreciated that but yeah i was on like my fifth dealership at that point and i was just at a point where like i'll buy a car from anybody who's not a dickhead yeah you know it's and it sucks it sucks that it takes four or five dealerships before you find a decent person i'm just i'm just doing it online now yeah i just like carvana and like all of the shit i just have like search filters set up so it emails me and like cars to go or everyone has a car that i like then i'm just gonna trade my car online and buy buy one online it's weird that we're all in the same boat my wife literally just did that oh really she just bought a car from carvana it was very easy she was a smart one she bought bought a car off of their service or whatever and then they're like oh we're gonna deliver it on like this saturday and then they're like actually sorry we're delivering it on like this following friday i found a guy who's gonna come later this week he's gonna do a 600 point inspection on the car too many points uh to check on a car that's a lot of points there's only 300 points on that car

um but i because i called uh me and gene johnson to see if uh to see if they were i'm i'm like hey that's the best shop in town i said hey if I bring this car in, do you guys do an inspection?

Because when you buy the car, you have seven days to check it and then either return it or you go, hey, I like this car. It's a great car.
I don't think anything's going to be fucked up on it.

14,000 miles. Everything's fine on the car.

But this guy's going to come and check it and everything. Gene Johnson, the guy.

If you live in Austin, Gene Johnson.

That is a place to go. So the guy's like, I don't do those inspections.
Go to this guy. He gave me a site.
He's like, go to this guy. This is the guy I tell everyone to go to.
That's the spot.

I said, okay, cool. Guys, kind of come and check it out or whatever.

It is the least,

I've only ever bought cars in parking lots for cash. That is the only way I've ever bought cars in my life.
It's the only way I've bought cars.

This was very impressive because I did not think that buying a car over the internet was a good idea.

It seems insane to me, but it arrived.

The thing I was really impressed with is that He brought the car. My wife checked it out.
Great, cool.

He was leaving, and then she started getting texts and emails that said, Hey, the report for your windshield breakage has been entered.

Hey, this auto light glass, whatever is going to come repair on this day. And she's like, What the fuck is going on? Apparently, on the drive over, a rocket kicked up and broken the windshield.

And the guy who dropped off the car put all of the stuff in. It's no cost to her because it's still their car or whatever.
And it's getting replaced later this week.

That's the big thing I worried about. What is the damage in transportation? And they took care of it and everything.

She didn't even see the chip and then they took care of it and they're coming like later this week to do it. I would have bought a car from Carvana.

Are they the ones with the vending machine? Yeah. I really want to do the vending machine, but

it just like everything was too expensive for what I was buying. I mean, the problem is it.
Probably because of quality control.

You're getting free windshields.

It is expensive to buy a used car. It's not a bad car.
It's just not the service for a kid's first car. Exactly.
Yeah, my fear. Where we're at, totally fine.

My fear, like, I've bought many cars with cash at parking lots, like you're talking about. I feel like people, scams have gotten so complicated nowadays that I would get ripped off.
I 100% agree.

In 2008, it felt like, oh, this is fine. I found it on Craigslist and everything's fine here.
Now I feel like I'm about to get fleeced. Every time, yeah.
In a way that I don't. Everything.

Have you seen the Facebook marketplace stuff where it is cars that people are selling for like $4,500,

no title,

key fob missing and all this stuff. And people are like, I got you cash.
And it's like,

you want a key a real cheap? What the fuck?

It's pretty cool. That's great.
New dark club, Facebook. That's awesome.

Yeah, years ago, the first time I ever bought a car to dealership was my Prius back in 2010. Before that, I'd always done like parking lot deals like you're talking about.

And I'd always heard what you were talking about, Jeff, like it's going to take forever and you're going to be trapped there. So I thought I was being smart when I bought that Prius.

I was like, I'm going to show up 30 minutes before closing. I know they've got the car I want.
I'm just going to be like, that's the first time. They stayed at midnight.
Yeah, they stayed.

I think we did not leave till close to midnight. I was like, how the fuck?

They knew. They were ready.
Yeah. Like, they close at six or seven or whatever.

