2025.07.14: The Life We Chose

You know it's the only country that still has the plague.

Binding the plague, please!

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gut up!

Good!

Recording to you, wherever you are, because

it is Morning Subware for July 14th, 2025.

My name is

Bertie Burns sitting right over there.

I had to yell because he didn't do it.

No, actually, the other other day I saw on the Morning Subware subreddit somebody was requesting to hear you do the intro again.

Never acknowledge anyone's requests.

I don't know what their name was.

It's a slippery slope.

That's a good point.

It just goes from there.

I don't even have the internet.

I wasn't on there.

It's a good call.

There was a great, did you see Superman?

No, not yet.

There's a little, they do a lot of stuff with social media in Superman.

And I don't know how.

They pull it off.

Usually when you put social media stuff in a movie, it's always shit.

Right.

But they managed it.

I don't know how they managed it.

Do they use the names of real social media networks?

No, they didn't have any cameos by influencers or anything like that.

There's just a character in it that takes like a lot of selfies.

There's even a reference to hashtags.

They did a lot to like call it.

Hashtag seems kind of dated, right?

So, yeah, a little bit, but it's still played somehow.

It's okay.

So I said this on the Patreon this weekend.

I saw Superman with JD this weekend or late last week.

I was not looking forward to Superman at all.

I'm not a big Superman fan.

I didn't really respond to any of the trailers or the dog in the trailers and stuff like that.

I was completely wrong, man.

That was a great movie.

I enjoyed the hell out of that movie.

Which theater did y'all go to?

We went to

the Regal IMAX, the one that's up

in the Arboretum.

Okay,

okay.

It's like, you know.

where North Pike, where Northwest used to be.

I can't reference everything because everything just shut down.

Everything was already already in the process of changing and then i i moved away during covid and then everything completely changed that's your fault what's your biggest loss in austin your lifetime uh ls teca maybe what's that a mexican restaurant that was on east seventh oh really good it sounds good it's they closed like probably seven years ago because the owner wanted to sell and the building is just graffitied up and boarded up and nothing nothing ever happened to it whenever we would change offices you would go nuts in hell because you love to look for real estate yeah so one of your favorite things

and uh

remember that like, what was it on 7th Street?

It was like a boxing club?

Oh, Uptown Social.

No, yeah.

Uptown Sports Club?

They've turned it into something else now.

Like, it's now a bar called that.

Yeah.

But I remember we went and looked at it at the time.

It had like dirt floors, right?

It was dirt flooring.

How do you do that?

Don't you start with the floor and then build the building from?

Not them.

They didn't do it that way.

They started with the roof.

Yeah.

Well, they didn't say what kind of sports it was.

Maybe it was beach volleyball.

It had an old school like

the fisticuffs boxer style guy yeah it had that on the sides back when men were tough bernie there's a boxing gym on

i guess it's north i get confused between uh burn it and uh north lamar like yeah

those businesses up there are interchangeable to me a bunch of warehouses yeah yeah there's a you know what street yellow rose is on though

that's on lamar

i know that's on lamar because it's right next to

the barbecue

by yeah the barbecue place that i like the rib spot they serve a rib.

You can buy.

Yeah, we ate it.

I think we talked about it on this podcast.

One rib.

You can buy one rib at a time.

Yeah, it's like a Flintstones rib.

So good.

Knocked your car over.

Hey, how was Rachel Brosnahan in that movie?

She was probably the best part, to be honest with you.

Yeah.

I mean, we can't go into spoilers because this is the public version.

So if you want to, you can go listen to the Patreon one.

But it's not much to spoil.

It's fucking Superman.

You know what I mean?

He flies around.

He punches stuff in the face.

And then that's great.

I just love the fact that it was like,

did you ever see the Justice League poster, and it looks like the old

Queen album cover where they're all in the dark?

I don't think so.

The old Justice League was trying too hard to be edgy, and I guess I assume that was going to go forward.

And you know, Marvel takes itself so fucking seriously now, but this was just fun.

It was like a comic book movie, man.

It was, it was fun.

I could see how somebody who's like very invested would be like, this is too fucking goofy.

But I didn't mind.

Superman.

Yeah, yeah.

Fun.

I'm gonna go see you right now.

Are we done?

Your kids would like it, man.

I should take them.

