A Bubblegum Winner

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Okay, this is episode 56.

Last episode was 55.

Just how numbers work.

We were at Iri Bean Coffee and Wine Bar.

We talked about Jeff's Arachnophobia story.

We talked about Freaks at the Call Center.

Is this the last episode of the season?

No, we have one more.

I think, yeah, we're one off.

Remember, I made a big stink about this.

We started at 50.

We're at 56.

Don't worry.

Okay, so we only mean interrupted.

We only have to do one supplemental piece because we did another one

eight weeks ago.

Right, that's right.

I forgot about that.

We talked about Eastside King being a porn store.

We talked about the break show and your new podcast, so all right.

Came out today, huh?

Yeah.

Talked about Eastside King.

Rave reviews.

I don't think there have been any reviews.

Zero so far.

No, Rave.

Rave.

Childhood, Cremories, and a Clown Murder card.

Raven review, please.

Raven review.

That was all last time.

We're at Des Nudo Coffee.

Have you received any email about the Detroit Tigers bubblegum card?

What was that?

Jeff's boss?

We saw.

What was that?

We solved that, right?

What's that?

Yeah, the bubblegum.

What was that?

Yeah, we said whoever was the first person to email Eric at jeff'sboss.com or something.

Oh, let me check.

I certainly don't have access to this fake email that he sent.

That's why I'm asking who you are.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

The thing we talked about.

If you don't know what he's talking about, it's on the break show, an episode that guests was on.

I went to Barrett's Coffee this weekend.

I forgot.

We had like

a pack of Detroit Tigers bubblegum from 1989 or something.

And then on this show last week, we said that we would send it to whoever was the first person to email, whatever the email address was that we gave.

Yeah.

And that episode, and we said most likely it'd be a first member because episode comes out for first members first.

And that episode came out, as this recording, that episode came out for first members yesterday.

I believe it's out for the general public now.

So I'm curious if anybody actually emailed.

I'm just trying to drink my...

I was wondering what was happening.

And then I talked into my coffee.

Great.

Did you get an email?

I'm looking right now.

Okay.

I had to find the login for it.

Yeah, that's why I was giving the background and vamping.

And he leaned forward and I thought he was.

Well, right, right, because he was trying to drink his microphone.

Yeah, but turns out I was just trying to.

Okay, he's still working on it.

So you went and had coffee.

So that's the one downside of doing this podcast.

You said you already went to Barrett's this morning.

Oh, I go to Barrett's once a month.

That's where I buy my beans.

Oh, I should have told you.

Barrett's is my favorite coffee shop in Austin because I think

they're the best roaster in Austin.

I have like a tub, like an air seal tub that I put, I fill up to the top with the Chiapas, and then I get two other bags of something different every time.

So like Chiapas is like my daily driver.

And then I rolled the dice on a Columbia and

a Costa Rica.

I don't remember what that was.

So you're big like Central America, South America coffee.

I agree.

I do like it.

I do like an Ethiopia.

It's just a different flavor, a different size of bean, a different kind of coffee.

But I was looking for something more, I don't want to say acidic, but a little bit more fruity.

This is all because Jeff hasn't looked this up, by the way.

No, no, I'm just listening to you guys talk.

I I don't look this up.

No, as I said, the problem I have is drinking coffee in the morning at home and then coming drinking coffee again easily.

Oh, this is my second cup, and it will be half of the amount of coffee that I have.

And I'm going to have more coffee this afternoon.

I'm going to get flying.

How is that a problem?

That seems like a feature.

Wait,

coffee makes me pee.

Throw a monster in there as well.

Because

if I don't limit, I think I had a conversation with Ashley Jenkins about this

like forever ago.

I have to limit myself to two cups of coffee a day, unless I'm doing like this show.

Otherwise, there will be no limit as to the amount of coffee that I drink in a day, and it will, I will get sick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I will be, I will become ill with the amount of coffee that I drink.

Yeah, but it'd be so much fun getting there.

Oh, it would be, it's just the best because this is the closest to stimulants that I can do.

Yeah, like legal.

Have you ever been?

My friend's a coffee roaster.

And

when he said when he worked at a coffee shop, he's like, it's the most legal high that you can be because you're grinding beans all day and just ingesting caffeine at a level that you're flying.

He doesn't like wear a mask.

No, he's like all day long.

Mask don't work, Gus.

You're just like buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.

You get off, you're like, man, I have a headache.

Yeah, we've got, we've got gum responses.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

My podcast has been out for a half hour now or so.

Okay.

And there were 37 emails about it.

So the first one

was just from Levy.

I don't want to say the full name.

Levi.

L-E-V-I.

Okay.

Levi.

I love my Levy brand jeans.

Levi.

And they just said gum.

There you go.

That's the very first one.

Way to go.

Way to go.

Congratulations to Levi.

I'll receive it.

Love your jeans.

And sorry to Derek and Intuition and Obob and Liam and Scott and Sam and Brandon and Audrey and Nick and Brad.

Yeah, yeah, all the people that missed it.

I like this.

I like.

I'll try to think of more ways to do this.

I like

interaction.

I like to send stuff in and like interacting?

I like reading people's names and having stuff.

We don't have anything like that on the show, really.

No, and I think this was really good.

We don't have anything like that at Roosteath, actually.

And I've been listening, you know, or I'm listening.

I've been watching old Howard Stern every day.

Like, I watched the Sal and Artie and Richard fight last night.

That's three parts, over two hours long.

How did Emily like it?

She liked it.

Really?

She's in it for the fights.

She loves to see the fights.

And that's a top five fight of all time.

But the thing that I think that was so brilliant about that show that has never been replicated is Howard's in the middle of a conversation, like this conversation, and then just very deftly,

he takes a call and you don't see it coming, and then he's like,

Gary from Massachusetts, what do you think?

And then Gary gets to pipe in and make fun of Artie

or Sal.

And it creates such an immersive moment.

And I'm not saying that we should ever take live calls, but I do feel like that's something that we could find a way to enhance or to take advantage of in some small way because it just like it adds so much more to the show.

It makes it feel so more fuller.

And I think it makes the audience feel like they're much they're so much more a part of it yeah you know the problem is that you know we're not live we would have to have like a predetermined thing ahead of time and of course how to figure it out but I I'm not I'm not saying we shouldn't do it I'm saying we need to like think creatively about a way to do it yeah and I'm not saying that Anma is the right podcast for it or that it makes sense for Anma in any way I just feel like it's something that Rooster Teeth as a company could take better advantage of yeah and I think that when we used to stream RTP live like part of that was like chat interaction like seeing what people were saying and like saying someone's name but it's different than taking a call.

It is different.

I mean, it's like

you read the chat lines, like you get one sentence from them instead of like a short back and forth.

Right, exactly.

And it's like you just like, I mean, it's not hard to text some, to

tweet and tweet.

What am I trying to say?

It's not hard to communicate via Twitch or whatever, Twitch chat.

Yeah.

But it's not the same thing.

It's not, it just doesn't feel.