They're going to stay. They're ready.
They're ready for it. And you just want to be like, all right, the car's $9,000.
Here's $9,000. Now you give me the keys.
And I leave and we're done.

And they're like, well, not so fast.

This guy needs to clang on a computer for about 45 minutes. He's going to need to take three breaks.

He's going to need to inexplicably walk to the back for a while and then come back and look confused and then clang around on the computer a little bit more. And then we'll let you go.
Yeah. Misery.

It's kind of like getting a tattoo where your tattoo artist just starts going and then stops and goes, I got to smoke a cigarette. And you go, is this weird? This should only take.

Dude, this should be a 90-minute process.

Four hours. Cigarettes are why I have half, why I don't have more tattoos.
I would have twice the amount of tattoos as I have if I didn't go to a tattoo parlor.

You know, you make an appointment, you already know what you're going to get done. You've already worked it out in the email months in advance.

And you walk in and you go, all right, I'm here at 10 a.m. I'm here at 9.55.
Let's go. And they're like, all right, cool.
10. All right, I'm going to go out for a smoke break.
Yep. I'll come back in.

And they go out for a smoke break. And I'm not.
Singling out any single tattoo artist. This is every tattoo artist.
This is every tattoo artist.

And they go, okay, and they set up their station a little bit and they put, you know, they fucking pour the ink and they get everything going, test the gun.

They go, all right, I'm going to go get a smoke break real fast fast, and then I'll come back in. And they're gone for 20 minutes.

And then they come back in and they have to have a conversation with somebody else. And then that person goes out for a smoke break and they follow them out.
And you're like, are they smoking again?

Or I can't tell. And they come back in and they tattoo you for 30 minutes and they go, I'll be right back.
And they have another smoke break. Seven cigarettes get smoked for every tattoo.

The thing that gets me is when you're getting work done and someone else is

another tattoo artist just comes over and sits and watches, but doesn't say a word. They don't make conversation they're just having a look and eating an apple with a knife and yeah you're like what

the fuck is this stop stop this now so bizarre

um we're we're getting on towards like yeah 40-ish minutes so i do want to talk about once over um never been here before found it on a whim just wanted to come south of the river uh

what did you guys think of the coffee it is uh first off once over has been i recognize this sign i don't recognize their current branding branding, so it's been around for a while, I think.

It's in a section of South First that is like the coffee corridor. There's like nine.
That might be the highest concentration of coffee shops in Austin right here, it feels like.

I would give it like an eight. Yeah, I really enjoyed my iced coffee.
I love the branding even more. The branding's cool.

I felt like initially every other sip I was taking to the coffee tasted entirely different. Whoa.
Like, at first, I was like, oh, this is awesome. Then it was like, oh, no, this is terrible.

It was like, no, wait, it's really good. No, wait, it's not.
You're like kombucha girl. Yeah.

Now that it's settled,

it's kind of watery.

I felt like it's not the right ratio of

coffee to water for Nameracano.

It's a little weak now that I'm on the back half. So I'm going to go lower than eight.

I think it's about on par with Dog Day, in my opinion. I don't want to give it like a six point six.

Yeah, yeah. This is definitely better than Dog Day.
I think that this, it's a little watery. I think you were right.
I think it's probably just been sitting for a little while.

I don't have anything wrong with it.

I'd probably give this like seven and a half for an eight because it is

a decent cup. Like, if I lived around here, I think I would come here every once in a while.
It's a B.

I think it's a B. I think it's still a B.
If I lived around the corner, this is great. I love sitting out here with the Bowling Creek right here.

This is really cool, pictures. It's cold.
It's cold-ish, but it's fine with a hot cup of coffee sitting out here, a day-old

cinnamon roll. Yeah.

I will say this about this place. We walked in the front door and we immediately walked into Austin in 2006.
Yeah.

like it is, it is, I don't know what it is, but this place feels like walking back in time in a, in a good way, right? Yeah, absolutely.

And the staff was all like leading off of that, the staff was all like super friendly, awesome, it was like super cool.

Like, you know, we were just standing around waiting, and they're like, oh, we'll be right with you. Like, all right, yeah, I mean, it's fine, I know you're busy.