Yeah, my kids are picky.

I mean, they might like it.

Are they?

They started watching The Simpsons.

Really?

Yeah.

Like, how do you start watching The Simpsons in 2025?

Because some friends of mine who have kids that are like just slightly older, he told me that they had started watching The Simpsons and can't stop.

And so I showed it to my kids and they're watching it.

They watch what?

Season 23?

They started at one.

They started at one.

It's so bad.

Dude, they're watching season one.

They're like seven episodes in.

It's not good.

I mean, it's not bad, but like compared to where it got to, I'm like, kids, just stick with it for, you know, 12 more seasons and then we'll get there.

We were talking about this the other day because I remember when the Fox

network launched.

It was in the late 80s.

Remember, they had like a Joan Rivers talk show.

Simpsons started on one of the shows.

Tracy Ullman, right?

Yeah, that launched on, that was one of the launch shows for the network, wasn't it?

I don't remember.

Probably.

But does that mean like they have been on the air every day that Fox has been in business?

Probably as a television network.

For like almost 40 years probably fucking insane dude that's insane I mean the they got their show I think they're at 35 who knows they're it's it's ridiculous so good luck to your kids I guess they'll emerge after 18 months of binge watching yeah it'll take them a while is there anything that sticks with you for Simpsons you I mean no but I'm also not like a

I'm not a quote guy you know people can quote that stuff or they'll hear lines and they know exactly what it's from that's that's not me there's only one that really sticks out to me what is it when the kids all get the nerd kids all get wedgies and they're all rolling around the floor in pain from the wedgies and one of them says yeah this is the life we chose

the the only other quote that i remember is the one um they kind of have like that shining episode where Homer is the one who goes crazy.

Treehouse of Horror?

One of those?

There's that line in there where he's like, I forget what he says.

No beard, no sleep, makes Homer something, something.

And Marge goes, go crazy.

And he goes, don't mind if I do.

I think Conan O'Brien

won the,

what is that?

The Mark Twain Award?

There's some kind of like very prestigious award that's named after Mark Twain.

And then, of course, when he goes to accept it, everybody just comes on and basically roasts him in their speeches for him.

Yeah.

And talked about how he's so associated with the Simpsons, Conan O'Brien.

He's written like

1% of the shows or something like that.

He was involved with 1% of the shows.

And it's just absolutely ridiculous.

Yeah, it is something that I associate him highly with, too.

You do?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess he probably spent more time at SNL than I did.

I'm sure he did.

And now that goddamn talk show he's been doing for fucking ever.

Had you ever heard of Conan O'Brien before you got that talk show?

No.

Neither had I.

No.

But I mean, I was pretty young.

I don't think I would have known who SNL writers were.

Especially like in a pre-internet age.

I don't know why you would really know some of that info unless you were.

I feel like I would know if I heard the the name Conan O'Brien.

True.

Yeah, that's a strange one.

We're kind of used to it because we say it a lot.

That's a fucking ridiculous

Conan O'Brien.

But I was thinking about that.

You said about stuff that sticks with you.

I was wondering, I'm going to put you on the spot here.

Okay.

What is the longest you've ever had a subscription?

Do you think?

I'm like one that lingered around and you just had it forever.

I've talked about it on this podcast before, having Hotel Rwanda on Netflix for like a year for like over a year and never watching it.

And I still haven't seen it.

Um,

because you that was back when Netflix had DVDs, yeah, and I just kept the DVD for a while because you were eventually you're gonna like thought I was gonna watch it.

It was a it was an intellectual movie.

And did you feel like if you turned it back in, you would be defeating yourself a little bit?

I don't know what I think I just thought I really was going to watch it.

And then at some point, I realized I was never going to be in the mood.

And so I was going to send it back.

The other, the other thing that's not

entirely a subscription, but

my internet service I don't own my own cable modem so I pay a rental fee on top of my internet for the modem used to do that with the phones too but I've been doing it for like yeah I've paid for that modem so many times and it cost me like a hundred bucks to buy a new one and I keep not doing it but I keep paying it used to be $8.99 a month now it's like $11.99 a month or whatever and so I'm paying this for this Device you would think after a while they would just like be okay you've you've paid for this thing three times forget about it just just for being a good customer why would they do that why would they do that, I guess?