It doesn't feel like it's elevating the audience to being a part of the show in the way that they do, which is just kind of, I don't know.

It feels like they're on the same level.

and I like that.

I agree.

We have the anarchy question.

We have like a small thing where people can participate, but I like what you're saying.

I like this bubblegum.

I also really like the old Detroit Tigers logo.

So

this is really a sweet spot for me.

You know what I mean?

It's more of just a like, just, you know, something that's been going on in the back of my head thinking about like, there's got to be some way we can richen that experience a little bit.

You know, let's embigon it.

Let's embigon it.

Yeah.

It's a perfectly cromulum idea.

We're at Des Nudo Coffee.

It means naked.

This place is fucking happening.

Yeah, this is why I've been putting it off.

People recommend it.

A little trailer park.

There's a Veracruz, there's Dominican.

Oh, there's two Veracruzes, a juice bar and a taco place.

There's a Kolachi place, too.

I think there's Crolachi.

Yeah, Crolachi right here.

This is one of those places in Austin, which is most places in Austin, but this is definitely one of those places in Austin where we come and sit down, and everybody here is three times as attractive as us.

And I feel like, oh, man, Austin got a lot prettier at some point.

That's everywhere in the world.

A lot more handsome yeah I think it's because our like clothes fit now clothes didn't used to fit you're right about that clothes didn't until like two I think probably like 2004 clothes didn't fit and then clothes started fitting so now everyone like oh I'm like a model it's like you just bought clothes I uh I started re-watching lost yeah from the beginning whoa and

it's it's crazy to see it now because I'm like oh you know obviously lost came out like in 2004 so I was like oh this looks dated as fuck like this the clothes are all weird.

It's like, oh, this is like early 2000s fashion they got going on here.

Like, enough time has passed, it'll never look right again.

Right.

It's like, oh, in my mind, this is still a fairly, it's an older show, but it's still fairly contemporary.

But I started watching it, and it's like, oh, no, this is old.

This is, this is, this is almost 20 years old now, which is fucking crazy to think about.

I'm on a real big kick.

Like, you know, I've been re-watching The Simpsons.

Yeah.

Which is weird because now I'm up to like season 24 and they're starting to get more contemporary too.

Like there was a reference to the Revenge TV show in the most recent episode I saw.

I was like, oh, like they're I'm catching up now.

Revenge was such a big thing in Achievement Hunter.

There goes the trash truck.

But yeah,

it's just strange

how

you look back at TV shows and how time gets really weird about that stuff.

It's really weird.

Yeah, you're weird.

Dude, you just try watching Dallas with me.

It's 1982 in Dallas.

That's perpetually old.

Holy shit, dude.

They're like, Dallas is always old.

Like, Dallas was always a long time ago.

It wasn't old in 1982.

For us, though, it was.

But I was around.

In 1982, I was four.

I was seven.

I was probably proud of myself for not shitting my pants anymore.

Then I went to kindergarten to shit my pants again.

It is the way the world looked when I first started looking at the world.

If that makes sense.

I got you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it looks right to me, but also wrong.

I think that's how lost looks.

Yeah.

Where you go, yeah, this is how everyone dresses.

Oh, this is how everyone dressed.

There was a, I saw on Reddit, someone posted a picture a few days ago of an old McDonald's ashtray.

I don't know if you remember them.

They were like brown and they had the McDonald's arches on them

and it was like notched out.

I remember seeing those in McDonald's when I was a little kid.

And there was an interesting comment in the thread where someone said, when people think of the 80s, they always think of like neon colors and like late 80s style.

But for them, that was the 80s, like the early 80s, that brown, like with the whole, almost like a whole world from the 70s.

Yellow, orange brown uh like that's really what it is and that's what i think like the dallas era there goes to try and get some good audio texture you know it's funny you say that uh that's kind of like how Richard Linkletter made Daisy Confused, which is his love letter to the 70s, right?

And a couple years ago, he made a movie called Someone's Gotta Have It or something.

Someone's got some.

Everybody wants some.

Everybody wants some, right?

And I didn't see that movie, but it was a love letter to the 80s.

But I didn't see the movie because the clothes that they were wearing looked exactly like the 70s, so it looked like another Daisy Ding Confused.

And I went like, that's not my 80s.

And it just immediately turned me off to it, which is dumb reason not to watch the movie.

No, but I get it.

I think the beginning of a decade is always a holdover from the last part of the previous.

Like, that's the early 90s.

Everyone's like, oh, Grunge.

And it's like, that's like, it's when you get into like mid-90s.

Yeah.

Grunge is like 93, 94.

You think about the early 90s, and it's the holdover from like neon and hair metal in excess.

Dude, Nelson going into the 90s was one of like the big hit big top bands i think of like neon ski jackets yeah for some reason

everything looks like that cup that dixie cup the white with like the

like swiggle on it i think of puffy dallas cowboys jackets oh hell yeah i had one of those yeah that's

actually i never liked this cowboy for one second but everybody wanted that jacket it was so dumb so dumb in the late 90s it felt like everyone was wearing everything it was like the bright like slightly brighter colors but everything was like charlotte hornets and nobody was like a charlotte hornets fan everyone just had a shirt why I don't know.

I don't know.

Basketball was big.

Someone determined to be a big one.

But why the Hornets though?

Like, I get it.

Basketball was big.

Were they like a new team at that point?

They were an expansion team.

I don't know if that was when they came out or not, but they also had

Larry Johnson play for the Hornets.

Maybe.

They had some heat for Larry Johnson.

I think it's interesting because you have something like the Hornets that had

in the late 90s, the thing that everyone had.

It was like the cool look.

And the Jazz had something like that, too.

They had like the mountains and the kind of like teal and purple and white and everything.

And they didn't change everything for so long that it started being cool again.

Yeah.

It's like

they were like shit for so long that it started being cool again.

I feel like the Denver Nuggets are the prime example of that too.

100%.

Like their logo that was so trapped in the 80s and then now suddenly you're like, God, I can't get enough of that fucking logo.

It's so 80s.

You just fucking stick with it.

Don't change.

Yeah, just don't change.

Eventually it all comes back around.

That's it.

Oh, that's happening now with clothes.

Speaking of coming back around, I'm excited about, I was thinking about this the other day.

I'm excited about when

our shit shit comes back around like red vs blue will come back around 20 years from now and it'll have some little moment and everybody will re or everybody some people will rediscover it and it'll be like like i was reading an article the other day with this you know that band yellow card they're having a moment right now and the article was yellow card is having a moment and they have no idea why yeah and it's all about how they don't understand why they're popular again out of the blue and i wonder if that will happen there'll be like some nerd

tock influencer suddenly everybody will be into strong bad and penny arcade and red vs.

blue for like three weeks before they move on.

I'll get served TikToks that are like clips from Red vs.

Blue and I just go like, oh, I'm not interested in this.

And people will be like, what is this?

Get this off my FYP.

What are you doing?

I want to listen to these guys some more.

It's interesting watching TikTok try to...

It's at the right word, but it's the word I'm going to use.

Try to legitimize themselves or try to reach a broader audience.