This looks like every place Gus and I ate Tex-Mex for 15 years, this back porch. Like, half the restaurants we ate at, half the bars we went to.

This is Austin in the early 2000s, just like next to a craggy little creek that's more rocks than creek with probably like 40,000 mosquitoes just out of sight.

Yeah, it's like the kind of creek that only exists to filter or to siphon away flood water. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like when it rains, I'm sure it fills up.

What are the neighborhoods around here? Gorgeous. I mean, like Monroe Heights.
The house that we can see right here is like...

The backyard and everything is right up against it. And it's like, damn, man, this is like really cool.
It's really nice. It's a really nice area.
Very, very nice area. Yeah.
Really nice.

If you go that way, you're getting close to Zilker Park. It's pointing west.
And it gets, yeah, I'm sorry. And it gets going, it's really fucking fancy right over there.

On the other side of Zilker Park, or on the other side of Lamar here is an area called

Barton Hills, which is fucking stupid. Yeah.

Stupid expensive. Stupid expensive, yeah.
The thing that Once Over says on their site is that they share a lot with what they said are the best tacos in town at Primo's. Oh, now you tell us.

I didn't know. I looked it up in the middle of this recording.

I went, like, I was looking to see how long it had been here. And then it said, like, hey, we share this a lot with Primo's next door.
And I went, oh, okay.

Primo means cousin in Spanish. Yes.
Little, that's your Spanish lesson for the day. I already knew that.

Primo means prime in American English.

Maybe we don't have time for this, but

I wanted to follow up with something I said like a month ago.

I finally went and got my driver's license renewed.

Remember, I tried to go. How was it?

I had an appointment scheduled. Did you go up to the place off Cameron or whatever? No, I went to the one.

In my mind,

the place to go for your license in Austin is the place off of Lamar, close to Koenig by the Whataburger. Oh, the DPS office over there?

I think that's been the place for about 10 years.

I used to go when our office was downtown. Yeah, you used to go to the downtown office? No, the one by the Capital that no one knew about.

That's been gone for a while. That's been gone.

Yeah, so I went back to the one over the dps and you know like we like i mentioned last time i didn't have my birth certificate like for some reason uh they they wanted that and so they made me a new appointment a month later it was uh december 8th which was this past friday they made me an appointment at 10 40 a.m and i thought i'm a busy man i want to try to get this out of the way the the the check-in says you can check in 30 minutes early like i'm gonna check in early i'm gonna get this done that way i can go get on with my day so i show up at 10 10 check in and uh prints me out a number and i'm a 71.

And I'm like, okay, cool. I look up at the board.
They're at A41. Okay, 30.
It's not terrible. It's a big building.
Not great. Not great, but not terrible.
So I go and I sit down.

10.40 rolls around. And this is that place over at Lamar? Yeah.
Okay. 11 o'clock rolls around.
11.30 rolls around.

Noon rolls around.

Finally, at 12.10, they call me up an hour and a half past my time. I've been there for two hours.
I showed up early. That's my fault.
Right. But an hour and a half past my time, they're like A71.

I'm like, finally. I go up there and, you know, they've got like the camera to take your picture and everything.
And I sit down. The woman is

very guarded. I could tell, like, she's probably dealt with a lot of angry people.
Yeah. And I'm angry, but I don't want to be angry at her.
Right. She's doing her job.
Right. It's not her fault.

And I'm trying to like kind of like make jokes and break the ice. And she's not having any of it.

And

the camera that I'm sitting next to that you're supposed to take your photo with, it's like

you can hear the fan going in it. it it sounds like it's dying like a

and i'm like

is that a you got a refrigerator in your desk here or is that the the camera i'm like that that finally broke the ice she liked that okay she was like oh she's like yeah you know she's like i always feel like it's my grandmother's refrigerator old refrigerator it sounded like that right it's like yes finally exactly like

got it um but it took so fucking long like i showed up early i had my paperwork all done had my passport with me um they changed passports by the way i had to get a new passport they're like it was different from my old one.

Really? They've got like a hard plastic page in them now with your photo. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. My old one didn't have that.

How old is your passport? My old one was from

20, yeah, 2013.

I got a new one in like 2021. That's when they changed them, 2021, I think.
Anyway, finally got it. It was a huge pain in the ass.