I feel like people, sometimes people do that, but they just shut down.

There was some appeals court that just shut down.

There was going to be this right to cancel in the U.S.

And it's one of those consumer protections.

And then, of course, the court goes, nah, we don't want that.

No, we don't want to protect consumers.

It was all these cool rules, too.

It said it was rules to have like notifications when they were going to do auto renewals,

more disclosure for program linked to free trials.

And then they also wanted to have specifically a guideline rule that if you sign up with a credit card, however easy it is to sign up, it has to be equally as easy to cancel it as well, which I appreciate.

It's like, and I get, I get why it's a win for business, but it's, it's like so much business right now in the modern economy, it's just like people not paying attention to the long game at all.

Yeah.

I can tell you for a fact, I avoid gym memberships like a play because mine was a gym membership.

I had like a $40 a month gym membership for like two goddamn years.

Yeah.

And they're impossible to cancel.

And well, I just moved away from that neighborhood, but I still lived in Austin.

I was just like, I'm not driving halfway across town.

And it's like, that stuck with me for so goddamn long.

They just made it so hard to cancel that thing.

So I, you know, I saw in that article too, it mentioned that the reason they struck it down is because they failed to do some sort of study for

changes that'll affect the economy to the tune of more than $100 million.

So that also just goes to show you like how much fucking money these companies make off off of counting on us not paying attention to the fact that we've subscribed to them.

Like when you turned in that hotel Rwanda back into Netflix, they probably had to report it as a public company.

Somebody on there was probably like, fuck, this guy sent this back.

He starts back

on cardboard box at his desk.

It's all over voice.

Back it up.

We're leaving.

But I, you know, and I appreciate it too when they do that stuff.

I get so fucking annoyed now because I go through these runs where I'm like, I'm going to clean up my inbox and I'm going to unsubscribe to every little thing that comes out.

Get these notifications of like a fucking thing that I ordered.

And they're like, if you ask me for my feedback five times, that also seems like a bad strategy.

Yeah, for sure and you ask me for that.

I'm pretty fucking bad.

Yeah.

It's like, you really don't want me to read your, okay, I'll come rate your fucking thing.

Say that.

I also say, do you ever get a package on Amazon?

And we get a lot of drop ship stuff.

in the UK, which is basically you order it and they're like, oh, it'll be there in like six weeks because it's going to be straight from China.

And I bought these lanterns impulsively off of Instagram.

Now I'm not going to buy Instagram stuff anymore because this one was just trash.

Like it looked like I probably paid like 5X for it.

Right.

But then sometimes you get that little piece of paper in there too.

And it's like, hey, if you rate our thing five stars, we'll give you a credit back or something like that or send you a free summary.

Is that legal?

I don't know.

Yeah, why not?

I don't know.

Just buy it for reviews.

I don't like it.

I don't like it.

Yeah.

I do get suspicious sometimes when I see a product and then I start reading the reviews and like 12 of them in a row will say

this review is part of a promotion for the product.

And it's like, oh, they got the thing for free.

Why would they give it a bad review?

Leave a bad review for something you gave me for free?

What am I, a piece of shit?

Yeah, I saw a,

I was looking at Airbnb at a place recently and it had all five stars and then one four star.

And there was nothing in the review that indicated why you would take a star off.

And even the owner replied and was like, We really strive to get five stars here.

Like, if there's anything we can do, let me know.

And it's like, why?

Yeah, you're right.

I mean, things are good or bad.

Why would you leave four stars?

Might as well be five.

I was in an Uber in Tucson just recently.

Dude, Tucson's hot.

Tucson is fucking hot, dude.

Also, there's a lot of fighter jets flying overhead.

And the cab driver tried to tell me.

that they have so many jets flying overhead because they work for the coast guard i was like what fucking coasts we're like are they just preparing for when California is gone?

What the fuck does that mean?

When it falls into the ocean, they can run their sorties over the new coastline.

I was like,

our cab drivers have the best information.

But this guy who picked me up in his Uber, he had a 4.99 driver rating.

So somebody.

I asked him.

I had to ask him.

What did he say?

He said, he said, I know the guy who did it.

Of course.

Of course he knows.

He goes, I had five for a long time.

He said he picked up a couple.

His name was John.

He was really.

He fucking knows the guy's name.

He knows his his address.