Like I've been seeing a lot of advertisements that they do where they almost try to position it like a tool to promote your small business.

Where it's like they're trying to reach people, trying to grow into new markets that they don't, that they're not already hitting.

It's like, oh, you can use this

to show off whatever it is you're selling on the internet and reach a new audience.

Like, oh, they're really

trying to expand that market and really trying to get it out of just whoever is already using it and get new people into the platform.

You know, they're doing that in a couple of different fronts.

This is of no interest to y'all, probably, but

card breaking is a huge thing in card collecting and the thing I'm into.

And I used to do a lot of card breaks on YouTube

just because you can like, it's a cheap way to get product that you want or to only focus on the teams you want and stuff.

A lot of people think it's gambling.

I'm not here to promote it or dissuade people from using it.

It's something that I do from time to time.

And TikTok card breaking has...

killed YouTube card breaking.

Really?

It is so much easier.

You just go to a TikTok, you go to a live feed, the guy's there, you click a button, and then you pick your team, and then you Apple Pay, and then you're there.

And it's so fast and a taste.

Why do you pay in?

What is that?

What do you think?

So the way it works, what card break is, it's like, there's many different kinds, but many different kinds, but the main one is called PYT, pick your team.

So let's say I'm a card dealer.

I have a case of

NBA Prism 2022-23.

A box in that case, a hobby box, will cost you, let's say, $1,000.

Somewhere between like $750 and $1,000.

A case will have 12 boxes in it.

So you're looking at $15,000 worth of product, maybe, $12,000 worth of of product somewhere in there.

You could never afford that.

I'm not going to go buy a $1,000 box of cards, but I only give a shit about the Boston Celtics anyway.

So I can go in and pay $200 to just get all the Boston Celtics cards out of all that break.

Okay.

And then so they sell by team.

And then like a team that has a hot rookie like Victor Wimbinyama, San Antonio, that

maybe $600 to buy that.

That's what I was going to ask.

But if you like the Washington Wizards, it's $35.

You know, it's commiserate to the level of stars and the value of the cards in there.

And who's, I guess, just whoever the dealer is sets up all of that.

Yeah, they just set up the price and figure out what they want to do.

And sometimes you can buy into a case, you can buy into a box, you can buy a variety where you get a bunch of different sports or whatever.

And it's just a way for you to be able to afford to get cards from the teams that you want without and have the

fun of breaking and seeing packs opened as opposed to just buying like the I'm going after Marcus Smart and Jason Tatum, right?

And so I could just buy those individual cards.

But the fun is like the discovery, much like we had when we did the the break show the other day.

And I presume the dealer sets the price so that they make a profit as well.

Yeah.

It's not just like an at-cost thing.

So on TikTok, they set the price.

It's a hard price.

You're capped in.

And they figure out what their profit margin is and they adjust accordingly.

On YouTube, it's bidding.

So you can sometimes get lucky and get super cheap.

Oh, so it's expensive.

Only one person could get all the Boston Celtics, and they're bidding against someone else who wants to get the Boston.

Yeah, so like I'm bidding against everybody else who wants Boston Celtics cards.

So sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't.

But with TikTok, it's easy.

You just pay the price, and that's what it is.

Interesting.

Okay, I can see why you said some people, like at first, I didn't understand why you said some people thought of it as gambling.

Oh, a lot of people

view it similarly to like loot boxes, loot crates, and it is, it's gambling.

You're betting on getting something out of that.

But if you're not, if you don't care what you get, if the experience is what you're going for, then it doesn't, then I think it's fine.

That's interesting.

You know, I'm in it for the excitement, the shock and awe, the surprise and delight.

And then if you get a cool card at the end of it, it's awesome.

But if you didn't, chances are I paid 15 bucks.

Yeah, Yeah, cards are back in a very weird way.

Where it's more than that, too.

Costco is selling these like Pokemon card trick-or-treat packs.

Have you seen these?

No.

It is a, it's like...

50 packs or whatever.

Someone's listening to this and they're going, that's not how many it is.

Say for the sake of this.

It's like 50 packs in like this sleeve or like big box or whatever.

And each pack has like three cards.

And each little pack has like a basic one, a regular one, whatever, and then like a prism-y one.

I don't think they're worth much, but they're to buy to give to kids for trick-or-treat stuff

instead of candy.

That's adorable.

And it's like, that's how big this stuff is again, where you can give out, you're giving out cards on Halloween instead of candy.

Because that's what, I mean, kids are super into Pokemon cards.

So.

Obviously, like we talked about, I used to collect cards in the 90s.

I've seen.

Yeah, no, I've seen

a few.

Yeah, we still have plenty.

Looking forward to seeing more.

And so

my knowledge kind of stops there.

And from when I used to collect it, I knew that there used to be an age a long time ago, right, in the 50s and earlier, where it's like cards were kind of a rare thing.

You end up with stuff like Mickey Mannels, Honest Wagner's, like this kind of niche thing.

And then we entered in the 90s, we entered like this garbage era.

The junk wax era.

It was just like overprinting.

And I feel like, based on what you're telling me, it seems like that's coming back around.

Like the market crashed, it went away.

Nobody really cared about it.

Now people care about it again.

Is it coming back around?

Is there going to be just like a huge crash?

It's so much more complicated now than that.

And maybe this isn't good podcast talk because I can go into it.

I don't know.

So maybe we cut this if it's not interesting.

It's your job to make a good podcast talk.

Okay, do your job.

So yes, what happened in the 90s was cards skyrocketed in popularity.

And so

card companies, Topps, Bowman, Donrus, Fleer, Upper Deck, they just started printing cards.

Like there were, like a 1991 Topps Mark Maguire.

There might be 3 million of them in circulation.

Then after the bottom fell out of the market, it became,

it was like dark days for a long time.

Only serious collectors were involved.

And then what happened is they started lowering the print runs because there was no demand.

And to entice people to buy cards, they started...

coming up with the ideas of putting autographs in and memorabilia, like you know, bits of a...

Yeah, bits of a like a jersey or whatever.

And that helped.

And then exclusivity, they started figuring out how to number number cards, you know, the one of a 2,000, and then it became one of 100, and then started having one of ones.

And that really created

a groundswell of support again for cards for people that wanted to, people love rarity.

I love rarity.

Everybody loves rarity.

Everybody loves to get like a one-of-one.

I want every one-of-one Marcus Smart on Earth.

I don't know why.

I just want it.

I'm the only one that has it.

And I've only got like four, but there's tons.

And so then also with sneaker culture becoming and fashion around NBA becoming a big deal, sports cards kind of just started to become the big deal again.

And then when the pandemic hit and everybody looked backward through their life and said, I can't go outside.

What did I used to like?

Was it making bread?

I was collecting cards.

They fucking exploded again.

And in that moment, print runs started to rise again.

to meet demand.

And so the cards that are coming out today, 2022, 2023, 2024, are going to probably

10 years from now be worth a little bit less than the cards that came out three, four, five years ago.

But the market adjusts and also

the demand is so much higher.

So many more people are into it.