And the whole time I'm sitting there, like, I fucking hate this state.

I fucking, you cannot get a driver's license in this goddamn city because the state doesn't know how to fucking run a driver's license office. Anyway, that's the update.

I went to the one on Cameron and I picked a number without an appointment, and I was in and out in 30 minutes. Remind me when we get to my car right now.

Remind me to show you my driver's license photo. Oh, cool.
Because it is the worst photo ever because the camera was low. Yeah.
So I had to look down and I've got like all these neck rolls.

She showed it to me and I was like, no, perfect. Print it.
Let's do this. Is your driver's license in color?

So I have the temporary one right now. Okay.
So like the black and white. She said I'll get my permanent one in two weeks.
My wife's is in color. I think she got hers like more recently.

I got mine a couple of years ago and it's black and white. Yeah, mine's black and white.

Yeah, on my license. I I think that's the new style.
No, isn't it? Maybe she got

a color. That doesn't.

I will say that's a photo that does not look like the new style, Jeff.

Oh, wow. Okay, so maybe, maybe black and white is the new thing.
Huh? I think so. I take the photo.

Every time I have to take a driver's license photo, it becomes a battle between me and the person on the other end where they go, not acceptable. And I go, well, let's try again.

They go, not acceptable. And I go, I'm going to be here all day.

Eventually, you're going to have to say yes to one of these photos. That's the one that they get said yes to.

I think it's interesting because I just flew to New York for the weekend.

You don't have to show your ticket anymore. You just show this ID because it's got the little star on it.

It depends on

TSA Pre. If you're TSA Pre.
Okay. And it depends on the airport.
Not every airport does that.

I've done that with my old license, which does not have that star at some airports. It works in Austin and JFK.
Yep. I was just like, oh, I don't have to show anything.

No, you go and you give them the license. You don't have to show anything else.
It's so inconsistent, though. Yes, it is.

Well, it's like taking off your shoes and taking your laptop out and everything. It's just inconsistent.
Yeah. Wow, shocking.

It's weird.

Government things are run medium. When I flew back from Singapore a couple months ago, we show up to the Singapore airport, flying Singapore to San Francisco, San Francisco to Austin.

Show up to the Singapore airport and my wife and I get there and

we check in. We got a bag to check.
So we go up to the counter, check our bag. you know, walk up, you know, we leave, go like, they're like, go that direction.
We walk over there.

There's like a dude who like looks at our passport, stamps us, we're leaving the country. We walk over to our gates and Esther turns to me and goes, You realize we didn't go through security?

And I was like,

You're right. We just showed that dude our passport, and we didn't go through like a metal detector.
No one asked to take our shoes off or anything. I was like, that is really weird.

And then we get to our gate, and there's a metal detector at the gate. It's like the last, you scan your boarding pass to get on the plane, and then they like scan you at that point.

Like the security was at that, at the last possible moment getting on the plane. I saw everything leading up to there.

I guess you have to show your passport and you have to show like a ticket to prove that you can be there, but security's like, what's at the last second?

I guess they don't want to give you like 45 minutes to an hour and a half free in the airport to figure out how to make a bomb or something.

It's bizarre. How strange.
But that's how it felt like flying back from Japan and stuff too. There's like signs that say like, don't take off your shoes.
And you're like, oh, okay, cool. Thank you.

One time, I don't know if you were on this trip or not. We flew domestically in Australia.
I believe it was a flight from Melbourne to Adelaide. Or no, no, it's from Adelaide to Melbourne.

I wasn't there. I don't know.
And

we went through, we show up to security, and there was no one there. It was like honor system.

It was like you put your stuff on the conveyor belt, you walk through the metal detector, you pick your stuff back up, and then you keep going. Like, it was just totally unmanned.

There was no one there. Was that in Melbourne or Adelaide? It was in Adelaide.
Wow.

So weird.

We're nearing the end of the episode. Okay.
I do want to get some anarchy. I know.
I'm very sorry. But don't worry.
I think we have to pre-record one and we got to do. I needed to pee this.