No, no, the name of the driver was

the customer.

Okay.

That would be against the rules of Uber professionalism, I'm sure.

But he said that it was a couple, and he was a chatty guy, the driver.

He said, I'm a chatty guy.

And I think I talked to the wife more than I talked to him.

And he didn't like that.

So

he could give me like a four or whatever.

What a fucking dick move, dude.

That is a dick move.

I felt terrible.

But then I saw you can pull up your rating for yourself.

I don't have Uber.

I have a Lyft, though.

Let me see.

Well, I'm like a 4.85.

What did you do?

You talk too much?

I don't know, dude.

I don't know what the fuck I did.

You know what I think it might be?

What?

When I lived in Austin,

whenever I would go to the airport,

the GPS tells you to go a specific way.

It tells you to go basically straight across town.

Yeah.

And then go over to 183 and go down to the airport that way.

It's so much faster to go like down Mopac and just hook onto 71.

I know for a fact crossing town, like going past airport boulevard and all that stuff.

So I would often say like, oh, don't go.

I know it's going to tell you to go this way, but go the other way.

And I think maybe that's just like.

You got ding for that?

I think I got to start off on the bad foot.

And that's what I use Uber for, is only going to the airport.

What else am I going to use it for?

I have five stars on Lyft.

Get the fuck out of the way.

But I have 33 rides.

So not like a ton, but enough where I could have got dinged.

On Uber, I've got a, you go to Uber.

Let me pull up my thing here and I'll tell people how they can go look and see see what your rating is on Uber if you've got it.

I wonder if it counts for Uber Eats, too.

Like, maybe people are judging my means.

Yeah, I've got to say somebody didn't like your order.

Yeah.

They're like, I'm taking this rib up to this fucking guy's house again.

Oh, gotta.

Look at this.

And then I pulled this up, and now it's like, you gotta tip the last guy.

I don't remember the last guy.

Oh, he was nice.

He was nice.

You just, you gotta tip him anyway.

Oh, that was the Coast Guard guy.

How long has it been?

Like a week.

He's over there stewing, waiting for that tip.

By the way, sales tax in the UK is 20% and it seems seems egregious what yeah sales tax is it's called that it's 20 for sales tax some stuff is not as much like food is not

tipping here is

it's basically if you add sales tag which in texas is eight and a quarter and then any kind of tip on top of that you're at 20 yeah and you're doing more like everything everything is already so goddamn expensive and then it costs so much more right it's ridiculous what'd you go to tucson for uh i went to go see some friends okay so you go to uber you hit on account in the the bottom left corner, bottom right-hand corner.

Yeah.

And then it says I'm verified.

I don't know what the fuck that means.

And I have a 4.85.

And I told that, I go, I have a 4.85 thinking, okay, that's kind of bad, but not too bad.

And John, Mr.

4.99, he goes, ooh, some people won't even pick you up with that.

What?

What?

Yeah, they'll do a threshold where it's like, don't give me anyone who's under 4.9.

And I have been sent places.

That's crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Under 4.9.

That's picky.

That's real picky.

You're being too picky.

Your kids picking up movies.

They're like, I only want the 4.9, and that's it, man.

Can you actually see?

You can't see your actual reviews, though, right?

No, I wish.

I don't know if they can.

That'd be awesome.

I want to see what people said about me.

Like, how ridiculous is this?

I just tipped a guy from a week and a half ago.

Yeah.

I just tipped him because he came in.

Like, I guess some people use this app every day.

I don't use it.

That's what I'm saying.

This guy who knows who his one bad review is from, he's been sitting there wondering where his fucking tip is, bro.

Wouldn't you, though?

You'd be stewing.

Like, maybe this.

Also, listen, let's be honest.

If John knows who it was, he knows that was bad service.

I know.

He knew it was bad service.

Oh.

He knew that he

was right.

Yeah.

He really was talking to that guy's wife too much.

Maybe

he probably, he tilted the mirror down.

It was like, brother,

you cannot.

Yeah, I should have joined the Coast Guard in Arizona.

It was a reasonable thing.

Those were flotation devices.

So why do you use Lyft and not Uber?

I can't remember.

I don't know.

Was there like a thing?

Yeah, there was a moment.

There was some moment where like Uber, people were saying Uber had done something and use Lyft Lyft instead.