So many people are looking at it as a legitimate alternative investment

avenue.

And people are building out portfolios of million-dollar cards to put their money into, which I think is wild, but is it really any different than gold or any other?

I think of it like ARC.

Yeah.

It's worth what someone wants to pay for it.

It's worth what somebody wants to pay for it, right?

But what's happening is now Fanatics has hit the scene and they are destroying their competitors.

They have snaked the,

like, it used to be Topps on one side and Donris on the other.

And they, between the two of them, they had pretty much all the major league licensing.

Like, Upper Deck, there's others that are in play.

Yeah.

But Topps and Donris, or Tops and Panini, rather, Panini owns Donris.

Tops and Panini are the two heavy hitters.

And Panini is what I mostly collect.

That's all NBA, NFL.

They have unlicensed baseball.

Topps has licensed baseball, licensed football, no license for basketball, right?

Panini came in, they bought Topps, just bought them.

So we own you now.

Then they went and they said, we're going to destroy you, Panini.

And so they took.

Panini bought Tops, you said?

No.

I'm sorry, Fanatics came in.

Fanatics came in and bought Tops last year or two years ago.

And then they have just waged war on the other competitor, Panini, and they are beating them into submission.

They have taken away.

Panini just lost the NBA license and the NFL license.

So now I think they only have hockey and other sports.

So in 2026, Panini will only be able to release unlicensed baseball, football, and basketball cards, which should be the end of Panini.

And then Fanatics will own the market.

What's an unlicensed card?

How do you release an unlicensed card without a card?

They airbrush logos off.

Okay.

So they can release a card of cards.

If they have player licenses, and Panini has player licenses.

So you have to have player license.

You have to have team license.

And so you can have one without the other, which makes it complicated.

So

how is Panini losing this?

Are they just not paying the money for these licenses?

I assume it sounds like they're getting outbid.

Right.

They're getting outbid.

They're losing their deals because Fanatics is coming in and going, NBA, don't sign a deal with them.

Sign a deal with us.

We'll give you better terms.

We want exclusivity.

And the NBA is like, this is a better deal for them.

I'm sure they pay more than what the NBA would get for both.

And so Panini's just kind of out on their ass.

Panini just tried to counter-sue Fanatics over last week, and I think that that's not going to go well.

And then, so it's become like a war.

And a lot of people hate Panini and are happy about Fanatics.

Excellent sense.

Everybody,

you aren't wrong about that.

Everybody hates Fanatics.

And everybody's like, yeah, Fanatics is just going to destroy it.

And so destroy the industry.

But it's so weird.

It's like eating itself right now.

Nobody knows what's going to happen.

Fanatics wants to control the breaking market too.

So they're making it, they're going to set it up when they are now in charge of TOPS and all other, they may end up buying Panini in this whole deal.

They're going to make it, they're going to set up deals with hobby enthusiasts and with card shops to say, you can't break on eBay if you buy from us.

You have to to break through our card shop live app.

Yeah, and so they're,

eBay breaking was already dying, but I imagine they'll come after TikTok next and they're going to try to set it up where if you do this kind of stuff, you can only get it.

They're going to get it.

They want to cut.

It's like a cut of anything.

It's like selling used video games, right?

Like developers and publishers don't like that because they don't get their cut there.

So they're just trying to get the cut of.

They want to control the entirety of the market.

And people are really excited about it.

And I don't know why, because I think it's going to destroy...

Maybe not destroy it, but it's going to radically alter the, and it's never for the, it's never good.

It's never for the best.

If any of what just happened on this podcast was interesting to you, check out So Alright, which is just what that was, but without the interruptions from me and Gus.

But I've never talked about baseball cards on that.

No, no.

It's like a special sneak episode.

You should, because that's, I had no idea, and they're just doing what the fuck they did in the goddamn 90s.

Yes, they are.

Exactly why I started out.

They are doing exactly the same thing and going the hubris of, yeah, don't worry, it surely can't happen twice well i think they it's short-term game for them right like they're gonna make a buttload of money they don't give a

i i shouldn't say i don't know i my conjecture is that the corporate entities don't give a fuck about the you know the collector they're just pumping his process fund or paying back investors and then dumping so what'll happen is that it'll implode and then the people that really love the industry will finally be able to afford the cards they wanted.

A ton of people will lose a ton of money who weren't in it for the right reasons anyway.

And then the people that still give a shit will still give a shit.

And then it'll reach some new equilibrium and continue on.

That's really interesting.

And it'll just continue to ebb and flow and go up and down.

I think it's incredibly interesting and you should cover it on So All Right.

Okay, maybe I will.

I think that's, I had no idea.

I think you talked about like the 90s stuff and what's happening now.

I had no idea that Fanatics came in and was doing this shit.

History.

That's insane.

History loves to repeat itself.

It's what it does best.

And I just don't understand why everybody's so had, so excited to see Panini fall because everybody hates their quality control uh-huh right they think the quality control is really poor and they prompt they pump out too much product but nobody but they're all like they're excited because the guy because they're seeing this company get taken down that they have issue with but the company that's taking them down is going to be a thousand times worse or just as bad you know new boss same as the old boss yep anyway

Do you think, and Eric, I made some more space for you if you want to get in some shade here.

Thank you.

Do you think,

like, Pork, you're talking about poor this just to be a card episode?

Do you think poor quality control is a means of also artificially creating rarity?

It's like, no?

Because, like, oh, only 5% of the car of this specific card are centered and cut well.

So.

Because they already price in rarity.

I mean, they have like every card that every card that comes out.

Like, I collect Marcus Smart.

He's my PC, my personal collection.

Love Marcus Smart.

He's my favorite player.

I've got...

Mine's an alienware.

I've got over 4,000 individual distinct Marcus Smart cards at this point that are different.

And so like Prism comes out with this year's basketball, 2023, 2024.

Marcus Smart will be a Memphis Grizzly in it.

That's going to be weird.

I don't like that.

But they'll have his base card, and then there will be 36 parallels, probably.

That are like, it's like his base card, his cracked ice card,

his blue cracked ice card, his red cracked ice card,

his blue parallel, purple parallel.

It just looks slightly different.

Okay.

They just like there's different versions of the card.

Then there'll be a card that's like, this one is one of 99, this one's one of 75, this orange one's one of 50,

and then there'll be like three of them that are one of one.

There'll be like the black pulsar and like whatever other

black and gold, and they'll be one of one.

And so there's so much rarity built into the system.

I was thinking of the old way

that didn't exist.

No, the good artistic should do it.

But if yeah,

if they're creating the rarity like that by doing limited runs and letting you know then that's...

It's definitely being created.

And there's doing the break show with Jeff, and he runs into this stuff.

Now I know what cracked ice is.

I think of breaking bad.

Here's an example.

Here's an example.

Here's last year's Marcus Smart Tops card.

This is every different version of that card that I have.

Yeah, different colors, different sheens.

And so that's one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five.

That's 29 different versions of that card that I have.

Jesus.

Yeah.

not typical

andmatopic, not typical and ma fodder, but I think this stuff's super interesting.