We're not a burger, man. I'm just going to use it.
Yeah, we're doing burgers on Wednesday, baby. Yeah, hell yeah.
We just got to figure out when and all that.

Hey, so anarchy questions, you guys can send us questions if you want at animal podcast on Twitter or Instagram and r slash animal podcast, which is a subreddit we don't run.

Here's one from Winchester Ghost.

Do you ever dream about retiring and opening a record or coffee shop? Yeah. Which one? Both?

Neither specifically.

I used to dream about retiring and opening a bookstore.

I have a friend that just did that up in upstate New York, and and he's having a fucking blast doing it, and I'm having a blast living vicariously through him and not wanting to go through the amount of work I'm watching him go through, you know?

Which, by the way, if you get a chance, I think it's C.S. Miller Bookshop up in Norwich, New York.
Shout out to Jason.

Frequent him. He probably needs the, he could use the business.

He'd opened a bookstore in 2023.

I definitely dream about retiring. I'll tell you what I was dreaming about the other day, if I'm being totally honest with you.
I was on my bike.

I was doing my bike around Town Lake, and there was a City of Austin parks dude driving around in a golf cart. And I followed behind him for a while.
He just drives up to a trash can.

He takes the lid off. He just grabs the bag, slings it into the back of the golf cart.
drops another trash bag in, puts the lid on, and he just keeps driving.

And I thought, that is the best job on earth. That dude is out in the parks.
Every day, he probably goes to a different park. He's like, I got to go.
Wednesday's Mary Seabright Park.

Thursday's Ramsey Park. Friday, I'm down at Zilker.
I feel like we've seen these guys before in some of our episodes. Like when we were

Saturday's Northwest Park. Yeah.
And I just thought, like, this guy's outside all the time. He's by himself.
Nobody's fucking with him. He's got AirPods in.
So he's just listening to podcasts.

He's driving a golf cart, which is, I would pay to drive a golf cart. You know,

it's so much, it just seems so fun. That's great two months out of the year.
Yep. What do you mean? Then you got to deal with like May to September, like we just did.

And it's just over 100 degrees every day, and you're out in that. Yeah, but I wouldn't have to be doing that here.
Oh, I see. Okay, I see.
Okay, yeah, that's much better.

There's a crucial piece that you left out of that. No, I just like, I just saw the job.
I like the job. I don't have to be in Austin.

Those jobs are everywhere. Much better.
Yeah. But I dream about that kind of stuff.
Like, man, like, like, I dream about cutting grass sometimes. I loved cutting grass.

I had a little yard cutting business when I was in high school, like everybody did. When I was in the army, and they would, like, they would do details.
I would always volunteer to cut the grass.

That's how I got. You had ulterior motives there.
Well, eventually, that's how I got the whole thing where I had to go to the hospital because I was huffing gas. Yeah.

I got busted huffing.

But I think about it all the time. Like, I do want to retire from this.
I clearly want to retire from this.

I don't know that I want to retire from podcasting, but I do, I would love to be done with work and then be able to work a job that I just find

personally fulfilling in some way. You know, like small tasks that are easy to accomplish in a job that you don't bring home with you.

I think that

would just be ideal. I could work, you know, I've joked about working, owning a laundromat, but I'm serious about that.
I think that would be fun.

I don't know. I would like to do something else and something that has nothing to do with entertainment.
You know, people would be like, isn't that the guy that used to do red versus blue?

Why is he bagging? Like, why does he work at a hardware store?

I would have the biggest grin on my face. There was

a viral social media video a year or two ago, and I'm going to get some of the details wrong. I apologize in advance, where someone found like

a former actor, I want to say he was from like another world or something, like working at Trader Joe's. Oh, Hot Bridges.
No, no, no. It was, it was, um,

he, they had put him in Always Sunny after that. Uh, he's, it's, I can see the guy's face.
What was he in? I don't remember, but Webster?

I remember thinking at the time, like, Like when I'm done and I retire, I'd work at a Trader Joe's.

I'd work at a Costco, like something where I'm just like putting shit on a shelf and then you go home and you don't do it. You don't worry about it.
Like that's it.

He was the guy who played Tiger Woods in the episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia where D, where he tried to get D to take pictures of her feet for him.