And I hadn't used either one at that point, and I needed to use one.

And I was like, okay, I'll just sign up with Lyft.

You find it, you find it.

So I don't even have Uber.

I don't have it.

Older, is it hard to keep track of all that stuff?

Like, who you're not supposed to like for whatever reason?

For sure.

Like, what did this actor do again?

You know, that's so bad.

What's wrong with Uber?

What's the, and what this Epstein guy, what did he do exactly?

But what else is going on?

Oh, we should talk about this.

I was in Arizona.

I guess the week that somebody there died of the fucking plague, too.

Was that your fault?

No, no.

They were in Flagstaff, which I think is like North.

I don't know.

My Arizona geography is not.

That thing did say it was northern Arizona somewhere.

Apparently, prairie dogs.

Prairie dog?

Yeah, prairie dogs.

They start dying off.

It's one of the indications that plague is kicking around.

I also learned something interesting from this article about this.

So the person who died died of the plague.

When I say the plague, that is the what?

The black.

plague yeah the bubonic plague bubonic plague i learned that bubonic is actually a term that means something specific.

Oh, like the way it was transmitted?

Yeah, something

it lands in your lymph nodes.

It's the same bacteria, I guess, but it lands in your lymph nodes.

And when it does that, that's bubonic plague.

So it's bubonic plague.

Now it sounds weird when I say bubonic.

Blue blank.

The bubonic plague.

Yeah.

Okay, that's right.

Bubonic if it's in your lymph nodes.

It's pneumonic if it's in your lungs.

And then there's another one here.

It's tubonic if you got it from it.

Chewbacca.

If you got it from a wookie, a flea from a Wookiee, it is septicemic if it's in your bloodstream.

Okay, so what did this person get from the flea bites?

I believe they died of pneumonic.

Okay.

And it sounds like this thing, it's just the fucking plague.

I love it.

Whatever that hair is where it is in my body.

If it's in my body, that's the place.

100% of the body is where I don't want it to be.

Right.

I thought that thing said it had a decent survival rate if you can do something about it in the first 24 hours.

But how do you

know?

But I mean,

I think the symptoms were like any other symptoms of getting anything else.

So I'm going to start going to the doctor and be like, hey, I started feeling sick less than 24 hours ago.

I think it's either allergies, a cold, or the plague.

Right.

And you walk in.

Just give me the antibiotics.

As a dude under 60, and they're like, you're fine.

Get the fuck out of here.

Anyway.

You're not getting your way to the car.

You're not getting treatment on your first visit for anything serious, right?

Yeah.

You've noticed that too, right?

I got to come back four times.

I don't even believe you're sick.

Right.

I got to get like, look, it's the same fucking knee.

I'm on my fourth appointment.

Can we do something about the goddamn knee at this point?

Yeah.

I don't think that guy's going to be able to do it.

prairie dogs.

Is that what they say?

Yeah, prairie dogs in Arizona.

I guess that's the prairie dog capital of America.

I was just in southern Colorado, and there were prairie dogs all over the place.

And at this

little ski resort called Purgatory, they have this alpine slide that you can go down.

And there were fucking prairie dogs like all the way down the slide, like right there, looking like they're just going to like

jump on the thing and right.

No, they didn't bite me.

No,

from fleas.

Flea.

Getting all scratchy.

Yeah.

It's been, I think, a heat wave.

Why Arizona, too?

I don't associate many prairies with Arizona.

It doesn't seem like a prairie state.

I mean, they live in the sand or something.

I don't know what they do.

That is a weird one.

What did Gene Hackman's wife have?

You're itching now.

I am itchy now.

Hannah virus, right?

Yeah.

That she probably got from rats.

Probably got from rats, yeah.

And then she died.

She died from that, and then he died of just like being unattended.

Fucking sucks.

Hey, I was just watching.

I watched this, talked about this in the podcast, too.

There was like an hour-long interview with Wes Anderson about all of his movies because he's got a box set coming out, and Phoenician Scheme was coming out at that point in time.

So, that interview is fucking great.

I loved it.

Do you like Wes Anderson?

I like, I do a lot.

Yeah, have you seen the Phoenician Scheme?

I have not.

We had a weird double feature this weekend.