Well, thank you.

I'm really curious to hear it.

I don't mind it for this podcast either.

Yeah.

Because I think that's.

You're so into it.

It's like Gus talking about fucking flying.

Like it's like there's nothing more interesting than Gus.

I want to go flying with Gus.

I kind of don't want to go flying with Gus, but I want to go flying with Gus because I want to watch Gus be good at this.

Yeah.

You know, like I want to watch him be in his element.

Yeah.

Because there's nothing more fun than watching somebody in their element doing what they love and what they're excited about.

On the way down here, we were coming down to Des Nudo.

I was talking about,

it's still hot here in Austin, but there was a cold front that came through yesterday.

This might be the end of the 105s and 107s.

Yesterday was 109 degrees.

We might be at the tail end of that.

I think today's only supposed to be 100 degrees.

It's a fucked up grackle right over there.

Where did I get you, dude?

Oh, it just took a shit.

Anyway, yeah, yesterday a cold front moved through, and

you were talking about amateur weather people on TikTok.

Yeah, it's my least favorite new TikTok trend.

And I was talking about how when I got my pilot license, we had to learn a decent amount about weather.

Like, it's a big deal, and you get drilled a lot about it.

And

I talked about how when you watch weather forecasts or you look at weather charts on your phone, like a cold front comes through and it's like a blue line with the little triangles on it.

And when I was

learning about weather for my pilot license,

they introduced a lot of things, a lot of concepts.

They made these abstract concepts real.

And one of the things that really stuck with me was thinking about a cold front, right?

It's like you think about the air that's around us right now.

It's a big air mass.

If it's, you know, if we have like a high-pressure system, if it's been hot, you have this hot air all around you.

And a cold front is this mass of colder air that's coming through.

And colder air, everyone knows that cold air sinks, hot air rises.

So like the colder air almost comes through like a plow.

It's being pushed through.

It's heavier than the hot air.

So it comes through kind of like shoehorns shoehorns under or plows under the hot air and forces the hot air up.

And that's what creates thunderstorms.

It's like this moist hot air getting shoved up by this cold air that's sneaking in under it.

That's why you see thunderstorm clouds like get this huge verticality on them.

So then this the cold plow comes through and it throws all the hot air up.

The cold air just keeps on trucking, keeps on moving, and then eventually the hot air falls back down.

Right.

And is it still hot again?

It could be.

until it reaches a point where there's not enough energy for it to continue pushing against the hot air.

Like, that's why it's been so hot here this summer.

They keep talking about this heat dome, this high-pressure system over the central part of the United States.

It's just so powerful that cold, no cold front, no cold system can push through it.

And that's why we had weird weather here yesterday.

Yeah.

Because we had like the confluence of three different masses of air kind of meeting here all at the same time.

It was really close dew point level to having tornado warnings, but it was too dry to actually happen.

But But boy, it felt like it was about, it felt like tornadoes were about to happen.

The wind started whipping like crazy out of nowhere.

I left my buddy's place and he's like, yeah, it's supposed to rain later.

And I went, no fucking way.

I got home and it was just

it was a rain too.

Like it was fucking a big ass raindrop.

Wild.

They were thuds.

I don't think I got any rain.

Really?

Are you serious?

Oh, it was like

a motherfucking rain.

It was so patchy everywhere.

Like North Austin didn't get stuff.

Parts of South Austin did and then others didn't.

It was so lucky.

It was wild.

Yeah, it was like neighborhood by neighborhood.

It was.

You know, don't live far away from each other.

I know.

Stuff out east, stuff out west, like it wasn't consistent.

It was everywhere.

The weather was super weird.

The best part was it at least cooled the air.

Like, it wasn't like getting hit by a blow dryer when the wind was blowing.

It wasn't dog's breath when you stepped outside.

Yeah.

Brutal.

So I'm hoping we're at the end of it.

I took the trash out

right after the rain stopped, and I was like, holy shit, there's a breeze.

Yeah.

This is pleasant air.

It was what fuck, dude.

I'm wearing jeans today.

Look at you.

Yeah.

Well, I figured we were out before noon.

It's 88 already.

Yeah, but I figured we are out before noon, so it'd be all right.

It'd be all right.

You're wearing jeans today.

I put on pants for the first time the other day because I had to take Millie to the doctor.

Do you dress up for stuff like that?

Like, I could have worn shorts to Millie's doctor appointment.

I was thinking about it when I was there, and I was like, I'll see you with pants on for this.

Now, this, to me, feels like a thing, like an are you garbage thing, where it's like, do you dress up to go to the doctor?

To the doctor?

Does he sell pants to the doctor.

It's like a special thing.

I do.

Like, I'll wear,

if it's an appointment for something, I'll be like, I'm not just going to wear like a t-shirt and shorts.

I'll put on like pants and like, maybe like a collared shirt

for the fucking doctor.

Go and go to the dermatologist.

They like just fucking take it off.

What are you doing?

I typically, the last time I wore pants or long pants, it's when we did the 20th anniversary stream the other day.

Oh, yeah, how that goes?

Because I don't want every other comment in chat to be, oh my God, Gus is wearing shorts.

Right.

Like get over it.

Like that's the only reason, like I'll wear long pants to work if I know I'm going to be on camera just because

it doesn't need to be a distraction.

What a dumb comment to make.

It's great that you mentioned that because we really should talk about what we did last Friday because I don't know about you, but I had an all-time, I didn't anticipate it.

I didn't expect it going in, but I had an all-time great

experience

making that production with Gus.

Like a 20th Red vs.

Blue 20th anniversary.

Live stream.

Yeah.

From Bernie's spare bedroom.

Yeah, well we did it

in the stage, but they recreated Bernie's spare bedroom as accurately as they could based on the photos and obviously for practicality for the live stream.

And it was bizarre.

It was

too good.

Becca and Jason Saldano both happened to be in the office that day recording lines for Red vs.

Blue.

And so they got, I brought them both on so they could see it.

And it's like, it's shocking.

It's like walking into 2003.

Yeah, I didn't know Becca was there.

I saw Jason.

Yeah.

We pulled Becca in for some help on another recording.

Yeah, I saw her post about that.

I was like, what the hell?

I didn't know Becca was here.

It was very fun.

But it was like such a, like, I felt, it was, it was a shocking moment the first time I stepped on it.

And

I don't know about you, but I was overcome with a rush of memories and emotions.

And I never thought I would step foot in that room again.

And then I was briefly.

So then

it was really a bunch of like RVB 20th anniversary merch and we do these live sale events and so Gus and I were there just you know trying to convince people to buy shit but also

the hook was that we would just tell stories about the the start of the beginning of the of the company and the beginning of the production and making River's blue and making reverse blue and we would kind of half-ass machinimate it as we were doing it and that part was so much fun.

I hadn't head-bobbed in

over 10 years probably.

It was also interesting because then as we're doing it, same as you, like something we've done a lot in the past and haven't done it in a long time.

Best people in the world at it 15 years ago now, not so much.