And he is from the sitcom. Maybe Cosby Show, something like that.
Maybe. Yeah, I can't remember the guy's name, Michael, maybe.
But anyway. And he was like, yeah, I got to make a living.

I have family to feed. Of course, I'm going to, like, here I am working.
Fuck you, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and I thought people

shaming him for working at a grocery store and making money money to support his family.

What an entitled bunch of assholes.

A bunch of opinions online. That's not fucking crazy.
Similarly, I don't know specifically what I'd want to do, but something that you don't take home with you.

Definitely something out of the limelight. I want to disappear.
Yeah. You and I both want to disappear so badly.
Yeah. I love that.
Let me ask you this, because this is another question.

This is from an XL Hockey fan.

In the past, on the RT podcast, Gus mentioned that Esther was against him becoming a pilot. How does she feel now? And is it something you're going to keep pursuing?

Well, I mean, she definitely embraced it that's why i started i think you know the pandemic kind of

changed her opinion not you know not only her changed a lot of people's perspective on life right it's like if there's something you like and something you enjoy you should do it this is the only chance you got and i think you know we're in the middle of that uh you know before the you know well before i started training and she was like you know what you know when the vaccines come out and you know we're closer to the other side of this you should absolutely do it this is the only life you have and i appreciate that so much i'm so thankful to her well i think for finally getting on board She also saw how serious you were about it and how safe you've been about it.

Yeah. And

it's been great.

I can't imagine ever doing that as a career. I love it.
I would love to find a way to have a second career doing that. But in order to become like

a serious pilot, it's very complicated. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money to get to that point.
That's for a commercial pilot, right? Like what if you were one of the guy who flies banners?

Yeah, I mean, technically, that's a commercial pilot. Sure, but it seems like it's on an easier level to achieve, probably.
That is very dangerous. Really? Flying banners?

Yeah, that is incredibly dangerous. Really? Uh-huh.
Because, like, a windy day or something? It's just,

it's, it's,

it's a lot, right? I mean, you're, you're pulling that banner. You're essentially in slow flight.
You got your flaps down. You're low to the ground.

If something goes wrong, you don't have a lot of altitude to trade off. You're already slow.
You're low and slow the entire time, which is like you do not want to be. That's why.

Landing and takeoffs are so dangerous typically. If you're high

and or fast, you you can, like, you have this energy you can play with and trade with. When you're towing a banner, you're low, slow, with a ton of drag on you.

If something goes wrong, man, that is not a good place to be. Can you, is there like a eject banner button? Yeah, you can, I mean, that's how you have to get rid of it, right? Yeah.

You can drop it, but

you're still in a bad place at that point.

I think about you every time I see those, and I see them all the time. I always stare at them.
I'm always really curious. I was curious the other day.

I was looking up to see how much it would cost to get a banner. I was like, I should get a banner.
I should pay someone to fly a banner. How much is it?

I don't remember. I I think I found a place out of Sandmarkers that would do it.
I have to look it up again.

I was a,

I've been thinking a lot about how it's 2023, right? It's almost 2024.

And when I was a kid, what I thought the 2020s would look like. And I think the biggest surprise to me in my adult life has been that we don't have flying cars, right?

It just seems like something we would have. And then it struck me the other day, we absolutely have flying cars, and we've had them for a very long time.
They're called helicopters.

And then I got me thinking, like, why aren't helicopters more prevalent? Why don't you see them all over the place? The skies are empty. It's a much faster way to get from point A to point B.

I understand it's far more complicated, but people are clearly able to, Bill Burr can do it, for Christ's sakes.

And then I went to New York City and I looked up and I went, oh, I guess we are in the future.

There are like Uber helicopters in New York.

And I just, because we stayed by the Brooklyn Bridge, like right by the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo, and the sky at 7 p.m., I could probably see 25 helicopters.

Just all, it looked like a thousand Logan Roys descending on New York City, right? And I was like, oh, fuck, we are here in certain places.

And I felt very excited about humanity briefly in that moment. I almost had to hire one, like one of those, like a helicopter ride share the last time I was in New York years ago.