We watched Phoenician Scheme, and I guess because Benicio del Toro is in it, we also watched Sicario.

Oh, yeah, that was like whiplash watching those two movies.

It honestly could almost be the same movie, but with dramatically different tones.

Like, one is very serious and one is very not.

Was Phoenician Scheme good man i'm a sucker i love wes anderson uh people complaining that the wes anderson movie was too wes anderson i'm like what no that's why i'm going yeah i loved it i loved it it was frantic it was crazy what were you going to say about the interview or what's going to say about that we were hopping from the plague to the uh

hannah virus and gene hackman did that get you oh no because in the interview he talks about uh having gene actman he talks when he gets to uh royal tenen bombs He uh, he talks about the experience of having Gene Hackman.

And there was always reports that Gene Hackman was just a fucking asshole.

He was such an asshole on the set of the movie that Bill Murray had to talk to him.

Jesus, when you're bringing in Ambassador Murray, you've got a problem, I think.

But

he was pretty open about it, but it was like very cordial.

You didn't call him an asshole like I just did, speaking ill of a dead one.

Wow.

Yeah, it's pretty rude.

4.5 stars right there.

But

he was talking about how.

You should go watch it, but he says, like, he had a thing where he was talking with Gene Hackman and Gene Hackman said to him, like, point blank, like halfway through filming the movie, he goes, I thought you were, you told me, you assured me that I was going to enjoy this.

And West Andrew's like, I kind of thought, I thought you would.

That's what he said.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

And, because, you know, a big part of casting is like,

it's like drafting in baseball.

You go around to houses and like dinners and meetings and you just.

Yeah, you kind of got to court them.

Yeah, a little bit.

It's kind of like dating in a way.

It's weird.

Right.

And it really is too, because kind of like dating, people become way more interested in a project when other people are interested

as well.

Like,

it's like you kind of want to be like,

maybe a better analogy is throwing a party.

You ever throw a party and you say, hey, do you want to come out to this?

Who's going to be there?

Yeah, what is that question?

I don't ask that, dude.

I just come.

People ask me that question.

Forget it, dude.

I know.

That's a horrible question.

Yeah, I don't.

I mean, I think that maybe.

is an anxiety thing a little bit more than it is like,

are cool enough people going to be here?

I don't know.

Maybe it gives them a sense of what the vibe is going to be.

But fuck that.

I'm bringing the vibe, Bernie.

You know?

Comes with you.

It comes with me.

You and your five stars on Lyft.

You're like, I'm going to jump a little bit.

Like, fuck.

You open your lift.

I tip them before the ride, you know, just right off the bat.

It's payola.

That's what it is.

Right in the shirt pocket, just two bucks.

They know it's coming.

Treat them well, buddy.

Treat them well.

But you were just talking about anxiety and go back to your thing about, you know, you walk into an emergency room and you've got flu-like symptoms.

Right.

First diagnosis, I'm sure, is going to be the flu.

When I was getting allergy shots and they talk about like what you have to watch out for,

all the signs for anaphylactic shock just so happen to be like 100% overlap in the Venn diagram of all the symptoms of anxiety.

Right.

So heart attacks basically the same too, right?

Right.

It's all the same shit.

Oh my God.

Shortness of breath, racing heart rate, an impending sense of doom.

It's like that's you, that's an anxiety attack.

That's exactly what that is.

Maybe you just read the news and that caused it, you know?

Maybe you had a moment of silence and contemplation to yourself.

I just want a nurse, you know, just constantly around to tell me it's going to be okay.

Would you do that?

What?

Would you ever hire like somebody to go around with you and just care for you?

I mean, I'd have to have a lot of money, but yeah, that's a lot of money, dude.

It seems like I always thought college was like the big expenditure you had to save for in your life, but apparently, like, the last six months of your life are like

half a million bucks you got to spend on care for like bonus home or something like that.

It just ended before then.

My parents never did that, but I met somebody whose family was going to go into like

managed care, I think is what they call it.

You know, they go into a retirement home.

Follow, man.

It was like, I'm not kidding.

It was like 12 grand a month.

Yeah.

Who the hell has 12 grand a month at that point in your life?

I know at the end, too.

Holy moly, dude.

That's a lot of money.

Just give me like six grand a month worth of drugs and put that in me and I won't care where where I'm at.