As we were doing it, it's like then you remember like all the little problems and all the little workarounds.

So then it became like, oh, you know, you see this problem we're having here.

Like this is the workaround that you would do practically when we were filming to avoid this thing.

Yes.

And it's all people are like, oh, I had no idea.

You know, it's like it's been so long since we've talked about that stuff that a lot of that knowledge is forgotten.

Yeah, that's an interesting thing too.

It's because for the first like, I don't know, seven or eight years of the company, every time we did an interview, we answered those questions and we told those stories.

And it was like, it was like

there was like a, I don't know,

a list of things you would talk about.

You know, start of the company, where we got the name, Chupa thingy, all that stuff that would be like, people would ask about over and over.

We would get sick of answering.

Yeah.

You know, that we would get sick of talking about, honestly.

And

it was so much fun to remember all those.

all those moments again and to relive them and to try to like we tried to share there's this thing called the lighting trick we used to use It was probably the most important tool in Halo 1.

It just allowed us to light the characters better because a lot of the map is really dark and in shadow.

And sitting down and then remembering how to do it and then trying to do it and ultimately failing

was a lot of fun.

I wonder if, look at thinking back, I wonder if it was a Halo 2 thing.

No, it was Halo 1.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny.

You talk about how...

It just didn't work.

But it was like that when we did it.

Yeah, we haven't done it in year symbol.

There might have been some weird step we missed.

It's just finicky.

We would have to do it seven seven or eight times to get it to work back then, too.

So you talk about how we used to answer these questions all the time and how it became like it was just like you would just spit the answer out, right?

I remember one time I was at DragonCon and I was doing an interview and someone was asking me one of those questions that we'd answered a million times.

This must have been like 07, 08 maybe.

And I was talking to the reporter.

I was answering their question and I remember hearing like at the convention they had paged someone.

I thought like there was something going on with like Homestar Runner.

And I was like, oh.

So like I tuned out of the interview, still talking, listened to the page, and then came back.

And I was like, my mind went away while I was, my mouth was still giving the answer.

You know, my mind focused on something else, and was like, okay, that's, I'll deal with that later.

And came back into the present.

Now, that's a combination of three things going on there at once.

One, you know the source material so well, you're you're honestly on autopilot.

And we were on autopilot for so many years in those interviews, right?

Two, you have that kind of brain, and then that takes a certain, like you can micromanage.

I think the call center also has a lot of money.

Three, and it's the big thing there is that you've managed a call center, and that is a fucking skill that you will have for the rest of your life.

You can listen to multiple conversations at the same time enough to understand them all without losing any of them.

Because you had to, because we had to listen to 20 people on call at the same time, and you had to listen for the problem moments and the warning signs and pay attention.

And yeah, that's a really unique skill that I think you'll have for the rest of your life, probably.

Yeah.

I don't know if you remember

talking about the call center.

God, we talk about that place a lot, right?

We, we, for a while, we did like these outsourced

calls.

Should I say that?

We did this outsourced phone company calls

where it was like

there was like a new phone that had come out and everyone wanted it.

And like, it was so, they were getting so swamped with calls, with people asking about the phone that when their call center was busy, it would overflow to us.

And it was just like taking names and then like lead generation, right?

Yeah.

For a sales thing.

So it's like you didn't need tech people to answer those calls.

It was just like whoever.

They just needed to answer the phone and like take down name and contact information and then route it to the appropriate salespeople.

All they did was fill out a form in a web browser and hit some.

It was all taken care of for them.

And I remember we had this problem where, for some reason, when we were getting, and we had like separate reps for that, because these were not tech savvy people.

They just needed to take the call.

So we had separate reps for that.

I remember we were having a problem for a while where those calls were dropping and we couldn't figure out why.

And

I was sitting around with Ray.

You know, Ray was working on recoding the A C D at at the time.

Do you want to say what an A C D is?

It's an automatic call distributor.

It's like when you call a call center, it's like the software that

you can call and then knows which agent to route it to, who's available, who can recall it.

Who's been available the longest?

Right.

That kind of stuff.

So Ray was working on recoding the AC D, and I had installed a new phone system.

So we were sitting there.

I remember we were watching the raw ACD feed, which is like watching a computer error log, right?

It's just like...

Everything the ACD is doing.

It's like the matrix.

In real time, right.

It's like all the code coming through, like calls coming in, where are they getting routed, who's doing what.

And I remember we sat there for like

an hour or two watching the ACD in real time.

And we're like, one of the agents is just hanging up on people.

What?

Yeah, and we were like, her over there.

That's why our calls are disconnecting.

She's like answering the phone and then hanging up.

And it was like, oh, you're fired.

I don't know if you remember that.

It was like the weirdest, dumbest thing.

We had to sit there staring at the fucking

software.

I don't remember if you were there.

I know it was me and Ray looking at it.

Who can figure it out?

Obviously not for the podcast, but who was it?

It was like, it was, it wasn't like, it wasn't a tech rep.

It was like one of those temporary rep people.

It was, I remember who it was.

It was one of Kenny's people.

Yes.

Yeah.

We had like a staffing solutions company that would come in.

Right.

Yeah, I remember that day.

It was one of those people.

It was like, oh,

do you also remember that she put a, we had these little phone boxes that you would hit to answer that had like it was had like the nine digits and stuff that you could call, but it was just like this little box that was connected to a headset.

It's where the call routed through.

And she just put a piece of paper over it to show that she was hanging up on people so you couldn't see the lights.

Yeah.

So because when you were on the phone, there was like a little amber light.

Yeah.

And when you weren't on the phone, it wasn't illuminated.

Yeah.

I forgot about the piece of paper.

Yep, yep.

She did that.

Did she say why?

I think she just didn't want to talk to people.

Like she just wanted to, she didn't want to work.

She was like, it was like, clearly you got to go.

And she's like, I'm out.

See ya.

She was not into it.

And yeah, she was like.

It was like, it's just a dumb whatever job.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had a friend who did that.

I won't name him, but he worked like he was in between stuff and he's like, I'll just take this call certain job, whatever.

And he's like, I knew it was time to go when

I looked at the phone ring and I just watched it and I didn't pick up, which is what my job was.

And

realized I could not do this anymore.

You're like, oh, I guess this is the moment.

That's it.

And

I think everybody who has to work on the phones has that moment.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It's brutal.

It never stops ringing.

It's overwhelming.

It's incredibly overwhelming.

I hate the sound of a phone ringing to the side.

You would walk in on a good day, and a good day was when it was busy, right?

Because that means we were getting paid.

But you would walk in and it'd be a 30-call queue.

And you would leave, and there'd be a 20-call queue, and you would have worked eight hours, and it never dipped.

Yeah.

Brutal.

Those were the days.

Man, you guys never, it's funny.

You always talk about the call center stuff, and it's like, this thing happened, and this thing happened, or whatever.

I've never thought about the work of the call center.

You worked so much and so hard.

Never once thought about what the job was.

It It basically put Gus and I in there, and we had to be to be a tech support agent, an internet tech support agent in 1999 and 2000, you have to be the most patient human being on earth.