Because like I was stuck. I had given a presentation at

30 Rockefeller Center. And it was like, man, my flight was out of Newark, and I had to leave at 5 p.m.
And it was like on a Friday. I was like, fuck.

I was in the car heading to Newark, and I was like, looking at my phone, like, do I need to tell this guy to drop me off at a heliport instead? Like, am I going to miss my flight?

Because if I missed it, it was like, then I'm spending another night in New York. Like, what's the trade-off?

And then luckily, you know, the driver was able to find a way to get me to the airport in time to make my flight. But it was fucking close.

We got to do a helicopter episode. I don't think my wife would let me go in a helicopter.

They're expensive to maintain and expensive to fly. And dangerous to fly as a result.
Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

But it is. It's a flying car.
We have flying car technology. We've had it for a long time.
That's what's prohibitive. People say, oh, a flying car, I would use one.

Essentially, then you're just... People have to become pilots at that point.
I mean, I just don't trust people driving regular cars. Right.

There was a period in time when

nobody in the world knew how to drive a car, and then we all managed to get there. Yeah, but look at where we're at.

But it's like if you have a problem or you don't know what's going on, you pull over and stop. When you're in the air, you can't stop.
When we get to the roundabout. You can stop.
You just fall fast.

When we get to the roundabout, again, next time I'm with you and we're in the roundabout on 51st, I'm just going to be like, yeah, man, so you want these people just driving helicopters?

You want to fly in next to you? I know.

I get personally, I get very frustrated in the roundabout. It's like, like,

you're nuts.

Man,

I would love to take a helicopter. I think that'd be fun.
I'm just disappointed in us as a society that we don't use them more. They're expensive.
I think it's just really inefficient. I guess.

It just feels like we could solve that. We could solve the cost.
Who's we? Society. This guy's talking about batteries earlier in the car and hooks.
Now it's helicopters.

Battery-powered helicopters.

Yeah, probably. Make them smaller.
Oh, those exist.

I just read. I just read

they're launching autonomous helicopters. That is something I would never trust.
I just, you just unlocked a memory. I just read that on the plane.

I think I saw that United Airlines is investing in some of that technology, like to get people around to and from the airport and congested cities like New York.

I think it's one of your test beds that they were considering. Crazy.
Well, that was an episode I ended up. What a wild episode.
We were all over the place.

That's fun.

Next week, I think we're going to do a burger, which means we're going to record Wednesday.

We're pre-recording some episodes for

the holidays. So when you listen to this and you go, huh, that's a little outdated.
That's why. That's why.
So don't worry about it. But these are stories from 40 years ago.
They're all outdated.

So don't worry about it. Maybe something we should talk about next time.
I keep meaning to bring this up and I keep forgetting. I'll put it in the notes.

I don't know if you've been watching the new Nathan Fielder show on on Showtime the Curse. I've seen the first three episodes.

The Zellners directed like episodes two through four, two, three, and four. They didn't do episode one, and then I just watched this past Friday's episode.
They did not do that one either.

I read about it.

It's a 10-episode series. I think they did three of the episodes.
Okay, so then they're three. They did it two, three, four.
Yeah, they did three of the episodes.

They're the only people aside from whoever the director is.

Nathan Fielder, I think, directed last night's episode. Maybe the first one, so maybe he did the rest of the day.
Maybe he did the others, yeah.

I thought that was really cool. So happy for them.
Yeah, awesome. Good for them.
I love them so much. They work with so many people.
I'm such a fan of. I'm such a huge Nathan Fielder fan.

So many people that I'm a fan of get to work with them. That's how I look at it.
They're really talented. They are.
So cool. Well, very cool.

Hey, thanks for listening to Anma, R slash Anima podcast, the subreddit we don't run at Anima Podcast, Twitter, and Instagram to see all the pictures from this week's episode and every other episode.

But that'll do it for this one. That'll do, Eric.
That'll do. Thanks, man.
That'll do. Appreciate it.
Any final thoughts, parting words for the folks at home?

If you can get a day-old pastry for 50% off, you fucking buy that pastry. And then buy the full-price brand new one and discover how much better it is.

You probably can't go wrong either way, but pay the extra money and get the good one. Thanks for listening.
Bye.