Heroin in video games, bud.

Pop it in.

It's very efficient economically at the end of your life.

Just do that.

Just do that.

Well, Jason, what's going on, man?

What have you been up to?

You've been recording music or anything like that?

We have been a little bit.

And also,

Nick and I, we had been, we're playing the show in August as this other kind of newer, newer project thing.

We've been for a while talking about,

I don't know, over the course of the last 15 years, me and Nick, or really mostly Nick, have recorded all kinds of songs that don't fit in any of the bands that we've been in, you know, and they've just never been released.

And some of Nick's songs in particular are like really good and they should be available to hear, whether or not we make a big push for somebody to hear it or not.

So we've been talking for a while about like coming up with a name for a project to use where we could just put anything out that doesn't have to fit in.

with some band that we've been in, right?

So like, I don't want, you know, like the next visitors album doesn't want to sound like metallica or just what you know whatever whatever that thing is so um

why is why has come with names so hard by it's terrible was it hard yeah it was super hard we could

can i tell you yeah i'm relieved to hear that because i struggle with it so bad i like to know that other people struggle with it as well we ended up uh

I have no idea if this name's any good or not.

We ended up calling this thing Valley Video because that was the name of the...

I like it.

That was the name of the video and video game rental store that we went to in our neighborhood when we were kids in the 80s.

So where I'd rent like Nintendo cartridges and stuff and it was smaller than your living room um and there's nothing on spotify or soundcloud called valley video already so we figured nobody's using it that's probably the biggest hurdle in this day and age when anybody can put out music um but anyway we were trying to figure out how we were going to do this thing at the same time uh our friend rory who's the guy who recorded the visitors album he had a project in the early 2000s called slow reader which is really good that you should listen to it's awesome it sounds like um

like elliott Elliot Smith and the Postal Service.

But they're playing a reunion show.

They asked us, they asked me and Nick to play like some visitor songs acoustic.

And we were like, maybe.

Or like, you know, we have all these other songs too.

And so.

I'd like to hear that.

Did you record the acoustic versions of it?

A visitor stuff?

Yeah.

No, this is all other

stuff.

I mean, some of it would kind of fit in that, in that realm.

But we were like, sure, we'll do it.

And the show is already sold out.

Nobody's going going to be there to see us.

So it's like, perfect.

We don't have to be any good.

You know what I mean?

No pressure.

Yeah, no pressure.

So we're going to play that kind of with a couple other guys as a band.

So we've been kind of working on how to do that.

That's really the main thing creatively lately.

So it's sold out so people can't go to the show.

Yeah, so nobody can do it.

I love this.

Yeah,

I'll tell you a name.

It doesn't even matter what it's called.

Well, then now you have an obligation to release it or something.

I know.

Yeah, we will.

Is there always pressure, too?

Like, comedians have started to do a thing where, like, you go to a show and they put your phone in a bag.

Yeah, I had to do that.

And they had to seal it and all that stuff.

Have they started to do that at live music shows or do people not care yet?

I don't know.

I mean, the live music stuff is like

not very good when you watch it from a recorder from a phone, really.

Or ephemeral, too.

You're not going to spoil a song.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

Unless it was like something unreleased, but that's pretty unlikely, too.

Maybe I'll just start doing jokes in the songs.

There you go.

Can't bring the phone in.

I'm sure there's been concerts though where you can't do that.

So can I tell you something which might inspire your logo a little bit?

Yeah.

So it's Valley Video.

Do you know that the word

for W

in French is double V?

In Spanish, it's double-vais.

Doublevé.

That's what it is in French, doublevé.

Yeah.

So there you go.

So I don't know.

I don't know what you do with that information.

Right, two Vs.

Might just steal the Weezer logo and just say it's two Vs.

What are they going to do?

What are they going to do about it?

They're going to rate you three stars.

They're going to sue me, and then I'm going to use that as publicity.

You're going to publish that your Lyft app.

Your rating's going to drop by one full star.

Now you'll know what happened.

All right, well, Jason, it's always a pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me here on this Monday, July 14th.

All right, well, that does it for us today.

I do want to say, I'm going to do my job here and say a very special thank you to Susan Frazier and Ian Monroe for sponsoring this podcast.

All right, we will be back to talk to you tomorrow.

We hope you will be here as well.

Later.