Gus and I were probably two of the least qualified people for that part of it.

It's amazing.

But I'll say this, we fucking did it and we succeeded and we excelled at it.

But man, I couldn't imagine going back and having to like hand-hold people through, type in their password.

And it's not like there was no,

you couldn't remotely control someone's computer.

You know, they weren't connected to the internet.

Even if they were, it was like a dial-up connection at best.

Some people called up with like, you don't know what they were calling up with.

You know, there was one time I had to play paper, rock, scissors with it.

We had a callback.

There were two level two techs on the job that day.

It was me and John.

And we had a callback and we both looked over the notes.

We were trying to figure out who was going to take it.

And the notes were, the level one tech was talking to this woman.

She has Windows 3.1.

The level one tech walked her through deleting her win.ini file.

Call her back and recreate her Win.ini file so her computer will boot again because now it's only booting to DOS.

Fuck me, dude.

And me and John looked at each other.

It's like, we'll pay paper, rock, scissors.

Loser has to call her back.

I won.

John had to call her back.

He was on the phone, I think, for four hours that day, rebuilding that woman's Win.ini file by hand and then getting her computer to boot back into Windows 3.1.

John L, not John F.

Correct.

Yeah.

There was a guy we used to work with named John.

F or L.

What?

F or L.

L.

Okay.

Well, both of them, I guess, would fit into this, but I guess L is who I was thinking of.

Who was every, he was like the,

I wouldn't say we were the three amigos, but it was close.

Like, he was close to, Gus and I were always closer, but he was right there with us, and he was like in our, like, it was the three of us hanging out a lot, and the three of us, and I don't know why,

whatever happened to him.

I don't know.

Because it was like, we, like, would we go to lunch?

It wasn't, it was the three of us.

Really?

It was like, I don't know.

Gus and I were always a little bit closer, but we hung out with that dude all the time.

And we were really close with him, and it just, he just disappeared.

He was the guy who owns Smutt Warehouse.

He was the guy who owns Smut Warehouse.

Yeah.

Hell yeah.

And I liked him so much.

He's a great dude.

Yeah.

I really enjoyed that guy.

I wonder what ever happened to him.

It's weird how friendships.

Ebb and Flow.

Ebb and Flow.

And like

by all right, like he could easily be a founder of Cool.

He could be sitting here too.

Yeah.

Yeah, he could be sitting at this table with us right now.

Wow.

And it just didn't happen that way.

That's crazy.

Yep.

And for no reason.

It wasn't because he wasn't, like, we didn't like him.

He might have gone somewhere else or had another job or quit.

And then, you know, we just, like, you lose touch with someone.

Wild.

We're getting close to time, so we should talk about the coffee.

We should.

Can I tell you one old rooster story here?

Please.

I don't think I told this because it just popped into my head when we were across the street at Fleet

a couple months ago.

We're real close to Fleet.

Because we're real close to Fleet coffee, which is one of our highest-rated coffees.

And we were talking a lot about like the Cavalier, and I think we talked about Garmin's over there, which is being rebuilt as something else with a sandwich place.

But it just struck me when we were pulling in that I took a call from Garmins once and it was Lewis right after he started working with us, Lewis Medina, who no longer works with Roost Teeth but did for a long time and was like seven years, I think, and was integral in a lot of what we did.

And he called me and I went and I took a call in the back alley and I paced that back alley for an hour and a half on the phone with him.

And that phone call, that day in that back alley is where we built out the Let's Play family.

Really?

Yeah, we built the whole thing out on the phone.

He's still in LA or New York.

He wasn't in Austin yet.

And we just like, I don't know why it just popped in my head, but I remember thinking as I was walking up and down the back alley, like, I wonder how many times I've,

like, I've paced back all the way.

I probably have the record to this day of most people, most paces behind that building.

Thanks, dude.

It's good.

And yeah, I don't know.

It just popped in my head.

But like...

The whole like who to go after, creatures, kind of funny.

That whole thing was all in one phone call behind that building.

Wow.

Yeah.

Anyway.

That's crazy.

How's your coffee?

I want to know what you guys think of Des Nudo.

This is one of the

most requested coffee spots for us for a podcast where people don't really request coffee spots.

I will say, I think it's very telling that all three of our cups are empty and have been for a while.

I don't know if I've ever seen it

like this.

The coffee was excellent.

It's

way more mild than,

no, not mild, mild the right.

It's way more smooth than most Americanos that I get.

It was so easy to drink from the first sip all the way through to the end.

We are like in a coffee renaissance between this and Erie Bean.

Yeah, where Aribean.

Iribean.

Ivory Bean.

This was really in a different way, very different than those other places.

This was so smooth and easy to drink.

I don't know what to say about it.

It was awesome.

I also got to say, like, the vibe here, the environment really adds to it.

I know it's just a trailer park like every other trailer park in Austin, but this one has a good feel to it.

It's a good crowd.

It's the right amount of busy.

Well, there's food and there's coffee.

Yeah.

And there's space.

What number do you give this?

Man, I would give this like 9.5.

I don't know.

This one's fucking excellent.

What do you think?

Maybe 10, man.

This might be the best.

I'm going to give it a 9.1.

Is it 10?

Yeah.

This is the best cold brew I've had in Austin.

Phenomenal.

I'm going to put it up there with the ranks of Fleet and All Gimmicks and Irie Bean.

I don't know that it's better than any of those, but it's not worse.

I would put it up there.

I think this might be better than all those places.

When we leave, I got gimmicks.

I have to get a drip coffee when we go because I got the cold brew.

I was texting a friend.

My friend's a coffee rooster, and

he was talking.

We were talking all weekend.

I'm like, going to Des Nudo on Monday.

He's like, I haven't been.

So many people tell me to go.

I said, gonna be worth it, whatever.

We had a lot of that conversation.

I texted him, and I'm like, I hate to tell you, you got to make a trip out.

It's worth it.

It is.

Oh, my God.

This cold brew is like drinking fruit juice.

It was so sweet and fruity and

almost no bitterness.

It has a sourness that I really liked, but not overpowering.

It had

a sweetness like fruit.

It was so easy to drink.

It is, sometimes you get cold brew that's overextracted or has been sitting for too long, tastes dark.

I think that these beans aren't going between a lot of people.

I think these beans are going straight from, if I had to guess, like Columbia to here because they are,

those are

high,

that's a high-quality cup of coffee.

For what we just paid to, coffee should be so much more expensive than it is.

For what we just paid, that is an incredible cup of coffee.

There's a line to get coffee.

The irony, too, is that

this is one of the four highest-ranked coffee shops we've run.

Among the four,

now we have four.

And you could, this is so close to the other one, Fleet, that they could throw rocks at you.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's right next to Fleet.

This is Coffee Alley.

Yeah.

It's Coffee Alley.

Serville Road Coffee Alley, baby.

I like the idea of sort of an NFT moment, but like.

We're creating a heat map of the best coffee in Austin so that you can get the best cup for no matter what part of town you're in.

Like if you're down south, you know you got Irie Bean on the mar.

If you're up north by the domain, you know you got all gimmicks.

If you're on the east side, you have your choice now between Fleet and and Des Nudo.

What about that trailer?

Over by

freewheeling.

Freewheeling.

Freewheeling.

You've got Freewheeling down there.

In front of Corral Snake.

That's right.

In front of Corral Snake.

That's right.

Between Freewheeling.

Fuck, I forgot about Freewheeling.

Iribe Bean, Des Nudan.

We've been on a fucking tear.

Yeah, that's pretty much good.

That was why I was like, man, can I rate this that high?

Everything's been amazing lately.

I'm definitely more of a hot coffee drinker.

It's too hot to do it right now.

This cold brew is,

man, it really is next level.

I didn't, I really was so skeptical going into this.

It was like watching Oppenheimer where I went, I don't know if I'm really going to like this, and then left and went, fuck, that was pretty amazing.

You know, that's a speaking of Lewis earlier.

I owe Lewis for the rest of my life for turning me on to Cold Brew because I was a hot coffee drinker like you.

I would have ordered a hot coffee here, 110 degrees, and drank it.

But learning to love Cold Brew has really made life easier.

It's really, a lot of places do it really well.

This is definitely one of those places.

I really, really, really, really recommend this.

I'm going to get a drip coffee when we leave.

Just like the regular, I have to try.

If that's how good their cold brew is, I have to try their regular coffee.

Yeah.

It's absolutely.

I'm floored.

I can't believe it.

Worth it.

Definitely.

Definitely as good as everybody said it was.

Yeah.

And that is

the part that I'm having trouble really coming to terms with.

Well, especially in a city like Austin.

Yeah.

You know?

Everything is overhyped in a way where I just go, cool.

Oh, man.

This lives up to it.

For sure.

I'm really curious.

My buddy Robbie is my roaster friend, and I'm really curious to see what he says when he comes over here and tries this.

Let's get into an anarchy question.

This is from Greeton, who corrected me on their name pronunciation.

It's Greet Ton, but even my friends pronounce it wrong.

Well, guess what?

Spell it differently.

Get you friends.

What's your favorite local commercial?

Oh, you do know Betty Blackwell?

The fuck, did you just say?

Dude, dude, I was going to hit with like a fucking, I was going to hit with some law shit, but he, oh man.

So I was going to go like Lorenz and Lorenz or something, but Gus nailed it.

There's no better answer.

There was a,

it was only one commercial she ever ran.

It was a lawyer, Betty Blackwell.

Okay.

She ran this commercial forever in Austin, like in the old standard definition, you know, 90s days, where it's just like, you don't see it.

It's like a woman talking on the phone.

You don't ever see her.

It's on YouTube.

Yeah, and she's like talking to someone else on the other side.

You don't hear this side of the conversation.

She's like, yeah, so-and-so is in trouble.

He needs a good lawyer.

We don't know what to do.

Oh, you know Betty Blackwell?

And then it cuts to like Betty Blackwell, like, hi, I'm Betty Blackwell.

I'm an attorney.

And this commercial ran for decades.

You do know Betty Blackwell?

Right.

And once, you know, HD TV came around and everything was broadcasting in HDs.

They still continued to run this like 4-3 SD commercial.

And maybe 10, 15 years ago, they finally updated it.

Where it's like they reshot it.

Yeah.

This exact same commercial in HD.

Well, why would you, if you got the right script, baby, just do it again.

And it was just an older Betty Blackwell at the end.

It was like the the Lucas cut.

Yeah,

it was amazing.

I think that is forever.

Like, the fact that it persisted and that it jumped, they remade that commercial for the new HD format.

I think Betty Blackwell is like the ultimate local Austin commercial.

It's funny, too, because I was having this conversation with Emily not too long ago because she grew up in Houston.

Uh-huh.

And we were talking about like Mattress Mac commercials and things between the two.

And I was like, yeah, nothing beats Betty Blackwell.

And she's lived in Austin for like 12 years, 15 years maybe, and had never heard it.

So we looked it up and I showed it to her.

Oh, that's fun.

It's unjust.

YouTube if you want to see it.

You do know Betty Blackwell?

Awesome.

Just fucking enjoy it.

Hi, I'm Betty Blackwell.

Do you have any others that pop to mind for you?

I mean, all the lawyer commercials are the.

Oh, who's the dude that dresses up like a pickle?

Scott Elder.

Scott Elder.

Scott Elder.

He has not had a commercial in a while.

No, not in a while, but that was fun.

I will say the thing about him is John Oliver.

Last week tonight with John Oliver kind of ruined that for me.

But John Oliver's all over Austin commercials.

Well,

those commercials, those Scott Elder ones, aren't unique to him.

It's like a package that car dealers can buy.

And he showed other versions from other states.

It's the exact same script.

It's the exact same execution.

It's like, oh, it's just a copy-paste for whatever local market you're in.

So that kind of ruined it for me.

Thanks, John Oliver.

There was that moment there where,

you know, Radiant Plumbing, they have goofy Avengers commercials and shit.

And John Oliver was,

he discovered them and played a couple of commercials on last week tonight.

And then he got them to put him in a commercial, supposedly.

Oh, that's awesome.

No, no, they made a commercial based on a script he had written

for Magnolia.

Oh, that's funny.

How goofy.

Well, that's good.

I want to watch the Betty Black Hole on it.

It's so great, dude.

It's so good.

It's so good.

I want another cup of coffee.

Hey, if you want to follow us on social media, you can at Animal Podcast on Twitter and on Instagram.

You can send your anarchy question there.

You can also go to r/slash animal podcast, which is a fan-run sub.

I want to be really clear about that.

But this is a very good episode.

Don't forget to send that gum to Levi.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we need to send the gum to Levi.

We got a bubblegum with the money.

We want to contact Levi today.

And then let's also not forget that if you enjoyed this podcast, we have many great other podcasts for you to consume.

Gus is on a DD podcast called Tales from the Strinky Stinky Dragon.

Stinky Dragon.

Jesus Christ.

Tales from the Stinky Dragon.

I do a podcast with Eric called F Star Star K Face.

That's how you have to search it.

Yeah.

You won't find it any other way.

You could try to type out the word.

You won't find the podcast.

Obviously, this podcast, Anma.

and then

I do a podcast called So Alright.

Just started.

Seems to

see a few rave reviews.

People are very into it.

Very excited.

I think we have one more episode here before we go to a two-week break.

So Gus can have a little bit of downtime away from us.

Yeah, I'm going to go flop.

He needs his break.

He definitely needs his break.

Mental health break for us.

But we won't miss any content because we'll have two weeks of supplemental for this.

Because Eric and I do work.

That's right.

We're hard workers here for the company.

We're company men.

You can follow us at Anima Podcast.

See all the pictures from this and every other episode.

Any final thoughts?

Strong words?

Time to just do the coffee if you're in Austin.

Yeah.

Dude, Austin's no longer a foodie town.

It's a coffee town.

Forget about it, Jeff.

It's a coffee town.

Oh, good morning, guys.